Introduction
First, thank you for serving on the Stewardship Council!
Most of the presentations you will hear at Council meetings are dry, mildly technical, and DOE-mandated. These may not in general be items you take back to your constituents. Occasionally there will be denunciations of procedures or expressions of dismay by groups or individuals commenting publicly, sometimes disrupting meetings. One of the perks of membership is the annual visit to the Central Operable Unit.
Challenges
We have heard rumors of an information shockwave when first joining the Council. This page is meant to provide some carefully vetted information for new members, mostly in the form of suggested readings from our website. Please feel free to contact DMW or Kim Griffiths if you feel additional information or documents would be valuable, or with questions you feel Council members would like answered.
Key documents
Most of the science documents on this website address current conditions; a few discuss the history of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. You will find many non-science groups to be focussed on what went on at Rocky Flats before closure, environmental violations
- How effective was the Superfund cleanup?
- What’s in RF soil? The historic emphasis on RF plutonium in soil stems from the fact that Pu emits very few penetrating gamma rays but plenty of short-range (3-4 inches) strongly ionizing alpha particles. Thus essentially all exposure to Pu comes from breathing in or swallowing dust. Additional soil Pu radioactivity is contributed by `hot particles’ (tiny flecks of PuO2) which are mostly present near the eastern boundary of the Refuge in relatively small numbers. The focus on Pu has infantilized public discussion for the past 25 years.
- How effective was the Superfund cleanup?
The documents below (with important graphics at right) show how firmly anchored in measurements the reassuring conclusions you hear from Legacy Management and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment really are. Most of the science documents on this website address current conditions; a few discuss the history of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. [You will find many non-science groups which attend Council meetings are focussed on what environmental violations that went on at the Rocky Flats before closure.]
For those who might like a deeper dive on the health effects of radiation
- A crash course in radiation, biology, and health physics
Politics: As Stewardship Council members, you may indirectly feel pressures from
The Superfund cleanup: You