Fire may cost Los Alamos lab at least $300 million

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Fire may cost Los Alamos lab at least $300 million

SANTA FE, New Mexico, June 9 (Reuters) - Damages to the 
largest U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory in May from New Mexico's 
largest wildfire could total more than $300 million, lab officials said 
on Friday. 

The fire also wiped out several years worth of scientific research by 
some of the lab's 12,000 workers when a trailer used as an office 
was gutted, destroying 20 personal computers at the birthplace of 
the atomic bomb. 

The blaze, triggered by brush burning in Bandelier National 
Monument that roared out of control, scorched the sprawling Los 
Alamos National Laboratory and destroyed more than 200 homes 
in the adjoining town of Los Alamos. 

Dick Burick, the lab's deputy director for operations, said recovery 
and repair work would cost an estimated $130 million this federal 
fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, then another $100 million in fiscal 
2001 and a comparable or lesser amount the next year. 

"Thus the costs to the laboratory and DOE (Department of Energy) 
attributable to the fire and its aftermath could exceed $300 million," 
Burick told a congressional committee earlier this week in 
testimony made available on Friday. The lab is owned by the DOE 
and managed by the University of California. 

"These costs do not include the value of the lost productivity for 
several weeks, roughly $50 million for three weeks," he said. 

The fire burned across 8,000 acres (3,238 hectares) on the lab's 43 
square miles (111 sq km) on a plateau cut through by canyons and 
the Jemez Mountains, where it was founded in the 1940s for 
construction of the first atomic bomb. 

Burick reiterated that none of the lab's major buildings, nuclear 
research sites or bunkers for radioactive materials and explosives 
were damaged. 

Flames destroyed 39 trailers and sheds, many of them used as 
offices for the lab's staff, as well as damaging power lines and 
firefighting equipment and spreading soot and ash through high-
tech facilities. 

"There is hardly a workspace in the Lab that was not affected by 
soot and smoke. The extent of computer damage from fire and 
smoke is yet to be totaled -- perhaps hundreds of desktop 
machines will need replacement," he said. 

Burick said some of the costs will be incurred for erosion control 
aimed at preventing or reducing flash floods expected when heavy 
summer rains late this month or next run down the scorched 
mountainsides above Los Alamos. 

The lab has as many as 600 sites contaminated by radioactive 
materials and other wastes from the 1940s and 1950s, when rules 
for handling them were looser. Burick said there are concerns 
floods could wash contaminated ground downstream to the Rio 
Grande river, about five miles away. 

"We believe that there is no health risk due to contaminants from 
lab operations in the runoff, and that material concentrations will 
remain below regulatory levels... Nonetheless, in view of the 
laboratory's goal of zero environmental impact, the measures 
necessary to reduce or eliminate contaminated runoff under various 
scenarios will be evaluated and appropriate action taken," he said.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Division		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    
ICN Biomedicals, Inc.				E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 				                           
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Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Personal Website:  http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205
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