Re: Article: Trees Near N.M. Lab May Be Radioactive

[Michael McNaughton <mcnaught@LANL.GOV>]

At 05:39 PM 11/30/2002 -0500, JOHN JACOBUS wrote:

>The following appeared in the Washington Post on Friday, Nov 29.  I think 

>this subject about contaminated trees came up in the past.  Can anyone 

>refresh my memory on what the radionuclide concerns are?  Thanks.

>The trees are in Bayo Canyon,



Bayo Canyon was used in the 1940s and 1950s for the "RaLa" project, which 

used radioactive La-140 to take radiographs of the implosion of DU. The 

La-140 decayed long ago, but it is accompanied by small amounts of 

Strontium-90, which is still present, deep underground, in one small area 

less than an acre. Some vegetation in this area has deep roots and 

occasionally finds a pocket of Sr-90. Bayo Canyon has been cleaned, except 

for this one area that is fenced and posted. However, in the past we have 

been embarassed by the discovery of an occasional fragment of DU shrapnell 

embedded in a tree in an area that was thought to be clean.



mike

Mike McNaughton

Los Alamos National Lab.

email: mcnaught@LANL.gov or mcnaughton@LANL.gov

phone: 505-667-6130



************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.

You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/