The Nation - News from Oct. 10, 1989

The operator of the Rocky Flats nuclear arms plant knew as early as 1984 that dangerous amounts of radioactive plutonium may have accumulated in building air ducts but failed to act on the information, a former employee said. James Stone, a utility design engineer at the site from 1980 to 1986, said he raised the probability of such plutonium deposits with Rockwell International Corp., which operates the plant near Denver under an Energy Department contract. “They said we cannot afford to clean it,” Stone said in a telephone interview with a news service. Stone’s suspicion of a buildup of plutonium residue in the ventilation system was borne out by independent investigators who disclosed in a report to the Energy Department last week that such plutonium deposits raised “a real possibility” of an accidental nuclear chain reaction.