April 3, 2013

25 of 65

Rocky Flats

I’m gonna preach you a sermon about Old Man Atom,
And I don’t mean the Adam in the Bible datum,
I don’t mean the Adam that Mother Eve mated,
I mean the thing that Science liberated . . .
              -Talking Atomic Blues

We have all seen horror films in which something evil and sinister is lurking in the shadows, in the night.  A poor unsuspecting woman opens her door to let the cat out; or an elderly gentleman returns from visiting grandchildren, and we know we will never see that person again.  How do we know?  The ominous background music gives it away, but the actors can never hear the music.

All the time I was growing up there was danger right in front of me, but I didn’t really see it, and neither did anyone around me.  It was the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant – we called it simply “Rocky Flats.”  People would say, “What do they do out there at Rocky Flats?”  And someone would answer, “Oh, that’s Dow Chemical.  They make oven cleaner and stuff.”  We should have been listening to the songs in the background, like “Talking Atomic Blues.”

Dow Chemical did, in fact, make oven cleaner and stuff; they just didn’t do that at Rocky Flats. Rocky Flats was owned and operated by the United States Atomic Energy Commission and managed by Dow.  The product manufactured was plutonium triggers for atomic bombs.

The year after the plant opened, our family moved to a location just five miles away from it, as the crow flies – or the plutonium particles blow.  There was no thought that there could be any problem.  Perhaps we should have wondered why surface to air missiles were deployed to protect the oven cleaner.

Plutonium is an element that can ignite even at room temperature, and a fire occurred in 1957 releasing plutonium into the atmosphere.  I was nine years old and do not recall even hearing about that accident.  In the 1960s there were incidents of contaminated material leaking into the soil and becoming windborne.  Another fire, this one larger, broke out in 1969 and released more plutonium.  In the 1970s, nearby landowners began lawsuits against the plant operators alleging contamination of their property.

In 1978 and 1979, thousands of people joined demonstrations demanding that the plant be closed.  Activists like Daniel Ellsberg and Allen Ginsburg were arrested and prosecuted.  Entertainers such as Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt performed and urged the crowds to continue to protest.  I attended a demonstration, as one of thousands of average citizens, and I donated some money to help the cause.  I should have done more.  I excused myself because I was busy preparing for some very serious and important trials in my law practice.  I should have done more.

Demonstrations and protests continued.  In 1983, some 17,000 people joined hands to symbolically encircle the plant.  I did not participate.  My son Michael had been born just three days earlier.  I should have done more – for him – but that is not the way a new father thinks.  I had obligations at home.

In 1989, in an action by the federal government against itself, the plant was raided by the FBI and EPA for criminal violations of anti-pollution laws, but the charges were not pursued.  Additional charges were brought for violations of the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Rockwell International – which had replaced Dow Chemical as manager of the facility – pleaded guilty and paid over $18 million in fines.  The plant has been closed down and the area converted to a wildlife refuge.  There are new housing developments within  a few yards of the former boundaries.

Detailed treatments of these and other incidents can be found in books such as Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen and An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats:  Urban Myths Debunked by Farrell D. Hobbs – two books written from vastly different points of view.  One day I may write something comparing and contrasting those books, but I am not going to do that now.

Plutonium is a known carcinogen, but epidemiological studies have not clearly established whether increased rates of cancer are found among former workers at Rocky Flats or in the areas immediately surrounding the plant site.  It is known that cancers of the lungs, liver and bone marrow are those which most commonly result from plutonium exposure.

My mother did not smoke a single day in her life, yet she was diagnosed with a terminal form of lung cancer.  She asked her oncologist if it might have resulted from living so close to Rocky Flats.  He said there was no way to answer that question and that it would not be productive to pursue the inquiry.

My brother Lonny developed a disease called myelofibrosis, which is a serious bone marrow disorder and considered a type of chronic leukemia.  Eventually he developed an acute form of leukemia that could not be treated.  We briefly discussed whether growing up in the shadow of a nuclear weapons facility could have caused that condition, but we could only speculate.

Tragically, these same questions are being asked across the country in places like Alamagordo, New Mexico and Hanford, Washington and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  The so-called Cold War led to such a fear of Communism and the Soviet Union that virtually the entire country was turned into a giant factory for the construction of nuclear weapons.  That may seem like hyperbole, but it is estimated that the land area devoted to American nuclear weapons bases and facilities was greater than that of Massachusetts, New Jersey and the District of Columbia combined (http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/50); and material was constantly moved across the country between facilities by truck and train.

Today in excess of 17,000 known nuclear warheads are in existence – down from the more than 70,000 built over the years, but still more than enough to destroy the Earth many times over.  They were created and they exist because of fear.  How many innocent people have died so we could assuage our national fear?  As I learned with my mother and brother, there is no way to answer that question.  We don’t know.

I do know, and I did know, that fear is itself a cancer and cannot lead to a positive result.  I should have been listening to the ominous music playing in the background; and I should have done more.

Ah, but the atom’s international, in spite of hysteria,
Flourishes in Utah and in Siberia
. . . . . . . . .
Now we must choose between
The brotherhood of man or smithereens
The people of the world must pick out a thesis:
Peace in the world or the world in pieces!
          -Talking Atomic Blues

NOTE:  Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August of 1945, causing the world to focus on the power of nuclear energy and creating fear of the potential consequences of a war fought with atomic weapons.  In 1947, a newspaper reporter and folk singer named Vern Partlow wrote a song, “Talking Atomic Blues” or “Old Man Atom.”  Its lyrics were changed from time to time and versions were recorded by the usual suspects such as Pete Seeger and The Weavers, and even  (perhaps surprisingly) by The Sons of the Pioneers, who produced the most commercially successful version.  Examples of the song may be heard here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXhE22-ly1c) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrGSlcfJ-Tc).  The popularity of the song resulted in Partlow losing his job, and after an investigation by federal agents, he was identified as a member of the Communist Party by Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. A similar sentiment to that expressed in the song, in the same talking blues form, is Bob Dylan’s “Talking World War III Blues,” which I learned while in high school:

Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell,
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell,
Give me a string bean, I’m a hungry man!
A shot gun fired and away I ran.
I don’t blame him too much, though – he didn’t know me.

NOTE 2:  You may want to check the comments below for some updated information.