Northwest Public Television | Tyler_William
Robert Bauman: Now you can give it right back to her?
William Tyler: Yeah, I plan on it.
Man One: Exactly. All right, get this off your face there.
Bauman: Does your daughter live here in Richland?
Tyler: She lives right across the street from me.
Bauman: Oh, does she? Oh, there you go. Well, you can really give it to her then. [LAUGHTER] She can't avoid you.
Tyler: Well in fact, we work together at HAMMER.
Man one: I’m rolling.
Bauman: All right. Well I think we're ready to get started. So let's start by having you say your name and also spell it for us.
Tyler: My name is William T. Tyler. W-I-L-L-I-A-M, T, T-Y-L-E-R.
Bauman: And you go by Bill?
Tyler: Bill, yeah.
Bauman: All right. And today's date is August 28th of 2013. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So let's start, if we can, by maybe having you talk about what brought you to the area. When did you come to work at Hanford, and what brought you here?
Tyler: We came out here on vacation from Oklahoma in 1947 to see my dad's brothers and sisters. And we were going to stay for a week or so. And my dad applied for a job here and got it, and we stayed. I thought it was the end of the world. This was not a pretty place in 1947. But I went in the Navy in 1950, got into the nuclear program and came out here in 1955. Went to work at Hanford. Worked as an HPT until '82, I believe. And then I went into management in health physics.
Bauman: So HPT, you mean health physics technician. Is that was HPT is?
Tyler: Uh-huh. Sorry.
Bauman: That's okay. So how old were in 1947 when you came on vacation?
Tyler: I think I was 15.
Bauman: Okay. What sort of job did your father get?
Tyler: He worked in transportation.
Bauman: And you already had aunts and uncles who came here?
Tyler: Yeah.
Bauman: So you said you thought this was the end of the world. What do you mean by that? What are your first impressions of the place?
Tyler: [LAUGHTER] Well, my first impression is we got here July the 5th. And my aunt and uncle had a little cafe on downtown Kennewick, on Kennewick Avenue. And it was about 104 degrees out. And we were driving down the street looking for it. And my dad says, man, I wouldn't live here if it's the last place in the world. And back then there was not a lot of trees. There was in Kennewick, and a few in Richland. But every time the wind blew, it was dusty and the tumbleweeds flew, and a lot of dust storms. In fact, they call them termination winds. Because everything was booming out in Hanford and every time the wind blew, people didn't like that and they'd just pick up and quit. So they called it termination winds.
Bauman: Do you know when your aunt and uncles came here?
Tyler: My aunt was born here in Kennewick. My uncle came out here in '37, '38, somewhere along that area.
Bauman: Oh, okay, so you'd had relatives here before the Hanford site.
Tyler: Oh yeah.
Bauman: And so when your family first came in 1947 and you dad got the job and stayed here, where did you live?
Tyler: We lived in Kennewick for a year. And then we got a house in Richland in 1948 at 635 Basswood.
Bauman: That was a government home then?
Tyler: Uh-huh. It was ranch house. And we moved in Thanksgiving Day of '48. And my future wife moved in next door the same day. I didn't know that was my future wife, but it turned out to be. And I still live on Basswood. Different house, but--
Bauman: So did you go to high school here then?
Tyler: I went to Kennewick. I started in Kennewick because that's where we lived and I didn't want to transfer. So I rode the intercity bus every day to Kennewick and back. I graduated in 1950 and then somebody in Washington wanted me to join their services. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: So how would you describe, outside of your first impression, how would you describe the community of Richland in late '40s, early 1950s?
Tyler: It actually—it was a very good place to live. I didn't realize it at the time. It was smaller, much smaller--probably 5,000 people in each of the cities. It was a good place to live if you could ignore the wind blowing and the dust storms and that sort of thing. But it kind of grows on you. I know I wouldn't live anywhere else.
Bauman: In those early years when you were here in the '40s and '50s, do you remember any particular community events that stand out in your mind?
Tyler: Yeah, Atomic Frontier Days, the Grape Festival in Kennewick, and then the fair. Nothing big or spectacular, but it was something to do.
Bauman: Can you describe Atomic Frontier Days a little bit? What sorts of things--
Tyler: Well, normally they had a queen and a parade of course. And it was just kind of a—I don't know how--just a parade and kind of a get together type thing for the people that lived here.
Bauman: So let's talk about your work a little bit now. You said you started working in '55.
Tyler: ’55.
Bauman: So can you talk about who you worked for at time and a little bit more detail about what sorts of work you did? What area of the Hanford site you worked in?
Tyler: Okay, I started February the 22nd, 1955. And my first work assignment was 200 West Area tank farms. And then I went up to the REDOX facility which was a separations facility. A couple months later, then I went to U Plant. And then I went to T Plant, which were all separation facilities. And then I went over to PUREX in December of 1955. That was prior to startup. We started up our first spiked run was I think March or April of '56. And I worked there until '62 I believe. When I worked there, we also was switched with the 100 Area HPTs, or RCTs, or radiation monitors for exposure reasons. Because they got a lot more exposure than we did, so we would switch with them. And I got to work in all the 100 Area reactors except N when they were running, and some of the 300 Area.
Bauman: So just about everywhere?
Tyler: Yeah, I worked basically in every facility out here except 234-5.
Bauman: And so was GE the contractor? What contractor did you work for?
Tyler: GE. They were the prime contractor. And they left here in '66 I believe. Then Rockwell and Westinghouse and Fluor Daniel and MSA.
Bauman: So as a health physics technician, what exactly did that mean? What sorts of things did you do on a daily basis?
Tyler: Well as you know, there was a lot of contamination, radiation. And our job was to set the dose rates if people were going into a radiation area. We would go in, set the dose rates, stay with them. Got to make sure that the dose rates didn't increase while they were in there. We surveyed them out when they were done with the GMs and alpha detectors to make sure they didn't take any contamination home with them. And that was our prime responsibility. We maintain control of personnel exposure rates and their contamination, if they had any, and made sure that everything was as clean as we could get it. That's the short and sweet version.
Bauman: Yeah. And you did that, obviously, at all these different areas you worked at on the site?
Tyler: Everywhere, inside, outside, burial grounds.
Bauman: Were there ever any incidents while you were doing this where people did have excessive exposure or anything along those lines?
Tyler: Yeah, there was a lot of them. When GE came here--well, they were the prime contractor. Back in those days, you really couldn't talk about your job. You could say that you worked at Hanford and that was pretty much it. But yes, there was a lot of good memories and bad memories. Some really high exposure rates almost on a daily basis, because everything was running. And what will go wrong probably does. And it was very interesting work. It was something different every day. It's the kind of job that you look forward to doing and working. I did. I really enjoyed it.
Bauman: So what was the process or procedure if someone had an overexposure?
Tyler: Well, you had your dosimetry, which—Battelle read that. So you know what they got. And that's the record that's with you forever. At that time I think we worked--[PHONE RINGING] Shit. We worked under a 50 millirem per day limits, or 300 a week. And sometimes you would exceed that. But we were issued dosimetry everyday when we came to work. And you had a film badge which was read I think once a month. But they kept a running record of your exposure. That's why when we, when 100 Area radiation monitor--[PHONE RINGING] Hello. Can I call you back, Ian? Okay, thanks. Sorry. I don't know how to turn it off.
Bauman: So we're talking about the dosimeter--
Tyler: Yeah, they kept records of all your exposures. And then every month they would send you a copy or let you know what it was. But if before the end of the year was out, if you were running short of exposure, then they would transfer people--particularly the radiation monitors--to different areas. And they what they were doing was using our exposure instead of--and letting their people cool down a little bit. It was just a way of equalizing the dose rates to the personnel. And it worked good in theory. And there was some--and I probably shouldn't say this—but there was some little minor ripples in the water, because people accused the other people of hanging back and now I got to come save you, that sort of thing. But it was all in fun. Everybody knew how serious the job was. And that was just part of their job.
Bauman: And so how long did you work as a health physics technician then?
Tyler: I think until 1982 and I went into management in health physics. At that time, they called us managers. And I was the manager of East tank farms until 1988. And then I transferred over to the West Area environmental group and took that over. My responsibilities were all of the outside radiation contamination areas. Burial sites. '89 I retired. Came back three months later and went to work in the environmental restoration part-time. And I did that until 1995. And then when Bechtel came in, I left there and went back to health physics side and become a evaluator at HAMMER for radiation protection, which I still do.
Bauman: So you still work for--
Tyler: Two to three days a week.
Bauman: So you mentioned earlier the sort of secrecy of some aspects of Hanford. Obviously secrecy, security were a very important part of. I wonder if you could discuss that at all, any ways that impacted your work?
Tyler: GE had a very rigid plan of how they wanted things to go. And security of course was top secret. If you went—and a few people did--they go down and have a beer at the bar and they get to talking. And you never know who you're talking to you. And there was cases where people didn't have a job the next morning. Because security would overhear them. And you were pretty much done. So people didn't talk about their job. They didn't even talk about it with their family. Security was very strict. When you—well, for instance, when you go to work in the morning or if you're on shifts, same thing. You would catch the bus at the bus lot. Get on the bus, go through the barricade at the Y. If I was going to PUREX, we'd go up, pull in to the front gate of PUREX. You'd get out, off the bus. Go through the badge house. Pick up your dosimetry. Go out. Get back on the bus. The bus would pull inside the gate. Get back on the bus. Go down to PUREX. Get off the bus. Go through their badge house. And they would check your lunch bucket and all that. And then go into the building. And then in the evening, just reverse that process and back out again. So they were very strict. If you drove your car, you could not drive it past the main gate of East Area. You parked outside. And when you could drive inside, security would check the glovebox and the trunk and whatever was in the car. So it was very regimented.
Bauman: I wanted to ask you about, in 1963 President Kennedy visited for the opening of the N reactor. I wondered if you were there and have any memories of that event at all?
Tyler: I was not there because I was on shift at that day, or I probably would have been.
Bauman: Mm-hm. Obviously, one of things that happened with Hanford is the shift from focus on production to focus on clean up. And I wonder if that shift impacted your work in any way?
Tyler: Yes. Like I said before, I was the manager of East tank farms. And my office was at Semi Works, which is in 200 East Area, which was a pilot plant for PUREX. Semi Works was running. We were doing strontium cesium runs. But then when the edict came out that we were going to phase out and clean up, one of the first facilities--well I think it was the first facility—that we started tearing down was Semi Works. And D&D did the work. But we shut it all down and demolished the building and just imploded it in place. Built a dirt berm over it, cleaned it up. Most of the cells and the tanks are still in place, but they're full of grout. And then there's concrete over it. And what we did was tear down—this was approximately a three-story building with three stories underground. So when we tore down the building—it had a lot of piping and columns—we tore down the building and left the west wall standing. And we filled everything we could get inside like the basement and concreted it in place. And then we undercut the west wall. And this is probably four foot thick. And got a couple of Caterpillars and chains and hooked it over the top of the west wall. Pulled it down over like a lid. And then dirt berm over it, and there it is. And the stack that was there—the exhaust, the big stack—they imploded that and laid her right alongside the building. One guy did that. We deconned it first, and he came in, and a dynamite expert told us where we was going to put the stack and put a stick out on the end in the ground like they do now on the TV. And laid that stack right down on that stick, all by himself. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: So that definitely did make for significant changes then, the shift from production?
Tyler: Very significant, because that was kind of pilot test for all the other anticipated deconning and decommissioning they we're going to do, which is still going on.
Bauman: Let's shift now and talk a little bit about HAPO. I wonder--I know you've been involved with them quite often. I wonder if you can talk about your involvement when you became involved in HAPO and how that came about?
Tyler: Well let's see. First, HAPO was a GE acronym which stands for Hanford Atomic Products Operations, which was the name of GE's part of this. GESA, which is another credit union down the street, was the General Electric Supervisors Association. GE was very particular about their managers or supervisors were a step above the blue collar worker. And I think they still maintain that. If you were a supervisor, it's white shirt and tie. And you don't fraternize with--So when the credit committee wanted to get started, that's the name they chose, just HAPO. And it's '53. And I was looking at one of the early--the record book. And I think there's five or six of the charter members of the first—that I worked with that were radiation monitors just like I was. But I never joined HAPO until my wife was--she likes C First. And I never joined HAPO until I think '71. And then a friend of mine that I worked with talked me into getting on the committee that approved loans, credit committee, which I did. And then I got invited later to go on the board of directors and got voted in and been there ever since. I really enjoyed it. It's a great credit union.
Bauman: So is it the board of directors then, primarily is it either current or former Hanford employees?
Tyler: No. It used to be when we were federal, you had to work out here to join HAPO. And then they relinquished or changed the bylaws so that anybody could join HAPO. If you give them $5 and signed up, you were a member for life. But initially it was you had to work here to join.
Bauman: And you said you didn't join until '71. What led you to decide to join at that point?
Tyler: The guy I carpool with, one of them, convinced me that I should do that. [LAUGHTER] And I didn't like C First. I never did like C First. But my wife liked them because you got at the end of the month, you got all of your checks back. And she liked that. But I joined HAPO and started my own checking account. And then she finally joined shortly after I did. And now the rest is history. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: So, I know you weren't part of the formation of the credit union. But I wonder if you can talk about it a little more? If you know more, were the employee unions at Hanford involved in the credit union, establishing that?
Tyler: Yes.
Bauman: And anything you can talk about that?
Tyler: Helen Van Patten was one. GESA started it first. And then the blue collars said well, we got to have one of those. The first store was down by the Spudnut Shop. I think we had one or two employees. And everything was in a ledger, handwritten. Joe Blow borrowed $25. It was very basic. But fortunately, it kept growing and membership increased.
Bauman: So the unions saw it as a way to provide credit union opportunities--
Tyler: Right.
Bauman:--for blue collar workers or laborers or whatever? Okay. So I want to—going back to your work at Hanford, what are some of the more challenging aspects of your work, and maybe some more rewarding aspects of your work?
Tyler: That’s a good question. Probably one of the most challenging was the responsibility when you're out on a hot job where the contamination levels are great and the radiation levels are great, and you have a whole crew of people. It challenges you to--it's always in the back of your mind that something's going to happen and I'm not going to see it, or I'm not going to catch it. And somebody's going to get overexposed. And that's always in the back of your mind. Because--and I have to beat my own drum here for a bit—radiation monitoring and health physics now, whatever they are, it's a very challenging job. You're responsible for--you're taking care of people. And they trust you. And they expect you to look out for them. And it's a lot of responsibility, but most everybody accepts that gladly, because they know how important it is. Because you're responsible for--you could get somebody really overexposed, and who knows what the consequences are? As far as rewards for that, I think is the satisfaction of when the job is done, that you knew you did your best job. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got overexposed. Nobody got contaminated. And the job got done.
Bauman: Were there any events or incidents or anything, sort of unique things that happened during your time working at Hanford that sort of really stands out to you?
Tyler: When I first hired in, like I said, I went to REDOX. One of the problems they had shortly before I got here was they had a ruthenium—they ran some ruthenium and they played it out in the stack. And then it broke loose. And it kind of went out in the desert and on the ground. And you had ruthenium chunks of—it looked like white paper that built up on the inside the stack and then finally broke loose and fluttered out and went everywhere. And one of my first jobs with a GM and a walking stick was walking out through the desert and finding these things. Little specks, big specks, didn't have any trouble finding them. [LAUGHTER] They were very hot. And I remember we used the KOA cans from T Plant, which were little round cans, metal cans about that big around, about this high with a snap-on lid. And that's what we put them in, with dirt for shielding. And then buried them. But there's been a lot of incidents of hot burials from PUREX. I remember some where we used a burial string. We used a locomotive, a whole bunch of flat cars. And then at that time, they'd build big wooden boxes. And I recall one big one that had enough lumber in it to build two B houses. Huge—it sat on two flat cars. And we put it in, and we took readings over the top of the tunnel as it went out of the tunnel towards the burial ground. And it read greater than 500 R. And as you know, 500 R for an hour is a lethal dose rate to 50% of the people, 60%. And then you go down the railroad track behind B Plant, pull it across the highway which patrol barricaded the road. So you pull the string across the road and then back it into the burial ground. And then you had to sink—this box was built on skids. And a big long steel cable lay on another flat car, three or four flat cars away from it. So you would pull that. And you would pull it down into a burial trench. And the Cat would be down there ready. And the train would back up and they would grab that cable, put the eye on. Hook it to the Cat. And then the Cat skinner would pull the cable off. And the train would move up until the boxes sit here and the cables here. And the Cat's down here pulling. And then we'd get up to the--and there was a dock where you could slide it off. And you would turn that box and pull it in. Pull it down into the trench, down to the other end, wherever you wanted it. Unhook the Cat. Leave it. Pull the Cat out. And then they would backfill that box. And that's the way they did the burials. And it worked great except when the box collapsed unexpectedly.
Bauman: Then not so great.
Tyler: Yeah, that's not a good--that happened once or twice.
Bauman: During your years working out there, were you ever concerned about your own safety, health, protection, in any way?
Tyler: Well as stupid as it may sound, no. I never was. Because I always figured I knew what I was doing. And I received some very good training in the Navy, which helped. But I never worried about it. I always trusted me.
Bauman: Were you a member of a union when you were working at Hanford? And what union was that? And I guess, what sort of relationship did the union have with management here at Hanford during the time you were here?
Tyler: Good and bad. [LAUGHTER] I used to be chief steward for the radiation monitors. I went through two negotiations. And after the last one, I decided I didn't want any more of that. Chief steward's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.
Bauman: What does that mean exactly? What—chief steward--
Tyler: Well, you're the union rep plant wide for all of the HPTs. And I had this grandiose idea that I could just change everything. It's a great idea, but it doesn't work. It's a job that somebody has to do. And it's a job that is thankless. Because somebody's always mad at you. Whatever you do, in some of the people's eyes, you could always do better. And it's just not a good job. [LAUGHTER] But I enjoyed it. You learn a lot. And you learn both sides of the fence--how the company thinks and how the union thinks. And then you try and compromise.
Bauman: Were there ever any times you were here where there was a strike or any sort of--
Tyler: Two--'66 and '76.
Bauman: And were those sort of across the site?
Tyler: Yep. And in '66, after we settled the '66 strike, GE left.
Bauman: Was that one of the reasons they left?
Tyler: Yeah, well, they had planned to leave. And then that's when--because when GE was here, they were the only contractor. And then when they left, they kind of broke it up into the 200 Areas and the 100 Areas. And it's always been different contractors, not just one prime contractor.
Bauman: Do you remember what some of the key issues were in '66 and '76 in terms of--
Tyler: Wages. Wages were always the key issue. Well, I take that back. '66 or '76 was, they were going to do away with the buses. And that was a key issue for everybody. It didn't happen, but it was a--that was when they spent all the money redoing the bus lot. And then a couple years later, they did away with the buses anyway. But we did get air conditioned buses. Before we had old buses, the old green buses. Well like the ones sitting down at--
Bauman: The CREHST Museum?
Tyler: Yeah. Those were some of the newer ones. The older ones were international buses that looked like a truck. Cold in the winter and hot in the summer. But they worked. When they did away with the buses, see, that did away with a lot of jobs in the bus lot. Maintenance, everything there, which was a lot of people.
Bauman: So part of that was about jobs and issues of transportation?
Tyler: Mm-hmm.
Bauman: Anything I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about or that you think we should talk about?
Tyler: Well, we've covered pretty much every--well, we've covered pretty much everything I think. I don't really know what you're looking for.
Bauman: Just your experience. That's why I wonder if there's something that you experienced some event or something that I haven't asked you about yet that you think would be important to—
Tyler: Well. When I retired, I took the first early out and then got bored to death and came back. When I was in the environmental group in West Area, a good friend of mine was an environmental manager outside the site. But he talked me into coming back part time and become a waste shipper and a waste handler. Which was--I'd never done it. I knew what it was. But I finally relented. I enjoyed it. It's entirely different. Because I was kind of burned out on radiation protection, and I wanted to do something different. Didn't want to retire, but I wanted to do something different. So I went to the classes and become a certified waste shipper and a waste handler. And we took care of all of the sites outside of 200 East, 200 West. All the burial sites, all the drilling sides, the river, pretty much everything. And it was very interesting. Until '95, when I decided I didn't like the contractor. [LAUGHTER] And I went back to health physics.
Bauman: Most of the students I teach now were born after the Cold War ended. Obviously most of your career, the Cold War was going on during most of the time you were working at Hanford. So I'm wondering what you think would be important for young people today and people in future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War?
Tyler: I'm trying to remember. We had the strike in '66. And there was almost another strike four or five years later. In fact midnight was the deadline when we were supposed to go on strike. And at 11:30, we got a notification that the President had put a stop to the strike because of the situation with the Cold War thing. And I think that's the first and the last time that ever happened. But as far as--
Bauman: So then about 1970 or so?
Tyler: Early, yeah, '71 or '72 maybe. No, it was before that, because I was still on shift. It was probably '68, '69 maybe. But as far as the Cold War, it's still going on in different forms—my personal opinion. You look back at history--and I've lived through a lot of it--nothing has really changed. Like what's going on now, and the Bible says there'll be war and rumors of war. And that's correct. Because whatever our President does—whatever he does is going to be wrong in a lot of people's eyes. It's kind of like if you don't do it, you should have. And if you do do it, you shouldn't have. [LAUGHTER] It's a different type of cold war. Instead of—we used to worry about Russia. And I'm not too sure that—maybe we should still be worrying about Russia and a lot of other countries that--Things have changed. But they haven't—the basic things that caused the Cold War hasn't changed. There's all kind of weapons. I don't know.
Bauman: All right. I think that's all the questions I have for you.
Tyler: Okay.
Bauman: I want to thank you for coming in today.
Tyler: Thank you for having me.
Bauman: Pleasure to talk to you.
Tyler: Good.
Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. To start us off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us?
Mark Jensen: My name is Mark Jensen, M-A-R-K, J-E-N-S-E-N.
O’Reagan: Great. Okay. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Mr. Jensen on March 25th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Jensen about his experiences working at the Hanford site and living in the Tri-Cities. To start us off, can you tell us a little bit about your life before you came to Hanford?
Jensen: Well, my mother moved to Richland to teach English at what was then Columbia High School, now Richland High School. She was a single mother with five children. So I started school at Jefferson Elementary in Richland in kindergarten. When I was in third grade, my mother remarried, and I was adopted by my new father. He was a long-time Hanford worker. Anyway, so I grew up in the Tri-Cities. We moved to Kennewick when I went into fourth grade, and I went through the Kennewick School District after that, and graduated from Kamiakin High School in 1974. Went to Washington State University, got a degree in forestry, thinking that would get me out of the Tri-Cities, because there aren’t any forests here. Unfortunately, there weren’t any jobs in forestry. So I came back home to live with my parents, and my dad mentioned that N Reactor was hiring reactor operators. So I applied, and got a job as a reactor operator.
O’Reagan: What time frame would it have been that your mother moved here?
Jensen: I was five, so that would have been 1961.
O’Reagan: Okay, great. Can you tell us about the schooling, the education, the schools in the Tri-Cities as you experienced them?
Jensen: Well, I went to Jefferson Elementary, like kindergarten through third grade. It was in an old building left over from World War II. It was probably a grade school built as part of the Manhattan Project. That’s all long since been torn down. Then when we moved to Kennewick, I went to Hawthorne Elementary school there. Building’s still there as far as I know. And then to Vista Elementary, then to Highlands Middle School—Highlands Junior High in those days. Then the Kamiakin High School which was brand new.
O’Reagan: What was life like as a kid in Kennewick?
Jensen: It was pretty routine, I guess. Went outside and played in those days instead of staying inside for video games. It didn’t matter how hot it was outside, we’d go out and play baseball all day usually, and things like that. Then just going to school during the school year and doing whatever during the summer. When I was growing up, before my mother remarried, she would work in the summer and I was usually babysat by some of her students. After she remarried, then she stopped working during the summer. But I’m fairly certain that one of the reactor operators I worked with at N Reactor was one of my babysitters when I was second or third grade. But anyway.
O’Reagan: When you were sort of a teenager, what sort of stuff did you and your friends do for fun around the area?
Jensen: Usually, after doing our homework, we’d go outside and play basketball, every day, every night. We had a lighted basketball court. We’d play basketball all day Saturday and Sunday. When the weather was nicer, we’d play baseball or variants of baseball, since there were seldom enough people to make up a couple of teams. We used to go to baseball games—minor league baseball games—in the summer. A variety of different team names. There was a stadium in Kennewick called Sanders Jacobs Field that’s long since been demolished. That’s pretty much what we did, just mess around. Go bowling, things like that.
O’Reagan: Do you know what your step-father did at the Hanford site?
Jensen: He was a chemical engineer, and he worked at N Reactor and the older reactors designing systems for decontaminating the reactors. When I was in high school, he worked at the Tank Farms in the 200 Area. He was in charge of Tank Farm surveillance, and that was when the tanks started leaking—the older tanks first started leaking. So we got frequent telephone calls in the middle of the night that there was a leaking tank. Sometimes I’d hear my dad say something on the telephone, and the next day I would see that in the newspaper, as a Hanford spokesman said, kind of thing. That was kind of interesting.
O’Reagan: So I guess you were aware of the future environmental issues pretty early on?
Jensen: Yes. Yeah.
O’Reagan: Did that impact your life at all? Or was it sort of in the background?
Jensen: It’s just the way things were.
O’Reagan: So when you came back and were looking for a job and you first heard about this job at N Reactor, did you—was that something you were sort of excited about? Was it something you were--?
Jensen: It sounded interesting. I knew nothing about it. Not too many people knew reactor operators, although there were certainly plenty of them around here over the years. So I had no idea, really, what that job entailed. But it was a job, and it paid pretty good. So when it was offered to me, I accepted it.
O’Reagan: What kind of skill sets did it end up requiring you to gain?
Jensen: I had to learn a lot about how to operate complex systems, do valving in a precise, controlled manner so it was done correctly. Not so much working with pumps, other than checking to make sure they were running properly. I didn’t have to do maintenance kind of things. Then once I got my certification in the control room, I had to learn how to operate all of the systems, use the controls in the control room to do that, set everything up properly, and what to do in case of an emergency, or a reactor scram, or upset. Try and keep the reactor from scramming, things like that.
O’Reagan: What kind of training was involved?
Jensen: We started out, once we got into the certification program, we went into what we called phase one training. That basically started off with fundamentals training. We got some math and chemistry. Didn’t hurt that I had chemistry in college. It’s kind of funny—the week or two weeks we had in chemistry, I think I learned more than the two semesters of chemistry in college, because the instructor was so much better for the fundamentals class than the professor I had at college. But it might have also been because I was older and a little more mature.
O’Reagan: Was that onsite at Hanford?
Jensen: It was onsite at Hanford, out at N Reactor. We had some chemistry, math, a little bit of electronics, things like that. Started learning some of the various systems at the plant. Then we went back on shift for several months. I can’t remember now how long, I mean this is almost 40 years ago, so it’s kind of hard to remember everything. So when we went back on shift, we were given a packet of stuff that we had to study on our own and learn while we were assigned to do other jobs throughout the plant. Then we went back into class, into phase two, and studied more systems, and started learning how things in the control room worked. I can’t remember if there were four phases or three phases, but each time after a phase ended, we had an exit exam. Then we went back to shift, with more stuff to do in between the regular job stuff. At the end of all of the phases, we took an eight-hour written exam. Theoretically, if you failed the written exam, they could fire you. Or they could just reassign you as a non-certified operator. Some people did that after they failed. They just said they didn’t want to continue. But generally they gave you a second chance. Well, I passed the first time, so didn’t have to worry about that.
O’Reagan: How long did that process take?
Jensen: Started probably in February or March of ’81. I was completely certified in June of ’82. So it was probably about a year and a half for the total process. But they were in a hurry to get people certified, because there were a lot of older operators who were getting ready to retire. So they needed to get people in there and get some experience before they lost too many of the older, experienced operators. So after the eight-hour written exam, we had to study for what we called the demonstration exam. That was in the control room, and an instructor would say, okay, Mark, how do you set this console up for operation? You are going to do this job, show me without actually doing it--because it was in the real reactor—how you would do it. Later on, we had a simulator that was pretty much an exact duplicate of the reactor, and then you could actually do the things in the simulator. But for my demonstration exam, it was just point out what you would do. When we passed that exam, we actually got a pay raise. We went from what we called a Grade 18 to a Grade 21, and got a nice little bump in pay. Then you studied for your oral exam. That one, you went before an oral board. There was a representative from operations, a representative from training, and a representative from nuclear safety. They all had a certain set of questions to ask, and any one of them could come in at any time with follow-up questions. So that—I think that took me six hours. And I passed that, so then I was a certified operator. Except that operations would not sign your certificate until you demonstrated that you could handle the jobs. So when I went back on shift, I was assigned to an experienced operator. So we rotated through various positions in the control room, and I followed him around. Initially, he would do things and tell me what he was doing. Then he would have me do it, but he would tell me what to do. And then when he was pretty satisfied I knew what I was doing, he would just sit back and let me figure out what I was doing. And then he must have told the control room supervisor I was ready, control room supervisor told the shift manager I was ready, and the shift manager recommended that my certificate be signed by the manager of operations. Then I could sit on consoles all by myself.
O’Reagan: So was there an influx of younger operators at that point?
Jensen: Yes, we had quite a few coming through. My certification class, we had three supervisor candidates, and I think we had seven operator candidates. One of them ended up not completing it. All of the rest passed. Some of them, it took them a couple attempts at the eight hour and maybe even the oral board to get certified. Then right after me, there was another class with a lot of other young people. So we got a lot of young people in there, and then that allowed some of the older operators to retire. I think some of them were hanging around a little longer than they might have wanted to otherwise, just because they knew they would have been shorthanded if they left.
O’Reagan: Was this all at N Reactor?
Jensen: Yes.
O’Reagan: Was it the same training program for all the reactors?
Jensen: Well, N Reactor was the only reactor left at the time. They had similar programs at the older reactors. But it evolved over time and got a little more detailed. We had a little more stuff on reactor physics. In the original days, it’s just, this is what you’re going to do, and nobody asked why, because it was all secret. It’s just, do this and keep this needle within this range, or whatever. Later on, you actually started to teach people what was happening. Some of the old operators complained about having some reactor physics stuff in there. Wah, we don’t need this stuff. And they were so good that it’s like, I don’t know that they really did need that. They just knew what to do when something went wrong. But the theory is it never hurts to have too much knowledge.
O’Reagan: How many people were working at a given time in the actual reactor?
Jensen: In the control room, or—?
O’Reagan: That, and also—
Jensen: It’s easier for me to say in the control room, but I’ll estimate on the other.
O’Reagan: Sure.
Jensen: Minimal shift in the control room was three operators and a control room supervisor, but we generally had four. There were three positions that had to be manned 24 hours a day when the reactor was operating. One of them, the nuclear console, where you actually controlled the reactor power level, we rotated two people in and out on that: two hours on and two hours off. If you only had three, then, I think the control room supervisor could give you relief. But you weren’t allowed to be there for more than two hours at a time. The other two consoles, you could be there for the whole eight hours on a shift. After my class and the next one went through, they had enough operators that we could get six or more operators in there, which gave a lot more flexibility, both for giving breaks to people, because it can get hard to keep your focus all night long, particularly on graveyard shift, when the reactor ran itself, pretty much. You’re just looking at things to make sure everything’s normal. That gets hard to do. It doesn’t sound like it would be, but it is. It’s pretty—puts a strain on you. So we had more people to give breaks. And extra certified operators to go out throughout the plant and check things, because they could recognize problems that non-certified operators might not. So, let’s say six of us in the control room, a control room supervisor, a shift manager. They were both certified control room shift manager/operators also. So they could do anything in the control room we could. And on a typical shift, you usually had a couple of electricians, a couple of instrument technicians, three or four health physics technicians—radiological control technicians—we called them radiation monitors in those days. Plus supervisors for all of them. And maybe a handful of millwrights, pipefitters, whatever. Mostly, the maintenance people did their work when the reactor was shut down. There wasn’t very much for them to do when the reactor was operating. But there was always work for instrument technicians. They would come in, and if something wasn’t working right in the control room, we’d call them in and they would tinker with it and try to fix it. Things like that. Day shift, there were a lot more people on there. And then during a reactor outage, much more work going on, particularly or the maintenance people. Because that’s when they were tear pumps down and rebuild them and things like that. So there were probably, on days, a couple hundred people out there. On shift, maybe thirty.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. So you’ve sort of been doing this, but could you walk us through a day in the life? What would sort of your average day involve?
Jensen: Okay. I’d come to work in the morning, a little bit before eight. And if I were assigned to the control room, I would go in and receive a turnover from the operator whose console I was taking over. We had a schedule that rotated us through. So if you’re one or two, you’re on the nuclear console. If you’re three, you’re on the double-A console. If you’re number four, you’re on the BN console, and I do not know what BN stands for. We used to joke that it was short for boring, because it was the most boring of the three consoles when we were at full power. So if I’m going to be on the nuclear console, I’d come in and there’s an operator who’s ready to leave. He gives me a turnover, tells me what the power level is, if we’re going to be raising power, if we’re at full power, we’re just going to hold power, if there’s any areas of the reactor that seem to want to lose power or gain power. So I get the turnover and then I take over. If I was on the nuclear console, I would work for two hours, and the other operator would come in, and I would give him a turnover and he would take over. And then I would usually give breaks to the other operators, unless we had enough other people to give them breaks. Anytime you take over, you’d get a turnover for what’s going on. Worked the nuclear console for two days, then you’d go to the double-A console. The double-A console controlled the reactor pressure and the primary coolant pump speed, and sending steam to the Washington Public Power Supply System. So you had this big console, went around like this and like this, and there were separate sections for each of the steam generator cells. We had six—five operating at any one time. Occasionally we ran with four operating. We never did all six. There was a reason why; I can’t remember what the reason why was. But always had one in reserve. That one was a pretty busy console during startups and shutdowns. I had full power. It was look around, look at all of the drive turbines for the primary coolant pumps and make sure they’re running at the proper RPM, look at the pressurizer level and make sure it’s at 23 feet. Got very busy on a reactor scram—lots of stuff to do there. And after the day on the double-A console, we went to the BN console. That monitored the secondary coolant system, so we had water coming back from the Washington Public Power Supply System. We sent them steam, they sent back condensate to us. Then we had a secondary system to maintain the pressure of the main steam header. So we had to watch that, plus we had to watch the rupture monitor system, which would check the radiation levels in the coolant water outlet from the reactor tubes. There were 1,003 tubes with fuel in them. The system would compare the radiation level between two adjacent tubes, and if one of them was higher than the other, a red light would come on on this panel. Then you’d go over and push the button to reset it. They’re coming on and off all the time. But if we had a rupture, that meant there was a leak in the cladding on the fuel. Usually, it was a little small pinhole; sometimes—and I never saw this—the welded-on endcap would blow off. Uranium, normally, is not very soluble in water, but when the water’s really hot, then it’s really soluble. And we’re running at 600 degrees or so for the coolant water. So if you had a rupture, you could start dissolving the uranium very rapidly. That’s got all of the fission products in it from the uranium atoms that have split, which are highly radioactive. So you could completely contaminate the primary coolant loop. So you needed to catch a rupture before it progressed too far. That was a frustrating job because those lights are coming on and off all the time. You got to look at those, and it was kind of a bad design, because that panel was here, the other panel was over there, and you had to keep looking back and forth. So that’s why we’d call it the boring console. It was pretty boring at full power. A lot of work there, again, on a reactor startup. We had to set things up to control the main steam header pressure, and that was a lot of work. So it was kind of fun, then. But full power, it was kind of boring. After we cycled through, if we had more than four operators, then we’d have two days where we’re—you could either study, because we always had to maintain our certification, and we had quarterly requalification classes and every two years we had to recertify. Or you could just be assigned to go out in the plant and do various jobs, help out—if it’s needed somewhere, help out some of the operators who were still studying to be certified operators, help train them, things like that. And then you just kept rotating through that. If we had an outage, we only had two places manned in the control room. One was the double-A console, and the other one was the communications console. So you kept contact with everybody throughout the plant, and made PA announcements if need be. Just let people know what’s going on. If we were in charge/discharge operations, you might be assigned to work on the charge or discharge elevator, to set it up for refueling the reactor. Or just—if it’s not a charge/discharge outage or we’re already done with that, you might be going in the rod rooms and doing some valving to assist the millwrights who might be repairing control rod issues and things like that.
O’Reagan: I saw you had some pictures there. Could you walk us through some of what those are?
Jensen: Yeah. Here is a picture. I found this online in the Hanford system a while back, and I was really surprised. That’s me, and I don’t remember posing for this picture. But I am on the charge elevator here. This is the wall, and it’s opposite the reactor and it’s a shield wall and each of these things here are plugs. You can open one up on the elevator side and on the other side, there was a really large elevator called the W work elevator. It actually came off a World War II aircraft carrier for lifting airplanes up to the flight deck. They could pull a plug out there, and they would run a tube through this penetration. Then you would mate it up with the process tube in the reactor. That’s how you refueled. They must have had a photographer up there taking pictures to show other people what goes on there. That was my assignment, and so I obviously posed for this picture, but like I say, I don’t remember doing this at all.
O’Reagan: Is that your usual outfit when you were working?
Jensen: Yes. Those are called anti-C clothes, or—original Hanford terminology was SWP clothing, for Special Work Procedure. During World War II, you didn’t want to say that this was to protect against contamination, because this is all secret what we’re doing. So you’re doing a special work procedure, so you have to wear the special work procedure clothes.
O’Reagan: So that’s a second pair of gloves there?
Jensen: Yeah. I would be wearing two pairs of coveralls, a hood, two pairs of gloves and some rubber shoes. And underneath the rubber shoes there’s some canvas booties. So this is not a real high contamination job. If we were actually refueling the reactor, I’d be wearing plastic raingear over that. We used to wear a face shield to keep water out of our face. Later on, we had a hood with a blower unit that provided air so we didn’t suffocate, and that kept water off our face. So that’s about as good as I could get on the elevator. This picture was taken of our crew in the control room. We had started a straight day shift crew. It was so we had more time for training. We worked Monday through Thursday in the control room, and every Friday we had training. And the rotating shifts, when they came in on days, they worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the control room, and then during the week they had training. We formed up this brand new shift. They let it out by seniority, and there weren’t that many people who wanted to do it. Some people, strangely enough, really liked shiftwork. So I managed to get on the first crew. And on our very first day working together as a crew, we had what we call a WPPSS turbine trip—the Washington Public Power Supply System bought our steam, and they had two turbines, and one of their turbines tripped. That had happened before, and the reactor had never managed to ride through that without scramming. Well, we kept the reactor from scramming. And I was on this console here—this is the nuclear console. I was controlling the reactor power level. When their turbine dropped off, the main steam header pressure goes up. This is getting a little technical, but—
O’Reagan: No, that’s great.
Jensen: The main steam pressure goes up high. That sits on top of the steam generators. When the pressure’s high, water doesn’t boil as easily. And when water boils, you get heat exchange. So we are sending hotter water back through the reactor. That is not as good a moderator as the cooler water. So the reactor power went down very fast. So I had to start pulling control rods to make up for that. In low-enriched reactors, like any of the Hanford reactors, when you lose power rapidly, you start building up a fission product called xenon which is a neutron poison. It absorbs neutrons better than anything else. At equilibrium power, we’re making xenon at a certain rate, and it’s destroyed as soon as it’s made by absorbing neutrons. So the net amount of it in the reactor is zero. But if we lose power, we’re still producing it for several hours at the old rate. But we don’t have as many neutrons in there, so the reactor power will go down and it will just make it worse. So you have to pull rods very fast. So that’s what I had to do. My part was to keep the reactor from going down so far that the xenon would take it all the way down. The other operators were working to keep the main steam header pressure from going up too high, because we had a scram trip on that, because you didn’t want to rupture the steam header. The people controlling the primary coolant loop pressure had to do work on that. It was very exciting. But we survived it, and so they took this picture as a commemoration. One of the people involved was on the nuclear console when they took the picture and he didn’t want to be in the picture. So he’s not in there. But I like this, because if you know what you’re looking at, you can actually see that the reactor’s operating. There’s some indications there that the reactor’s at its 4,000 megawatt power level. And it’s one of the few pictures I’ve ever seen where you can tell the reactor was operating. Then, almost a year later, the exact same thing happened again, and I was in the same place. It was really easy the second time, because I knew exactly what to do. So they took a picture again, for all of us. This is the double-A console. Kept these all these years. As long as I’ve got these up here, this is an aerial photo of the N Reactor complex. Let me see. This is the reactor building right here. Make sure I’m not looking at things backwards. This building over here is the Washington Public Power Supply System. You can kind of see over here there’s some lines that go over, and those are the steam lines going over to them. They bought the steam from us and then sent the condensate back after they ran it through their turbines.
O’Reagan: How much did you have to communicate with them?
Jensen: Frequently. We called them up--any time we were going to do something that might affect the power level, we would call them up, tell them we’re going to do that. If they were going to do something that might affect the condensate coming back, they would let us know. They would give us some numbers. From there, power generation, which we would compile into a daily report, I think that was the basis for how much money they paid us for the steam. Things like that. So we were in constant contact with them. Usually it was the operator on the double-A console who would communicate with the—we called them Whoops in those days. They didn’t like being called Whoops. Now it’s Energy Northwest. But that’s a habit that’s hard to break. I still want to call them Whoops. And we didn’t mean it anything derogatory in those days, but—
O’Reagan: When you said that the turbine tripped, would that seize it up? What does that involve?
Jensen: I’m not really sure why it tripped. They may have had some valves—steam admittance valves close or something. If they told us why it tripped at the time, I can’t remember. This was 1987 or so. So it was quite a while—almost 30 years ago. The second trip—not sure if it was the same cause or not. I know one time they had a turbine trip and we didn’t survive that one. [LAUGHTER] It was kind of funny. Somebody was sweeping in their control room, and the broom fell and hit a switch and caused the turbine to trip off. So on that reactor outage, they paid for everything we did to get the reactor back up. We had a special charge code. Because it was their fault, so they’re paying for it.
O’Reagan: That would, I guess, give the reactor xenon poisoning and they couldn’t start up for a certain amount of time?
Jensen: Yes. If we scrammed from full power, theoretically, you could pull control rods almost immediately and override the xenon building up. But we had a mandated one-hour hold if we scrammed from full power. And that’s so that you will make sure it wasn’t a spurious scram. If it’s something that’s actually not working correctly, so it would be unsafe to operate, you can figure that out. And by doing that—waiting that one hour, it gets impossible to start the reactor up. So our minimum downtime from full power was generally about 23 hours—23 to 24 hours. If we could figure out what the problem was and get it fixed, then we started up the next day. If I was something serious, it might take a few more days, or several days, to figure out what the problem is or correct the problem. And then when we started up, it was kind of interesting, because we had the control rods pulled almost completely out of the reactor before the reactor went critical. And then as the power goes up, you’re pushing control rods in, rather than pulling them out to raise power, until you get to a point—it’s called xenon turnaround—where you’ve burned up all of the xenon that was in the reactor, and now the reactor’s making more of the xenon and then they start coming back out. So those were actually really fun.
O’Reagan: How often did the reactor scram?
Jensen: N Reactor was getting kind of old by the time I was there. Some of the equipment was really old, old technology, and getting a little hard to maintain. We usually had two or three scrams in a particular operating run. I’m not really sure how many, because, again, it’s been so long. We would typically operate for a month. And we were in plutonium weapons-grade production mode, and so we only operated for a month, and then we would shut down and about a third of the reactor. But it was unusual to go an entire cycle without at least one scram. And usually they were spurious ones. The ones that caused a lot of them were the flow monitor system, which was a pretty old system. If somebody slammed a door or something somewhere, the instruments would vibrate, and it would give a false indication of low flow, and the reactor would scram. It only took one of the 1,003 flow monitor devices to cause a reactor scram. So that was kind of touchy there.
O’Reagan: And that was automated?
Jensen: Yeah, it was automated. You had this big panel with all these 1,003 dials. Normally, we never changed them. If we swapped steam generator cells out—like cell five was out for years until it got re-tubed, and then we put that one in and took another one out so they could re-tube that one. And we had to adjust all of those dials. Oh, that was a boring job—get them all set exactly right, and then somebody has to go through and check them all. If we ran in that mode with that same balance of steam generators, we didn’t have to do that every startup.
O’Reagan: In the pictures with the other operators, could you just tell us about one or two of the other folks you were working with?
Jensen: Okay. This is Dennis Real. Hopefully he won’t mind that I mentioned his name. He still works at Hanford. He started a little bit before me. This gentleman is Bill Terhark. He was a very, very experienced operator. He was one of the ones that you really wanted to have in the control room when things went bad, because he knew what to do all the time. He had so much experience. He went back to the 1950s, operating—probably operated at every one of the reactors. This is Fred Butcher, Jr. His dad had also been a reactor operator, Fred Butcher, Sr. And that’s me, and this is our control room supervisor, Glen Buckley.
O’Reagan: Do you know anything about their backgrounds? Were they also—I guess the one who had most experience probably trained in reactors, but were they all engineers mostly?
Jensen: No, no. Dennis had been a paramedic or EMT before he started working at the reactor. I’m not sure about Fred, what he did. Bill had graduated from high school, joined the Air Force, came out of the Air Force, got a job at Hanford. Typically, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they did not hire engineers to be—and I don’t know what Glen’s job was—or what his background was, before. Most of us, except the older operators had college of some sort or another. When I hired on, they were hiring people usually with a couple years or more of college.
O’Reagan: So you were there through the end of N Reactor, is that right?
Jensen: Yes. In 1987—well, 1986—I think it was in April, was the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl, although really was not similar at all to N Reactor, everybody thought it was, because both reactors are moderated by graphite instead of light-water. So everybody looked at graphite—that must be the cause of why Chernobyl blew up. Well, it blew up because it was a really poor design, and it was poorly operated, and they had a really unusual transient situation and then they had a steam explosion that tore the reactor apart. Well, we decided we would make some safety upgrades. They decided we’re going to shut down on January 7th, 1987. Six months of safety upgrades, then we’d start back up. Well, we pretty much knew we were never going to start back up again. They did do all the safety upgrades, spent millions of dollars on them, but—anyway, so we came in on January 7th knowing that this is probably the last day of operation for the reactor, and it was our job to shut it down. I was on the double-A console that day. It would have been nice if I had been on the nuclear console, to be the guy actually putting the rods in, but that was Dennis. So we shut the reactor down. Took about an hour. We still had fuel in the reactor for a good almost two years before we defueled the reactor. Because we were going to start up again. And then finally they said, no, we’re going to defuel the reactor and we’ll go on wet layup. So we still had water pumping through the pipes, keep everything wet. Because if you let it drain of water and then it’s damp in there, then things will start to rust. But if you have water flowing through there, that wouldn’t happen. So we went for a few months where we kept all of the pumps running and stuff like that, but no fuel in the reactor. And then they said, well, now we’re going to go into dry layup. So we drained the primary coolant loop and all the other systems, and then we had big fans blowing hot air through there to keep moisture from condensing in there. The thought was, maybe we’ll get the order to start up again. And then they just said, nope. Pulling the plug. Reactor is abandoned, and it’ll go into decontamination and decommissioning. And it’s essentially been torn down now, and what’s left of it—the reactor block itself—is all cocooned. Just like most of the other old reactors.
O’Reagan: What happened to your and the other reactor operators’ careers at that point?
Jensen: [SIGH] Well, that was kind of a scary time. People thought we’re going to get laid off. Some people quit and went back to school. I remember one guy went to school and got a doctor’s degree in optometry and became an optometrist. There was some programs to help people with that, some money to help people go to college and get something else. Some people just found other jobs and left. And then I ended up staying. I was getting bored with being an operator at a reactor that wasn’t operating, and there wasn’t even any fuel in the reactor. But we still had all the stored fuel, and they needed somebody to be what they called the criticality safety representative, to work with operations and with the criticality safety analyst to make sure we’re still storing that fuel safely, so we don’t have any inadvertent criticality accident. Not very likely, but it could conceivably still happen. So I got that job, and in addition to that I was doing other stuff that you would call nuclear safety work. So I ended up becoming, to all intents and purposes, a nuclear safety engineer, even though I don’t have an engineering degree. And I’ve been doing that ever since.
O’Reagan: Who is that, technically, that you were working for at that point? Was it Battelle?
Jensen: No. Initially I worked for UNC Nuclear Industries. That was UNC parts stands for United Nuclear Corporation. They had the contract to run the reactors. In those days, Rockwell ran the 200 Areas for the Tank Farms and stuff like that, and the processing plants. So they ran the PUREX Plant that was extracting plutonium from our fuel. Battelle operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and that does research and design. Right after we shut down, DoE announced that they were going to consolidate all of the contracts. Westinghouse got that contract, so I worked for Westinghouse at the time I got into nuclear safety. Westinghouse went through a contract period and then a renewal period, and DoE typically does not renew anybody’s contract—nowadays anyway—more than once. So Westinghouse left, and then they announced a bid for a new contract. The Fluor Corporation won that one, and so I worked for Fluor for several years. They went through—I think they went through two and a half. DoE gave them an extension on the second done until they could get everything in place. And then the contract was won by the CH2M Hill Company, and that’s who I work for now.
O’Reagan: Does it make much difference when one becomes—
Jensen: WE used to joke the only difference it makes is in the color of the paycheck. It makes a little bit of difference, because you get some upper management coming in, and they have different ideas on how things should be done. We all joke that we have to educate them on how things actually are done. That’s only half-joking because it’s different than anything else. Fluor had some subcontractors who had never done work for Department of Energy before. So they wanted to do things the way you do it in the commercial nuclear industry. And it’s like, you don’t get to do it that way—you do it the way DoE tells you to do it. So we kind of had to educate them. But it’s a little bit different. There’s a little bit of different philosophy every time.
O’Reagan: Was there ever any kind of either interest or communication with the commercial sector, in terms of learning or teaching any particular things?
Jensen: We did a little bit. I cannot remember the name of the organization, but it’s an organization that compiles knowledge from commercial nuclear reactors all over the country, and the disseminates that to help everybody. We had some people who would go to meetings there, so I guess we became a member of this group. I never was involved in that, but—So we would hear things that happened at other plants and then see if there were some lessons learned that we could apply. But N Reactor was so different than a commercial reactor that sometimes things that happened at N Reactor, they wouldn’t be able to use at a commercial reactor and vice versa.
O’Reagan: How secretive was your work?
Jensen: Not much. There were a few things—security stuff was classified. But what we were doing was no longer secret, hadn’t been secret since 1945. I had to have a clearance—it was a secret level clearance. Mostly that was just to make sure I was trustworthy and wouldn’t sabotage the plant or something. Very rarely did I actually see any information that was classified secret.
O’Reagan: I would assume, though, that the plutonium itself—I guess you didn’t see the plutonium until it got through the PUREX Plant?
Jensen: Yeah, well I never saw it. I’ve never seen plutonium. All of that stuff—how it was handled, how it was stored—that’s all part of the security thing, and that was all classified. And would still be, to this day, except we don’t have any plutonium at Hanford—not in any discrete form that you can do anything with, anyway.
O’Reagan: So what is it you’re doing again? Could you give us more detail on what you’re doing or what you did subsequent to being a reactor operator?
Jensen: I worked in nuclear and criticality safety for N Reactor until we shipped all of the fuel over to the fuel storage basins at the K East and K West Reactors and I moved over there. I worked in criticality safety for that. When they were storing the fuel, that was fairly easy, because they weren’t doing anything. Then they decided they needed to get the fuel out of the basins because they’re close to the river, and the K East Basin had leaked at least once and maybe twice in the past. So the contaminated water gets into the groundwater and eventually gets out to the river. So we needed to get the fuel off the river, so they built a storage facility in the 200 East Area. We had to build a whole system to take the fuel out of the basin and put it in shielded casks and ship it over thee. So there was a lot of work on that, and all of that had to be set up to prevent criticalities. And also nuclear safety, which is more concerned with releases of radiological stuff to the atmosphere. So you need to keep those releases down below certain guidelines that DoE provides to protect the public.
O’Reagan: So was this at all part of this amelioration cleanup efforts at that point?
Jensen: Yeah, that’s the whole goal that we’re working towards: get all of the fuel out of the reactor basins. So we got it all out of the K East Basin first, and then that’s actually been destroyed—the basin has been completely dug up and destroyed, and the area backfilled. The reactor’s prepared for cocooning, but hasn’t been, because they ran out of funding. So it’s in a safe, stable condition right now. K West Basin is empty of fuel, but it has sludge. I still do some work for 100 K, although mostly I work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant now. They’re going to move all the sludge out, and then they’ll do the same thing to the K West Basin that they did at K East. And basically, all over Hanford, that’s what they’re doing is cleaning things out, and getting them ready for demolition. So I work at PFP now in nuclear criticality safety there, and they’ve got miles and miles of ductwork. Some big pipes and some little pipes that are all contaminated with plutonium, and they have to carefully take all that stuff out. Get enough of that out so they can actually start tearing the building down.
O’Reagan: Are there any general ways, whether it’s the type of people working there, or morale, or whatever, that the work at the Hanford site has changed over the time you’ve been there?
Jensen: [SIGH] During the operating days, it was fun. Actually fun to go to work and do something that you thought was productive. I mean, you can argue whether you thought we should have been making plutonium for nuclear weapons or not, but the job was very interesting. When the reactor shut down, the morale went down quite a bit, because, for one, people thought they were going to lose their jobs, and two, it’s like, well, even if we stay here for decommissioning, that’s not going to be anywhere near as interesting. And it isn’t. It has its own interesting aspects to it. But mostly, people are pretty professional and here’s a job, we’re going to get all of the fuel out of K East. So people went and worked on that, and we’re going to get all the fuel out of K West, so you work on that. While you’re doing that, it’s satisfying, because you’ve got a goal to work for. PFP—it’s a very difficult job. I think the morale kind of goes up and down. We have successes and then there’s problems you run into. But in a way that’s what makes a job interesting, if there’s problems that you can resolve and get through it, and then you succeed on this task and go onto the next one. But it was a lot more fun to operate than to do what we’re doing now.
O’Reagan: How much longer would you guess we’re going to be doing this--?
Jensen: I, personally, or Hanford?
O’Reagan: Both, why not?
Jensen: Well, PFP is supposed to be torn down. It was supposed to be torn down by the end of September this year, but it’s probably going to be about a year off from that. The K Basin—K West Basin has sludge in it. They’re probably going to start removing the sludge in about two years. That’ll probably take about a year to do that and then they’ll start tearing that basin down. There’s still a huge project called Groundwater, where they’re pumping contaminated water, and it’s not just radioactive contamination, there’s a lot of heavy metal contamination in Groundwater. They pump that out, and they run it through processes to take the, like, chromium out of the water and replace it with a type of chromium that’s not as environmentally damaging. That’ll go on for years and years. And then there’s still—all of the old processing canyons are still there in place, and all of those are going to have to be torn down at some point. So, it’s probably decades more work here. And then there’s all the tanks. They’re going to take all the waste out of the tanks and run it through the Vit Plant which isn’t done yet. So years of work left at Hanford.
O’Reagan: Interesting. Were you ever interested in the sort of politics of Hanford?
Jensen: Not too much. The politics were different. In the ‘80s, it was whether we should be making weapons-grade plutonium or not. Nowadays the politics is more like, which project do we rob from to give to somebody else? And political battles in Congress as to how much funding Hanford gets, and things like that. So I try and stay out of all of that.
O’Reagan: Sure. So how about life outside of the work plant? Where were you living—still in Kennewick?
Jensen: Yes, I’ve been living in Kennewick since I moved there as a kid in 1965.
O’Reagan: Where in Kennewick?
Jensen: It’s over near Highway 395 as it kind of cuts through the middle of Kennewick.
O’Reagan: How has life in the Tri-Cities changed in the time you’ve—
Jensen: The Tri-Cities is a lot bigger. It was pretty small when I first moved here. For several years, it was just slowly growing, and it’s been growing like crazy since. It’s like, they’re always building new schools, and there’s always housing developments under construction. There used to be a lot of orchards in Kennewick, all around. There’s hardly anything now, because they’ve all been cut down and there’s houses there now. Traffic’s a lot worse.
O’Reagan: What do you do in your spare time? Any hobbies or--?
Jensen: I like photography, I like to take pictures with film, which is old-fashioned nowadays. And I like to develop the film myself. So far that’s all been black and white film; I haven’t tried developing color film yet. And I like to collect old film cameras that I can still find film for and use those. Up until recently, I was playing hockey—adult hockey, which I started when I was 49, started playing hockey. I’m 60 now, so I’ve been doing that for about 11 years. However, I had quit, hopefully only temporarily because I’ve got some medical issues. My doctor said no hockey until this is resolved. And then I hurt my knee the other day, so I don’t know. That might—even if the other one gets resolved, that might be the end of hockey. I like to go to Tri-City Americans hockey games during the season. I got to Tri-City Dust Devil games during the baseball season. Like to go to plays and movies. I decided this year I was going to audition for a play, see if I could get in. I did not make it, but I’m going to try again, coming up later. Probably this summer. So we’ll see. Never done that before, either. But it always sounded like fun.
O’Reagan: Any sort of major events or incidents, whether at work or just sort of around the Tri-Cities that comes to mind that are sort of worth commemorating, or worth just sort of mentioning?
Jensen: Kind of the interesting thing—back in 1986, reactor was still operating, and do you remember Connie Chung, the news—she came to the Tri-Cities to do a show on Hanford. Everybody at work was wondering who she’s going to interview. And we’re thinking they’re going to interview, like company president, company vice president, or something. And I remember joking that she should interview a reactor operator like me. And everybody laughed. And about an hour later, the phone rang, and it was the producer wanting to talk to me, and they wanted to interview me that night. And I got permission from the company. Turned out, my dad, who, like I said, had worked at the Tank Farms—he had gone to a public hearing on what to do with tank wastes. The Connie Chung crew had gone to the same meeting, because they were getting background information. My dad spoke at the meeting, and they said, oh, we have to interview that guy. When they talked to him, he mentioned that his son worked as a reactor operator. Oh, god, that’d be great, interview them both. So that’s how I got called up. The company gave me permission, and they did it in my house. I told them, it was my son’s third birthday, and I said we’re going to have a birthday party, but you can do the interview after the birthday party. So they said okay. After I got home, my wife sent me out to buy ice cream, I think. And I’m coming back. When she came back, she was all excited. Connie Chung called personally and asked if they could film the birthday party. So they filmed my son’s third birthday party, and then they interviewed my dad and I in my living room, and then—I don’t know, two, three hours of interview stuff, and they boil it all down to about five minutes. But that’s the way that goes. So that was kind of exciting. I was a minor celebrity for a while.
O’Reagan: Any other stories leap to mind?
Jensen: We had some interesting scrams in the control room. I talked about the two turbine trip ones that were very interesting. The first one, like I said, I had to pull control rods rapidly to compensate for the xenon building up faster than it’s being burned out. I got that all settled out, and the power level wasn’t dropping, and I had forgotten that--when the main steam header pressure goes up, the power level goes down—well, eventually, they’re going to control the main steam header, and it’s going to go back where it’s supposed to be. And the power all of the sudden starts shooting up. So now I’m shoving control rods in like crazy to keep the power level from going up too fast, because we could scram on a high rate of rise. So I got that all settled out. The second time it happened—since I was the most experienced person on the plant on this upset, I got it settled out from the xenon, and I just got my ear open over here, and as soon as I hear somebody say, main steam header pressure’s coming down, I look over and the power level starts to go up, and I tap some rods in, and it was just like routine. Nothing to it. But another time, we had another accident—well, accident’s probably not the right word. We had another upset. We had a new control system—computerized system for controlling valve positioning. The old system we had was very ancient. It was obsolete when they put it in at the reactor, but they got a good price on it, so that’s why they did that. So we had this new computerized system, and there were two cards in the computer that controlled the valve positioning. The primary card, and a backup card. If the primary card failed, you would transfer to the backup card, and it was supposedly a bump-less transfer. The system wouldn’t even know. The primary card had failed, and so it transferred to the backup card, and everything went perfect. Well, the instrument technicians took the primary card out to repair it, and they came to put it back in. Now, this card controlled the steam valves going over to WPPSS. I was on the console controlling all of that, and I remember, jokingly, I said to the guy—the instrument tech and the engineer, when they came in, they were going to go to the rom below the control room where all of that stuff was. They were going to replace it, and I said, you aren’t going to scram us, are you? And the engineer said, trust me. And they went down—and I was just joking, because I figured, no big deal—and they went down and they put the primary card in and they told it to take over. It took over and sent its signal to the valves, but the secondary card did not relinquish control. So all of the steam valves opened up twice as far as they were supposed to. So our steam pressure goes down, and when that goes down, the reactor power goes up. And the primary coolant pressure also goes down, because you’re boiling water really well in the secondary system, that cools the water really well in the primary system, and cold water contracts. So that pressure goes down, and if the pressure goes down to far, the reactor scrams. So I’m fighting like mad with—somebody else came over to help me—to keep from scramming on low pressure. Other people are working over here, trying to keep from scramming on something over here. And other people over here, and the guy on the nuclear console is trying to keep the power level from going up too fast. We’re running around—it was very exciting. Seemed like it took hours. Probably just took a few minutes. We got it all stabilized out, and I’m looking at the primary loop pressure, and it’s kind of fluctuating and bouncing. And right when it’s going—trying to think if it was going up or down. See, if we cool—it had to have been going up. The secondary card cut out, all the valves slammed shut, and we had the exact opposite thing happen. Now, the primary loop gets hot, everything expands, and we scrammed on high pressure. And then about five minutes later, the instrument tech and the engineer come upstairs. They could tell something bad was happening, and they just looked like—it wasn’t their fault, but—
O’Reagan: When it actually does scram, is it actually just rods, or—I’ve heard some designs where there’s actually just balls that are—
Jensen: Okay. The main system was control rods. And you were going like this, like dropping down from the top. The old reactors had safety rods that dropped in from the top. N Reactor’s rods all came from both sides, and they overlapped. All the rods would slam in with hydraulic pressure. We had some hydraulic pumps that would turn on and pump very high pressure hydraulic fluid into the system, and the rods would shoot in. It would take about a second-and-a-half to go in. And you’d get all these enunciators in the control room, and if you were—mmm, it’s pretty boring here at two in the morning, and then all of the sudden the reactor scrams, you were wide awake. Got adrenaline pumping through and then you’ve got all these things you have to do to make sure everything works correctly on a scram, because it causes all kinds of things. The balls were the backup to the control rods. They had to be 75% in in one-and-a-half seconds. If they went in too slow, there was a problem. If they went in too fast, there was a problem, just because they could be damaged. But if they went in too slow, that’s what the ball system was for. There were hoppers on top of the reactor—I think there were a hundred-and-some reactors. And they were full of boron carbide balls. Boron absorbs neutrons. That’s what’s in the control rods to absorb neutrons. If you had one slow rod, it’s no big deal. If you had two slow rods in one column, you would drop balls on both sides of that rod column. If you had three slow rods anywhere in the reactor, you would drop balls on both sides of each of those three rod columns. Then there was also a thing where you could have a complete ball drop—drop all of the balls. If the reactor power level did not decay below five megawatts in three minutes, I think it was, then you would have a complete ball drop. That happened twice. Once, for real, because we had a scram and the rods didn’t go in at all—this is before I started working there. So there’s a scram trip, the rods did not go in, the balls dropped. And the other one was we were starting the reactor up—getting ready to start the reactor up and going through all of these checks on various instrumentation. The instrumentation that would monitor if the reactor power was below five megawatts in three minutes, they were doing the work on that, and they had a procedure that they would run. There were three channels and they would run it on each channel. That included having a switch to put in a couple of different calibrate positions. Basically, it put a false signal into the system so you could see if it’s responding correctly. So an operator and an instrument tech were doing that. They did channel one and it didn’t look right when they put it in the calibrate position. So they went on to channel two to see if it would do the same thing, and they did that. Well, they put two trips into the system. The reactor—what we called the safety circuit—was not made up, and so the system started timing for five minutes. These two instruments said the power level was greater than five megawatts with the safety circuit broken. When the give minutes went up, all the balls dropped. It was kind of innocuous. There was an enunciator that said, any ball hopper open. So the enunciator goes off, and the operator looks up at that. Any ball hopper open. And then he realized what happened. He told the control room supervisor, and the control room supervisor told me that. He says, I looked up at it. And I looked down. And I looked up again to make sure it was actually on. And then he said a few bad words and then he went and told the shift manager that we had dropped all of the balls.
O’Reagan: I heard on the old reactor designs, that had to be actually sort of vacuumed out.
Jensen: Yes. They used vacuum—they were steel balls, too. And they used vacuums to suck them up. At N Reactor, we had a valve at the bottom of the channel that you would open up, and the balls would drain into a hoist, and then you would lift them all the way up to the top, and put them in a hopper at the top—a big hopper—and then you would load the individual hoppers. That was a horrible, horrible job, being up there loading those hoppers. It was always hot, you had to wear plastic raingear and an assault mask, which—rubber hugging your face, and it’s hard, physical labor, and wearing the raingear and it’s already 100 degrees up there anyway. It was just miserable work. So nobody liked to do that. When we had that big ball drop, my job was to go down underneath the reactor. You could open up those drain valves remotely. So we had Bill here who smoked a lot and was not allowed to wear respirators, he was operating the control panel. But a lot of times, the valves wouldn’t work remotely. So, me, wearing all of this fresh air stuff, would stand by, but would say, 43 didn’t work. So I would have to go back there, trailing this hose with my fresh air, and go back to 43, and open it manually. It was extremely hot, radioactively, down there. I picked up my entire one week’s worth of radiation. We were allowed 300 millirem of radiation, either in a single exposure or in a seven-day period, and I picked up that entire 300 in less than an hour, going back and forth. And most of the time, I was just standing there, waiting. And I’d go back in there, and I’d pick up quite a bit, and I’d open up a valve and come back, and then I was done and left. Couldn’t work in a radiation zone for seven days after that.
O’Reagan: How often did you have the radiation testing? Or was it the hand-and-foot test—
Jensen: Oh, any time we came out of a contaminated zone, contaminated area, when we were wearing those SWPs, you have to undress in a proper sequence. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this. We had step-off pads. A red pad and a green pad. And when you get to the red pad, before you get to that, you have to remove all of your outer clothing before you step on the red pad. And then when you get to the green pad, you have to remove all of your SWP clothing before you step on the green pads. So you end up coming out there—well, in the old days when there were very few women working in the Area, you’d be coming out in your underwear. Later on they made us wear a t-shirt and shorts. But I kind of lost track of what we were saying there. Oh, the hand-and-foot counters. And then when you came out, we would step into a hand-and-foot counter or a whole-body portal monitor that would monitor our sides and front and back, to make sure we weren’t contaminated. Then usually we would also be surveyed by a health physics technician who’s got a Geiger counter, and he just slowly goes over, checks your hands, checks the bottom of your shoes, makes sure you’re not—don’t have any skin or clothing contamination. If you do, then you’ve got to get decontaminated. And that happens once in a while.
O’Reagan: Was that ever a concern of yours?
Jensen: No. I did get a few skin contaminations. I had to hold over once. I got some primary coolant water in my hair, and there was a lot of radon in the water. Radon is electrostatically attracted to polyester and hair. So it latches on, and it’s hard to get off. I just had to wait until it decayed off. After about--
O’Reagan: Did you shave?
Jensen: No, no. I washed my hair several times, and then they just said—come back every hour and we’ll check, and after about three hours they let me go home. Usually, skin contaminations wash off pretty easy. If it’s your clothing, you have to wash the clothing. You don’t get to take that home until it’s passed as clean. Sometimes, rarely, stuff would have to get thrown away. But I never had any serious contamination issues. If you’re careful, if you dress correctly, and then when you come out, you undress correctly, then it’s very rare to be contaminated.
O’Reagan: Any other sort of stories leap to mind from your--?
Jensen: There’s a few things that happened before I was there that were interesting. I don’t know. We had an accident. It was about three—and this one is an accident—it was about three years before I started work. They flushed a tube of hot, radioactive fuel onto the charge elevator, which is not where it’s supposed to go. It’s supposed to go out the back, and fall into the discharge shoots and then go into the basin. There were workers on the elevator when it happened. They got very high radiation exposures. Fortunately, not high enough to kill anybody. But that was just lucky, I think. So, I don’t know. That was the most serious thing I know that happened there. We did have one—before I was certified, we had one really bad accident where we lost all the instrument air to the plant. Almost every valve functions with air—they’re air-operated: air to open, air to close. A lot of pumps are—the pump speeds are maintained by air pressure, things like that. So we had a scram, and it was a very abnormal scram. But we survived it.
[VIDEO CUTS]
Camera man: Okay, hold it out so we see.
Jensen: --piece of fuel out of the reactor, and they pushed all the hot, irradiated fuel out, but we’d done a normal refueling after that shutdown. And, well, now, we’ve got to—we pushed out all the hot fuel, and now we’re going to push out all the un-irradiated fuel and keep it, just in case we start up again. I happened to be walking by when they got the last one out, and they were taking a picture and they said, get over here!
Camera man: Oh, so where are you? Are you down in front there?
Jensen: I am right there.
Camera man: Yep, that’s right.
O’Reagan: You’ve got the [INAUDIBLE] gear guy in back.
Jensen: So these guys are all dressed up in the gear and they’ve got the fuel with them. I think they’ve got the fuel with them in there. There’s another picture that I don’t have that actually shows them holding the last piece. [VIDEO CUTS] There were two certified operators when I was hired on. I think there had been some more who had left. There was another lady who was in the certification program and then she certified shortly after that. In my class, there was one woman and she did not go all the way through, and then in the class after, there was at least one woman in there. So we had a handful of women certified operators. The very first one hired, I’m pretty sure that would have been Martha Coop. I’m wondering who the guy you talked to was who hired her. Because I’m sure I would know him. I just can’t think of who that might have been. The other one was Leslie Jensen, no relation to me, and I think she was the one who babysat me when I was probably a kindergartener or a first grader. She was one of my mom’s students.
O’Reagan: All right. Anything else I should be asking here, any other memories that are worth preserving?
Jensen: I’ll probably think things when I get home.
O’Reagan: Sure.
Jensen: But right now I think I’m—
O’Reagan: Great. All right, well that’s been great. Thank you so much for being here.
Jensen: You’re welcome.
Douglas O’Reagan: Would you please spell and pronounce your name for us?
Teena Giulio: My name is Teena Giulio. First name is T-E-E-N-A. Last name is G-I-U-L-I-O.
O’Reagan: Great, thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview on May 4th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Miss Giulio about her experiences working at the Hanford site and living in the Tri-Cities throughout the 20th Century. Okay. Thanks for being here.
Giulio: Thanks for having me.
O’Reagan: So I understand you were actually born in the Tri-Cities.
Giulio: Yes, I was. I was born in the Tri-Cities in 1961. Moved away when I was, oh, four or five, and then moved back when I was 13. I’ve been here pretty much ever since, for the most part.
O’Reagan: Where did you move away to?
Giulio: Denver.
O’Reagan: Hm. Was that—were you too young to sort of notice differences? Did you notice differences when you came back?
Giulio: Oh, I noticed differences. I didn’t like it. We lived for probably three or four years up in the Seattle area. I identify that with home because of all the trees and the green and the smells and all of that. Denver just didn’t have that. Nostalgically, I like the spring here, because when it rains you get the smell of the sage and the dirt and the Russian olive trees—not that I like it, but it’s just that nostalgic smell.
O’Reagan: Where within the Tri-Cities did you live when you moved back?
Giulio: In Richland.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm.
Giulio: In Richland. When I was very little, we lived in Richland, moved to Kennewick, moved to Finley. [LAUGHTER] And then moved away.
O’Reagan: So you came back in, I guess, middle school? Is that right?
Giulio: Just began seventh grade, yes.
O’Reagan: What was it like in Richland’s middle schools?
Giulio: [SIGH] Well, everybody else had pretty much had grown up together, so I felt like I didn’t belong. I felt very out of place. [LAUGHTER] I really don’t know what to tell you, other—it was very clique-ish back then. I don’t know if it is still now, but yeah, it was very clique-ish. I just didn’t feel like I was part of any of that. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Did that change by high school?
Giulio: Yes. Yes, of course I had made friends and continued those friendships on even until today, which is nice. It’s kind of a shared thing, so yeah.
O’Reagan: Right. Let’s see. So I understand your family were long-time Hanford workers.
Giulio: Yes. Both grandfathers worked out at Hanford. My father and his brother worked out at Hanford. My uncle’s sons and daughter worked out there, and then I worked out there also.
O’Reagan: What did your grandparents do?
Giulio: I’m not sure what my paternal grandfather did. But my maternal grandfather—I think he worked out at the 200 Areas. I guess it was like there was a coal bin or coal cars or something like that. He worked in that.
O’Reagan: Do you know what time period that would be?
Giulio: In the ‘50s and ‘60s.
O’Reagan: Okay. And How about your parents? What did your parents do?
Giulio: Let me see. Well, let me go back to my grandparents.
O’Reagan: Sure, yeah.
Giulio: They came out in the late ‘40s, I believe—late ‘40s, early ‘50s—to take part in all of the building and expansion and all of that. My parents—my father worked in several different areas, and—can I get my paperwork? [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Yeah, sure.
Giulio: Let me see. Where did he work? Let me see. He started working out there as a delivery person, delivering top secret documents and other materials as needed to the 100 Area. Let me see. Transferred to operating engineer, and his first job was unloading the coal cars for approximately three years, which—that’s what my grandfather did, too, was the coal cars. He also built bunkers in the coal rooms, worked in the boiler house, water filtering, pump houses. [LAUGHTER] Let me see. Yeah, and that—I think, I believe, that’s where—shift work—so yeah. He kind of got around to all the different areas, but it was mainly in the 200 East and West Areas.
O’Reagan: Okay. So sort of a technician-laborer-type role?
Giulio: Mm-hmm. And he went back—it’s like he left and got hired back or got laid off and got hired back. Because there were several times in my paperwork here that I’ve noticed he worked for different contractors at different times. I think that was fairly common back then, too.
O’Reagan: Did you have a good impression of what your father was doing growing up?
Giulio: No. No. He was always very—I don’t want to say secretive—he just didn’t talk about it a whole lot. I did wonder why he didn’t shower at home. [LAUGHTER] As I got older, I realized that he showered at work after work, before he came home. When he got transferred to Rocky Flats, that was the same thing. They got cleaned before they came home so you didn’t bring coal dust or any type of radioactivity type of contamination home.
O’Reagan: Do you remember or how you started to get an idea of what was going on at Hanford in general?
Giulio: No, not really, other than stories from my grandmother. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother after my grandfather passed. I spent the weekends with her, and we would talk a lot about a lot of different things. She would tell me the stories that she remembered. When they moved out here, and he first started working out there, she told me that she would pack his lunch for the day and he would walk off to the corner where everybody would meet. They—at that time, they had bus systems, and all over the city of Richland, the buses would pick up the workers. She said that all the windows were blacked out except for a small area for the driver. So nobody knew where they were going; they just got on the bus, took a long ride out, got off, and did what they were supposed to do. They all had very specific jobs. And then they cleaned up, got back on the buses with the blacked out windows, took a long ride home, and got off on the corner again. So that was my indoctrination of how secretive it was, way, way back. And she said that nobody knew what they were doing. They all had very specific jobs. They didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t know what it was part of. Oh, she also said that they moved—they occasionally did different jobs. Like they would stay at one position for a while and then they would take them to a different area to do another job. So they—nobody could really put together, mentally, what was going on, until after—you know, everything kind of broke loose and came out as to what was going on. Probably—I’m not sure if they were here when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. I want to say that they were. I’m trying to recall the stories that she’s told me. I want to say that they were here, because after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, she said that all the news stories came out that it was the plutonium from Hanford that was in the bombs that were dropped. Then everybody realized how important what they were doing was. So they must have been here in the ‘40s and worked throughout the ‘50s.
O’Reagan: Was your mother a homemaker?
Giulio: My mother worked—my mother worked as—it would be considered a paralegal now. She worked in one of the law offices here in town. So, no, she didn’t work out at Hanford.
O’Reagan: Okay, great. Let’s see. So after high school, what was your next step?
Giulio: [LAUGHTER] I really wanted to get a job out there. So I took several low-paying, not-very-prestigious jobs, until I could get my foot in the door out there. My father wasn’t working there at the time, and nepotism was pretty rampant. [LAUGHTER] I finally got a call that somebody wanted to interview me, and I started out there in 1981. It was actually exactly one year after Mt. St. Helens blew. So maybe that was ’82. I don’t remember. Anyway, it was exactly one year after Mt. St. Helens blew, I started working out there. I worked out at 100-N as the mail carrier. I got delivered twice a day, the mail from 200 East Area, which was like their main process station, I guess you’d call it. And I would sort the mail and deliver it to the various people out there at 100-N. So you could say I got around. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Why was it you wanted to work out there?
Giulio: The money. The money, the security, the benefits. And it was kind of like that’s where you were supposed to want to work at that time. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Hm. What were some of the sort of low-paying jobs you worked first?
Giulio: I worked in a furniture rental store. [LAUGHTER] And I worked in a funeral home—actually right out of high school, I worked in a funeral home, at Enon’s for a while. And then there was one in Kennewick that I worked at, but they were—it was kind of interconnected; they did work for each other. But I worked the front offices and typed contracts and did—it wasn’t really glamorous.
O’Reagan: Sure.
Giulio: But I liked it. Good people.
O’Reagan: How long were you working with the mail out at Hanford?
Giulio: I want to say close to a year. And then, at that time, after six months, you were eligible to transfer and apply for other jobs onsite. So I saw an opening in the—what do they call it—the site paper, or whatever it was. Saw a job opening for a metal operator and I read the description, and I thought, oh man, this sounds like a lot of fun. And what it turned out to be—I did get the job—what it turned out to be was various positions on an assembly line production of fuels for N Reactor. And, yes, it was; it was very interesting. And I really liked what I did.
O’Reagan: Could you describe sort of what you were doing in as much detail as you’re comfortable with?
Giulio: Sure. You know, I’m not sure if it’s classified or not. I would imagine at this time it may be not—may be unclassified. The fuel rods for N Reactor were—I want to say about this long. The outer tube was about that big around. And then there was a smaller tube about that big around that slipped inside there. So how those were produced were the uranium core billets—that’s what they were called—and they were extremely heavy, very, very heavy. They came in billets that I believe were about that tall and about that big around. They were put through an extrusion press. They had to have cranes and little carts and stuff to wheel them around with. I didn’t take part in that particular job. It was a very dirty job. [LAUGHTER] Very hot. I don’t remember the foot-pounds of pressure that it was pushed through, but it was pushed through the extrusion press and came out in a very long tube. Like probably as long as this room, if not longer. I believe—well, of course they had different sizes. They had the larger size and the smaller size that they produced. And then they were cut into the lengths that we needed. I didn’t take part in that. [LAUGHTER] Let me see. I’m trying to remember the exact order. And then they were run through a salt bath. Two different type—no, not two different types. There was just one type of salt, but two different temperatures. They were hung from a rack that kind of—it would look like a carousel, and these huge, huge salt baths. It was molten salt, is what it was. I did do this for a while. You loaded the rods onto the rack and this carousel would lift it way up and take it over and slowly dunk it into the first molten salt bath, which—I don’t remember the temperature, but it was extremely high. That was a fairly dangerous job, because you had to make sure that no water got in there. So you had to make—you had to blow the rods off, make sure there was no water, because it was reported to explode if you got water in the molten salt. So it went through that first salt bath, it raised up, and went to another salt bath which was cooler. Then I want to say water after that, different temperatures of water, and the thing came off. At that point, it went to I want to say an acid etch. Because the billets, when they were pushed through the extrusion press were coated with graphite, and this helped it go through the press, obviously. So you had to wash off the graphite. Yeah, you washed off the graphite and etched it and they came out in this very shiny—it looked like aluminum, but it was really pretty. And then we would—yeah, they would take a—[LAUGHTER] I’m trying to remember this! I don’t remember exactly how it was done, but the ends, they had to etch out the ends, because they were to the end with the uranium. So they’d etch it out, probably about that much. Then it would go through what we called brazing. In the braze room, you put the fuel rods upright, heated it up, and put beryllium rings in the end. No—put the beryllium rings in before it gets hot.
Man Off-camera: [INAUDIBLE]
Giulio: [LAUGHTER] Sorry my story’s so boring. [LAUGHTER] That’s funny. [LAUGHTER] I like it! [LAUGHTER] So, anyway. You put the beryllium ring at the end, heat it up, and the beryllium ring would melt and meld with the outer core. And I don’t remember what the outer core—not the outer core, but the outer cladding was. I’m sure it wasn’t aluminum, but it would melt. And then another part would be—something—how did they do that? Don’t remember. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. I did—wow. I just really don’t remember the whole process. But it’s–yeah, there’s a huge, long process. At one point, we would weld the ends shut. And I want to say that was after they brazed it, because the brazing would melt the cap, and then it would get cut somehow. I don’t think I did this.
O’Reagan: It sounds like a lot of different sort of technical skills.
Giulio: A lot, yeah, a lot of manual skills. But a lot of it was done by machinery, too. And the photograph that I have is for the—it was called the TIG welder. This is one of the larger fuel rods, and you’d put like a rubber thing in there and twist it tight so that the argon would not get out. This was what we called the Chuck, and it swiveled on this little thing, and you would insert this end into the Chuck and it would go around and around and around. On the other end, there were tungsten, little—I don’t know what they’re called—that would heat up inside the chuck here and weld this part shut. Apparently, I was one of the best ones they had. [LAUGHTER] At least, that’s what they told me; I don’t know if it was true or not.
O’Reagan: Was the picture taken by a coworker?
Giulio: No, there was a photographer that came through at a certain time. I don’t even remember why. But this particular picture was in the Federal Building for the longest time. When it finally came down, they gave it to me. And this right here where it says, “I love you, Teena, 1981,” that—I sent that to my father. And then when he passed, of course I got it back. But he kept it for a long time. But yes, this particular picture was in the Federal Building on a wall, on an easel, I’m not sure, but I want to say it was probably close to 15 years. [LAUGHTER] So, yes, the welding part was part of the process, and then there was another process where it was etched out so that there was a little ch-ch-ch-ch on each side. Then it would get stamped with the specific number. I did do the stamping. It was all done with a little hammer. You’d just kind of put in the numbers and go whack! Stamp the numbers in.
O’Reagan: Was this all learning by doing, or was there a formalized training process?
Giulio: No, it was all on-the-job training. And yes, I did, I liked all of it. Oh! I remember now. Yeah, because right next to the station, on the other side, was where it was—the part was etched out. Yeah, I did that, too. It was done with lubricated water. Then there was also a quality control type of thing where it was all done underwater with—was it radar? Some kind of a sensor, the fuel rod would turn around and around and around, and this little sensor would go along the fuel rod to see if there was any gaps between the cladding and the uranium. Because when you got heated in the reactor, if there was any gaps, it would explode.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm.
Giulio: So there was lots of quality control measures that were done also. We had an autoclave where they would test the fuel rods, where they would heat the fuel rods up in this autoclave to the temperatures that would be heated in the reactor. That would be the better place for it to blow. [LAUGHTER] But they always had—they always checked the welds, they checked the cladding, they checked the uranium, all of that along the whole process. And I did almost all of that.
O’Reagan: What was the timeframe for this?
Giulio: Early ‘80s.
O’Reagan: Okay.
Giulio: Early ‘80s. And this says 1981, so I believe I started out there May 18th, 1981, and I worked out there for four or five years. I don’t remember. I took a leave of absence and then came back as a security escort. [LAUGHTER] Which—I liked that, too.
O’Reagan: By the early ‘80s, was it unusual being a female technician out there?
Giulio: Yes.
O’Reagan: What was that like?
Giulio: Yes. It was—it really wasn’t too much different for me, because I had always had male friends—close friends. I got along with most of the guys, except for some of the older guys. They didn’t take too well to women being out there doing their job. There was a little bit of harassment. But it was very subtle. Let me see. I want to say there was--one, two, three, four, five--six women in the whole building, doing this very large job, and I was one of them. So it was definitely one of those first steps for women into this man-dominated career.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. How many people would be working at a time roughly?
Giulio: Almost all of us.
O’Reagan: Right, but what sort of scale of workforce at the time, would you estimate?
Giulio: In my particular area?
O’Reagan: Sure.
Giulio: Probably 50 to 60.
O’Reagan: Okay, interesting. Let’s see. Can you describe some of your coworkers for us?
Giulio: [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: In just sort of broad terms.
Giulio: Well, we had the older guys who had been out there since the beginning of time. Most of them were pretty nice. There were a couple characters. One I had kind of a soft spot for, only because he was kind of a codger. His name was Ralph. He worked in the sandblast area. He was kind of hunched-over, not a real happy guy. But he was really, really nice. During break time he would put his safety goggles up on top of his hard hat and he’d take off for his break. Then he’d come back, has anybody seen my goggles? Where are my safety glasses at? [LAUGHTER] And the whole time they’re on top of his head. And somebody would say, Ralph, check your helmet. [LAUGHTER] I don’t know why he appealed to me. Probably because he was so unique and I’m attracted to very unique people. [LAUGHTER] Then of course, we had the age 30 to 40 men. That was kind of like they had started out there, maybe five to ten years before I had. Then of course, the younger generation, which I would have been.
O’Reagan: Let’s see. Did a lot of people come in and out of those roles, or was it a pretty steady set of people?
Giulio: It was pretty steady set of people. Occasionally we would get new people, but mostly it was pretty steady. When somebody met retirement age, of course, we just kind of moved into different roles, or they would hire somebody new.
O’Reagan: So you were gone before the end of N Reactor?
Giulio: Yes. Yes. I remember just after I—well, actually thinking, as I was doing the security escort job, thinking I should probably find something offsite, because I don’t think this is going to last much longer. [LAUGHTER] So that’s where that ended.
O’Reagan: Do you have the impression that was sort of a common feeling at the time?
Giulio: I didn’t at the time have that feeling, but I do now. I do now think that it’s just—okay, it’s one thing after another. You’ve got one site that closes, well, another one’s still open, you’re going to go do something there. Or it’s a new job in another area that’s taken up. Especially with the cleanup effort that’s going on out there now. It’s not the—is it privatization? Is that what they’re calling it? I don’t remember. But, yeah, it’s becoming non-government work anymore. Yeah, and I remember thinking that it was probably a good idea for me to get off site.
O’Reagan: How much emphasis was there on transparency in the safety risks of what you were working on?
Giulio: Can you repeat that?
O’Reagan: So, how much were you sort of made aware of any health risks—or how much emphasis was there on safety while you were working out there?
Giulio: I want to say there was not as much emphasis on safety as there is these days. I know today it’s almost fanatical. I mean, it’s like everything from paper cuts are analyzed. But there was a very strong safety culture, only because we were working with heavy machinery, heavy material, sharp objects, hot objects, the potential for cuts and smashes and all kinds of things were very prevalent. They wanted you to be aware of what was possible. But, as I said, I don’t believe it was as prevalent as it is now.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm, sure. So do you have any kind of specialized nuclear training for working with those materials, or just sort of general warnings?
Giulio: Actually, I was going to say no, I didn’t have any training, but I did. There were several training classes that we were required to go through on a yearly basis. What they call Rad Worker, which was radiation worker training, general safety training, and—I’m trying to remember what else. So, yes. Yes, I was trained.
O’Reagan: Sure. Can you tell us about the security escort job?
Giulio: [LAUGHTER] The security escort job. I actually liked that. It did get very boring at times, because we weren’t allowed to—there was no cell phones, for one thing. We weren’t allowed to read or play cards or do anything like that. I came back at that time because I had had a Q clearance, which was one of the highest clearances you could have at the time, which I got during the mail carrier job because I was handling classified information at that time. I escorted—it was mostly construction-type workers, trade workers, into buildings and areas where they needed to go to do their job. I stayed with them until they did their job. Sometimes it was really boring. [LAUGHTER] But I met a lot of great people. That was probably what I liked most about all of my jobs, is that I met a lot of great people. I liked everything that I did from mail carrier, metal operator, and the security escort. Security escort was lots of fun, because I got to go lots of different places onsite. It was 200 East, 200 West with the well drillers, with the construction people, in the 105 Building, out at 100-N, which is where I met my husband. [LAUGHTER] I was in—no, I wasn’t in the 300 Area. It was mostly at the 100 Areas and 200 Areas, and sometimes out in the deserts with the well drillers and geologists.
O’Reagan: How was it you met your husband?
Giulio: [LAUGHTER] Through a mutual friend, actually. The friend had been trying to get me to go out with him. But I told him it was—I like you only as a friend. So it was the 109 Building, actually. I went in there with the construction workers and this friend, Kurt, yelled down from the top of the stairs, Hey, Stoner! What are you doing? [LAUGHTER] Stoner’s my maiden name. So I went upstairs to speak with him for a couple minutes, and my husband was sitting at a desk. So Kurt and I talked back and forth a little bit and I looked over at my—well he wasn’t my husband then—at Monty, and there was just something that kind of clicked. I was like, man, I’d like to know who that is. I thought his name tag—they were patrolmen—I thought his name tag said Guido. [LAUGHTER] Come to find out, it wasn’t Guido. That’s just what they called him. So I went back downstairs with my construction workers and did my job and went home. As I walked in the door that night, the phone was ringing and it was Monty. He had looked up my name and was calling me to see if I would go out with him, and I did.
O’Reagan: Was, even in general, sort of social scene built around the Hanford workers, or was it just sort of a Tri-Cities scene and that happened to be—I guess I’m trying to get a sense of what was the social scene like for relatively young people in that era.
Giulio: [LAUGHTER] A lot of going out on Friday nights. [LAUGHTER] That kind of seemed to be the thing to do, is on Friday nights, everybody would meet at some place, usually in Richland, for a couple drinks and if anything took place afterwards, go to somebody’s house, and have some more drinks and maybe watch TV. Yeah.
O’Reagan: Did you have any hobbies?
Giulio: I liked to ride my bike. At the time I didn’t do much hiking, but I like to do that. I think I pretty much worked a lot. Worked a lot, went home, and took care of my home.
O’Reagan: Sure. Let’s see. I went through those.
Giulio: Hobbies—what else did I do? Boy, that’s a long time. I like cars. So I would go to car shows. I had a couple friends who were in bands, so I would go watch the bands at different venues.
O’Reagan: Such as where?
Giulio: In the park. At different--[LAUGHTER]—different bars around the Tri-Cities. So I’d go have a couple drinks and listen to them, and during their breaks, they’d come and talk to me and we’d have some fun. Yeah. At that time, a lot of it seemed to revolve around drinking. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Let’s see. How much was sort of secrecy or security a part of your Hanford working experience?
Giulio: As mail carrier, it was—I didn’t read the classified material. It wasn’t addressed to me, so I didn’t open it. But I definitely had to keep it very secure and make sure it got to the correct person, and that they—they had to sign for it, also. So there was this custody—chain of custody type of thing. The paperwork—okay, I received it, yes, I filed it, I got it to the person it was supposed to go to, he filed it, I kept that piece of paper, and then what paperwork needed to go back to whoever sent it—had to make sure it got back to that person also. Not a lot of secrecy at that time, other than the classified material. The metal operator job—not a lot of—no.
O’Reagan: Okay. Let’s see. Were there other pictures there, or was that it?
Giulio: Oh. This was a picture that I found when I was going through my father’s paperwork. I’m not sure where or when it was, or even what it’s all about. This is my father right here. He was never one to really smile much in photographs. I think I recognize this person, but I can’t recall his name. I believe it was one of my father’s friends at the time. Like I said, I don’t remember what it was or where it or when it was, and there’s nothing on the back! So. Yeah.
O’Reagan: Let’s see. I had a question that blanked out of my mind. I hate when that happens. While I’m thinking, anything we haven’t discussed that you had thought maybe would be worth sharing?
Giulio: Hmm. [LAUGHTER] A story that my grandmother told me. [LAUGHTER] Ha. When they moved out here, they had just started all the Alphabet Houses. They had started building them, and they were able to get into one. She told me, at that time, nobody locked their doors. Because it was all government, everything was—all the repairs were taken care of by the government. The houses were painted, the landscaping was placed, all of that. She said that one night, her and my grandfather and my mom and her brothers went out to—I don’t know if it was dinner or a movie—but they had gone out. They came home and pulled into the driveway, everybody got out, and she—I think she said my grandfather walked in first. He opened the door and walked in, and then she walked in, and she’s standing there holding the door, and she goes, Sam, this is not our house. [LAUGHTER] But it was all dark. It was dark enough in the night that all the lights were off, and most people went to bed fairly early back then. Yeah, she said that they very quietly went out the door and shut the door. I guess they had gone one house farther than what they needed to. But she said it was pretty spooky. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: So you grew up here in the ‘60s, ‘70s and onward. Was the Cold War or the anti-nuclear stuff, or the other sort of national stuff something that impacted your life at all, or was that just sort of out?
Giulio: It did impact my life to a certain degree, yes. Because coming from this area, most of us had been around it for the majority of our lives—or all of our lives. When I moved to Yakima in the mid-‘80s, I met some anti-nuke people. Or a lot of the people that I became friends with were decidedly anti-nuke. I met one gal who had actually come to—I don’t know if they called it a protest then, or what—but they would breach the fences, and then they’d get arrested because they were on government land. So, yes, I became friends with someone like that. I tried to explain to them the measures that were taken so that the average Joe didn’t get contaminated—as far as I knew, the measures that were taken. And of course, they’re all thinking everybody glows green out here or blue. You touch something, you get your skin scrubbed off with a wire brush. That was in the age of Silkwood—is that what the name of the film was?
O’Reagan: I don’t remember.
Giulio: Me either! [LAUGHTER] It had Meryl Streep and Cher and somebody else in it, I don’t remember. Yeah, I think it was Silkwood, Karen Silkwood. Okay, so we’ll stop that. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Oh. But that wasn’t really a point of contention? They were able to sort of live with disagreement with you on that, I guess?
Giulio: Yeah, we agreed to disagree. I don’t think they were particularly pleased that I had worked out here or was working out here, but—
O’Reagan: How have the Tri-Cities changed over the course of your living here?
Giulio: Oh, my gosh. It’s not so Hanford-centered, which I find very nice. We’ve got different companies in here with different missions. I’ve seen part of the reservation opened up, and different businesses in there, and not even nuclear-related businesses. Which I find refreshing, so that it’s not like this entity that is just sitting there taking over. Yeah, it’s much—the Hanford site is much smaller now. There’s no special nuclear material out there anymore. Obviously, there’s waste out there, or else we wouldn’t have the cleanup effort that we have going on—which, by the way, I like that also. Not exactly sure how it’s going or where it’s going or what’s happening to it, since I don’t work out there any longer.
O’Reagan: Okay.
Giulio: Yes. Nice to hear about that.
O’Reagan: Okay. I think those are the main questions I had written down here. Anything else that comes to your mind?
Giulio: Not that I can think of.
O’Reagan: Great. All right, well thanks so much for being here.
Giulio: Thank you!
O’Reagan: All right.
Giulio: And if you’re interested in speaking to my cousins, I can give them contact information. If you’re interested in speaking to my husband, I can talk to him, see if he would be—because like I said, he started out there in 1986 and he’s held every position on patrol except for training.
O’Reagan: Yeah, that’d be great. Emma helps coordinate all that, so she’s already been in contact with her—
Giulio: Yes.
O’Reagan: I can tell her to ask.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin and I’m conducting an oral history interview with Daniel Barnett on July 13th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Daniel Barnett about his experiences growing up in Richland and working at the Hanford site. So the best place to start, I think, is the beginning. So why don’t you tell me where you were born and what year.
Daniel Barnett: I was born in Aberdeen, Washington in 1938—August 13th.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: And when the war started, my dad was working for the Harbor Patrol in Seattle as a patrolman. He heard that they were hiring over here, so he came over here and they hired him almost instantly because he already had the security clearance and everything.
Franklin: Ah.
Barnett: So he called my mom and told her that he had a job over here and to get herself packed, because he was gonna get her. But when she moved here, she couldn’t move to Richland. It wasn’t even on the map at that time. They took it off the map and everything. She had to move to Prosser.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: And later on when they finally got a prefab built, we moved into a prefab at 1011 Sanford.
Franklin: Where was your father from? Was he from Washington?
Barnett: He was from Oregon. All my family is from Oregon except for me. My dad said he couldn’t get across the border fast enough.
Franklin: So being from—what drew him to Hanford? Was it the pay?
Barnett: I think so. Well, he was originally—he worked at a plywood plant, then he went to work for Harbor Patrol. He had asthma, which the wet climate apparently irritated. So he had a chance to get over here, so he moved over here.
Franklin: Okay. So the climate played a—
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --big factor and wanted the dry and the sunshine.
Barnett: Well, probably the pay, too, because the pay was good for those times.
Franklin: Right. And how long did your family live in Prosser before you moved?
Barnett: We were there about a year, I think. I don’t remember truthfully—I was only about five when we moved there. And I was there probably about a year. I just vaguely remember moving to Prosser.
Franklin: Right. Okay. And you moved—so you came over in 1944—
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --right? And so you would have moved to Richland in 1944? About there?
Barnett: Oh—I think we actually—Dad came over, I think in ’43. A year later, in ’44 we moved over.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: Because I remember ’45 when they announced the war—dropping the bomb on Japan, and Mom told Dad when he come home, I know what you’ve been guarding! [LAUGHTER] Because he didn’t even know what he was guarding at the time.
Franklin: Right. Wow. Did your dad talk about his work much? Or maybe [INAUDIBLE]
Barnett: He worked as a patrolman until they sold the town and then he became a painter.
Franklin: A painter?
Barnett: Yeah, he was an artist so then he became a painter and painted the houses and the buildings in Richland. Because when the government owned Richland, if you had a paint job needed done on the house, you called them and they come in and painted it. You didn’t hire somebody from a company to paint it. The government did it.
Franklin: And was he a patrolman onsite the entire time until they sold the town?
Barnett: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Okay. Was he assigned to a specific area, or--?
Barnett: No, just general patrol. He talked about patrolling the fences, taking their Jeeps and going down the length of the fences and checking them out, and all that sort of stuff. But just a general patrolman, not any special area.
Franklin: Okay. And you said that your—what did your mother do when she first got here?
Barnett: Oh, she was just a housewife. She eventually went to work as a waitress. And then finally she got on to work at Hanford. She worked with Battelle for about 29 years as a lab tech.
Franklin: Oh, wow. Do you know which lab she worked in?
Barnett: Well, she did—where they did testing on the animals. Though at that time they were testing marijuana on chimpanzees and different types of animals. She did the test work on the meat from the animals.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Barnett: So I don’t know exactly—it was—again, probably wasn’t supposed to be told, so she didn’t say much about it.
Franklin: Did she have any schooling beyond—
Barnett: Just high school.
Franklin: Just high school. And what about your father, did he--?
Barnett: He was just high school.
Franklin: Just high school as well. Where did your mother waitress at?
Barnett: Well, the first place she had was O’Malley’s Drug Store which now is a—what do you call it? A Tojo Gym? Where they teach different martial arts?
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: It’s down on Williams, right off of Williams. That’s what it is now.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: O’Malley’s Drug Store eventually closed, moved up to Kadlec. And a lady bought it from him, and now she’s down there on George Washington Way.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: And right by O’Malley’s Drug Store used to be a Mayfair market. So I sold newspapers out at the lunch halls at Hanford. Sold—well, I don’t remember—but I think it was the Columbia Basin News to start out, because that was the first newspaper of the Tri-Cities, was the Columbia Basin News. Then they bought them out and became the Tri-City Herald. But I remember selling—give you an idea, you can figure out how much time, because I remember one of the headlines was—one of the union leaders had been arrested by the government. And I don’t even remember who it was, it’s been so long ago. But I remember that was one of the headlines of one of the newspapers.
Franklin: What about—do you remember the Richland Villager at all? That was a local paper.
Barnett: Yeah, but it wasn’t very much. It was very small.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I delivered the Seattle P-I.
Franklin: Seattle P-I?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Okay. And you said your mother started waitressing at Malley? At O’Malley’s or Malley’s?
Barnett: At O’Malley’s.
Franklin: O’Malley’s. And then did she waitress anywhere else in Richland?
Barnett: Not that I know of. From there she went out to Hanford.
Franklin: And that was when pharmacies or drug stores as we know them now, they used to have lunch counters.
Barnett: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Right. And so they would go there and they were more of like a café-slash-pharmacy.
Barnett: Yeah. The one up on Thayer, I think it was Densow’s at that time. That had a heyday lunch counter in it, coffee shop. It closed up and now I think it’s just pharmacy.
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Barnett: But where the south end—what do you call it? You know when you get down here, you sit and try to remember things and you get kind of jumbled up—Salvation Army building is now on Thayer was originally the Mayfair Market.
Franklin: Okay. And what did they sell there?
Barnett: Well, that was the grocery store.
Franklin: Grocery store, okay. Do you remember—so you said you moved into—what was the address on Sanford?
Barnett: 1011 Sanford.
Franklin: And do you remember what kind of prefabricated house it was?
Barnett: It was three-bedroom.
Franklin: Three-bedroom prefab, okay.
Barnett: No, I think it was two-bedroom, because my sister was just a little baby then.
Franklin: Okay. And did you share a room with your sister?
Barnett: Probably with my brother.
Franklin: Oh, so how many siblings—
Barnett: Had three kids. I had an older brother. We were about five years apart.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So an older brother, you, and then a younger sister.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: And then how long did you live at 1011 Sanford?
Barnett: I don’t really remember, but it must have been three or four years, because as soon as they got the A houses built, we had a chance to move into one. And we moved immediately to one. Because we had three kids, and a prefab’s kind of tight for three kids.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah. I live in a two-bedroom prefab. And it’s—with just my wife, and it’s pretty—
Barnett: Well you know why they’re called prefabs.
Franklin: Tell me.
Barnett: They were built by a company, brought in in two sections and then put together. They were prefabricated.
Franklin: Yeah, the prefabricated engineering company out of Portland.
Barnett: And nobody could figure out why they put that little square door in the back other than to throw the garbage out it. I don’t know—have you ever heard of Dupus Boomer?
Franklin: Yes.
Barnett: He made some cartoons about that backdoor.
Franklin: Right, and that the rooves had a tendency to fly away.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: And they had to put—
Barnett: Well, in 1955, they did. They had two of them blow off.
Franklin: Yeah, those are great cartoons.
Barnett: Like “Pa wants a bathtub.” [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So tell me a little more about growing up in Richland. Which schools did you go to?
Barnett: Well, the first school I went was Carmichael. And that was probably a mile-and-a-half away. We walked to school. Nobody thought anything about it. There wasn’t any buses. There was a bus system in Richland, but it was run by the government. It was a little old bus that you could pick up in two places in Richland to go downtown and go to a movie and come back. But no buses hauled you to school. There was high school buses that hauled people. They picked them up in the Horse Heaven Hills on farms and brought them to Hanford—I mean to Col High—it’s Hanford now. But, no, I walked to school real regular, didn’t think about it, nobody had any panic about walking to school. Everybody did it because it’s normal.
Franklin: And do you remember—so you would have been going to—was it Carmichael—growing up right in the early Cold War. What do you remember about civil defense? Duck-and-cover, air raids.
Barnett: I don’t remember doing that.
Franklin: Really?
Barnett: I don’t know whether we did or not, but I don’t remember doing that.
Franklin: Do you remember knowing what was being made at Hanford? Did you ever have any fear—how real did the Cold War seem to you?
Barnett: Well, the Cold War affected me quite a bit because I was in eight years during the Cold War—in the Air Force.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: The security was a lot tighter. I mean, there was—you couldn’t go out to Hanford without having your security badge checked. Now you can drive clear to the Area and before you go in the Area have your badge checked.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: But then, there was a badge check when you got on the buses, the badge check, when you got out to your area, and then again they checked your badges when you left the area.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So it was—the security was real tight.
Franklin: Mm-hmm. But what about when you were growing up, when you were a kid in school? Did you ever have any special fear or pride in what was being made at Hanford?
Barnett: Nope. It was—like I said, nobody knew what they were doing out there until they dropped the bomb. Then they found out they’d been protecting part of the atomic bomb.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: But I had no fears about it. I went down the irrigation ditch—there used to be an irrigation ditch that ran through town that started—it had two, three ponds on Wellsian Way that were the settling ponds for Richland’s water system. And we used to go there and swim in them. One of the ponds they eventually made a juvenile fishing pond. And the irrigation ditch runs from there, clear down to where the hospital is, down in front of the hospital, several ponds down through the hospital and then under—well, through the Uptown district, one of them went through the Uptown district, and one went to the Columbia River. And wasn’t until ’48 that they finally put a pump in there, because in ’48 when they built the dam—they built the dike, rather—the irrigation ditches plugged up. So they had to put up a pump station in so they could pump the water irrigation ditch up into the river. We used to fish in that. We used to go down there and slide down—slide over where the pump was, because it was all slick and slimy. We’d put on an old pair of jeans and go down there and slide into the water. I mean, that’s things kids then. Nowadays they wouldn’t even think about it. My mother told me when I could swim 25 feet, I could go in the river by myself. Mainly because you didn’t go to the river too often in the winter; you went in the summer. And there’s not a place in the Yakima, if you can swim 25 feet, you can’t get back to the shore. So I spent all my—most weekends and spare time at the Yakima River playing around.
Franklin: Wow. What about—maybe you could talk a little bit about the growth of Richland and kind of the building of some of the major hallmarks, like the Uptown and the—
Barnett: Well, the Uptown was built—the rest of it closed up, but originally the Uptown—as you come into Uptown off to the left—that was a big theater. And we used to have a big matinee. The Spudnut’s shop has always been there. I can remember going to the movie on a Saturday and the lineup for the movie—I think it was 20 cents for a movie then. But it was clear past the Spudnut shop. We used to watch the owner there making the Spudnuts while we were waiting to get into the movies.
Franklin: Has that been in its same location--
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --in the mall?
Barnett: Spudnut’s has been there ever since it started. They originally were out there in Kennewick. If you go in there and pick up their menu, they have a little story about where they started. They started out there in the Wye.
Franklin: That’s great. And what else about it? Because Richland kind of developed out towards--
Barnett: Well, Newberry’s was on the other end of the Uptown district. That was kind of a department store type. I think the only one I saw was about 15 years ago, and that was in the Dalles, Oregon. I don’t even know if they exist anymore. The downtown district, every year we had different contests for the kids. They had marble shooting contests and bubblegum blowing contests—all kind of contests to keep the kids’ interest.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: At that time, the—what is it? The Allied Arts, or was that in the Atomic Frontier Days?
Franklin: Can you talk maybe a little bit about the Atomic Frontier—do you remember going to the parades?
Barnett: Yeah. They had a lot of the old western movie stars come to the Atomic Frontier Days.
Franklin: Like—do you remember any names in particular?
Barnett: No, I don’t. Like I say, a kid doesn’t retain names like that. He hears them and doesn’t retain them. But my dad, apparently, knew a couple of them, so he visited with them. It started out as just a celebration of Hanford and stuff. And then it worked into the Allied Arts show.
Franklin: Okay. And do you remember any particulars of those celebrations, like the parade—the floats, or—
Barnett: Well, there wasn’t any parade. There wasn’t any parade, and where Howard Amon Park is, there used to be a swimming pool. You know where it makes a turnaround? Well, there off to the right there used to be a swimming pool. And right now, they still got the old children’s swimming pool there, but then there was a regular swimming pool in the water. And in 1948 when the big flood came, it filled up full of water and they ended up breaking it up and burying it and building the Howard Prout pool. But we used to go down there and swim just about every day. And we’d go to the other end of the park and pick peaches, because it used to be a peach orchard. Because there were orchards all over town. Where Jason Lee was—the old Jason Lee—that was a cherry orchard. Where Densow is, that was a cherry orchard. Carmichael had an orchard. There was orchards all over town. Because this was an agriculture district at the time the government bought it and moved in.
Franklin: Were you in any clubs or—
Barnett: I was a boy scouts.
Franklin: --organizations? Boy Scouts?
Barnett: Yeah. We had—one that sticks in my mind the most was we had one of our young scouts drowned at the Uptown. That’s the one I mentioned. He went on an inner tube, fell in the water and drowned. That was in ’48. And actually, the water where the hospital was, the irrigation ditch you got there, that was 15-foot deep at that time.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: That backed up so much, they—that’s when they built what they called the America Mile, the dike. They called all the earthmovers from Hanford out to Richland to build that dike. Because when they started, the water was lapping over the edge to go into the houses. And they poured that thing in about 24 hours.
Franklin: Wow, that’s amazing.
Barnett: Now, the George Washington Way was closed to all civilian traffic, and these great big earthmovers were just going down the road, 30, 40 miles an hour.
Franklin: Wow. What other kinds of activities did you do in Boy Scouts?
Barnett: Oh, built models. Car models. You whittle them out, put the wheels on them, all that, have races with them. Went on trips. Just normal Boy Scout stuff. Got a little more sophisticated, but just the normal Boy Scout stuff then.
Franklin: Right. And so after you went to Carmichael, did you then go to Richland High?
Barnett: Col High.
Franklin: Col High?
Barnett: [LAUGHTER] It was Col High then.
Franklin: Oh.
Barnett: They changed the name because there was a Col High downstream on the Columbia that had had the name before Richland High was called Col High. So they changed it to Richland High instead of Col High.
Franklin: Oh. But was the mascot always still the—
Barnett: All the bomber.
Franklin: --bombers? Okay. So the Col High Bombers?
Barnett: Yup.
Franklin: Okay. And when did you graduate high school?
Barnett: 1957.
Franklin: And then what did you do?
Barnett: I went in the Air Force. I think about two months after I got out and I went in the Air Force. I already spent 27 months in the National Guards. I got in the National Guards when I was 16, and when I went to sign up for the Air Force, the squadron commander of the National Guards was—he got shook up because he enlisted me when I was 16. [LAUGHTER] So they changed the date on my discharge papers from the National Guards. So according to my discharge papers from the National Guards, I’m 78 right now.
Franklin: Oh.
Barnett: Those days, they did things like that, nobody thought anything about it.
Franklin: Wow, yeah.
Barnett: Because if you were warm they took you into the military then.
Franklin: Right. [LAUGHTER] And what did you—describe your time in the Air Force.
Barnett: Well, of course there was basic training. The first place I went was Westover, Massachusetts—that’s Springfield, Massachusetts. And that was a total culture shock for me, because I grew up in a comparatively small city. And Springfield then had over 100,000 people in it.
Franklin: Right, and I guess, too, at this point you would have completely grown up when Richland was a government—
Barnett: Yup.
Franklin: --still was all government space.
Barnett: Yup, they sold it while I was in the Air Force.
Franklin: Can—actually I guess maybe we can back up a little bit. What strikes you, maybe looking back on that, or—
Barnett: I watched them build the Alphabet Houses. And there wasn’t one or two people on the houses; there was five or six building these houses. And they seemed to go up overnight. One of the things that I don’t know is fact or not, but knowing the government it probably was—is they were supposed to build half basements for a coal fire furnace, a coal bin, and two tubs, and place for a washing machine. The contractors screwed up on some of them and built a full basement. And the government found out about it and made them go back in and seal half the basement with dirt. [LAUGHTER] Typical government.
Franklin: Were your—granted you were a kid at this point, but was your sense—were people happy—
Barnett: Oh yeah!
Franklin: living in a government-controlled and -owned town?
Barnett: Nobody thought anything about it. There was very little crime. Because at that time, there was only about two, three ways to get out of Richland. So there was nobody causing any big deal. And if you got in a whole bunch of trouble—you didn’t live in Richland unless you worked at Hanford. And if your kids got into too much trouble, they told the parents, you calm them down or go find another job. So it was stopped.
Franklin: Right. Did you—was Richland mostly a white community at that time? Right? Were there any other—
Barnett: Yeah, there was—one, I think there was only one black community in Richland—Norris Brown. And I think they lived in Putnam.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I remember we had a basketball game in Sunnyside. And Sunnyside wasn’t gonna let them play on their court. And we told them, fine, we’ll just get up and leave. So we all started to get up and leave and they finally broke it and gave in and let them play on the basketball court.
Franklin: How did you know this family? Did you go to school together?
Barnett: Yeah, I went to school with them.
Franklin: Oh okay, and did you play basketball?
Barnett: No! I’m not a sports—I had my first surgery on my knee when I was about 13, so—
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Barnett: I’ve never played any sports. My sporting then was hunting and fishing.
Franklin: But you kind of heard about this story?
Barnett: Oh, yeah. We all know them. Went to basketball games. Then there was sock hops and at noon they taught dancing in the lunchrooms for kids that wanted to learn how to dance.
Franklin: So do you know what the patriarch of that family would have done at Hanford to be able to earn a place at Hanford? Because mostly from what I’ve heard, mostly African Americans had to live in Pasco.
Barnett: Yeah, because they wouldn’t let them live in Richland—I mean Kennewick.
Franklin: Yeah, in Kennewick. So how did—do you know any particulars as to how that family was able to live in Richland?
Barnett: I think it’s just that the government—that they had to be equal on them, and they just hired them and they went to work out there. I don’t know any particulars on it, but that’s basic what it was.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: They were in a government town, and there was no way that anybody could refuse—and there was nobody that complained about it.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: Again, the government controlled it. They said, if you don’t like it, goodbye.
Franklin: Right. And they would—they called the government for pretty much anything you needed on the house, right? For coal?
Barnett: Right. Lightbulbs, chains, coal. But coal was delivered once a—I don’t know whether it was once a month or once a week. But coal was automatically delivered. And like I say, if there was anything major done, you called the housing department. They came in and fixed it.
Franklin: I think sometimes for outsiders looking in, it’s kind of striking to hear about the government completely owning this town and controlling the lives of the people and having that much control on people’s freedoms and responsibility. But from the people I’ve talked to who grow up in Richland, they have very fond memories of it.
Barnett: Yeah, there was no restrictions on the normal freedoms. There was restriction on if your kids got into trouble, because, like I said, the patrol would go up to the person that had the kids that were causing the problem and said you either straighten your kids out or you go and find another job. Which, to me, made common sense. And so it was actually pretty decent.
Franklin: Did you ever get any sense from your parents that they felt, maybe, restricted, not being able to own their own home or do any of their own repairs, or did they just—
Barnett: No, not then. I think—that was just after the Depression—I think they were just happy to be able to get a home.
Franklin: Right. Interesting. Because, you know, for some people looking outside, you could look at that level of government control—because we have these big debates about the role of the government in society today, and it’s kind of interesting to hear about it.
Barnett: Well, there was no control where the government come in and said, you do this and you do that and you do this. As long as you didn’t get into trouble and you did your job, and were a normal person, there was nobody ever complained about it. I remember I was back behind where the Racquet Club is. I was hunting ground squirrels with a .22 one day. And at that time, nobody had any problems with it. And one of the Richland patrol people came and picked me up and brought me back to the patrol station. And he called my dad. My dad come in and he says, what’s wrong? He says, we caught your boy shooting .22s at such-and-such area. He said, well, is he aiming at the road? Said, no. Said, did he shoot it at anybody? Said, no. Then what the hell are you bothering me about? I mean, that’s just how it was in those times. It wasn’t any of this, oh my god, he’s got a gun. It just was normal. Because I had my first rifle when I was about—I must have been about eight years old. And we used to go out and go rabbit hunting.
Franklin: Did you ever spend much time in Kennewick or Pasco—in either of those--?
Barnett: Not really. My wife was born in Pasco.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I never spent much time in it because I had no reason to. I mean, it wasn’t the case of I was afraid to or wary about it—just I had no reason to. All, everything I needed was in Richland or around the Richland area.
Franklin: Why did you first have to get surgery on your knee at 13?
Barnett: Well, my knee locked. I didn’t find out until about 25 years later that the doctor had actually not fixed it. Because what they found out was there was a meniscus cartilage—you know in your knee? And mine was oblong and it had broke in half. And it had slipped between the joint and it had locked my knee so I couldn’t straighten it out. So I’d have to pick it up, lay it across the other leg, and pull it and pop it back out. But that was the first—I was accident prone. I had a radical mastoid when I was about 15. By the time I got out of high school, I probably had 100 stitches in me. I mean, if it happened, I did it and got it happened to me. I was playing baseball, jumped over a fence, and landed on a guard rake with the thongs up—four thongs in one of my foot.
Franklin: Ouch.
Barnett: Weird things like that are always happening to me. One time, when I was in school, I reached up to open a door and a kid slammed it and put my hand through the window, sliced across this way. And I looked at it, bleeding, and I closed it up and went to the nurse’s office. The nurse got all panicky. She called my mom, and I could hear my mom say over the phone real loud, again?! And the nurse must’ve thought she was the hard-heartest old lady there ever was, but my mother was just used to it.
Franklin: Yeah, right.
Barnett: And I didn’t do things out of the way to have it happen, just—if it’s gonna be an odd thing, it happened.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So I kind of, like I say, with all this mess I got with my knee now, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome, a lot of it. I don’t—I get frustrated with it, because I love to garden and I can’t garden anymore. But I don’t get worried or depressed about it, because it’s there and nothing I can do about it, so just live with it.
Franklin: Right. So jump back ahead now. So you said you moved to Springfield in the Air Force for basic training, and that was—
Barnett: No, I was—San Antonio for basic training, and then to Springfield.
Franklin: And that was a big culture shock.
Barnett: Oh, yeah. I mean, I drove a vehicle and drove into town to haul officers into town. And here is a town with 100,000 people and I’d never been in anything bigger than Richland, Washington. So you can imagine the shock it was, being in that kind of traffic.
Franklin: Right. And then where did you go after that?
Barnett: Well, I was there for about a year-and-a-half, two years. Then I went to Thule, Greenland.
Franklin: Interesting.
Barnett: Top of the world.
Franklin: Yeah. And what were you—was that for the—weren’t there bombers stationed—
Barnett: No, they had the fueling planes there. Yes, they had SAC planes all over the world at that time. But at Thule they had the KC-135s and the KC-97s that were fueling planes.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So we were there to support them.
Franklin: And those were there to refuel the—
Barnett: The B-52s.
Franklin: --the B-52s that were carrying weapons in case of--
Barnett: Yup, because there was one from every base in the world in the air 24 hours a day.
Franklin: Right. And can you talk—what was that like, to be in—and was the base separated from any other communities in Greenland, or did you--
Barnett: It was a base of its own. There were no other communities besides Thule, that’s it.
Franklin: And how long were you there?
Barnett: Year.
Franklin: And what was that like?
Barnett: Well, it’s an interesting place to visit, but you don’t want to live there permanently. [LAUGHTER] Let’s put it that way. They have permafrost which is—oh, I guess about two foot down. So in the spring there are all these little beautiful tundra flowers—yellows and whites and all that. And then when they’re gone it’s just green grass and that’s it. And when they went to put a pole in the ground, they put a can—a barrel of oil in the ground, and light the oil, and then dig around that barrel. Because that’s the only way to get down past the permafrost. Because permafrost is almost like concrete.
Franklin: Yes, yeah. I’m from Alaska originally, and so I’m very familiar with permafrost. So after Greenland, where did you go?
Barnett: Went to Mountain Home Air Force Base.
Franklin: And where is that?
Barnett: Idaho, Washington.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So kind of close to--
Barnett: Yeah, out in Mountain Home. They had B-47s then at Mountain Home.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I figured out that they actually phased out B-47s because they were built before the B-52s and they figured the B-47s weren't worth keeping around.
Franklin: And what did you do in the Air Force?
Barnett: I drove. I drove every kind of vehicle you can think of.
Franklin: Oh, really?
Barnett: Yeah. When I moved to Fairchild from Mountain Home, I was trained to tow B-52s in the back, in the hangars.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: With a five-ton Yuke. Four-wheel drive, five ton, and you had wing walkers on the outside that would guide you, and you would back this thing up, this big B-52 into a hangar.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: They would pull it down to a fueling station or whatever.
Franklin: Cool. And then when did you come back to Richland?
Barnett: 1965. I got out to Richland and we moved to--I can't remember the address, but it was on Marshall. We moved to a house on Marshall.
Franklin: Was it an Alphabet House, or was it a--
Barnett: Yeah, it was an Alphabet House. I remember it most because the neighbors had a monkey. And the monkey kept stealing my daughter's candy from her. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So you said--wait, so by this point you had a family?
Barnett: Yeah, I had--I adopted my oldest boy and I had two children.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: They were all born at Fairchild.
Franklin: Okay. And a wife, I presume?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: And what did your wife do in Richland?
Barnett: She was just a mother. But we divorced in about '70. And then I remarried.
Franklin: Okay. And what did you do when you came back to Richland?
Barnett: Anything I could. I worked at O'Malley's Drug Store for a while. I worked at his house--O'Malley's house, leveled his backyard. I worked at Walter's Grape Juice, I worked at Bell Furniture, I worked at—at that time, it was originally called the Mart, at that big building right next to the Federal Building. At one time, that was a big--what would you call it? They had a cafeteria and a grocery store and all the other—kind of like Walmart.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: It was called the Mart at that time. And I worked there in the clippers that they washed the dishes with. And then I went to work for the bowling alley, Atomic Lanes, which was right there where the Jacks and Sons Tavern is. That was a community center and a bowling alley there. And I worked there for about a month, and then they went automatic. So, about that time, I was just about ready to get out—finish high school. And I don't think I had any other job after that, and I went in the Air Force.
Franklin: Oh, so--I'm sorry. When you came back to Richland, what did you do? So in 1965.
Barnett: Oh, I did everything then. You name it, I took a job. Before—I'm sorry, I got it backwards. Before I went in the Air Force, there wasn't many jobs for people in the—who were kids in Richland. And I worked the bowling alley and I worked down at a dry cleaning outfit. But when I come back to Richland, that's when I had all these other jobs. I worked all these other jobs to keep supplied for the family.
Franklin: How had Richland changed in the eight years since you had been gone?
Barnett: Well, the Uptown district had--the Newberry's had left. And there was a Safeway store right next to the theater. Right now I think it's a—I don't know, some kind of a multi shop deal. And both of the stores that were there originally are gone. They're now all antique stores.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So it was—when it was built, it was the first big complex for going shopping in Tri-Cities.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And after they built that, they built Highlands. And that was another big complex for shopping. So I worked everything I could, and 19--oh, what was it? [SIGH] About '67 or '68, I went to work at Hanford. I finally got on with them. Because I'd been applying at Hanford for three years. And I finally got to work with them. I won't mention how I got to work for them, because to me, it's kind of a ridiculous deal, and I don't know whether it was prejudice or not. Well, I'll go ahead.
Franklin: I was gonna say, now you've got my interest.
Barnett: I was--how I'd shop for a job, I'd go out and fill out an employment application, and I'd just distribute--go out all over town and fill out employment applications. And every week, I'd go back and check them. Well, one time, I was filling out an appointment application, and one of the guys I knew, I met him, and he said, hey, there's a new employment office over there at the new Whitaker School. And you might check it out. So I went over there and checked it out and signed up. And three days later, Hanford called me for a job. And I found out that that originally was a minority employment office.
Franklin: Oh.
Barnett: So I've always had the feeling that somebody didn't look at the records right. They didn't see the C. [LAUGHTER] Because I didn't get hired until I went to there and did an application. Because the government was required to hire a certain number of minority--
Franklin: Right. Well, but you did get hired.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: So what did you do at Hanford?
Barnett: Well, I can say as little as possible, like everybody else. [LAUGHTER] That's a common joke. Of course, it took me about--I couldn't understand it. It took me about three months to get a security clearance. When I was in SAC, I had a Secret clearance. Both my folks worked at Hanford, they had Secret clearance. But it still took me about three months to get a security clearance. And all the time, since I've been on the Air Force, I've lived in Richland, I never could understand the government—why they wasted so much money on a security clearance for me. But when I got out there, I started as a process operator. And started at B Plant. And there was no training at that time. I mean, when you went into a radiation zone, one of the guys that was experienced took you with him. And you dressed like he did, hoping he knew what he was doing, because that's how you dressed. And that's how you learned to dress right. So I started out going into the canyon--I don't know if you knew what the canyons were—okay? We went into the canyons and I helped mixed chemicals in the chemical gallery. And that's where I think I really screwed up my knees, because I can remember—remember, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome--I remember throwing a hundred-pound sack of chemicals on my shoulder and going up three flights of stairs with them, rather than wait for the elevator. Young and dumb, indestructible. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Actually, maybe for those who might be watching this who might not be as familiar with some of this stuff as I am, can you describe the canyon?
Barnett: Well, the canyon was—well, like I say, the building was about 150-foot wide and about 800-foot long. And it was four stories deep and there was just one--the reason they call it canyon was because it was a gigantic canyon. It went the full length of the building, and they had huge cranes that moved different stuff so they could process the atomic waste. Because in B Plant, they process the nuclear waste. They ship it down to B Plant and we go through chemical stuff to separate the strontium and cesium from it. And that would be sent to the encapsulation plant. That was built about—oh, six years after I went to work at B Plant. They closed up after I'd been there for ten years, and I went to work for Encapsulation Building. But the canyon is an immensely big, empty storage building, really what it is. And I don't know how—or what they're gonna do with them now, because there is some radiation there that you wouldn't believe how hot it was. We took samples of radiation behind lead shields, and then they were so hot that they ended up having the crane pick up the samples and dispose of them, because we couldn't move them.
Franklin: Wow. Did you—and so when you came back, your father was no longer working at Hanford, right?
Barnett: Yeah, he was still working at Hanford.
Franklin: Oh, was he still working—so you guys worked at Hanford at the same time.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Oh, wow, that's really interesting. So can you tell me a little bit more about what a—describe in a little more detail the job of a process operator?
Barnett: Well, real basically, we were what you might call nuclear janitors.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: We clean up the messes that pipe fitters or millwrights or electricians made. We process all the chemical--mixed all the chemicals and processed—did all the processing of separating the strontium and cesium from the nuclear waste and ship them to tank farms. And that was basically what our main job was. We had a few major accidents. Now it'd be all over the world, about how bad it was and all that. But we just went about our business cleaning it up and went on our job. None of us got an overdose of radiation. We relied on our radiation monitors and they were good radiation monitors. If we were getting too much, they yanked us out of there real quick. So we didn't even think about it. It wasn't the case of being scared of it or anything else. It's like your hazardous wastes that they got, like coming from the hospital, where they work in an x-ray lab, they throw all the gloves and stuff and that. That's called mixed hazardous waste. Well, you could take a bath in that and not get any radiation on you. But according to what the public knew, those things are really highly radioactive boxes. And I think the biggest problem the government had is they didn't tell the people enough about what was really going on after the war was over.
Franklin: Oh. Really?
Barnett: Yeah, because there would have been less worry about things that were going on then, if they would have known. Because if you don't know anything about radiation, and you hear somebody mentions something is irradiated, you get all panicky about it. The expression for radiation out there was, you get a crap up. You get a crap up, you scrub it off and go about your business. Now, they panic and take you to town and do all that sort of stuff. There, we just scrubbed it off and went about our business.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And I never worried about it.
Franklin: Okay. So you said you were a process separator at B Plant. And then you went to the Canyon, and what did you do--
Barnett: Well, I didn't go to the Canyon, I went to 225-B, the Encapsulation Building.
Franklin; 225-B, the Encapsulation Building.
Barnett: That's where they encapsulated the strontium and cesium.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: We all did a multitude of jobs. We worked on the cells, processing the strontium and cesium. And we worked behind the cells in mixing chemicals and we worked from when they loaded the chemicals for shipment for a long period of time when they were shipping cesium to the radiation plant for irradiating medical waste. And that ended when the guy was what they called recycling the cesium capsules too much. They get real hot. I mean, temperature-wise. And he was setting it in the water for a period of time and taking it out of water and cooling them off and stashing them back in the water. Well, one of them leaked.
Franklin: Ooh.
Barnett: And so they ended up, the whole place had to have all those capsules moved back. So that was a big fiasco. And again, it wasn't our fault. It was the guy doing the work was stupid enough to not check and see what he was doing.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And that's usually what happens with most—any of the radiation. And if you work with radiation, it's not the guy doing the work, it's somebody that's stupid and doesn't check what he's doing, doesn't follow regulations that causes the problem.
Franklin: So did you have any other jobs at Hanford? Or what--
Barnett: I don't know, you ever heard of McCluskey?
Franklin: Yeah.
Barnett: Well, I was over there when we cleaned—for five weeks cleaning up that building.
Franklin: Really?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Were you there at the time of the accident--
Barnett: No, no.
Franklin: --or part of the cleanup for that?
Barnett: Afterwards. They were trying to clean up the rooms so they could go in there and get things squared away. And we spent five weeks there. And to tell you how screwball the government can be, the last week-and-a-half we were there, we finally told our supervisor, look, all of worked on this radiation for 15, 20 years. We know how to clean it up. Quit telling us what to do. Let us go in there and clean it up and we'll get it cleaned up for you in no time at all. So they took a chance. And what they did is we ragged all along the bottom of the building, and we took water fire extinguishers. Because it's americium, and americium is a powder substance, it floats real easy. But it's water soluble--it'll run down with water. So we went in there and sprayed the walls with it real heavy. Then wiped everything down, moved everything that was movable, bagged it up in plastic bags and moved it out. And inside of a week, we had it down to mask only. Before then, we were wearing three pairs of plastic and cooling air and fresh air.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: And we cleaned it up in a week-and-a-half because they didn't want the people that knew what they were doing doing it. And that's the biggest problem with the government: they've always got the bureaucracy up here that knows what's going on, but they never ask the poor guy that’s doing all the work what's going on. I think you've seen that numerous times. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I think so. [LAUGHTER] Wow, that's really fascinating. So how long total did you work at Hanford?
Barnett: 30 years.
Franklin: 30 years.
Barnett: I had to take a medical retirement in '98.
Franklin: '98. So then you were there, then, kind of from the shift from production to cleanup. Right? The production and shutdown.
Barnett: No, when I left they were just getting ready to start cleaning things up.
Franklin: Okay, so can you maybe talk about the shift from production to shutdown? How did that affect your job?
Barnett: Well, I really didn't get in on any of the cleanup, because I left before they did. But I talked to a number of the guys out there that I worked with that were in the cleanup. The biggest problem they had is they put such a limit on chemicals they could use to do cleanup that they had to use things that they claim were not environmentally safe. They had to void all that--like Tide. They wouldn't even let us use Tide to wash the walls down. Now, you use Tide in washing machines. [LAUGHTER] Come on, give me a break. That's a hazardous chemical? And I guess it took them quite a while to get the thing cleaned up. Because, like I say, they didn't start cleaning it up until after I left.
Franklin: Right. So what did you do in the shutdown era? Like after '87, from '87 to '98? What was your job primarily?
Barnett: They didn't shut down--they shut B Plant down, but they didn't shut 2-and-a-quarter down. 2-and-a-quarter was still processing strontium and cesium.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so then you kept in the waste encapsulation.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Can you describe a little bit more the process of waste encapsulation?
Barnett: Well, strontium is not soluble--not water soluble. And strontium is. And what they had--they had a special process--I don't know exactly the process. I just know what we did. You would take a mixed chemicals with the cesium and you would dissolve it and then you would heat it up to--I think--800 degrees into a liquid. And then you had a machine we called a tilt-pour which would pour seven capsules at a time full of cesium. And then you'd take these capsules and you'd put a sensoring disc in them to make them airtight. And then you'd weld a cap onto that. That'd be welded by a machine. And most then it was computerized. Then that was decontaminated until it was clean. And then it was put into another capsule, and that capsule was also—put a lid on it, but it was soldered on—welded on. And that was moved into the pool cells. Pool cells are 13-foot deep. What you had is a special hole built into the wall with water that you would shove that capsule through. And then the guy on the other side in the pool cell would grab the capsule and pull it out. And he would go to the pool cell that he's designated to go to, and he would shove it through a hole in the wall. And somebody on the other side would grab it and pull it and then you'd put it into its spot. So it was quite a process. And the fear was--you couldn't get that capsule within five feet of the top. Because if you did, you'd get a high radiation alarm. They’d read millions of rads on those capsules. They were hot, no two ways about it. And one thing I've always wondered is why does cesium glow blue when you turn the lights out?
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: You turn the lights out in the pool cell, and all these cesium capsules will glow blue. And I've never--I've had somebody say it's something about the speed of light and all that. But I'd like to know the real reason it does that.
Franklin: That sounds kind of strangely beautiful.
Barnett: It was. It's a blue glow all along the bottom. The strontium doesn't. Strontium is not water soluble and it doesn't glow at all. In fact, I got some strontium in me one time when I had a tape when one of the manipulators--I don't know if I didn't mention--all the work was done from the outside with the manipulators. You know what manipulators are.
Franklin: Right, yeah.
Barnett: Okay, and all the capsulation, all of the work was done with manipulators from the outside. And it was amazing what some of those guys could do. They could take a little bottle about so big with a little bitty top and they could pick up that bottle, hold it here, and took up the other--the cap with the lid and put it on it.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: I was never that good with it, but there some guys out there who got real expertise with that. It just takes a lot of work to learn to use those things.
Franklin: I bet.
Barnett: That's one reason my hand's tore up--my hand just didn't take it so much.
Franklin: And you said you got strontium on your hand?
Barnett: Yeah, I got--I couldn't handle manipulators good because my hand was falling apart on me. So I took all the decontamination of the manipulator. Because that's--a manipulator has to be pulled after so many--I think it's so many weeks, the Mylar coating on it starts deteriorating. So it has to be pulled, decontaminated, and new Mylar sheath put on it. And I was in there decontaminating one of the manipulators, and one of the—well, they were trying new bands that controlled the grips. And one of them broke and sliced my hand. And I got some strontium in my finger. It was about 700 counts. I wasn't too worried about it. But they took me to town and went on all government roads, documented and everything and brought me back. I couldn't work with radiation for about three months until that thing finally deteriorated--worked out of the body.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: But I didn't worry about it. It wasn't enough to do any harm.
Franklin: Wow, that's really--
Barnett: See, that's the difference between working with the stuff and knowing what it does, and not working with the stuff.
Franklin: Right. Right, I've heard a lot of similar things about--
Barnett: It's like chemicals. I'd rather work at a radiation plant than at a chemical plant. Because if you have good radiation monitors, you're not gonna get an overdose of radiation. But with a chemical plant, look what they have out there now. A guy gets a whiff of chemicals, they all go panic about it.
Franklin: Yeah, I see where you're--I see your point. So you said--earlier when you said you would put the cesium in the pools—cesium cans, you couldn't get them too close to something, because they'd get too hot. Sorry--can you--
Barnett: No, it wasn't too close--they're in--oh, it probably was a--well, what would you call it? It was like a cabinet with holes in it. You would drop these in there. And they're spaced out. You couldn't pull them too high.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: If you pulled them sometimes when you're getting ready to transfer them to the pool cell, they would hydroplane and come up. And if you pulled them too fast, they would come up and you'd get a high radiation alarm. You’d just drop it back down and it'd go off.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: That's what it was.
Franklin: I got--okay. I gotcha. So--
Barnett: It only takes one time, you remember not to do that anymore. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] I bet. So even though your area—your work didn't change much when most of the plans ordered to shut down. You still probably worked with a lot of people whose jobs might have changed--
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --during shutdown. Can you talk about that transition between process--?
Barnett: Well, I talked with some of the guys and they were talking about how much work it took to get things cleaned up. Like the area behind the pool cells, that had to be completely decontaminated. And we finally got it down to where it was just one pair and no masks. That took a lot of work. Decontaminating just takes a lot of hand-scrubbing. I mean, it's not a case of, you can put something there and pick it up and get rid of it. You got a scrub a lot of places until it's gone. It takes a lot of work. And I talked to one fella, and he said that they had all the cells that were down to clean—and what they consider clean is no radiation in them. And it is hard for me to believe, because some of those cells were really hot. But I never got a chance on the cleanup.
Franklin: How was--so when Hanford was shifting over, how was this change explained by management, or some of the--how was it conveyed, or how did the community take it?
Barnett: Management never explained anything to anybody. [LAUGHTER] I don't remember hearing the community complaining about anything, because most of the guys worked out there, and they knew what was going on. So there was no big panic about it. It wasn't the case where some guys didn't work here, they were told this was going on and got all excited because they didn’t know what was going on. Most people knew what was going on. So there was no big panic that I remember.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: We didn't panic with radiation, because we had good radiation monitors.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And that makes a big difference when you're working around radiation.
Franklin: So being in waste encapsulation, how did other events--other nuclear accidents around the country or around the world, like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, kind of affect how your job or how--
Barnett: It made us see how ridiculous--because Three Mile Island actually worked. It was [UNKNOWN] what it was built for. And the moderation they got--radiation they got was not as much as you get flying from here to Denver City. Because you get more radiation from the sun than you do from—what the people at Three Mile Island got. But they blew it up so big, because so many years the government kept radiation such a secret. And that's the reason there's so much panic whenever they say radiation. Of course, there's been some real bad accidents. That one in Japan—that was a horrible thing. But as far as Hanford goes, most of the people that worked at Hanford don't—I guess they're not working around radiation anymore; it's all chemicals. Because they're getting—they get the chemicals and to me, that's the management's problem. Because they're doing something wrong in taking care of the people. The people are doing what they're told to do. If management is telling them, hey, you got to wear this, and they're not wearing it, then that's their problem—that’s the worker's problem. But when the management doesn't do anything about it, that's their problem—that’s management's problem. And I think from what I've heard and read, most of this is a managerial problem. It's not a case that the worker is going out of his way to ignore any safety concerns.
Franklin: Right. What about the accident in Chernobyl? How did that--did that affect your job, or--
Barnett: Yeah, it affected it because they shut down N Reactor. And N Reactor, up until then, was as safe as any reactor in the country. It had so many safety pieces on it that you could darn near slam a door and make it shut down. But they shut it down because it was something like Chernobyl. And that's where the big effect was.
Franklin: How did--oh, how did security policies change over time? Did they change with the different contractors or in response to different events?
Barnett: No, the security’s main thing was basically the same. You had the security guards at like 200 East—well, they left the security guards that you couldn’t get out to Hanford without a security clearance. But that quit because they had the buses, and that stopped. And they had the security guards checking the buses and stuff as you went through. And then typical government, they started screaming about, oh, we're burning too much gas. We can't afford gas! So we'll shut the buses down. [LAUGHTER] So everybody had to drive out. But the guards at the gate checked your badges, checked your cars. If there was anything in it--you couldn’t take cameras or anything like that out there. If the guard knew you, he checked you out whether he knew you or not, because he had to make sure your wife didn't leave a camera sitting in your backseat you didn't know about.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: Which happened on occasion.
Franklin: Right, I bet. How did your job change with the different contractors coming in? Did it change much, or did you--
Barnett: Well, every contractor that came in, the engineers thought they were gonna remake the world. They would come up with some plan that they saw on a schematic and say, this is the way we want to do it. And we'd tell them point blank, it won't work. We've tried it that way. And they say, oh yes, it will! So we'd spend $50,000 in parts and stuff to put this together, and then it didn't work. And then they went around, well, why didn't it work? Well. The only one I ever saw that was a decent engineer is when he'd draw up a plan to do something, he would go to the millwrights, he would go to the operators, he'd go to the instrument techs and ask them to look at it and see if there's anything that needs done on it. And he had never had any problems. But these that come straight out of school and thought they could reinvent the world were a pain in the butt to us because they cost money and time.
Franklin: Do you remember who that good engineer was?
Barnett: He left. I don't remember who he was. But he left and went to work for a big company some place.
Franklin: Oh, okay. Do you remember President Nixon's visit in--I think it was 1970 or 1971?
Barnett: I might have. I didn't see him. I don't worry about politics.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Barnett: He didn't do our place any good or any bad. Just a big political statement.
Franklin: How did the Tri-Cities change from when you came back in 1968 until today? What kind of strikes you as major changes?
Barnett: Well, there seem to be more, you might say, petty crimes. There wasn't as much as there was before--there was more than there was before, I should say. But the city maintained its equilibrium about the same, because the people have been here for 20 years, and then they sold the city to the town. There was no big change in the government. The police stayed the same. The biggest change was you had to call a painter if you wanted your house painted. And they sold the houses to the people, and that was the biggest change.
Franklin: How about, though, since—from when you came back in 1968 until today? Has there been any--has the community changed at all?
Barnett: Well, a lot of the businesses have left Richland. They moved out Columbia Center area, or up there in that area. We don't have--you got to go to Columbia Center to find a business. There's a few still there. There's Home Depot and stuff like that down there, Big Lots. But there's not as many as there used to be. And mostly antique shops or stereo shops.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: But there's always the Spudnut. It's always been there.
Franklin: There is always the Spudnuts, yeah. They're good too. Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about?
Barnett: Well, us kids had different ways of playing that nowadays they would just panic about it. We used to have BB gun fights. We’d put on leather jackets and extra pair of Levi's and a hat and go into these orchards like where Densow's was and we'd have BB gun fights. And you haven't really lived until you've had your butt shot by a BB. [LAUGHTER] But nowadays there'd be some big panic about it that you're gonna shoot an eye out. Well, nobody ever shot an eye out because we made sure that we didn't shoot towards the head. [LAUGHTER] When they were building the houses, that's what was amazing, how fast they put these houses up. It wasn't a week or so to get a house started--it was almost a week and they had the thing almost done. And we used to go to different houses and have clod fights. Things like that that you don't dare do nowadays.
Franklin: When you had what kind of fights?
Barnett: Clod fights. Clodded earth. We'd get behind stuff and throw clods at each other. And the snow then was two, three foot deep. Because I remember building snow forts in my yard three foot high and never have to go to the yard to get snow. So there has been a big change in the weather. And the shelterbelt, that made a big difference, because I remember when we had sandstorms--not dust storms, sandstorms. And my dad would pull his car up in front of the house to keep the sand from blasting the side of the car off--the paint. So there's been big changes. The shelterbelt was one thing the government put in that actually worked. It’s kind of surprising. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That's great. Is there anything else? Anything else you'd like to talk about?
Barnett: Well, not really. Just that the area behind--you know, in West Richland at that time used to be Heminger City and Enterprise. They were two cities then.
Franklin: Okay, tell me, were those cities that predated the Hanford Project?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Okay, and how big were there?
Barnett: Oh, they were just little communities. It was just one run into the other. There was one called Enterprise, one was called--what did I just say?
Franklin: Something city.
Barnett: Heminger City.
Franklin: Heminger City.
Barnett: One of the elections went out for voting, they had one of the places that you went to was called Enterprise.
Franklin: And how long did those communities last after Hanford came?
Barnett: Not very long. I can remember Dad going out to the first town—first little town was Heminger City. And that was right where Cline's computer shop is, it was automobile shop there. And those were all owned by one group--one person. I think it was--Herricks was the name. And she had a little taco stand in one of the places. And OK Tire Shop had part of the one building that they sold tires and did car repair out of. So it was a slow change in West Richland. We had a feed store for a while. But Hanford went on strike and our feed store went down the tubes. They used to have what they called parking lot critter sells. People would bring all their animals, little animals that they wanted to sell in cages. And we would sell them for them and get 10% of the interest. It was a pretty good deal, because a lot of people had pet rabbits and stuff like that and they wanted to get rid of them. Usually had them at the un-boat races. You heard of the un-boat races?
Franklin: Why don't you tell me?
Barnett: The un-boat races? You ever heard of them?
Franklin: Why don't you tell me?
Barnett: Well, the un-boat race was you went up to the Horn Rapids Dam, and you put something in. It could not be a boat. It could be a bath tub, it could be inner tubes--it could be anything that you could see above that would float and it could not be called--it was called un-boat race. And there was a prize that they got down towards the bridge that crosses the Yakima there on George Washington Way. Got down about that far, there was a prize who got there first. But they ended up cutting that out because people left too much stuff—garbage alongside the road. They wouldn’t pick it up and take it with them when they were done with it. But that was a lot of fun. We used to stand up on the ridge. Always started about May. And we'd stand there and watch people come down the river on these un-boats. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That sounds really fun. Anyone else have anything? Okay, well, Dan, thank you so much for talking to us today. I learned a lot of great stuff about Richland and waste encapsulation. I really appreciate it.
Barnett: Okay.
Northwest Public Television | Henry_Danny
Henry: My name is Danny Henry. Spelling is D-A-N-N-Y. Middle initial is R for Ray, R-A-Y, Henry, H-E-N-R-Y.
Bauman: All right. Thank you. And my name's Robert Bauman, and we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities on July 2nd of 2014. So let's start maybe by talking about how and when your family first came to the Tri-Cities. When that was, and why they came.
Henry: Okay. Actually, my father first of all came to the Tri-Cities. And he came to the Tri-Cities, I believe it was somewhere around '48. It was in the mid or late 40s. And he actually came out from the South, from Arkansas--Atkins, Arkansas, Polk County. And he was married to my mom at that time, but she stayed back in the South, and he came out to work for the government during the war effort. And he worked out here for some period of time. I don't know how long, but he liked it out here. And so once his mission was done, he went back to the South. And then later years, came back out and found work with the railroad. And then eventually he started working construction. And he became a laborer, and worked construction. Then he came back out to the site, and worked at N Reactor for some period of time. And I can even remember back in the 60s when John Fitzgerald Kennedy came out here, the President, to give a speech about the N Reactor. I was a kid. I think I was probably about seven or eight years old, maybe 10, somewhere around there. And then he decided to stay out here. When he came back out to the Northwest, back out to Washington, decided to stay out here and got work, and then sent for my mom, and she came out. And so they made a life and stayed on.
Bauman: Hm. Do you know how he originally heard about Hanford? It's a long way from Arkansas.
Henry: My understanding from my older brother, which is 20 years older than me, he said that he actually received direction from the government, or allowance from the government, and received gas credit, or chips, or whatever, in order to drive out and to show up at the Hanford site at some designated time. And so him and another one of his friends both drove out, and they went to work out here during in the 40s.
Bauman: So he was recruited in some way or something, right?
Henry: Yes. Yeah.
Bauman: So then you were born in the Tri-Cities?
Henry: Yes, I was born in Pasco, Washington in 1953, May 7, 1953. And I graduated Pasco High School, went on to college, and graduated from Evergreen State College, and then returned back here to the Tri-Cities and found employment out at Hanford. First of all, it was with Rockwell, and with the fire department. I'll back up a little bit. During the summer of when I was in high school, two summers, I did work out for J. A. Jones at that time in the 300 Area, and I actually worked as a printer, or learned—as a summer job, and learned how to print on these old, offset printers. And did that for two summers. And so when—actually I had graduated from college and came back. While I was at college, I did receive an emergency medical technician certificate through the State of Washington, and so it was a good shoo-in to go to work for the fire department as a firefighter. So let's see. It was Chief Good at that time who hired me. And at that time there was only a few that had EMT certifications. And Chief Good had told me that there was no intention at that time to actually have the fire department respond for emergency care. They had always called the Richland fire department, or Kadlec, or some other emergency services. And so I didn't really see a whole bunch of future in staying there at the fire department. So I heard that they were hiring down at N Reactor for reactor operators, and the pay was a bit better. So I thought that would be a challenge. And so I applied.
Bauman: And so you got a job there, then?
Henry: Yeah. I started working at N Reactor, I believe it was late 1978, and went into the reactor operator program, and eventually—well, started in the fuels department, and then had the opportunity to get into the certification program for the control room. And decided I would take on the challenge. There was a lot talk back and forth with the other operators. Some was pro and some was con. No, it's not really better to work in the control room. It's better to work in fuels. But I seen a challenge of being able to actually operate a reactor. And I really wanted that certification. And so I did go in the certification program. And after, I think, two years, two and a half years—I think the class started out, I think it was like 24, 26. And the final certified reactor operators, I think there was six of us. I could probably name them. Yeah. And all the other operators dropped out, and they went back to fuels, or they got into the trades, or just left the company. But I stayed on and was certified. It was very, very challenging, very hard.
Bauman: Right. And so how long was that training program again?
Henry: The training program, I think it was about a year and a half, two years. With all of the qualifications, you had to be trained on all the different systems. You had to get checked out by the senior operators, and they would ask you questions, and make sure you were proficient in every one of those before you got the sign-off. So you had to complete all of that, as well as take tests, periodic tests, on the systems. And when you had finished all your actual qualifications, then you were allowed to take the eight-hour exam.
Bauman: Oh, okay. Hm.
Henry: And so once I had finished up mine, there was testing. And I took the eight-hour exam, and passed the eight-hour exam. I think I probably took about 10 hours to finish it, but that was fine. And passed the exam. And from there, you were then allowed to do a walk through, where a senior trainer would take you out into the facility, and basically ask you anything he wanted to, all the way from the front face, to the rear face, to the confinement valves, to the emergency cooling system, and anything in components or valves, and circuitry, and all of that. And I passed that, and did quite well. I spent a lot of time actually—when I was an operator, the duties primarily was laundry, because there was a lot of SWPs, or radioactive clothing that was used. So someone always had to maintain laundry. And then also some of the duties was housekeeping. Some of the duties was actually patrol, where actually you went through the reactor, and made sure all of the outside systems and everything was in correct alignment, and there wasn't any out-of-spec conditions. So I spent a lot of time out in the reactor. At the time when I was out, I took it upon myself to take prints with me, and actually verify and look at a lot the systems out there, so I knew them pretty well. So that was one of the things that really worked for me when I did my walk-through. I was really ready for that. And I think I scored highest in my walk-through of the three tests. The final test was the oral exam. And the oral exam consisted of a senior person from training, senior person from operations, senior person from nuclear safety. And they all sat on your board. And I think there was one other individual also, I think may have been quality assurance, maybe. And basically they sit in a room like this, and you sit in front of a table, and they ask you questions, and you answer the questions. And they had the choice of asking you whatever questions they chose to, as long as it related to reactor operations, up to and including the electrical distribution systems that powered or brought power to the reactor, as well as the power going out, steam systems, all of the different auxiliary systems part of the plant. But anyway, I passed that exam also, the oral board. And so then I was granted my certification.
Bauman: A pretty grueling process. [LAUGHTER]
Henry: It was, very much. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: And so how long were you an operator, then, how long did you work?
Henry: Actually, as a certified operator—I maintained my certification, I believe, for a year and a half, maybe two years. There was a requalification. I think it was about a year and a half. I did operate the reactor, the nuclear console, the AA console. That probably doesn't mean anything to you, but the water systems, or the actual nuclear panel, where you actually pulled and maintained power, and adjusted power, and also a lot of the air balance systems, and the secondary systems, where the steam was produced and sent over to Washington State Public Power. We sold steam. It was a dual purpose reactor. And worked on all of the panels.
Bauman: And so before you were an operator, you worked in fuels, you said.
Henry: Yeah.
Bauman: So what sort of work did that entail?
Henry: The fuels operation--[COUGH] excuse me—was actually--the fuel that would come, that would be the spent fuel that was discharged out of the rear of the reactor would come out, go down, and go what was called a trampoline, and go into the water, and hit this metal mesh chain type of trampoline to slow it down. These fuel elements were, I think, as I remember, somewhere around 50-60 pounds. So coming out of the back of the reactor, they were there pretty heavy. And so then they would roll down into conveyor carts, and that's one of the duties as a fuel operator, doing charge discharge. You'd basically take the fuel after it went through the cart, move it out, index it, take it out, and then place it in various different storage compartments in the back face of the reactor, or actually in the basin, what was called the fuels basin. And then also--that was the primary job of a fuels operator, yeah.
Bauman: And so how long total did you work at Hanford, then?
Henry: Total time at Hanford is 35 years. I've been out here 35 years. It's been a long haul.
Bauman: Yeah. And so you started in the late 60s?
Henry: '78 or '79. I believe my actual start date was 8/1/1978.
Bauman: So you were there for a little while, and at some point the mission shifts to clean up.
Henry: Yeah, yeah.
Bauman: How did that impact the sorts of things you were doing?
Henry: Well, one of the things about being--as an operator, is that you work shift work. And so I actually worked shift work, I think, for like three years, rotating shift, A, B, C, D; graveyard, swings, days. So I never got used to that. I had a family. I was just starting a family and stuff, and I wanted to be able to spend a lot more time with my kids and my wife on normal hours. So I looked for another job at N Reactor, and there was an opening for actually a process standard engineer/nuclear safety engineer. And so I applied for it. I got the job, and was responsible for maintaining standards, process standards, which is day-to-day operations. If there was any changes or deviations to the operations, there had to be approval. There was an approval process. And so I was kind of responsible for maintaining that, reviewing it, and then approving it through the control room, through my management, in order to make any changes to reactor operations. Pretty much that was that job. It was straight days. I liked that. Five days, I was off the weekends. It was great. And there was some other opportunities also during that time in that position. I wanted to mention, I had a very good mentor. His name was John Long, and he was the nuclear safety engineer, or nuclear safety manager, manager of nuclear safety at that time. And John was very instrumental in assisting and helping me, and I really do appreciate his efforts. He's deceased now. But anyway, John helped me quite a bit when I was in that position. There was other opportunities also. I moved from there, and became—actually went into the planning aspects of outages. And so the reactor would run for so long, sometimes there was a planned outage, sometimes an unplanned outage. Unplanned outages usually were because the reactor scram for some reason. Maintenance had to be done, something had to be fixed or repaired. So for the actual planned outages, I became a planner/scheduler, or took a position as a planner/scheduler, and actually planned to do various different maintenance. What that consisted of was drawing out a long-term plan, and when the reactor was down, to manage that plan, and for the systems to be fixed, repaired, coordinated for the least amount of time so the reactor could actually come back up and running. We were being paid. And it was one thing I wanted to mention about N Reactor. There was a lot, a lot of good spirit. The people who worked out there, they really knew that they were on a mission. This was during the Cold War, and we knew what we were doing, and it was just a lot of good spirit. You know, when you'd ride the bus out--by the way, I rode the bus back and forth. And when you'd be on the bus, and the reactor was down, and you'd get past the fire department, and you'd make that last left turn, people would just kind of wake up. And they'd be looking, and they were looking to see if that green light goes on. There was—on the board, there was a green or red light. And someone up front would say, yeah, we're up. And it was just a lot of that kind of spirit of wanting the reactor to run. I really, really liked that. So being a part of the--doing the planning and scheduling, or a position as planner/schedule was a real shoo-in to going to work as outage manager. I then became an outage manager, where actually I managed the outage center. And the outage center basically coordinated, on a daily basis, on a shift basis--there was six of us, and I guess you could say we were kind of elite, we were very picked to run that, because it was so critical to the mission—and your responsibilities was to make sure that things got done as scheduled, as planned, and that you had the craft resources to do them. You coordinated with the operations folks, the fuel folks, the engineering. That was your job, to coordinate all those efforts. A lot of the things that happened in the plant and the repairs actually required that you have engineers in place in case there was questions, technical questions, changes to paperwork that had to be authorized, and so on and so forth. So that was part of the job as outage--primary job as an outage manager is to make sure of that. And you reported directly to upper management, and sometimes DOE. So you were responsible on a daily basis to coordinate and have those meetings, and ensure that work got done and statused at the end of the day. So shortly after that, they announced that—or probably, I guess, maybe about six to eight months in that position--they announced that N Reactor--after Chernobyl--they announced the N Reactor would no longer be on the same mission, and it was going to shut down. So I moved from there to another job. I actually left N Reactor, and went to 200 Area, and worked as a nuclear safety engineer, over for—I'm trying to think right now. I can remember who I worked for. I worked for Arlen Shade. But actually, my responsibilities was over B Plant WESF. And at that time they had just started to bring back the capsules that was basically sent down to--I forget exactly--Decatur, I think. Yeah. And anyway, these capsules, there was some problems with them. But anyway, they were bring them back. And so I was right as part of that. I don't know what happened to that mission, but I served there as a nuclear safety engineer with oversight responsibilities over people at WESF for a period of time. And then after that, let's see. I almost have to look at my resume to think.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Henry: It's really been--it's actually been that long. Of course you're going to be cutting and doing clips and stuff.
Bauman: Yeah.
Henry: So I can just-- Oh, by the way I have a--I actually pulled this out. This was actually my certification. Wally Ruff's name over to the right there kind of faded. It must have gotten wet.
Bauman: Oh, yeah, huh.
Henry: That's the original certification.
Bauman: [INAUDIBLE]
Henry: What's that?
Bauman: --the control room on the--
Henry: Yeah. Yeah. So I didn't know exactly what you guys would want, but I just grabbed some stuff. This was my 30-year recognition with Fluor. I don't have a 35. I don't know. They didn't give out a 35-year recognition. I don't know why. Let's see. Where am I? Process standards, senior outage planner, outage manager of nuclear safety, principal engineer. Oh! Yeah. Then after that there was—actually, when I was--as the nuclear safety principal engineer oversight over B Plant WESF, there was a position that came available for a manager for OSHA compliance, OSHA safety and health program. We had previously been benefited, let me say, with headquarters coming out, and they were called the tagger team. And they basically came out to the site, and they went through the whole site, and they were doing assessments. They had a very, very large group, and they assessed the site, with the effort to give feedback to the improvements that needed to be done at Hanford. Well, part of the actions, or corrective actions, was to develop an OSHA type of assessment program that would look at occupational safety and health, industrial hygiene, and in some aspects, I think, fire protection. Anyway, there was a position open, and I did not have the background in occupational safety and health, but I talked to my manager, and talked to my manager, and finally I convinced him to put me in as a temporary position, just as an acting manager. And so he went ahead and authorized that. So I then moved from the outer areas down to 300 Area, and from there, he basically said, okay, Danny, you want this position. You think you can do it? He says, okay, here's a stack of resumes. You have two staff and that's it, and a student worker. Okay, so you need to first of all hire and find some people that are qualified to be inspectors in occupational safety and health, and hygiene. And then you need to have all this done, by the way, and a program developed in four months. And so that was quite a challenge. It was really a challenge. I did hire—went outside and hired some people, and they were good people. We were a very good team. I didn't know about occupational safety and health, but they taught me. I knew I could hire people that were smarter than me. And I actually hired--and maybe for reference, one of the people was Judy Larson I don't know if she still is living. But she was a certified industrial hygienist. She was working for PNNL, and she transferred over. I also hired a student that--well, no, he actually had graduated with a mechanical engineering degree, and he wanted to do fire protection. So I said if he came over I'd get him trained up. And so he came over. And I also hired another individual that was an industrial hygienist—or two other individuals, a Clinton Stewart, and the first occupational safety and health person I hired, his name was Steve Norling. And he would be a good person to interview in the future. I would recommend that you do that.
Bauman: How do you spell the last name?
Henry: Norling. N-O-R-L-I-N-G. Steve. He's a good guy. He still works PRC. I haven't seen him in a few years, but I think he's still out there. But anyway, we developed a program. We put the program together, hired a contractor to actually help us with the writing of the program, and we set it up. And we actually went out in the site, and first of all, we had to compile all of the buildings, because we were basically responsible for all of the Westinghouse people, and all of their facility. So we had to figure out all of the facilities in the whole site. And then we had to have some kind of system to figure which ones we would go look at first, based upon risk. And so we developed that program, and to make a long story short, the tagger team came back out to check the corrective actions on all of the site, and when they got to us, our program, they had no findings, absolutely no findings, zero findings. And they only had one recommendation, in that we needed to involve the employees more. And so then we transitioned into the Voluntary Protection Program. But that was very outstanding. And that really impressed my management. So then from acting manager, I was made manager of the organization, and proceeded on to continue my career.
Bauman: So what time frame was this, roughly, then? [LAUGHTER]
Henry: Oh, let's see. That was May 1991 to September 1992.
Bauman: Okay.
Henry: Okay. Let's see. From there, I transitioned into basically manager of safety programs assessments, which developed. And basically our mission at that point was to develop baseline hazard assessment programs for facilities. And basically, for each facility that you had operations in, to go and do a baseline hazard of everything, both the occupational safety, industrial hygiene, the nuclear aspects of it, and any other types of hazards, so that for that facility, all of the known hazards of that facility would be known and could be communicated, and basically programs and systems set up in place to keep the workers safe. From September 1992 to February 1994, I worked in that position. And after that, I worked as the manager of the Voluntary Protection Program, or actually manager of Industrial Safety Planning, which consisted of managing the Voluntary Protection Program for Westinghouse and for Fluor Hanford, doing their contract transition. And of course the Voluntary Protection Program is still out here on the site, as you probably well know, and there's different--but I was very instrumental in getting that program off zero. After that, I worked as operations engineer. I transitioned and went back out to the site, to 105 K-East and K-West. I worked as an operation specialist in development of the Canister Storage Facility and the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility out at K-Basins and at 200 East, is where the Canister Storage Building is. And then also K-East and K-West storage facility. I was assigned to the shift office, and worked as an OE, Operating Engineer, basically under the direction of a shift manager. And basically managed the facility's work activities, coordinated those on a daily basis to get work done, assigning work to the craft personnel, releasing work packages during lockout/tagout, and various different aspects of operations for that facility, managing that facility. After that, let's see, that was from 1998 to 2002. And from January 2002 to present, I've worked as a management assessment coordinator. And responsibilities are primarily to develop the Management Assessment Program and Integrated Evaluation Plan database for DOE-RL. And let me explain, that Integrated Evaluation Plan is basically a database that takes RL's assessments and our assessments, and basically puts them together, so we have one integrated plan.
Bauman: I see.
Henry: And that effort is to actually benefit, or to alleviate, or eliminate redundancy in assessments, teaming with the site and doing various different assessments, rather than they doing one and we doing the same one. Yeah. So that's currently where I'm at right now.
Bauman: So you've had several different sorts of positions. You've worked at N Reactors, and K-Basins, and different parts of the site. Of the different jobs you had, over the 35 years, different places you've worked, what was—was there a specific job or place that was sort of the most challenging and/or most rewarding, that you got the most sense of accomplishment or reward?
Henry: Yeah, there was. I would have to say probably the reactor operations was probably, I'd say, number one, because I know there was no other African Americans that had ever certified at N Reactor, and then later on I found there wasn't any others in any of the other facilities of the plants. So I felt very good about that. And it was very challenging. The second area would have been in developing the OSHA compliance program, because that was basically, I knew basically nothing. And I had to go find people in order to work that were much smarter than me, and be able to develop a program that would actually meet the muster of headquarters when they came back out. And it was very challenging. I stayed up quite a few nights thinking about it and worrying about it. And yeah, it was very challenging. But it was a very, very well-put-together program, and it met everything that they were looking for. So I'd have to say those two positions were the most challenging, yes.
Bauman: When you were talking about working at the N Reactor, you talked about riding the bus, and the sort of spirit, the sense of mission, I think, in the Cold War--
Henry: Yes.
Bauman: So when the Cold War ended in 1989, 1990, did that sort of sense of mission change? Did it shift somewhere?
Henry: I guess I couldn't really expound on that, because what I was speaking of was during the time I was working at N Reactor. And once the Cold War ended, I was at that time working--when did the Cold War end? That was--
Bauman: Well, I guess it depends, right? The Berlin Wall came down in '89.
Henry: When the wall came down. Okay. Yeah. I was—where was I at at that time? Yeah, I was actually up in the 200 Area. I was oversight. I was a part of an appraisal team doing integrated safety appraisals out of the 200 Area. So I had transitioned away from N Reactor some years before that. So I didn't really feel a difference with what I was doing. The real thing that I seen that really affected a lot of the people at N Reactor was when they announced that it was not going to—it no longer had a mission. It wasn't going to be restarted. The reactor was run very hard, run very well, and produced a lot of power, and was very good in its mission. And there was just a lot of pride there. And when that was announced, there were a lot of people that really was hurt by that, because it was a reason to come to work. It was really a reason to come, and a reason to work for something.
Bauman: I want to go back to something you talked about early when you started talking. And you mentioned President Kennedy's visit when he dedicated the N Reactor. So do you remember that? Did you--
Henry: I actually remember that very well. And in fact, it was my father, and my mother, and my sister, and me, and my friend, Ronnie Brown. I haven't seen him in years, but I understand he's doing well. My dad brought us all out to the site, and drove with all of the, what seeming like thousands and thousands of cars, you know, we were just kids, and all the way out to N Reactor. And yes, I definitely remember that. I can remember the helicopters coming in, and the dust flying, and all that. And I didn't know that President Kennedy's hair was red. [LAUGHTER] But on that day, seeing him that close, because me and my friend, we kind of wormed all the way up as close—we were just little tiny kids, so people let us by. And we got up there, and we were able to stand up on—there was like different seating that people had brought. And we just kind of stepped up on one of the little seats that were there, and we had to get our heads up over the crowds. And we could see him when he stepped out of the helicopter, and he walked over to the podium. I can remember that, just like the yesterday. I also remember that day very well because my sister—it must've been over 100 degrees there--my sister was suffering from heat exhaustion. I remember when we actually came back, my mother was taking care of her. She was getting water into her, and everything. That was a very vivid day. That was a very, very, very good day.
Bauman: What I also wanted to ask you was, like growing up in Pasco in the 50s and 60s, was it a segregated place? Or was it—what was it like?
Henry: Not when I came along. Not actually in the 60s. I hear stories about the way it was, but I don't know. I went to Pasco High School. I went to Stevens Junior High School. It was all integrated. My grade school was Whittier. It was integrated. It just was East Pasco, and it was primarily blacks. But also there was Hispanics and whites all went to that school, but it was predominantly black. Then after, actually, when I finished sixth grade, they divided sixth grade, and then seventh, eighth, and ninth. It was junior high school. I was selected, because of where I lived in East Pasco. I was assigned to go to Stevens Junior High School, which was, at that time, way across town, and nothing, hardly anything around it. So we rode the bus over to Stevens. But prior to that, the majority of blacks, African Americans, Hispanics, basically went to McLoughlin Junior High School. But McLoughlin at that time was what is now Pasco City Hall. That used to be McLoughlin. [LAUGHTER] But my brother goes back, I mean my brother's deceased. And he passed away, in fact, about a year and three months ago.
Bauman: This was your brother who was about 20 years older?
Henry: Yeah. He actually went—the high school at that time was McLoughlin, which then became City of Pasco.
Bauman: Okay. [LAUGHTER]
Henry: And Whittier was the grade school, junior high school when he went to school. I do have some pictures of him. He was part of the patrol that went out and let the kids across the street and stuff. Yeah, he had the little patrol hat on, and all that. I have all those pictures of him when he was really young. And by the way, my brother, he is 20 years older than me, but he graduated from Pasco High. He then entered the Army--or no, he was drafted. He was drafted, and he actually fought in the Korean War. And he corrected me. Every time I said Korean War, he said, no, it's the Korean conflict. It was not a war. [LAUGHTER] And he served two terms in Vietnam, and was wounded.
Bauman: What was his first name?
Henry: Thurman. In fact I have a—here—obituary out of the paper. But he had what I consider a pretty impressive military career.
Bauman: Yeah, 20 years of active service.
Henry: Yes. Two terms in Vietnam, a very unpopular war. Me growing up in the 60s, it was, gee, I've got a brother that's overseas fighting, with all the racial strife and stuff here in the United States. But he was very proud of his country, and he was willing to go and do whatever he was assigned to do.
Bauman: And so you had an older brother, and how many other siblings did you have?
Henry: I had a sister. I actually had a half-brother and a half-sister, that—they didn't live here. They lived--Margie lived in Wichita, Kansas. And my other brother, half-brother, lived in--I think he lived in Wichita, Kansas, too. I didn't really get to know him that well. I got to know Margie pretty well. Then I had my sister, Marilyn. She graduated from Pasco High School. A teacher for 34 years in Yakima. She just retired about three years ago, I think. And still living in Yakima. But she taught school. And those were all of my siblings.
Bauman: So would you say that Pasco, Tri-Cities was a good community to grow up in?
Henry: Yeah, I think so. I really think so. No, I don't have any--I have to just--not so much the community as much as pointing back to my parents. I think I had very--I've seen other people, my friends with different parents and stuff. And I think I had some pretty good parents. My dad was very industrial. He worked construction as a laborer, but he had rentals. And he had--and of course, I came along much later. But he had houses and rentals, but he worked construction. And him and his best friend, Mr. Louzell Johnson. He was a bricklayer. My dad was a laborer. They kind of was a team. And they worked, and they built a lot of houses throughout Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland back in the 50s and 60s. And he worked on a lot of the dams on the Snake River.
Bauman: Oh, really?
Henry: The building of a lot of the dams. And I can just remember--well, I can remember my mother talking, and also my dad. And on Sundays we would take drives, and he would take us way out to where the dams were being built, and stuff like this, for something to do on Sunday for the family. And I didn't pay any attention to it really. But I can remember. I can remember. Those were very good times. My mother, she worked at the Navy base that was in Pasco. Have you heard—
Bauman: Yes!
Henry: --that there was a Navy base there? She worked in the laundry at the Navy base. And then we came along, my sister and me, and so she just stayed home and took care of us, and my dad worked. But I spent a lot of years painting, and fixing hot water tanks, and unplugging sinks when I was a kid. I was very cheap labor. [LAUGHTER] So I learned to do that stuff really early in life. So that's pretty much my parents. They were very good people. Anybody you ask, they were very good people. There’s the obituary of my mom. I didn't get the obituary of my dad. I didn't find it. I have it somewhere, but there's this picture here. Anyway, go ahead. I just—I’m kind of rambling. So you can--it's a good thing you're editing this, and you can cut out all the--
Bauman: Are there any other events? You talked about the JFK visit. But any other events that sort of stand out in your mind from growing up, or from your years working at Hanford?
Henry: You know, I can't really--not really. Not really anything that really, really stands out.
Bauman: So overall, then, in looking back at your 35 years working at Hanford, how do you assess it as sort of a place to work?
Henry: Overall, I'd say that Hanford, for me, it's been a very good place to work. I was given opportunity. You know, I had opportunity. And anyone that's going to achieve anything in life, if they prepare themselves, and when the opportunity comes, they step forward and they take it. I mean you can't much ask for much more than that. My dad gave me some advice, of course, when I first started working out there. You know, he said, make sure you keep your eyes open, and you watch everything around you. And do not worry about if there's people against you, because God will always put one person there for you. And I always remember he told me that. And so I think about that, that different times during the time I worked out there, the people that have been there, that have assisted me and mentored me, and helped me to continue to do better work, a better job, and basically to feed my family and keep on living, as my mother would say. Yeah. I can't think of any other outstanding--there's been a lot of accomplishments, just small little milestones that have been made in safety and our management's commitment to safety, and our management's commitment to the workers, and making sure that they are heard, and that they're actually dealt with, and talked to, and gotten back to when they have safety concerns. And I guess there's a lot of pros and cons about that. But I see safety as being not just the number one thing at Hanford, but being integrated in all that we do at Hanford, is how I see it. And so I know there's a lot of things—I've seen the media. I've seen there are things that are going on out there that I don't know about. I have not worked in some of those areas. But for all of the areas that I have worked and been in, that has been the primary concern, is safety. And you compare to what we have out at Hanford, compare it to out in the real world, and we have a lot of commitment and concern, and actually management standing up, and taking responsibility for things, and actually dealing with them, trying to correct them, and working to try to make events or things that happen not reoccur. I actually brought a--you can get back to your questions, but I'll forget. But I actually sent off--you know, I seen it on television, and then a fellow employee told me about the Cold War Patriots?
Bauman: Oh, yeah.
Henry: And you probably know. I got my little certificate. And I got, actually, the pin. Whoops! I actually got this pin that came with it. And I have it—of course I can't bring my badge in here, because it's a Hanford badge. But I stuck my little pin on the badge, and so I thought that was kind of neat.
Bauman: Yeah. Actually, I talked to the Cold War Patriots last week about the project here. Well, I don't have any other questions for you.
Henry: Oh, okay!
Bauman: Unless there's something else that we haven't talked about yet, or I didn't ask you about that you think is important, to-- We can--Eric can actually film some of this sort of once we’re done talking.
Eric: Yeah, anything that you showed him we’d want to get photocopied.
Henry: Okay, sure.
Bauman: They could always integrate that, then, into the interview.
Henry: Okay, sure. Sure.
Bauman: Anyway, thanks very much for coming in--
Henry: You bet.
Bauman: --and doing the interview. I really appreciate it.
Henry: Okay, yeah. You know, if you don't step forward and make sure that you're a part of history, you won't be. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Absolutely. So how did you--I was going to ask you, how did you hear about the project? Did [INAUDIBLE] contact you?
Henry: Actually, I was at a PZAC meeting--President's Zero Accident Council—
Bauman: Oh, okay.
Henry: --meeting--and there was an individual that works--