Rocky Flats Plant

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The Rocky Flats Plant was a United States manufacturing complex that produced nuclear weapons parts near Denver, Colorado. The facility's primary mission was the fabrication of plutonium pits, the fissionable part of a bomb that produces a nuclear explosion. The pits were shipped to other facilities to be assembled into complete nuclear weapons. Operated from 1952 to 1992 by private contractors Dow Chemical Company, Rockwell International Corporation and EG&G, the complex was under the control of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), succeeded by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1977. The plant manufactured 1,000 to 2,000 pits per year. Plutonium pit production was halted in 1989 after EPA and FBI agents raided the facility and the plant was formally shut down in 1992. Rockwell then accepted a plea agreement for criminal violations of environmental law. At the time, the fine was one of the largest penalties ever in an environmental law case. Cleanup began in the early 1990s, and the...

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