Study: Quake could pose risk to Los Alamos lab

I'm thinkin a massive quake would pose a risk at my house too

What a stupid story. This could be written for any nuclear facility. A big quake COULD damage San Onofre and they have quakes all the time out there. Hey and a big accident COULD rip open one of the WIPP containers.

slow news day

Did the goverment build on a falt,
Did they plan seimech tech be for hand. The tax payers have to live with the treat of release of Radiation. Nothing to worry about unless you drilling the taos hum?

Ya' know, if we have a 'quake up here big enough to cause catastrophic damage to that building then I think NM is going to have a lot more problems than a radiation release.
And yes, Virginia, there are worse things than radiation.

Just now figuring this out?

Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, had a 5.9 magnitude earthquake on Jan. 24, 1980. Most of the damage, (about $10 million) occurred in the nuclear research center. Expensive laser equipment was knocked out of alignment or thrown off supports. The Lab maintains there was no radiation release during this event.

Plutonium 239 wrote:

Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, had a 5.9 magnitude earthquake on Jan. 24, 1980. Most of the damage,(about $10 million) occurred in the nuclear research center. Expensive laser equipment was knocked out of alignment or thrown off supports. The Lab maintains there was no radiation release during this event.

No radiation released...yeah, right.

On May 11, 1969, Rocky Flats Plant outside Denver experienced the worst accident in plant history, a major fire in the 776-777 building, initially caused by pyrophoric plutonium scrap. One of the costliest industrial fires of all time. Damages were estimated at between $26 to $50 million dollars this accident was intensified and confounded by a number of operational errors.

The fire at 2:27 p.m. Sunday was reportedly caused by spontaneous ignition of a 1.5-kg briquette of plutonium alloy scrap contained in a metal can. This scrap was believed to have been oily and coated with residual carbon tetrachloride. Once ignited, the fire spread through several hundred interconnected gloveboxes in the two connected buildings.

Interesting to note: the Dept of Energy officially states, "The small amount of plutonium released was entirely contained on plantsite and was about 0.0002 curies. Slightly contaminated external areas were subsequently cleaned up."

That a little humorous, since the fire burned for two days with huge clouds of smoke drifting across Denver. If smoke can get out of the buildings, then Pu got out also, IMO.

Plutonium 239 wrote:

On May 11, 1969, Rocky Flats Plant outside Denver experienced the worst accident in plant history, a major fire in the 776-777 building, initially caused by pyrophoric plutonium scrap. One of the costliest industrial fires of all time. Damages were estimated at between $26 to $50 million dollars this accident was intensified and confounded by a number of operational errors.
The fire at 2:27 p.m. Sunday was reportedly caused by spontaneous ignition of a 1.5-kg briquette of plutonium alloy scrap contained in a metal can. This scrap was believed to have been oily and coated with residual carbon tetrachloride. Once ignited, the fire spread through several hundred interconnected gloveboxes in the two connected buildings.
Interesting to note: the Dept of Energy officially states, "The small amount of plutonium released was entirely contained on plantsite and was about 0.0002 curies. Slightly contaminated external areas were subsequently cleaned up."
That a little humorous, since the fire burned for two days with huge clouds of smoke drifting across Denver. If smoke can get out of the buildings, then Pu got out also, IMO.

I would agree.

If a quake that large was centered around the Houston, TX metroplex, petrochemical complex and ports, I would imagine an environmental and physical catastrophe substantially larger than what is described if it occured near Los Alamos. Do they require refineries to be built to these specifications? Further, the humanitarian disaster coincident with the widespread failure of all the 1960's era constructed homes and businesses in Los Alamos would immediately kill more people than what MIGHT happen with a rad release. Most of the public has an unrealistic perspective of the hazards of radiation.

For example, Santa Feans required the 599 bypass be constructed so that shipments to WIPP be routed around town, but yet they'll let a tanker full of chlorine gas or gasoline drive right down St. Francis. Some education and perspective is needed.

yosemite wrote:

<snip>
Most of the public has an unrealistic perspective of the hazards of radiation.
For example, Santa Feans required the 599 bypass be constructed so that shipments to WIPP be routed around town, but yet they'll let a tanker full of chlorine gas or gasoline drive right down St. Francis. Some education and perspective is needed.

You sure have that right,Yosemite!

yosemite wrote:

Santa Feans required the 599 bypass be constructed so that shipments to WIPP be routed around town, but yet they'll let a tanker full of chlorine gas or gasoline drive right down St. Francis. Some education and perspective is needed.

A lot of the stuff being shipped to WIPP is only mildly radioactive, and using those special WIPP trucks to transport this material is overkill. You are correct in that the tankers carrying materials like chlorine and gasoline pose a far greater potential hazard.

Plutonium 239 wrote:

On May 11, 1969, Rocky Flats Plant outside Denver experienced the worst accident in plant history, a major fire in the 776-777 building, initially caused by pyrophoric plutonium scrap. One of the costliest industrial fires of all time. Damages were estimated at between $26 to $50 million dollars this accident was intensified and confounded by a number of operational errors.
The fire at 2:27 p.m. Sunday was reportedly caused by spontaneous ignition of a 1.5-kg briquette of plutonium alloy scrap contained in a metal can. This scrap was believed to have been oily and coated with residual carbon tetrachloride. Once ignited, the fire spread through several hundred interconnected gloveboxes in the two connected buildings.
Interesting to note: the Dept of Energy officially states, "The small amount of plutonium released was entirely contained on plantsite and was about 0.0002 curies. Slightly contaminated external areas were subsequently cleaned up."
That a little humorous, since the fire burned for two days with huge clouds of smoke drifting across Denver. If smoke can get out of the buildings, then Pu got out also, IMO.

A lot of the problems those Denver facilities (Rocky Flats is between Golden and Boulder, and there's another facility to the East of Denver whose name I don't remember- Rocky Mountain Nuclear Arsenal?) are self-inflicted. For DECADES they dumped nuclear waste into crevices. This lubricated plates below the surface and has contributed greatly to the area's geological instability, or whatever the proper techno-jargon is.

Is L.A. spread out over a fault-line or is the risk from the vibrations felt from Earthquakes from neighboring states? Is there recorded history on any seismic waves over the area in question?...

Oh yes bring on a few earthquakes, I truly miss that part of CA.

Got so used to them never batted an eye when the ground shook.

Has there ever been any earthquakes here in NM in ABQ area?

Bluntly Spoken wrote:

Oh yes bring on a few earthquakes, I truly miss that part of CA.
Got so used to them never batted an eye when the ground shook.
Has there ever been any earthquakes here in NM in ABQ area?

Amazing Blunt! Living in certain parts of Ca do get some tremors. I have never experienced one. How many years did you live so dangerously close to so many Quakes?....Where you in the Oakland/SF area of the last really noticeably quake?....glad to hear that you and your wife/children were safe....wow!...

Bluntly Spoken wrote:

Oh yes bring on a few earthquakes, I truly miss that part of CA.
Got so used to them never batted an eye when the ground shook.
Has there ever been any earthquakes here in NM in ABQ area?

One very recently in Socorro, within the last 2 years.

skinwalker wrote:

Is L.A. spread out over a fault-line or is the risk from the vibrations felt from Earthquakes from neighboring states? Is there recorded history on any seismic waves over the area in question?...

Yeah, Skins...this is from Science Direct:

The Pajarito fault forms the western margin of the Rio Grande rift in north-central New Mexico, and lies adjacent to Los Alamos National Laboratory, a major Federal research facility. Vertical displacement on this normal fault over the past 1.2 Ma has created a 50- to 120-m-high fault scarp on Bandelier Tuff (1.2 Ma), yielding a long-term average slip rate of ca. 0.1 mm/yr. In support of a Laboratory-wide seismic hazards assessment, we excavated 14 trenches in the Pajarito fault zone to determine the age of the most recent displacement event, the recurrence interval between events, the displacement per event, and the variability in slip rate and recurrence through time. The large number of trenches was required by the large height of the fault scarp and the complexity of the fault zone. Only about half the trenches contained significant thicknesses of Holocene deposits, but in those trenches there was clear evidence for an early-to-mid-Holocene displacement event. The previous event was at least 20–40 ka, and the average recurrence interval over the past ca. 300 ka was about 20–40 kyr. We infer that much of the structural relief across this fault developed soon after eruption of the Bandelier Tuff between 1.0 and 1.2 Ma, and that slip rate slowed considerably after that time.

If I'm reading this right, the avg ground slip rate of .1mm/yr (.004 inchs) per year seems pretty small. And the avg recurrence interval is 20,000-40,000 years apart.

Bluntly Spoken wrote:

Oh yes bring on a few earthquakes, I truly miss that part of CA.
Got so used to them never batted an eye when the ground shook.
Has there ever been any earthquakes here in NM in ABQ area?

Ya, Northridge Quake, The bigger Frisco one during the world series... Funny how you get use to them. I do miss them too. Slept through a few as well. One of them woke me at like 5am. That scared me a little because my wall unit and TV almost fell over onto the bed.

Lived in Santa Monica area till 1980 when we moved to Redlands.

Our second home there was smack on a fault so we got a lot of minor quakes and some truly good jolts, one cracked our chimney.

Would always have something rattle around. You do get used to them, really.

Evil Todd, I remember that one very well as we had friends whose home was just a few miles for it and it cracked their slab, they had one of those companies that check that stuff, geologist or some name like that and they fed something down that crack, they never hit bottom.

Several homes were like that on that hill too, lost contact with that friend years ago so no idea if they still live there or not.

Used to take the Santa Monica Freeway to work till that hit, then it took another 45 minutes with all those detours.

Hey Skinwalker, Redlands you know is right nest to Berdoo, you know well that area, right?