The Real Rocky Flats: Nuclear Ghosts Under the Denver Suburbs

The Cold War history behind the plutonium heist in The New Ride in Town

There’s a stretch of rolling prairie just northwest of Denver where you can hike for miles or watch elk graze, and never guess that it used to be the site of a nuclear weapons factory. That now serene piece of real estate was once called Rocky Flats Plant — and is most well-known as the site where a large number of plutonium triggers went missing in a way that defies all known physics. That was back in the late 1970s and was one of the predicates for drawing down the facility.

A weapons plant hiding in plain sight

From 1952 to 1989, Rocky Flats manufactured the plutonium detonators that were used in America’s nuclear arsenal. And it wasn’t at some remote desert facility. It sat just sixteen miles from downtown Denver, and construction of the plant was a significant boost to the Colorado economy, employing thousands and prompting the state to build new highways just to reach it. For a long time, locals were proud of it, or at least had a certain amount of respect.

But that began to change in 1969, when a fire sent a plume of radioactive smoke into Denver’s already murky atmosphere. Not too long after that, it was rumored that hundreds of corroding barrels of waste were buried just inside the site’s perimeter. Denials were piled up one atop the other.

A decade of protest

Rocky Flats didn’t stay inert outside of the perimeter, either. Starting in April 1978, a group calling itself the Rocky Flats Truth Force began blocking the railroad tracks leading into the plant and camped on the rails for the better part of a year. That first rally drew roughly 5,000 people to the west gate, and the movement pulled in national figures — Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was arrested there four times that year, and poet Allen Ginsberg joined the blockades and later read his “Plutonian Ode” while sitting on the tracks.

The protests only grew from there. A 1979 rally outside the plant drew about 9,000 people and led to roughly 300 arrests, including Ellsberg’s. The movement crested on October 15, 1983, when an estimated 17,000 demonstrators joined hands to try to encircle the plant’s entire 17-mile perimeter. The activism eventually gave rise to a permanent organization, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, founded by several of the original organizers.

The raid, and the shutdown

In 1989, the plant paused production after 80 armed FBI and EPA agents raided the site under Operation Desert Glow, which was designed to investigate allegations of environmental crimes. The contractor, Rockwell International, later agreed to pay an $18.5 million fine, the largest in the history of the nation at the time. The collapse of the Soviet Union, soon thereafter, sealed the site’s fate, i.e. permanent closure.

Fast Facts on the Cleanup

From 1952 to 1989, workers at the site produced plutonium “pits”, which were grapefruit-sized spheres used as triggers for thermonuclear weapons.
The cleanup ran from 1996 to 2005, costing roughly $7 billion, and covering a 385-acre industrial area containing about 800 buildings and other structures.
Cleanup crews decontaminated, decommissioned, demolished, and removed more than 800 structures, hauling away over 650,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste and roughly 575,000 tons of other waste.
Around 21 tons of weapons-grade material were shipped off to other sites, along with 100 metric tons of plutonium residue.
The cleanup concluded in 2005, but the area that used to be occupied by the former buildings is still fenced off.

From weapons plant to wildlife refuge

The land surrounding the old plant reopened in 2018 as the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, more than 5,000 acres of trees, wetlands, and prairie hosting 239 species of migratory and resident wildlife, from falcons to elk. New neighborhoods now sit right up against the old buffer zone, which has led to plenty of sightings of glowing wildlife and strange cryptids roaming the area.

Officials say the soil is safe, although not everyone agrees. At least one researcher has argued that the site hasn’t been studied rigorously enough and that plutonium still lingers in the soil, and there’s an entire documentary, Half-Life of Memory, built around workers and residents who don’t want that history quietly grassed over. And strangely enough, back in 1989 strontium and cesium were found, even though there had never been a nuclear reactor on site.

In the end, the government got its wish. The place looks like nothing was ever there. But the notorious stories and rumors leaves one wondering what has been left just below the surface.

Of final interest, Scoots Martin reported from the location nemerous times, including during the aftermath of the plutonium trigger raid. He also reported on the protests and toured the facilities when they were under investigation. Getting on site required a background check, and his application was denied three times. He finally got smart and transposed a few letters in his name to outsmart the primative computers that were being used to process the requests. Some of what he found is related in the novel The New Ride in Town.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management & EPA interagency fact sheets; NPR; CBS News Colorado; Westword; Boulder Weekly; Rocky Flats Nuclear Guardianship timeline; Wikipedia.