The radioactive stuff was all removed or well buried. I’m more worried about the large subdivision built on the site burning down.
Also the fuckers had the audacity to name the subdivision 'Candelas'. For those following along at home, Rocky Flats was a plutonium warhead manufacturing facility raided by the feds back in the day for doing crazy stuff like lighting plutonium on fire, and not coming anywhere near close to what would be expected for storing contaminated materials. It then became one of the first super fund sites.
When you purchase a home there you are legally required to be provided and then sign a document that outlines the history of the Rocky Flats plutonium facility. I was provided this document and had to sign it as do every other homeowner here.
What I've learned is that people who don't really know anyone that lives there or have never bothered to talk to anyone who purchased homes make assumptions about the entire area. They assume that the people that purchase homes were ignorant rubes who weren't aware of the sites history. I knew about the site and researched it for well over a year before I chose to buy a home in the neighborhood.
I spoke with a nuclear physicist who lives in the neighborhood. I also have a co-worker who is also a physicist and was once in charge of a nuclear reactor at his university.
There were over a quarter million soil samples taken from the area surrounding the core containment area. There was decades of testing by the EPA. It was a super fund site for decades.
Additionally the neighborhood is not built on the site. It is built outside of a perimeter, well over a mile and a half from the core area that was covered over with concrete where the soil still contains traces of plutonium.
As you pointed out plutonium is indeed in alpha emitter rather than gamma. It's also extremely heavy and oxidizes on contact with oxygen. It's not the kind of substance that's going to blow around. It will kill you if you inhale it or ingest it of course.
I have many photos of herds of elk in the refuge that surrounds the core site. It's not at all the wasteland that people make it out to be.
Additionally your first statement claiming that a single company sues people who want to do testing is completely incorrect and can't be backed up by any references. I live here and I happen to know that no single company developed the subdivision. It was purposefully set up by the government of Arvada as a zone and split amongst multiple developers. Additionally more testing has been done in the land around the refuge which the developers have no control over or legal standing. As to testing within the subdivision, the homeowners can test whatever they want in their yards with no permission from the developers. Like a lot of anti-nuclear misinformation it doesn't even make sense when you dig into it.
Additionally the fire never got to a point where it was going to hit Rocky flats. Rocky flats and the surrounding area were placed under a pre-evacuation order in the event that the wind shifted. I live here that's why I know this.
I do respect your opinions, and I didn't want to start hysterics. But the mind goes wondering how all this happened, and where it could lead: a simple grass fire turned into one of the most destructive fires in Colorado's history within hours. That's not something that anyone was prepared to have happened. The mesas here were supposed to act as fire breaks, not fire starters.
I hope you and your loved ones - as well as your neighbors are safe. I'm glad to hear the news of your neighborhood being spared.
My partner is exhausted from covering the story for the NYT, as well as just this year. Overhearing her on the phone (paraphrasing, and terribly): "as a local reporter, I just want to grieve with everyone else, but here I am, needing to scrape open again freshly minted wounds".
Let me guess, a document that also indemnifies the developers?
> As you pointed out plutonium is indeed in alpha emitter rather than gamma. It's also extremely heavy and oxidizes on contact with oxygen.
So no refutation of the core point. And we know it was oxidized; they lit it on fire. That doesn't stop it from being extremely dangerous.
> I have many photos of herds of elk in the refuge that surrounds the core site. It's not at all the wasteland that people make it out to be.
There's been a resurgence of wild life around Chernobyl too. That's not metric for nuclear waste contamination.
> Additionally your first statement claiming that a single company sues people who want to do testing is completely incorrect and can't be backed up by any references. I live here and I happen to know that no single company developed the subdivision.
Candelas LLC contracted out several home builders, but that doesn't change anything. At this point they seem to have taken their money and run though; it was dissolved in 2019.
> It was purposefully set up by the government of Arvada as a zone and split amongst multiple developers. Additionally more testing has been done in the land around the refuge which the developers have no control over or legal standing.
Testing in the refuge literally stopped the development of the Jefferson Parkway because there was a sample that was almost 20x the limit.
> As to testing within the subdivision, the homeowners can test whatever they want in their yards with no permission from the developers.
Do you know anyone who has tested?
> Like a lot of anti-nuclear misinformation it doesn't even make sense when you dig into it.
It's not coming from "anti-nuclear" sentiment, it's coming from "lot's of evidence that an extremely dangerous superfund site wasn't cleaned up". Here's Jefferson County's Executive Director of Public Health publicly calling out some of the issues. https://www.denverpost.com/2018/06/15/after-decades-of-secre...
Additionally the large subdivision was not built on the site but surrounding the perimeter to the site. The core site is off limits to anyone as a precaution to prevent anyone from tampering with the remediations or deliberately vandalizing them.
Surrounding the core site is a wildlife refuge that is fairly large. On the outside of this refuge is the subdivision.
Ironically my neighborhood is right off of 72 and 93 and is completely white on the map.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_contamination_fr...
Note that this Wikipedia article isn't up to date and has some biased editing. For example Rocky flats refuge has been open to the public for a couple of years now. The article has the typical antinuclear activist tactic of FUD.
As a person who has to deal with climate change related incidents like the fire yesterday, I have huge animosity towards anti-nuclear activists.
The same people who have been protesting everything nuclear for decades are the ones complaining about climate change now without seeming to understand that all of the Western world would be like France now if not for them. The fire we are ringing our hands about potentially causing contamination probably would not have happened if not for these activists destroying the reputation of nuclear power over several decades.
