Aerial Tour of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)

In November 2004, the Los Alamos Study Group chartered a small plane and took a group of staff and board members on a flight around the perimeter of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The goal of this flight was to obtain additional closeup photographs of the Area G nuclear waste dump at LANL. The flight was very successful and the Study Group was able to photograph Area G and other critical areas of concern around the laboratory site. We have made several of these photographs available here for your informational use only. All of these photographs are copyrighted. If you would like to use any of these photographs for publication, please contact Trish Williams-Mello at: twm(at)lasg.org

Some of the sites photographed:
(Note: all of the photographs below are copyrighted by the Los Alamos Study Group.)

Area G
Overview
Overview from the west
Vertical overview
Waste-storage tents
Waste shafts
Close-up of waste dumped in unlined pits
Another close-up of waste in the unlined pits
Proposed expansion area

Area L
Overview
Closeup

Other sites
Evaporation ponds

TA-53
TA-53 (wider view)

TA-55 (13 Mar 2012)

A Brief explanation of Area G:
Did You Know? There is a nuclear dump just 19 miles from the Santa Fe Plaza . It's called "Area G".

At 63 acres, Area G is the largest MDA (Material Disposal Area) and contains the most waste (10,800,000 ft ; enough to fill 1.4 million 55-gallon drums). Area G has been a disposal site for dangerous wastes of all types, including a wide range of toxic chemicals, pesticides, PCBs, transuranic (TRU) wastes, spent nuclear fuel and components of small nuclear reactors, and other radioactive wastes of every description. Beneath the mesa surface, plumes of hazardous waste vapors and radioactive tritium have mingled to cover much of the site. In 1999, LANL had plans to expand MDA-G by 66 acres, more than doubling its size to accommodate increased nuclear waste generation from the planned production of plutonium “pits,” (the cores of nuclear weapons). Currently there is no regulatory limit to the rate or amount of nuclear waste that could be disposed on the Pajarito Plateau.