Peace Train for August 24, 2018
By JUDITH MOHLING
Hot plutonium particles definitely are not cool.
They are to be avoided, although with past nuclear activities we all are at risk. As Kate Bush sings, “Chips of plutonium are twinkling in every lung.”
Rocky Flats, on a windy plateau eight miles south of Boulder, was home to a plutonium pit factory. Every pit, the core of a nuclear weapon, in the US nuclear arsenal, was fabricated at the Rocky Flats plant over 40 years, from 1952 to 1989, totaling more than 70,000 pits. Each pit if fractured into breathable particles contains enough plutonium to harm the health of every person on earth. The area was “cleaned up,” after production was stopped, and declared “safe” by the EPA, the DOE and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. All admit that there is still an unknown quantity of plutonium dusting and buried at the site, and presumably their fingers are crossed that plutonium does not migrate.
But, it does—from burrowing animals bringing up tons of soil a year laced with plutonium, from wind, water, snow; any disturbance of the soil undoubtedly releases hot particles.
At least, let’s minimize risk of exposure and keep people, especially kids, away from Rocky Flats.
But wait! The US Fish and Wildlife Service has a plan that will maximize exposure to hot plutonium particles. They intend to open the site to the public for recreation, hiking and biking, for example, in three weeks, on September 15. Think of cyclists on a windy day—clouds of possibly radioactive dust swirling up from their tires. Or consider families sitting on the ground happily consuming a sticky picnic.
Strangely, given its invisible alpha particles, Rocky Flats is luxuriously beautiful—it has some of the last remaining tall grass prairie, undulating in the winds like an inland ocean; it is filled with wildlife—looking like a true haven for animals and humans. It is not.
There are signals of growing awareness. A “terrifyingly brilliant book,” “Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats,” by Kristen Iversen, is being read all over the world. In it Ms Iversen describes the institutionalized deceptions of the government at the plant throughout its tenure, and the deadly contamination. This may waken people to the dangers.
Also, the town of Superior, east of Rocky Flats, has a lawsuit asking for an injunction to stop the Fish and Wildlife Service from opening the Refuge until a careful, full environmental impact determination has been made—another indication of an awakening public.
Join the awakening and resist. Hot particles are not cool.
Come to a panel discussion: There Is No Refuge From Nuclear War or Nuclear Waste: Rocky Flats In Context, September 15, 7:00 PM at Naropa, 2130 Arapaho in Boulder.
And, join the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, www.rmpjc.org.
