Post / RJ Sangosti Maynard Harper watches Wednesday as crews begin demolition of Building 707 at Rocky Flats. Harper worked in the building for 22 years.

Many nights, Shirley Garcia's fingertips ached for hours after she finished her shift as a chemical operator at Rocky Flats.

The cause of her pain was the heavy lead-lined gloves she used each day on a production line at the nuclear weapons complex. They were a critical component of the "glovebox," a stainless-steel enclosure with glass windows meant to protect Garcia and thousands of other workers from the deadly radioactive materials they handled.

"At first, they were incredibly difficult to use," said Garcia, who began her career at Rocky Flats in 1982 and is now Broomfield's environmental coordinator. "But after a while, it really became second nature."

Recently, cleanup contractors removed the last of the 1,457 gloveboxes used in production at Rocky Flats. In just a few weeks, it will be shipped off to a low-level radioactive waste dump in Utah for disposal.

In doing so, one of Colorado's most prominent symbols of the Cold War will disappear, helping transform Rocky Flats from a vestige of the nuclear-arms race to a haven for hikers, cyclists and horse riders.

"Gloveboxes represented the guts of Rocky Flats," said Nancy Tuor, president and chief executive of Kaiser-Hill, the Rocky Flats cleanup contractor. "All plutonium work was conducted inside the stainless-steel boxes, and removing the last one ends an era at Rocky Flats."

Tuor described dismantling the site's gloveboxes as a cumbersome and complex undertaking. While some of the gloveboxes measured just a few cubic feet, a few others - like the 15,000-pound contraption recently pulled out of Building 371 - were up to 64 feet in length.

Each was designed to surround heavy, bulky and complex equipment such as lathes, furnaces or presses used in weapons manufacturing.

"When we were trained, it was explained to us that the leaded gloves and the shielding would keep us safe from any background radiation," said Roman Kohler, who worked at Rocky Flats between 1968 and 1995. "And we trusted that they would."

But the gloveboxes were not foolproof.

Sometimes workers were exposed to radiation when sharp metal objects inside the gloveboxes punctured the gloves.

Also, plutonium shavings sometimes spontaneously ignited inside the gloveboxes, sparking major fires like the 1969 Mother's Day blaze at Rocky Flats, considered one of the worst industrial accidents in U.S. history.

Still, many workers sought out glovebox jobs.

"When you were young and had a young family, it was good money," said Phil Saba, who worked as a machinist at Rocky Flats starting in 1957 for about $2.50 an hour.

In another cleanup milestone, workers Wednesday began demolishing Building 707. So far, contractors have demolished more than half of the 800 structures at the site northwest of Denver, where plutonium triggers were produced for more than 70,000 nuclear warheads beginning in 1952.

"Nearly every plutonium trigger in the current United States nuclear arsenal was manufactured and assembled in Building 707," said Frazer Lockhart, a Department of Energy manager. "The significance of demolishing another plutonium production facility is yet another visible sign that Rocky Flats is meeting its commitments and the site will soon become a national wildlife refuge."

Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or at kmcguire@denverpost.com .