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The Hot Zone

Kaiser-Hill says it can do the job by 2006. But will Rocky Flats ever come clean?

A A A Comments By Eileen Welsome Thursday, Aug 3 2000

A "conceptual land use" map recently prepared by Kaiser-Hill contains some hints of what the future may look like. On that map, a total of 1,400 acres has been designated as "restricted open space." This restricted area runs in a broad swath eastward across the site and encompasses much of the land that was contaminated with plutonium from the 903 Pad, the site where thousands of barrels of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in the '50s and '60s.

Scattered throughout the site will be numerous other artifacts from Rocky Flats' toxic past. As many as 89 ground wells may have to be monitored on a semi-annual basis to ensure the contaminated water is not moving off-site. Every ten years or so, the iron filings being used to clean the groundwater will have to be replaced, and the spent filings, which will then become low-level waste, shipped off-site. Holding ponds and diversion ditches will also have to be cleaned periodically.

Moon-suited workers examine radioactive garbage.

Read the first two installments in the Rocky Flats series:
Part 1: Bombs Away!
Part 2: This Place Is a Dump!

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For all of these activities, the DOE has budgeted approximately $385 million through the year 2070. Jim Stone, the engineer who blew the whistle about plutonium in the ducts at Rocky Flats, says the additional costs simply prove his point that the area will not be truly decontaminated when the contractor walks away. "Why would you need monitoring equipment if the site was really going to be clean?" he asks.

And who knows what the world will look like seventy years, seven centuries or even seven millennia from now? There may well be no United States and no state of Colorado. But one thing is certain: The plutonium will be just as radioactive as the day that it arrived at the weapons plant once called Rocky Flats.