SANTA FE – The US government sent an aircraft equipped with radiation monitors over the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory yesterday as a 285sq km (110-sq-mile) wildfire burned at its doorstep, putting thousands of scientific experiments on hold for days.
Lab authorities described the monitoring as a precaution and, along with outside experts on nuclear engineering, expressed confidence that the blaze would not scatter radioactive material, as some in surrounding communities feared.
“Our facilities, our nuclear materials are all safe,” said lab director Charles McMillan. “They’re accounted for and they’re protected.
The twin-engine aircraft, which can take digital photographs and video as well as thermal and night images, was sent to New York to take air samples after the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It has flown over wildfires and areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina. It monitored the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and helped locate debris from the disintegrated Columbia space shuttle.
In a testament to the sophisticated research undertaken at Los Alamos, the aircraft was developed with technology from the lab, the desert installation that built the atomic bomb during the second World War.
The pillars of smoke, which can be seen as far as Albuquerque, 97km (60 miles) away, have people on edge. The fire has also cast a haze as far away as Kansas.
However officials said they analysed samples taken from some of the lab’s monitors and the results showed nothing abnormal in the smoke. – (AP)