Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant Research Articles

Ecuador’s Early No-foreign Military Bases Movement*

Peace activists from around the world gathered in Ecuador in 2007 for the International Conference for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases and demanded the closure of existing foreign bases, a cleanup of environmental contamination, and an end to legal immunity for foreign military personnel. They called for support for and solidarity with “those who struggle for the abolition of all foreign military bases worldwide.”1 The conference came immediately after Rafael Correa, riding a rising tide of anti-imperialist sentiment, assumed office. The leftist president highlighted the United States’ hypocrisy when he famously quipped that he would allow the United States to maintain its military presence in Ecuador if in exchange the United States would permit his country to establish a base in Miami. Correa refused to renew a ten-year lease on the military base at Manta. When the U.S. lease expired two years later, U.S. troops peacefully departed. The 2007 no-bases conference came four years after a decades-long struggle forced the U.S. navy to abandon its bombing range on the small Puerto Rican island of Vieques.2 The United States’ departures from Vieques and Manta joined a growing list of well-documented examples of organized pressure forcing the closure of military facilities. In 1990, protests led George H. W. Bush to stop military exercises on the Hawaiian island of Kaho’olawe. Local opposition led to the closing of the Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Repair Facility in the Philippines, as well as the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado. Military bases at Okinawa, Japan, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean also faced significant resistance. Successful mobilizations against bases demonstrated that the U.S. military was not hegemonic and invincible, and that with significant organization, social movements could defeat imperial forces. The U.S. military advanced the narrative that it no longer needed a particular base and had willingly left of its own accord as part of a cost savings measure or due to changes in military strategy. The military’s previous entrenchment in the face of intense opposition, however, raised questions of whether their forces would have departed had they not confronted organized pressure.3

The Rocky Flats plea bargain: a case study in the prosecution of organizational crime in the US nuclear weapons complex

The integrated framework proposed by Kramer and Michalowski asserts that state-corporate crimes result from motivations, opportunities, and the absence of social controls. This paper examines the 1989–92 prosecution of environmental crimes at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant in order to examine more closely the social control of state-corporate crimes. This paper relies on social-scientific studies, newspaper and magazine articles, histories, and government reports in order to investigate how and why the prosecution progressed as it did. Political conditions and the presence of sympathetic individuals in key positions allowed the prosecution to go forward. However, the prosecution soon was undermined from within by Justice Department headquarters, who were less receptive to the idea of prosecuting environmental contamination as criminal behavior. Although the plea bargain was badly compromised, it helped promote initiatives outside of the criminal justice system that prompted some reforms at the Energy Department. The paper concludes that criminal prosecution by itself is not likely to be effective for controlling state-corporate crime, but can promote and support other techniques that reformers can use to affect the institutional environment in which state-corporate crimes occur.

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

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...

A comparative study of 239,240Pu in soil near the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility, Golden, CO

The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Golden, CO released plutonium into the environment during almost 40 years of operation. Continuing concern over possible health impacts of these releases has been heightened by lack of public disclosure of the US Department of Energy (DOE) activities. A dose reconstruction study for the Rocky Flats facilities, begun in 1990, provided a unique opportunity for concerned citizens to design and implement field studies without participation of the DOE, its contractors, or other government agencies. The Citizens Environmental Sampling Committee was formed in late 1992 and conducted a field sampling program in 1994. Over 60 soil samples, including both surface and core samples, were collected from 28 locations where past human activities would have minimal influence on contaminant distributions in soil. Cesium-137 activity was used as a means to assess whether samples were collected in undisturbed locations. The distribution of plutonium (as 239,240Pu) in soil was consistent with past sampling conducted by DOE, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and others. Elevated levels of 239,240Pu were found immediately east of the Rocky Flats Plant, with concentrations falling rapidly with distance from the plant to levels consistent with background from fallout. Samples collected in areas south, west, and north of the plant were generally consistent with background from fallout. No biases in past sampling due to choice of sampling locations or sampling methodology were evident. The study shows that local citizens, when provided sufficient resources, can design and implement technical studies that directly address community concerns where trust in the regulated community and/or regulators is low.

Plutonium release from the 903 pad at Rocky Flats.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDH) sponsored a study to reconstruct contaminant doses to the public from operations at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. This analysis of the accidental release of plutonium from the area known as the 903 Pad is part of the CDH study. In the 1950's and 1960's, 55-gallon drums of waste oil contaminated with plutonium, and uranium were stored outdoors at the 903 Pad. The drums corroded, leaking contaminated oil onto soil subsequently carried off-site by the wind. The plutonium release is estimated using environmental data from the 1960's and 1970's and an atmospheric transport model for fugitive dust. The best estimate of total plutonium release to areas beyond plant-owned property is about 0.26 TBq (7 Ci). Off-site airborne concentrations and deposition of plutonium are estimated for dose calculation purposes. The best estimate of the highest predicted off-site effective dose is approximately 72 microSv (7.2 mrem).

Plutonium releases from the 1957 fire at Rocky Flats.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment sponsored a study to reconstruct contaminant doses to the public from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. This analysis of the September 1957 fire in a plutonium fabrication building that breached the building air filtration system is part of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment study. The plutonium release from this fire is estimated using environmental data collected around the time of the fire and an air dispersion model. The approximate upper bound on the total plutonium release from the fire is 1.9 GBq (0.05 Ci), with an uncertainty of about two orders of magnitude. Off-site air concentrations and deposition of plutonium resulting from the approximate upper-bound release are estimated. The highest predicted off-site effective dose resulting from the approximate upper-bound release is about 13 microSv (1.3 mrem).

METHODS FOR ANALYZING COMBINED DATA FROM STUDIES OF WORKERS EXPOSED TO LOW DOSES OF RADIATION

Epidemiologic studies of workers exposed occupationally to protracted low doses of radiation provide a direct assessment of health effects resulting from such exposure and thus supplement information provided by studies of populations exposed at high doses of radiation and high dose rates. Analyses based on combined data from several studies can be expected to provide a more thorough assessment of low dose occupational studies and more precise risk estimates than can be obtained from any single study. Statistical methods for conducting such combined analyses are discussed, and different approaches, such as basing analyses on various levels of aggregation of exposure data, are compared and evaluated. Emphasis is given to methods for obtaining risk estimates and confidence limits that can be appropriately compared with estimates that form the basis for current radiation protection standards; these estimates have been obtained through extrapolation from high dose data. Methods are illustrated using combined data on workers at three US Department of Energy facilities: the Hanford Site, Richland, Washington; the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, Denver, Colorado.

Lawmaker as Lawbreaker: Assessing Civil Penalties against Federal Facilities under RCRA

On June 6, 1989, seventy agents from the FBI and EPA, armed with a search warrant, entered the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado. Capping a tenmonth criminal investigation, the search exposed evidence of a wide range of environmental violations, including the secret incineration of hazardous wastes, false claims of compliance with groundwater monitoring requirements, and intentional mixing of hazardous and radioactive wastes.1 The Rocky Flats incident is a particularly dramatic but nonetheless accurate reflection of the type of environmental problems created by federal facilities. By the mid-1970s, the federal government had adopted statutes governing almost every major environmental threat, including air emissions, pesticides, and hazardous waste dumping. As the 1990s commence, one great irony is that the federal government continues to be a major violator of its own laws. From the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine to the Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio to the Hanford Reservation in Washington, almost every state in the country faces pollution problems caused by the activities of federal facilities.2 The prob-

Analyses of Combined Mortality Data on Workers at the Hanford Site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant

An important objective of studies of workers exposed occupationally to chronic low doses of ionizing radiation is to provide a direct assessment of health risks resulting from this exposure. This objective is most effectively accomplished by conducting combined analyses that allow evaluation of the totality of evidence from all study populations. In this paper, combined analyses of mortality in workers at the Hanford Site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant are presented. These combined analyses provide no evidence of a correlation between radiation exposure and mortality from all cancer or from leukemia. Of 11 other specific types of cancer analyzed, multiple myeloma was the only cancer found to exhibit a statistically significant correlation with radiation exposure. Estimates of the excess risk of all cancer and of leukemia, based on the combined data, were negative. Upper confidence limits based on the combined data were lower than for any single population, and were similar to estimates obtained from recent analyses of A-bomb survivor data. These results strengthen support for the conclusion that estimates obtained through extrapolation from high-dose data do not seriously underestimate risks of low-dose exposure, but leave open the possibility that extrapolation may overestimate risks.

NUCLEAR ARMS PLANTS: Idaho bars entry of plutonium wastes

The Department of Energy—already beset by massive cleanup and safety problems at its nuclear arms plants—now must grapple with a further dilemma in dealing with radioactive wastes. Gov. Cecil D. Andrus of Idaho closed the state's borders on Sept. 1 to shipments from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver. If an alternative is not found by next March, when storage of the wastes at Rocky Flats itself is expected to reach stateimposed limits, DOE may have to shut down the plant, its sole source of plutonium triggers for nuclear arms. The ban comes after decades of temporary storage of Rocky Flats transuranic wastes at DOE's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) in southeast Idaho. The mixed waste is contaminated with plutonium-239 and hazardous chemicals. INEL's 144-acre radioactive management complex stores two kinds of solid wastes: transuranic wastes (including such things as contaminated clothes, gloves, tools, plastics, and sludge) that primarily emit ...

Public distrust and hazard management success at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.

Based on experience gained while serving a public oversight commission appointed by the governor of Colorado, hazard management at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant is reviewed. Specific reference is made to the plant's history of controversy, its defense-in-depth strategy of hazard control, occupational health issues, public exposure to plutonium, and the assessment of low-probability, high-consequence risks. This leads to the conclusion that Rocky Flats is, by any objective standard, a hazard management success. It follows that public distrust of Rocky Flats arises as much from fear and loathing of nuclear weapons themselves as from the manufacturing process by which they are made.

Plutonium concentrations in arthropods at a nuclear facility.

Arthropods were collected for 239,240PU (239Pu) and 238Pu analysis from three study plots in close proximity to the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant and from a site 110 km N-NE of the plant. Mean 239Pu concentrations in arthropods were 265, 16, 0.7 and 0.5 dis/min g−1 at the three Rocky Flats study plots and at the control site, respectively. Arthropod 239Pu concentration data were statistically analyzed by season of collection, taxonomic group, and sampling site. Only the collection site differences were significant (a = 0.01) and these were correlated with 239Pu concentrations in soil. The mean activity ratio of 239Pu to 238Pu in arthropods was 52, similar to the value of 51 obtained for soil. The mean ratio of 239Pu in arthropods to 239Pu in 0–3 cm soil at Rocky Flats was 9 × 10−1. Arthropod biomass and Pu concentration data indicated that only about 10−8 of the total plutonium inventory is in the arthropod component of the ecosystem. Leafhoppers, grasshoppers and spiders accounted for roughly 80% of the arthropod inventory of 239Pu.

Plutonium hazard in respirable dust on the surface of soil.

Plutonium-239 in the fine particulate soil fraction of surface dust is subject to suspension by air currents and is a potential health hazard to humans who may inhale it. This respirable particulate fraction is defined as particles less than or equal to 5 micrometers. The respirable fraction of surface dust was separated by ultrasonic dispersion and a standard water-sedimentation procedure. Plutonium concentration in this fraction of off-site soils located downwind from the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant (Jefferson County, Colorado) were as much as 380 times the background concentration. It is prposed that this method of evaluation defines more precisely the potential health hazard from the respirable fraction of plutonium-contaminated soils.