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Flames from the Valley Fire in Lower Lake, California September 13, 2015. Credit: Jeff Head. Public domain image accessed via Flickr.
In May 2000, a planned burn to remove dead, dried underbrush on New Mexico’s drought-stricken Cerro Grande peak in the Bandelier National Monument grew out of control. As the sky darkened with smoke, a wall of flames fueled by high winds burned through tens of thousands of acres of land where people, elk, and bald eagles made their homes. The monstrous blaze escaped the monument’s containment line and headed to the forested birthplace of the atomic bomb Los Alamos National Laboratory. There, it raced over soil, rocks, and trees contaminated from decades-old nuclear weapons testing, releasing radioactive particles into the air and setting 47 buildings ablaze. As the devastation unfolded, the wildfire inched close to, but stopped short of, a facility containing tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen.
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The debate over reopening schools in California has intensified after Gov.
Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration said campuses could safely reopen without teachers being vaccinated and as unions have pushed back, calling for school workers to be immunized as part of any sweeping reopening effort to return students to classrooms.
The discussion comes as coronavirus infection rates and other health metrics in the state trend in a positive direction. That could soon allow for the reopening of campuses that have been closed since March in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, among others.
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NASA Faces $1.9 Billion Bill to Clean up Contaminated Sites Across the U.S.
On 1/21/21 at 10:50 AM EST
NASA faces a bill of about $1.9 billion to clean up its sites across the U.S, a report by government auditors has found.
The space agency faces soaring costs for the restoration of former sites, with the potential costs having increased by 45 percent since 2014, according to the Government Accountability Office report published last Friday.
Environmental cleanups could cost $1.9 billion as of fiscal year 2020, a rise of about $180 million from 2019 and a rise of $724 million from 2014.
The bulk of those predicted costs, or environmental liabilities, comes from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory located about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles that played a key role in the Apollo and space shuttle programs.