Decontaimination of a Nuclear Bomb Factory

There's a lot of great(?) quotes from this, but was a little concerning:

* During complex chemical operations, so much plutonium nitrate dripped onto the bottom of gloveboxes that workers faced the risk of criticality - an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction that sprayed a deadly stream of neutrons. To prevent criticality, workers did the nuclear equivalent of pulling the plug on a bathtub. They used a "crit valve" to dump plutonium nitrate from the glovebox to the factory floor. That prevented a criticality disaster from ever occuring at Rocky Flats.

"When you got more than 2 inches of liquid in a box, you'd have a choice - you either have a criticality, or you have a cleanup job,"

said Don Sabac, a Rocky Flats worker since 1961. "You always chose the cleanup job."

For a worker, that meant dropping to his or her hands and knees and scrubbing the plutonium solution off the floor with industrial cleanser, called K.W., and strengthened paper towels called Kimwipes.

That didn't always work. Acids in plutonium solutions often ate through concrete floors or walls and prevented a thorough cleanup. So workers painted over dozens of radioactive areas with purple or brown epoxy.