And while discussing nuclear bombs, here is a point about Rocky Flats. Energy Secretary Watkins has been eagerly trying to ingratiate himself with the Green Church by persecuting weapons plants. He has already settled a meritless suit for $70 million in Ohio [AtE Aug 89, Sep 89]; and he also grandstands about the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado. Secret nocturnal FBI helicopter flights failed to uncover any prohibited toxins in the plume, though the local press kept screaming about the plant's incinerator. The DoE had to give the plant a clean bill of health, but then the news broke about the dreadful calamity: 62 pounds of plutonium in the plant's ducts! ("Enough for 4 nuclear bombs!") An average of 2 "criticality incidents" per month! To this day the press, Colorado's Gov. Roemer and other pols are screaming to their gullible victims who think they only just escaped being blown up.
Such accusations are difficult to investigate, since work at the plant is secret, the contractors are monuments to servile timidity, and the DoE, far from defending its ward, grandstands as the accuser. Nevertheless the truth came out at a lecture to a joint meeting of the Amer. Nuclear and Health Physics Societies; pre-dictably no member of the press was present (unless you want to insult me with that description). The lecturer was Dr. Tom Borak, professor of radiology and radiation biology at Colo. State U. in Ft. Collins, who was a member of a board appointed by the governor in September 1989 to investigate the criticality accusations. The board consisted of 11 experts, none of whom were allowed to be employees of the DoE or its contractors. After 3 months of inten-sive work in which they did their darnedest to uncover any evidence of criticality (defined as at least 101 fissions, equivalent to an explosion of 1.5 lb of dynamite) they handed in their detailed report to the governor, with copies to the press.
They might as well have sent a Hungarian translation of Hamlet to a herd of mountain goats. Early in their tenure they learned not to talk to the press after they read how their answers to reporters' questions were printed. "Radiation dose" was turned into radia-hon deaths; "kilo amounts" into killer amounts, and "body burden" into body burns, proving that your average US journalist is not necessarily a compulsive liar
¾just dumber than a retarded infant.There were indeed (an estimated) 62 kg of plutonium dust in the ducts
¾accumulated over 40 years and distributed over 4,000 feet of ducts. There was no reason to remove it, or indeed even to know about it, since all safety regulations are aimed at protecting workers' safety, not at detecting the presence of plutonium (this will now be changed). Now that things have calmed down some-what, the DoE proposes to leave the dust where it is, for (as with asbestos) there is no real reason to disturb it, and any alternative is less safe. But no, "Remove it!" howls the governor, whose nostrils scent political pay dirt; and what politician would not subordinate his constituents' health to so sweet a smell?And there was indeed an average of 2.5 criticality incidents per month
¾an infraction of the rules pertaining to criticality. For example, there is a rule that no lab room may contain more than one one-liter beaker, presumably to avoid the accumulation of too much liquid (plutonium compound?) if spilled. So if anybody enters that room with an additional half-liter beaker¾empty or full, as I understand¾this is a "criticality incident."And that is the potential mushroom cloud under which the people in the Denver-Boulder-Golden area live. Unless they have special channels, such as subscribing to an obscure little pink sheet, they cannot find out the strictly censored truth.
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Vol. 17, No. 9
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 17, No. 9 Date: December 01, 2004 03:38 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: Seabrook goes on line
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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