Secrecy and its fallout at a nuclear weapons plant: A study of Rocky Flats oral histories.

Abstract

The basis for this study is a large collection of oral histories of persons who were centrally involved in working at, or being impacted by, the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Denver, Colorado. The oral histories were collected in collaboration between a library-based volunteer oral history project (the Maria Rogers Oral History Program) and a museum that will preserve the history of the plant (Rocky Flats Cold War Museum). Using just these oral histories as the data source, the issue of secrecy and its ramifications are examined. Secrecy as a national security structure and how it affects workers is explored, including how “compartmentalization” and “need to know” played out in the functioning of the manufacturing plant mass-producing the “pit”—the fission bomb that is the detonator of a thermonuclear weapon. The reactions of community members, including regulators, environmental and peace activists, politicians, and concerned citizens, are examined with reference to the issue of the plant's secr...