Workers at Rocky Flats helped build America’s nuclear arsenal. A new film digs into memories of the controversial plant

If you visit the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge northwest of Denver, you see different types of wildlife, miles of hiking and biking trails and acres of rolling prairie.  

But you don’t see any trace of the astonishing history of what happened there during the Cold War: The Rocky Flats plant made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons until it was shuttered in the early 1990s.  

The buildings used in processing the plutonium were destroyed and the area was cleaned up under a Superfund site designation. And after a series of sometimes contentious public hearings, the wildlife refuge opened to the public in September 2018. 

Filmmaker Jeff Gipe explores that history in a new documentary, Half-Life of Memory: America’s Forgotten Atomic Bomb Factory. Gipe grew up in nearby Arvada. His father worked at the plant in the 1980s.  

Gipe says he made the film to remind people of the hazards buried beneath the wide-open spaces of the wildlife refuge, and to share the voices of workers whose lives were affected by the dangerous materials processed at Rocky Flats. He spoke about the documentary with ITN’s Erin O’Toole. 

The film premieres Saturday, Nov. 2 at the Denver Film Festival. Find the complete lineup and schedule for the festival here. 

You can watch the film’s trailer here. 

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Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner

Theme music by Robbie Reverb
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In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.