Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

by Kristen Iversen

Overview

“An intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security.”—Rebecca Skloot, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
 
A shocking account of the government’s attempt to conceal the effects of the toxic waste released by a secret nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and a community’s vain search for justice—soon to be a feature documentary

Kristen Iversen grew up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated "the most contaminated site in America." Full Body Burden is the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and—unknown to those who lived there—tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium. It's also a book about the destructive power of secrets—both family and government. Her father's hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats—best not to inquire too deeply into any of it. But as Iversen grew older, she began to ask questions and discovered some disturbing realities.

Based on extensive interviews, FBI and EPA documents, and class-action testimony, this taut, beautifully written book is both captivating and unnerving.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307955654
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/04/2013
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.23(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.92(d)
Lexile:	1030L (what's this?)

About the Author

Kristen Iversen grew up in Arvada, Colorado, near the Rocky Flats nuclear weaponry facility and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver. She is head of the PhD program in Literary Nonfiction at the University of Cincinnati. During the summers, she serves on the faculty of the MFA Low-Residency Program at the University of New Orleans, held in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is also the author of Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, winner of the Colorado Book Award for Biography and the Barbara Sudler Award for Nonfiction. Iversen has two sons and lives in Cincinnati. 

Read an Excerpt

1

Mother’s Day

1963

It’s 1963 and I’m five. I lie across the backseat of the family car, sleeping with my cheek pressed against the vinyl. My mother sits in the front with baby Karin and my father drives, carefully holding his cigarette just at the window’s edge. This is how I remember my mother and father: smoking in a cool, elegant way that makes me want to grow up quick so I can smoke, too. It’s evening and I’m tired and cranky. The spring day has been spent on a long drive through the Colorado mountains, a Sunday ritual.

We turn the corner to our home on Johnson Court, the square little house my parents bought when my father left his job as an attorney for an insurance company and set up his own law practice. The neighborhood is made up of winding rows of houses that all look like ours: a front door and a picture window facing the street, two windows on each side, and a sliding door in the back that opens to a postage-stamp backyard. We have a view of the mountains and one tree.

“Uh-oh,” my mother says.

“Jesus.” My dad stops the car. I scramble to my knees to look.

Our house is smoldering. One side is gone. A fire truck and a police car with streaking red lights stand in the driveway.

My dad jumps out and my mom reaches over and pulls up the parking brake. “Dick,” she says, “I’m taking Kris to the neighbor’s.” My mother is always good in a crisis.

Mrs. Hauschild is waiting at her door. She takes a pair of pajamas from her daughter’s room—we’re almost the same age—and she beds me down in the basement in a sleeping bag. “She’ll be fine here,” Mrs. Hauschild says. “She doesn’t need to see all that commotion.” She suggests they both have a drink and a cigarette. My mother nods.

“Someone must have left the lamp on in Kris’s bedroom,” my mother says as they walk up the stairs. “The drapes caught on fire.”

I repeat these words in my head until I come to believe I set the fire myself. I can still picture my bedside lamp, the brass switch, the round orange globe always warm to the touch.

Years later—decades, in fact—my father laughs when I tell him this story. “You didn’t cause that fire, Kris,” he says. “Your mother and I did. We had been sitting and talking in the living room, having a drink together, and we left a burning cigarette in the ashtray. Neither of us noticed. The drapes in the living room caught fire first.” The flames never reached my room.

This is how I want to remember my parents: still talking to each other, even when the world was tumbling down around their ears.

•

We rent a basement apartment for a month and then move back to our rebuilt house. Nothing is ever said about the fire. Nothing is ever said about dark or sad or upsetting events, and anything that involves liquor is definitely not discussed. My parents are elegant drinkers. My mother can make a Manhattan with just the right splash of whiskey and vermouth. My father takes his bourbon straight on ice. After dinner, once my mother has tucked us into bed, my parents make cocktails and play cribbage to determine who has to do the dishes. From my bedroom I can hear my mother’s soft laugh. Sometimes there’s a stack of unwashed plates in the sink when we leave for school in the morning.

Soon another baby is born: my sister Karma. This is not a hippie name, despite the fact that we live close to Boulder. My mother insists on naming her daughters after her Norwegian heritage: Kristen, Karin, Karma.

At the top of the hill behind our house stands the Arvada cemetery. The year 1863 is etched in a stone marker at the entrance. The cemetery works like a magnet. As soon as our mother puts us out into the yard for the afternoon—just like the kids and grandkids on the family farm back in Iowa, who were expected to fend for themselves for the day—Karin and I scramble over the fence and head for the hill. We are our own secret club, and Karma joins us as soon as she is old enough to toddle along. Sometimes the other neighbor girls—Paula, Susie, and Kathy—are allowed into the club as temporary members. We trek across the field behind the row of backyards and through the old apple orchard and get up to the creek, where we balance a flat plank across the shallow, sluggish water and tiptoe across. Water spiders dance across the surface and tiny minnows scatter when we push our toes into the muddy bottom.

At the crest of the hill stand row after row of headstones. Some are tall, others flat against the ground. Some have the names of children or images of their faces etched in the stone, and we stay away from those. We run up and down the rows, shrieking and gathering up the plastic flowers. We pile all our flowers in the middle and sit in a circle around them. We look down the hill to our house and imagine our mother, big and round, lying on her bed and waiting for the next baby, a boy at last, she’s sure of it. A little farther, we can see the Arvada Villa Pizza Parlor and the Arvada Beauty Academy. Between our neighborhood and the long dark line of mountains stands a single white water tower, all by itself. The Rocky Flats water tower. There is a hidden factory there.

That hidden factory is the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, a foundry that smelts plutonium, purifies it, and shapes it into plutonium “triggers” for nuclear bombs. The plant also recycles fissionable material from outmoded bombs. A largely blue-collar link in the U.S. government’s nuclear bomb network, Rocky Flats is the only plant in the country that produces these triggers—small, spherical explosives that provide an atomic bomb’s chain reaction. The triggers form the heart of every nuclear weapon made in America. From 1952 to 1989, Rocky Flats manufactures more than seventy thousand plutonium triggers, at a cost of nearly $4 million apiece. Each one contains enough breathable particles of plutonium to kill every person on earth.

Rocky Flats’ largest output, however, is radioactive and toxic waste. In all the decades of nuclear weapons production, the nuclear weapons industry produces waste with too little thought to the future or the environment. The creation of each gram of plutonium produces radioactive waste, virtually all of which remains with us to the present day.

But no one in our community knows what goes on at Rocky Flats. This is a secret operation, not subject to any laws of the state.

The wind blows, as it always does. I imagine the bones of pioneers and cowboys beneath our feet. The chill of evening begins to creep up the hill; the air turns cold when the sun dips.

“Let’s go!” Karin yells, and we jump to our feet and roll and tumble down the hill. We bounce across the plank and race across the field, full speed, before the sun sets and the ghosts come out.

Table of Contents

1 Mother's Day: 1963 1

2 Drums and Bunnies: 1969 48

3 Nuns and Pirates: 1974 111

4 Operation Desert Glow: 1979 167

5 A Raid and a Runaway Grand Jury: 1989 217

6 Doom with a View: 1990 241

7 Fire, Again: 1991-1996 272

8 What Lies Beneath: 1996-2011 300

Epilogue 341

"Plutonian Ode" by Allen Ginsberg 345

Acknowledgments 351

Rocky Flats Timeline 355

Notes 359

Index 389

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Full Body Burden is one of the most important stories of the nuclear era—as personal and powerful as "Silkwood," told with the suspense and narrative drive of The Hot Zone. With unflinching honesty, Kristen Iverson has written an intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security. Rocky Flats needs to be part of the same nuclear discussion as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. So does Full Body Burden. It's an essential and unforgettable book that should be talked about in schools and book clubs, online and in the White House."
—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
 
"What a surprise! You don't expect such (unobtrusively) beautiful writing in a book about nuclear weapons, nor such captivating storytelling. Plus the facts are solid and the science told in colloquial but never dumbed-down terms. If I could afford them, I'd want the movie rights. Having read scores of nuclear books, I venture a large claim: Kristin Iversen's Full Body Burden may be a classic of nuclear literature, filling a gap we didn't know existed among Hersey's Hiroshima, Burdick and Wheeler's Fail-Safe and Kohn's Who Killed Karen Silkwood?"
—Mark Hertsgaard, author of Nuclear Inc. and HOT

"This terrifyingly brilliant book—as perfectly crafted and meticulously assembled as the nuclear bomb triggers that lie at its core—is a savage indictment of the American strategic weapons industry, both haunting in its power, and yet wonderfully, charmingly human as a memoir of growing up in the Atomic Age."
—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Atlantic

"Why didn't Poe or Hitchcock think of this? Full Body Burden has all the elements of a classic horror tale: the charming nuclear family cruising innocently above the undercurrents of nuclear nightmare. But it's true and all the more chilling. Kristen Iversen has lived this life and is an authority on the culture of secrecy that has prevented the nation from knowing the truth about radioactive contamination. This is a gripping and scary story."
—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country 

"Kristen Iversen has written a hauntingly beautiful memoir that is also a devastating investigation into the human costs of building and living with the atomic bomb. Poignant and gracefully written, Iversen shows us what it meant to come of age next door to Rocky Flats—America’s plutonium bomb factory. The story is at once terrifying and outrageous."
—Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

"The fight over Rocky Flats was and is a paradigmatic American battle, of corporate and government power set against the bravery and anger of normal people. This is a powerful and beautiful account, of great use to all of us who will fight the battles that lie ahead."
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth

"Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Full Body Burden is a tale that will haunt your dreams. It's a story of secrecy, deceit, and betrayal set in the majestic high plains of Colorado. Kristen Iversen takes us behind her family's closed doors and beyond the security fences and the armed guards at Rocky Flats. She's as honest and restrained in her portrait of a family in crisis as she is in documenting the incomprehensible betrayal of citizens by their government, in exposing the harrowing disregard for public safety exhibited by the technocrats in charge of a top-secret nuclear weapons facility. For decades the question asked by residents living downwind of the plant was 'Would my government deliberately put my life and the lives of my children in danger?' The simple and irrefutable answer was 'Yes, it would . . . in a Colorado minute.'"
—John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power & Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little
 
“This is a subject as grippingly immediate as today's headlines: While there is alarm about the small rise in radioactivity in the food chain, one reads in these pages about how a whole region lived in the steady contaminating effects of nuclear radiation. Kristen Iversen's prose is clean and clear and lovely, and her story is deeply involving and full of insight and knowledge; it begins in innocence, and moves through catastrophes; it is unflinching and brave, an expose about ignorance and denial and the cost of government excess, and an intensely personal portrait of a family. It ought to be required reading for every single legislator in this country.”
—Richard Bausch, author of Peace and Something Is Out There

Reading Group Guide

1.       In this book, author Kristen Iversen weaves together two narratives: a memoir of growing up in Arvada and a historical account of Rocky Flats and the nuclear industry. What effect did moving back and forth between the two storylines have on your experience of reading the book? Did you find one of the two storylines more compelling than the other? Can you think of a different way the book might have been structured?
 
2.       What themes are shared by the two narratives in the book? How are they expressed in each narrative?
 
3.       When Kristen is a child, her mother tells her, “I think [Rocky Flats] makes cleaning supplies. Scrubbing Bubbles or something.” (p. 12) Later, when protesters rally against the plant, her parents ridicule the protests. By the end of the book, however, Kristen has worked at the plant and joined the opposition to it. What are some key moments in the evolution of her views about Rocky Flats?
 
4.       One of the most dramatic passages in the book depicts Stan and Bill fighting the “Mother’s Day Fire” at Rocky Flats (pp. 26–38). Iversen describes the scene in detail, from the “burning globes” that crash from the ceiling to the underpass beneath the glove boxes. What parts of the scene were most vivid or memorable for you?
 
5.       While horseback riding one day, Iversen is disturbed when she comes across a dead cow at the edge of the lake near her house, and she describes the mountains nearby as “a dark, heavy presence, a watching shadow.” (p. 71) The discovery of the cow seems like an ominous portent. Are there other examples of foreshadowing in the book?
 
6.       From Fluffy to Tonka to the wild rabbits and deer at the Rocky Flats site to the deformed chickens, animals are a constant presence in the book. What role do animals play in the storyline?  How were pets and animals important to Kristen’s household, and why?
 
7.       When Kristen was fourteen years old, her father crashed the family car. Afterward he said he had swerved to avoid an oncoming car, but it was clear to her that he had been drinking. Since her parents did not seek medical treatment for her, it was not until years later that she found out she had broken her neck. She writes, “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.” (p. 110) At what other times do we see her family’s “habit” of silence? How does it affect her? Can you think of a relationship in your own life in which you and a close friend or family member never talked about something vital to both of you, or pretended that it had never happened?
 
8.       At one point, Kristen’s mother takes the family to see a psychiatrist and each member of the family draws a picture of home (pp. 120–121). The passage reveals key elements of the family dynamic. What did you learn about each family member’s coping mechanisms from this scene? In what different ways did Kristen and her siblings respond to their father’s alcoholism, and to the secrets of Rocky Flats as they were revealed over time?
 
9.       In 1978, protesters were tried for trespassing and attempting to obstruct the activity of Rocky Flats. They base their defense on a little-known “choice of evils” law in Colorado. The law says that an illegal act is justified if it is done to prevent a greater, imminent evil or crime. The judge decides that the law isn’t applicable in their situation (p. 158). Do you agree with the judge’s reasoning? Have you ever been in a situation where this law might have been applicable?
 
10.   Immediately after Kristen learns that Mark has died, her parents argue and then her father knocks on her bedroom door. “How can I let him in when a thousand times he has cast me out?” she asks herself (p. 166), and she does not let him in. Do you think she was right to protect herself from her father? If she had let him in, what do you imagine they might have said to each other?
 
11.   There are several passages in which Rocky Flats workers are contrasted with the activists seeking to shut the plant down, such as the scene with well-to-do protester Ann White and working class security guard Debbie Clark (pp. 193–194). How did the two groups feel about each other? Were there any similarities or sympathies between the two groups?
 
12.   Full Body Burden contains many surprising facts about Rocky Flats and about radioactive contamination, such as the fact that a single microgram of plutonium is a potentially lethal dose (p. 24) or that in 1970 there was no emergency response plan to protect the public in the event of a major disaster at Rocky Flats (p. 67). What fact made the deepest impression on you?
 
13.   The poem at the end of the book, “Plutonian Ode” by Allen Ginsberg, was written on the occasion of the 1978 Rocky Flats protest and specifically refers to Rockwell, Rocky Flats, and other nuclear weapons facilities. In it, Ginsberg describes plutonium as a “dreadful presence,” a “delusion of metal empires,” and as “matter that renders Self oblivion.” Why then does he call the poem an “ode”? How does the poem reinforce the message of the book?
 
14.   During the Cold War, an impenetrable veil existed between the nuclear weapons industry and the general public. The U.S. government considered this secrecy necessary for national security. Do you think there is any way the government could have communicated more to the general public without jeopardizing the nation’s safety?
 
15.   For many years the nuclear weapons industry was exempted from environmental regulation because national defense was considered a higher priority. This book reveals the tragic consequences of that exemption. Are there situations in which you believe it is justified to exempt the government, certain industries, or private companies from the law?
 
16.   We live in the era of Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media, as well as organizations that seek transparency in government, such as WikiLeaks. Do you think the level of secrecy maintained by the DOE and the operators of Rocky Flats during much of the plant’s history could be maintained today?
 
17.   Do you live near a nuclear site or nuclear power plant? If so, has your state or local government informed you of the potential risks of living near such a facility, or about emergency response plans in the event of a serious accident involving radioactive contamination?
 

Interviews

A Conversation with Kristen Iversen
Can you talk about the juxtaposition of the toxicity of Rocky Flats and the rugged beauty of Colorado?
Colorado is a beautiful state, and the area near Rocky Flats is especially stunning. The rolling hills leading up to the line of mountains, including the Flatirons, are very dramatic. People hike and bike and walk with their dogs. And the location is ideal—Rocky Flats is just minutes from Boulder and a short drive from Denver. Yet despite Colorado's reputation as a healthy state with an outdoorsy lifestyle, the truth is that there have been many environmental problems. Rocky Flats is simply the most notorious. The land looks beautiful, but there are places where the soil will be radioactive for the next 24,000 years. Also, contaminants escape into the local water supply and citizens question whether the site is being adequately monitored. As I write this, there is a controversy about plans to open portions of the former site of Rocky Flats to the public as a "wildlife refuge," despite some scientists' warnings that it remains unsafe.
Was there one moment when you knew you had to take action?
I have thought about writing this book since I was a child. Rocky Flats was such a mystery to me! After college, I lived in Germany for several years, and I wanted to be in Berlin when the Berlin Wall came down. As it turned out, I had to come back to the states just before that occurred, and I had to watch it on television. It struck me then that there was a connection between what had just happened in Berlin, and what was happening in Colorado at Rocky Flats. People thought the Cold War was over. But it wasn't over in Colorado.
The moment that really shook me, though, happened during the time I was working at Rocky Flats, in my thirties. I had just put my two sons to bed. I came downstairs and turned on the television, and there was a Nightline special on Rocky Flats. It was shocking. I learned that I was working next to fourteen tons of plutonium, most of it unsafely stored. The plant was a mess. Plant manager Mark Silverman was fairly forthright in describing the terrible state of the facility. To his credit, he felt that it was time to begin to tell the truth about Rocky Flats. (Sadly, Silverman himself died of cancer not long after his work at Rocky Flats.) How could I work at the plant and not know all these things? The next morning, when I went into work, some employees expressed shock and others thought the press was just exaggerating. That day I knew I had to quit, and I knew I would research and write a book. I wanted to understand the story—the whole story.
Explain your writing process. Did you use any of the journals you kept as reference while writing the book?
I've kept a journal since I was a small child. I was the kind of kid who had to write everything down—notes, stories, my experiences and feelings—so I had a wealth of personal material to draw upon. I worked at the plant for a short time to support myself and my two children while I was in graduate school, and during that time I quietly took notes on everything. I felt like a Cold War Harriet the Spy. I write to remember and understand.
This book involved twelve years of research and writing, and the bulk of the research was investigative. I read court documents, technical reports, EPA and DOE documentation, and all of the Rocky Flats interviews—dozens and dozens—held at the Maria Rogers Oral History Project at the Carnegie Library in Boulder, Colorado. I conducted dozens of new interviews myself. It was a huge project to weave all of this information together, make sure it was accurate, and tell a good story.
Your book reveals the repeated instances in which the effects of Rocky Flats were hidden or downplayed by Rockwell International, Dow Chemical, and the DOE (Department of Energy). How this was possible? And, why did this happen?
The Atomic Energy Commission—which later became the Department of Energy—was established after World War II. Its primary purpose was to develop the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons and test nuclear bombs. There was no environmental regulation or oversight. Due to Cold War secrecy, most AEC operations—and their effect on the environment and local populations—were completely unknown the public. It wasn't until the 1970s that nuclear weapon sites were forced to comply with environmental laws and regulations, though even then they often skirted them. Private operators of U.S. weapons plants, like Rockwell and Dow Chemical, operated on a for-profit basis and were not held legally or financially accountable for accidents, leaks, or problems. Production was the only thing that mattered. Even after the EPA was established, nuclear weapon facilities argued that they should be exempt from EPA regulation.
Who have you discovered lately?
I'm currently reading The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb by Philip Taubman (Harper 2012). It's a fascinating look at how five bipartisan figures—Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and Sidney Drell—worked to shape nuclear strategy during the Cold War and beyond.

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 2013 Colorado Book Award
Winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Nonfiction
A Mother Jones Best Book of 2012
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012
An Atlantic Monthly Best Book about Justice

"Full Body Burden is one of the most important stories of the nuclear era—as personal and powerful as "Silkwood," told with the suspense and narrative drive of The Hot Zone. With unflinching honesty, Kristen Iverson has written an intimate and deeply human memoir that shows why we should all be concerned about nuclear safety, and the dangers of ignoring science in the name of national security. Rocky Flats needs to be part of the same nuclear discussion as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. So does Full Body Burden. It's an essential and unforgettable book that should be talked about in schools and book clubs, online and in the White House."
—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
 
"What a surprise! You don't expect such (unobtrusively) beautiful writing in a book about nuclear weapons, nor such captivating storytelling. Plus the facts are solid and the science told in colloquial but never dumbed-down terms. If I could afford them, I'd want the movie rights. Having read scores of nuclear books, I venture a large claim: Kristin Iversen's Full Body Burden may be a classic of nuclear literature, filling a gap we didn't know existed among Hersey's Hiroshima, Burdick and Wheeler's Fail-Safe and Kohn's Who Killed Karen Silkwood?"
—Mark Hertsgaard, author of Nuclear Inc. and HOT

"This terrifyingly brilliant book—as perfectly crafted and meticulously assembled as the nuclear bomb triggers that lie at its core—is a savage indictment of the American strategic weapons industry, both haunting in its power, and yet wonderfully, charmingly human as a memoir of growing up in the Atomic Age."
—Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Atlantic

"Why didn't Poe or Hitchcock think of this? Full Body Burden has all the elements of a classic horror tale: the charming nuclear family cruising innocently above the undercurrents of nuclear nightmare. But it's true and all the more chilling. Kristen Iversen has lived this life and is an authority on the culture of secrecy that has prevented the nation from knowing the truth about radioactive contamination. This is a gripping and scary story."
—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of Shiloh and Other Stories and In Country 

"Kristen Iversen has written a hauntingly beautiful memoir that is also a devastating investigation into the human costs of building and living with the atomic bomb. Poignant and gracefully written, Iversen shows us what it meant to come of age next door to Rocky Flats—America’s plutonium bomb factory. The story is at once terrifying and outrageous."
—Kai Bird, co-author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

"The fight over Rocky Flats was and is a paradigmatic American battle, of corporate and government power set against the bravery and anger of normal people. This is a powerful and beautiful account, of great use to all of us who will fight the battles that lie ahead."
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Eaarth

"Part memoir, part investigative journalism, Full Body Burden is a tale that will haunt your dreams. It's a story of secrecy, deceit, and betrayal set in the majestic high plains of Colorado. Kristen Iversen takes us behind her family's closed doors and beyond the security fences and the armed guards at Rocky Flats. She's as honest and restrained in her portrait of a family in crisis as she is in documenting the incomprehensible betrayal of citizens by their government, in exposing the harrowing disregard for public safety exhibited by the technocrats in charge of a top-secret nuclear weapons facility. For decades the question asked by residents living downwind of the plant was 'Would my government deliberately put my life and the lives of my children in danger?' The simple and irrefutable answer was 'Yes, it would . . . in a Colorado minute.'"
—John Dufresne, author of Louisiana Power & Light and Love Warps the Mind a Little
 
“This is a subject as grippingly immediate as today's headlines: While there is alarm about the small rise in radioactivity in the food chain, one reads in these pages about how a whole region lived in the steady contaminating effects of nuclear radiation. Kristen Iversen's prose is clean and clear and lovely, and her story is deeply involving and full of insight and knowledge; it begins in innocence, and moves through catastrophes; it is unflinching and brave, an expose about ignorance and denial and the cost of government excess, and an intensely personal portrait of a family. It ought to be required reading for every single legislator in this country.”
—Richard Bausch, author of Peace and Something Is Out There

From the Publisher

…a simmering and sickening book that runs on two downward sloping tracks. The first is the story of Ms. Iverson's largely pastoral middle-class childhood…[the] other track is serious investigative journalism. Ms. Iverson has delivered an intimate history of the environmental abuses at Rocky Flats, which opened in 1952, and the history of how those abuses have been systematically covered up…For a while you think these two narratives won't quite come together. But they do, in powerful ways…More impressively, Full Body Burden…becomes a potent examination of the dangers of secrecy.
—Dwight Garner

The New York Times

In this powerful work of research and personal testimony, Iversen (Molly Brown), director of the M.F.A. creative writing program at the University of Memphis. chronicles the story of America’s willfully blinkered relationship to the nuclear weapons industry through the haunting experience of her own family in Colorado. Moving to the spanking new subdivision of Denver called Bridledale in 1969, an area hugely expanding due to the growing industries nearby, Iversen’s middle-class family of four children, lawyer dad, and homemaker mom believed they had secured the American dream, hardly questioning that Dow Chemical was making anything more than scrubbing bubbles in the top-secret Rocky Flats foundry. Built in the early 1950s by the Atomic Energy Commission to smelt the plutonium “triggers” for the nuclear bombs necessary to deter the Soviet Union during the cold war, Rocky Flats had already suffered a major plutonium fire in 1957, the extent of radiation damage swiftly covered up, before a similar fire on Mother’s Day 1969 proved the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, spreading unknown quantities of radiation in the soil and water and costing .7 million to clean up—also carefully covered up in the name of national security. Meanwhile, residents began to get sick, especially the children who ran wild over the contaminated land; animals grew sterile; protestors started to arouse concern; and studies were published, culminating in a FBI raid of the facility in 1989. Yet the grief was ongoing, as Iversen renders in her masterly use of the present tense, conveying tremendous suspense and impressive control of her material. Agent: Ellen Levine. (July)

Publishers Weekly

The title refers to the amount of radioactive material in the human body that becomes an ongoing source of radiation. It’s a chilling concept, but it’s a key concern if you live near a company that produces nuclear bombs. This memoir is a testament to the nuclear age, and to the Americans who knowingly and unknowingly became its victims. Narrator Kirsten Potter’s voice has the perfect combination of forcefulness and tenderness to make this a compelling work. She uses a gentle, measured tone when narrating the sections on everyday life and a more aggressive, portentous tone when narrating the parts that will raise the hair on your neck. Potter also knows when to pause for effect. It’s a great performance for a book that deserves a wide audience. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2012 - AudioFile

A harrowing account of Colorado's Rocky Flats plutonium plant by a woman who grew up nearby. In 1951, in a cow pasture outside Denver, the U.S. government broke ground for a secret Cold War nuclear weapons facility that would manufacture plutonium triggers for atomic bombs. Owned by the Atomic Energy Commission, the plant produced more than 70,000 fissionable triggers and considerable radioactive and toxic waste. Iversen (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis; Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth, 1999) grew up in a new suburban development three miles from the plant, totally unaware--like her family's neighbors--of what went on there. In a gripping narrative that intersperses stories of the Rocky Flats plant and her family life, the author describes how an astonishing habit of silence flourished in the community, which would not permit suspicions about the cluster of gray concrete buildings to shatter its idyllic 1950s suburban innocence. The same silence reigned at home, where Iversen and her siblings were expected to overlook their father's alcoholism and their mother's pill popping. In 1969, after a second plutonium fire, the AEC admitted that Rocky Flats worked with plutonium, but claimed this posed no threat to the public, a position the government maintained for years. This exquisitely researched book details official efforts to hide the plant's toxic dangers; health researchers' efforts to expose a rising incidence of cancer deaths; massive protests involving Daniel Ellsberg and others aimed at closing the plant; the 1989 joint FBI-EPA investigation of environmental crimes at Rocky Flats; and local residents' later tumultuous class-action court battle. In 1990, Iversen took a secretarial job at the plant and began gathering information for this extraordinary book. "Nearly every family we grew up with has been affected by cancer in some way," she writes. In 2007, after a cleanup, most of Rocky Flats was set aside for use as a wildlife refuge. Superbly crafted tale of Cold War America's dark underside.

Kirkus Reviews