After three cleanups, independent analysis shows 80-year-old plutonium persists in Acid Canyon and beyond
By Alicia Inez Guzmán, Searchlight New Mexico | August 15, 2024 searchlightnm.org
The world’s oldest documented plutonium contamination may not lie not in the Chihuahuan Desert at the Trinity Site, where the first-ever atomic bomb ripped open the skies and melted the sand into green glass. Rather, that distinction more likely goes to Los Alamos’s Acid Canyon, according to an independent study by Michael Ketterer, professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at Northern Arizona University.
Ketterer announced these findings at an online press conference held by Nuclear Watch New Mexico on Aug. 15, after collecting and analyzing soil, water and plant samples in Acid Canyon, a popular hiking area in the middle of town. Beginning in 1943, the year the Manhattan Project came to Los Alamos, workers released radioactive waste into the canyon. Three remediations would follow, but as Ketterer’s analysis found, “a super weapons-grade” plutonium persists in the soil, water and plant life in and around Los Alamos, representing some of the earliest ever made.
One thought came to his mind as he analyzed samples from the area, collected last month:
“I’ve never seen anything like this in any samples anywhere,” he told Searchlight New Mexico in an interview.