"Another Kind of Fukushima?" Asks Whistleblower Robert Gilkeson

[bananas]

http://www.truth-out.org/whistleblower-robert-gilkeson/1645468940

"Another Kind of Fukushima?" Asks Whistleblower Robert Gilkeson
Monday 18 July 2011
by: Subhankar Banerjee, Climate Story Tellers | Op-Ed

No, I didn't make up the whistleblower title for Registered Geologist Robert (Bob) H. Gilkeson. For his important work on groundwater contamination at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in 2007 he received the annual "Whistleblower Award" from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability at a Washington, DC reception.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico is operated by competent people, right? And, is filled with respected scientists who always tell the truth, right? That is the "official story"—the world's greatest science protecting America—that LANL has been feeding to the American lawmakers, media and the public for nearly seven decades. But now the northern New Mexico community members and organizations are determined to put an end to LANL's "official story." They're building a "new story." Here is their story.

On Wednesday July 6, LANL opened after being closed for more than a week due to the Las Conchas Fire that has become the largest fire in New Mexico history. As of July 16 it has burned 156,245 acres including large areas in crucial watersheds and sacred sites in the Santa Clara and Cochiti pueblo lands. That Wednesday afternoon I sat down for 3 1/2 hours of conversation with Bob Gilkeson, Joni Arends, Executive Director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS), and David Bacon, board member of CCNS. I was shocked to learn about the massive amount of toxic and radioactive wastes that are on the surface and in subsurface pits at LANL. It got much worse—I learned about the great seismic hazard that has potentially catastrophic implications for the entire American southwest. LANL is also proposing to build a new $6 billion nuclear facility as part of an integral plutonium pit (triggers) production complex for building new nuclear weapons. You can stop this—it is your call.

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Fukushima was producing nuclear power, whereas LANL produces nuclear weapons. There is a difference, but David made it clear for us, "Because they're looking at a possible major earthquake, it'll impact all of us. With 6 metric tones of plutonium inside the lab, and all of the surface and subsurface nuclear waste, it'll impact the entire American southwest, everybody. They need to pack up right now and leave." I was puzzled by David's comment, even if they do pack up, where would they go? Which community on this earth would want an operation in their backyard that would put radioactive and hazardous toxins into their watersheds, air and lungs?

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Subhankar Banerjee is founder of ClimateStoryTellers.org. He is currently editing an anthology titled, Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point (New York: Seven Stories Press, April 2012) and his photographs can be seen now in exhibitions Where I Live I Hope To Know at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth through August 28, 2011 and in Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe through October 9, 2011. He has been appointed Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for fall term 2011.