Scientists may have discovered a radioactive “hot
spot” at a future wildlife refuge surrounding the former Rocky
Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. The plant, northwest of Denver,
produced plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons for more than 30
years. The U.S. Department of Energy and Kaiser-Hill, the company
contracted to clean up the site, plan to dispose of the
plant’s nuclear waste by 2006. Once it’s clean, 6,000
acres surrounding the plant will be transferred to the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service, which will be in charge of regulating
everything from public access to future prairie dog colonies.
But in September, Kaiser-Hill discovered a 30-acre plot
in the northern buffer zone with a radioactivity level that was 120
times higher than expected, although still well below the limit set
for the refuge. Now, Kaiser-Hill and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency are re-sampling the plot to see if the hot spot
was merely the result of a lab error.
“We don’t
really think it’s news,” says the Energy Department’s
supervisory general engineer, Joseph Legare, who calls the results
“curious.”
Others aren’t so sure about the safety
of the buffer zone. “Plutonium remains dangerous for a quarter of a
million years,” says LeRoy Moore, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain
Peace and Justice Center. “We have no idea what human and natural
events are going to disturb the land.”
The Fish and
Wildlife Service expects to finalize the Rocky Flats management
plan early this year.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wildlife refuge may still be radioactive.
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