Associated Press
December 27, 1998

BOULDER A small radioactive drum has been found in a trench at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant where workers dumped containers of depleted uranium 40 years ago.

Workers who were pouring clean fill dirt into the excavated trench discovered the three- to five-gallon drum Tuesday after part of a wall collapsed, said Jennifer Thompson, a spokeswoman for Kaiser-Hill, which is cleaning up the property under an Energy Department contract.

The outside of the drum did not register as radioactive, but its contents did, she said.

Crews plan to excavate the drum in the next few weeks and to conduct more radar searches of the area.

"We're not sure if there might be anything else outside that boundary as well," Thompson said.

Between June and September, Kaiser-Hill employees removed about 30 tons of depleted uranium from the trench after conducting ground-penetrating radar studies and interviewing employees.

Because the main portion of the trench contained tons of debris, Thompson said it was not surprising the radar search missed the small drum.

The workers conducted radioactivity surveys along the lining of the trench after it was excavated, but the drum apparently was set far enough into the wall that the equipment did not detect it.

LeRoy Moore of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center said the discovery is "a reminder of how unpredictable and potentially dangerous the cleanup work is."

"Nobody really knows where everything is," he said.

The plant, about eight miles south of Boulder, manufactured triggers for nuclear weapons before it was closed.