A consultant hired by the U.S. Department of Energy to verify the adequacy of its $7 billion Rocky Flats cleanup has found 13 radioactive “hot spots,” energy officials said Thursday.
The Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education found contaminated soil this summer near an area where plutonium-tainted oil once was stored in barrels, some of which leaked.
That area, known as the 903 pad, was considered one of the most contaminated sites at the 6,500- acre former nuclear-weapons factory and had been cleaned up years ago by a DOE contractor.
The site is slated to become a wildlife refuge after the cleanup, which is expected to wrap up next month. Public access will be restricted on about 1,000 acres of the former industrial area, which includes the 903 pad.
“In areas that have been remediated, how can you still have hot spots?” asked David Abelson, director of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, during a local citizens advisory board meeting Thursday night where the institute’s findings were presented.
DOE officials downplayed the contamination, saying the radioactive soil covers nine very small areas – ranging from the size of a kitchen tabletop to a living room.
Consequently, those areas will likely never be cleaned up, they said.
“It begs the question, ‘Do we continue to chase these little hot spots at the constant expense to the taxpayer? And at what benefit?’ We see very little right now,” said Frazer Lockhart, the Energy Department’s Rocky Flats manager.
Abelson said he believes the Department of Energy is breaking the terms of the cleanup agreement.
“Basically, what they’re saying is that because it was found so late in the game, they don’t have to touch it,” he said.
Just a few months ago, Kaiser-Hill Company, the Energy Department’s cleanup contractor, found five additional hot spots near the 903 pad.
About 75 cubic yards of contaminated soil were removed about two weeks ago and will be shipped to a radioactive waste dump in Utah, Kaiser-Hill spokesman John Corsi said.
“In no way whatsoever was this a public health concern,” Corsi said. “But it was above the cleanup level, so we took the appropriate action.”
Corsi said the contaminated soil contained between 70 and 100 picocuries of plutonium per gram of soil. The cleanup level is 50 picocuries.
That level of radioactivity is expected to translate to odds of one in 500,000 of a future wildlife refuge worker getting cancer, he said.
Still, longtime Rocky Flats critics said the find was proof that DOE and their cleanup contractor don’t really know if Rocky Flats is adequately cleaned.
“If I had things my way, I’d pour concrete over the entire site, fence it off, and put up a sign admitting to the many mistakes that were made there,” said state Rep. Wes McKinley, D-Walsh, who was the foreman of a grand jury that investigated Rocky Flats in 1989.
“A wildlife refuge sounds pristine,” McKinley said. “You’d think there’s nothing more than Bambi and Peter Rabbit running around. But we know there’s more to it than that.”
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
