Punam Thakur, left, and Sally Ballard, right, both radio chemists at the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center, study and record samples of plutonium and americium in the counting room at the center. Researchers at CEMRC are monitoring the nuclear situation in Japan closely, but say that the chance of radiation reaching Carlsbad is very slim to none if the current conditions remain the same overseas.

David Baker, a radio chemist at the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center, studies and stores samples of multiple chemical elements in the center's counting room. Baker is one of many scientists studying the area surrounding WIPP for any radioactivity as well as monitoring the nuclear situation in Japan.

By Matlin Smith
Current-Argus Staff Writer

CARLSBAD – Local radio chemists from the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center assure the Carlsbad public that radiation from Japan will not affect the city as long as current conditions remain the same overseas.

” We will eventually see litt le spikes” said Dr. George Mulholland. the interim director at the center. “But they will be miniscule.” CEMRC, established in 1991, is a center designed to anticipate and respond to emerging health and environmental needs and develop and implement an independent health and environmental monitoring program in the vicinity of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, making all results accessible to the public.

Although researchers at the center primarily measure the soil, air, water, native plants and animals in the region around WIPP, a nuclear waste repository located in salt beds about 26 miles outside of Carlsbad.