The book by Len Ackland is a well-researched source of information about Rocky Flats that I recommend. I posted a two part review of the book on that link of this web site, and committed to not editorializing in writing that review. The first part posted 9/7/11 is mostly about the history of Rocky Flats tied to the Church family, and the second part posted 9/14/11discusses operations, legal actions, and controversies. This posting discusses my disagreements with some of what Mr. Ackland wrote, and I suggest reading my book “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked” for another perspective. That book is available free on this web site or from Amazon. I’ve heard that “history is interpretive,” and the differences between Mr. Ackland’s presentation of the history of Rocky Flats and mine confirms that observation. I intend to provide the content of the two part review and this posting to Mr. Ackland

There is criticism in “Making a Real Killing” about the selection of the Rocky Flats site for construction of a new nuclear weapons component production facility.  The book says the AEC knew they wanted Denver to be the location, but they went through the motions of an open selection process. I’ve read the Project Apple report (the report about the selection of a site for the plant), and there were compelling reasons given in that report for selecting a Denver location.  All of the other locations in other states had high humidity, and the production processes needed low humidity. Denver also was judged to be a good location for attracting and housing skilled workers. The author observed that the evaluation used wind data from Stapleton Field, and that actual Rocky Flats wind data “…should have eliminated Rocky Flats…”  The Stapleton Field wind rose showed the wind blowing to the north just under a fourth of the time and to the south about ten percent of the time. The wind would be blowing toward a populated area at all times from either Stapleton Field, Rocky Flats, or from any of the other six Denver locations considered, including the alternate location adjacent to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. I posted a more detailed discussion of the Project Apple report on July 27, 2011.

The book mentions that “Building D,” which would later be designated Building 991, was the first built at Rocky Flats. The author calls it “…the atomic bomb assembly building.” Rocky Flats constructed components for atomic bombs, but no atomic bombs were assembled there.

The 903 pad was largest source of plutonium contamination released by Rocky Flats, and it is mentioned that the drums were removed from the pad in 1968. “Then, reflecting the same nonchalant approach to nuclear waste that led plant managers to create this temporary storage area in the first place, the field sat uncovered and subject to wind dispersion until July 1969. I have been challenged about the discussion in my book blaming AEC for the problems and stating that Dow argued against the pad and the way it was managed. That has led me to seek more information, and my search isn’t over. However, I’ve been consistently told that the paving project was held up for several months because engineering groups in the AEC Albuquerque Area Office and AEC headquarters were in dispute about the design of the cap that was to be added. Part of the delay was to complete a required Davis Bacon Act review. The act required that all federal construction exceeding $2,000 total cost must pay workers on-site no less than locally prevailing wages. I have been consistently told that there was frustration that the paving wasn’t completed more quickly, but I’ve found little evidence that the delay was caused by taking a “nonchalant approach.” I intend to continue looking for information about this issue, and hope to do a more detailed posting in the future.

There are several observations that worker safety and fire safety took a backseat to production, and the Building 771 fire in 1957 and the Building 776/777 fire in 1969 certainly proves there should have been more care taken with fire safety. I know that fire safety wasn’t ignored before the 1969 fire, because one of my tasks after that fire was to test remaining glove box windows to determine which ones contained fire retardants. The fire retardant windows were obviously installed for fire safety, but that didn’t prevent the windows in the lines affected by the fire from melting and burning. The retardants created dense smoke that made the efforts of the fire fighters much more difficult. The information about a million pounds of Benelex to provide radiation protection to workers contradicts at least in this one instance the inference that worker safety was downplayed, although the Benelex played a major role in the 1969 fire. Also on the subject of worker safety, interviews with Union officials often focused on that subject. I will point out that the Union found safety gave them significant leverage in getting concessions from management. The Department of Energy also discovered they could obtain substantial increases to funding by criticizing health and safety practices.

In my experiences, safety concerns were given priority over schedule; the need to operate safely was discussed at least daily. There was never a doubt that we were working with dangerous materials, and that care was required to protect ourselves and our coworkers. Of course there were nearly two decades of operations before I began my Rocky Flats career, so I can’t testify how things were then. However, I will remind that any discussion of why production schedules were important should include remembering the world situation while debating the need for Rocky Flats, what was made there, and whether production should have been given a high priority. I can see no debate that the people working at Rocky Flats were assigned a national defense mission that the military and government determined was a crucial.  Mr. Ackland provides a solid basis to justify why production was emphasized. He writes that the Joint Chiefs concluded in 1949 that the133 nuclear weapons stipulated in “…war plan Trojan…” wouldn’t be enough. By 1950, “The military’s plans meant ‘a greatly increased requirement for atomic weapons’.” In the 1960s, “Most Americans, including the managers and employees at Rocky Flats, accepted the notion that the United States had to win the nuclear arms race to defeat communism.”

The book mentions that the Pugwash Conferences “…founded by U.S. and Soviet scientists in 1957, advocated alternatives to a balance of nuclear terror between the two ‘superpowers’.”  What isn’t mentioned is that the Pugwash Conference was a front for the Soviet Union, (from Wikipedia) “…whose agents often managed to weaken Pugwash critique of USSR and instead concentrated on blaming the United States and the West.” Not mentioned in the book is the World Peace Council. That organization “…received $63 million in Soviet funding, criticized western armaments and weapons tests, and refrained from criticizing Russian arms.” Numerous peace groups were closely connected with the World Peace Council.

Mr. Ackland mentions the ballot initiative that Colorado voters approved to halt “peaceful” nuclear blasts in the state after the AEC detonated four atomic devices underground in western Colorado. I was surprised he didn’t mention that the 1982 ballot included a proposed amendment to the Colorado constitution to “…bring about the cessation of nuclear weapons component production in Colorado…” The proposal was defeated by 584,256 opposed to 326,550 in favor. Voters were said to have been influenced by the thousands of jobs at the plant and the positive economic impact for the Denver area. I think it is fair to point out that the people of Colorado were aware of what Rocky Flats was making by that time and knew of contamination released by the 1957 fire, the 903 pad, and the tritium incident. They choose jobs.

In the discussion of the tritium incident it is mentioned that Dow was criticized “…for its flat denials and inaction in trying to identify the tritium source.”  A Rocky Flats employee was quoted as saying “…I knew what was wrong. I knew Dow was lying,” I attended meetings when Colorado first reported elevated tritium levels downstream of Rocky Flats, and I was heavily involved with the investigation to identify the source of the tritium after the results were confirmed.  Dow and the AEC were both wrong when they denied the tritium came from Rocky Flats, but they did not lie. Tritium was not supposed to be involved in site operations. Material containing tritium was received from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Rocky Flats was not informed that there was tritium in the material. I attended a meeting preceding a press conference about the release, and the Energy Research and Development (ERDA) manager (ERDA had replaced AEC) told us AEC had failed to control material, and that Dow was blameless in the matter.

Perhaps my strongest complaint about the book is some of the information in Chapter Fourteen titled “Rockwell’s Crimes.” I have no dispute with the statement that “…Rockwell International Corporation pleaded guilty to committing ten environmental crimes—five felonies and five misdemeanors—at Rocky Flats.” I will refer to my detailed descriptions and reasons for the guilty plea in my book, but I give a quick summary here. Rockwell was forced to plead guilty because the Justice Department was threatening to issue indictments that at least some of the prosecutors believed weren’t supported by the evidence. Rockwell knew indictments would ruin lives regardless of the outcome of a trial.  Mr. Ackland accurately writes, “Investigators failed to prove the most spectacular crimes alleged in the June 1989 search warrant.” What he doesn’t say is that the ten “crimes” in the guilty plea would not have been called crimes anywhere other than in a legal document designed to prevent government embarrassment. As examples, sewage treatment plants at places other than Rocky Flats often exceed their permitted discharge limits, and sometimes municipalities and other operators have had to pay fines for those exceedences. However, I am unaware of any other circumstance where the exceedences have been called crimes or where the fines levied were anywhere close to what Rockwell paid. My favorite “crime” was Rockwell pleading guilty to the fact that DOE had submitted a permit application  more than six months after Rockwell had provided it to them and six months after the date it was due. Rockwell pleaded guilty to inaction by DOE and paid a two million dollar fine. The intense scrutiny from a raid by dozens of federal agents and a Grand Jury investigation that lasted over two years found nothing that hadn’t been reported to the regulators before the raid. Rockwell helped save the reputations of embarrassed federal officials by paying millions of dollars in fines for elevated levels of non-toxic pollutants in sewage plant discharges and paperwork errors.

I wish Mr. Ackland would have mentioned that there was no off site impact from any of the ten “crimes,” that they weren’t mentioned in the search warrant, and they weren’t uncovered by the raid. They were “discovered” in official reports submitted by Rocky Flats to Colorado and EPA before the raid. I do credit Mr. Ackland with mentioning that the Radiological Assessments Corporation was hired by the state health department to analyze contamination released by Rocky Flats. He writes, “They haven’t found significant off-site contamination.”  I will point out that the final report said, “The records clearly indicate recognition of the need to control and limit radionuclide releases since the beginning of plant operations…none of the documentation included the occurrence of any previously unreported major events…” Is anyone else fascinated that no historian or investigative reporter has looked into the absurdity of the guilty plea forced on Rockwell?

I’ve often heard and read that the selection of Rocky Flats as the location where a new nuclear weapons production facility code named “Project Apple” would be constructed was flawed because those doing the selection used wind direction at what was then the Stapleton Field, which led them to believe the wind would frequently blow towards the mountains instead of toward Denver. I recently found a copy of the report prepared by the Austin Company titled “Engineering Survey and Report for Santa Fe Operations Office of the Atomic Energy Commission on the Location and Site for Project Apple” in the archives of the Rocky Flats Museum.  The report, which was submitted on March 27, 1951, says in the cover letter, “As we advised representatives of…the Atomic Energy Commission, the Site Review Committee and representatives of the Dow Chemical Company …on March 14 and 15, we have recommended site 4, at Rocky Flats northwest of Denver, as best satisfying the Site Selection Criteria…” The report states that the location was to be “West of the Mississippi River, North of Texas, but include Panhandle Area, South of the northern boundary of Colorado; East of Utah.” There were nine cities that met the preliminary criteria of being 5 to 25 miles from a city of at or near 25,000 people (from which to recruit a work force). The cities were Oklahoma City, Omaha, Lincoln, Amarillo, Springfield, Topeka, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. There were 35 sites investigated in the vicinity of those nine cities. Six additional cities with populations fewer than 25,000 were added to the consideration, but none were judged to provide any advantage that would overcome the smaller population.

The site area was required to “…be a square, two miles on a side. Land presently owned or controlled by the Government is preferable.”  The plant area had to meet some basic suitability requirements for building construction and require a minimum displacement of homes and people. It was desired that the region have living conditions, community facilities, and recreational opportunities that would be attractive to workers. A low humidity climate was a primary consideration, since the plant would require significant air conditioning that was expected to be provided by evaporative cooling. Rail, highway, and air transportation factored into the evaluation as well as availability of power, water, and fuel. It was determined that the three Colorado cities were the only ones to meet the crucial climatic criteria. “Pueblo is less suitable than Denver in being less attractive to workers and in being home of Colorado Fuel and Iron’s vital industrial operations (a possible military target). Colorado Springs has the fundamental disadvantage of being served by a relatively small local electrical utility which has no interconnections with other utilities as emergency sources.”

It was determined that a site near Denver would be selected, and dozens of potential sites were evaluated. It is frequently asked why anyone would build a plant manufacturing plutonium components near a major metropolitan area. The report makes it clear that proximity to Denver was a positive consideration to those doing the evaluation. “The field survey reduced (the number of sites) to seven sites which lie nearest to the City of Denver and could be economically served with power, water, railroads, and highways.” (Emphasis added) The seven sites were:

North of and adjacent to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal

Six and a half miles northeast of Brighton

Gunbarrel Hill seven miles northeast of Boulder

Rocky Flats

South of the Federal Center

South of Marston Lake, two miles from Littleton, by the South Platte River

Two miles south of Littleton by the South Platte River

The selected site was Rocky Flats and the alternate was the one by the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. It is interesting that an “advantage” of the Arsenal location was it was nearer to present residential areas and considerably nearer to Stapleton Field. The advantages were overcome by “…the undesirable reaction of the public to having this additional ‘secret’ project close to the civilian installations northeast of Denver and in the South Platte Valley.” One mention of wind direction was in a table that lists “Unfavorable Factors” for the sites south of Marston Lake and the one south of Littleton that the prevailing wind was toward Denver.

I wrote in my book “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban myths debunked,” that I found arguments that Rocky Flats shouldn’t have been selected because wind directions were misinterpreted to be “tedious.” The Stapleton Field wind rose shows the wind blowing in all directions, including to the north just under a fourth of the time and to the south a tenth of the time. I predict no one who thought or thinks Rocky Flats was a poor place to build a nuclear weapons plant would have endorsed any of the seven Denver locations or the 35 original sites near other cities.