>> more now from booktv. theying the their childhoonext tohe weaonfatyrong er 00 pni triggers for nuclear bombs. the author examines the effect the plant had on the environment and what the u.s. gornment did know tellthe local polation. th is about anou

>> well, thanks. thanks so much for being here tonight, and it's such a pleasure to be here at a bookore that is such an important bookstore in the area and in the cry nrye o? llespli. how's that? is that better? okay. full bid burden growing up in the nuclear shadow of rocky flats is a book about my childhood in arvada, colorado. mifrheckts eaap plant. actually, our first house was seven milesway, and then in 1969, we moved to a subdivision which was closer to the plant, about three e ana lewom rat srsdotr and i had an idyllic childhood in the sense we had horses and dogs and spent time outdoors riding

horses in the fields around the plant and swimming in the lake. we never knew whatnt o ckla deat ly was. we had no idea of the environmental contamination that was happening in the area. plutonium and carbon chloride and a number o things going in envinment the . teika k neighborhood, i worked at the plant myself, and i got a sense of what it was like to be on the inside of the plan there was one evening when i came home fromworking atrock flat anehe leond e aow "nightline" that it was an expose of what was really haening at the plant. it was the first time i had an awareneswha hni erhoxtdi amios.

it was on that day i decided to quit my job at rocky flats, and the day i quit was the day i decided to write a book about it. it took ten years o research and writing to pull the story akha r leno i waed twre t's vhsm footnoted and everything in the book is factual. check in the back and see where the information comes from. i wanted to write this story from the perspective of all of the kinds of people oseives had beenffected bky me and my family, but workers there, the activists, all the people, thousands and thousands of people in colorado and yont affected by rocky flats. another rean i sste t s hhe - we are continuing to deal with the legacy of the nuclear weapon production in the country in many ways. the environmental legacy and cultural legacy ofhow important

afedeo leoeras antey it awof h e bg ct. when i worked at the plant, it was common for workers to call ourselves cold war warriors, the people who worked on the lines, but people growing up near rocky warss, we also were col war wen'nhas ppg he pt. r i neighborhood was that it was operated by dow chemical, and they were making household cleaning suppes. mrouit rug le as nppto thhaen clean up, but a controversial cleanup, a controversial levels of contamination remaining in t soil, and 1300 acres of that site are so profoundly eve o fmatheca ner, ta, t o the site will be a national wildlife

refuge for hikg, bikes, and possibly hunting. there's agreat deal of contamation on the site, and there's a lot of the home building and shoppingal and goon t.tth i felt although in colorado and the country as a whole, we want to forget that rocky flats happened. it's a story we want to put in the past and pretend it's fixed, d we don't have to deal wi it, but the truth of the mter is is itatoe ve cnu ea w ttu onha a half-life of 24,000 years. it's not going away any time soon, so this is something we have to deal with. what i'm going to talk about this evening is i'm going to read briefly fom three sio too m g begin with a childhood section. the way the book is written is it's my own story ad the story in history of the plant itself put together. tho y lines.veyou t o

the first section is from when i was a child, and the first time i road out to the lake near my house, which to present day is contaminatthpliu senf lbu dt t aeme the first time i road to the lake, the wind whips hair across my face so hard it stings. tonka isager t run. iibek. igreuns head tucked and neck arched. he prances and dances. let's run, let's run. he gathers himself into a ball of muscled energy and shoot across the fie l alo in onll cr hh thighs, crouch low, and hang on. maximum contact, minimum

control. i'm alone. that's the best part, to be alone with a horse and the gently rolling hills, and the nd bng rin i yoke walk calmly. my mom has repeated tales about what happens to young riders who gal lantly steps full speed into ground h holes. thei legscanp, t's e on allo h a field, the long grass hides thousands of potentially lethal mounds and bumps. he dislikes caution and kws there's a time onach de when we as hs, ncthoaan drop the rains, bury my face, and let him rip. we pranced across the wooden bridge arching over the ditch. i tried to maiain control as neor ken wow

pdhecommunity barn, skidded through another gate, trotted fast the swamp, and he broke into a light sweat, and cantorf gentle rise to the barbed wire fenceurrounding the . there gos trd ta san wire, there's a heavy padlock from the latch. a thoughtful child clipped the wires below the lock. i swung back up, and hean my vagois. aoar e stretches below us a mile in diameter. blue water extends in ripples to a line of cotton woods on the far side. the wind dies, it's quiet, about rfy l rha peea fth ed e, mountains rise suddenly, violencely from the sandy brown of the plains,

silhouettes of blue, green, and gray rising to the sky. i'm filled with theeautyof . ill eauc t n to the chest, and twist my hands in his main. go, i shout, and when the reigns drop, he shoots over the hill and down the other side racing to the edge of the lake. his bck is slkthea elee m . isee it. should i pull him up? will he race in the water? the ground blurs. i see the body first. in the split second before he spots it, i ready myself for his response. e sli s tnof e aist,nde s f ne i had seen it first. he spins around on his back haunches, and i pull him up short. the lower house of the cow's body lies in the water swoen. the upr hfis lond r heun r trsup achingly

like she tried to pull herself out. the eyes bulge. was the cow shot? drowned? sick? there's no other cows in sigh i loo again across the lake. co,lue,dteem e maiee l a dark, heavy presence, a watching shadow. it's too far to yell for one of any sisters. i chastise myself fiercely for not having the courage to investigate. horig ground.the yho, i think that was the day i had a sense that maybe something was not quite right. tonka, the first true love of my life is the main character in the book. ta ahe p wiki a little bit and talk about the point where i actually went to work at the plant myself. the history of this is a dramatic history, and 2341989,

after -- envinml relati, ers of avoiding a ronlan rtthnd epa, and it's the only time in the history of the country that two government agencies raided another. the department was operated by the department of eney. estwoperse dow and rosewell. we were largely unaware of what happs at the plant, in1989, i was actually living in germany at the time working as a journalist, and one ofheea ie wen t ti nd the globe looking for good stories to write about, and the most important story i had to tell was really literally what was i single parent with tword.

kids, putting myself through graduate school, and rocky flats, was, as it had been in a long time, the best j in town provided a lot of people with jobs. woan t hee section mentioned leon i give my kids their baths and put them to bed, come down, and turned on the tv. i go downstairs and take off my shoes. i make a cup of tea,tret out on the couch, and turn on the televisi. i'llivys mes re t. en sit bold upright. rocky flats is on television. abc "nightline" is interviewing people i know. the narrator talks about years of contamination at the plant overhe 1 .oduction was halted intate of limbo wanting to resume building nuclear weapons while trying to deal with enronmental regulations. the plant had been able to avoid them in the past. rocky flats has five of the

nationop tge ils eoy. di the plutonium processing building is the worst. building 776 isnumber two. they report that an internal memo shows as much as 13.2 tricofpliu ocedune pi 5,000 seals containers of waste containing hydrogen gas that can cause the plant to rupture scattering plutonium. they were out in the open for 11 years, and the bottoof the thatl ur r supply. cans that were not supposed to be stored for more than a year were stored for five. mark silverman, the doe manager at rocky flats, is on screen. pateatk.ece welfromthe k fexe,to n vents, duct work, the glove boxes, in the walls and

ceilings. we can't tell you how much is in any given location in any place. therwasor rdkeepin at drgsabuilding was built, added on to, and we literally don't know where every pipe or lines. have a nice day, i think. that was the line tt i often heard on the pa whe th made thndarow00es h you know, hold on, things are bad. have a nice day. have a nice day, i think. i grab my journal and start scribbling words. this y le anous tcst. that's the pad i walk by on my hunch hour. he continues to the plains and northern and western suburbs of denver. some of the barrels rustednd waisr on a map in the

area. while the creek dumps into great western reservoir and another feeds the stanley lake reservoir. samples from bhshow dosit pla m. eyerhelo t work at rocky flats on the roof in the mother's day fire who shakes his head. -production, production, production, kelly says. safety was a word. was not really practiced. the job was to get the product out the door an if yougo di, they wold turn their head. he talks about the grand jury investigation that began in 1999, 1989, after the fbi raid. he interviews ryan ross, the the journast who broke the story he s. cote ameul bhe accountable for it, ross says. they didn't care whether it was the federal government or in the plieft sect, or how high up in

the government they were. he knows a doze sections were taken out of the juryeport. almost all ofemado th cus ohe , egdu they found at rockwell was engaged in was continued to be done under the contractor. one of the grand jurors appears on screen. i have nightmares. i coun'tleepat t in a wi hfo wehay room. another, o -- a resident near the plant since 1964 notes the housing continues to grow as ey lobby the housing pnn cmin. e dever tconthto, homeowners kept ignorant thanks to the sealed grand jury report. i paced in the dark living room for an hour before putting on my night gob. many things i fear the or were iteaid to think about aretr

s g o ta my journal again. i just saw rocky flats on television, i write. oh, my god, i can't sleep. i turn off the light and wait for the morni. that was t moment that i ciav t plant and write a book. i'm going to skip back in time a lile bit to the 1969 fire. there were many fires at rocky flats. aryadne 5 # 1959 that happened after my family moved out to rocky flats. it was mother's day, and we were all having a nice mother's day brunch like everybody else the community, and we h n eare w a fe at t onprsi binat pt, t es, indeed, a radio active cld over our head and denver metro area. one of the more remarkable things about this particular

fire is that there was independent off-site testing pliuom blou flats as far as 30 miles from the plant, and in elementary school, my elementary school, 12 miles from the plant showed deposits. and it was verynteresting because the departmentof engy tihe wut of-site contamination so we learned at that point, or some people knew it at that point, butthe more interesting thing is the department of energy sd int,he 1957 fire thataminatn, burned out 620 filters that were not changed in fourears, the worst contamination came with the 195 fire and the fact when i mentioned earlier, the thousands of blstag in odaknt gr. wheste the

public began to have an inkling of the exmpt of the ntamination. even then, the day after the fire, a couple days after the fire, there was a notice in the rockyouws sg e an wn cktha paper right next to a little picture of the week. it was very much minimized. what i'll read now is the section introducing two binindan skinder. i had access to interviews myself and interviews part of caieranor.tory up at the frwrghese chapters. two men in particular, bill and dan, who are fighting the fire, they are not firefighters as a matter of fa. they are guards. they showed up on mother's day

with a low staff day bausef eidan sp e o t go to the building where there's a fire. when they arrive, it looks quiet and clean, at least from the outside. thera lngoc w s dend a sf uboo lngnto the hallway. men pull on masks and air tanks. co2 only, bill says, no water. stan nods. they open the door, moving into hallway, and ty move into the maindunr. c anpsnhi ks usually as bright as a supermarket, the room is nearly pitch black. a few emergency lights glow. the only noise is from the fans feeding the fire he can feel more thansee. ofmyceheutd.s t smoke rolls towards them in waves.

there's the orange glow and moves closer. looks like the flames are shooting up over the glove boxes, one, two, three gve boxes, no, all of them. heno t f. in fs,ig f moving flames, but the color is different. it's the distinct unearthly brilliance of burning metal. what is that, stan yells? plutonium, probably the thatis ns anee iou ut it's not just that plutonium, but the plastic, the shielding, the glove boxes. bealex doesn't burn, why is it thlao,ilts's ir ts lot of radiant heats to make that flam l. this fire has been going on for awhile. buing globes crash from the ceiling. hard to tell if they are lights or pendts, e bketst

sht.ts,eis he knows this building, both men walked it hundreds of times, upstairs and down. the two buildings are connected. the 776 side has two floors, and 777 ha one. protecting therooff 7 ia filters stretch across the entire roof area. stan likes to compare it to the air filter on a car. with the car, you clean the air before you pl it into the engi. bungu naicng ou the atmosphere. the flow is reversed from inside to outside. if the fire burns through this and the 777 roof, massive amounts of plutonium and othe coamints d mer sd stan opens up the cabinet with a stack of hard hats, handing one

to bill and straps one on himself. where are the other firefighters, he wonders? they are unaware of the team comi in from thede bin bus sands setting in corners for extinguishing fires. they throw sand on the flames, but it's like rice in the face of on an coming locomotive. the fire continues to gw. g a2 stnd s ta fe io the glove boxes. it has little effect. they empty another canister. the air in the room is unbearably hot, and they are breathing heavily, already about out of air. the fire gallops tough the li. whatnoane llllomng bt an can't hear it. what are they supposed to do? who are they to ask? they are alone. the no water rule is all they got, but it's useless. you can't use water inutm

reonarh the men bolt out shaking and gasping, change masks, confer briefly, ignoring the radtion monitor. don't step outside these lines, he barks. epheontanati iid eses pni possibly recognize a line of chalk. water? bill looks to stan for confirmation. water, what the hell, stan thinks, he's not a firefighter. he's a ard. he liv in the count, andll hoee areitur i . are you good with these things, he asked bill? more or less, bill replies. they wrestle with the nos l. use the fine spray. got it. seatperentle like he s ay they re-enter the building with hoses. 'll take time going forward, bill says, i spray you, then you

me. we need to keep each other cooled down. let's head towards the center, stan, says, get under the beams ee h io ay st mrward into the smoke trying to follow the emergency lighting on the floor. hey, bill yells, stan looks back. don't blow those pieces together. keep them serated. i know. hekn. atapnge the roof is gettin so warm, so hot from the fire, it's starting to rise like a marshmellow bubble. the problem is if theoof were mo al box linedn't be he directing a spray of water on the flames and on each other. they only got a few feet when they see the real fire. in the boundary area, where plutoniummelted and cst into prtion li.ar carried t eouyi00e

ng containing eight furnaces held inside glove boxes. the entire line is ablaze. bill curses. the men glance at each other. the pruction area is tit. there's ju one way tet theahrth dese me glove boxes have steps, stairs going down to a miniature basement with steps leading up the other side. this allows workers to get from one side of the production line to the other. the underasses have no dins, glbo cmid a silnd a to ced uno flushed out. there's no place for the water to go, and the underpasses are filled with water. the water is rising. it's like a sheep pit, bill says, and laughs. ras or a kto e'e criticality, bill, stanes says. we're looking right at it. who's going in? both men are silent. bill looks up and sees an

elevator flipped upside down, eetalor ais opwi gll tht gus it might be him and stan. he thinks of his wife who is pregnant, his two other kids. they were trained for the battlefield, but i didn't prepare them for this. one thing it di teach them was to keep their feelings to themesve llasn. the water is up to the knees. he thinks he's moving fast, but feels slow, and prays they have not knock plutonium in the water that can lead to the criticality they fear. he's up the other side, andthe thisaker alls dry instantly. his face scorched beneath the mask. stan is behind him. they spray the fire until air is low, a few short minutes. they drophose wde tou ,anigao or radiation monitor is waiting

when they burst from the building and yank off their masks. he checks the hands. you're hot, man, he barks. coded. hisharpness'tidee fe. nou'ffhas.n. ggo back. stan reaches for a fresh tank. it's about to go. you keep us out here to all watch the roof melt? i'm serious. you guys are not going ck in thatung. weweaioril a guys. we don't have anyone else yet. we don't have enough gear. we're waiting for boulder and broomfield for more tanks. the onl other members on duty are on the phon is ttou, ge? ee ihe m m and recognizes him from the lunch room. i can't let you back in, stan, george ss. come op, what the hell are you guys thinking? he looks to the road.

a van is on the way take deamio buiing55fo orstay w the fire get in, and denver's scwed. give us the tanks. bill's voice is serious. can't do that. theytraphemn,ll them, stan says. sks gge a folded, blokes their way. they bolt pass him. they duck back into the building. i'll go first this time, stan shouts, crouched into the production line, dartsack and forth, saying athingot okikto. qs amman key. they spray down and switch. bill doesn't move as quick as stan, t feels like they are making progress, thinking about the roof. i'm ot, bill shouts, and gestures towards the nk. ans. on tatand exertion cause them to go through the air more quickly

than usual or if the tanks are just partially fill. abruptly, he's knocked to the floor, planon t back, can't dot scnebu. s mto rze body is covered with a heavy material. ceiling material. his heart pounds. the roof, he thinks. this is it. the roof is gone. it's over. but nothing happened. looke up to see bll heds hanve a a up, looks around. he's covered with gunk, gunk, and pulls a piece off his arm. bill points to a gap in the ceiling, a false ceiling made of fiber material and twooot by th yethos t collapsed from the weight of the water. stan is coved with soaked ceiling tiles. the roof is still in tact. he stands up and bill cleans him off. he can't read bill's face.

tside, theyxplowi ht adt, sys, but i think that's the closest i came to shitting my payments. it strikes them hilarious. gege stands back, hi d a- oo read a very little bit here at the end. with respect to what happened with the fire. stan loses his mask in the fire, and he's contaminated, and bo thof holds. for the citizens of colorado, luck plays a big role on the afternoon of mother's day, may 11th, 1969. there are three lucky breaks, erl largely the results of human eirowofck cudear ie w when workers left behind a metal plate that blocks the north

glove box line forcing the racing fire to turn from building 777, a single story imattouig6.th aum network roo building 776 has a second story is a less susceptible. this buys time. the second lucky break occurs when a memberindustries to hose anening fire oluum ito of plutonium oxide ash like wet cement. the pile does not move. later, a fire investigator reports that if the fireman had been successful in moving the sludge in pushing pluton togetheraititul vendeees erd pees of luck is the most important, -- the third piece of luck is the most importan a busted fireman backs aire to bininto a poweleja

57n disattal power cutoff occurs in the nick of time. the fans sucking the fire into the bk, feeding it, causing the firens b ly tstops spinni. h. hill stop there. i'll see if you have any questions aboutis era of heros in the book. activists, everyone from daniel ellsberg and others who camped out, and thereererotests felt they, younodnntke wh r tnyha rthid one of the things that i wanted to stress in the book was this idea of

secrecy and silencing, and how secrecynd silencing at the leofamil ri coun coort, te' price for that, and so that's one of the things i wanted to bring out. it happened in so many ways. when you have that silencing and secretinin the counit i via un e'cttsos, residents, and often people at odds even the workers who were contaminated and became ill from the work at rocky flats, and thfoea aer o rked out . ny workers were proud of, but there's friction amongst the works, those who were sick, those who didn't, what story do we tell about rocky flats? it's been interestingore inouhe cry lkabthok a inatop h

fukushima changed the conversation. we're talking about these things in aery different way now, and i think for whatever reason people are ready toalk about rocky flatinay th inas s a itat he nuclear weapons systems in the country. it was one of 13 facilities. rocky flats was the factory. we produced re than 70 play tope y pits ith nur i oy, and now i think people are prepared to talk about the story in a different way. yes? >> 70,00 pits were proced, buwher didth ao? atpetoem a was the cleanup done after they ledded rocky flats, and to what extent has any clean upbeen done

out there? >> ,h f, i th nr interesting acronyms at rocky flats, and those of you working with the government might be aware of this, but it's -- the of b'sor piggers aupsm the plutonium came from hamford and it was a mache that rocky flats in these -- it was melted in here and people worked in glove boxes linked sainls lxendkepu eirm aan led lined gloves working with each piece, went u and down the line. once the pits or triggers were ready to go, they were sentto pantex in texas to th fil exivan ttin eyuawo become, you know, part of the a nuclear

warhead. so i think one of the things that was interesting of working ere, it was easy to believe, and production stoed the for alinivrp w i s- ilwaer but it was easy to believe we were not pulling the trigger,art of the process, or putting the bomb together. we were just making plutonium pits. you know, it's really an acronym, a ehemi, thwa wiesto where did it go and where did the pits go is with what's called muff. when i worked there, one of m jobs was to type up reports. i worked with managers and germings, project managers, and type up reports thaten in. hame d understand a lot of what i was writing about, and m-u-f, what's that? it's an odd firm, but refers to

pliun over the course of eight years, rocky flats lost more than 3,000 pounds of play tope yum. where did that go? there's speculation on the department of energy and ohers sotis theso int. o backyard, and there was a cleanup, started in -- really began in 1995 when i w working out at the plant. the department of energy estimatethat it woul take0 year$3li c th they'd have the technology to do it. of course, those are almost impossible figures. there was a lot of pple at that time who felt it should be atl sfizoat ho ct, cap it, and

pray it doesn't move. we have not done that. instead, we have a compromised cleanup. the company was hired to come in and they did the clean up in bin,y amartion of that went to cleanup water and soil. as i mentioned briefly earlier, the site is slated to open as 13ree cmidlife rug aug 'lve opened to the public. it was a facility over 800 buildings, and a very large plutonium production facility at the center connected by tunnels and things beneath tfa at h all the plutonium was transported. that material is still out there. the way we were able to get a cleanup for $7 billion is that we have a very compromised eanup standard, and what that means is that for the top three

oil wrealng 50picos per gram of soil. for 3-6 feet, we allow 1,000-7,000 per gram of soil, and there is no limitelow 6 et enugis ath t rn, wind, it's very windy in this area. the winds come off the mountains, very ht high winds. the windows in our house would just rattle and buzz. when i worked o there, it was t mmorke th htr i a out there. a lot of rin, a lot of snow, and then many studies have shown that there's play tope yum uptake in the grass, a study by drsmallwood shows how 12% of to ground hogs out there. there's a lot of ground hogs o there. like that theme with tonka in

the beginning, there's a lot of holes out there, and so plutonium does not stay put. it's moving all theim stpole ai on-site. the cleanup we have is a controversial cleanup, and we are busy building houses out there. an excerpt ofhe book appeared in reader's digest, and ias the,anthu cdnwt lial t bulldozers and everything stirring up the dust. every time they stir it up, it suspends plutonium particles in the air. it's lethal. mioofman c err ahe effect. it has to be absorbed through a wound or a cut or something like that, but it's most dangerous when it's inhaled into the lungs and there's elevated rates of ng cancer braior er hhfs

er mghoo and in the areas around rocky flats. yeah? >> i want to thank you for a compelling read. i wanted to ask you more about that. my impression wa that a singl rt, n'ca fpliu u -- inhaled, and you were done. i don't understand how two-thirds of the population there is not dead. no, seriously, how is tat? >> no, yeah. ths sesm 19. inlevated cancers and elevated health issues. there's a lot of heros in the book, and i where about dr. car johnson, hwasirr e thpant f mb orsat e county. they wanted to build houses out

rocky flats. it's beautiful land. those of you who have been moinheai reous ut environment, and so there's a lot of development going on out there and always has been. it's a fastest growing area in the country. when they said w want to bud houses out there, they said, we have to do studies first and s exactly what's going ont ernd iers ntatin san erelt ct the population. he found health effects elevated levels of cancer and other diseases, and then other researchers since that time confirm the rltlu stshedemef yonohe i it is, as i said earlier, i think we are just finally getting to the point where we can have a conversation about rocky flats. there's been so much conflict about it, and a lot oflu eee ps te,pe have been very -- want to

believe the area is safe and want to build houses and shopping malls and highways and all of that. it's a high population area. it's like the tobacco itr al o i ople. here's the thing over here. can they be connected? the department of energy or even the colorado health department does a study saying, we, yes, we have elevated cancers and th and threr prths a connection. i want to tell you briefly about one of the women that i where about in the book, andshe grew up down the road from us. we had hors and dogs and animals, and s the th was arm fy. ey t o gn, organic garden, raised own animals, cows, and horses, and lived off the land. the primary difference between our family and that family was that we could not dig a well.

our father tri to dig a well thtere u o od wat. that stanley lake water table. that family has been very, very ill. it is certainly one of the strongest people i've ever met. it was just remarkable working wither, witsok foatel h 9th brain tumor. it's remarkable she has survived. she was given six months, b, you know, she's really survived. the very first reading i did from this book in colado a coup nigo, hti lye. e itatoem a lot of other families like hers who stories have not been told that finally someone is talking about the stories and letting people know, and i certainly have been getting hundreds of e-mailsrom people cadpe gup whew up or live near other facilities, you know, hamford,

here, and we got back from the riverside. it's the same thing. not just in the united states. there was asist ci sooc ats cedya they were doing the same thing there that we were doing at rocky flats, and they had very, very silar issues with contamination iidents, and that sort of thing in t same time period. the intereing ing to m i d sat ie , lelin russia near the mayak plant were more aware of what was happening there than we were in colorado, in bridledale, in our neighborhood about what was weno .ck fs. yeah? >> can you talk about the way in which -- [inaudible] >> the rain? well, it's a fascating story, boaneaoegotoo it in depth in

particular parts of reading like a thriller. it's an incredible story. there have been reports of problems at rocky flats from the veryeginning. paulhort eone more manin an t 1950s when the plant was built in 1951 and started production in 1952. there was a problem with the engineering report in the beginning turning out the location of the plant that needed to be located close to a growinguln. as nik s alamos where it's a company town. rocky flats had to be close to a owing population to have workers, but at the same time, they needed something that was remote. when they ough roy fs, e eneg rt w stlyasn patterns at stapleton airport rather than the rocky flats

site. as i mentioned earlier, the winds come down off of that, and even though one of the requirements was that the pant thonf tmaalin su w g wov ama metropolitan area, that's where it was located and would blow across us. jim stone said in the very beginning that this is a bad idea. heuld no lte ent s rend h in orth rocky flats over the years, and there was a number of things that happened # he was concerned abouthe pond crete in particular. they had big solar ponds tryng thidw how to make plutonium stable. they mixed it with cement and put it in blocks and called it pond crete, and they stored them in card board containers out in e open, a naed

seje. enrkut there, they referred to it as the jelly factory. you could stick you drsh i never did, but it never hardened, and it leaked into the environment. theswere t of theng j sncd ou ro oinoht as well, missing plutonium, and this whol issue caught the attention of john with the fbi o workedith another agent from t epa, and theyneat e abehi inatoc sha were really bad for denver including the incinerator with the building burning radioactive waste and have been doing so f years. they were worrieout that. inann aisgaem na of jim stone who went in provided hours and hours and hours of testimony that led to

three flyovers over the plant at night, and they tookinfrared webl pr that there were thermal lines extending from the plant indicating rood active emissions into walnut creek, stanley lak you know, our neighborhood, a jtha olre based on that information, they were able to set things up so there was a raid on june 6th, 1989, and they told john and his jue nt tan st th g p w n shot at because they were prepared to defend the plant, but they told officials at rocky flats there was going to be a meeting about some environmeal terrorist th wedo meg,

d itht twoul be a great scene in a movie, they walked in, and all the rocky flats and rockwell officials are sitting there, and they said, actually, we're here becaus wre gout to r anndre ats tga'r just ready to move in. the raid lasted for several days. it led to a 21-month grand jury investigation that uncovered a lot of information abt ntatioandng amioutrnt e thwarted investigation. they wanted to indict rockwell officials and people at the department of energy. turned out there were no indictments, but criminal olatns. ck pne8. ll s aunt they received in bonuses that partular year. there were no indictments. the people of colorado, we had

no idea why this was such an anot rwn grand jury report. they wanted that released. the primary thing was they wanted people in colorado to know that this contamination was op -- ongoing. that report was sealed and rema sealed toth pnt y. e' rtei iteread in 1990 with comments by the department of justice, but that reportnd all of the documentaon attached to it remeans sealed to the present day and was not available to the companies who thlstaling theant y >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> the secrets of rocky fts, you know, an excerpt of the book rain the nation rtl yick ftiee scr there's a lot of information

that people should know. we should have known in the past. we were -- those of us who lived around t plant, we were cold war warrior, on tnt ne heldr, boto . ? >> [inaudible] how -- why, and how did they seal it from the public and press? >> well, there's been a lot of furry in t public and pes anantimeer gd thdgign,s u eyetheight to keep it sealed, and grand jurors themselves, if they say anything about what happened, then they put themselves at risk. they can be put in jail. a lotf people spoke abt is ud mlyh mihaeen pictures of him, he's a real character, wears acowboy hat, and he eventually ran for ofice. he was the foreman for the rocky

flatanry a talked t i ne the ie dvehers t only get that report and the records unsealed, but he would like at the national wildlife refuge, whher or not it's signs, andpe w sutic, hewa haed h ha we built nuclear weapons, contaminated the environment. you need to know that whether you're thiing about going hiking or sending your child on a school field trip out the or buyi aousex tsi ic wth ali. retis now that has been defeated. you know, trying to get signs up out there. there's a lot of -- there's a lot of interest, as i said earlier in the area on the part of builders and binesses d hetutns there and not let people know what happened and what remains, the

legacy, the environmental legacy that remains. if you go out there now, there's no sign and the area that's highly ctated sd ced o o re, soyou can't see that particular area, although the area is guarded, and the rest of the looks, and this is what the colorado department of health and energy says, it loo pristine. it is notristine. it obousl-- i mn, y te on . ye? >> it's fascinating how many people in our neighborhood were extremely sick or died from being exposed to rocky flats. we're not nrly as close as where they are buiin right w,lessth d ju astonishing tome they are going ahead with it. >> uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. there's a lot of construction out there. sometimes people ask, well, how could you not know about rocky

ats ornow w g op out there? even to the present day, people don't know. i was in boulder a couple weeks ago, and the guy athe front desk; athe hotel i was sying at. i said i was inou okutkylats. he grew up in boulder, never heard of it, and has no idea. it really, it's always been the best kept secret in town. it still is. >> do you have comments about fukushima for us? >> well, i think that, of course, this is connected. this is not just our backyard, but everyone'sackyard. it showed up in various things, washing on the shore.

there was contamination from fukushima near rocky flats i k ,ee at thecky f connected. it was interesting to me. when i finished the book last spring and sent it to my agent who sent it to the blishers, and it was just by cident so fuimpp,nd - lleror i came home, turned on the television, and everyone on television, cnn, and msnbc re all talking about the veryhings i have been talking about for years with rocky flats. brtryg t hfukuimre rctheue i is country and beyond, and i think it changed the conversation. i think people are mu more willing to look add what happened not only with the nuclear weapons policy and progms b allearo dnsin mng frd

afuof fixing up the aging nuclear power plants and maybe building more. you know, one of thehingwe have to take into consideration is the human cost of all of these things, and i think that's one thing people have not talked i t ogl ea ie trhaot contaminated, local neighborhoods, local areas. maybe there is one. i don't know. i don't know of any. i thi they got a 100% recd on t. yeruens okay. well, thank you so much for being here. [applause] thu'seb.more information, visit kristiniverson.co