As a nuclear physicist, Bob Bistline was trained in the world of subatomic particles – neutrons, protons, electrons and quarks.
Observing autopsies of former Rocky Flats workers was a very different and bloody environment but one Bistline would become intimately familiar in during his 38-year career at Rocky Flats, where he was responsible for – among other things – measuring plutonium inside employees’ bodies.
“It was hard,” Bistline said. “Here they are my friends – I even went to church with a couple I did autopsies on. But at the same time my feeling is, ‘I’m here to help them.’ My job is to try to find out as much as I possibly can to protect the future generation.”
Bistline retired last week from the former nuclear bomb plant, where he conducted what is widely regarded throughout the Department of Energy complex as some of the nation’s most important research on radiation exposure.
His work has helped mold DOE policies and programs that focus on protecting thousands of nuclear workers from the dangerous materials they handle in the name of national defense.
“I guess you could say he’s populated an entire country with his knowledge about these issues,” said Dr. John McInerney, Rocky Flats’ site doctor. “If there’s a beryllium issue at (the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state), the Department of Energy calls Dr. Bist line. If there’s a major study regarding plutonium, Dr. Bistline’s work is always cited.”
Born on the family farm in Kansas, Bistline’s career at Rocky Flats was launched when he was approached by recruiters from Dow Chemical Co. while he was working on his master’s degree in radiological sciences at the University of Washington.
One of his first tasks upon arriving at the nuclear bomb plant in 1966 was to develop a device that could measure plutonium in workers’ lungs at levels that equaled 2-billionths of a gram.
It was a challenge, Bistline said, because of plutonium’s ability to lodge itself deep inside the lungs and other organs where it was difficult to detect.
“We were finding surprises,” Bistline said of those early tests. “We were finding plutonium in workers we didn’t realize had been involved in incidents. If we hadn’t had the lung counters, we wouldn’t have known for years.”
Those kind of discoveries happened frequently at Rocky Flats, where Bistline worked for every contractor until joining the DOE in 1995.
In the plant’s early days, Bist line said, protecting workers from radiation was a top priority, but it was sometimes hindered by ignorance.
Back then, he said, the government contractors wanted to keep workers who had been exposed to plutonium far away from the radioactive material.
So they put them to work in the beryllium foundries.
“In fact the industrial hygienist at the time said, ‘Beryllium? That’s as innocuous as the sand we walk on.’ And that was kind of the thinking at the time. But I had real concerns even back then.”
As one of the first scientists to study the cumulative impact of the two materials, Bistline is today considered one of the nation’s top experts on beryllium, which can cause lung scarring and often leads to a painful death.
While his scientific research has won him national recognition, it’s his quiet advocacy for the thousands of sick Rocky Flats workers that has won him the most respect from his peers.
“He does his job – not because he enjoys being published or being considered a world expert,” said Bruce Wallin, Rocky Flat’s radiation safety officer. “He does it because it’s all about having heart. He does it because he cares about the workers and wants to help.”
In the early ’80s, for example, Bistline started the Department of Energy’s first real worker “recall” program so he could monitor radiation effects long after employees left the plant.
He is now among the hundreds of employees who are moving on. Rocky Flats is expected to close in October as crews complete the $7 billion cleanup job.
And even though he and his wife will soon be moving back to Kansas, Bistline says he will probably continue to do consulting work and serve on panels looking at health effects of radiation.
“I was really blessed,” he said. “The good Lord blessed me, I tell you, to place me here at Rocky Flats. There were so many lessons learned here.”
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
