This book by Kristen Iversen is a nearly encyclopedic collection of negative stories and rumors about the Rocky Flats nuclear weapon plant and there is a companion review of the book on that link of this web site. The author did a significant amount of research and numerous interviews, but there are indications that some of the information was misinterpreted, misunderstood, or exaggerated.
The author emphasizes that the neighbors believed the Rocky Flats plant made cleaning supplies despite the fact the one headline mentioned in the book celebrating that the plant would be built near Denver referred to the Atomic Energy Commission plans to build an “A-plant.” The theme that no one knew what was going on at Rocky Flats is continued through the author’s childhood despite documentation in the book about several scientists doing sampling and analysis that identified plutonium downwind of the plant after the 1969 fire. Plutonium contamination from the plant had been well-documented and advertised by people who opposed the plant and its mission when Colorado voters considered a constitutional amendment to outlaw production of nuclear weapons components at Rocky Flats in November 1982. Voters decided they wanted the jobs and resulting positive economic impact on the metro area despite the news reports about contamination from the plant. Slightly under a two thirds majority voted against the amendment and in favor of retaining the plant. That vote isn’t mentioned in the book.
I’ve decided I only have enough space for a few of the subjects where I disagree. Where should I start? The descriptions of the 1957 fire in Building 771 and the plutonium contamination from the 903 pad are somewhat similar to factual accounts, although the statement that the 1957 fire might have released “…as much as 92 pounds of plutonium or more…” is clearly an exaggeration. The account of the 1969 fire begins by saying it was in Building 771 and then describes black smoke coming out of the stack of Building 776/777. The only stack visile off site was the one at 771. Also, I saw the plenums after the fire, and could not even see the damage that was reported to the first stage. The other three stages of filtration were undamaged, which means “black smoke” wouldn’t have been coming out of any stack or vent. The orange and white hazmat suits the author mentions weren’t used until decades after the 1969 fire.
The litany of accusations about accidents is less important than the many accusations about health effects of Rocky Flats. I’ll restrict myself to a few key points. There are discussions about tons of plutonium missing from Rocky Flats, and it is ignored that those “tons” are later accounted for at waste disposal sites. Just about every governmental agency and several private groups have done sampling and analysis of soil samples in the vicinity of the plant, and releases in the tons of plutonium would be quite easy to detect. A ton of weapons grade plutonium contains over 60,000 curies of activity. Add twelve zeros to that number and you arrive at the picocurie unit of measure used for amounts of plutonium in soil.
There are mentions of autopsy samples from people around Rocky Flats that found plutonium contamination. There is also a mention that plutonium was recently detected in the crawl space of a home near Rocky Flats. There isn’t a person in the world who does not have plutonium contamination and there isn’t a location in the world where you won’t find plutonium It will be found in any crawl space in any city and in the tissue of any resident in the world.
There is mention of a rancher who had a deformed pig he took to meetings and that thorium was found in the gonads of some of his animals. There are higher levels of background thorium in Colorado than most locations, but they were there before the Rocky Flats plant was constructed. Rocky Flats did not process thorium.
The author thought she had caught the plant in a lie when she wrote, “Despite insistence there has never been a criticality…a memo reports an average of two ‘nuclear criticality infractions’ each month.” “Criticality infraction” was the term used when the aggressive program to prevent criticalities found something in a glovebox that wasn’t mentioned in the strict criticality limits required to be posted on the box. A criticality infraction was certainly not the same as a criticality, although I can understand why that would be confusing. On the subject of criticalities, it is mentioned that during a fire in Building 371, “The criticality alarm blares…indicating there is plutonium contamination in the air.” The alarm that sound when there is airborne plutonium contamination is called the Selective Alpha Air Alarm (SAAM) and not a criticality alarm.
There are other passages in the book that bothered me because of inaccuracy or misinterpretation, but what is important is that the author suspects illnesses of herself, her family, friends, and neighbors were caused by Rocky Flats. One study by Colorado concluded that laborers were and are the most at risk from plutonium released from Rocky Flats, and that risk “…is about the same as a person’s risk from plutonium released during past nuclear weapons testing.” That risk is listed 0.5 in a million. The risk of being killed by a lightning strike is given as 110 in a million. It is estimated that 46 percent of people living in Colorado will develop cancer in their lifetime. So there will be 460,000 out of a million Coloradoans who develop cancer in their lifetimes. It would seem we could find something other than one chance in a million to worry about. I liked Vincent Carroll’s explanation in his opinion column about “Full Body Burden” titled, “Again, raising a false alarm.” The first sentence is, “We never want to stop scaring one another, do we?”
The book mentions that an appeals court reversed the class action lawsuit verdict that had awarded hundreds of millions to land and home owners around Rocky Flats. There is no explanation for the why the court took that action. The court ruled that irrational fear cannot be grounds for a judgment. To the extent Plaintiffs rely on anxiety from an increased risk to their health as an interference with the use and enjoyment of their properties, that anxiety must arise from scientifically verifiable evidence regarding the risk and cannot be wholly irrational.”
Since irrational fear is just as debilitating as rational fear, it is my hope that people who have become fearful because of what they read in Ms. Iversen’s book will read my free book about Rocky Flats. Perhaps Chapter 25 will help some people be less fearful. The table of contents lets you go directly to specific chapters. The book is also available for purchase on Amazon as Kindle or paperback for those who prefer to pay for books. The subtitle of my book “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” is “Urban Myths Debunked.” I suggest the subtitle for “Full Body Burden” could have been “Urban Myths Perpetuated.”
