As one of the "public interest advocacy groups" mentioned in The New Mexican's editorial of June 20 ("LANL's contaminated history is a product of a different time"), Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety takes issue with two of the principal points made in that piece.

We agree that the release of the Centers for Disease Control historical review of Los Alamos National Laboratory activities is a significant event. The CDC document makes fascinating reading. Through hundreds of pages of committee-speak prose punctuated by scientific charts and graphs, there emerges a story that is by turns exciting, terrifying, tragic and even occasionally comical.

We strongly disagree, however, with the blasé attitude suggested in The New Mexican editorial that "what's past is past." While the CDC report focuses on past activities at LANL — it is, after all, a historical document retrieval project — the contaminants released in those times are, for the most part, still out there.

Plutonium, beryllium, uranium, to mention only a few of the toxic materials released from LANL, do not go away by themselves. Many of these substances are still in the canyons below the laboratory, migrating toward the Río Grande and the Buckman well fields (as well as the diversion site for the Buckman Direct Diversion Project). Every passing day makes cleanup of those canyons more, not less, urgent.

Nor do we agree that LANL contamination can be dismissed as the product of "different times." No one doubts the motives or the intentions of LANL staff. However, the CDC documents reveal a long, tangled tale of ignorance, hubris and human frailty again and again leading to release of toxic materials.

In the early years of the laboratory, scientists were only beginning to learn about the extraordinary and novel substances they were dealing with. That inevitable ignorance has no doubt diminished with time — to that extent, times may have changed — but it will never be completely eliminated.

It is less clear that LANL's hubris has diminished. There is a romantic allure to the idea that the weapons of mass destruction produced at LANL are so vital to the nation's security that their continued production justifies concealing dangers to the community. It's easy to understand the appeal of thinking oneself an "insider" who has the right, even the obligation, to lie to the people for their own good. That this belief has held sway in the past seems plain.

As the editorial noted, "credibility has never been LANL's strong suit." The CDC documents show unmistakably that "there were lots more radioactive emissions from LANL than were ever officially acknowledged." It is far from clear that the attitudes that led to official concealment in the past have changed. (A meeting held last Thursday at Buffalo Thunder Resort was, in fact, being conducted by the CDC and is not "part of an ongoing effort" by LANL to gain "public confidence.")

Finally, one can wonder whether, even with the best information and most honest intentions in the world, the kind of activities carried on at LANL can be conducted safely so close to a populated area. Even careful people make mistakes, and people working with dangerous materials make dangerous mistakes.

No one who glances through the 31-page table titled "Partial Chronology of Accidents, Incidents and Important Events at LANL," which makes up chapter 16 of the CDC documents (available for free download at http://www.lahdra.org/pubs/pubs.htm), will ever again be complacent about the possibility for human error in dealing with nuclear materials.

CCNS has worked for more than 20 years to improve public accountability for LANL's activities and to promote clean-up in the area around the laboratories. We have urged Congress and the president to ensure that LANL turns sufficient resources to the unromantic but urgent task of cleaning up its legacy of contamination.

In short, the history of LANL contamination is a fascinating and scary story that is far from over.

Grant Franks is chairman of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety.