New Mexican downwinders, receiving financial compensation for the first time, reckon with the ongoing tragedy of the Trinity bomb detonation — and fight to ensure remembrance
Nuclear
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Seismic shift: How U.S. policies on nuclear weapons are likely to change under Donald Trump
Searchlight spoke with six experts about what the new administration could mean — for everything from Los Alamos National Laboratory to a possible return to underground detonations at the Nevada test site
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Plutonium just had a bad day in court
In a major decision whose consequences are still being assessed, a federal judge declared that plutonium pit production — one ingredient in the U.S. government’s $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion — has to be performed in accordance with the nation’s strongest environmental law
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Elemental questions
After Searchlight New Mexico and other news outlets published a researcher’s findings of 80-year-old plutonium contamination in Los Alamos’s Acid Canyon, lab director Thom Mason deemed the local recreation area a “cleanup success.” Is it? And according to whom?
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A nuclear legacy in Los Alamos
After three cleanups, independent analysis shows 80-year-old plutonium persists in Acid Canyon and beyond
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LANL plans to release highly radioactive tritium to prevent explosions. Will it just release danger in the air?
The venting may harm pregnant women and fetuses, advocates say.
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The long path of plutonium: A new map charts contamination at thousands of sites, miles from Los Alamos National Laboratory
Plutonium hotspots appear along tribal lands, hiking trails, city streets and the Rio Grande River, a watchdog group finds
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The reawakening of America’s nuclear dinosaurs
Are America’s plutonium pits too old to perform in the new Cold War? Or are new ones necessary?
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Buried secrets, poisoned bodies
Why did a Truchas woman die with extraordinary amounts of plutonium in her body — and why was she illegally autopsied? For this reporter, the answers hit close to home.
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Chess, cards and catnaps in the heart of America’s nuclear weapons complex
At Los Alamos National Laboratory, workers collect full salaries for doing nothing