Workers Undergo More Tests for Radiation Exposure

Three workers to undergo more tests

Paraphrased by:
Steve Waldrop
April1, 2003

Golden, Colo.- Thirty of the 33 Rocky Flats workers tested for possible exposure to plutonium radiation have been cleared. The three remaining workers will undergo more tests to find out if they were exposed when an air duct backed up at the former nuclear weapons plant.

Energy Department spokesman Pat Etchart said if the three were exposed, it was only briefly because they evacuated the building as soon as alarms indicated a malfunction of the vent system. "None of the three are expected to exceed any kind of federal workplace safety standards," Etchart said. The Department of Energy is overseeing the $7 billion cleanup of Rocky Flats and is monitoring the tests. The tests were prompted after an accident, when workers were using a forklift to remove equipment from a building that was used to build plutonium ignition devices for atomic warheads during the Cold War.

To keep carbon monoxide from collecting in the room, workers rigged a pipe from the forklift's exhaust to the building's ventilation system. The work caused a damper inside a vent to close, possibly forcing air from plutonium-tainted areas of the building to back up in the room where the crew was working without respirators.

Plutonium exposure, in high levels, can cause cancer and other serious ailments. Nuclear weapon components were made at Rocky Flats for 39 years. Work ended in 1989 when the plant was shut down by federal authorities for severe safety violations.