Plutonium Sampling at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Cost of RECA Chart
In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
New & Updated
Breakthrough Study Bolsters RECA Claims for New Mexicans Exposed to Trinity Test Site Radiation
Plutonium Detections From Trinity Test Discovered 78 years After Test – Confirm RECA Must Be Expanded
Located in the Tularosa Basin in southern New Mexico, the Trinity Test Site marks the location of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” would have you believe this area is desolate, inhospitable and uninhabited. Contrary to this narrative and popular opinion, The area where the Trinity test occurred was not uninhabited. There were more than 13,000 New Mexicans living within a 50-mile radius. Many of those children, women and men were not warned before or after the test. The event marking the dawn of the nuclear age in July 1945 ushered in decades of health issues for residents living downwind due to exposure to radioactive fallout. The long-lasting impact of radiation exposure is a painful legacy that the New Mexican communities have had to bear.
New preliminary information strongly supports Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) status for New Mexicans downwind of the Trinity Test Site. In the past weeks, Michael E. Ketterer, (Professor Emeritus, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ) has completed a short “proof of principle” study that directly investigates where plutonium in soils originates by analyzing isotopic ratios, in a known portion of the Trinity Test plume.
Dr. Ketterer sampled soils along highways NM 42, US 54, NM 55, US 60, and US 380. The isotopes show that there is definitely plutonium from the Trinity Test in the northeast plume, and distinguishes it from global (stratospheric) background and New Mexico regional background from Nevada Test Site fallout. Soils along all five of these highways contain plutonium that reflects mixtures of Trinity Test debris and global/Nevada regional background fallout; in some cases, nearly 100% of the Pu originates from the Trinity Test.
Plutonium Detections From Trinity Test Discovered 78 years After Test – Confirm RECA Must Be Expanded
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, July 31, 2023
Tina Cordova, Tularosa Basin Downwind Consortium – 505.897.6787 | Email
Dr. Michael E. Ketterer – 928.853.7188 | Email
Scott Kovac, Nuclear Watch New Mexico – 505.989.7342 | Email
Santa Fe, NM – New preliminary information strongly supports Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) status for New Mexicans downwind of the Trinity Test Site. In the past weeks, Michael E. Ketterer, (Professor Emeritus, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ) has completed a short “proof of principle” study that directly investigates where plutonium in soils originates by analyzing isotopic ratios, in a known portion of the Trinity Test plume.
Dr. Ketterer sampled soils along highways NM 42, US 54, NM 55, US 60, and US 380. The isotopes show that there is definitely plutonium from the Trinity Test in the northeast plume, and distinguishes it from global (stratospheric) background and New Mexico regional background from Nevada Test Site fallout. Soils along all five of these highways contain plutonium that reflects mixtures of Trinity Test debris and global/Nevada regional background fallout; in some cases, nearly 100% of the Pu originates from the Trinity Test.
While Dr. Ketterer has not encountered any activities (expressed as Bq/kg or pCi/g, Becquerels or picocuries respectively) of plutonium that cause alarm from the radio-toxicity standpoint, there’s very limited data.
Does New Mexico Deserve Downwinder Status: Definitely Yes, as Evident Via Plutonium Isotopes in 2023 Soil Samples
Michael E. Ketterer, Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Northern Arizona University , Flagstaff AZ
Introduction/objective: to investigate whether plutonium from the July 16, 1945 Trinity Test can be identified in contemporary soils and dusts near the Trinity Site. A proof-of concept study was conducted via a small-scale July 2023 collection of soil samples along five public highways transecting the areas reported to be most affected (refer to 239+240Pu deposition inventory map from Beck et al., 2020). More-distant soil samples were obtained from the Carson National Forest near Truchas, New Mexico.
Nolan’s Oppenheimer treats New Mexico as a blank canvas
New Mexicans are integral to the history of atomic development and testing, but they’re nowhere to be seen on screen.
“We’ve been slept-walked into a new nuclear arms race, arguably far more dangerous than the first,” said John C. Wester, Archbishop of Santa Fe. “I grew up in the duck-and-cover generation. Perhaps some of you remember that. I felt chills many decades later when I read that Robert McNamara, defense secretary during the Cuban Missile Crisis, said that we survived that crisis only by luck. Luck is not a sustainable strategy for the survival of the human family.”
Jay Coghlan, of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, emphasized the danger from renewed plutonium pit production at Los Alamos, which he sees as both unnecessary for nuclear deterrence, and as risking development of new nuclear weapons.
BY KELSEY D. ATHERTON | July 28, 2023 sourcenm.com
In Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biopic “Oppenheimer,” released last week, the Manhattan Project comes to New Mexico largely because J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) wishes it so. The film was shot in the Land of Enchantment with a hastily assembled Ghost Ranch set serving as the film’s freshly constructed Los Alamos. “Oppenheimer” features New Mexico as setting, backdrop, and refuge for the transplant scientists and military men who spent World War II developing the atom bomb. The film does not show the people already living in New Mexico, neither before the first shovel hits the dirt nor after Trinity’s radioactive fallout creates the first downwinders.
TIME – Inside the Los Alamos Lab Making Nuclear Bomb Parts Again
“It’s difficult to comprehend the level of contamination, the diversion of amounts of money into something that, in my view, will not improve national security,” says Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a Santa Fe-based watchdog.
BY W.J. HENNIGAN/LOS ALAMOS, N.M. | July 24, 2023 time.com
In the Lab Oppenheimer Built, the U.S. Is Building Nuclear Bomb Cores Again
Something unusual is happening inside the plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. PF-4, as it is known to top government officials, is the heart of America’s nuclear complex, a lab where scientists and engineers study and experiment on highly radioactive materials in tight secrecy…
