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abolition-usa-digest       Sunday, March 7 1999       Volume 01 : Number 086




----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 11:47:42 -0500
From: ASlater <[e-mail]>
Subject: (abolition-usa) Fwd: Re: UK has already taken weapons off alert

>Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 16:15:31 -0500
>Subject: Re: UK has already taken weapons off alert
>To: [e-mail], [e-mail]
>From: [e-mail] ([e-mail])
>
>Thanks to Alice for putting up some sections of the UK Strategic Defence
>Review (SDR). I think we need to exercise some caution, however, about
>equating the UK announcement with de-alerting, a term the government has
>specifically avoided.
>For more analysis on what the SDR meant for nuclear policy, you can find
>six
>short critiques (from a range of perspectives) in Disarmament Diplomacy 28
>(on our website) and some pertinent extracts and documentation from the SDR
>and its supporting essays in the same edition. For your interest, I am
>copying a couple of paragraphs I wrote on the implications of the 'reduced
>day to day alert' status announced, after discussing in more detail during
>a
>meeting with MOD officials and Frank von Hippel.
>In encouraging the other NWS to do likewise, it is perhaps useful to use
>the
>UK as a positive example of taking the first step, but we should not
>congratulate my esteemed government too much, as they specifically ruled
>out
>taking any of the more substantial or verifiable de-alerting steps that had
>been proposed for the SDR.
>
>EXTRACT FROM DISARMAMENT DIPLOMACY 28 (JULY 1998) ON UK STRATEGIC DEFENCE
>REVIEW
>'STILL PUNCHING ABOVE OUR WEIGHT' by Rebecca Johnson
>
>....Significantly, Labour announced that its nuclear forces were on a
>"reduced day-to-day alert state", not targeted, and normally at "several
>days 'notice to fire'". This appears to be an unverifiable operational
>decision, rather than technical de-alerting.  It provides a welcome
>protection against accidental, hair trigger or unauthorised firing, but
>falls a long way short of the kind of confidence-building measures and
>operational marginalisation of nuclear weapons that had been called for by
>many citizens' groups and analysts.  Indeed,   Despite the MOD's actual
>failure to provide continuous 24-hour patrols during the past decade,
>Labour
>confirmed the aim of having at least one Trident submarine at sea at all
>times.  The argument for mothballing the fourth submarine was rejected.
>All
>four will be brought into service, with the intention of having two in port
>while one is on patrol.  The implication is that deterrence requires
>continuous readiness, if not hair trigger alert.  Relying on arguments
>about
>'surprise attack' and potential misunderstandings, the SDR rejected
>proposals for 'de-weaponising' Trident by separating and storing the
>warheads on land.  On the contrary, it pledges to "ensure that we can
>restore a higher state of alert should this become necessary at any time."
>Stating that the "credibility of deterrence also depends on retaining an
>option for a limited strike that would not automatically lead to a full
>scale nuclear exchange", the SDR proposes a 'sub-strategic' role for
>Trident, but fails to say what that might look like.
>
>Although the SDR states that "the Government wishes to see a safer world in
>which there is no place for nuclear weapons", it clearly does not envisage
>Britain giving them up any time soon: "while large nuclear arsenals and
>risks of proliferation remain, our minimum deterrent remains a necessary
>element of our security". Elsewhere, the SDR refers to nuclear deterrence
>as
>"longer term insurance" for NATO........................
>
>website address is below.
>
>
>
>The Acronym Institute
>24, Colvestone Crescent, London E8 2LH, England.
>telephone (UK +44) (0) 171 503 8857
>fax                (0) 171 503 9153
>website http://www.gn.apc.org/acronym
>
Alice Slater
Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE)
15 East 26th Street, Room 915
New York, NY 10010
tel:  [phone]
fax:  [phone]
email:  [e-mail]

GRACE is a member of Abolition 2000, a global network working for a treaty
to eliminate nuclear weapons.

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------------------------------

Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 11:54:42 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: (abolition-usa) Nuclear Nightmare

In a message dated 3/5/99 1:49:17 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[e-mail] writes:

<< Subj:     (abolition-usa) Nuclear Nightmare
 Date:    3/5/99 1:49:17 AM Eastern Standard Time
 From:    [e-mail] (Timothy Bruening)
 Sender:    [e-mail]
 Reply-to:    [e-mail]
 To:    [e-mail]

 Last week, I had a nuclear nightmare.  I was sitting in an auditorium when
 someone said that a nuclear bomb would explode in the auditorium in 15
 minutes.  I ran north, hid behind a building, and waited for the bomb to
 explode.  After the explosion, I looked south and saw a mushroom cloud and
 burned rubble.  I then continued on north to escape from the fallout.  Have
 you ever had a nuclear nightmare?
  >>

Oh yes, Timothy - but long ago, just as we entered the nuclear age, back in
the late 1940's or early 1950's. Other nightmares since, but only one that was
nuclear.

The bomb was part of the origin of the "Beats" - time was ending, all things
had to be of immediate value (not immediate gratification - somewhat
different).

David McReynolds

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------------------------------

Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 16:46:57 -0800
From: Jan Harwood <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: (abolition-usa) New brochure

Our Abolition 2000 Committee (WILPF, Santa Cruz) would like 50 of your
brochures.  We've reviewed them and think they're a vivid introduction to
the subject.  Please send them to Jan Harwood, 312 Elm St., Santa Cruz, CA
95060.  Thanks very much, and good work!



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 with "unsubscribe abolition-usa" in the body of the message.
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------------------------------

Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 23:29:45 -0500
From: "Ross Wilcock" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (abolition-usa) FW: Nuclear Y2K

STAR/NIRS/BASIC, as a component to the March 8 symposium on Nuclear Y2K in
the Cannon Caucus Room, has scheduled an activist meeting on Nuclear Y2K the
day before the symposium.  The activist meeting will be from 2-5 on Sunday
March 7, 1999 at the NIRS office which is located at 1424 16th Street NW,
Suite 404.
Scott Cullen
Counsel
STAR (Standing for Truth About Radiation)
P.O. Box 4206
East Hampton, NY 11937
[phone]
fax: [phone]
[e-mail]


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------------------------------

Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 23:07:39 -0800
From: "David Crockett Williams" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (abolition-usa) Bombs Away

Bombs Away
The American handling of atomic weapons in peacetime has been riddled with
mishaps. The most spectacular accidents have come in the mere transport of
the bombs from one place to another.
In early 1958, for example, a B-47 crashed into a fighter plane and
jettisoned a nuclear weapon into the sea off Savannah Beach, Georgia. The
bomb was never found.
Later that year another B-47 accidentally dropped an atomic bomb while
flying over Florence, South Carolina. When it hit the ground, an explosion
with the power of several hundred pounds of TNT blasted out a crater
thirty-five feet deep and spread a ring of plutonium around the area. Local
residents preparing for a family picnic heard it coming and barely had time
to duck for cover. "It blew out the side and top of the garage just as my
boy ran inside with me," said Walter "Bill" Gregg, whose family was injured
in the blast. "The timbers were falling around us. There was a green, foggy
haze, then a cloud of black smoke. It lasted about thirty seconds. When it
cleared up, I looked at the house. The top was blown in and a side almost
blown off." The government later dragged Gregg's compensation claims
through the courts. He finally won fifty-four thousand dollars, but was
left deeply embittered by the experience.[2]
In 1961 two more American atomic bombs were dropped over Goldsboro, North
Carolina, by a crashing B-52. One deployed a parachute, which eased its
fall to earth; the other broke apart on impact. Another B-52 with four
hydrogen bombs aboard crashed into an ice floe near Thule, Greenland. The
entire plane and its cargo apparently disintegrated, leaving a radioactive
hole nearly half a mile long in its wake. With abundant apologies to the
Danish government, which rules Greenland, the military was forced to ship
1.7 million gallons of contaminated ice and snow back to the United States
for disposal. In January of 1966 yet another B-52 crashed into its
refueling tanker and spewed three hydrogen bombs onto the fishing village
of Palomares, Spain. A fourth bomb dropped into the Mediterranean. TNT
exploded in two of the bombs and spread plutonium over a square mile,
forcing the U.S. to destroy local crops and remove tons of radioactive
topsoil back to South Carolina for burial.
In all, the U.S. military admits to twenty-seven accidents involving
nuclear weapons--which it terms "Broken Arrows." Independent critics charge
the figure is more like 125.[3]
If the handling of nuclear bombs has been less than perfect, so has their
production. In 1963, for example, a fire at the AEC's Medina works in San
Antonio touched off 120,000 tons of explosives and sent a uranium cloud
into the environs of one of Texas's largest cities. At least two major
explosions also ripped through the AEC's Burlington, Iowa, bomb-assembly
plant. And the AEC's hydrogen-bomb fabrication plant at Pantex, Texas (near
Amarillo), was severely damaged by a freak hailstorm, despite its supposed
invulnerability to enemy attack.[4]
Significant quantities of radiation have also leaked into the environment.
In 1974 the operators of the huge Savannah River weapons facility at Aiken,
South Carolina, accidentally released some 435,000 curies of radioactive
tritium in a single day--the largest single tritium emission ever reported
in the U.S. Studies of the local water system show serious contamination,
and there are preliminary indications of an escalated cancer rate among
people living near the plant.[5]
Overall, the American nuclear weapons production program has been plagued
with mismanagement, cost overruns, sloppy handling of radioactive
materials, and low worker morale.
All of which may have found its ultimate expression at the Idaho Nuclear
Engineering Laboratory (INEL), a vast outpost where
research-and-development projects are conducted for the military, spent
nuclear submarine fuel is recycled, and military radioactive wastes are
stored.
INEL has a bleak history. In 1960 three technicians were killed there when
a fuel rod blew out of a small test reactor, piercing the body of one and
pinning him to the reactor containment, high above the core. The other two
men were hopelessly contaminated, and pieces of their bodies had to be
buried in lead caskets. An NRC official later indicated that the "accident"
may have been caused deliberately by one of the technicians in a bizarre
suicide-murder plot stemming from a love triangle at the plant.[6] In
subsequent years INEL has been plagued with sloppy handling of nuclear
wastes. Concentrated uranium was accidentally dumped on a nearby road. Far
more serious, INEL management from 1952 to 1970 deliberately dumped some
sixteen billion gallons of liquid wastes into wells that feed directly into
the water table below. Radioactive contamination has been found 7.5 miles
away, angering local farmers and raising questions about the long-term fate
of the huge Snake River Aquifer, a major underground water source for much
of the American Northwest.[7]
An even more severe accident, however, occurred during the 1978 World
Series. With the Yankees leading the Dodgers 7-2, the plant supervisor was
engrossed in the game on a portable TV set he had sneaked, against
regulations, into the facility. Had he not been so involved in watching New
York win yet another World Championship, he might have noticed that an
abnormal buildup of radioactivity was occurring in a small
uranium-processing column nearby. No one was checking the plant's
monitoring devices. One recording chart had run out of paper two weeks
earlier. Meanwhile the solution in the processing column was dangerously
unbalanced. As the game was getting under way, uranium concentrations in
the column were sixty times what they should have been.
Suddenly, at 8:45 P.M., high-radiation alarms began ringing around the
plant. The panicked supervisor abandoned the Yankees. Operators in the
control room fled to a sheltered area.[8] Fortunately the column was
brought under control. But official figures showed that at least eight
thousand curies of radioactive iodine, krypton, and xenon had been released
into the atmosphere, more than enough to threaten the health of anyone
downwind.[9]
The supervisor was later fired. An investigation of worker alienation and
low morale at INEL concluded that the situation was bad, with no easy
solutions available. As a health physicist who worked on the study told The
Idaho Statesman: "It's a generic question that I have no answer for."[10]

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Clyde W. Burleson, The Day the Bomb Fell on America (Englewood Cliffs,
N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978), p. 13. The Savannah Beach incident appears on
p. 16.
3. David E. Kaplan, "Where the Bombs Are," New West, April 1981, p. 80.
4. Rapoport, Great American Bomb Machine, pp. 22-23.
5. Robert Alvarez, Report on the Savannah River Plant Study (Washington,
D.C.: Environmental Policy Institute, 1980) (hereafter cited as Savannah
River Study).
6. Stephen Hanauer, NRC, interview, June 1981.
7. High Country News, February 8, 1980, p. 10, see also, Progressive,
October 1980, and J. T. Barraclough, et al., Hydrology of the Solid Waste
Burial Ground, as Related to the Potential Migration of Radionuclides,
Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Open File Report #76-471 (Idaho
Falls: U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division, August 1981)
(hereafter cited as Hydrology).
8. Idaho Statesman, April 25, April 26, and May 22, 1979. The bulk of the
"World Series" story appears in the May 22 edition.
9. DOE, Radioactive Waste Management Information: 1978 Summary and
Record-to-Date (Washington, D.C. July 1979), p. 12 (DOE, Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Division, Idaho Operations Office, prepared by E.G. & G. Idaho).
10. Idaho Statesman, May 22, 1979.

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------


Disaster at Rocky Flats
Two decades before that incident a devastating but little-known fire at
Rocky Flats laced the Colorado winds with deadly plutonium.
Built in the early 1950s at a cost of $240 million, the huge factory
produces plutonium triggers for hydrogen bombs. It sprawls at the eastern
edge of the Rocky Mountains, its tall stacks jutting out of the flatlands.
Steady winds rush through the canyons and into those plains, often reaching
blasts of up to eighty miles per hour--and quite often heading toward
Denver, sixteen miles to the east/southeast.
In fact the air currents are so powerful that in the late 1970s the
Department of Energy chose a patch of land just west of the plutonium plant
as its prime national site for testing windmill components.
As a key link in the cold war rush to nuclear supremacy Rocky Flats was
built under great secrecy. The handling of large quantities of plutonium at
the plant was not made public until 1955, two years after it had opened.
There was no public input into choosing the site. The military, said Dr.
Tony Robbins, former director of the Colorado Department of Health, "made a
decision to place a plant with a large quantity of plutonium and a lot of
other trace elements pretty much within the Denver metropolitan area." The
siting was "clearly a mistake."[11] Approximately 600,000 people live
within twenty miles of the plant.
A major component of the Rocky Flats operation is the glove box production
line. In it lumps of plutonium are measured, machined, milled, and shaped
to use in bomb triggers. The material is kept in airtight boxes and
manipulated by workers from the outside who use rubber gloves fastened to
the boxes, thus avoiding any contact with the toxic metal inside.
But plutonium can catch fire spontaneously in air. In the evening of
September 11, 1957, some of the "skulls" on the glove box line of Room 180
in Building 771 ignited. The fire was found by two plant production men
shortly after 10:00 P.M.
The area was designed to be fireproof. But it was soon a radioactive
inferno. Firemen switched on ventilating fans, but that backfired,
spreading flames to still more plutonium. They then sprayed carbon dioxide
into the area. That also failed. Meanwhile the filters designed to trap
plutonium escaping up the stacks caught fire. The shift captain and other
observers reported a billowing black cloud pouring some 80 to 160 feet into
the air above the 150-foot-high stack of Building 771.
As the crisis intensified, plant officials struggled to find a solution.
They knew water would destroy millions of dollars' worth of complex
equipment. They also knew the intense heat might flash the water into
enough steam to blast into an explosion and send even more plutonium
particles flying toward Denver. But when the carbon dioxide failed, there
was no alternative. In the early hours of the morning water began pouring
into the blaze. Fortunately it worked. The fire went dead roughly thirteen
hours after it began.[12]
The damage was extensive. Initial AEC reports contended that there was "no
spread of radioactive contamination of any consequence." Seth Woodruff,
manager of the Rocky Flats AEC office, told the local media that "possibly"
some radiation had escaped. "But if so," he emphasized, "the spread was so
slight it could not immediately be distinguished from radioactive
background at the plant.[13]
But--as at Three Mile Island twenty-two years later--there was no reliable
equipment operable at the time to monitor the amount of radiation that
actually went out the stacks. Not until a week after the fire were working
gauges installed. Then, in a single day, emissions registered sixteen
thousand times the permissible level--a full fifty years' worth of the
allowable quota.
Some fourteen to twenty kilograms were estimated to have burned in the
fire, enough to make at least two bombs equivalent to the one dropped on
Nagasaki.[14] And that may not have been the worst of it. According to a
study based on figures from Dow Chemical, which operated Rocky Flats at the
time, some thirteen grams of plutonium were routinely deposited daily on
the first stage of filters in Building 771. According to government
documents obtained in a lawsuit against the plant, the 620 filters in the
building's main plenum had not been changed since they were installed four
years before the fire. Thus a pair of local researchers theorized that as
much as 250 kilograms of airborne plutonium could have gone out the stacks
from the burning filters alone.[15]
Such an enormous release of plutonium struck some in the Denver area as
beyond plausibility. But a much lower estimate of 48.8 pounds of
plutonium--one tenth of the 250-kilogram figure--was calculated as enough
to administer each of the 1.4 million people in the Denver environs a
radiation dose one million times the maximum permissible lung burden.[16]
"I find the high release estimates hard to believe," we were told by Dr.
John Cobb of the University of Colorado Medical School. "But even if only
one gram of plutonium escaped, as the plant operators say, that would be
cause for concern."[17] Nor was plutonium the fire's only by-product. The
water used to extinguish it became infused with radioactivity. In this case
some thirty thousand gallons of it escaped unfiltered, thus spreading its
contamination into local streams and the water table.
Through the whole crisis there had been no warning to local schools, health
departments, police, or elected officials that something extraordinary and
dangerous was happening at Rocky Flats. There were no backup plans for
evacuation, no notification to area farmers or ranchers to safeguard their
health or that of their animals.
And though some of the buildings were heavily contaminated, bomb-trigger
production was back under way within a few days. Over the next thirteen
months, Rocky Flats's operators recorded twenty-one fires, explosions,
spills of radioactive material, and contamination incidents inside the
plant.[18]

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Rocky Flats Action Group, Local Hazard, Global Threat Rocky Flats
Nuclear Weapons Plant (Rocky Flats Action Group, 2239 E. Colfax, Denver,
CO, 1977), p. 3 (hereafter cited as Local Hazard).
12. Carl Johnson, "Comments on the 1957 Fire at the Rocky Flats Plant, in
Jefferson County, Colorado," report to the Conference on the Relation of
Environmental Pollution to the Cancer Problem in Colorado, at the American
Medical Center Cancer Research Center and Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado,
September 1980 (hereafter cited as "Comments"); and Rapoport, Great
American Bomb Machine, pp. 27-28.
13. Denver Post, September 12, 1957.
14. Johnson,"Comments."
15. For the 250-kilogram estimate, Johnson in "Comments" cites R. W.
Woodward, "Plutonium Particulate Study in Booster System No. 3 (Building
771) Filter Plenum" (Golden, Colo.: The Rocky Flats Plant, January 27,
1971); and H. Holme and S. Chinn, "Pre-Trial Statement," Civil Action Nos.
75-M-1111, 75-M-1162, and 75-M-1296 (Denver: U.S. District Court for the
District of Colorado, 1978). See also, J. B. Owen, "Reviews of the Exhaust
Air Filtering and Air Sampling, Building 771," unpublished manuscript,
Rocky Flats Plant, Golden, Colorado, March 14, 1963.
16. Rocky Flats Action Group, Local Hazard, p. 3; see also, F. W. Krey and
E. P. Hardy, Plutonium in Soil Around the Rocky Flats Plant (New York: AEC
Health and Safety Library, 1970), p. 36; Carl Johnson, et al., "Plutonium
Hazard in Respirable Dust on the Surface of Soil," Science, August 6, 1979,
pp. 488-490; and Jack Anderson, "Colorado Plant Eyed as Radiation Source,"
Washington Post, March 25, 1979, p. D25.
17. John C. Cobb, interview, May 1981.
18. Rapoport, Great American Bomb Machine, p. 28.

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------


More Fires
A continent and an ocean away, in countryside that could hardly have been
less like the flatland at the foot of the Rockies, Britain was also facing
a disaster from bomb production. Amid the cold, deep lakes and lush
farmlands of the English north country, fire struck the plutonium
production reactor at Windscale in early October 1957--less than a month
after the first fire at Rocky Flats. Windscale was designed to produce
plutonium for bombs. Rocky Flats made such plutonium--once it was
chemically processed--into triggers.
On October 7 uranium fuel pellets in the Windscale reactor caught fire.
Attempts to quench them failed.
Though the plant was a military facility, word of the accident soon spread.
The public was told the radiation releases were harmless, and there was no
danger of an explosion. Both statements were false. Radiation monitors at
the plant site and in the countryside showed high levels of contamination.
As at Rocky Flats, carbon dioxide could not extinguish the fire.
On its fifth day plant officials prepared to use their last resort--water.
At 9:00 A.M. two plant technicians and a local fire chief dragged a hose to
the top of the containment dome and aimed it at the flaming core within.
Plant workers and firemen ducked behind steel barriers and braced
themselves for the worst. As water surged through the hose, radioactive
steam poured out the stacks and into the wind. There was no explosion. The
core was soon flooded; danger of a meltdown was over.
But by Monday, October 14, a ban on the sale of milk had been enforced over
a two-hundred-square-mile area. Thousands of gallons of contaminated milk
were dumped into the Irish Sea. Hundreds of cows, goats, and sheep were
confiscated, shot, and buried. Farmers who slaughtered their animals for
meat were told to send the thyroid glands to the government for testing.
Workers at the nearby Calder Hall reactor were ordered to scrub down with
stiff brushes to remove contamination from their skin. Coal miners working
in nearby shafts were replaced with "fresh" workers who had not been
exposed to the radiation that had filtered through the mine ventilation
systems. And in London, three hundred miles away, radiation monitors noted
significantly increased levels.
Despite the national emergency that had been proclaimed, British officials
told the public it was unlikely "in the highest degree" that anyone had
been harmed by the accident.[19] But several months later British officials
conceded to a United Nations conference at Geneva that nearly seven hundred
curies of cesium and strontium had been released, plus twenty thousand
curies of I-131. The admitted iodine dose represented more than fourteen
hundred times the quantity American officials later claimed had been
released during the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.[20]
Like its ally across the Atlantic, the British government studiously
avoided systematic follow-up studies on the health of area residents. When
a local health officer named Frank Madge used a Geiger counter to confirm
abnormal radiation levels in mosses and lichens, officials from the British
Atomic Energy Authority actively discouraged publication of his
findings.[21]
A study of health data in downwind European countries later indicated a
clear impact of the accident on infant-mortality rates. It was, Dr. Ernest
Sternglass told us, "as if a small bomb had been detonated in northern
Great Britain."[22]
Eight years and eight days after the accident at Windscale--on October 15
1965--yet another major fire at Rocky Flats contaminated twenty-five
workers with up to seventeen times the maximum permissible dose.
In 1968 a truck carrying contaminated soil to an off-site burial ground was
found to be leaking, forcing plant operators to repave one mile of road. It
was a modest measure at best, considering that the half-life of plutonium
is more than twenty-four thousand years, while the "full-life" of asphalt
paving is far less.[23]
Then, on Sunday, May 11, 1969--at a time when little Kristen Haag was
likely to be playing in her sandbox six miles downwind--plutonium stored in
a cabinet at Rocky Flats ignited. The flames leapt into the glove boxes of
Buildings 776 and 777. At 2:27 P.M., when the fire alarms sounded, the
blaze was out of control.
According to veteran reporter Roger Rapoport, author of The Great American
Bomb Machine: "When company firemen reached [Building] 776-777 they found
tons of flammable radiation shielding feeding the blaze. The fire-fighters
donned respirators and charged into the dense smoke." Once again plant
officials hesitated to use water. But when the carbon dioxide supplies ran
out--after ten minutes--they had no choice. At times the smoke billowed so
thickly that firemen were "forced to crawl out along exit lines painted on
the floor." After four hours the fire was under control. But isolated areas
continued to burn through the night.
The AEC first estimated the damage at three million dollars. It soon proved
to be more like forty-five million dollars, ranking it as the most
expensive industrial fire in American history at that time. It would take
two years and hundreds of regular and part-time employees to clean up the
mess. One regular plant janitor refused to help in the cleanup for fear of
radiation poisoning. He was fired.
Far from letting a major radioactive fire slow down bomb production, Rocky
Flats operators continued full-speed construction of a
seventy-four-million-dollar addition designed to increase plant capacity by
half.[24]
Nor were the fires the only source of contamination. Dow records showed
that at least one thousand barrels of contaminated lathe oil were burned in
the open air during their operation of the plant, sending unknown
quantities of uranium into the air. And despite assurances to the public
that no radioactive waste was being stored on site, more than fourteen
hundred barrels of it were found there.
When AEC officials decided to move those barrels in the spring of 1970, a
Dow report confirmed that "ten percent of the drums had holes apparently
caused by rust and corrosion. . . . Many of the liquid drums developed
leaks during handling or after exposure to air and sun."[25]
One Dow study indicated that up to forty-two grams of plutonium had been
carried off by winds blowing through the drum storage area.[26]
Another Dow report conceded that normal plant operations were resulting in
the daily release of millions of individual particles of plutonium, each of
which could lodge in a human or animal lung, or be ingested with
local-grown food and feed. Such particles are known to cause serious
internal damage.
DOE monitoring records kept from 1970 to 1977 indicated that levels of
airborne plutonium were higher in the Rocky Flats area than at any of fifty
other stations around the U.S. Dust samples downwind showed plutonium
concentrations 3,390 times what might be expected from fallout. Evidence
also surfaced that the nearby town reservoir had been contaminated.[27]
Constant mishaps at Rocky Flats led to a growing distrust among area
residents. As early as 1969, in the wake of the fire that spring, a group
of scientists from local industries and universities asked DOE and the AEC
to monitor the soil downwind. Their request was refused.
So Dr. Edward Martell, a nuclear chemist working at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research, with considerable experience from the bomb-testing
era, decided in the fall of 1969 to conduct some tests of his own. His
findings confirmed some of the community's worst fears. Abnormal plutonium
levels were clearly evident in soil to the east and southeast of the plant.

Martell quickly came under attack from plant supporters. But when the AEC
did its own study of downwind soil, it also had to admit to significant
contamination. "We find his results are accurate," conceded a ranking
military spokesman. "We don't disagree with his new data. As far as
measurements, sampling techniques, and knowledge of science, we think
Martell is a very competent scientist." The AEC did, however, question
Martell's health conclusions. "While it is true," they said, "that some
plutonium is escaping from the plant, we don't believe it presents a
significant health hazard to Denver."
Dr. Arthur Tamplin--at the time a leading AEC health researcher--strongly
disagreed. The Martell study "shows about one trillion pure plutonium oxide
particles have escaped from Rocky Flats," he warned. "These are very hot
particles. You may only have to inhale 300 of them to double your risk of
lung cancer." Tamplin calculated that if plutonium had been spread as
Martell suggested, lung-cancer rates in Denver could rise, over time, 10
percent. An additional two thousand Coloradans could fall victim to Rocky
Flats.[28]

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
19. John G. Fuller, We Almost Lost Detroit (New York: Reader's Digest
Press, 1975), p. 86. The Windscale story is told on pp. 71-87.
20. Virginia Brodine, Radioactive Contamination (New York: Harcourt Brace,
1975).
21. Ibid.
22. Ernest Sternglass, interview, October 1980. High cesium levels in
people eating fish caught "in the path of the Windscale effluent" are noted
in E. D. Williams, et al., "Whole Body Cesium-137 Levels in Man in
Scotland, 1978-9," Health Physics Journal 40 (January 1981): 1-4. The
contamination seems to be coming from ongoing operations at the Windscale
reprocessing facility.
23. Rapoport, Great American Bomb Machine, pp. 31-36.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., p. 25.
26. S. E. Hammond, "Industrial-Type Operations as a Source of Environmental
Plutonium" (Golden, Colo.: Dow Chemical Company, 1970).
27. Carl Johnson, "Cancer Incidence in an Area Contaminated with
Radionuclides Near a Nuclear Installation" (report presented at a session
sponsored by the Occupational Health and Safety, Environment, Epidemiology,
and Radiological Health sections of the American Public Health Association
at the 107th Annual Meeting, New York, November 9, 1979) (hereafter cited
as "Cancer Incidence"). For a notation of contamination in the Broomfield
Reservoir, see also Rocky Flats Action Group, Local Hazard, pp. 4-5.
28. Rapoport, Great American Bomb Machine, pp. 38-39.

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------


A Grim Harvest
To Lloyd Mixon, Rocky Flats is an unwelcome newcomer. "I can walk out the
back door twenty feet and see where I was born," he told us from his
thirty-acre farm in Broomfield. "I was here a long time before that plant
was." Six miles to the east, Mixon can see the tall stacks of the plutonium
factory, with the winds blowing toward him "right down out of the canyon."
In 1975 he told a joint congressional-gubernatorial commission that bizarre
problems had begun surfacing among his animals, problems in quantities he
had never seen before. There was a calf born hairless with a body full of a
watery substance and a liver "three times normal." There were pigs and fowl
with mutations. There was another calf born dead with tissue that tested
similar to cows exposed to radiation under experimental conditions.
Mixon later told the crew from Dark Circle that pigs had been born on his
farm whose "nose and mouth [are] twisted, where they're not able to nurse."
Some, he added, had been born with five toes instead of the normal four.
Others had hips and ears badly deformed, "with eyes that were not like
they're supposed to be."
"We've had chickens with no eyes," he added, "you break open the shell,
they've got beaks like needles." Mixon continued, "We've had them where
their legs have been so badly twisted and turned that they were unable to
kick out of the shell. We had a chicken hatch with the brains right on top
of his head."
State health inspectors told Mixon his problems stemmed from poor feed and
hygiene. "They brought down what was supposed to be an expert, and he
didn't even know how long it took for the eggs of different birds to
hatch," said Mixon. But those birds that had allegedly been deformed
because of poor food and hygiene had been kept in sanitary wire cages and
fed commercial grain. "According to the ticket on the feed we buy, it has
everything adequate in it. So it's caused from something else." Inbreeding
was also suggested, but in one case "the female came out of Pennsylvania
and the male came out of Texas. There's no way they could be related."
There were also charges of mismanagement. "I've had livestock ever since
I've been three years old," Mixon said. "My people back years and years
have had livestock."
Mixon's anger was reminiscent of the days when the AEC had scorned sheep
farmers whose animals had died in bomb fallout. And his experiences matched
those of a growing roster of farmers near nuclear facilities whose animals
seemed to serve as a bellwether for bad news to come from radiation. In
Pennsylvania, New York State, Vermont, New Hampshire, Arkansas, and
Colorado farmers have complained of bizarre deformities, reproductive
problems, and unexplained deaths among their animals--problems that seem to
have no other possible cause except nearby nuclear facilities. In nearly
every case "experts" from state agriculture departments have discounted the
claims, blaming other factors ranging from weather to bad feed to
inbreeding to mismanagement.
But Lloyd Mixon blamed Rocky Flats. "We used to have several different
varieties of pheasants," he told Dark Circle. "We got where they wouldn't
produce. The eggs were infertile. So we just went out of it. Then we had
some lambs born with the guts, or the insides hanging out. [Some would] be
alive. We've had some born dead that way. We've had kid goats born with
growths on them. . . ."
And, he told us, there've been "geese who would walk across the yard and
all of a sudden, they'll stiffen up and die. There've been deformities in
cats, and they've stopped reproducing the way they should. We've lost a
couple of dogs with cancer."
The health department, Mixon added, won't release any data on other cases.
But Mixon has received numerous calls from neighbors, including one who
complained of eleven colts, all born in the same season, all born blind.
And there was general agreement that wildlife had disappeared from the
area. "You don't see a rabbit around here anymore," he said. "And people
that try to raise them . . . they just stop reproducing."[29] Mixon noted
that many of his neighbors prefer to keep quiet about what is happening for
fear of undercutting the value of their property and their produce.
One of his neighbors who did agree to talk with us--anonymously--told us
she had lost so many colts to stillbirths and deformities that she went out
of the horse-raising business altogether. "The animals aren't what they
used to be and nobody's is getting any better," she said.[30]
Unfortunately the problems do not seem to be limited to animals. In the
late 1970s Dr. Carl Johnson began finding abnormal cancer rates among human
beings downwind from Rocky Flats.


The stolid, conservative Dr. Johnson is former director of the Health
Department of Jefferson County, which encompasses Rocky Flats. He is also
an officer with the Army Reserve and maintains a top-secret "Q" clearance.
As a public-health officer Johnson became disturbed by the constant
malfunctioning of the nuclear industry and began his own studies to confirm
or deny what the AEC and DOE were telling--and not telling--the public
about Rocky Flats.
Dividing the downwind area into four zones and correcting for age, race,
sex, and ethnicity, Johnson found male cancer rates in the zone closest to
the plant to be 24 percent higher than in the zone farthest away.
Intermediate zones showed excess rates of 15 percent and 8 percent. Female
cancer rates were 10 percent higher in the near zone as opposed to the
farthest one, with intermediate zones showing excesses of 5 percent and 4
percent. The excess cases for both sexes involved cancers of the lung and
bronchus, upper respiratory tract, colon, rectum stomach, gonads, liver,
thyroid, and brain as well as leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma.
There were other alarming statistics as well. Johnson's studies of people
forty-five to sixty-four years of age in eight census tracts near the plant
showed a doubled lung-cancer and leukemia death rate over subjects living
in "relatively uncontaminated" zones. In essence Johnson found 491 excess
cancer cases when the DOE said there would be less than one.
A separate study of a large suburban area near Rocky Flats found a
congenital malformation rate of 14.5 per 1000 births as opposed to 10.4 per
1000 for the rest of the county, and 10.1 for the state overall.[31]
Johnson's findings raised public awareness of Rocky Flats and helped fuel a
movement to close the plant. His findings also put him in a difficult
political position. Local real-estate interests began applying pressure to
have Johnson fired from his job as Jefferson County health director. In May
of 1981 they succeeded.
Meanwhile autopsy reports on workers at Rocky Flats showed plutonium
concentrations in all organs of their bodies. And a study for the EPA by
Dr. John C. Cobb of the University of Colorado School of Medicine indicated
preliminary evidence of excess plutonium levels among other local human
autopsy specimens plutonium that was traceable by its isotope-ratios to
Rocky Flats. But in an interview Cobb warned us that plutonium might not
necessarily be the chief culprit in any area health problems that might
surface. "I'm not sure plutonium is the right thing to look for," he told
us. "They also burned thousands of gallons of oil with uranium chips in it
out there. A combination of the uranium in the cutting oil might be more
important than the plutonium."[32]
Whether it was uranium or plutonium, or both, Lloyd Mixon had been directly
exposed. "I had some tumors taken off my chest," he told the Dark Circle
crew. "I've had my thyroid taken out. I'm tired quite a bit of the time,
more than what was usual, and [I've] got a numbness in my left side, my
shoulders. They found a growth on my right arm between my elbow and my
shoulder. . . . My daughter was born with a hole in her heart," he said.
Mixon also noted that his neighbors complained of being perpetually
overtired, numbness in their hands, and other inexplicable health problems.

There was also talk of "children being born retarded," he told us, "of them
with mental problems."
Few of his neighbors, he said, would point an accusatory finger at Rocky
Flats. But, he asked us, "if it isn't that place, what is it?"[33]
For Rex Haag there wasn't much doubt. He had lived within six miles of the
plutonium factory, and as a contractor had built another five dozen houses
nearby "without the least bit of knowledge of that being a dangerous
area."[34]
After Kristen Haag's death from bone cancer, the body was cremated. At her
father s request, her ashes were sent away for testing. When the results
were slow in coming back, Johnson called the laboratory, where a technician
told him "there was some problem because there appeared to be a large
amount of plutonium 238" in the ashes.
And when the official report finally arrived months later, it cited what
Johnson termed "rather high" levels of plutonium 238.[35]
Rex Haag soon helped organize a business coalition to help close Rocky
Flats. People justify the operation of the plant "in the name of national
interest, or national security," he said. "But I wonder if the same people
who are saying that, if it were their child, if they could actually sit
there and say the same thing."[36]
Lloyd Mixon had similar questions. "I've been hearing a lot more problems
lately," he told us. "In a few years things are gonna get a lot worse."[37]


- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
29. Lloyd Mixon, "Statement," Hearings of Governor Lamm's Task Force on the
Rocky Flats Plutonium Facility (Boulder, Colo.: April 1975); in Dark
Circle, and interview, May 1981.
30. Anonymous, interview, April 1981.
31. Johnson, "Cancer Incidence"; and Carl Johnson, "Evaluation of Cancer
Incidence for Anglos in the Period 1969-1971 in Areas of Census Tracts with
Measured Concentrations of Plutonium Soil Contamination Downwind from the
Rocky Flats Plant in the Denver Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area,"
5th International Congress of the International Radiation Protection
Association, Jerusalem, Israel, March 9-14, 1980.
32. John C. Cobb, et al., "Weapons Grade Plutonium in Humans Near Rocky
Flats," abstract submitted for a poster session at the AAAS Annual Meeting,
Toronto, Canada, January 1981; and Cobb, interview, April 1981.
33. Mixon in Dark Circle, and interview.
34. Haag in Dark Circle.
35. Johnson in Dark Circle, and interview, July 1981.
36. Haag in Dark Circle.
37. Mixon interview.



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