I Have Beheld The Horror Of Infinity
Aug. 24th, 2006 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
funraniumAnd it is in Colorado, near Denver.
I happy to state for the record that Rocky Flats (AKA The Rocky Mountain Arsenal), now known as the Rock Flats National Wildlife Refuge, no longer exists. Thinking about Rocky Flats causes an involuntary bit of shuddering in most environmental health & safety folks. I indirectly credit my present safety career to a pamphlet the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition sent me back in the 10th grade when I wrote to them requesting information about toxic waste. The pamphlet was a somewhat inflammatory piece about the infamous Basin F, once described without exaggeration as "The Most Toxic Square Mile On Earth".
The Rocky Flats started as an Army chemical weapons plant in 1942. Parts of its land were then leased to private industry, primarily Shell Chemical, who used to for pesticide and herbicide research and production until 1982. Basin F is their, and DOD and DOE's, fault...
This is not an auspicious beginning in a story of pollution.
Especially because that's not what I want to talk about. I promise you people stories of radioactive horror and I have one. I want to tell you about Room 171 in Building 771.
Building 771 was a scary building. Its purpose was the machining and assembly of plutonium weapons parts and the reclamation of plutonium from wastestreams. This started back in May of 1953 when operations cranked up. Really, the '50s are when the really impressive nuclear horror happened, but I digress. It was all plutonium all the time in that building.
In 1957, a large fire started in Room 171. In all likelihood, this was a fire started by the pyrophoric nature of plutonium, much like phosphorus' proclivity to ignite in air. The fire was a bad one, spreading into the plenum of the ventilation system contaminating most of the building. After the workers and firefighters cleaned up a bit, then they called the rad folks. Following good technique, they worked from the areas of lowest contamination to highest. The clean up crew managed to decontaminate (well...to 1957 definition of "decontaminated") the majority of the effected areas and then they entered Room 171, instruments in hand.
I would like you to keep in mind that the radiation of concern from 239Pu is primarily alpha, the stripped nuclei of helium that are blocked by paper and travel a scant centimeter in air before they stop, and some neutrons but not a lot if you don't have a nuclear blast happening.
All of their instruments screamed and pinned the top scales on their meters...just being held in the air of the room because there was so much plutonium dust.
So they went back, threw those contaminated meters away, and got different meters just to make sure they didn't have a group malfunction. Nope, they pinned too.
They had the instrument shop put different resistors in another set of meters to adjust the scales by several orders magnitude beyond the manufacturer specifications. Alas, they also went right to the top of the scale.
The health physicists at the time did some calculations and basically determined that they couldn't make an instrument that could count the amount of radiation in there. This is how Room 171 got its nickname, "The Infinity Room".
With the decon folks now terrified to go back in there again PERIOD, it was decided that the safest course of action was to seal the room and check it again twenty years later. And that they did...after thirty one years, because it took a while to get permission after the two decade mark elapsed.
This time they set up enlcosures, redundant air purification, put everyone in triple anti-contamination gear, and then drilled a small hole in the door and fed an endoscope through so they could see what they were up against inside. The scope man did his thing and peered around. He then plugged the hole, stepped away, decon'd, dressed out, and asked to be taken to a bar.
He didn't say anything until they got a few drinks in him. Figuring he was relaxed enough now, they asked what he saw.
His reply, with a look of horror on his face: "Jackhammers. There are fucking jackhammers in there."
It seems that at some point during the 31 year period between the fire and this, someone decided to go in there and try to do some cleanup and demolition...WITH JACKHAMMERS ON CONCRETE IN A ROOM MORE WITH MORE CONTAMINATED THAN CHARO'S UNDERWEAR. They could find no record of this work happening. We have no idea who went in there. We have no idea if they wore respiratory protection or any protective gear for that matter. It could have been a crew of day laborers with no idea what they were doing...who knows?
Do you want to know what they did wear when they went in to decon this place in the 90s? I'll show you:
I want you to look at that get up. I want you to imagine how long it took to get into all of that. Now imagine that you have an itchy nose or have to take the most satisfying pee ever, but that Plutonium Death awaits you if you give in to that urge. If you penetrate your suit in any way while you're in containment, you're doomed.
They are wearing:
2 suits of Tyvek coveralls
1 suit of lead impregnated plastic
2 layers of gloves
Air purfying respirator
And over that they are wearing:
Heavy gauge plastic environmental suit with "bucket" rigid top
Kevlar waders and gauntlets for rip protection over that
And a supplied air line
That's right, they are wearing a respirator inside of a suit that is getting supplied air because they are that paranoid about respiratory protection. With good reason I might add, because they estimated the airborne contamination to be four to sixteen thousand times the maximum permissible level.
Rocky Flats is proud, PROUD, of how well the decontamination and demolition went. I would be too, because nothing leading up to it is worth being proud about.
In 1957, a large fire started in Room 171. In all likelihood, this was a fire started by the pyrophoric nature of plutonium, much like phosphorus' proclivity to ignite in air. The fire was a bad one, spreading into the plenum of the ventilation system contaminating most of the building. After the workers and firefighters cleaned up a bit, then they called the rad folks. Following good technique, they worked from the areas of lowest contamination to highest. The clean up crew managed to decontaminate (well...to 1957 definition of "decontaminated") the majority of the effected areas and then they entered Room 171, instruments in hand.
I would like you to keep in mind that the radiation of concern from 239Pu is primarily alpha, the stripped nuclei of helium that are blocked by paper and travel a scant centimeter in air before they stop, and some neutrons but not a lot if you don't have a nuclear blast happening.
All of their instruments screamed and pinned the top scales on their meters...just being held in the air of the room because there was so much plutonium dust.
So they went back, threw those contaminated meters away, and got different meters just to make sure they didn't have a group malfunction. Nope, they pinned too.
They had the instrument shop put different resistors in another set of meters to adjust the scales by several orders magnitude beyond the manufacturer specifications. Alas, they also went right to the top of the scale.
The health physicists at the time did some calculations and basically determined that they couldn't make an instrument that could count the amount of radiation in there. This is how Room 171 got its nickname, "The Infinity Room".
With the decon folks now terrified to go back in there again PERIOD, it was decided that the safest course of action was to seal the room and check it again twenty years later. And that they did...after thirty one years, because it took a while to get permission after the two decade mark elapsed.
This time they set up enlcosures, redundant air purification, put everyone in triple anti-contamination gear, and then drilled a small hole in the door and fed an endoscope through so they could see what they were up against inside. The scope man did his thing and peered around. He then plugged the hole, stepped away, decon'd, dressed out, and asked to be taken to a bar.
He didn't say anything until they got a few drinks in him. Figuring he was relaxed enough now, they asked what he saw.
His reply, with a look of horror on his face: "Jackhammers. There are fucking jackhammers in there."
It seems that at some point during the 31 year period between the fire and this, someone decided to go in there and try to do some cleanup and demolition...WITH JACKHAMMERS ON CONCRETE IN A ROOM MORE WITH MORE CONTAMINATED THAN CHARO'S UNDERWEAR. They could find no record of this work happening. We have no idea who went in there. We have no idea if they wore respiratory protection or any protective gear for that matter. It could have been a crew of day laborers with no idea what they were doing...who knows?
Do you want to know what they did wear when they went in to decon this place in the 90s? I'll show you:
I want you to look at that get up. I want you to imagine how long it took to get into all of that. Now imagine that you have an itchy nose or have to take the most satisfying pee ever, but that Plutonium Death awaits you if you give in to that urge. If you penetrate your suit in any way while you're in containment, you're doomed.
They are wearing:
2 suits of Tyvek coveralls
1 suit of lead impregnated plastic
2 layers of gloves
Air purfying respirator
And over that they are wearing:
Heavy gauge plastic environmental suit with "bucket" rigid top
Kevlar waders and gauntlets for rip protection over that
And a supplied air line
That's right, they are wearing a respirator inside of a suit that is getting supplied air because they are that paranoid about respiratory protection. With good reason I might add, because they estimated the airborne contamination to be four to sixteen thousand times the maximum permissible level.
Rocky Flats is proud, PROUD, of how well the decontamination and demolition went. I would be too, because nothing leading up to it is worth being proud about.
