Full Body Burden

by Kristen Iversen

  But how clean is clean? Exactly how much residual plutonium will remain in the soil? In 1996, as part of the Rocky Flats Clean-Up Agreement—a legally binding agreement for site remediation—the DOE, EPA, and CDPHE put forth interim radionuclide soil action levels (RSALs) for plutonium and other radionuclides. The RSALs will determine how much radioactive material will have to be removed and how much can remain on the site. If contamination levels are below the RSAL, no action will be taken.

  Even the most cynical observers are surprised when the RSALs are announced. The legally binding standard the government intends to adopt for cleaning up plutonium in the soil on the Rocky Flats site is 651 picocuries per gram of soil, significantly higher than at any other site in the United States.

  There will be no cleanup of off-site soil.

  How does 651 picocuries per gram of soil at Rocky Flats compare to other plutonium-contaminated sites? The bomb test sites at Enewetak Atoll and Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean are lower, at 40 and 14 picocuries per gram of soil, respectively. The Livermore National Lab in California is at 10 picocuries per gram of soil. Fort Dix in New Jersey is at 8 picocuries per gram of soil. A portion of the Hanford, Washington, site, one of the most contaminated sites in the country, is at 34. Even the highest level of contamination at the Nevada Test Site, where the nuclear bombs were tested, is lower, at 200 picocuries per gram of soil.

  Citizen and watchdog groups are deeply alarmed. They call for an independent assessment of the RSALs and how they were determined. In response, in 1998 the DOE agrees to fund an independent assessment of the cleanup standards. After fifteen months of study, Risk Assessment Corporation, a well-known team of scientists, releases a peer-reviewed study that recommends a level of no more than 35 picocuries per gram of soil, a reduction of 95 percent from what the DOE, EPA, and CDPHE have originally agreed to as the legally binding standard. The Soil Action Level Oversight Panel sends this recommendation to the DOE.

  The DOE never formally responds.

  Instead, the DOE, EPA, and CDPHE come up with a compromise of their own. The top three feet of soil at Rocky Flats will be cleaned up to 50 picocuries per gram. Soil from three to six feet below the surface will be cleaned up to a level of 1,000 to 7,000 picocuries per gram. There will be no limit on the amount of plutonium that will remain in the soil six feet or more below the surface, despite the fact that a great deal of material and contaminants remains below the surface, in parts of the lower floors and basements of buildings and the extensive piping that connected them.

  Critics note that just cleaning up the top contamination level does not take into consideration soil movement due to weather, erosion, or—perhaps most worrisome—burrowing animals. A 1996 study of burrowing animals present at Rocky Flats shows that they constantly redistribute soil and its contents. Animals dig to depths of ten to sixteen feet and disturb as much as 11 to 12 percent of surface soil in any given year. Wind and water actions contribute further to soil movement.

  In 2000, Congress proposes transforming the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site into a wildlife refuge, and the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge Act passes in 2001. Kaiser-Hill promises they can do the cleanup fast, and for the agreed-upon price. The graduated standard for residual plutonium in soil is officially adopted in 2003. Of the $7 billion slated for cleanup, most will go to site security, relocation of weapons-grade material, removal of bomb-production waste, and demolition of buildings. Only 7 percent of the total—roughly $473 million—will go for actual soil and water cleanup.

  Rocky Flats will become a plutonium graveyard, with a few sprinkles on top.

  Government officials claim that background levels for plutonium—due to fallout from the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons from 1945 to 1963—make the whole argument moot anyway. In 1963 many countries signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, promising to stop testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. Underground nuclear testing was still permitted. The ban met with mixed results: France continued atmospheric testing until 1974 and China until 1980. Underground testing continued in the Soviet Union until 1990, in the United Kingdom until 1991, in the United States until 1992, and in both China and France until 1996. These countries promised to discontinue all nuclear weapons testing after the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996 (a treaty that has never been ratified by the U.S. Congress). Some countries that did not sign the treaty have continued testing. India and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998, North Korea in 2009.

  The average background level for plutonium along the Front Range of the Rockies resulting from global fallout is 0.04 picocuries per gram of soil. Although measurements vary, most levels at the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, and some of the off-site areas around Rocky Flats, are dozens of times higher.

  The wildlife refuge is designed to protect wildlife and habitat as well as provide opportunities for public hiking, biking, and possibly hunting. In December 2004, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announces the results of a study to determine if the deer at Rocky Flats will be safe for human consumption. Tissue is collected from twenty-six deer and a control deer. Only the deer from Rocky Flats have detectable levels of plutonium in bone samples. The government determines that the risk level from eating deer with “tissue activity level” falls within an acceptable range.

  “Close it, fence it, pave it over,” implores an environmental engineer at a forum in Boulder a few months later. But the government has no intention of closing off the land. In their view, turning former nuclear sites into nature reserves is “thrifty environmentalism. It would cost a fortune to clean up the site so people could live there … but making it safe for ‘wildlife-dependent’ public use is more affordable.”

  ROCKY FLATS tends to run in families. During the Cold War years, it was common for entire families to work at the plant. Workers spread the word about good jobs and great pay, and government officials found it easier to do security clearances on relatives of employees who had already been cleared.

  Many workers, and sometimes members of the same family, became ill. Rocky Flats was supposed to keep track of on-the-job exposures, but their record-keeping was inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate. Records were often lost or misplaced. Dosimeter badges, which employees wore to record daily exposure levels, were sometimes mixed up or zeroed out. Workers did not have full access to their own exposure records.

  Sixteen members of the Dobrovolny family worked at Rocky Flats. By 2007, seven were sick or dead from health issues related to Rocky Flats. Mark Dobrovolny worked at Rocky Flats for years. His father worked at the plant and died of lung cancer. Mark, who painted walls and floors at Rocky Flats with a coating designed to prevent spilled radioactive material from getting into the air, has health issues, but is reluctant to request his exposure records. “Actually, I don’t want to know,” he said. “And I don’t know that I would believe the information that was there.” Like other workers, he was never sure if he was really safe. “Everyone who worked out there thought they would get cancer,” he said. His former wife, Michelle, who also worked at Rocky Flats, has chronic pneumonia, bronchitis, and other health problems. “The hardest thing is watching my family members die around me,” she said.

  Over the years, a number of studies have been done on worker illnesses at Rocky Flats. A DOE-financed study in 1987 found that workers exposed to plutonium experienced a higher proportion of deaths tied to brain tumors and cancer in blood-producing organs. That same year, the epidemiologist Dr. Gregg Wilkinson published an article finding that some exposed Rocky Flats workers with internal plutonium deposits as low as 5 percent of the permissible “lifetime body burden” developed a variety of cancers in excess of what was normal for unexposed workers. The New York Times reported that Wilkinson, whose report had received extensive peer review, had been told to alter the results of his study before publishing it. When he first showed his findings to a physician at Los Alamos, the doctor exclaimed, “Oh, this is terribl
e.… If these findings [are] real, they would shut down the nuclear industry.” Wilkinson said a deputy director “stated that I should not write to please peer reviewers, but rather I should write to please the DOE because they provided funding and support.” Wilkinson published the results anyway. He was ordered to submit all future work to an assistant director of the Los Alamos lab for approval before publishing any further data, and in protest he left his job.

  Wilkinson then went to the State University of New York at Buffalo and conducted a study on the health of women employed at twelve DOE sites around the country, including Rocky Flats. Over the years the DOE had employed more than eighty thousand women, but had never conducted a study of the health effects of nuclear work on women. Wilkinson found that exposure to external ionizing radiation appeared to be associated with an increase in leukemia and brain tumors, and an increased risk for all cancers combined.

  In 1990, testing by doctors at the National Jewish Hospital in Denver revealed that many workers were suffering from chronic beryllium disease. Unlike cancer or other diseases that were difficult to tie directly to exposure to plutonium or other radioactive elements, beryllium disease was clearly a result of working conditions at Rocky Flats. Exposure to beryllium dust can lead to a buildup of scar tissue in the lungs that reduces the capacity to process oxygen. Several hundred workers were diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, which has no cure and is often fatal.

  A 2003 study found that Rocky Flats workers who inhaled radioactive particles of plutonium were particularly vulnerable to lung cancer. Rocky Flats workers in general may also be more susceptible to brain cancer, and they appear slightly more susceptible to other cancers such as leukemia. Conversely, in 2009 the CDPHE study concluded that worker cancer deaths were not that much higher than in the general population.

  There always seemed to be at least one contradictory study that made it hard to draw firm conclusions.

  In 2000, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson acknowledged that workplace exposures had harmed the health of workers in the U.S. nuclear weapons industry. That same year Congress passed the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act (EEOICA), a program intended to compensate ailing workers and shift the burden of proof of exposure to the government rather than the worker. The government relies on dose reconstruction, which uses estimates and computer modeling to try to determine past exposure to radiation. The process is expensive, arduous, and prone to error, partly because of industry-wide poor record-keeping.

  During the production years at Rocky Flats from 1952 to 1989, more than sixteen thousand people worked at Rocky Flats, and thousands more during the postproduction years. Approximately six thousand of them have applied for compensation on the grounds that their illnesses were caused by radiation or toxic chemicals. In addition to lost records, many have had to deal with repeated delays and complicated exposure formulas. Although hundreds of workers have been helped by the program, by 2011 two of every three who have sought compensation have had their claims denied. Four of the seven members of the Dobrovolny family were denied medical care and compensation.

  Charlie Wolf is one of the few managers at Rocky Flats who goes into the hot areas with his workers to coordinate a job or help out in a pinch. Hired in 2003, he is deeply involved in cleanup operations, but he doesn’t live to see the final result of his efforts. Just a year later he develops an aggressive brain tumor called a glioma. The doctors originally give him six months to live—he fights for six years, and dies in 2010. His cancer can be tied directly to Rocky Flats, yet he is repeatedly denied compensation. It isn’t until after his death that his wife and daughters receive $150,000 in compensation, which barely makes a dent in his medical expenses.

  In February 2010, Representative Mark Udall introduces the Charlie Wolf Nuclear Workers Compensation Act, designed to reduce some of the red tape of EEOICA and expand the category of individuals and list of cancers that qualify for compensation. The legislation gains little support.

  THE CLEANUP itself generates waste. Every glove, shovel, screwdriver, and wrench used to disassemble Rocky Flats equipment becomes toxic, too. Tents are constructed to try to limit airborne contamination when buildings are demolished. For every single pound of detoxified equipment, another 1.6 pounds of waste is generated.

  In August 2004, former grand jury foreman Wes McKinley, whistle-blower Jacque Brever, and FBI agent Jon Lipsky hold a press conference on the steps of the Denver capitol to protest plans to open the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge to the public. On the way to the event, Lipsky receives a call from his employer. When it’s his turn to speak to reporters, he says, “I received a call from the FBI ordering me not to talk about the Rocky Flats case, so I can’t tell you what I came here to tell you.… As a father and a fellow human being, I urge you not to allow recreation at Rocky Flats. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”

  On October 13, 2005, the last shipment of transuranic (plutonium-laden) radioactive waste from Rocky Flats heads off to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, which opened on March 26, 1999, after twenty-five years of planning and complications, including protests and lawsuits. Based on the compromised cleanup standards, the Rocky Flats cleanup is declared successful. “Our success at Rocky Flats is a great inspiration to those other sites [around the country],” says Clay Sell, deputy secretary of the DOE. “Six years ago, seven years ago, the problems at Rocky seemed insurmountable.” The EPA certifies the site on June 13, 2007. In July the DOE transfers nearly 4,000 of the 6,200 acres of the Rocky Flats site to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for eventual use as a public recreation area. Approximately 1,300 acres of deeply contaminated land, including the former industrial zone and the areas capped with cement, are to remain off-limits. The DOE will retain this land for long-term surveillance and monitoring.

  When the cleanup is declared complete, 2,600 pounds of plutonium are still missing. Studies demonstrate that vegetation and plants at Rocky Flats absorb plutonium from the soil—called “uptake”—and birds and animals carry it far afield. The control of spreading weeds is a constant problem. Another study shows that small burrowing animals such as groundhogs and even the tiny Preble’s meadow jumping mouse regularly bring plutonium to the surface, despite the DOE’s computer modeling that claims plutonium will remain stable below the surface.

  Despite public opposition and concern, plans move forward for the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Visitors, including school groups, will enjoy a visitor station staffed on a “seasonal basis,” at least sixteen miles of open trails, parking at trailheads, scenic overlooks, and the opportunity to view wildlife and go hiking and biking. Home development near Rocky Flats continues at a rapid pace, with the closest house within two miles. Nearly two and a half million people live in the Denver metropolitan area within a fifty-mile radius of the former nuclear weapons factory.

  IN THE spring of 2005, Tamara Smith Meza goes in for her regularly scheduled MRI scan. For months the results have been normal, but this time the doctors are concerned. It looks like the tumor has returned and has spread to Tamara’s abdomen. The doctor schedules a full-body PET scan, but in preparation she has to undergo an ultrasound test. She usually keeps her emotions in check, but this time she is frightened.

  On the day of Tamara’s ultrasound, her regular doctor isn’t in, but he leaves instructions for the technician to go ahead with the ultrasound in preparation for the PET scan. Tamara and David sit down and answer the usual questions about her health, her list of medications—questions she has answered a million times. One question in particular is always more difficult than the others.

  “Are you pregnant?” the technician asks.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Tamara is very sure. She glances at David. Like her sister, Tamara has always had fertility problems. She and David are now thinking about adopting a child.

  Tamara lies down on the table and the technician smears jelly on her abdomen. Sh
e begins to move the wand over her skin. David sits nearby, looking intently at the screen. Suddenly the technician laughs. “Well, there it is!”

  David looks up in surprise. This seems a little unprofessional. Tamara is stunned by the technician’s enthusiastic tone. “What?” she asks. She cranes her head toward the screen. “Is that the tumor?”

  “Tumor?” the technician says. “What tumor? That’s a baby!”

  “A baby?” Tamara looks at the technician as if she were out of her mind. David is speechless.

  “Yes.” The technician leans forward and moves the pointer on the screen.

  “But we can’t have children!” Tamara says. “We know. We’ve tried. I’m sick.”

  “Well,” the technician says, “I’m not your regular doctor, and I don’t know what your health issues are. But tumors don’t have heartbeats. And this has a heartbeat.”

  Six months later, Tamara and David are the parents of a healthy baby boy. They name him Isaac.

  JIM STONE, the troubleshooter-turned-whistle-blower whose testimony helped shut down Rocky Flats, has waited a long time for his reward. Following the FBI raid in 1989, he filed a whistle-blower fraud case against Rockwell and was awarded $4.2 million in damages. But he never saw a dime of it. Rockwell appealed the case and eventually it went to the U.S. Supreme Court. After his eighteen-year fight, in 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court denies Stone any damages and also makes it more difficult for whistle-blowers to share in proceeds from fraud lawsuits against government contractors. By this time Stone is eighty-one years old and living in a nursing home. Two weeks after the decision, he dies from complications related to Alzheimer’s.