![]() The Rocky Flats Plant was declared a Superfund site in 1989 and began its transformation to a cleanup site in February 1992. The plant has since been shut down, with its buildings demolished and completely removed from the site. Weapons production at the plant was halted after a combined FBI and EPA raid in 1989 and years of protests. According to a 1972 study coauthored by Edward Martell, "In the more densely populated areas of Denver, the Pu contamination level in surface soils is several times fallout", and the plutonium contamination "just east of the Rocky Flats plant ranges up to hundreds of times that from nuclear tests." As noted by Carl Johnson in Ambio, "Exposures of a large population in the Denver area to plutonium and other radionuclides in the exhaust plumes from the plant date back to 1953." The contamination of the Denver area by plutonium from the fires and other sources was not publicly reported until the 1970s. Prevailing winds from the plant carried airborne contamination south and east, into populated areas northwest of Denver. Much lower concentrations of radioactive isotopes were released throughout the operational life of the plant from 1952 to 1992, from smaller accidents and from normal operational releases of plutonium particles too small to be filtered. The contamination primarily resulted from two major plutonium fires in 19 (plutonium is pyrophoric, and shavings can spontaneously combust) and from wind-blown plutonium that leaked from barrels of radioactive waste. nuclear weapons production facility located about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Denver, caused radioactive (primarily plutonium, americium, and uranium) contamination within and outside its boundaries. Radioactive contamination from the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado One of four example estimates of the plutonium (Pu-239) plume from the 1957 fire at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
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