Last Stage of 'Most Hazardous' Cleanup Begins

The final demolition of one of the U.S.'s most hazardous radioactive buildings began last week, DOE says. "Building 771" at the Department of Energy's Rocky Flats Site outside Denver was once a plutonium processing facility that began operating in 1953. In 1994, the department concluded that the building was DOE's greatest vulnerability because of the hazardous and radioactive material it housed and its legacy of plutonium leaks, spills, and a major fire that occurred four years after it first opened. Allegations of illegal operation of an incinerator in the building in 1988 led to a Department of Justice investigation and the site's permanent shutdown a year later. The cleanup began in 1994 and required development of new cleanup technologies to address the extreme levels of radioactive hazard posed by the facility, such as airborne contamination of plutonium at levels 2,000 times greater than maximum safe-entry limits. DOE says it is on track to remove the remaining 450 structures at Rocky Flats by 2006 and turn the 6,000-plus-acre site into a national wildlife refuge.