The Committee to Nuke Elysium

A wildfire is raging for a third day in the hills of northern New Mexico near the nuclear laboratory where the atomic bomb was first developed.

The blaze came within a few kilometers of a dump site where around 20,000 barrels of plutonium-contaminated waste is stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

However, officials said that the fire is being kept at a safe distance and there is no danger of it reaching the low-level radioactive materials.

The Los Alamos laboratory, which was established during World War Two as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb, remains one of the top nuclear arms manufacturing facilities in the US.

The cause of the fire is believed to be a fallen power line.