Full Body Burden

“A few miles away, drivers on the Denver-Boulder turnpike can see the smoke, but no one understands its significance. The temperature is close to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The Styrofoam is melting. One area of the roof is soft and beginning to rise like a big bubble. If the bubble bursts, they’re in trouble. The entire city is in trouble.” 

On Mother’s Day, May 11, 1969, Rocky Flats workers fight a large plutonium fire on the production line inside Building 776. Iversen depicts the story through the eyes of firefighters, guards, and a radiation monitor, but she also acknowledges the greater community threatened by this fire. 

“With a final price tag of $70.7 million, the 1969 fire at Rocky Flats breaks all previous records for any industrial accident in the United States. [...] A congressional investigation later that year reveals that government officials hid behind national security to cover up details of the fire, and it was only the ‘heroic efforts’ of the firefighters [that] ‘limited the fire and prevented hundreds of square miles [from] radiation and exposure.’ The report recommends extensive building modifications, and notes that if AEC officials had not disregarded the recommendations following the 1957 fire, there never would have been a fire in 1969.”

The Mother’s Day fire of 1969 serves as a template for other incidents at Rocky Flats. Plant officials will, over many years, continue to hide unsafe practices, as well as fail to improve production facilities and waste management areas that expose people to radioactive chemicals. 

“‘Maybe she’s an alcoholic,’ Karin volunteers. My mother’s look is sharp. ‘How do you know that word?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know,’ Karin retorts, and the matter is dropped. I add the word alcoholic to the list of words we’ve been strictly instructed never to say [...].” 

Iversen’s mother enforces secrecy and silence among her family members to protect them from harm and to maintain an appearance of normalcy. Iversen now knows that her father is an alcoholic and that her mother likely forbids using the word because it describes him. 

“Everything is said furtively; everything is hush-hush. We don’t want the neighbors to know. We have to protect my dad’s practice. Keep things within the family, and keep things to yourself. When I feel like exploding inside, or running away, I remind myself that someone needs to hold down the fort. That someone feels like me.” 

The Iversen family upholds itself by not sharing certain information— particularly regarding their father’s alcoholism—with others. As the oldest child, Iversen acutely experiences this burden and feels responsible to care for both her siblings and her mother. 

“If plutonium is inhaled or ingested, or if it enters the body through an open wound, tiny particles can lodge in the lungs or migrate to other organs, particularly the liver or the surface or marrow of bone, where they bombard surrounding tissue with radiation. It may take twenty to thirty years for health effects such as cancer, immune deficiencies, or genetic defects to become manifest.” 

The nuclear industry—Rocky Flats in particular—depends on plutonium manufacturing, despite a longstanding body of evidence demonstrating its harmful effects. Here, Iversen details these effects based on her research.

“We never speak of the accident again. Silence is an easy habit for a family or a community. This is just for us to know. Eventually we’ll forget this ever happened.” 

Under the influence of alcohol, Iversen’s father crashes the car with his two daughters inside. Although both he and Iversen are seriously injured, the family bond of secrecy remains in place to downplay dysfunction and uphold appearances. 

“A review of all the studies, consultation with national and international experts, and the regression analysis show that there is, indeed, a rise in cancer that can be attributed to Rocky Flats. Not only is off-site land generally contaminated, but there are also isolated ‘hot spots.’ The Holme Report, as it comes to be called, concludes that the plant has been highly negligent, with results including fires, accidents, and poor storage of waste plutonium.” 

In the landowners’ case against Rocky Flats, prosecuting attorney Howard Holme compiles a 500-page report on the plant’s operation, environmental contamination, and effects on public health. The case settles out of court years later, and the Holme Report’s damning information is classified, protecting the nuclear industry from further scrutiny. 

“I study her closely, just as closely as I watch my father, vigilant for the slightest hint of a crack, a slip, a breakdown. We are always on the edge of catastrophe.” 

Iversen keeps watch over her parents and their instabilities in an attempt to keep her family safe. Like nuclear elements, the adults in Iversen’s life run the risk of catching fire and creating a criticality that will altogether undo her family. 

“Caught in the crossfire of my parents’ war, I live for the afternoons when I can gallop Sassy out to Standley Lake, the wind blowing hard against my face as the ground blurs beneath her hooves.” 

In a house full of pets, Iversen prefers her horses and rides them as often as she can to break free from her fraught home. The writer later learns that radioactive material from nearby Rocky Flats riddles the landscape she loves exploring on horseback. 

“‘There is no safe level of radiation exposure,’ he says. ‘So the question is not: What is a safe level? The question is: How great is the risk?’ There is no such thing, he states, as a ‘permissible’ dose of radiation; the slightest quantity can be enough, in a susceptible human, to cause some form of cancer.” 

A 1978 trial against the protesters of Rocky Flats Truth Force features this testimony from Dr. Karl Morgan about the serious dangers of nuclear chemicals. Dr. Morgan bases his statements on nearly three decades of studying radiation’s effect on the body; other expert witnesses during the trial echo his alarm about the dangers of Rocky Flats’ contamination. 

“How can I let him in when a thousand times he has cast me out? I pull the dark of the room around me and feel my soles sink into the carpet, a thousand pounds of weight.” 

After learning of her boyfriend Mark’s sudden death, Iversen runs to her sister’s bedroom to absorb the shock alone. She hears her father ask to come inside but after his many years of avoiding her and her family members, she resists letting him in during this sudden trauma,. 

“All this grim news is becoming a problem for the county commissioners, the county board of health, the DOE, and Rockwell. For them, business is the name of the game, and no one wants to hear about contamination. [...] All that counts is the number of triggers produced. There is little transparency or oversight: Rocky Flats makes its own rules.” 

Iversen calls out the self-interest of Rocky Flats officials and other parties that seek to gain from its success. Amidst growing public distrust and attempts at oversight, the plant strengthens its defenses and continues prioritizing production over safety. 

“Plutonium was supposed to be a savior, to save us from the enemy. It wasn’t supposed to leak and burn and blow away, seep down into the water table and fly up into the sky. It was supposed to pay attention to borders and fences and property lines. It was supposed to know the good guys from the bad guys.” 

After discussing the history of plutonium and the atomic bomb, Iversen considers the illusory control humanity claims over nuclear elements. Unstable elements cannot obey the rules humans set for them, and nuclear products have, in fact, become weapons against their makers. 

“Karma reaches out for the hands of those standing next to her. She looks across the landscape. The human chain runs for miles, snaking up and down hills, people lined up against the barbed-wire fence. Blankets, ropes, jackets, backpacks, baby strollers, and bandannas are used to fill in the gaps. American flags wave in a rainbow sea of balloons, and signs and slogans are everywhere: [...] ‘No Nukes Is Good Nukes’ [...].” 

Iversen documents the Rocky Flats Encirclement from her sister Karma’s point of view, showing thousands of activists stretching the human chain around Rocky Flats in protest. Repeatedly, activists take risks to demonstrate against the plant and draw the public eye to the dangers of nuclear production. 

“The nuns are arrested and booked at the Denver County Jail. During their trial, they—like the two nuns before them—insist upon calling Rocky Flats a bomb factory. ‘We need to tell the truth about it,’ Pat says. ‘It’s only through resistance that Rocky Flats will become visible.’” 

The nuns Pat McCormick and Mary Sprunger-Froese freely enter Rocky Flats and stage a quiet protest near Building 771 on Ash Wednesday. They know they will be arrested and, like many other activists, consider this a worthy sacrifice to warn the public about the plant. 

“In the single-minded drive to win the Cold War, thousands of tons of radioactive and toxic waste have accumulated around the country. Every site in the DOE complex is contaminated, and there is no central disposal site for nuclear waste.” 

The nuclear industry, like any industry, generates waste, but its waste contains the same elements as atomic bombs. The industry values intense production but fails to anticipate the amount of waste that will accumulate and—like the Rocky Flats boxcar—have nowhere to go. 

“In An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen—the Norwegian playwright whom my mother insisted we read when we were young—tells the story of a doctor who discovers that the baths at a popular vacation spot are contaminated by toxins from a local tannery, and citizens are becoming ill. [...] he is denounced, driven away, and declared an ‘enemy of the people.’ The strongest man in the world, Ibsen wrote, is the man who stands most alone.”

Throughout Dr. Carl Johnson’s long campaign against Rocky Flats’ pollution and public health hazards, many attempt to suppress him, and he loses his job. Iversen recognizes his nobility and the sacrifice he makes for the greater good, although—like the Ibsen character—his warnings go unheeded.

“In January 1993, the Wolpe committee issues a report revealing evidence of high-level intervention by Justice Department officials to reduce charges and fines against Rockwell. ‘The most important thing that federal prosecutors bargained away in negotiations with Rockwell was the truth,’ Wolpe says.” 

After the FBI raid and grand jury trial, a congressional subcommittee investigates the case against Rocky Flats and the plea bargain that concluded the trial. Representative Howard Wolpe finds that federal officials fought on behalf of Rocky Flats, despite its illegal activities, and that the plant’s secrets will remain hidden because of the plea deal. 

“I pace the dark living room for an hour before putting on my nightgown. So many of the things I feared, or were afraid to even think about, are true. It’s real, and it’s still going on. I take up my journal again. I just saw Rocky Flats on ABC Nightline. Oh my God. I can’t sleep.” 

During her time working at Rocky Flats, Iversen is shocked to see a news story exposing the plant’s widespread pollution and the outcome of the grand jury trial. She adds to her growing journal full of notes about the plant, which will become material for Full Body Burden. 

“‘I want to write about the two things that have frightened me most in life,’ I say. ‘Rocky Flats, and Dad’s alcoholism.’ I can’t tell the story of the plant without telling the story of my family. It all seems connected. [...] It’s turned out that the most important story to tell is quite literally in my own backyard.” 

Iversen tells her sister Karma that she wants to write the truth about both her family and the nuclear plant near her childhood home. The connections between these narratives, both implicit and explicit, include the theme of secrecy and the impact of radiation on the body. 

“Silence is an easy habit. But it doesn’t come naturally. Silence has to be cultivated, enforced by implication and innuendo, looks and glances, hints of dark consequence. Silence is greedy. It insists upon its own necessity. It transcends generations.” 

Iversen considers the pact of silence that governs both Rocky Flats and her family. Remaining silent protects people, but the policy itself threatens those who want to expose the truth and imposes a heavy burden. 

“The body is an organ of memory, holding traces of all our experiences. The land, too, carries the burden of all its changes. To truly see and understand a landscape is to see its depth as well as its smooth surfaces, its beauty and its scars.” 

Studies cited throughout Full Body Burden show that the body—like the land itself—retains radiation for years. Although people would like to forget or cover up secrets like Rocky Flats, Iversen remarks on how the physical world contains evidence of hidden stories. 

“We don’t talk about plutonium. It’s bad for business. [...] We built nuclear bombs, and we poisoned ourselves in the process. Where does the fault lie? Atomic secrecy, the Cold War culture, bureaucratic indifference, corporate greed, a complacent citizenry, a failed democracy? What is a culture but a group of individuals acting on the basis of shared values?”

The secrets of Rocky Flats hold larger implications for the United States, which has suffered from pollution and disease because of the nuclear industry intended to protect its citizens. Like Representative Howard Wolpe earlier in the text, Iversen wonders whom to blame if an entire culture engages in or endorses dangerous behavior.