Jeri Clausing: Questions Around $6 Billion Nuclear Lab?

At Los Alamos National Laboratory, scientists and engineers refer to their planned new $6 billion nuclear lab by its clunky acronym , CMRR, short for Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility, but as a work in progress for three decades, and with hundreds of millions of dollars already spent, nomenclature is among the minor issues. Questions continue to swirl about exactly what kind of nuclear and plutonium research will be done there, whether the lab is really necessary and, perhaps most important, will it be safe, or could it become New Mexico's equivalent of Japan's Fukushima? As federal officials prepare the final design plans for the controversial and very expensive lab, increased scrutiny is being placed on what, in recent years has been discovered to be a greater potential for a major earthquake along the fault lines that have carved out the stunning gorges, canyons and valleys that surround the nation's premier nuclear weapons facility in northern New Mexico. Final preparations for the lab, whose high-end price tag estimate of $5.8 billion is almost more than the New Mexico's annual state budget, and more than double the lab's annual state budget, also comes as a cash-strapped Congress looks to trim defense spending and cut cleanup budgets at contaminated facilities like Los Alamos.