I subsequently learned that Rocky Flats was a very controversial place. That was about all I knew about Rocky Flats until I applied for the job in Jefferson County. I thought it was ironic that they had not been able to surround the plant when they attempted to hold hands and form a human chain around it. I had also heard about the antinuclear protesters who had picketed Rocky Flats.

I couldn’t see anything of interest going on there. “That’s where they make atomic bombs,” she said. I had dated a girl from Boulder in the late 1960s who had pointed it out to me one day as we drove by on US Highway 93. I knew little about Rocky Flats when I took the job. As the government official statutorily responsible for protecting the health of Jefferson County’s residents, I was trying to learn all I could about the nuclear weapons fabrication site and its potential impact on the health of the community. It had been a year since Operation Desert Glow, the raid on the Rocky Flats Plant by the FBI and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Jefferson County, metropolitan Denver’s gateway to the Rocky Mountains, contained the Rocky Flats Plant, the Department of Energy’s industrial site that made plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs. I had recently been appointed as the executive director of the Jefferson County Health Department. “I will never talk to you or anyone from Jefferson County,” she shouted as she slammed her telephone receiver down.

The emotional anger and mental agony were palpable as she spat the words at me. “You and Jefferson County killed my husband!” The woman on the telephone was almost screaming now.

Doom nuclear plant secrets