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"I've said to myself, 'This is full-service, self-service terrorism here,'" Peters says about the library. "My only hope is that I don't think the terrorists have this information. If they did, they'd have done it already."

Among the documents Peters found in the reading room was a DOE Plutonium Vulnerability Assessment filed in August 1994, which contains a brief analysis of what could happen if a plane smashed into four of the buildings at Rocky Flats. "Although the likelihood of this event is low," it reads, "the consequences to the worker would be high in terms of personal injury; the consequences to the public and environment will be high." Elsewhere in the document, "high" is described as involving significant numbers of deaths. Although the four buildings no longer contain weapons-grade plutonium, as they did when the report was issued (it has been moved to Building 371, which is reinforced with concrete and rebar), the structures may still harbor enough dangerous material to be potentially deadly.

Paul Solevad

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• Jeff Peters
• Mark Graf
• David Ridenour
• War and Conflict
• Terrorism

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"And that is why we have been working very hard to remove all the plutonium from the site," responds Etchart. "That will ultimately eliminate the risk. Should we spend another $100 million when we almost have the material removed and when we are cleaning up and closing down and taking all the walls down?"

The DOE can't afford not to, Peters says. "We're going to lose a nuclear facility in this country before it's over," he predicts. "A New York type of event would be nothing compared to if they'd supplied the same well-trained terrorists to Rocky Flats. You and I would not be here. New York cost us $100 billion and 6,000 people, and our country can absorb that. I don't think this country could absorb Rocky Flats going up in a vapor cloud."