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Rocky Flats Site

Plutonium is forever

published Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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January 29, 2012

By LeRoy Moore and Robert Del Tredici

Whether to build the Jefferson Parkway or to turn Rocky Flats into a playground, the determining factor should not be commercial or residential development. The determining factor should be hot particles of plutonium.

A hot particle of plutonium is one that can lodge in air sacs of a lung or be moved via blood elsewhere in the organism. Wherever it resides in the body it irradiates surrounding tissue. A single particle of plutonium can damage more than 10,000 cells within its range.

Nobel chemist Glenn Seaborg, who discovered plutonium in 1941, called it "fiendishly toxic, even in small amounts." Physicist Jeremy Bernstein recently declared plutonium "the world's most dangerous element."

published Monday, August 01, 2011

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The following op-ed was written by ANA board member Judith Mohling and published by the Colorado Daily on July 28, 2011. The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, an ANA member group that Judith works with, has been fighting for honest cleanup of the Rocky Flats site since 1986.

Jon Lipsky, former FBI agent who led the 1989 raid on Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, has said he uncovered many instances of tampering with environmental monitoring and data falsification before his investigation was cut short by federal prosecutors:

"It became apparent to me during the investigation of Rocky Flats that the Department of Energy and the Department of Justice were primarily concerned about minimizing the extent to which the public became aware of the contamination at Rocky Flats, both off site and on site."

Cut to today: Become aware. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service which now has jurisdiction over the Rocky Flats buffer zone that lies around the most contaminated center, still under Department of Energy jurisdiction, has received two bids for a 300-foot wide strip of land along the eastern (Indiana St.) edge of Rocky Flats, one bid to make the land available for construction of a portion of the proposed Jefferson Parkway, another to use the land for construction of a bikeway.

Responsibility downwind of Rocky Flats

published Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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By LeRoy Moore

November 16, 2010

The Department of Energy almost certainly is responsible for the ongoing exposure of people to highly toxic radioactive plutonium in homes, schools, libraries, shops and workplaces downwind of the defunct Rocky Flats nuclear bomb factory. Some people very likely have had their health damaged. But to date the DOE has done nothing about the problem.

The issue surfaced recently when a citizen sampling project sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center of Boulder found plutonium in dust collected from crawl space beneath a house about one mile downwind of the Rocky Flats plant site. Wind had carried the plutonium from the plant to this location during production years. It had collected in the crawl space since 1960 when the house was built.

published Tuesday, August 10, 2010

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AOL News
(Aug. 4) -- Activists questioning the thoroughness of the cleanup at an old nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver say they have found particles of weapons-grade plutonium in air samples taken near the site. Part of the site is a national wildlife refuge that is slated to open for public recreation.

The federal Department of Energy declared in 2005 that its decontamination of the Rocky Flats facility was complete, after a 10-year effort that cost $7 billion (although the DOE originally thought the project would take 65 years and $37 billion). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to allow public recreation at a national wildlife refuge established in 2007 on part of the site.

PLUTONIUM AND PEOPLE DON’T MIX

published Saturday, October 24, 2009

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PLUTONIUM AND PEOPLE DON’T MIX
WHY THE ROCKY FLATS NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE
SHOULD REMAIN CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC
by LeRoy Moore, PhD, Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center, October 13, 2009

Soon after completion in 2005 of the “cleanup” of the site of the defunct Rocky Flats nuclear bomb plant near Denver, the Department of Energy (DOE) transferred about three-fourths of the nearly 10 square mile Rocky Flats site to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to operate as a wildlife refuge. FWS had already decided to open the future refuge for public recreation. This paper elaborates three reasons why this decision should be reversed:

• The site is contaminated with an unknown quantity of plutonium and americium.
• Standards for permissible exposure to plutonium and americium adopted for the site provide inadequate protection for potential visitors to the refuge because the standards are based on a flawed method of risk assessment and a truncated view of the toxicity of these materials.
• In addition, those responsible for the Rocky Flats “cleanup” did not consider some crucial data regarding environmental conditions at the site.
• Together, these points add up to a great weight of uncertainty that underscores the need for caution. The conclusion to this paper looks at alternatives for dealing with the refuge, including a visionary approach for nuclear guardianship.

To read full paper, click here

The victims of the atomic bomb

published Thursday, August 06, 2009

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By Nickolas Roth, Program Director, Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
August 6th, 2009

The anniversary of the United States atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki serve as a reminder of the danger posed by nuclear weapons and the need for this country to work in good faith toward their elimination. The bombings killed more than 200,000 people and set in motion an arms race that has resulted in several near brushes with nuclear war.

There are more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in existence today. The vast majority of these weapons are held by the United States and Russia, with 9,400 and 13,000 respectively.

Originally published in the Los Alamos Monitor:
http://www.lcni5.com/cgi-bin/c2.cgi?075+article+Opinion+20090806145909075075001

2009 Fact Sheet Nuclear Weapons Forever

published Monday, February 23, 2009

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Life Extension Program

In the late-1980’s the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Rocky Flats Plant, which produced plutonium pits for nuclear warheads, was shut down after a raid by the FBI. Eventually, the plant was shuttered, disrupting the U.S. capacity for producing new warheads.

Download 2009 Fact Sheet: LEP2 final.pdf

2009 Fact Sheet Nuclear Weapons Environmental Cleanup

published Monday, February 23, 2009

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Six decades of U.S. nuclear weapons research, testing, and production activities have left dozens of Department of Energy (DOE) sites polluted with massive amounts of radioactive and hazardous wastes. Most DOE sites are now on the Superfund list of the nation’s most environmentally dangerous facilities. Their contamination threatens millions of people living near the sites or along major waste transportation routes. Some of the nation’s most important water resources are endangered.

Download 2009 Fact Sheet: Cleanup5.1 final.pdf

Grassroots Groups by Nuclear Site

published Monday, October 20, 2008

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The following is a geographic list of Grassroots Organizations who monitor Nuclear sites in the United States.

Download PDF: GRASSROOT GROUPS MONITORING NUCLEAR SITES.pdf