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. Continue reading →