CBS News makes false assurances of safety re: Los Alamos wildfires

A CBS News headline, "Los Alamos fire moves away from nuclear waste," does not even match the story that accompanies it, which makes no such report. The story does contain a number of bland assurances from Los Alamos National Lab officials about the lack of anything to worry about, really, such as "CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers reports that officials there say there was nothing to worry about anyways." The story misleadingly reports:

" 'The bulk of the drums there truly are things like notes that are contaminated, contaminated gloves,' Wallace says.

Those drums are in outdoor domes made of reinforced steel covered with a plasticized fire retardant. But lab officials insist this site and two others containing additional radioactive materials are safe. More radioactive waste is stored in concrete tubes buried deep in the ground; plutonium and uranium are stored in vaults inside hardened concrete buildings."

No mention is made of the fact that those drums could still burst from the heat, and those so-called "low-level" radioactive wastes, those contaminated notes, gloves, tools, etc., are contaminated with ultra-hazardous plutonium, a microscopic dust particle of which inhaled is almost guaranteed to cause lung cancer. Burning such an ultra-hazardous substance, of course, is about the worst possible thing that could be done with it. If it is so harmless, why are the tens of thousands of drum of plutonioum-contaminated military wastes bound for a deep geologic disposal site at Carlsbad, New Mexico?!

Another CBS News headline and story, "Los Alamos fire stokes fear of radioactive smoke," contradict its story above, conveying more about the radioactive wastes and contamination still very much at risk of being overrun by wildfires, as other postings in this section make clear.