The Secret and the Sacred: Two Worlds at Los Alamos (2001)

In Los Alamos New Mexico, Robert J. Oppenheimer and his staff created the first atomic bomb, "Trinity," the scientific prototype to "Little Boy" and "Fat Man," the bombs that hastened the end of World War II by leveling Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although the laboratory is now a leading center of genetic research, it remains a place of secrecy, for its main mission is to maintain the existing nuclear arsenal, a task that hides behind the name, "Stockpile Stewardship." This film is about the history, heritage and horrors of the nuclear age in Los Alamos. The lab takes up forty-three square miles--indigenous land of the Tewa people from the pueblos Santa Clara and San Ildefonso. Consequently, the local Indians are cut off from their traditional shrines of worship. One of these sacred places contains the petroglyph of Avanyu, the mythic serpent that is the guardian of the springs. According to tribal wisdom, those who poison the water must face Avanyu's fiery revenge. The local ground water has been contaminated by decades of the laboratory's negligence. At the laboratory, formulas pull rank on myths. Warnings from the pueblos' spiritual leaders to laboratory officials fell upon deaf ears. Nothing disturbs the local air of denial like a little peaceful activism. Artists and activists meet at the Black Hole, a former supermarket that Ed Grothus calls home. Ed, an outspoken pacifist, resells lab salvage at the Black Hole. However, radioactive waste is never resold; instead, over decades, the laboratory covertly buried it in the ground. That's where former New Mexico EPA inspector Greg Mello comes in. With his peaceful Geiger counter, Mello has become the laboratory's most feared critic. The film also features former lab employees, Native American historians and environmentalists, artist Erika Wanenmacher, all of whom take a stand on behalf of the land and historical truth.