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Radioactive contamination from the Rocky Flats Plant

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This article is about offsite radioactive contamination caused by the Rocky Flats plant and the health effects of that contamination. For information about contamination on the site of the plant, see Rocky Flats Plant.
One of four example estimates of the plutonium (Pu-239) plume from the 1957 fire at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. More info.

The Rocky Flats Plant, a former U.S. nuclear weapons production facility in the state of Colorado, caused radioactive contamination within and outside its boundaries and also produced "area-wide contamination of the Denver area."[1][2] The contamination resulted from decades of emissions, leaks and fires that released radioactive isotopes, largely plutonium (Pu-239), into the environment. The plant was located about 15 miles upwind from Denver and has since been shut down and its buildings demolished and completely removed from the site.

According to a scientific study, "In the more densely populated areas of Denver, the Pu contamination level in surface soils is several times fallout", and the plutonium contamination "just east of the Rocky Flats plant ranges up to hundreds of times that from nuclear tests."[3]

As noted in a scientific journal, "Exposures of a large population in the Denver area to plutonium and other radionuclides in the exhaust plumes from the plant date back to 1953."[4] Moreover, in 1957 there was a major Pu-239 fire at the plant, followed by another major fire in 1969. Both of these fires resulted in this radioactive material being released into the atmosphere, with the then-secret 1957 fire being the more serious of the two. The contamination of the Denver area by plutonium from these fires and other sources was not reported until the 1970s, and as of 2011 the U.S. Government continues to withhold data on post-Superfund cleanup contamination levels.

Elevated levels of plutonium have been found in the remains of cancer victims living near the Rocky Flats site, and breathable plutonium outside the former boundaries of the plant was found in August 2010. No government studies of the plutonium contamination and its effect on health are being held as of 2011, and private groups and researchers remain concerned about long-term consequences of the contamination.[5][6][7][8]

After operating for 40 years, only ending after great public protest and a combined Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raid in 1989 that stopped production, the Rocky Flats Plant was declared a Superfund site in 1989 and began its transformation to a cleanup site in February 1992. Removal of the plant and surface contamination was largely completed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nearly all underground contamination was left in place in order to reduce costs to the U.S. Government, which provided liability indemnification to the defense contractors that operated the plant.[5]

Discovery, prosecution and assessment

Subsequent to reports of environmental crimes being committed at Rocky Flats, the United States Department of Justice sponsored an FBI raid dubbed "Operation Desert Glow," which began at 9 a.m. on June 6, 1989.[9]. The FBI got past the Department of Energy's heavily armed, authorized to shoot-to-kill security—whose armament included surface-to-air missiles—under the ruse of providing a terrorist threat briefing, and served its search warrant to Dominick Sanchini, Rockwell International's manager of Rocky Flats, who as it happened died the next year in Boulder of cancer.[10][11]

The FBI raid led to the formation of Colorado's first special grand jury, the juried testimony of 110 witnesses, reviews of 2,000 exhibits and ultimately a 1992 plea agreement in which Rockwell admitted to 10 federal environmental crimes and agreed to pay $18.5 million in fines out of its own funds. This amount was less than the company had been paid in bonuses for running the plant as determined by the GAO, and yet was also by far the highest hazardous-waste fine ever; four times larger than the previous record.[12] Due to DOE indemnification of its contractors, without some form of settlement being arrived at between the U.S. Justice Department and Rockwell the cost of paying any civil penalties would ultimately have been borne by U.S. taxpayers. While any criminal penalties allotted to Rockwell would not have been covered—ultimately, by U.S. taxpayers—for its part Rockwell claimed that the Department of Energy had specifically exempted them from most environmental laws, including hazardous waste. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]

Regardless, and as forewarned by the prosecuting U.S. Attorney, Ken Fimberg/Scott,[20] the Department of Justice's stated findings and plea agreement with Rockwell were heavily contested by its own, 23-member special grand jury. Press leaks on both sides—members of DOJ and the grand jury—occurred in violation of secrecy Rule 6(e) regarding Grand Jury information, a federal crime punishable by a prison sentence. The public contest led to U.S. Congressional oversight committee hearings chaired by Congressman Howard Wolpe, which issued subpoenas to DOJ principals despite several instances of DOJ's refusal to comply. The hearings, whose findings include that the Justice Department had "bargained away the truth,"[21] ultimately still did not fully reveal the special grand jury's report to the public, which remains sealed by the DOJ courts.[22][23]

The special grand jury report was nonetheless leaked to Westword. According to its subsequent publications, the Rocky Flats special grand jury had compiled indictments charging three DOE officials and five Rockwell employees with environmental crimes. The grand jury also wrote a report, intended for the public's consumption per their charter, lambasting the conduct of DOE and Rocky Flats contractors for "engaging in a continuing campaign of distraction, deception and dishonesty" and noted that Rocky Flats, for many years, had discharged pollutants, hazardous materials and radioactive matter into nearby creeks and Broomfield's and Westminster's water supplies.[24]

The DOE itself, in a study released in December of the year prior to the FBI raid, had called Rocky Flats' ground water the single greatest environmental hazard at any of its nuclear facilities.[25]

Sources of contamination

During the Cold War the Rocky Flats Plant nuclear weapons production facility was built with high security conditions by the U.S. Government—but without consulting local or state authorities for permission—about 15 miles to the northwest of Denver. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, only employees knew of the work being done there, and even they had only a working knowledge of their specific responsibilities. The general public was kept entirely uninformed.[26][27]

Plutonium, used to construct the weapons' fissile component, can spontaneously combust at room temperatures in air. Major plutonium fires in 1957[5] and 1969[28] occurred at Rocky Flats and spread radioactive contamination in the Denver metropolitan area. Isopleth diagrams from scientific studies show the city of Denver included in the area where surface sampling detected plutonium.[29]

Estimates for the amount of plutonium released to the environment from the major fires vary between tens of grams to hundreds of kilograms. Hundreds of other small plutonium fires and intentional incinerations also occurred at Rocky Flats that were not nearly as destructive.[30][5][27][31]

As documented in FBI reports and court records, FBI agents and prosecutors became aware that Rockwell workers had been mixing hazardous and other wastes with concrete to create one-ton solid blocks called pondcrete. These were stored in the open under tarps on asphalt pads. The workers had also directed liquid contamination into a series of holding ponds, even after regulators had closed the ponds due to ground-water contamination. Liquid from the sewage plant, meanwhile, had been "spray irrigated" over fields via sprinklers, mainly to avoid the cost—and the regulatory and public reviews—that would come from directly discharging the contaminated waste into creeks.

The pondcrete turned out to be weak storage. Relatively unprotected from the elements, the blocks began to leak and sag. Nitrates, cadmium and low-level radioactive waste—some of which with a 24,000-year half-life—began to leach into the ground and run downhill toward Walnut Creek and Woman Creek. There they would sometimes meet the liquids from the sprinklers, for they also had run-off that flowed into the creeks.[32]

Most of the plutonium from Rocky Flats was oxidized plutonium, which does not readily dissolve in water. In terms of waterborne Pu-239 contamination, a large portion of the plutonium released into the creeks sank to the bottom and is now found in the streambeds of Walnut and Woman Creeks, and on the bottom of local public reservoirs just outside of Rocky Flats: Great Western Reservoir, no longer used for city of Broomfied consumption as of 1997, and Standley Lake, a drinking water supply for the cities of Westminster, Thornton, Northglenn and some residents of Federal Heights.[33]

Additionally, thousands of 55-gallon drums of nuclear waste from milling operations were stored outside in an unprotected earthen area called the 903 pad storage area,[34] where they corroded and leaked radionuclides over years into the soil and water. An estimated 5,000 gallons of plutonium-contaminated oil leached into the soil between 1964 and 1967.[35] Portions of this high-level radioactive waste became airborne in the heavy winds of the Front Range, with Denver being downwind.[28][27][36][37]

Effects on health

Despite the fact that elevated levels of plutonium have been found in deceased bone-cancer victims such as 11 year-old Kristen Haag, whose home was six miles away from Rocky Flats, related long-term health studies for the general population of the Greater Denver Metropolitan Area do not exist and are not on-going as of 2011.[38]

An early, focused study by Dr. Carl Johnson, health director for Jefferson County, showed a 45 percent increase in congenital birth defects in Denver suburbs downwind of Rocky Flats compared to the rest of Colorado. Moreover, he found a 16% increase in cancer rates for those living closest to the plant as compared to those on the outer perimeter of the area, and he estimated 491 excess cancer cases whereas the DOE estimated one. Real estate interests pressed the county to fire Johnson, claiming his findings hurt their industry. After electing a real estate investor to the county board, they succeeded.[39][40][41]

Additional individual radiological victims directly related to Rocky Flats are featured in the film Dark Circle. These include Rocky Flats employee and brain cancer victim Don Gabel (who died during filming), Beth Campbell and Ruth Wiebe. The dramatic effects on the livestock of rancher Lloyd Mixom are also discussed.[42]

Other effects

Denver's automotive beltway to this day lacks for a component in the northwest sector, partly due to concerns over plutonium contamination,[43] which prevailing winds spread over the area during and since the fires.[44] Notably, plutonium has a 24,000-year half-life, and the Superfund remediation of Rocky Flats did not include offsite areas, nor Denver, nor its suburbs. U.S. Government efforts to make the area surrounding the former plant into the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge have been controversial due to the pervasive contamination, much of which is underground and not remediated.[45][7][46]

Reporting of contamination

No radioactivity warning, advisement or cleanup was provided to the public in the 1957 fire, the worse of the two major fires. At the time of the 1957 fire, AEC officials told the Denver Post that the fire “resulted in no spread of radioactive contamination of any consequence.”[47] The public was not informed of substantial contamination from the 1957 plutonium fire until after the highly visible 1969 fire, when civilian monitoring teams confronted government officials with measurements made outside the plant of radioactive contamination suspected to be from the 1969 fire, which consumed hundreds of pounds of plutonium (850 kg).[48][49]

The 1969 fire raised public awareness of potential hazards posed by the plant and led to years of increasing citizen protests and demands for plant closure.

Despite plutonium incineration and hundreds of accidental fires that began in the 1950s,[50] including the major plutonium fires of 1957 and 1969, airborne-become-groundborne radioactive contamination extending well beyond the Rocky Flats plant was not publicly reported until beginning in the 1970s by way of isopleth maps showing the contamination in millicuries of plutonium per square kilometer (Carl J. Johnson, Cancer Incidence in an Area Contaminated with Radionuclides Near a Nuclear Installation, AMBIO, 10, 4, October 1981, page 177 and Table 3).[39]

Independent researchers also discovered cesium-137 and strontium-90 near the Rocky Flats plant, providing evidence that each of the major fires and explosions in 1957 and 1969 had involved a criticality accident. Rocky Flats officials denied that criticality had ever taken place at the facility.[51] In the 1957 fire an explosion occurred in the ventilation system whose filters had initially trapped a good deal of escaping plutonium oxide before they were in turn destroyed, releasing Pu-239 to the atmosphere.[39][39][52] The 1969 fire "also burned through the filters in the building's exhaust system, and witnesses reported that plutonium-contaminated smoke rose into the atmosphere from a ventilation duct on the roof."[44]

In film

The award-winning 1982 PBS documentary Dark Circle spends roughly one half of its 82-minute length on the topic of the Rocky Flats Plant, its plutonium contamination of the local area and the effects it has had individual lives. Rex Haag, parent of bone-cancer victim Kristen Haag, appears in several scenes to comment.[42]

Notes

  1. ^ Moore 2007
  2. ^ Iversen, Kristen (2012-03-10). "Fallout at a Former Nuclear Weapon Plant". The New York Times.
  3. ^ "Plutonium-239 and Americium-241 Contamination in the Denver... : Health Physics". Journals.lww.com. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  4. ^ http://www.jstor.org/pss/4312671
  5. ^ a b c d "The September 1957 Rocky Flats fire: A guide to records series of the Department of Energy". United States Department of Energy. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  6. ^ "Rocky Flats Nuclear Site Too Hot for Public Access, Citizens Warn". Environment News Service. August 5, 2010. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  7. ^ a b Hooper, Troy (August 4, 2011). "Invasive weeds raise nuclear concerns at Rocky Flats". The Colorado Independent. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  8. ^ "1969 Fire Page 7". Colorado.edu. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  9. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-08). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : When Federal Agents Take On a Government Nuclear-Bomb Plant, Lines of Law and Politics Blur, and Moral Responsibility Is Tested". Los Angeles Times.
  10. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-08). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : When Federal Agents Take On a Government Nuclear-Bomb Plant, Lines of Law and Politics Blur, and Moral Responsibility Is Tested". Los Angeles Times.
  11. ^ http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1990-11-22/news/9011220359_1_plutonium-rocky-flats-sanchini
  12. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-15). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : The Justice Department had negotiated a Rocky Flats settlement, but the grand jury could not keep quiet about what happened there". Los Angeles Times.
  13. ^ Hardesty, Greg (March 29, 2006). "Retired FBI agent helped close nuclear-weapons site". The Orange County Register. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  14. ^ http://www.westword.com/content/printVersion/224917/
  15. ^ Schneider, Keith (1992-03-27). "U.S. Shares Blame in Abuses at A-Plant". The New York Times.
  16. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-08). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : When Federal Agents Take On a Government Nuclear-Bomb Plant, Lines of Law and Politics Blur, and Moral Responsibility Is Tested". Los Angeles Times.
  17. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-15). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : The Justice Department had negotiated a Rocky Flats settlement, but the grand jury could not keep quiet about what happened there". Los Angeles Times.
  18. ^ Wald, Matthew L. (1989-09-23). "Rockwell Is Giving Up Rocky Flats Plant". The New York Times.
  19. ^ "U.S. Shares Blame in Abuses at A-Plant". The New York Times. 1992-03-27.
  20. ^ Prosecuting U.S. attorney Fimberg changed his last name to Scott after the Rocky Flats deliberations were finalized; see The Ambushed Grand Jury, page 118.
  21. ^ "The Ambushed Grand Jury," Chapter 6, page 98.
  22. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-15). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : The Justice Department had negotiated a Rocky Flats settlement, but the grand jury could not keep quiet about what happened there". Los Angeles Times.
  23. ^ "The Ambushed Grand Jury," Chapter 6, Note 54.
  24. ^ http://archive.boulderweekly.com/010605/coverstory.html
  25. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-15). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : The Justice Department had negotiated a Rocky Flats settlement, but the grand jury could not keep quiet about what happened there". Los Angeles Times.
  26. ^ Johnson, Carl J. (1981). "Cancer Incidence in an Area Contaminated with Radionuclides Near a Nuclear Installation". AMBIO. 10 (4): 176–182. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  27. ^ a b c Moore, LeRoy (1992). 1957: Fateful Year for the Nuclear Weapons Industry (PDF). Environmental Consequences of Producing Nuclear Weapons. Chelyabinsk, Russia. Retrieved September 17, 2011. {{cite conference}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  28. ^ a b "Rocky Flats Virtual Museum". University of Colorado at Boulder. Retrieved September 3, 2011.
  29. ^ Moore 2007, pp. 87–89.
  30. ^ "Citizen Summary: Rocky Flats Historical Public Exposures Studies". Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  31. ^ "U.S. Shares Blame in Abuses at A-Plant - Page 2 - New York Times". Nytimes.com. 1992-03-27. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  32. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-08). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : When Federal Agents Take On a Government Nuclear-Bomb Plant, Lines of Law and Politics Blur, and Moral Responsibility Is Tested - Page 7 - Los Angeles Times". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  33. ^ "Contaminants Released Surface Water from Rocky Flats". Cdphe.state.co.us. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  34. ^ page 28 of 43
  35. ^ Siegel, Barry (1993-08-08). "Showdown at Rocky Flats : When Federal Agents Take On a Government Nuclear-Bomb Plant, Lines of Law and Politics Blur, and Moral Responsibility Is Tested - Los Angeles Times". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  36. ^ "Summary of Findings: Rocky Flats Public Exposure Studies: Key questions addressed by the research". Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  37. ^ "Rocky Flats Virtual Museum: The Fire Was Inevitable". University of Colorado at Boulder. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  38. ^ Wasserman, Harvey; Solomon, Norman (1982). "Bomb Production at Rocky Flats: Death Downwind". Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation. New York: Dell. ISBN 978-0-440-04567-0. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  39. ^ a b c d Moore 2007.
  40. ^ Weyler, Rex (2004). Greenpeace: How a group of journalists, ecologists and visionaries changed the world. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books. ISBN 978-1-59486-106-2.
  41. ^ "Democracy and PublicHealth at Rocky Flats: The Examples of Edward A. Martell and Carl J. Johnson" by LeRoy Moore; page 106, 107 (et al) http://www.rockyflatsnuclearguardianship.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/leroy-moore-papers/dem-public-heath-at-rf-12-10.pdf
  42. ^ a b Dark Circle, DVD release date March 27, 2007, Directors: Judy Irving, Chris Beaver, Ruth Landy. ISBN 0-7670-9304-6. http://www.pbs.org/pov/darkcircle/
  43. ^ "Metro Denver's Northwest Quadrant Transportation Solution". Go The Betterway. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  44. ^ a b Schneider, Keith (1990-02-15). "Weapons Plant Pressed for Accounting of Toll on Environment and Health - New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  45. ^ Moore, LeRoy (April 28, 2011). "Plutonium: The Jefferson Parkway`s biggest problem". Camera. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  46. ^ Salazar, Quibian (2011-07-21). "Plutonium parkway". Boulderweekly.com. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  47. ^ “Atomic Plant Fire Causes $50,000 Loss,” Denver Post, 12 September 1957.
  48. ^ page 28 of 69
  49. ^ Page 3
  50. ^ Brooke, James (1996-12-11). "Plutonium Stockpile Fosters Fears of 'a Disaster Waiting to Happen' - New York Times". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  51. ^ "Boulder Weekly | NewsandViews | CoverStory". Archive.boulderweekly.com. Retrieved 2011-10-27.
  52. ^ "Rocky Flats Historical Public Exposures Studies: Soil and Sediment Study Summary". Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Retrieved September 17, 2011.

References

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