EPA's LV office monitors radiation

Forest fires raging near nuclear facilities on opposite sides of the world are having very different results.

Fires raging in and near Los Alamos, N.M., have caused no release of radiation, local officials of the federal Environmental Protection Agency say. In the wake of fires in the northern Ukraine near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, however, scientists have discovered slightly higher levels of radioactivity.

The difference comes from the 1986 nuclear reactor catastrophe at Chernobyl, which left a legacy of radiation in the environment, said Gregg Dempsey, who is leading an EPA monitoring team of 10 scientists from Las Vegas to New Mexico to test the air for radiation.

"These two fires are similar," Dempsey said Wednesday, "except Chernobyl has a lot more radioactive contamination on the ground, in plants and in trees."

Chernobyl's No. 3 unit, the only reactor operating after the disaster, malfunctioned in a steam pipeline that was repaired late Wednesday. No radiation was released as a result of the breakdown, officials said. They did find radiation released from roots and stems of plants in the nearby forest in the wake of the fires.

The concern over radioactive contamination carried in billowing clouds of smoke is the same in the communities living in the path of both fires, Dempsey said.

However, there is a major difference in how radioactive sources are handled in New Mexico. At Los Alamos, the Department of Energy had buried or bunkered its radioactive sources, including plutonium, Dempsey said. The fortified buildings holding radioactive elements survived the blaze.

Two EPA scientists from Dempsey's team spent all night analyzing air samples taken during the weekend from 20 monitoring sites in and around Los Alamos, Dempsey said. They found no trace of radiation. "Absolutely none, we didn't see anything," he said.

The EPA health physicists, chemists and monitoring technicians from the local Office of Radiation and Indoor Air Pollution office collected samples from the town of Los Alamos and two Indian pueblos, San Ildefonso and Santa Clara, during three visits to the sites. The samples went to an on-site lab for analysis on Monday.

The EPA is equipped with an 18-wheeler that acts as a mobile laboratory, another van used as a stage to prepare the samples from the field, a camper-style vehicle for an office and a truck to carry all the equipment, director Jed Harrison said.

Bechtel Nevada, the local contractor for the Department of Energy, also sent staff to Los Alamos, as well as the EPA's Dallas office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

About 500 firefighters and scientists are camped on the outskirts of Los Alamos, Dempsey said. Before the Los Alamos fire, he had been working at an abandoned nuclear plant in Odessa, Texas.

"This is my seventh week on the road," Dempsey said. "I don't have a family, but I have a little dog. He's with my mother and I don't know if he'll recognize me." Mary Manning

covers environmental issues for the Sun. She can be reached by phone at (702) 259-4065 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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