Activists: Plutonium Traces in Air Near Rocky Flats

(Aug. 4) -- Activists questioning the thoroughness of the cleanup at an old nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver say they have found particles of weapons-grade plutonium in air samples taken near the site. Part of the site is a national wildlife refuge that is slated to open for public recreation.

The federal Department of Energy declared in 2005 that its decontamination of the Rocky Flats facility was complete, after a 10-year effort that cost $7 billion (although the DOE originally thought the project would take 65 years and $37 billion). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to allow public recreation at a national wildlife refuge established in 2007 on part of the site.

"The interesting thing is that we found no plutonium in two samples and a lot of plutonium in two other samples," Marco Kaltofen, the head of a Boston lab that identified the particles, told AOL News.

The samples were collected in April by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, which has criticized the quality of the cleanup and called for increased testing and other safeguards.

Plutonium particles were present in dust from a crawl space in an older home near the plant, Kaltofen said. He said the highly toxic substance presumably accumulated during the period from 1952 to 1994, when workers assembled the plutonium pits used as triggers for hydrogen bombs.

Kaltofen also said he found traces of less than 0.5 percent of plutonium and americium, which he called "significant, a huge amount."

"It would be a good project to check all these older homes," he added.

Kaltofen has analyzed radionuclides at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and at a facility in Russia's Ural Mountains, according to the website of his Boston Chemical Data Corp.

Plutonium and thorium present in a second outdoor sample near the Rocky Flats site suggest that the wildlife refuge's air should be monitored periodically, Kaltofen said. "We can't answer the questions about hazards without doing that, at a minimum."

LeRoy Moore, of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, said in a statement that "the plutonium found at the open-space location was probably deposited there quite recently." He noted that burrowing animals dislodge soil at the site and winds scatter the particles brought to the surface, which could bring some of them "into the lungs of people using Rocky Flats for recreation."

The microscopic particles can be easily inhaled, ingested or absorbed through an open wound. If plutonium is lodged in the body, it bombards surrounding tissue with radiation, which increases the risk of cancer and genetic defects.

"This small sampling project indicates that Rocky Flats is a local hazard forever," Moore said.

"The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge should be managed as open space that is closed to the public," Colorado state Rep. Wes McKinley told AOL News. "This is not a good place for our school kids to go on field trips. At the very least, there should be a warning that you may be exposing yourself to plutonium."

McKinley was the foreman of a grand jury that issued corporate indictments alleging environmental crimes at Rocky Flats. A settlement placed jurors under a gag order, but he has disputed for years the thoroughness of the cleanup effort.

Officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment did not respond to phone calls and e-mails seeking comment. They have maintained previously that plutonium does not reach hazardous levels at Rocky Flats.

Thomas Cochran, a nuclear expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the latest data are "probably not sufficient to cause an alarm," but added that "you'd want to investigate further."

In 2006, a jury awarded $554 million in a verdict against the government contractors that operated Rocky Flats in a class-action suit brought on behalf of 12,000 homeowners who claimed that plutonium had been released off-site, damaging their property values. An appellate court decision is pending. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in March.