2500 Trinity Dr.

Los Alamos, NM

(West of Ashley Pond)

The first of six morally-called people who were arrested in Los Alamos on August 6, 2012 for peaceably attempting to protect the public from the Lab’s deadly radioactive hazards will be tried on Sept 18^th at 11 am.

Albuquerque, Santa Fe and downriver Pueblos now have measurable beta emitters and alpha-emitting plutonium in their water supplies, resulting in (conservatively) over 4000 additional cancer deaths per million population over the next 50 years (based on 3 picocuries of alpha emitters per litre, as they now are at Santa Fe’s Buckman well). Plutonium is one of the deadliest radioactive substances on earth.  (The above figure does not even include inhalation of plutonium.)

Some of those arrested were handcuffed by Bechtel Corporation’s contracted private militia–called SOC, (Secure Our Country)–even though they had been arrested by authorized civilian policemen. The Los Alamos manager of SOC has been subpoenaed to testify on this important civil rights issue.

MunicipalJudge Alan Kirk, former Los Alamos Chief of Police, last month denied a request that he be removed for a potential conflict of interest; he denied a request for a jury trial; and he denied a request that Catherine A. Euler, PhD, the sole self-represented defendant, be tried at the same time as her fellow defendants.  He has scheduled Euler’s trial to go forward next Tuesday, September 18^th at 11 am.  The media are cordially invited to attend. Activists are invited to bring signs or banners to display before and after court.

The five co-defendants represented by counsel have a pre-trial date of October 17^th; no trial date for them has yet been set. Euler and her five co-defendants are facing three charges under the Municipal Code: Obstructing Movement, Refusing to Obey an Officer, and Trespass on Los Alamos National Lab Property. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of $500 or three months in jail.  Euler has said she will refuse to pay a fine because it is Lab activities–not her activities–which are the greater crime.  She said she is prepared to spend time in jail if that is the penalty for trying to alert the public to dangerous Los Alamos National Lab impacts on human health and the environment. Euler will also be joining the ongoing anti-nuclear hunger strike on September 18^th.

Euler said the municipal code specifically permits citizens to temporarily block a road if they are protecting the public from a hazard, and (if given the opportunity) she will argue that the radiological hazards to lab workers and the public have been scientifically proven to be greatly underestimated by the nuclear establishment.  Attached are three of the scientific documents she will try to present in her own defense, which suggest that long term exposure to even low levels of man-made ionizing radiation constitute a previously unacknowledged public hazard, and that she was justified in temporarily blocking the road into the lab in a moral-conscience-directed effort to protect the Lab workers and the public from these hazards.

She will further provide documentary evidence that excess cancers are not the only hazard caused by exposures to low levels of man-made ionizing radiation; dozens of sound epidemiological studies also point to a dose-response relationship which also includes genomic instability, higher infant mortality, and heart disease, among other potential health effects. Some scientists believe they have evidence that lower levels of radiation can actually be MORE harmful to humans, because the cells are not killed outright; instead, they can sometimes replicate in a damaged form.

Catherine Euler said: “We can no longer allow the nuclear establishment to gamble away all our futures. Some plutonium and insoluble uranium isotopes will remain accessible for human ingestion and inhalation in the dust and air of New Mexico, and in the Rio Grande and nearby aquifers, for the rest of time. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) radiation “protection” standards are neither accurate nor updated by recent epidemiological studies (See attached summaries of the German KiKK and French Geocap epidemiological surveys). Bechtel and the DOE are invested in relaxing radiation standards because it helps lower fiscal costs, but the cost in terms of human health effects are beyond calculation. Indigenous peoples downstream are at great risk, as are all the breathers of air and drinkers of water in Santa Fe, Albuquerque and downriver.  Citizens have a duty to future generations to inform themselves about the hazards Lab authorities are refusing to acknowledge, and then to act on that information.”

That same evening there will be a public hearing in Española to give the public an important opportunity to voice concerns over the DOE’s plans to process 13.1 tons of “excess” plutonium at Los Alamos National Lab and/or the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The hearings begin at 5.30 pm  at the Northern NM Community College, Center for Fine Arts, 921 Paseo de Oñate. Public comments begin at 6.45 pm and the hearing will continue until 8 pm. For further information please check out these websites:

Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety: http://www.nuclearactive.org/

Nuke Watch New Mexico: http://www.nukewatch.org/

Nuke Free Now: http://nukefreenow.org/

Trinity Nuclear Abolition: http://tna.lovarchy.org/

Information on the ongoing anti-nuclear hunger strikers through 2013: http://hungry4peace.org/