The Rocky Flats Incident
The date was September 11th, 1957. A small fire breaks out from plutonium shavings in a glove box at The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Manufacturing plant, located on a ~4...
The date was September 11th, 1957. A small fire breaks out from plutonium shavings in a glove box at The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Manufacturing plant, located on a ~4 square mile plot of land near Arvada, CO. A few minutes later, the exhaust fans in the plant stopped working due to fire damage and the contamination risk was averted, or so goes the official story. In reality, small traces of plutonium were later recorded across large swaths of the Northern Denver metro area.
After a second fire in 1969 under similar circumstances, local officials conducted studies on the spread of the contamination, and it was revealed that several local reservoirs had been exposed to the oxidized plutonium. Though the 1969 fire had released far less contamination than the 1957 one, it was finally known to the public that there was a risk of radioactive contamination for years prior.
In more recent years, there have been mixed testing results on the lingering impact & amount of contamination in the area.
Here are several resources for more information on the Rocky Flats Incident and recent impact studies:
https://www.energy.gov/lm/articles/rocky-flats-site-colorado-fact-sheet
https://www.kunc.org/science/2019-10-04/heres-what-you-should-know-about-radiation-at-rocky-flats