Category Archives: Commentary

New Affiliate Website: NuclearDeterrence.net

Posted on by

NuclearDeterrence.net header image

Nuclear deterrence has been a central element of American security policy since the Cold War began. The deterrence concept is straight-forward: persuade a potential adversary that the risks and costs of his proposed action far outweigh any gains that he might hope to achieve. To make deterrence credible, the United States built up powerful strategic, theater and tactical nuclear forces that could threaten any potential aggressor with the catastrophic risks and costs of a nuclear retaliatory strike against his homeland.

During the Cold War, the primary focus of this deterrent was the Soviet Union. The Soviets built their own nuclear force targeting the United States, producing a situation of mutual deterrence, often referred to as “mutual assured destruction” or MAD. Continue reading →

Natural Plutonium

Posted on by

Coming-Soon_RFB2_Front_Cvr_300x450pxAn excerpt from the new book, “U.S. Nuclear Deterrence: The Cold War and Colorado’s Nuclear Weapons Factory” by Farrel Hobbs. (Coming Soon to Amazon.com bookstore by Sept. 15, 2018.)

Let’s start at the beginning, which, in the case of Rocky Flats, is about 4.5 billion years ago. The Rocky Flats Plant was known mostly for its role in producing plutonium components for nuclear weapons. Those of us who worked there knew that the plant did much more than that; many thousands of people who worked at the plant never came close to any plutonium. However, plutonium is what comes to mind for most people when they think of Rocky Flats. Activists who devoted themselves to protesting the place learned that they created more support against the plant when they focused on plutonium, and they began to declare that “plutonium was designed to kill.” That’s a very catchy phrase, but there weren’t many people around to be killed 4.5 billion years ago when plutonium first existed on Earth. I restrict my discussion to Earth and ignore what possibly happened in other galaxies. Continue reading →

Rocky Flats Retirees – You Have a Decision to Make About Your Pension – Don’t Delay

Posted on by

A big change is underway for Rocky Flats retiree’s pension plan. To our other readers: please forgive the focus of this post – but you might be curious about how your government treats the Cold War Warriors. The government is dumping the pension plan. No longer will your pension be guarenteed by the Fedral government. You must choose to receive a lump sum or a private annuity plan.

I’ve received my Plan Termination Benefit Kit and if you have not, call the Support Center at 1-800-709-7697.

There are deadlines coming up – the end of May for corrections. Check your information. My spouse was listed as deceased. He assures me he is not now and has never been deceased, so I had to submit a correction.

There’s a lot of detail in the kit and I won’t try to summarize it. Get your kit, read your kit, and make your decisions. Don’t delay. There are various financial instruments to research. There are forms to fill out, some need to be notorized, and if you are divorced there are extra forms. Did I mention, don’t delay.

Whatever you decide, your paperwork must be postmarked by the end of June or you get whatever the default option is.

I’m not qualified to offer recommendations. Heck, I haven’t decided what I’m going to do. Continue reading →

Chinese Space Station Will Crash to Earth April 1st – No Fooling

Posted on by

Space events aren’t our usual topic here at Rocky Flats Facts, but this is hard to ignore:

Tiangong compared to school bus

Tiangong compared to a school bus

One enormous chunk of space junk is about to crash. What was once China’s first space station, a habitat designed to test docking procedures as well as perform some experiments in orbit, has run out of fuel. Like any satellite or orbiting spacecraft, without periodic altitude boosts, Tiangong will return to Earth in a fiery breakup.

The world is watching as Chinese space station Tiangong-1 hurtles toward Earth and makes a fiery reentry. Chances that space debris will hurt anybody are extremely slim, although when and where the space station’s remains will land is still unknown. aerospace.org

There’s a great video posted here – scroll down.

Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge – a new source of science-based information for neighbors

Posted on by
Rocky Flats Plant fromAir

My own photo of the old plant, from a public document

Rocky Flats Facts began with a book debunking myths about the Rocky Flats Plant. Decades of secrecy surrounded the nuclear weapons plant, and by the turn of the century, greater-Denver’s expansion towards the once-remote location put a large population within sight.

Read the book to learn about the plant’s production days, good and bad, and the EPA/FBI raid. The raid occurred after the Cold War fizzled out, leaving the Department of Energy unexpectedly confused over what to do with the plant, which was now in the heart of the Colorado Front Range.

It took years, and as an employee I can tell you it was terribly frustrating to go first in one direction, then another, with study after study, before a final plan emerged. Much of the waste and debris from demolishing the plant was shipped away to disposal and storge sites, though some contamination was buried onsite.

Today the site is a National Wildlife Refuge, and since decades of security had protected it from livestock grazing, that’s a fine use.

I was recently sent a link to a new website, Friends of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

This site is intended to educate rather than to just convey information. The focus is very much on recent data and recent science. Information on this site is intended for those who wish to understand at a variety of levels (from the very non-technical through the fairly technical) the science behind the assurances that living near or visiting the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is safe for adults and children.

We have been careful to draw information (whenever possible) from 2012 to the present, and from international (not simply US federal) sources. We intend that it serve as a repository of carefully vetted information (and links to more) drawn from the published, peer-reviewed literature in health physics, radiation biology, biophysics, medicine, and epidemiology, or from personal experience.

The site is independent from the usual suspects in ongoing discussions of Rocky Flats. You’ll find discussions of risk that are useful in daily life, as well as when evaluating the old plant site. I won’t leave you wondering: their headline states “the Wildlife Refuge is safe.”

I hope the surrounding communities value the site’s final use, and I admire the effort and care that has gone into this new website. If you want to know more beyond the headline’s conclusion, check it out.

Lie Travels Around the Globe While the Truth is Putting on Its Shoes

Posted on by

Quoteinvestigator says this expression has been evolving for three hundred years.

hiking bootIn 1787 “falsehood” was reaching “every corner of the earth”. In 1820 a colorful version was circulating with lies flying from “Maine to Georgia” while truth was “pulling her boots on”. By 1834 “error” was running “half over the world” while truth was “putting on his boots”. In 1924 a lie was circling the globe while a truth was “lacing its shoes on”.

You can read the citations for yourself on the site. I’m more excited by a recent study that shows this expression is true.

False news spreads faster than true stories, and it’s because of humans, not bots, according to a new study published today in Science. axios

I’m still angry at Russian meddling in our elections, and fake news continues to be a threat. Did the Russians change anyone’s vote? Who can tell? You and I look at loads of information – even if I told you a particular story you viewed was false-news-from-Russia (or, for that matter, from a fellow citizen) I doubt you could say that particular item tipped you over the edge.

The reason fake news works is because we’re human. “Avoid temptation to shift the blame elsewhere… Even if we solve bots and the foreign interference problem, it wouldn’t solve the problem of online misinformation.”

Researchers studied more than 4.5 million tweets between 2006 and 2017. They used six fact-checking sites, including Politifact and Snopes, to determine if an item was true.

They found false stories — especially political ones — traveled faster, farther and deeper into the network than the true kind. (True stories took six times as long as false ones to reach 1500 people.) And, false stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth.

We humans are programmed for this. I’m reminded of the notion that, if our ancestors believed there was a lion rather than wind behind rustling grass, they lived to have offspring who led to us. Our brains find it safer to believe anything that confirms our fears, and so we share the item. The study says novelty also grabs us, and something we never heard before is more likely to be false (at least, on Twitter) but we share it.

sneakersIf you’ve tut-tutted over claims about male and female bell peppers, or Mars will appear the size of the full moon tomorrow night, or rumors of gang initiations that kill innocent people, or pizzagate – well, it’s just human nature. It takes effort to engage all that lovely pre-frontal cortex, but it’s worth it.