Demolition of Most Dangerous Building in America Begins

(ENS) DENVER -- On July 15, workers began demolishing Building 771 at Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons production plant 16 miles northwest of Denver. Building 771 is the first plutonium process building of its size and complexity to be demolished in the United States.

In 1995, the Department of Energy (DOE) concluded that Building 771 was its greatest vulnerability and the building was called the "most dangerous building in America," in media reports.

"The demolition of one the most contaminated buildings in the country, once thought impossible, demonstrates the nation's commitment to accelerated cleanup and closure of Rocky Flats," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Rocky Flats is now classed as a DOE owned cleanup and closure site operated by Kaiser-Hill Company under an accelerated closure contract. As part of that contract, dismantlement of Building 771 is expected to take six to eight weeks, with completion scheduled for September 2004.

When this historic cleanup is complete," Abraham said, "it will show that the U.S. government can clean up the legacy of the Cold War and turn the 6,000 plus acre reserve from a perceived public liability into a true public asset, a National Wildlife Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."

The safe cleanup and closure of an entire former nuclear weapons production site has been a task of such magnitude and complexity that it has never before been attempted, or accomplished, anywhere else in the world, Abraham said.

During a nine year cleanup process conducted in preparation for the demolition 15,000 liters of plutonium solutions have been drained and stabilized, the DOE says. Workers have removed 240 contaminated gloveboxes, 251 tanks, more than 11 miles of aging piping, and 40,000 liters of contaminated sludges.

"Under the Energy Department's accelerated cleanup plan, all the weapons usable material at Rocky Flats is gone -- 12 years ahead of the original schedule," said Secretary Abraham.

The majority of the plutonium stockpile at Rocky Flats was shipped to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Other materials were sent to the Pantex facility on Texas and to facilities in Tennessee. Some of the leftover plutonium was declared a waste and treated and packaged for shipment to the Waste Isolation Plant in New Mexico.

An issue at the site is thousands of cubic yards of wastes that still must be shipped away. Some is waste left from the weapons production era, but most of it is being generated during the site's cleanup as buildings are torn down and soil contamination is addressed.

The Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board warns that while some waste has already been shipped to sites in New Mexico, Nevada and Utah, some types of radioactive waste do not yet have a disposal location designated or available. These "orphan" wastes must be addressed if the site is to successfully close.

The successful decontamination and demolition of the major plutonium production facilities such as Building 771 must be done carefully to prevent air dispersion of the plutonium embedded in these facilities, the Board says.

Plutonium emits alpha radiation, which can travel only short distances and will not penetrate through items like a piece of paper or human skin. The much thinner lining of the human lung is not as effective a deterrent so the greatest danger from plutonium comes if a person inhales plutonium. Once inside the lung, the energy released by the plutonium particle can cause damage to the surrounding tissue and may lead to the development of a cancerous tumor.

Another risk at the site centers on protection of surface water leaving the site. Soil and groundwater cleanup projects are underway to accomplish this risk reduction.

Cleanup of Rocky Flats was expected to take 65 years and cost in excess of $36 billion. Abraham said the cleanup now is expected to be completed at a cost of $7 billion "a savings to the taxpayers of $29 billion."

The 6,550 acre site is part of the national nuclear weapons complex, at one time responsible for the production of nuclear weapons. Operations at the site began in 1952. During the Cold War, Rocky Flats was responsible for manufacturing the nuclear trigger device or "pit", a small, hollow sphere made from plutonium. No longer needed for nuclear weapons production, the site is left with a legacy of contamination.

Building 771 is the second of the site's five major plutonium contaminated facilities to be demolished. Over the next 18 months, the remaining 450 facilities and structures at Rocky Flats will be decommissioned and demolished and environmental remediation completed. Rocky Flats is scheduled to close in 2006. It will then be classed as a National Wildlife Refuge.