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. Well, thanks for being here, first of all. To start off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us?
Sue Olson: Sue, S-U-E. Olson, O-L-S-O-N.
O’Reagan: Okay, thank you. And I am Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral interview here as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. It’s February 5th, 2016. This interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So just to get us started, would you please tell us something about your life before you came to Hanford? Where you were growing up and so on.
Olson: I was born in Claude, Texas. I graduated from Panhandle High School as valedictorian in my class. I went to Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. Then went to University of Texas in Austin, Texas. I was—[COUGH] Excuse me. I was in college in an accounting class at the University of Texas in Austin when World War II was declared. I heard the President declare World War II. So at the end of that year, I took a civil service test as clerk typist and I started working for US Corps of Engineers. I first worked at Pantex Ordnance Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and I had to transfer to Tyler, Texas to an army replacement training. And then after that, I received a teletype that I was to enter in for Hanford. We had received a teletype from a lady who had transferred up here, and she had said, don’t come here. It’s rattlesnakes, sagebrush, and dust storms. [LAUGHTER] So I transferred to the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. And Manhattan Project had three areas—I worked for the army major who was in charge of one of the areas there. DuPont was the contractor there. And at Oak Ridge, I met Robert Olson, who was with me at DuPont. Before I met him, he worked at the University of Chicago to work on the Manhattan Project—he worked on at the University. And he transferred to Oak Ridge; I met him there. We were married there, and then we transferred to Hanford, with DuPont. We arrived here October 1st, 1944.
O’Reagan: What sort of work did you do at Oak Ridge?
Olson: Well, he and I were at DuPont getting ready to work. The work on the Manhattan Project was to develop the bomb. That was what it was for. And he worked at Oak Ridge.
O’Reagan: Do you know what sort of—was he working in chemicals or physics? Do you know what sort of work he was doing there?
Olson: No, because it was all secret.
O’Reagan: I see. And did you say you were also working there as a clerk?
Olson: I worked as a secretary for the Army Major, who was in charge of the X-10 area in Oak Ridge.
O’Reagan: Okay. When you arrived at Hanford, what sort of work did you undertake here?
Olson: Oh, I signed up to be secretary and DuPont was the contractor here for the first year or so. And they sent me out to 200 West Area to be in the stenographic pool. I was the only secretary there. There were several departments, and all the departments brought their paperwork in to me. [LAUGHTER] And I took dictation for all of them who wanted to write letters of any type. Then they sent another girl out—another secretary out, but she couldn’t take dictation. So I did all of that. There were several departments. I don’t remember the names of all the departments, but it was a major process.
O’Reagan: Was it similar to what you were doing at Oak Ridge, or was it a new kind of work?
Olson: It was the same kind of work, secretarial work.
O’Reagan: Right. What was your impression of the Tri-Cities when you arrived? Was it like you had been warned?
Olson: No. [LAUGHTER] We drove along the highway south of town, and Bob looked over and said, there it is. And we could see a few houses. We went to the hotel to check in at the hotel, and the hotel was called the transient quarters. [LAUGHTER] The hotel in Oak Ridge was called the guest house. We were in the hotel about three days. Then we moved into—at that time the houses were assigned to people. There were only the two of us, and so they moved us into a one-bedroom prefab on Winslow Street.
O’Reagan: In Richland?
Olson: Winslow Street in Richland. And there was one street behind that, and behind that street was desert, all the way out to the river.
O’Reagan: What were your impressions of the house? Did you like the house?
Olson: Well, the house was adequate. It was 600 square feet.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Had a question and it went right out of my mind. [LAUGHTER] Okay. So could you tell us, what was an average day at your job? You said you took dictation, but what other kinds of work—
Olson: Typing. In 200 West Area in 1944, it was typing. Except for the people who dictated. One man came in one day and he dictated the evacuation process, which took him several hours to do it. And the evacuation process—if it had ever had to happen—the process was that it would be on buses—cattle car buses. [LAUGHTER] The seats were on the sides of the bus, vertically, not horizontally across as they are in most buses. But there was never an evacuation process. There was preparation for it, if it had happened.
O’Reagan: Interesting. I understand the transportation to get to jobs on the Hanford site was difficult. Did you take buses?
Olson: Well, there were buses. There were buses, yes.
O’Reagan: was that a long commute?
Olson: Yes. I don’t remember the number of miles, but it’s a long commute from Richland into the West area.
O’Reagan: What was your husband working on?
Olson: He worked on—it was a group of scientists that were—13 or 14 or 15, something like that—and they wrote the separations process. Which was part of the process.
O’Reagan: I guess that was probably a different part of the Hanford site from where you were working?
Olson: No, it was in 200 West Area, too. Yes. And it was a group of scientists who had transferred from Oak Ridge along with Bob.
O’Reagan: Right. Could you please describe Hanford as a place to work? It’s a broad question. Let’s see—what were some of the more challenging aspects of your job?
Olson: Well, that I typed for eight hours a day. I typed or took dictation eight hours a day. No coffee breaks, nothing like that, and everything was confidential. Nobody discussed their job with any other person.
O’Reagan: I would guess you would have had to have had pretty high clearance to be taking dictation on all these sensitive matters. What was that process like?
Olson: Well, I worked in Two West and then I transferred to B Plant, and I went to 300 Area. My next job, I worked for Wilfred Johnson when he was assistant general manager. And I worked in the 703 Building. I had Top Secret clearance there. So I had kept the filing cabinet locked. I took dictation from him. The rest of it was the type you’re making phone calls.
O’Reagan: When did you find out about what the goal of the Hanford site was, to make the weapons?
Olson: When the bomb was dropped, I read it in the local paper.
O’Reagan: What was your reaction?
Olson: I was happy. That the US was going to be safe.
O’Reagan: Right. Do you—trying to think how to phrase—is that your impression of that’s when everybody around you found out as well, or was it sort of a general surprise that the—
Olson: Yes. It was a surprise to everybody, I think. That’s my opinion. Except the men like my husband who were working on it.
O’Reagan: Did you continue working at the Hanford site after the war?
Olson: Yes. I worked there for ten years.
O’Reagan: Did your work change substantially once the war was over?
Olson: Well, as I said, I worked as a secretary in 200 West, and then I moved to B Plant. And I worked in B Plant, and then I went to the 300 Area and was a secretary for the head of metallurgy. And then I had the job as—I was then an executive secretary for Wilfred “Bill” Johnson. And I retired after that period.
O’Reagan: Did the workplace environment change in that time? You mentioned there were no breaks at first.
Olson: Change in what way?
O’Reagan: You mentioned it was very focused work during the war, no breaks, really concentrating to get the job done. Did that become more relaxed eventually, or was it still the same pace?
Olson: Not in the jobs I worked on. Everybody was there to work.
O’Reagan: Interesting.
Olson: No coffee breaks, nothing like that.
O’Reagan: Interesting. How about—can you tell us something about your life outside of work during the wartime?
Olson: We skied. Bob was from Wisconsin. He was a skier. And I grew up in Panhandle, Texas, and I did not ski. But I took lessons. And we skied on weekends.
O’Reagan: Where would you go?
Olson: We went to the closest one, over by—the closest one, which was south of East Richland. Tollgate. We went to Tollgate and skied there. And then we went up to the Snoqualmie Pass, and we skied there when it had only three rope tows. Before they put in any kind of lifts. It was—and I don’t remember the year for that, but—shortly after we got here, we went to Snoqualmie Pass.
O’Reagan: Did the social environment—did life in Richland change for you outside of work once the war was over?
Olson: Well, there were a few more activities, because while the war was going on, there was nowhere to go. [LAUGHTER] We had a friend from Oak Ridge we played bridge with part of the time, and then we skied weekends.
O’Reagan: Did you feel it was easy to meet new people when you moved here?
Olson: Did I feel--?
O’Reagan: I’ve heard some people say that when they first got here, they had a very easy time meeting people; I’ve heard other people say when they got here, they were so focused on the work, they didn’t get to meet as many people—
Olson: Oh, no, no, because we had friends from Oak Ridge who were transferred who were scientists. And people who were at work in that kind of work. So we visited with them, and they—we all had a little group, all the people that came from Oak Ridge. So we had several friends.
O’Reagan: Let’s see. Could you describe any ways in which security or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work?
Olson: Well, of course. [LAUGHTER] No visiting, no coffee breaks—we worked.
O’Reagan: Did the secrecy continue outside of work? I’ve seen in some communities that people feel that they can’t talk about the work, and that sort of gets—someone last week was describing how she sort of felt she had to be on her guard about speaking about her work. She was afraid of that. Did you feel any sort of sense like that?
Olson: We didn’t discuss—we did not discuss work, because we were busy with whatever we were doing—playing bridge or dancing or skiing. So there was no reason to discuss work.
O’Reagan: Sure. When you retired from being a secretary, you mentioned you eventually got into real estate. Is that right?
Olson: Yes.
O’Reagan: Was that right away, or did you have a [INAUDIBLE]
Olson: No, it was not. My husband died in 1974, and so I was at home. I did volunteer work for 20 years. I had no plans to go back to work, but after his death, I decided to work in real estate.
O’Reagan: Will you tell us about your volunteer work?
Olson: Oh, yes, Kadlec Hospital Auxiliary, and Mid-Columbia Symphony Guild, and Girl Scouts. All types of volunteer work.
O’Reagan: Great. What kinds of things did you do at the hospital?
Olson: Volunteer work. I would go down at 7:00 in the morning, and I answered the phone in one of the departments—I think it was the children’s department, that was part of what I did.
O’Reagan: And when you started getting into real estate, can you tell me about that?
Olson: Yes, yes. I took classes at CBC. I studied hard for it, and I passed the test. I started to work for a company called—let’s see—Sherwood and Roberts. They were a company that had offices in this state and California and some other state. I worked for them four years, and then I transferred to other companies.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Did that job change over time? I know the communities started expanding during that period—
Olson: Oh, well, yes, there was more work as the company got larger.
O’Reagan: Could you describe any ways in which you think of the Tri-Cities as changing over the first couple of decades you lived here?
Olson: Well, it got larger. Larger, and they built more houses out past Winslow [LAUGHTER] Winslow Street. Well, of course it changed. There were more activities. Everybody was more—and there were people transferring in and out from large companies. There were a lot of people who came here who had worked for other companies that came here. And some had worked for General Electric or whoever the major contractor was.
O’Reagan: Let’s see. Of course, during a lot of this era, the Cold War is going on as well. Did you feel that that was something sort of just off happening in the world, or was that something that you felt impacted your life?
Olson: The Cold War?
O’Reagan: Yeah, of course, there’s sort of this global conflict going on. There’s a lot of still building nuclear weapons, there’s thinking about use of nuclear weapons. Some people have described sort of a fear during that time, and other people have described they were happy—they went about their work and it didn’t bother them.
Olson: No, there was no fear to me personally. I was happy to see that the US was doing a job extremely well. I hoped it would continue to be good.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Let’s see. This is a general question. How would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the period that you lived here?
Olson: I think they should all be very proud of it, because it ended the war.
O’Reagan: Right. Is there anything that you think children growing up today might not know about this period?
Olson: I have no idea whether they know or not.
O’Reagan: Sure. Is there anything you think, beyond—sorry, I have to—trying to think through, just—as people have lived here for some time start thinking back on their lives in the community, how they would like people to think about the history of the local community? I guess you’ve answered that to some degree: we should be proud about the contributions of the time. I guess what I’m trying to get at is—what was different in, say, the ‘60s or the ‘70s, in living in this era than it is today? Anything come to mind?
Olson: I don’t think there was anything different from living in any good community or city.
O’Reagan: One of the local community leaders here—we understand you knew Sam Volpentest—
Olson: Yes.
O’Reagan: --who contributed a lot to the local history. Would you describe your knowledge of his impact, what he was working on when you got to work with him?
Olson: He was a major impact. He saved the Tri-Cities time after time after time. He made contacts in Washington, DC and he kept them. He flew back and forth frequently. Without his perseverance, the Tri-Cities would never have become as good as it had been. He kept sure that Hanford was going, which, at that time, was a main project in the Tri-Cities. And the best one producing.
O’Reagan: I always like to ask—what have I not asked about that I should be asking about? What else should I be asking you about?
Olson: Oh, I don’t know. Nothing else. [LAUGHTER] I think you asked very well, thank you.
O’Reagan: Well, if anything comes to mind, or anything you’d like to expand upon comes to mind, we’d of course love to hear it.
Olson: All right, thank you.
O’Reagan: But otherwise, thanks so much for being here. It’s been very interesting.
Olson: Thank you.
O’Reagan: All right.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jerome Martin about his experiences working at the Hanford site and his involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. And you—just wanted to use your legal name to start out with, but you prefer to be called Jerry, right?
Jerome Martin: Yes, I do.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name—
Martin: Okay.
Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010.
Martin: I believe it was earlier.
Franklin: Or possibly earlier. And some of the Parker Foundation videos, as we know, were lost. And so this video is an attempt to recapture some of the information that would have been in that oral history, but also add some other information, and also to give you a chance to talk about your involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. So just as a introduction to whoever views this in the future. So why don’t we start in the beginning? How did you come to—you’re not from the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Not originally.
Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Well, a little quick history, I got my bachelor’s degree at San Diego State College and then I was a radiation safety officer at San Diego State for about three years. Then I had an opportunity to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where, again, I was a radiation safety officer and on the faculty of the physics department. After several years there, an excellent opportunity came up for me here at Hanford with Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. So I moved here in 1976, and had a great opportunity to work with many other more senior people here at Hanford that had been here since the beginning. One of those, of course, was Herbert M. Parker. He was former director of the laboratories under General Electric, and then retired, but stayed on with Battelle as a director. I had a few opportunities to interact with him, and was quite impressed. I have heard stories about, he was a rather demanding taskmaster. And I could kind of imagining myself trying to work for him, but it would have been a challenge.
Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record?
Martin: I’ve had an opportunity to review many of his publications. They were quite professional and very well researched, and in many cases the leading authority on several topics. So I was very impressed by his publications. I didn’t have a direct opportunity to work for him, so I don’t know about his management style or other things. But that was the thing that impressed me the most, was his publications.
Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research?
Martin: His early professional career was in medical physics. He was at Swedish Hospital in Seattle for many years. Then he was called upon, as part of the Manhattan Project, to set up the safety program at Oak Ridge. He did that for about a year or so. Then he was called upon to do the same thing here at Hanford. So he came here and established the entire environmental safety and health program for Hanford. Of course he had all the right background to be able to do that, and he was able to recruit a number of really talented people to help him with that. So I think Hanford ended up with what could be known as the best environmental safety and health program, among all the early AEC and then DoE laboratories. One of the things that impressed me most by that program was the record keeping. And I had an opportunity to work on that in later years. But the way the record keeping was designed and set up and maintained was quite thorough. It was designed to be able to recreate whatever may have happened according to those records. It turned out to be very valuable in later years.
Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker?
Martin: I don’t recall the name of the individual that set it up, although I know Ken Hyde was involved very early on. He may have been at the very origin of it. But I’m sure Parker certainly influenced the rigor with which that program was established. In later years, John Jech was manager of the record keeping program, and then my good friend, Matt Lyon, was the manager of that. I worked with Matt, then, on American National Standard Institute’s standard for record keeping. We incorporated into that standard virtually all of the fundamentals that Parker had established initially.
Franklin: The first name was John—
Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H.
Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living?
Martin: No, he’s not.
Franklin: And what about Lyon?
Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde.
Franklin: What’s that?
Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Yeah, give or take.
Franklin: So you mentioned that the record keeping was designed to recreate an incident as it happened. Do you know of any such—or can you speak to any such times when that record keeping system was crucial into a safety issue?
Martin: The one that comes to mind is one of the more I guess infamous incidents here at Hanford. It occurred just around the time I arrived here in 1976. It was sometimes called the McCluskey accident out at the 231-Z Building. There was an explosion in a glovebox that resulted in very significant contamination of Mr. McCluskey by americium-241. And the response to that incident, and then all the following treatment of Mr. McCluskey was very well documented. In fact, those documents then became the basis for a whole series of scientific papers that described the entire incident and all the aspects of it. So that was one major case where excellent record keeping was very valuable.
Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey?
Martin: He survived for about ten years after the accident. He initially had very severe acid burns and trauma. But he was very carefully treated for that. The americium contamination that he had was gradually eliminated—not eliminated, but reduced substantially. He survived for another ten years after that incident even though he had heart trouble. I know several people that assisted in his care, and it was quite remarkable what they were able to do and what he was able to do.
Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work?
Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976.
Martin: Right.
Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle?
Martin: Well, I worked in what was called the radiation protection department, later called health physics department. My first assignment was called ALARA management. ALARA stands for maintain our radiation exposures as low as reasonably achievable. I would monitor the exposure records of Battelle workers, and watch for any that were the least bit unusually high, and then look for ways that we could reduce those exposures. And I monitored other things like average exposures and the use of dosimeters and things of that nature. The overall assignment was to generally reduce the workers’ radiation exposure.
Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort?
Martin: I think we were very successful, and it went on for many years, even after I had that assignment. I remember one time, looking at a report that DoE put out annually on radiation exposures over all the major DoE facilities. Those average exposures, highest individual exposures, and things of that nature. Battelle and Hanford had among the lowest averages of all the other DoE facilities. So, I believe it was a very effective ALARA program here at Hanford.
Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available?
Martin: Oh, yes.
Franklin: Oh.
Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE.
Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes.
Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall.
Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what—
Martin: Right. Well, I started getting involved in management at kind of the bottom level. I was an associate section manager, and then I got an assignment as section manager for the radiation monitoring section. I was responsible for all the radiation monitors—or as they’re now called, radiation protection technologists—the radiation monitors for Battelle and two other of the contractors here at Hanford. It was kind of ironic that I was located in what used to be the 300 Area library, and my office was on the second floor. And my office was the former office of Herbert M. Parker, when he was director of laboratories.
Franklin: Wow!
Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker.
Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for?
Martin: I did that two or three years, and then another opportunity came along in 1979—no actually, it was ’79, but I guess I’d been on that management job for about a year and a half. In September of ’79, which was about three months after the Three Mile Island accident, we had an opportunity to make a proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide support for their staff in emergency planning work. At that time, NRC was making a big push on all the power plants, all the nuclear power plants across the country to enhance their emergency planning programs. So we began about a ten-year project with NRC to supplement their staff. The NRC established the requirement for annual emergency exercises at each of the nuclear power plants, where they had to work up a scenario, and then they would activate their emergency response staff to demonstrate that they would know how to handle that accident scenario. We served as observers. We had teams of observers with the NRC staff. We did a total of 800 of those exercises over a ten-year period.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel.
Franklin: Yeah. So that would have been—so you said for power, would that have been for all of the power reactors in the United States?
Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time.
Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries?
Martin: I didn’t personally, but we did have some staff that went to a similar kind of program with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and visited foreign nuclear power plants. Some in France, that I recall.
Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants?
Martin: In the US, yeah.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: Actually, that was the number of reactors. There was a fewer number of plants, because many of them are two or more reactors at a site.
Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors?
Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time.
Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work?
Martin: That’s an excellent question, because that was in this period. Of course, the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986, and I was working directly with NRC at that time. I was project manager on that NRC contract. When Chernobyl happened, there was an immediate reaction, and NRC had to study the Chernobyl accident as well as we could, and then determine what could be applied to US power reactors by way of improvements and emergency planning. One of my managers, Bill Bair, was part of a US delegation led by DoE and NRC to actually visit the Chernobyl area shortly after the accident, interact with the Russians, and do lessons learned that was turned into a series of DoE and NRC documents that tried to extract as much useful information as we could from Chernobyl and apply it here in the US.
Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States.
Martin: Not exactly. The Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel. There were a few reactors in the US that also did not have containment vessels, but they had other safeguards. The N Reactor was one of those. Unfortunately, I would call it an overreaction of the US government to a reactor with no containment. Severe restrictions were put on N Reactor, and some re-design was required that ultimately led to the end of N Reactor. It’s interesting to note that at that point in time, which was about 1986, 1987, N Reactor had generated more electricity from a nuclear reactor than any other plant in the world. So it’s unfortunate it came to an early demise.
Franklin: And—sorry, my ignorance here on the technical aspects. You said some of them don’t have a containment vessel. What does a containment vessel look like and what role does it play, and why would there would be reactors with one and without one?
Martin: Well, N Reactor went back to the early—the late ‘50s, I believe when it was designed. It was designed similar to the other reactors here at Hanford that were intended for production of plutonium. But N Reactor was a dual purpose, in that it also generated 800 megawatts of electricity. But it had a similar kind of design to what you see out at B Plant, for example. So it didn’t have the same kind of containment vessel that other modern pressurized water reactors or other nuclear power plants have that is designed in such a way that if there is reactor core damage, any radioactivity released can be contained and not released.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion.
Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the—
Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment.
Franklin: Okay. Excellent. So after—obviously the demise of N Reactor, ’86, ’87, is kind of the end of operations—or I should say of product production—product and energy production on the Hanford site. So how did your job change after that? And what did you continue to do after the shutdown?
Martin: I wasn’t directly affected by N Reactor shutting down. And the other production reactors had been shut down before that, so I wasn’t really directly involved in that. But I had yet another opportunity came up that turned out to be really a challenge for me. The Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas is the primary assembly and disassembly facility for nuclear weapons. At that time, it was managed by a company called Mason and Hanger. Mason and Hanger had that contract for many years, and DoE challenged them to rebid the contract. So Mason and Hanger reached out to Battelle for assistance in teaming on environmental health and safety. So my manager talked me into being involved, so I went down to Amarillo and visited the plant and worked with the team there on the proposal that had to be presented to DoE. And we won the contract. Of course in the fine print it said I then had to move there.
Franklin: Ah!
Martin: But it turned out great. By that time, my family was pretty well grown, kids were through college. So we moved down to Amarillo, and I went to work at Pantex. We really enjoyed that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Amarillo’s a very nice town, a lot of nice people. The work at Pantex was very challenging. I enjoyed that very much, too.
Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant?
Martin: Well, I was manager of the radiation safety department down there for three years, which was my original contract obligation. During that time, we were very closely scrutinized by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, which was an organization established by Congress to be a watchdog over DoE. Their method for watching DoE was to watch the contractors very closely. So they would scrutinize everything we did, and then challenge DoE if they found something. They pushed us in a way that was good, because one of the things they promoted was professional certification. I’m a certified health physicist, certified by the American Board of Health Physics. At the time at Pantex, I was the only one we had there. But the DNFSB pushed us to add more, so I got more of my staff certified. There was a similar program for technicians called the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists, and at the time, we had two of my staff that were registered with NRRPT. Again, they pushed us to promote more training. By the end of that three-year period, I think we had ten of our technologists registered and certified. So we really improved the credentials of our staff. We instituted some new programs, again, related to ALARA radiation reduction. Probably the most interesting or challenging day of my life occurred down there in 1994. We were working on disassembly of the W48 program. The W48 was a tactical weapon used in—that was deployed in Europe—it was never used. But it was a very small, cylindrical nuclear weapon designed to be shot out of a 155 millimeter howitzer, which is amazing just to think about. But the plutonium pit in this device was surrounded by high explosive. It turned out to be rather difficult to disassemble this particular design of nuclear weapon. It also turned out that the plutonium pit had a relatively high dose rate, compared to others. So the workers were getting some increased exposure to their hands in the process of working on this. So we were concerned about their extremity dose. So we worked up a method for doing a classified videotape of the disassembly operation, so that we could study each step in the process to find ways to improve worker safety. Providing shielding, remote tools, things of that nature. The process on this was to take the plutonium pit and high explosives and put it in liquid nitrogen bath for a period of time. Then bring it out and put it in a little tub-like, and pour hot water on it. The HE would expand rapidly and crack off. And for the most part, it worked very well. Well, there was this one particular pit that we were working on when we were doing the videotape for this study. Apparently the HE wasn’t coming off the way it should, and so they had to repeat this process over and over. They brought it out of the liquid nitrogen, poured hot water on it, and the plutonium—the cladding, the beryllium cladding on the plutonium pit actually cracked, due to the severe temperature change. The workers who were working on this were trained very carefully that if that cladding on the pit ever cracks, get out of there fast, so you avoid a plutonium exposure. So that happened. One of the technicians heard an audible crack and saw it on the surface of that pit. And they all evacuated immediately. They got just outside the door of this special facility, and they called our radiation safety office, and fortunately my three best technicians were standing there by the phone. They said, pit had cracked. And so they got over there as fast as they possibly could. They recognized the danger of having an exposed plutonium pit, and how that can oxidize and cause severe contamination very quickly. They decided to put on respirators to protect themselves, but they didn’t bother with any of the other protective clothing because they wanted to save time. So they made an entry where the cracked pit was, still there with the water bath on it, and the video shooting this picture. They took samples right on the crack and on the water and all around it. They managed to take that plutonium pit and get it into a plastic bag and then they doubled bagged it and then they triple bagged it and sealed it up. Then they came out. Of course, the samples revealed that there was indeed plutonium contamination coming out of that crack, but they had contained it very quickly. When we made a later entry to retrieve the video tape that was still running, and we looked at the timestamp on it. From the time the crack appeared until they had it in the bag was seven minutes.
Franklin: Wow!
Martin: That’s about as fast as you can possibly expect a response team to come in and secure a situation like that. And so, following that, of course we had the incident debriefing, and I had to chair that. But we very carefully went through and recorded every little thing that happened from the time they were working on the disassembly to the time they exited. Got that all documented, and then the videotape of course documented all of that. The scrutiny by Department of Energy, the Amarillo office, the Albuquerque office, Headquarters, any number of others—we had a lot of attention that day. It was a long, hard day at the office, but very exciting. Following that, we had to debrief many other investigation committees and others. But we had that videotape to rely on, and that just was invaluable. That’s my—that was probably the most exciting day of my life, down there. [LAUGHTER] Got a follow-up to that. That W48 weapon was designed by Livermore. They came in at a later time and did a post-mortem on that cracked pit. And when they did, we discovered that the amount of plutonium contamination there that was available for distribution had it not been contained, would have totally just made that facility useless. I mean, extremely expensive clean-up, if it ever got done.
Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility?
Martin: Well, mainly that room.
Franklin: That room.
Martin: But it was a very big room, and a very valuable room, specially designed. But the quick response of our radiation safety technicians and getting that contained saved that room and millions of dollars in expense.
Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell?
Martin: 155 millimeters.
Franklin: Wow. And what is the—I don’t know if you know this—but what’s the explosive power of that—is it—I guess it could be—
Martin: Well, it’s just like the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 20-kiloton fission device. The plutonium pit is designed to implode and cause a super-critical reaction.
Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of—
Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this--
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Martin: --device. It boggled my mind.
Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever—
Martin: There’s quite a large number of different nuclear weapons. Many of them were tactical weapons used in Europe—or deployed in Europe during the Cold War. Many other more modern ones are part of Polaris missiles and other large bombs that can be deployed by B-52s or B-2s.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: Yeah. There’s quite a wide range of different models and designs. I didn’t know that at the time, but it’s fascinating. I remember one day standing in one of the disassembly rooms, and they had this nuclear weapon in a cradle standing there on the floor, and they had the top off of it. And I could just look down in the top of it. I couldn’t touch it, but I could look in there and just see the engineering in one of those things was just amazing. Just beyond belief.
Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine.
Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford.
Franklin: It’s okay.
Martin: Maybe I should come back.
Franklin: I think that’s a very interesting story. I certainly—I’ve also, like I said, heard of plenty of bombs—ICBMs, missiles, but I’d never quite heard of a howitzer-type fired weapon. But also just the fact that your team and your field was able to prevent a really nasty incident is pretty amazing.
Martin: Right.
Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill.
Martin: Well, like I mentioned, the professional credentials. Two of the three technicians who responded were certified by NNRPT. And they had the right kind of training, knew what to do, did it very well.
Franklin: Great.
Martin: I had an opportunity a year later to nominate them for a special DoE award for unusual—not heroism, but effective response. And they won the award that year.
Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex?
Martin: Well, the first time, was in ’96—no, I’m sorry, in ’93—and I had a special appointment back at DoE headquarters in Germantown. So I went back there for two years to work with the branch of DoE that was like an inspector general—the internal inspection branch, if you will. Very similar in scope to what the DNFSB—Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—was doing. Scrutinizing all the DoE operations at the national labs and other facilities, and trying to always make improvements.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So I worked with the DoE headquarters staff on many different audits that we did at other DoE labs. At the time, I specialized in dosimetry, both internal and external dosimetry, and other operational health physics parts of the program.
Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Well, I had a couple other interesting assignments in there. After DoE headquarters, then I went back to Pantex for three more years. And then another opportunity came up on an old facility near Cincinnati that needed to be decommissioned—decontaminated and decommissioned. And I went to Oak Ridge first, worked with the Foster Wheeler Company on the design of what became the largest radon control building that had ever been done. I was the radiation safety officer for that project at Oak Ridge in the design effort. And then we moved to Cincinnati for a year and I worked at the Fernald facility in actually building this radon control facility. What we were trying to deal with were these large concrete silos that contained residual ore material from the Second World War. They have to go back to—when the Manhattan Project was trying to bring together the necessary uranium in addition to the plutonium that was produced here at Hanford, they were using a rich pitch blend ore that was coming from what was then called Belgian Congo in Africa. It was shipped from there up the Saint Lawrence River to a facility near Niagara Falls. And then it ended up being processed to extract as much uranium as possible. But there were these residuals. They ended up in these concrete silos near Niagara Falls, New York as well as this Fernald facility, just outside of Cincinnati. So we had three big concrete silos that—I don’t recall—they must have been 80 feet in diameter and 50 feet high. So they held a lot of uranium ore residuals. It contained a fair amount of radium, which gave off radon gas. This facility was located not too far from a residential area. So it became a greater concern for getting it cleaned up. We put together this radon control facility that had these huge charcoal beds and you could pipe—you could take the head gas off of this silo, pipe it into these charcoal beds where the radon would be absorbed, and then the clean air would circulate. So you could fairly rapidly reduce the concentration of radon inside the silo to much lower levels. In the process, the charcoal beds got loaded up by absorbing radon. There came a point where you had to heat up that charcoal to drive off the captured radon. We devised a clever scheme with four different beds where we could kind of keep one of them recirculating on all times and have the other three working.
Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off?
Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated.
Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that—
Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too.
Franklin: Oh!
Martin: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--?
Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to—
Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon—
Martin: Oh, if it escaped from the silo. If there was no control of it—a certain amount of radon was escaping from the silo. For the most part, it’s a light gas, it just goes up and the wind blows it and disperses it. So it was very difficult to even measure anything offsite. But there was that concern there that we were dealing with.
Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue?
Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah.
Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life.
Martin: Yeah. So I did that, what amounted to ten years of offsite assignments. About that time, my wife and I got tired of moving. So we came back to the Tri-Cities, and our kids are here. I came back to work at Battelle for another few years before I retired.
Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle?
Martin: I came back in 2001.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006.
Martin: I retired about four years later. And the last major project I worked on was also very interesting. It was the project for customs and border protection. It was to install radiation portal monitors at seaports. This was shortly after 9/11, and there was a concern about dirty bomb material being imported by any means. We had one part of the project dealt with seaport, another part airports, and a third part postal facilities.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So I worked on the seaports part, and I had the Port of Los Angeles was my assignment. Another one of us had Port of Long Beach, which is right next door, which are the largest seaports on the West Coast and have the largest number of shipping containers coming in. So we devised a method for monitoring those shipping containers as they were unloaded and making sure nothing was coming in that way.
Franklin: Did—oh, sorry.
Martin: Very interesting project.
Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors?
Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: Turns out they were so sensitive, they would detect any kind of elevated background radioactivity. For example, kitty litter is a little bit elevated in background. Any kind of stone product, and there are various granite and other stone products imported from different places. Those had a high enough background activity that they would trigger our monitors. So we would run all these containers through a set of monitors, and any that triggered that amount would then be sent over to a secondary monitor, where they’d examine it more carefully, verify what was actually in the containers, sometimes inspect them.
Franklin: So recently our project staff got a tour of some of the facilities at HAMMER. And I believe we saw one of those monitors. Would that have been the same?
Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns?
Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through.
Martin: Yep, that was the one.
Franklin: So you helped design—
Martin: We helped design—oh, I didn’t really get involved in design. That was done by some real smart people out here at Battelle. But I was onsite trying to get them installed.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: And tested.
Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating.
Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle.
Franklin: Yeah, it sounds like it. Sounds like maybe I need to go get a job over there. Maybe they need a traveling historian. So, where—what have you been doing since you retired?
Martin: Well, for about five years, I worked for Dade Moeller, which is kind of a spinoff company from Battelle. And they had a major contract with NIOSH—National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health—as part of an employee compensation program for radiation workers. Initially, the way this was set up was we got the actual radiation exposure records for former employees and examined their measured radiation exposure, and then did some other calculations that would tend to take into account anything else that they might have been exposed to but was somehow not measured on the dosimeter and many other factors to kind of add up their maximum possible radiation dose. And then that was compared—this is where it got a little complex. There are many different types of cancer that can be caused by radiation at a high enough level. Some types of cancer can be caused by a radiation level lower than some others. So it depended on what type of cancer the individual had as to which—how we measured their maximum possible radiation exposure to the likelihood that that cancer was caused by radiation. We did a careful calculation using probability and determined that if their cancer was at least 50% probable that it was caused by radiation, then they were granted an award. Well, we did that for several years in a very careful, scientific way that was well-documented. Then it became political. A lot of former workers, then, applied for another category within this overall compensation program that they called Special Exposure Cohort. Which meant that it didn’t matter how much radiation exposure they had, if they had the right type of cancer, they could get the award. And it’s kind of degenerated that way. But for many years, I think we did it right. I also had an opportunity to work on another part of that project where we did what we call the technical basis documents, where we reconstructed the history of how radiation exposure records were developed and maintained at each of these different sites. Every one varied a little bit. I did the one for the technical basis document for Pantex in Amarillo, because I was familiar with that. But I got to do several other interesting sites, one of which was Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Going there and interviewing some of these old-timers and looking at their old records, I found that there was a chemistry professor at what was then Iowa State University. He was called upon by the Manhattan Project in 1943 to help them improve their methods for extracting uranium metal. The old process that had been used by the Curies and other early scientists was really quite inefficient. But this professor developed a method used in a calcium catalyst that was very effective. He was able to purify uranium metal much quicker and in larger quantities. The story was that he would have to get on the train every Sunday afternoon and go to Chicago for the meeting with the Manhattan Project and report on the progress of his research and so on. One week after successfully isolating an ingot of uranium metal, he took it with him in his briefcase. Went into the meeting with Manhattan Project and clunked it on the desk, and passed it around. He said that this is a new method for producing substantial quantities of uranium metal. All the scientists around the table kind of poked at it and scratched it and so on and didn’t believe it was really uranium, but it was. And they finally decided that he had made a great breakthrough, so they sent him back to Iowa and said, make a lot more, fast. And he did. So he had the material they needed, then, for the Manhattan Project.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: Interesting story.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation?
Martin: About ten years ago—almost ten years ago—my friend Bill Bair and Ron Kathren and a couple others on the Parker Board invited me to participate. Matt Moeller was chairman of the board at that time—invited me to participate, and I just joined in, and found it very rewarding. I really appreciate what the Parker Board does in the memory of Herb Parker and in the sense of scholarships and other educational programs. So it’s a pleasure to contribute to that.
Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76?
Martin: I moved here in ’76.
Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them?
Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here.
Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--?
Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: In North Richland. It was a very different community, but one that I came to know and respect. Because at that time, education was really paramount in the minds of parents and the school system. And my wife was a teacher. So we really took an interest in that. My kids got a really good education here in Richland. Went to Hanford High, and then did well in college. One of the main features of Richland at that time, I think, was a superior education program. Some of the other history of Richland with old government housing, and then we got a new house, and things like that are entirely different, but also very interesting.
Franklin: And is that what you kind of are meaning when you say it was a different community? I guess I’d like to unpack that a little bit more. How—in what ways was it different?
Martin: Well, a large part of Richland was originally government housing, and you only had to drive through town, you could see all the evidence of that. And then on the north side of Richland, they had opened up—beginning in 1965, I believe—development of newer private housing. We got here just in time to get in on a new house, and worked out fine for us.
Franklin: Great. Was there—being next to a site that was primarily involved in product production, plutonium production—was there a different feeling about the Cold War in Richland per se than anywhere else you had lived in the United States at that time?
Martin: There definitely was different feelings about the Cold War and living anywhere near a nuclear power plant. I remember when we were working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at many different reactor sites around the country. In many cases we would have public meetings to introduce the local folks to what we were trying to do to improve the emergency planning. There was a lot of concern about living anywhere near a nuclear power plant just a few years after TMI. I tried to explain to people how I live within 30 miles of nine nuclear power plants. But I understood radiation. I understood the risk, and I understood what could go wrong or how to deal with it. And it didn’t concern—didn’t bother me that much to live here. I found that to be generally true of a lot of people in Richland that were part—working at Hanford and were well-educated. They understood the risk and they could deal with it. Whereas many other people were just afraid. And I attribute that to what I call now about a 71-year deliberate misinformation program on the part of mass media to scare people about radiation.
Franklin: I like that. I’m writing it down. How do you feel that the—do you feel that the ending of the Cold War changed your work at all? I guess the reason why I ask—
Martin: It did.
Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material.
Martin: Yeah. I was in Germany in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down. I was also there in Berlin in 1984, and we actually crossed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin on a special tour.
Franklin: Really?
Martin: It was quite amazing. I was in Berlin for a meeting of the International Radiation Protection Association. I took my whole family; it was a tremendous adventure for them. But we were able to be part of a special US Army tour that went through Checkpoint Charlie. I think they did this once a week. And we had a little tour of East Berlin while it was still under the control of the USSR. We visited their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they had a little ceremonial changing the guard there. And we visited the square in Berlin where Hitler had burned the books that one night in 1939. And then we visited a huge Russian war memorial, and there was a building there where the Germans had surrendered in 1945. There was quite a story about that. But I was really impressed with this huge Russian war memorial. There were five mass graves that each held 100,000 soldiers. It was done in kind of the Russian style, with statues and other honorary symbols to clearly show their respect for the lives of all those soldiers. But that was an impressive sight. But I was there again in 1988 just before the Berlin Wall came down, and you could kind of see the end of the Cold War coming. So it was a great opportunity that I had, working for Battelle, being able to travel like that, and do many exciting things.
Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side?
Martin: Yes.
Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy?
Martin: It was quite unusual. I was scheduled to go to Russia a week after 9/11. It almost got canceled, but I managed to go. I was giving—they were having a conference for young scientists and trying to introduce them to international concepts of radiation safety. So I gave my paper and four others that we did to that group. It was located at what was the Russian equivalent of Los Alamos, their design facility. There weren’t very many Americans had been in there up to that point. So I was watched very closely. [LAUGHTER] And not allowed to see much, actually. But it was a very interesting exchange. The papers I was presenting were prepared in both English and Russian. And then we also did what they called a poster presentation, where we had a big poster with diagrams and everything—again translated to Russian. So we were able to put these up at this conference for these young scientists. They, I think, got a lot out of it because it was in their language so it was easy for them to understand. Working with an interpreter was a new experience for me. I would give this oral presentation, so I’d say one sentence and the pause. The interpreter would repeat that. I’d say the next sentence, and—kind of an awkward way to do an oral presentation.
Franklin: I can imagine.
Martin: But their hospitality was very good. This was in 2001. So the Cold War had been over for quite a few years. But we were trying to establish better relations. I think it was quite effective in doing that. I had another opportunity to work with Russian scientists on an NRC program, again where NRC was trying to provide training to their equivalent Russian inspectors for nuclear power plants and explain to them some of the ways that they did inspections, things they looked for, how they documented findings and things like that. We had four Russian inspectors and their interpreter come over from Moscow. I was their host in Washington, DC, and we worked with them there with the NRC headquarters for a week, providing training. And then we brought them out to Idaho to the Idaho National Lab, north of Idaho Falls, and went to a large hot cell facility at Idaho. A hot cell is where they have a heavily shielded enclosure with mechanical arms that do things on the inside. It was quite a sophisticated facility and somewhat unlike what the Russian counterparts were used to. But it was a good learning exercise for them. We kind of went through a demonstration of how we would do an inspection—a safety inspection. So, I had those kind of opportunities to interact with Russian scientists and found that very exciting. Very interesting.
Franklin: Did you find that there was anything that you had learned from them at all? Or do you feel that the US was much more advanced in radiation protection and health physics?
Martin: Well, I kept my ears open when I was talking to them, but they didn’t reveal much. [LAUGHTER] So, we didn’t pick up much that way.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: We were trying to help them.
Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant?
Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think.
Franklin: Okay, just curious.
Martin: I heard about it of course.
Franklin: I’m sure. That must have been a pretty big deal from the standpoint of both countries. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about?
Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: I’ve been talking about all the varied experiences I had, and excellent opportunities over the years. But I think one of the perhaps most impressive things that I was able to do was to be able to hire several good people into my organization. I won’t mention names, but there were several that I call superstars that are now leaders in the field. I was able to bring them in right out of college or from another job, and hire several really good people that certainly enhanced our program, and then gave them great opportunities to grow and expand. Like I say, they’re now leaders in the field. That was one of the most rewarding parts of my job.
Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them.
Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, okay, good.
Martin: But I’ll do that.
Franklin: Well, good.
Martin: We’ll do that.
Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you—
Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine.
Franklin: Emma, did you have anything?
Emma Rice: No, I’m fine.
Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much.
Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target?
Franklin: I believe we did.
Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s okay.
Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting.
Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch.
Martin: I hope so.
Franklin: And I think there might be a couple things that merit some more research in there that personally, for me, I’d like to find out some more about.
Martin: Oh, okay.
Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing.
Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER]
Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask—
Martin: Sure.
Hungate: You’ve been involved in a lot of things over a broad range of time and experiences and I just kind of wonder what you would feel is the one—maybe the item or two that you’ve worked on that will leave the most lasting impact?
Martin: The most lasting impact.
Hungate: Or that you wished had been developed more that didn’t quite complete, you’d like to see more work done on it, it was either defunded or it was—
Martin: Well, I’m thinking of several different things now. I’ll just have to think it through. The work we did with NRC to improve emergency planning on nuclear power plants I think was very effective. And that’s still being maintained today. Work we did with DoE at Pantex on nuclear weapons. You mentioned the end of the Cold War, that’s when many of these tactical nuclear weapons in Europe were brought back and declared obsolete, and so we were doing a massive disassembly operation on those. I learned a lot about nuclear weapons and found it fascinating. We implemented some methods at Pantex that I think are still in use in the maintenance programs that they do now. But we were able to, I think, substantially improve on radiation safety at Pantex. Certainly to the point where we were finally blessed by DNFSB and DoE. I think the quality of that program has been maintained. There’s several other projects that I’ve worked on over the years, but I guess there’s no one thing that stands out that I would be concerned about that it was defunded or ended or somehow went downhill. I’m sure that’s happened, but I haven’t kept track of everything.
Franklin: Being as nuclear power and nuclear weapons have different objectives, and you mentioned this retirement of a lot of nuclear weapons, do you feel that nuclear weapons still have a role to play in security—
Martin: I do.
Franklin: You do?
Martin: Yes. Because the Russians still have a lot of them, China has some, the French and English have a few. It’s what I call the mutual deterrent, which is a term that’s been used. It just means that we don’t ever want to use one again, but if any one of those countries had some kind of an unbalanced advantage, it could be used. So if we have this mutual assured deterrence, it keeps that in balance. So it’s important to maintain that stockpile.
Franklin: Interesting. Thank you.
Hungate: Okay.
Franklin: Great.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jerome Martin about his experiences working at the Hanford site and his involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. And you—just wanted to use your legal name to start out with, but you prefer to be called Jerry, right?
Jerome Martin: Yes, I do.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name—
Martin: Okay.
Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010.
Martin: I believe it was earlier.
Franklin: Or possibly earlier. And some of the Parker Foundation videos, as we know, were lost. And so this video is an attempt to recapture some of the information that would have been in that oral history, but also add some other information, and also to give you a chance to talk about your involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. So just as a introduction to whoever views this in the future. So why don’t we start in the beginning? How did you come to—you’re not from the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Not originally.
Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Well, a little quick history, I got my bachelor’s degree at San Diego State College and then I was a radiation safety officer at San Diego State for about three years. Then I had an opportunity to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where, again, I was a radiation safety officer and on the faculty of the physics department. After several years there, an excellent opportunity came up for me here at Hanford with Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. So I moved here in 1976, and had a great opportunity to work with many other more senior people here at Hanford that had been here since the beginning. One of those, of course, was Herbert M. Parker. He was former director of the laboratories under General Electric, and then retired, but stayed on with Battelle as a director. I had a few opportunities to interact with him, and was quite impressed. I have heard stories about, he was a rather demanding taskmaster. And I could kind of imagining myself trying to work for him, but it would have been a challenge.
Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record?
Martin: I’ve had an opportunity to review many of his publications. They were quite professional and very well researched, and in many cases the leading authority on several topics. So I was very impressed by his publications. I didn’t have a direct opportunity to work for him, so I don’t know about his management style or other things. But that was the thing that impressed me the most, was his publications.
Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research?
Martin: His early professional career was in medical physics. He was at Swedish Hospital in Seattle for many years. Then he was called upon, as part of the Manhattan Project, to set up the safety program at Oak Ridge. He did that for about a year or so. Then he was called upon to do the same thing here at Hanford. So he came here and established the entire environmental safety and health program for Hanford. Of course he had all the right background to be able to do that, and he was able to recruit a number of really talented people to help him with that. So I think Hanford ended up with what could be known as the best environmental safety and health program, among all the early AEC and then DoE laboratories. One of the things that impressed me most by that program was the record keeping. And I had an opportunity to work on that in later years. But the way the record keeping was designed and set up and maintained was quite thorough. It was designed to be able to recreate whatever may have happened according to those records. It turned out to be very valuable in later years.
Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker?
Martin: I don’t recall the name of the individual that set it up, although I know Ken Hyde was involved very early on. He may have been at the very origin of it. But I’m sure Parker certainly influenced the rigor with which that program was established. In later years, John Jech was manager of the record keeping program, and then my good friend, Matt Lyon, was the manager of that. I worked with Matt, then, on American National Standard Institute’s standard for record keeping. We incorporated into that standard virtually all of the fundamentals that Parker had established initially.
Franklin: The first name was John—
Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H.
Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living?
Martin: No, he’s not.
Franklin: And what about Lyon?
Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde.
Franklin: What’s that?
Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Yeah, give or take.
Franklin: So you mentioned that the record keeping was designed to recreate an incident as it happened. Do you know of any such—or can you speak to any such times when that record keeping system was crucial into a safety issue?
Martin: The one that comes to mind is one of the more I guess infamous incidents here at Hanford. It occurred just around the time I arrived here in 1976. It was sometimes called the McCluskey accident out at the 231-Z Building. There was an explosion in a glovebox that resulted in very significant contamination of Mr. McCluskey by americium-241. And the response to that incident, and then all the following treatment of Mr. McCluskey was very well documented. In fact, those documents then became the basis for a whole series of scientific papers that described the entire incident and all the aspects of it. So that was one major case where excellent record keeping was very valuable.
Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey?
Martin: He survived for about ten years after the accident. He initially had very severe acid burns and trauma. But he was very carefully treated for that. The americium contamination that he had was gradually eliminated—not eliminated, but reduced substantially. He survived for another ten years after that incident even though he had heart trouble. I know several people that assisted in his care, and it was quite remarkable what they were able to do and what he was able to do.
Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work?
Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976.
Martin: Right.
Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle?
Martin: Well, I worked in what was called the radiation protection department, later called health physics department. My first assignment was called ALARA management. ALARA stands for maintain our radiation exposures as low as reasonably achievable. I would monitor the exposure records of Battelle workers, and watch for any that were the least bit unusually high, and then look for ways that we could reduce those exposures. And I monitored other things like average exposures and the use of dosimeters and things of that nature. The overall assignment was to generally reduce the workers’ radiation exposure.
Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort?
Martin: I think we were very successful, and it went on for many years, even after I had that assignment. I remember one time, looking at a report that DoE put out annually on radiation exposures over all the major DoE facilities. Those average exposures, highest individual exposures, and things of that nature. Battelle and Hanford had among the lowest averages of all the other DoE facilities. So, I believe it was a very effective ALARA program here at Hanford.
Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available?
Martin: Oh, yes.
Franklin: Oh.
Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE.
Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes.
Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall.
Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what—
Martin: Right. Well, I started getting involved in management at kind of the bottom level. I was an associate section manager, and then I got an assignment as section manager for the radiation monitoring section. I was responsible for all the radiation monitors—or as they’re now called, radiation protection technologists—the radiation monitors for Battelle and two other of the contractors here at Hanford. It was kind of ironic that I was located in what used to be the 300 Area library, and my office was on the second floor. And my office was the former office of Herbert M. Parker, when he was director of laboratories.
Franklin: Wow!
Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker.
Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for?
Martin: I did that two or three years, and then another opportunity came along in 1979—no actually, it was ’79, but I guess I’d been on that management job for about a year and a half. In September of ’79, which was about three months after the Three Mile Island accident, we had an opportunity to make a proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide support for their staff in emergency planning work. At that time, NRC was making a big push on all the power plants, all the nuclear power plants across the country to enhance their emergency planning programs. So we began about a ten-year project with NRC to supplement their staff. The NRC established the requirement for annual emergency exercises at each of the nuclear power plants, where they had to work up a scenario, and then they would activate their emergency response staff to demonstrate that they would know how to handle that accident scenario. We served as observers. We had teams of observers with the NRC staff. We did a total of 800 of those exercises over a ten-year period.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel.
Franklin: Yeah. So that would have been—so you said for power, would that have been for all of the power reactors in the United States?
Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time.
Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries?
Martin: I didn’t personally, but we did have some staff that went to a similar kind of program with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and visited foreign nuclear power plants. Some in France, that I recall.
Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants?
Martin: In the US, yeah.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: Actually, that was the number of reactors. There was a fewer number of plants, because many of them are two or more reactors at a site.
Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors?
Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time.
Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work?
Martin: That’s an excellent question, because that was in this period. Of course, the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986, and I was working directly with NRC at that time. I was project manager on that NRC contract. When Chernobyl happened, there was an immediate reaction, and NRC had to study the Chernobyl accident as well as we could, and then determine what could be applied to US power reactors by way of improvements and emergency planning. One of my managers, Bill Bair, was part of a US delegation led by DoE and NRC to actually visit the Chernobyl area shortly after the accident, interact with the Russians, and do lessons learned that was turned into a series of DoE and NRC documents that tried to extract as much useful information as we could from Chernobyl and apply it here in the US.
Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States.
Martin: Not exactly. The Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel. There were a few reactors in the US that also did not have containment vessels, but they had other safeguards. The N Reactor was one of those. Unfortunately, I would call it an overreaction of the US government to a reactor with no containment. Severe restrictions were put on N Reactor, and some re-design was required that ultimately led to the end of N Reactor. It’s interesting to note that at that point in time, which was about 1986, 1987, N Reactor had generated more electricity from a nuclear reactor than any other plant in the world. So it’s unfortunate it came to an early demise.
Franklin: And—sorry, my ignorance here on the technical aspects. You said some of them don’t have a containment vessel. What does a containment vessel look like and what role does it play, and why would there would be reactors with one and without one?
Martin: Well, N Reactor went back to the early—the late ‘50s, I believe when it was designed. It was designed similar to the other reactors here at Hanford that were intended for production of plutonium. But N Reactor was a dual purpose, in that it also generated 800 megawatts of electricity. But it had a similar kind of design to what you see out at B Plant, for example. So it didn’t have the same kind of containment vessel that other modern pressurized water reactors or other nuclear power plants have that is designed in such a way that if there is reactor core damage, any radioactivity released can be contained and not released.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion.
Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the—
Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment.
Franklin: Okay. Excellent. So after—obviously the demise of N Reactor, ’86, ’87, is kind of the end of operations—or I should say of product production—product and energy production on the Hanford site. So how did your job change after that? And what did you continue to do after the shutdown?
Martin: I wasn’t directly affected by N Reactor shutting down. And the other production reactors had been shut down before that, so I wasn’t really directly involved in that. But I had yet another opportunity came up that turned out to be really a challenge for me. The Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas is the primary assembly and disassembly facility for nuclear weapons. At that time, it was managed by a company called Mason and Hanger. Mason and Hanger had that contract for many years, and DoE challenged them to rebid the contract. So Mason and Hanger reached out to Battelle for assistance in teaming on environmental health and safety. So my manager talked me into being involved, so I went down to Amarillo and visited the plant and worked with the team there on the proposal that had to be presented to DoE. And we won the contract. Of course in the fine print it said I then had to move there.
Franklin: Ah!
Martin: But it turned out great. By that time, my family was pretty well grown, kids were through college. So we moved down to Amarillo, and I went to work at Pantex. We really enjoyed that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Amarillo’s a very nice town, a lot of nice people. The work at Pantex was very challenging. I enjoyed that very much, too.
Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant?
Martin: Well, I was manager of the radiation safety department down there for three years, which was my original contract obligation. During that time, we were very closely scrutinized by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, which was an organization established by Congress to be a watchdog over DoE. Their method for watching DoE was to watch the contractors very closely. So they would scrutinize everything we did, and then challenge DoE if they found something. They pushed us in a way that was good, because one of the things they promoted was professional certification. I’m a certified health physicist, certified by the American Board of Health Physics. At the time at Pantex, I was the only one we had there. But the DNFSB pushed us to add more, so I got more of my staff certified. There was a similar program for technicians called the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists, and at the time, we had two of my staff that were registered with NRRPT. Again, they pushed us to promote more training. By the end of that three-year period, I think we had ten of our technologists registered and certified. So we really improved the credentials of our staff. We instituted some new programs, again, related to ALARA radiation reduction. Probably the most interesting or challenging day of my life occurred down there in 1994. We were working on disassembly of the W48 program. The W48 was a tactical weapon used in—that was deployed in Europe—it was never used. But it was a very small, cylindrical nuclear weapon designed to be shot out of a 155 millimeter howitzer, which is amazing just to think about. But the plutonium pit in this device was surrounded by high explosive. It turned out to be rather difficult to disassemble this particular design of nuclear weapon. It also turned out that the plutonium pit had a relatively high dose rate, compared to others. So the workers were getting some increased exposure to their hands in the process of working on this. So we were concerned about their extremity dose. So we worked up a method for doing a classified videotape of the disassembly operation, so that we could study each step in the process to find ways to improve worker safety. Providing shielding, remote tools, things of that nature. The process on this was to take the plutonium pit and high explosives and put it in liquid nitrogen bath for a period of time. Then bring it out and put it in a little tub-like, and pour hot water on it. The HE would expand rapidly and crack off. And for the most part, it worked very well. Well, there was this one particular pit that we were working on when we were doing the videotape for this study. Apparently the HE wasn’t coming off the way it should, and so they had to repeat this process over and over. They brought it out of the liquid nitrogen, poured hot water on it, and the plutonium—the cladding, the beryllium cladding on the plutonium pit actually cracked, due to the severe temperature change. The workers who were working on this were trained very carefully that if that cladding on the pit ever cracks, get out of there fast, so you avoid a plutonium exposure. So that happened. One of the technicians heard an audible crack and saw it on the surface of that pit. And they all evacuated immediately. They got just outside the door of this special facility, and they called our radiation safety office, and fortunately my three best technicians were standing there by the phone. They said, pit had cracked. And so they got over there as fast as they possibly could. They recognized the danger of having an exposed plutonium pit, and how that can oxidize and cause severe contamination very quickly. They decided to put on respirators to protect themselves, but they didn’t bother with any of the other protective clothing because they wanted to save time. So they made an entry where the cracked pit was, still there with the water bath on it, and the video shooting this picture. They took samples right on the crack and on the water and all around it. They managed to take that plutonium pit and get it into a plastic bag and then they doubled bagged it and then they triple bagged it and sealed it up. Then they came out. Of course, the samples revealed that there was indeed plutonium contamination coming out of that crack, but they had contained it very quickly. When we made a later entry to retrieve the video tape that was still running, and we looked at the timestamp on it. From the time the crack appeared until they had it in the bag was seven minutes.
Franklin: Wow!
Martin: That’s about as fast as you can possibly expect a response team to come in and secure a situation like that. And so, following that, of course we had the incident debriefing, and I had to chair that. But we very carefully went through and recorded every little thing that happened from the time they were working on the disassembly to the time they exited. Got that all documented, and then the videotape of course documented all of that. The scrutiny by Department of Energy, the Amarillo office, the Albuquerque office, Headquarters, any number of others—we had a lot of attention that day. It was a long, hard day at the office, but very exciting. Following that, we had to debrief many other investigation committees and others. But we had that videotape to rely on, and that just was invaluable. That’s my—that was probably the most exciting day of my life, down there. [LAUGHTER] Got a follow-up to that. That W48 weapon was designed by Livermore. They came in at a later time and did a post-mortem on that cracked pit. And when they did, we discovered that the amount of plutonium contamination there that was available for distribution had it not been contained, would have totally just made that facility useless. I mean, extremely expensive clean-up, if it ever got done.
Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility?
Martin: Well, mainly that room.
Franklin: That room.
Martin: But it was a very big room, and a very valuable room, specially designed. But the quick response of our radiation safety technicians and getting that contained saved that room and millions of dollars in expense.
Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell?
Martin: 155 millimeters.
Franklin: Wow. And what is the—I don’t know if you know this—but what’s the explosive power of that—is it—I guess it could be—
Martin: Well, it’s just like the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 20-kiloton fission device. The plutonium pit is designed to implode and cause a super-critical reaction.
Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of—
Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this--
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Martin: --device. It boggled my mind.
Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever—
Martin: There’s quite a large number of different nuclear weapons. Many of them were tactical weapons used in Europe—or deployed in Europe during the Cold War. Many other more modern ones are part of Polaris missiles and other large bombs that can be deployed by B-52s or B-2s.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: Yeah. There’s quite a wide range of different models and designs. I didn’t know that at the time, but it’s fascinating. I remember one day standing in one of the disassembly rooms, and they had this nuclear weapon in a cradle standing there on the floor, and they had the top off of it. And I could just look down in the top of it. I couldn’t touch it, but I could look in there and just see the engineering in one of those things was just amazing. Just beyond belief.
Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine.
Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford.
Franklin: It’s okay.
Martin: Maybe I should come back.
Franklin: I think that’s a very interesting story. I certainly—I’ve also, like I said, heard of plenty of bombs—ICBMs, missiles, but I’d never quite heard of a howitzer-type fired weapon. But also just the fact that your team and your field was able to prevent a really nasty incident is pretty amazing.
Martin: Right.
Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill.
Martin: Well, like I mentioned, the professional credentials. Two of the three technicians who responded were certified by NNRPT. And they had the right kind of training, knew what to do, did it very well.
Franklin: Great.
Martin: I had an opportunity a year later to nominate them for a special DoE award for unusual—not heroism, but effective response. And they won the award that year.
Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex?
Martin: Well, the first time, was in ’96—no, I’m sorry, in ’93—and I had a special appointment back at DoE headquarters in Germantown. So I went back there for two years to work with the branch of DoE that was like an inspector general—the internal inspection branch, if you will. Very similar in scope to what the DNFSB—Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—was doing. Scrutinizing all the DoE operations at the national labs and other facilities, and trying to always make improvements.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So I worked with the DoE headquarters staff on many different audits that we did at other DoE labs. At the time, I specialized in dosimetry, both internal and external dosimetry, and other operational health physics parts of the program.
Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Well, I had a couple other interesting assignments in there. After DoE headquarters, then I went back to Pantex for three more years. And then another opportunity came up on an old facility near Cincinnati that needed to be decommissioned—decontaminated and decommissioned. And I went to Oak Ridge first, worked with the Foster Wheeler Company on the design of what became the largest radon control building that had ever been done. I was the radiation safety officer for that project at Oak Ridge in the design effort. And then we moved to Cincinnati for a year and I worked at the Fernald facility in actually building this radon control facility. What we were trying to deal with were these large concrete silos that contained residual ore material from the Second World War. They have to go back to—when the Manhattan Project was trying to bring together the necessary uranium in addition to the plutonium that was produced here at Hanford, they were using a rich pitch blend ore that was coming from what was then called Belgian Congo in Africa. It was shipped from there up the Saint Lawrence River to a facility near Niagara Falls. And then it ended up being processed to extract as much uranium as possible. But there were these residuals. They ended up in these concrete silos near Niagara Falls, New York as well as this Fernald facility, just outside of Cincinnati. So we had three big concrete silos that—I don’t recall—they must have been 80 feet in diameter and 50 feet high. So they held a lot of uranium ore residuals. It contained a fair amount of radium, which gave off radon gas. This facility was located not too far from a residential area. So it became a greater concern for getting it cleaned up. We put together this radon control facility that had these huge charcoal beds and you could pipe—you could take the head gas off of this silo, pipe it into these charcoal beds where the radon would be absorbed, and then the clean air would circulate. So you could fairly rapidly reduce the concentration of radon inside the silo to much lower levels. In the process, the charcoal beds got loaded up by absorbing radon. There came a point where you had to heat up that charcoal to drive off the captured radon. We devised a clever scheme with four different beds where we could kind of keep one of them recirculating on all times and have the other three working.
Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off?
Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated.
Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that—
Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too.
Franklin: Oh!
Martin: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--?
Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to—
Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon—
Martin: Oh, if it escaped from the silo. If there was no control of it—a certain amount of radon was escaping from the silo. For the most part, it’s a light gas, it just goes up and the wind blows it and disperses it. So it was very difficult to even measure anything offsite. But there was that concern there that we were dealing with.
Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue?
Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah.
Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life.
Martin: Yeah. So I did that, what amounted to ten years of offsite assignments. About that time, my wife and I got tired of moving. So we came back to the Tri-Cities, and our kids are here. I came back to work at Battelle for another few years before I retired.
Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle?
Martin: I came back in 2001.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006.
Martin: I retired about four years later. And the last major project I worked on was also very interesting. It was the project for customs and border protection. It was to install radiation portal monitors at seaports. This was shortly after 9/11, and there was a concern about dirty bomb material being imported by any means. We had one part of the project dealt with seaport, another part airports, and a third part postal facilities.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So I worked on the seaports part, and I had the Port of Los Angeles was my assignment. Another one of us had Port of Long Beach, which is right next door, which are the largest seaports on the West Coast and have the largest number of shipping containers coming in. So we devised a method for monitoring those shipping containers as they were unloaded and making sure nothing was coming in that way.
Franklin: Did—oh, sorry.
Martin: Very interesting project.
Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors?
Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: Turns out they were so sensitive, they would detect any kind of elevated background radioactivity. For example, kitty litter is a little bit elevated in background. Any kind of stone product, and there are various granite and other stone products imported from different places. Those had a high enough background activity that they would trigger our monitors. So we would run all these containers through a set of monitors, and any that triggered that amount would then be sent over to a secondary monitor, where they’d examine it more carefully, verify what was actually in the containers, sometimes inspect them.
Franklin: So recently our project staff got a tour of some of the facilities at HAMMER. And I believe we saw one of those monitors. Would that have been the same?
Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns?
Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through.
Martin: Yep, that was the one.
Franklin: So you helped design—
Martin: We helped design—oh, I didn’t really get involved in design. That was done by some real smart people out here at Battelle. But I was onsite trying to get them installed.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: And tested.
Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating.
Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle.
Franklin: Yeah, it sounds like it. Sounds like maybe I need to go get a job over there. Maybe they need a traveling historian. So, where—what have you been doing since you retired?
Martin: Well, for about five years, I worked for Dade Moeller, which is kind of a spinoff company from Battelle. And they had a major contract with NIOSH—National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health—as part of an employee compensation program for radiation workers. Initially, the way this was set up was we got the actual radiation exposure records for former employees and examined their measured radiation exposure, and then did some other calculations that would tend to take into account anything else that they might have been exposed to but was somehow not measured on the dosimeter and many other factors to kind of add up their maximum possible radiation dose. And then that was compared—this is where it got a little complex. There are many different types of cancer that can be caused by radiation at a high enough level. Some types of cancer can be caused by a radiation level lower than some others. So it depended on what type of cancer the individual had as to which—how we measured their maximum possible radiation exposure to the likelihood that that cancer was caused by radiation. We did a careful calculation using probability and determined that if their cancer was at least 50% probable that it was caused by radiation, then they were granted an award. Well, we did that for several years in a very careful, scientific way that was well-documented. Then it became political. A lot of former workers, then, applied for another category within this overall compensation program that they called Special Exposure Cohort. Which meant that it didn’t matter how much radiation exposure they had, if they had the right type of cancer, they could get the award. And it’s kind of degenerated that way. But for many years, I think we did it right. I also had an opportunity to work on another part of that project where we did what we call the technical basis documents, where we reconstructed the history of how radiation exposure records were developed and maintained at each of these different sites. Every one varied a little bit. I did the one for the technical basis document for Pantex in Amarillo, because I was familiar with that. But I got to do several other interesting sites, one of which was Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Going there and interviewing some of these old-timers and looking at their old records, I found that there was a chemistry professor at what was then Iowa State University. He was called upon by the Manhattan Project in 1943 to help them improve their methods for extracting uranium metal. The old process that had been used by the Curies and other early scientists was really quite inefficient. But this professor developed a method used in a calcium catalyst that was very effective. He was able to purify uranium metal much quicker and in larger quantities. The story was that he would have to get on the train every Sunday afternoon and go to Chicago for the meeting with the Manhattan Project and report on the progress of his research and so on. One week after successfully isolating an ingot of uranium metal, he took it with him in his briefcase. Went into the meeting with Manhattan Project and clunked it on the desk, and passed it around. He said that this is a new method for producing substantial quantities of uranium metal. All the scientists around the table kind of poked at it and scratched it and so on and didn’t believe it was really uranium, but it was. And they finally decided that he had made a great breakthrough, so they sent him back to Iowa and said, make a lot more, fast. And he did. So he had the material they needed, then, for the Manhattan Project.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: Interesting story.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation?
Martin: About ten years ago—almost ten years ago—my friend Bill Bair and Ron Kathren and a couple others on the Parker Board invited me to participate. Matt Moeller was chairman of the board at that time—invited me to participate, and I just joined in, and found it very rewarding. I really appreciate what the Parker Board does in the memory of Herb Parker and in the sense of scholarships and other educational programs. So it’s a pleasure to contribute to that.
Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76?
Martin: I moved here in ’76.
Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them?
Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here.
Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--?
Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: In North Richland. It was a very different community, but one that I came to know and respect. Because at that time, education was really paramount in the minds of parents and the school system. And my wife was a teacher. So we really took an interest in that. My kids got a really good education here in Richland. Went to Hanford High, and then did well in college. One of the main features of Richland at that time, I think, was a superior education program. Some of the other history of Richland with old government housing, and then we got a new house, and things like that are entirely different, but also very interesting.
Franklin: And is that what you kind of are meaning when you say it was a different community? I guess I’d like to unpack that a little bit more. How—in what ways was it different?
Martin: Well, a large part of Richland was originally government housing, and you only had to drive through town, you could see all the evidence of that. And then on the north side of Richland, they had opened up—beginning in 1965, I believe—development of newer private housing. We got here just in time to get in on a new house, and worked out fine for us.
Franklin: Great. Was there—being next to a site that was primarily involved in product production, plutonium production—was there a different feeling about the Cold War in Richland per se than anywhere else you had lived in the United States at that time?
Martin: There definitely was different feelings about the Cold War and living anywhere near a nuclear power plant. I remember when we were working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at many different reactor sites around the country. In many cases we would have public meetings to introduce the local folks to what we were trying to do to improve the emergency planning. There was a lot of concern about living anywhere near a nuclear power plant just a few years after TMI. I tried to explain to people how I live within 30 miles of nine nuclear power plants. But I understood radiation. I understood the risk, and I understood what could go wrong or how to deal with it. And it didn’t concern—didn’t bother me that much to live here. I found that to be generally true of a lot of people in Richland that were part—working at Hanford and were well-educated. They understood the risk and they could deal with it. Whereas many other people were just afraid. And I attribute that to what I call now about a 71-year deliberate misinformation program on the part of mass media to scare people about radiation.
Franklin: I like that. I’m writing it down. How do you feel that the—do you feel that the ending of the Cold War changed your work at all? I guess the reason why I ask—
Martin: It did.
Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material.
Martin: Yeah. I was in Germany in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down. I was also there in Berlin in 1984, and we actually crossed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin on a special tour.
Franklin: Really?
Martin: It was quite amazing. I was in Berlin for a meeting of the International Radiation Protection Association. I took my whole family; it was a tremendous adventure for them. But we were able to be part of a special US Army tour that went through Checkpoint Charlie. I think they did this once a week. And we had a little tour of East Berlin while it was still under the control of the USSR. We visited their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they had a little ceremonial changing the guard there. And we visited the square in Berlin where Hitler had burned the books that one night in 1939. And then we visited a huge Russian war memorial, and there was a building there where the Germans had surrendered in 1945. There was quite a story about that. But I was really impressed with this huge Russian war memorial. There were five mass graves that each held 100,000 soldiers. It was done in kind of the Russian style, with statues and other honorary symbols to clearly show their respect for the lives of all those soldiers. But that was an impressive sight. But I was there again in 1988 just before the Berlin Wall came down, and you could kind of see the end of the Cold War coming. So it was a great opportunity that I had, working for Battelle, being able to travel like that, and do many exciting things.
Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side?
Martin: Yes.
Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy?
Martin: It was quite unusual. I was scheduled to go to Russia a week after 9/11. It almost got canceled, but I managed to go. I was giving—they were having a conference for young scientists and trying to introduce them to international concepts of radiation safety. So I gave my paper and four others that we did to that group. It was located at what was the Russian equivalent of Los Alamos, their design facility. There weren’t very many Americans had been in there up to that point. So I was watched very closely. [LAUGHTER] And not allowed to see much, actually. But it was a very interesting exchange. The papers I was presenting were prepared in both English and Russian. And then we also did what they called a poster presentation, where we had a big poster with diagrams and everything—again translated to Russian. So we were able to put these up at this conference for these young scientists. They, I think, got a lot out of it because it was in their language so it was easy for them to understand. Working with an interpreter was a new experience for me. I would give this oral presentation, so I’d say one sentence and the pause. The interpreter would repeat that. I’d say the next sentence, and—kind of an awkward way to do an oral presentation.
Franklin: I can imagine.
Martin: But their hospitality was very good. This was in 2001. So the Cold War had been over for quite a few years. But we were trying to establish better relations. I think it was quite effective in doing that. I had another opportunity to work with Russian scientists on an NRC program, again where NRC was trying to provide training to their equivalent Russian inspectors for nuclear power plants and explain to them some of the ways that they did inspections, things they looked for, how they documented findings and things like that. We had four Russian inspectors and their interpreter come over from Moscow. I was their host in Washington, DC, and we worked with them there with the NRC headquarters for a week, providing training. And then we brought them out to Idaho to the Idaho National Lab, north of Idaho Falls, and went to a large hot cell facility at Idaho. A hot cell is where they have a heavily shielded enclosure with mechanical arms that do things on the inside. It was quite a sophisticated facility and somewhat unlike what the Russian counterparts were used to. But it was a good learning exercise for them. We kind of went through a demonstration of how we would do an inspection—a safety inspection. So, I had those kind of opportunities to interact with Russian scientists and found that very exciting. Very interesting.
Franklin: Did you find that there was anything that you had learned from them at all? Or do you feel that the US was much more advanced in radiation protection and health physics?
Martin: Well, I kept my ears open when I was talking to them, but they didn’t reveal much. [LAUGHTER] So, we didn’t pick up much that way.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: We were trying to help them.
Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant?
Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think.
Franklin: Okay, just curious.
Martin: I heard about it of course.
Franklin: I’m sure. That must have been a pretty big deal from the standpoint of both countries. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about?
Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: I’ve been talking about all the varied experiences I had, and excellent opportunities over the years. But I think one of the perhaps most impressive things that I was able to do was to be able to hire several good people into my organization. I won’t mention names, but there were several that I call superstars that are now leaders in the field. I was able to bring them in right out of college or from another job, and hire several really good people that certainly enhanced our program, and then gave them great opportunities to grow and expand. Like I say, they’re now leaders in the field. That was one of the most rewarding parts of my job.
Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them.
Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, okay, good.
Martin: But I’ll do that.
Franklin: Well, good.
Martin: We’ll do that.
Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you—
Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine.
Franklin: Emma, did you have anything?
Emma Rice: No, I’m fine.
Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much.
Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target?
Franklin: I believe we did.
Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s okay.
Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting.
Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch.
Martin: I hope so.
Franklin: And I think there might be a couple things that merit some more research in there that personally, for me, I’d like to find out some more about.
Martin: Oh, okay.
Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing.
Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER]
Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask—
Martin: Sure.
Hungate: You’ve been involved in a lot of things over a broad range of time and experiences and I just kind of wonder what you would feel is the one—maybe the item or two that you’ve worked on that will leave the most lasting impact?
Martin: The most lasting impact.
Hungate: Or that you wished had been developed more that didn’t quite complete, you’d like to see more work done on it, it was either defunded or it was—
Martin: Well, I’m thinking of several different things now. I’ll just have to think it through. The work we did with NRC to improve emergency planning on nuclear power plants I think was very effective. And that’s still being maintained today. Work we did with DoE at Pantex on nuclear weapons. You mentioned the end of the Cold War, that’s when many of these tactical nuclear weapons in Europe were brought back and declared obsolete, and so we were doing a massive disassembly operation on those. I learned a lot about nuclear weapons and found it fascinating. We implemented some methods at Pantex that I think are still in use in the maintenance programs that they do now. But we were able to, I think, substantially improve on radiation safety at Pantex. Certainly to the point where we were finally blessed by DNFSB and DoE. I think the quality of that program has been maintained. There’s several other projects that I’ve worked on over the years, but I guess there’s no one thing that stands out that I would be concerned about that it was defunded or ended or somehow went downhill. I’m sure that’s happened, but I haven’t kept track of everything.
Franklin: Being as nuclear power and nuclear weapons have different objectives, and you mentioned this retirement of a lot of nuclear weapons, do you feel that nuclear weapons still have a role to play in security—
Martin: I do.
Franklin: You do?
Martin: Yes. Because the Russians still have a lot of them, China has some, the French and English have a few. It’s what I call the mutual deterrent, which is a term that’s been used. It just means that we don’t ever want to use one again, but if any one of those countries had some kind of an unbalanced advantage, it could be used. So if we have this mutual assured deterrence, it keeps that in balance. So it’s important to maintain that stockpile.
Franklin: Interesting. Thank you.
Hungate: Okay.
Franklin: Great.
Victor Vargas: Okay.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with George and Marjorie Kraemer on December 9th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with George and Marjorie about their experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full names for us, starting with George?
George Kraemer: George R. Kraemer and Kraemer’s K-R-A-E-M-E-R.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: Marjorie Kraemer, K-R-A-E-M-E-R.
Franklin: Okay. And George is G-E-O-R-G-E?
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: And Marjorie?
Marjorie Kraemer: M-A-R-J-O-R-I-E.
Franklin: Great. Thank you. So tell me how and why you—did you both come to the Hanford Site together?
Marjorie Kraemer: Mm-hm.
Franklin: Okay, so tell me how and why you both came to the Hanford Site.
George Kraemer: I was at the University of Wisconsin--
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: --in 1955. And I had a friend that was out here. And he told me about all of the deer hunting and the fishing, and all the good things. And he enticed me to come out.
Franklin: There wasn’t much of that in Wisconsin?
George Kraemer: Oh, yeah. But going out West—
Franklin: Oh, right, okay.
George Kraemer: --that was new. And so I drove out in April of 1955. I already had a job out here.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: And I stayed at the dorms—M-5, as I remember.
Franklin: And what was your job?
George Kraemer: I was a lab assistant first.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: From April of ’55 to May of ’56. And then I transferred to drafting department.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: This was at General Electric. And I was in there for—oh, from ’56 to December of ’65.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: And then I was asked to take another position. With—it was actually with Isochem. And it was—oh, engineering analyst, shop engineer, I went through all of those where I worked in a shop where they built vessels for Hanford—for PUREX, for REDOX, B Plant, T Plant—must be one more in there. And I did inspection of them. Fantastic job. Did that for—oh, quite a few years. Then in April of ’75, for another two years, I was a shop planner. I planned the activities of the shop—fabrication shop. And then in July of 1977, I was asked to be manager of this facility—of the shops. They had six separate shops, you know, like machine, tool and die, boilermaker, sheet metal, rotating equipment, welding lab, and all that.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: A fun job, too.
Franklin: Yeah?
George Kraemer: I kind of liked that; that was down my alley. Then in April of ’81, I was asked to manage activities of the design drafting group in 200 Areas. And I had—supervising the unit managers, engineering designers, drafters and engineers. Then in April of ’84, I was manager of specialty fabrication design and fabrication engineering support group. Again, this had drafting, designers, checkers, a few engineers. Then Westinghouse came. And I was asked to be the manager of design services which had all the drafting for Westinghouse.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: Did that for a number of years. And then--[LAUGHTER]—then my manager was a director, and I told him one day, you need an assistant. I said, I’m going to retire in due time, and I said, you need an assistant. And he looked at me kind of odd. But anyway, six months later he called me up, and he says, would you be my assistant? Had a good job. Nobody reporting to me. I did engineering quality counsel, the PRICE program, and Great Ideas, employee concerns, Native American outreach, the Signature Awards for Westinghouse. I wrote a few speeches, some for the president of Westinghouse.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
George Kraemer: It was kind of a good job! Then I wrote a little note here, I retired after 36 years on July 31st, 1991. 36 years, 3 months and 19 days, or nearly 9,500 work days, over 106,000 hours at 8 hours a day and over 6 million minutes at Hanford.
Franklin: Wow, you really broke that down to the very last second.
George Kraemer: But what I’m most proud about, except for that first transfer, all of my jobs, I was asked to take.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: I thought that was—said something for me, anyway.
Franklin: And Marjorie, how did you come to Hanford?
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, he came out, so—[LAUGHTER] And so we were engaged, and I came out in May. And we got married out here.
Franklin: May of—would that be—
Marjorie Kraemer: 1955.
Franklin: ’55, okay. And you guys were married here in Richland, or--?
Marjorie Kraemer: Yes.
George Kraemer: Oh, in Coeur d’Alene.
Marjorie Kraemer: Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Coeur d’Alene, beautiful up there.
George Kraemer: Yes.
Marjorie Kraemer: I didn’t work that first summer. I came in May. And then I got a job at General Electric in September, in the finance department.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: And I worked in the 700 Area downtown. And then they reorganized—or disorganized, I used to call it—[LAUGHTER]—and split up. And then I had to go out to the 200 Areas for a few years. And then I quit at the end of 1958 and had our children.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: After they—our son was in kindergarten, I went to work for a doctor in town, a pathologist, for ten years. And then I went to work for Exxon Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Fuels. Which was eventually bought out by Siemens, whom I retired with in 1991 also.
Franklin: Oh, wow. And when did you start with Exxon Nuclear?
Marjorie Kraemer: 1975.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so you spent a significant amount of time—
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right.
Franklin: And did you also do finance and accounting there?
Marjorie Kraemer: Yes, yes, in the accounting department.
Franklin: How—did you face any particular issues as being a woman in the workplace from the ‘50s—
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, let’s see.
Franklin: Especially in that early era, you know, where women were first kind of—
George Kraemer: You couldn’t work overtime.
Marjorie Kraemer: I remember when I worked out in the areas, in the 200 Areas, women couldn’t work overtime. For some reason. I don’t know if it was a union thing or a company policy or the federal government.
George Kraemer: You couldn’t work alone, anyway.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right. You couldn’t work overtime. They didn’t want you to work out there then.
Franklin: And you couldn’t work alone, either?
George Kraemer: Well, in overtime, I remember when I was manager over there, if some of the ladies had to work, we had to have somebody around.
Franklin: Like a male supervisor or just a supervisor?
George Kraemer: Yeah, somebody. Another worker even.
Franklin: All right. Interesting.
Marjorie Kraemer: And it was different, living in Richland, because it was a government town.
Franklin: Right.
Marjorie Kraemer: And you had to—you probably interviewed people where you get on a housing list to get a house. And your name comes up, you go down and you look in this little glass deal where they had the list—
George Kraemer: They posted of the new—
Marjorie Kraemer: Posted them, and when you--
Franklin: Oh, really? I hadn’t heard that. Could you describe it in a little more detail?
George Kraemer: Yeah, we put in for housing as soon as we got here. That was, well, in May. They had a posted board. Every week, they’d put a posting out there on the board and say who was eligible for a house. Finally, being the lowest peons out there, [LAUGHTER] we were eligible for a two-bedroom prefab.
Franklin: Oh, okay. I live in one of those now.
Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] Do you? Okay.
George Kraemer: So we got to look at two or three of them. Had to do it real promptly. And we choose one. 706 Abbott.
Franklin: 706 Abbott, okay.
George Kraemer: In Richland.
Marjorie Kraemer: We lived there in town, yeah. It was different, because, well, the house came with appliances. Refrigerator, stove and—
George Kraemer: What was it, $26?
Marjorie Kraemer: $27 a month or something.
George Kraemer: $27 a month or something for rent.
Franklin: And how was that comparative to—like, is that a pretty average rent, or was that a pretty good deal?
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was cheaper because it was government.
George Kraemer: It was cheap. Of course, I didn’t make too much money back then, either. [LAUGHTER]
Marjorie Kraemer: Of course if something went wrong, you just called up housing and they came and fixed it. Or they gave you a new one. [LAUGHTER] You know, a new stove or whatever.
Franklin: Were they pretty prompt?
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: Like, was the service—
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, they were.
Franklin: --pretty good?
George Kraemer: They had a special group, that’s all they did was maintain the homes.
Franklin: Okay. And describe that atmosphere of living in a company town where everyone worked at the same place and, you know, it was landlords of the government. I wonder if you could kind of talk about that atmosphere.
George Kraemer: Well, every Friday afternoon, The GE News would come out. You’ve probably heard of the GE News.
Franklin: Yeah, we have copies of The GE News in our collection.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.
George Kraemer: It was the local one, and that was reading, and they had the want ads in there, which you always went because people were buying and selling a lot of things in that era. The—like she said, I remember the water. The water was—we had both irrigation water and house water. Two separate spigots there. And that was kind of interesting. That all come with our $26 or $27.
Franklin: Wow.
George Kraemer: After about, oh, I don’t know how many years it was, we got a—no, we bought that house. That’s right.
Franklin: In ’58, when they—
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, ’58.
George Kraemer: Yeah, we bought that house. I think we paid $2,200 for it, as I remember.
Franklin: Wow.
George Kraemer: They were appraised maybe $3,000 and then they gave you a discount.
Franklin: Wow.
George Kraemer: And not too long after that, we moved into a two-bedroom—three-bedroom—
Marjorie Kraemer: Three-bedroom, precut.
George Kraemer: Three-bedroom precut.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
George Kraemer: That we bought on our own through the realtor.
Franklin: Was that one of the newer constructions?
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was better construction.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: It was better construction?
George Kraemer: The prefabs are made out of two-by-twos instead of two-by-fours for structure.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: And plywood—quarter-inch plywood on the inside and outside, and some—insulation wasn’t too good in it, but it had a little bit.
Franklin: Yeah, the insulation leaves a little bit to be desired.
George Kraemer: It’s some sort of paper product, two inches thick.
Franklin: Right. Well, yeah, because those were made, originally, for the Tennessee Valley Authority.
George Kraemer: Right.
Marjorie Kraemer: And they were supposed to not last very long.
George Kraemer: Short-term thing.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah. And they’re still—
George Kraemer: And they’re still in use, yes.
Franklin: Still around, yeah. Yeah, mine has been pretty extensively remodeled, but it’s still—still standing.
Marjorie Kraemer: I do remember when we first came here that Richland had the highest birthrate and the lowest death rate of anyone in the nation.
George Kraemer: We were part of that.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right.
Franklin: And it was likely due to the medical care, right?
George Kraemer: The medical care, a lot of young people—
Marjorie Kraemer: And everybody worked at Hanford and so they—you know, they were younger. There wasn’t any grandma and grandpas around. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, other people I’ve interviewed have mentioned that, that when they—especially—
Marjorie Kraemer: There wasn’t older people, you didn’t see them in Richland.
Franklin: Right, there was no one who was retired or—
Marjorie: Right, right.
George Kraemer: No! You’re right on.
Franklin: So it was mostly probably people your age.
George Kraemer: Mm-hmm.
Franklin: And then children of varying ages.
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: Yeah.
George Kraemer: You talk about the other things went on. We had limited places where we could go out and eat.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: Like we had the Mart building. That was a popular place.
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, they had a grease—
George Kraemer: It had a drug store.
Marjorie Kraemer: It had a little diner in it or whatever.
George Kraemer: A little dining area, things like that.
Franklin: Little greasy spoon type of thing?
George Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: And where was that?
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was on the corner of where the post office used to be, on that corner there, across the street. And of course it was kind of like a Quonset hut.
George Kraemer: Yeah, it was like a big Quonset thing.
Marjorie Kraemer: And of course it’s been torn down.
George Kraemer: Remodeled, anyway.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah. Quonset huts haven’t lasted somehow.
George Kraemer: When I lived in the dorms, M-5, for a month? Two months? Before we got married. And I was out here with a friend and she wasn’t out here yet. And then trying to get our food every night, we had to go eat in restaurants every night. It was kind of interesting. Very limited.
Franklin: Yeah.
George Kraemer: Compared to what you have nowadays.
Franklin: Right, or even perhaps where you had come from in—was that University of Wisconsin, is that Madison?
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: Okay. I imagine a college town would have probably had a little bit more to—
George Kraemer: Oh, yes.
Franklin: --for, you know. And so what about the night life? Did you ever partake in night life in Richland, or was there much of night life?
Marjorie Kraemer: No. We just—we played, you know, cards and things with friends.
George Kraemer: Yeah, a lot of cards. We had a couple friends out here already. And then we made new friends pretty rapidly. As I said, we had a lot of cards.
Marjorie Kraemer: Played cards.
George Kraemer: Camping. Did a lot of camping. I had a ’49 Ford—
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: --at that instance and timeframe. And the first summer we were here we were about camping every weekend.
Franklin: And where would you go, often?
George Kraemer: Oh, the Blue Mountains, north above Spokane—
Marjorie Kraemer: Mount Rainier.
George Kraemer: Mount Rainier, a lot. That’s one of my favorite places.
Marjorie Kraemer: White Pass.
Franklin: Yeah, it’s really pretty up there.
George Kraemer: So that took a lot of our time in the summer.
Franklin: I bet.
George Kraemer: Winter times were—well, we didn’t go camping. But, again, that’s mostly—we had a lot of cards and games that we played with our young friends.
Marjorie Kraemer: And you hunted a lot.
George Kraemer: Yeah, I did a lot of deer hunting and a lot of fishing.
Franklin: Oh, yeah. Well, you said that’s what brought you out here.
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: I’m wondering if each of you, starting with Marjorie first this time, could describe a typical work day when you worked out on Site.
Marjorie Kraemer: Oh. Well, let’s see. When I worked out in the Area it was a little different than in town, because I had to ride the bus. And of course, I think I got off about 6:00, and of course it was dark. And walked a couple blocks to the bus, and you paid a nickel for each way to go out to the Area, which was about 27 miles. And when you got there in the wintertime, it was dark. And you went in, and I worked in the B Plant, it was. And it was all cement, no windows. So you went in and it was dark. When you came out to go home, it was dark. So you never saw the sunshine until the weekend.
Franklin: Wow.
Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] In the summer, it was awful because not all the buses were air conditioned.
George Kraemer: None of them were. [LAUGHTER]
Marjorie Kraemer: Oh. Well, we had a few, I think, that were.
George Kraemer: Not then.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, gosh. You were just soaked, you know, because it was so hot. 100 degrees, riding in this bus.
George Kraemer: And they allowed smoking on the buses. That was not good for us that didn’t smoke.
Franklin: Oh you guys—both of you didn’t smoke?
George Kraemer: No.
Marjorie Kraemer: No, no.
Franklin: Seems to, probably in the ‘50s, have been more of a rarity than a—or at least, seems like a lot more people smoked then.
George Kraemer: True.
Franklin: Especially, I can imagine, in the wintertime with closed windows, that would be pretty oppressive. So George, what about you? Describe a typical—
George Kraemer: Well, I worked at 2-East for the first nine months or so. And that was like her. Our 222-S lab, no windows in there. Get up early, ride the bus, go to the—where Stores is now, at the big bus lot there. So all of the buses would go into there, and you would get off your bus and take the appropriate 200 Area bus or whatever, 100 Area bus. And likewise, when you came home, you’d come back to that bus lot, get off the buses, and get to your route.
Franklin: Was that time on the bus included in your work day?
George Kraemer: That was my time.
Franklin: It was included in your time. It was not included in your time?
George Kraemer: No, it was not included in--
Franklin: Oh, it was not included.
George Kraemer: No, no.
Marjorie Kraemer: No.
Franklin: So that was just considered part of—
George Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: Was that a pretty fast transition though, from catching the bus by your home to go to the lot to then get on the other bus—
George Kraemer: It was fast.
Franklin: It was pretty efficient?
George Kraemer: And the buses were pretty much on time.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: For some reason, I mostly had express buses where we didn’t stop at the bus lot.
George Kraemer: Well, later on, yes.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: Oh, okay. Interesting. And so then you said you’d get on the appropriate bus to the Area, and then—take me forward from there.
George Kraemer: Okay. We get on the bus there and I went into the lab, and that was an all-enclosed building again, no windows. And I did, oh, nuclear—not nuclear but radioactive waste disposal and things like that. We’d get a bus from 300 Area about once a week or twice a week and they would—not a bus, a tanker truck. Sorry about that. A tanker truck would come in and I unloaded that into some of our special waste tanks out there.
Franklin: Were these the tanks in the Tank Farms, or are these different tanks?
George Kraemer: No, that wasn’t the Tank Farm; that was the special area just for the 300 Area waste.
Franklin: Okay. And what would you do with the waste?
George Kraemer: Well, the tanker truck would back up to a big nozzle, and I’d hook up the nozzles and drain the tanks. Let it drain for an hour or whatever it was, and then go back out and unhook the thing and wave the driver on.
Franklin: Okay. And what would be done with the waste at that facility?
George Kraemer: It was just stored.
Franklin: Just stored. Okay.
George Kraemer: Yes. I don’t think we—outside of doing some sampling, which I didn’t do, that was it.
Franklin: Would that eventually go into the ground then?
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: Okay. And that’s when it would eventually go into the single-shell or double-shell tanks.
George Kraemer: Sooner or later.
Franklin: Sooner or later, find its way there. Okay.
George Kraemer: Yeah. And then I transferred into drafting and that was downtown in the 760 Building.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: Of course that way I could ride to work or walk to work.
Franklin: And that’s like pen-and-table drafting, right? Like on a drafting board.
George Kraemer: Drafting board, yes. That was kind of nice, because I could ride bicycle, walk or take the car, whatever. And I’d get home at least when it was daylight.
Franklin: That seems like kind of an interesting job shift from handling waste to more of a technical thing like drafting.
George Kraemer: Well, yeah, well, what started that, my boss wanted some sketches of flow diagrams and stuff like that. I said, I can do them. I did them, and he was impressed with them, and he says, you ought to be in drafting. And he led the way for me.
Franklin: Okay, interesting. What did you go to school for?
George Kraemer: Engineering.
Franklin: Oh, okay, just engineering in general?
George Kraemer: Mm-hm.
Franklin: Okay, and Marjorie, did you attend college?
Marjorie Kraemer: No, no.
Franklin: Oh, okay. How did you gain the training for accounting and bookkeeping? Was it just all on the job?
Marjorie: Yeah, on-the-job training. And you could advance back then. Nowadays if you didn’t have a college degree, well, I don’t think you would go as far.
Franklin: Sure, yeah. Okay.
George Kraemer: Another thing—I also took a lot of classes. GE at this time, they had engineering folks which would give us classes in various subjects.
Franklin: Is that over here in the East Building? Or was it different?
George Kraemer: I can’t remember exactly where it was. Sometimes—I think it was the Federal Building, I think it was.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: Just various things that would help me in my work and help me in my promotions, too.
Franklin: Okay. Interesting. That’s kind of a—seems like so much was provided to workers in terms of training and housing, and I think it seems foreign to a lot of workers today to think of a company being that kind of paternal—caring, paternalistic almost. It’s kind of the vibe I get off that era of Hanford’s history.
George Kraemer: Yeah. While I was downtown in drafting there, we worked on—I was in the piping squad. We worked on facilities in the 100 Areas, 200 Areas, not 300 Areas then. So I got to know pretty much all the areas. And I went out to visit them on lots of times where you have to go out and see what is really there. You go look at old drawings and it may not be the same.
Franklin: Right. Because you’re not looking at the as-builts.
George Kraemer: Right.
Franklin: You’re looking at the older—
George Kraemer: Right, and so consequently, we made a fair number of trips out to the various sites regardless of where they were.
Franklin: Okay, so you got, then, to see the whole site pretty well.
George Kraemer: I think I did, yes.
Franklin: Okay. Marjorie, what was—well I’m going to ask this question of both of you, but we’ll start with Marjorie. What was the most challenging and/or rewarding aspects of your work at Hanford?
[LAUGHTER]
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, [LAUGHTER] I’m not sure how to answer that. It was a good place to work. And it, you know, paid well. And I guess that’s, you know, the main thing. I wasn’t out for some big career or anything like that.
Franklin: Sure. And, George, what about you? What were some of the more challenging or rewarding aspects of—
George Kraemer: Well, you know, we went through a lot of companies: GE, Westinghouse, Atlantic Richfield, Isochem—maybe another one in there. But the fact is, I never lost a day of work throughout 36, almost 37 years. I was never laid off. But I think the most rewarding was being recognized for my work. Being asked to take all these promotions. I think that was rewarding, to me. Must be doing something right.
Franklin: Right, yeah. Great. Did the nature of the work at Hanford ever unsettle either of you? The, you know, just the--
Marjorie Kramer: Oh, you mean—
Franklin: The amount of chemical or nuclear waste or the possibility of—
Marjorie Kraemer: Radiation.
Franklin: --Soviet attack or anything like that. Did that ever—
George Kraemer: Well, you know, when we first moved here, the Army was still here.
Marjorie Kraemer: Camp Hanford.
George Kraemer: At Camp Hanford.
Franklin: Right.
George Kraemer: And they had Nike missile sites up on—not Badger, but—
Marjorie Kraemer: White Bluffs, out that way, didn’t they, across the river?
George Kraemer: Yeah, White Bluffs, and—
Franklin: Rattlesnake?
George Kraemer: Yeah, Rattlesnake! And you wondered about that. Planes would fly over every now and then. But other than that, as far as being attacked, no. And radiation-wise, I’ve learned to respect it.
Franklin: Sure.
George Kraemer: I never got involved in any serious things even though I went into some bad places, probably. But I never had—in the various canyons and stuff of the buildings. But never had any problems.
Franklin: Okay. And same for you, Marjorie?
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, and of course I wasn’t out there all that long. But I remember when we used to travel quite a bit. When we would travel and people would, oh, where do you work? And I would never say Exxon Nuclear; I would say Exxon. [LAUGHTER] Because they thought we glow in the dark, probably. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, that seems to be—
George Kraemer: That was very common, regardless of where you went. Like, say, we travel a lot and you stand up and introduce yourself. You didn’t want to say a great deal, because they figured you—they didn’t want to be around you. You glow.
Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] Some people.
Franklin: Why do you think that endures? Because today, even today, that’s—
George Kraemer: Ignorance. Ignorance of radiation, like in the paper here and now, they said, we’re the other Chernobyl. No! There’s not that possibility.
Franklin: Right. Because our problem is mostly chemical.
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: It’s not so much nuclear. I mean, there’s radioactivity—
George Kraemer: Oh, there’s a lot of radioactivity; there’s no question.
Franklin: --but it’s—
George Kraemer: But it’s not going to explode. It’s not that type.
Franklin: Right, we won’t have a meltdown. At least we can say that much.
Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: What are some of your memories of any major events in Tri-Cities history? I’m thinking of like plants shutting down or starting up—
George Kraemer: President Kennedy—
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
George Kraemer: --came out here. I can’t remember the year now.
Franklin: September 14th, 1963.
Marjorie Kraemer: 1963, yeah, ’63.
Franklin: Or 17th.
George Kraemer: Anyway, I was there. We all bussed out to—was that 100-N?
Marjorie Kraemer: He was out in 100-N, wasn’t he?
George Kraemer: 100-N, or--?
Marjorie Kraemer: Wasn’t it?
George Kraemer: 100-N, I think, wasn’t it?
Franklin: Yeah—
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, I think so.
Franklin: He came to dedicate part of the steam generating—
George Kraemer: You know, incidentally, I did the first working drawings, the scope drawings, of the piping of the major process piping of 100-N.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
George Kraemer: That was a fantastic job. I know one time I did my drawings, got them and they decided, hey, that’s classified, after the fact. I had to go through, collect all of my drawings and everything and then I had to secure my drafting boards and stuff like that.
[LAUGHTER]
George Kraemer: But we did it.
Marjorie Kraemer: And I can remember in the 703 Building when I worked downtown in 19—I think it was ‘55 or ’56—Ronald Reagan came. Because we had the General Electric Theater.
Franklin: That’s right!
Marjorie Kraemer: And he came through our building and was talking to everybody.
Franklin: Did you get to meet him?
Marjorie Kraemer: Yes, uh-huh.
Franklin: Okay. And did you also? Did he go to the Site?
Marjorie Kraemer: No.
George Kraemer: I don’t—
Marjorie Kraemer: I think you were out in the Area.
George Kraemer: I was out in the Area then. I don’t think I—I knew he was here, obviously. He was on—he toured some buildings, but I didn’t get to see him.
Franklin: That’s pretty—that’s interesting. I’d heard he’d come, but I hadn’t met anybody who actually really—
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, he came through our 703 Building—
Franklin: Oh, okay. So I imagine that was—
Marjorie Kraemer: Where finance was.
Franklin: --quite an interesting thing to have a Hollywood celebrity coming to Hanford. And so did you both go to see President Kennedy when he came to dedicate the N Reactor?
Marjorie Kraemer: I didn’t get to. Did you?
George Kraemer: You were not working at Hanford then, I don’t think.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right, no.
George Kraemer: But anyway, the whole company [LAUGHTER] all the people were there that could be excused. They just bussed everybody out there.
Franklin: Right. And were you one of those people?
George Kraemer: Yes, I was one of them people.
Franklin: Can you kind of describe that scene?
George Kraemer: Well, he was on the podium which was quite a ways away from me there. And he gave quite a talk, you know. Of course the excitement of hearing your President—or seeing your President was kind of interesting. And I really don’t know what he said anymore.
[LAUGHTER]
George Kraemer: But I thought that was a major highlight. Another one, probably, is when General Electric decided they were going to leave.
Franklin: Right. And that was in mid-‘60s, right?
George Kraemer: ’65, probably.
Franklin: Yeah, that sounds right.
George Kraemer: ’66, maybe.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, I think so.
Franklin: So describe that. How was the mood around Hanford and around Richland? Because General Electric had been so prominent.
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it affected George quite a bit.
George Kraemer: Yeah, it affected my pension.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Ah.
George Kraemer: Quite a bit. You know, I worked for over 36 years, and for those ten years that I worked under GE, that’s not included in my final pay—pension.
Franklin: Interesting.
George Kraemer: So I get—I don’t know. Very little a month for those ten years. It’s in a separate pension fund.
Franklin: Ah. Why is that? That seems a little—
Marjorie Kraemer: Because you were under—
George Kraemer: The government works in strange and mysterious ways. And there were lawsuits and stuff like that, trying to get them to include our years in the master plan.
Marjorie Kraemer: It was—one of the main reasons was you weren’t 35 yet.
George Kraemer: That’s another thing, yeah, I wasn’t 35 yet. That was a condition to get vested.
Marjorie Kraemer: That was the cutoff to get that--
Franklin: Right, right.
Marjorie Kraemer: --included in your seniority.
Franklin: So you could start to invest, right.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right, vested. Anyway.
Franklin: Wow.
George Kraemer: And of course the big thing when Westinghouse came over to retake all of the—together—you know, GE split up and then we had various split-up companies, and then all of the sudden we’re back together again.
Franklin: Yeah, it seems like—one other person I interviewed a little bit ago remarked at how the contracting agency, the government doesn’t always seem to know—like, it tries one big contractor, and then it tries to split it up a bunch, and then they go back to one big contractor, and then they want to split it up a bunch. So I’m wondering if you—either you or both of you—can talk about that shifting of contractors and how that impacted your work and your life.
George Kraemer: Well, in my case, same job. [LAUGHTER] Same boss, same everything. There wasn’t much new. Different name on the paycheck, obviously.
Franklin: But your unit stayed pretty intact throughout the change?
George Kraemer: Yes. There were no major reorganizations at first because of the takeovers of the different companies.
Franklin: Okay. And, Marjorie, what about you—so you worked initially those first few years, and then later on you worked for Exxon Nuclear, which—was Exxon Nuclear, were they a contractor or a subcontractor, or were they just aligned with—
Marjorie Kraemer: They were a private company.
Franklin: A private company, okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, they just made nuclear pellets.
Franklin: So they were like a service company for Hanford?
Marjorie Kraemer: No.
George Kraemer: No.
Marjorie Kraemer: No, no, they made nuclear fuels for reactors all over the world.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So they weren’t a Hanford company.
Marjorie Kraemer: No, they were private.
Franklin: So they were just in the same industry—
Marjorie Kraemer: But—
George Kraemer: Yes.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, and so—and it was Exxon.
Franklin: Right.
Marjorie Kraemer: It was Jersey—called Jersey Nuclear when I first started out.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: And then it was Exxon. And then they changed to Advanced Nuclear Fuels under Exxon.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: And then Siemens bought them in 1989, I believe.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: And I worked for them for a couple years. Nothing really changed. And then I retired with Siemens Corporation.
Franklin: Okay, interesting.
Marjorie Kraemer: Which was a really pretty good deal, because they have really good benefits. German companies do.
Franklin: They are very well-known for that, yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right.
Franklin: Yeah, that sounds like a pretty decent deal.
Marjorie Kraemer: I think they worked half-time, because when we wanted to call them up in Germany and talk to them about something, it seems like they were either on vacation or they had a holiday. [LAUGHTER] They were never there.
Franklin: Any memories of the, like, social scene or local politics, or just any—you know, either before the great selling, you know, the privatization or afterwards in Tri-Cities? Or actually, let me be more specific. I’m wondering if either of you can tell me about some of the protest activity that took place, or if you remember that, in the beginning in the late ‘60s and end of the ‘70s. Both kind of the protests that were pro-Hanford and anti-Hanford.
Marjorie Kraemer: No, we never did get involved in any of them. I didn’t.
George Kraemer: I didn’t, either. There were no major protests that I really remember. I know one time, there was a few of them along the road when we went out before you get to 300 Area. They couldn’t get out very far then.
Franklin: Right.
George Kraemer: But I didn’t really take too much interest in them. I figured they weren’t hurting anything.
Franklin: So the Tri-Cities up until the late ‘60s was pretty segregated in terms of where African Americans could live. Even though they could work at Hanford, they couldn’t always live in Richland for a while. And I’m wondering if you guys could—did you observe that kind of—
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: --that Civil Rights action and kind of some of that segregation before the Civil Rights?
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, I remember that there were a few blacks—I don’t know what you—blacks going to the high school and stuff when my daughter was going. Well, the Mitchells were here, you know.
Franklin: Right, CJ Mitchell.
George Kraemer: CJ Mitchell.
Marjorie Kraemer: And Cameron Mitchell was in my daughter’s—
George Kraemer: Daughter went to school with him.
Marjorie Kraemer: And she was good friends with him, you know.
Franklin: Right, and he was one of the first—
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right, and—
Franklin: --people to get someone to sell him a house in Richland. He had a lot of struggle getting that.
Marjorie Kraemer: And I don’t know what they did with the housing—government housing—if they gave it to—I guess maybe they didn’t give it to black people.
George Kraemer: They had no choice then.
Franklin: I believe they had to live in east Pasco until the ‘60s.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yes. I don’t think they could live in Kennewick, either.
Franklin: No, Kennewick--
George Kraemer: Kennewick was very bad.
Franklin: Yeah, they had the sundown. The sundown laws.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yes, right.
George Kraemer: Yes. When we first moved here, I’d become good friends with an African. And we used to play cards with him, and go places with him. I thought we were well-accepted.
Marjorie Kraemer: But he lived in Pasco, didn’t he?
George Kraemer: Yes. He did not live in Richland.
Franklin: Oh, right.
George Kraemer: But—I said it was very plain to us, that—I say, Kennewick was very bad. And they didn’t even want to go to Kennewick, the colored folks.
Franklin: Right.
Marjorie Kraemer: And they were supposed to get out of town before, like you say, sundown.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah.
Marjorie Kraemer: Which is not very nice.
George Kraemer: But, you know, it’s not nice to say, but they knew their place.
Franklin: Right, well, yeah, they knew where they could go and couldn’t—where they were welcome and where they were not. Yeah, that squares pretty well with the historical record. Thank you for that.
Marjorie Kraemer: When our daughter—after she graduated from high school, she went to WSU. And then she graduated from there. She got a nursing degree, and she went to Seattle and worked. And one of her comments once when she called me up, and she says, Mom, we really led a sheltered life in Richland, you know? [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s interesting. I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit more. What would have been so sheltered about Richland for her?
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, I think, you know, she went to Seattle and got a job. And her first job was in the King County jail. She was a nurse in the clinic. And she saw all these prisoners and—
George Kraemer: Not the best clientele.
[LAUGHTER]
Marjorie Kraemer: Right. And that was one of her comments after she called me up—called me up and said, you know, we really led a sheltered life, after seeing all these homeless people and skid row, and—you know. It’s just different.
Franklin: Right, because I imagine Richland would have been a pretty solid middle class, mostly white—
Marjorie Kraemer: Right.
Franklin: Still is majority, but mostly white, middle class. Pretty safe. If you didn’t work at Hanford, you didn’t live in Richland until 1958. And I imagine after that, it was pretty slow to change where most people who lived here worked at Hanford for—
George Kraemer: I think the police had a good—made their presence known, in a good way.
Franklin: Sure.
George Kraemer: And I think that was the difference between Seattle living and outskirts of Seattle or wherever she lived.
Franklin: Well, I imagine it would be in general an easier community to police where you knew everyone worked in the same place.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right, right.
Franklin: Everyone knew—or a lot of people knew everyone else, and you know it was—
George Kraemer: But crime was very low.
Franklin: Sure, sure.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right.
George Kraemer: First of all, you know the folks have clearances, things like that, that’s going to get a better grade of people. Because they went through all the rigmarole you have to go through.
Marjorie Kraemer: I saved one of those questionnaires, those Q clearance deals. I still have it. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, yeah?
Marjorie Kraemer: And I left—when I filled mine out, I left two weeks of my life off of this—[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, no.
Marjorie Kraemer: Of course it came back and they wanted to know where I was. [LAUGHTER] I was in transit to out here or something.
[LAUGHTER]
Marjorie Kraemer: And so they wanted to know—
Franklin: Those forms went back, what, like ten years or something like that?
Marjorie Kraemer: Oh, it was—
George Kraemer: Renewed or unless there was a need to upgrade.
Marjorie Kraemer: When I first filled it out, of course I was only like 20 years old. So I didn’t have that much to have to put on it. But they went back, and people told us, you know, we were from a small town and of course they told us, these people—
George Kraemer: Right.
Marjorie Kraemer: They were asking about you and all this—
Franklin: Right, calling around.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right.
George Kraemer: They were wanting to know what was going on.
Franklin: Right. Yeah, I know, that’s—
Marjorie Kraemer: Wanting to know where you went to school and where you worked back there. [LAUGHTER]
George Kraemer: I first got an L clearance when I came here.
Franklin: Is that a lower or higher—
George Kraemer: That’s a lower grade. And then as soon as I transferred into drafting, I had to get a new clearance, a Q clearance, again. Which I had the rest of my time here.
Franklin: Okay, interesting. Were they still any—I’m always a little fuzzy on my dates with this—were there any Atomic Frontier Days parades when you were here?
George Kraemer: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: Or were those over by the time that—
Marjorie Kraemer: No, they were here, and in fact, Sharon Tate—
George Kraemer: Yeah, Sharon Tate was in that.
Marjorie Kraemer: One of the first few years we were here, she was the Miss Tri-Cities.
Franklin: Oh, really?
George Kraemer: Yes.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah. Her dad was at Hanford, you know, Camp Hanford. He was an Army--
Franklin: Oh, that’s right, because I’ve always heard she was an Army—kind of an Army brat. Oh, really? That’s really interesting. I’ve oftentimes asked—I used to ask people about that question and it would miss a lot, so I kind of stopped asking about Sharon Tate. But that’s interesting that you remember seeing her?
Marjorie Kraemer: Oh, sure.
George Kraemer: Yeah, I remember they had parades down the main—one of the streets. I don’t remember which ones now.
Franklin: And you guys went to the Atomic Frontier Days and all of that?
George Kraemer: Why, certainly! Yes.
Franklin: Yeah, those were very colorful and kind of interesting events. Kind of wish I could have seen one of those in the flesh. Great. And so—gosh, you guys have already run down so many of my questions without even me needing to ask them.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: But I still have a couple. Could you describe the ways in which security and secrecy impacted your jobs, respectively? I’ll start with Marjorie.
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, you just knew that you weren’t supposed to—you know, I was in finance. And so I saw all these numbers and all this stuff. And you just knew you weren’t supposed to talk about things like that. But other than that, you know, it didn’t really affect me all that much.
George Kraemer: Well, I know, going on vacation or something like that, or going back to Wisconsin. We’d go quite a bit. And, what do you do out there? And you know, in general terms you tell them. But I was trying to remember some specifics. I’m sure there were some to do with security.
Marjorie Kraemer: It must have been very hard to work here in the ‘40s. [LAGUHTER] You didn’t know what you were doing, you know, you were building all this stuff.
George Kraemer: Yeah, we knew what we were doing, you know. What we were making and all this thing.
Franklin: You could talk about it to your coworker.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right.
Franklin: And not be afraid of being evicted from your home and losing your job.
George Kraemer: I remember looking at an old paper. It said, big headlines: it’s bombs.
Franklin: Yes. Yes, that’s the Richland Villager from right after the Nagasaki bombing, yeah. Interesting. Do you remember, were there like searches or did they search people on the buses?
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: Well--
George Kraemer: Going home. [LAUGHTER] A lot of times you just had to open your lunch pail up, and make sure there was nothing in it.
Franklin: You didn’t have any atoms in your pocket or anything?
George Kraemer: Yeah.
Marjorie Kraemer: They didn’t always look.
George Kraemer: They didn’t always look, but every now and then they’d have a search day.
Franklin: Okay. Kind of keep you on your toes.
George Kraemer: And of course all of the cars at 300 Area where the major barricade was. You had to stop, open your trunks if you drove a car. And then if you went into the various—200 Areas, 100 Areas, you had to stop again or you parked your car in the parking lot outside and walked in. And if you went into the various buildings, like PUREX or like in the lab where I was there, you had a number and a radiation badge, and your name and a number you were assigned. When I went to 222-S, it was number ten. I must have got some big wheels for a number or something like that. I was ten. They would look you up to make sure in their file—they’d look at, make sure the picture matched you.
Franklin: Wow, and that would be every time you’d come in?
George Kraemer: Every time you went in the building there.
Franklin: Wow. That’s very tight security.
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: When you—you said you had to go around the site a lot—how would you get around once you got—so you took the bus in, but how would you get from one area to the other?
George Kraemer: Engineering department had cars—government cars.
Franklin: Okay. And so then you’d just—could only travel in—
George Kraemer: And we just traveled in government cars out to the various facilities.
Franklin: Okay. When did the bus service stop?
George Kraemer: Good question. Let’s see.
Marjorie Kraemer: Late ‘60s?
George Kraemer: Hmm. Probably in that era.
Marjorie Kraemer: Because when we built the new house, and it was in 1966, and you still rode the bus then.
George Kraemer: That’s right.
Marjorie Kraemer: So I think it was in the late ‘60s.
George Kraemer: I would say in the late ‘60s, it was.
Marjorie Kraemer: Or early ‘70s.
Franklin: And so then—
George Kraemer: And there was much frustration.
Franklin: To much frustration?
George Kraemer: On a lot of people’s part. Including mine.
Franklin: Really? Why was that?
George Kraemer: I loved that bus ride. I mean, I loved going out there for—it was changed to, I don’t know, 50 cents or something. It was higher price, anyway. The nickel was just to pay insurance and liabilities. But—so I had to drive my car out or get into a carpool, or whatever.
Marjorie Kraemer: But then for a while, they stopped the service in town picking everybody up, and then you could go to the bus lot and catch a bus. For a while, for a few years.
George Kraemer: Yeah, they stopped the rounds through town.
Franklin: Okay. That’s such an interesting structure of life, to have everybody in one town that all catches the bus, and—
Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] And work at the same—
Franklin: You know when the buses are coming and everyone kind of depends on it, and—
George Kraemer: Yes.
Franklin: That’s just such an interesting—seems almost kind of foreign to a lot of people today. And so you said that was kind of a chagrin that the bus—is that because you liked just not having to drive, or not—
George Kraemer: I liked not having to drive. I knew that I had to be outside there at 6:00 or whatever it was every morning. And it was there. It was—
Marjorie Kraemer: You could read, you could do work—you could do all sorts of things.
George Kraemer: When I was manager out there for a while, I could do a lot of work on the bus.
Franklin: Ah.
George Kraemer: I had my own philosophy. I did not like to take any work home. I had my briefcase and I would do a lot of stuff on the bus. That was 45 minutes of uninterrupted time, and I could get a lot of my work done.
Franklin: Oh, I bet. Yeah. Interesting. What would you either—both of you, sorry—what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War? And I’ll start with you, George.
George Kraemer: Well, I think you’re doing part of it. [LAUGHTER] Let them know what’s going on. And you know, the kids never really knew what—really, what we were doing, I don’t think, in detail. Yeah, they knew in general. As I look back at the government—not too impressed.
Franklin: Really? Why is that?
George Kraemer: The stuff that goes on out there now—when we were—I was working, I felt I was doing a job. Things were going out—in the shops, things were going out the door. We were making things. Things were happening. I was proud of our work. Now I begin to wonder how long—you know, the Tank Farms have been undergoing their thing for years, and it’s going to be another amount of years before they do anything. It’s—not enough things are happening.
Franklin: Okay. Interesting. Marjorie, what about you? What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War?
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was just such a different sort of life, you know. You were kind of protected, I guess. You know, everybody, like, knew everybody, and you all worked at the same place, and your kids went to the schools in town. You went to the doctors that are in town. It was just a different sort of a—
Franklin: Right, like your daughter had said maybe a little protected, sheltered.
Marjorie Kraemer: Sheltered life, yeah.
Franklin: It’s so interesting to me because—George, the thing you said about feeling like you’d done something—I’ve heard that from other interviewees who had worked in that transition period, who had worked when Hanford was producing and felt a real sense of accomplishment. And then kind of felt like it was mired down during cleanup and that the mission’s unclear, the work doesn’t progress. And Marjorie, it’s always been amazing to me to hear that, that it does seem like a really safe and peaceful place, but when you look at it kind of on—there’s a flipside to that, though. It’s amazing that there’s this safe, peaceful place next to nine nuclear reactors.
[LAUGHTER]
Marjorie: And you know—
Franklin: And you know, like a major target in the Cold War.
Marjorie Kraemer: Well, I guess that’s true. I don’t know. You just--
Franklin: But I think those two can exist side-by-side. That it could be, you know, a place of production but also of danger and a place of safety but also—you know, and of security. I just—it’s—there’s a lot of contradictions in Hanford that I think are really interesting that get brought out in these interviews. So thank you. Is there anything that I haven’t asked either of you about that you would like to talk about?
George Kraemer: No. I’m sure I’ll think of some when I get home.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: That’s very common. That happens all the time. I get emails a lot from people like--
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: --I wish I had said this.
George Kraemer: Oh, let’s see. I think when I was a shop engineer out there in the shops, best years of my life out there. Again, I felt proud that we were doing something, things were going out the door. I was responsible for a lot of critical measurements and things of—the jumpers, the tanks, and everything that we did in the shop. And then troubleshooting. There was some failures out there and I would go out to troubleshoot to see how we could fix things. Contaminated vessels and things like that. But those were good years. Best years I had out there. Management was good, but there are a lot more responsibilities. But those worked out, too.
Franklin: Right. Great.
Marjorie Kraemer: And I think the schools were—you know—were good.
Franklin: Right.
Marjorie Kraemer: The kids had a good education, had good teachers.
Franklin: Right, I’ve heard that a lot that people—there were a lot of well-educated people that worked at Hanford and at first Battelle—Hanford Labs, and then Battelle and Pacific Northwest National Labs. So that there was a high focus on education and—
George Kraemer: Another thing is, probably more so than now, but the school sports. Didn’t have too much else to do, so there was a lot of basketball games and football games and soccer games and all that sort of things that people went to. And they really supported the high school sports.
Franklin: Okay. You think that’s more then than now.
George Kraemer: I think more then than now. There was less to do.
Franklin: Right, it was a little more of an isolated community.
Marjorie Kraemer: Right. And of course this year they went to the—
George Kraemer: Well, this year’s different. [LAUGHTER]
Marjorie Kraemer: --the tournaments. But when our daughter and son were in high school, they were always going to tournaments. And I always had to take kids and chaperone, you know?
Franklin: Oh, yeah, yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming.
George Kraemer: Ah, it was our pleasure.
Franklin: I see that you’ve brought some things. Would we be able to scan those and keep them with part of your—with your interview?
George Kraemer: You can have those. That’s my work history.
Franklin: Okay, great, we’ll scan this and put this with your interview, too.
George Kraemer: And she’s got some pictures there, too.
Franklin: Are these family pictures, or--?
Marjorie Kraemer: No, these are pictures of—
George Kraemer: No, they’re--
Marjorie Kraemer: Out at Hanford. This is one when I worked out at the Area. This was a million man hours without an accident, you know?
Franklin: Oh, wow, okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: And they had a fashion show. And this is me right here in radiation outfit, you know, that we modeled the—we modeled the outfits they wore in the contaminated labs and all that.
Franklin: And which one are you? Are you the one in the white cowl?
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, I’m the one right—with the—
Franklin: Okay.
Marjorie Kraemer: All covered up.
Franklin: Yeah, kind of a little hard to tell. That’s great. That’s a great picture. Ah, yup, General Electric Photo Division.
Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: Yeah, would we be able to scan these and put them with your interview?
George Kraemer: Yeah.
Franklin: That would be wonderful. Okay. Great. Well, thank you again, thank you both so much. ITts been a really excellent interview.
George Kraemer: Good!
Marjorie Kraemer: Thank you.
Franklin: You did good.
Man one: So it’s pointing at you.
Philip Craig: So it’s pointing at me?
Man one: Yeah, yeah.
Man two: Exactly.
Craig: Oh, there we go.
Man two: Perfect, perfect.
Craig: There we go!
Man one: Okay, excellent.
Craig: Okay?
Robert Bauman: Okay. Let me know when you’re ready, all right? Then we’ll—all right?
Man one: We are rolling, so on your cue.
Bauman: So, let’s start, first of all, by just having you say your name and spell it for us, so we make sure we have that correct.
Craig: My name is Philip Craig. P-H-I-L-I-P. C-R-A-I-G.
Bauman: Great. Thank you. And my name is Robert Bauman, and we are conducting this oral history interview on June 24th of 2015 on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So, Mr. Craig, why don’t we have you start, maybe, by just telling us a little bit about your background. Where you came from, how you came to Hanford, and that sort of thing.
Craig: Well my how I came to Hanford started back in high school. I had a high school chemistry class. I liked what I saw. And I knew that the Hanford Project was down the road—I was living in Selah, Washington, and the Hanford Project was very interesting to me. And I even wrote a term paper on Hanford, because I really wanted to work here. So, I went on to Whitman College, graduated from high school in ’56—or ’52, I’m sorry. Graduated from college in ’56, and then went on to Washington State College, then, now Washington State University in Pullman, and did a year of graduate work in chemistry. And at the end of that, I came to Hanford for my very first job. And lo and behold, that was exactly 58 years ago today: June 24, 1957. And it was quite an experience, let me tell you. The first thing that struck me, of course I had to have credentials to get in the building. And in those days, we didn’t have badges like you have today that are on a cord around your neck. We had a little plastic folder with our ID in it, and you’d pull that out of your pocket and flash it open to the guard sitting at the entrance desk. And then you could go on into the building and find your office and take it from there. The most interesting thing, I think, about it all was it was a very formal setting. For years we wore suits, ties, long sleeved white shirts only—couldn’t have colored shirts—and the ladies wore dresses. Far more formal than today’s environment. Security, of course, was very paramount. I mean, we were in the years where the Soviets and the United States was competing. And so the Hanford site, being one of the two principal sites manufacturing plutonium in the United States, the other one being Savannah River, most of the stuff in terms of total production and that sort of thing was top secret. A lot of it was not—it was secret, but security was paramount. I remember in my little office cubby hole—it was a room, it wasn’t just a cubby hole, in a big room—we had a three-drawer file cabinet with a combination lock. And I could take a piece of paper out of that file, put it on my desk and work on it. But if I had to go to the bathroom, it went back in the combination file, locked it, go down the hall and come back and you had to unlock the combination and start all over again. And the very first thing they had me do is they handed me about a three-inch black three-ring binder with a red coversheet, marked secret. This was the PUREX operating manual. Now, PUREX stands for Plutonium Uranium Extraction, and it was the chemical process that is used to take irradiated uranium from the reactors, dissolve it in acid, treat it chemically, and come up with a plutonium nitrate solution. And I had to read this manual in about a week. [LAUGHTER] It was pretty daunting.
Bauman: Now where was your first office? Where on site?
Craig: It was on in the 703 Building, which is about where the Federal Building is today. The last part of the 703 structure—it was a herringbone structure. We had offices coming off a main corridor, and there was about six tiers of those. And the very last one is still standing, and the city offices are in there. But later on, the Federal Building took over.
Bauman: And what was your first job title?
Craig: Physical—let’s see. Physical Science Administrator, I think it was. The other thing about the environment is that you handwrote all your reports, and then gave them to a secretary who typed them. There was no computers. So, it was kind of a laborious process to do that. I needed to check out a government car, which I did in the motor pool, and drive out to the Area to PUREX, and see what was going on most every day, drive back, write the daily report, mark it all secret, send it up a line to my boss. But that government car, let me tell you—it was not air conditioned. So those days were pretty warm. But we got it done. About two months later, after getting into the PUREX part of it, the fellow who was a companion office mate had been handling the plutonium shipments. And he went off to Washington, D.C. for another job. So I got the job of accepting plutonium products on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission and the US government. So it was a very formal process. The products were in two forms. After the plutonium nitrate left PUREX, it was sent over to what is known as the Z Plant. And in that plant, by a series of chemical operations, it was converted to a metal button about this big and it fit in a tuna fish can. It weighed something close to two kilograms. So that was the first product. The second product were manufactured, machined weapon components. And I won’t talk about the exact details of their size and shape at this point. But nonetheless, Hanford was in the business of making weapon components. So my job was to accept this product and make the shipment, every couple of weeks or so, to Rocky Flats. Rocky Flats was about 15 miles northwest of Denver, and it was the receiving site for the plutonium as buttons. They would take that metal and cast it into weapon component shapes and machine those and so on. And of course the other part was the shapes themselves, they’d go up in pieces themselves, and they would go into an inspection process and eventually assemble parts of the warhead.
Bauman: So when you say—you’re accepting them from the contractor, or--?
Craig: I was accepting these materials from the contractor. I mean, General Electric Company was the contractor, and their job on a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract basis was to run all these processes. And there’s hundreds of people involved in this. But at the end of the line, I had to make that transition from Hanford to the next step. So it was a couple of months into my first job, my buddy left for Washington, and here I am, learning how to actually accept these components. Now, you need to understand that plutonium was very radioactive. It emitted some gamma radiation, but not huge amounts. I mean, you could actually handle it. But it also emitted alpha radiation. And so it had to be contained in some kind of container, like a can. And then you could hold it in your hand. Interesting. It was warm. It was—the radioactive decay—was producing heat. So this can felt like hanging onto a 60 Watt lightbulb. Now, the other part of the business of plutonium is that if you got too much of it together in one spot, you had a criticality event. And of course, the bomb itself was designed to make a lot of it go critical at the same time, and that created an atomic explosion. But the point is that if you’re handling plutonium, it had to maintain a certain degree of separation at all times. In the chemical processing plants, they used different sized columns of chemical solutions and whatnot, depending on what was going on. And that was to maintain this critical geometry, so that you didn’t have any kind of criticality event. And after the plutonium was made into these buttons we called them, and canned in the tuna fish cans, they were stored in a vault. And the vault had pillars of metal rods, and little rings on that rod that you could put a can in. But it maintained the separation. So on shipping day, what we would do is we operators of the plant would go into the vault and take these cans and very carefully put—I don’t remember exactly how many—something about five or six cans in a little red wagon. Just a little kid’s wagon. But there was spacers in there so that these things didn’t get too close. And they’d bring it down the hallway to the room that exited to the building where it then could be handled further. And this assembly area, in this room were birdcages. Now a birdcage is a metal frame that’s about this big, this big, and this big. And in the middle was a metal pot with a lid. And the idea was that you took—one at a time—one of those cans from the red wagon, and you put it in the pot. And then I think the birdcage held like three buttons. Then there was a lid, and a bunch of bolts in places where you could put a wire with a lead seal on the end. And my job was to squeeze the seal closed with an imprint and record, of course, what the identity of those cans were, and the weight, and that sort of thing on paperwork. And at the end of that, I would sign this receipt for this material, and give it to the contractor. The weapon components varied a little bit differently, depending on the size and shape of the weapon component. Eventually, those were a much bigger birdcage, and it contained a couple of pieces of weapon material.
Bauman: So—
Craig: Hold up.
Bauman: Oh, sure.
Craig: I got to collect my thoughts here. Okay. You can go back on. The business of shipping, then—I owned that plutonium for maybe 15 minutes [LAUGHTER] before the government. Then I would transfer it to armed couriers, AEC couriers. They were not only armed with side arms; they were armed with machine guns. This was serious stuff. And they would load these birdcages into a truck, and eventually ship that off to Rocky Flats.
Bauman: How often did these shipments--?
Craig: Well, every couple of weeks or so.
Bauman: And so, they were shipped by truck then, to Rocky Flats?
Craig: That was a method used in later years. They didn’t really like shipping by truck that well. We actually had another system that involved—all I’m going to say is it involved rail. Because the exact details was highly classified.
Bauman: And did the amount that was shipped vary significantly, or--?
Craig: It varied, yes. Depends on how the production was going and what the requirements were on the other end.
Bauman: Oh, okay. Sure. And so how long did you do this, then? How long were you--?
Craig: From 1957 to 1972.
Bauman: Wow.
Craig: So I shipped a lot of plutonium.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
Craig: The other thing that was kind of interesting—I was explaining to you about the criticality. I hadn’t been on the job more than, I don’t know, a couple of months, shipping. I knew what to do, I knew the whole process, and I knew the sensitivity of it. One day one of these chemical operators who worked for the contractor had gone to the vault, and he came down the hall carrying about five tuna fish cans in his hand, and holding it with his arm like this. Well, that was absolutely high risk criticality event waiting to happen. And he walked in the room, and I said, ooooh. Just stop right where you are. And I instructed one of the other operators, take one of the cans from him and put it in the birdcage very carefully. And we got that shipment loaded and we were on our way. And then I went to the manager’s office—the plant manager’s office. Now, this fellow was like 60 years old. Kind of a salty southerner with—I mean, he was definitely in charge. And I’m 23 years old. Fresh out of college, wet behind the ears. And I gave him a real lecture about safety. And he didn’t like that. He called my boss. And my boss said Mr. Craig was right: you really almost had an accident today. That’s the end of that story. There was more to the whole weapons system. Since I was in the whole process, one of the small cogs—there was uranium coming from Oak Ridge. There was plutonium—some plutonium—and tritium coming from Savannah River. There was high explosives coming from Pantex. And then Hanford plutonium. This all had to be scheduled into what was known as the US master nuclear delivery schedule. It was the weapons document for all the weapons made in the country. It was a top secret document, and representatives from each of these sites got together, usually in Albuquerque, New Mexico, or at the Rocky Flats Plant. And we handwrote this schedule. There was no computers. There was a spreadsheet format, yes. But we didn’t have computers to do all that. Everything had to be balanced. This whole process had to bring all these materials together for processing at Rocky Flats. And so, about once a year we got together to do the master nukes schedule. I found I was pretty fortunate to be a part of that. I was pretty young. But it was a challenge. I had a lot of help, of course. But I was very impressed. One of the things that kind of scared me though was—and let me check on the date. October 22 to 24, 1962. That was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were in Denver and Rocky Flats to work on these schedules. Now, that was ground zero for the Russians. If they were going to attack the United States, that probably would have been one of their targets. And it was kind of scary working there for those two days. I was very thankful that President Kennedy convinced Khrushchev to back off and no ill things happened.
Bauman: Were you here when President Kennedy came to Hanford in ’63?
Craig: Yes, yes.
Bauman: Do you remember that?
Craig: Oh, I remember that. We got to drive out and see him out at the reactor site. It was quite an experience. I think that was one of the only Presidents I’ve ever seen in person. And it wasn’t long after that, you know, a couple months or less, that he was assassinated in Texas.
Bauman: Do you remember much about that day?
Craig: It was hot! [LAUGHTER] It was still warm when he was here visiting. But it was a big event. There was thousands of people out there in the desert. But it was very thrilling experience to see the President come.
Bauman: Sure. So, you said you were working on the shipment from ’57 to ’72. So did that process change much over those years, other than shifting from—
Craig: Well, yes. In about ’66, we quit making weapon components at Hanford. And the process moved to Rocky Flats entirely.
Bauman: So that part changed.
Craig: Yeah. That part changed. But the plutonium buttons didn’t.
Bauman: And so then in ’72 then, how did your job change? What did you start doing at that point?
Craig: Well, take a break for a sec.
[VIDEO CUTS]
Bauman: Sure, that’d be great. Do you want to go ahead and do that now?
Craig: Hmm?
Bauman: Do you want to go ahead and start that now then? Start talking about that?
Craig: Yes.
Bauman: Okay. That’d be great.
Man one: All right, just a moment. Okay, we’re rolling again. Just start whenever you—
Craig: Okay. Well, let’s see, I need the face page of this. Okay, I’m ready.
Bauman: Go ahead.
Man two: We’re rolling.
Craig: The other significant activity that I was involved with was in 1968. The site was in a state where we had 149 single-shell waste tanks and 28 double-shell waste tanks. Actually, that’s not quite right. There were four short of that on the double-shell. And these were boiling waste tanks. The others were not boiling waste. But it was all liquid, and we were concerned about the integrity of the tanks and the lifetime of the tanks. And so at that time, the Atlantic-Richfield-Hanford Company, ARCO, was the contractor. And two of their engineers, Sam Beard and Bob McCullough and I co-authored a document that was called “The Hanford Waste Management Briefing.” And the purpose of this was to explain the Hanford situation to our headquarters—our AEC headquarters staff, and Congressional staffers who were then going to be funding what is now known as the Tank Farm projects. And this document was a briefing document, and the key—one of the key charts that we were particularly proud of is to try to show people how complex the business of the Hanford waste system was. And this chart shows what happens to a ton of uranium that’s been irradiated and then processed at PUREX, and the wastes that come out of that whole process. And some of it’s boiling waste, because of high levels of radioactivity that are in that particular section of waste, and some was non-boiling. For example, you’re dealing with—for that ton of waste—680 gallons of non-boiling waste and 220 gallons of boiling waste. And in the non-boiling tank, you have 900 pounds of salts, chemical nitrate—nitrates and so on, and about 350 curies of radioactivity. But in the boiling side, there’s 230 pounds of salt, but 300,000 curies of activity. That’s why they’re boiling. And then there was a low-level stream that had like 55,000 gallons of waste that went to a crib—a crib is like a septic tank—tile field—and the swamp, which is just an open pond. There was another 560,000 gallons went there, but their radioactivity was less than a tenth of a curie. I mean, it was just negligible. On the solid side, there was about ten cubic feet of solid waste. There was about 10 million cubic feet—I’m sorry—of gases that came out. And here’s the number that it was radio—a surprise to everyone that it was published. It was secret then, but it’s been declassified since. Out of that ton of fuel came 530 grams of plutonium and four grams of neptunium. So the chemical process that started with a ton of material and ended up with just a very small amount. So it’s kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Because these wastes were boiling, we’d started building—had started building double-shell tanks. A double-shell tank is a steel tank within a steel tank within a concrete barrier. And this diagram in that briefing document showed what a double-shell tank was all about. These were million-gallon tanks. And in those days, it was about a dollar, maybe a dollar and a half a gallon to build those tanks. A million-million half dollars for one of these big tanks. Far, far, less than what they would cost today.
Bauman: Yeah.
Craig: At any rate, we made this presentation to the staffers and the ultimate activity was to remove as much as water as we could from the single-shell tanks so that we ended up with a salt cake that was not going anywhere. We isolated cesium-137 and strontium-90 by another chemical process, carried out in B Plant, to bring those short-lived emitters of radiation to a point where we could encapsulate those in steel cylinders. That was done and they’re stored. I think they’re still stored that way, but I’m not entirely sure. I kind of lost track of what’s happened since. We also built—were recommending that they build four more double-shelled tanks and that’s why the number finally grew to 28 double-shell tanks. And then, of course, it ultimately led to the pretreatment plant that’s in the process out here now, and the Waste Vitrification Plant.
Bauman: You mentioned one of the reasons for doing the report was there were concerns about the integrity of the single-shell tanks. Were some of them leaking at that point, or just concerns that they might leak?
Craig: I think at that point there were some that had displayed a little bit of leakage, yes. There’s other documents that showed some leakage, but, again it wasn’t into the concrete overpack, if you will. There was some, of course, got into the soil column, but it was not a series breach, and it wasn’t any radioactivity that got down into the groundwater. But we were afraid that it would. I mean, 1968, these tanks have been—the initial ones—had been built in 1944! ’45, ’46. So there was some that were approaching the end of life, and those tanks are still there today. And that’s why they’re so concerned about trying to remove some of the waste from these tanks and process it.
Bauman: So, who initiated—was this ARCO or AEC that sort of initiated the study that you helped write?
Craig: Oh, I think it was—collectively, the Hanford folks at engineering—folks on both sides of the contractor and the government were saying, we got to do something about this. Anyway, I think that’s about all I want to say about the creation of that document. I thought it would be interesting for you to look into if that ever showed up in the REACH literature as the kickoff document to get this thing going.
Bauman: Right, right. Yeah. And did you continue to be involved after this report in some of the tank—waste management end of things?
Craig: Yes. Actually, I had some side activities that I got into first. From 1968 to 1972, I was the plutonium leasing officer for the government. There was one in Oak Ridge for uranium, and I was the plutonium one for the US. And basically, what I was—what we did is we created a lease document, so the 125 commercial organizations, 40 government agencies, and about 450 colleges and universities could have plutonium material. And we would, in effect, rent it to them for a use charge. Wasn’t very expensive, but it was a charge. More importantly, if they lost any of it, they had to pay for it. The largest users of that lease program were the two reactor fuel contractors. One of them was Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation in Apollo, Pennsylvania. And the other one was Kerr-McGee in Oklahoma. They made reactor fuels for the breeder program at Oak Ridge, and the Fast Flux Test Facility here.
Bauman: Oh, okay. Interesting.
Craig: So that was a way for them to have this material. For the next nine years, I continued to be involved with the PUREX and Z Plant, and the management of both site materials—all of the different types of materials that we had: uranium, and plutonium, and so on. And those materials were about $500,000 to $750,000 in value. I’m sorry, $500 to $750 million in value. But it was a management process. Then later on, from 1981 to 1985, I was able to be involved in the last big development program that I had while I was working for the government. It was called the Spent Fuel Management Program. Now, during this time, the AEC had been in charge—prior to this time, the AEC had been in charge of both the Defense orientation of radioactive materials, and also the development of commercial power reactors. And there was a political hue and cry from about 19—let’s see—1974, I think it was—that the commercial reactor stuff should go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a new agency. And then, of course, a few years after that, about 1978 I think it was, the—oh, by the way, when the NRC was created, they changed the name of AEC. It became ERDA: Energy Research and Development Administration. And then about four years later, they changed it again to the Department of Energy. Well, now we had the government on our side—DoE had an obligation to kind of help the nuclear power industry deal with the long-term disposal of their spent fuel. I mean, as the fuel is burned up in their reactor and is no longer useful, eventually it was going to be encapsulated and sent off to Yucca Mountain. Well, until Yucca Mountain got authorized and built, then they needed an interim storage, and so we developed a concept called the at-reactor spent fuel storage. Several of us—myself and somebody from NRC, and somebody from Battelle, the contract who was working with me, and somebody from the Electric Power Research Institute, representing the power industry—I think that’s about it—we all went off to observe some dry storage in casks in Germany. We brought that technology back to the United States. We worked with the NRC to get it licensed. And now the power reactors of this country are using at-reactor storage in basically steel containers that contain the spent fuel and are just sitting on concrete pads, and the radioactive decay heat is dissipated into the surrounding environment. But all the radioactivity is very well contained in these casks. Hopefully, eventually Yucca Mountain will open. It was part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that I was involved with in those days. The whole purpose of this act was to create a long-term disposal. And NRC was involved in licensing that long-term disposal, and the nuclear power industry was to pay a fee for all this fuel that they were generating to help pay for this. Well, then all this got stopped because of the politics of Nevada and the—it’s going to be restarted, because there was a lawsuit that was settled recently that said that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act should be followed.
Bauman: Right. So, you were involved with that in—
Craig: I was involved in—
Bauman: About ’85?
Craig: --all that kind of stuff.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Yes. And then I left the—at that point, this will be—okay, you can go back on. At that point in 1985, I left the government, went private, went to work for a packaging—an engineering and design company that designed high-level waste shipping containers for use on transportation. They started off—their first big project was the Three Mile Island cask, to move that waste. And then from that, I marketed to the government a high-level waste—any kind of high-level waste that could be put into a cask and removed. And then the TRUPACT-II cask for use in transferring transuranic waste, or primarily plutonium waste, from the government sites to the waste isolation pilot plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico. And from there, I got involved on a couple of other organizations. Eventually, in 1991, I went to work for Lockheed. In 1996, Lockheed, along with—well, Fluor Daniel was the primary contractor, but we were on the Fluor Daniel team, and Lockheed was to manage the Tank Farms. So we came full circle, and I helped Lockheed win that contract.
Bauman: Right, you did come full circle.
Craig: So then, Lockheed moved me from—I was then living in Federal Way, and Lockheed rewarded me by moving me back to Hanford and letting me work on the Hanford site in ’96. And I did that until December of 2000. And there I was involved in the new contracting method. Instead of cost-plus-fixed-fee contracting, it was cost-plus-incentive-fee. And what we would do was we would create a document for a scope of work, a performance agreement. And the contractor would say, here, DoE, this is what we’re going to do for you, and here’s how long it’s going to take. And DoE said, okay, if you do that, we’ll pay you this fee, and if you don’t get it done on time, we’re going to cut your fee. And if you don’t do it well, we’re going to cut your fee. And my job was to, at the end of the work performance, was to write up the actual work done in a document to present to DoE that says, okay, pay us the fee. We were very successful in getting our award fee. And then I gave it all up in December of 2000, after 43 years.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Craig: Cut.
Bauman: That’s a long, fascinating career. Can I ask you questions, kind of go back?
Craig: Yeah, there’s a couple of transition spots I’m kind of worried about, that I kind of sound like an idiot.
Bauman: No.
Craig: I want to—is there any editing we can do?
Bauman: Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it. If there’s any issue we can go back to it later. It’s not a problem. I wonder if I can go back—and this is really interesting stuff, fascinating career. I wanted to ask you just about the community, when you arrived here in 1957, what was Richland like at the time? Could you talk about that a little bit? And did you live in Richland, or--?
Craig: Oh, yes. Yes. We were allowed to rent from the government a B house—half of a B house on Haupt. This was June 1957. And by then—a couple of months—the government started selling off the town to private citizens. And we were in the first block to be sold. The senior owners in the other end of the B house bought the B house. And at that time, we moved to the other side of town, into a ranch house, because that had been sold to its owner. This is kind of an interesting—are you recording?
Bauman: Yeah.
Craig: Oh, okay. This was kind of interesting, because the ranch house that the owner—I mean the resident who was able to buy it bought for like $7,700. And then when we bought the ranch house, I think we paid like $9,500. And of course, those ranch houses today sell for over 100. The town was very—initially of course, it was very caste-oriented. I mean, if you were a contractor, management, you got to live on the river. If you were a lowly government GS-7, you got to live in a B house. And there was a certain level of, you know, if you weren’t in this class, you weren’t part of it, you know. And I think that’s changed dramatically over the years. It doesn’t make any difference who you work for and how much money you make and all that stuff. People have changed for the better.
Bauman: Anything else about the community that stood out to you at the time?
Craig: Well, the first thing that Richland did was they had to celebrate their founding as Richland. They set off a mock atomic bomb, and it was a bunch of fanfare out in the park, and made a poof of smoke that was to represent a mushroom cloud.
Bauman: So, was this at Howard Amon Park?
Craig: Yeah. It was.
Bauman: Anything else that—memories that stand out, either about in community of Richland, or your work—any stories or memories that really stand out to you that you’d like to share?
Craig: I think I’m kind of—
Bauman: Good? [LAUGHTER]
Craig: Completed.
Bauman: All right, well I want to thank you very much. This was really interesting. I appreciate you coming in and sharing stories about your work, and all that you did out there. I really appreciate it.
Craig: Well, you’re more than welcome. I feel confident that this waste document that shows particularly how much plutonium was made, that was a very revolutionary thing. I mean, the idea how much of material you got out of a ton of uranium was—
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Very classified. And to see that declassified and whatnot. It’s—
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Craig: Kind of mind-blowing. But there’s the document. And it’s legitimate to talk about.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Not sure I want it on the local news tonight, but—[LAUGHTER]
[VIDEO CUTS]
Craig: Details, but I know that he was—
Bauman: Yeah. So, just let me know when you’re ready, all right? We can—
Craig: So this was August, ’76. I don’t know the exact date.
Bauman: That’s all right. I mean, the exact date we have, so—
Man one: Okay, we are ready.
Bauman: Just whatever memories or knowledge you have about it.
Man one: We’re rolling. Whenever you’re ready.
Bauman: Okay. So I don’t know if you want to talk to us about the McCluskey incident and your involvement in that?
Craig: Well, at the time, I was responsible for the Z Plant operations. And so, one morning, early, about 4:30 in the morning, I get a call from the plant that there had been an accident out of the plant, and I needed to get out there. And so I threw some clothes on and got a government car and went out to the site. What had happened was the plant had been operating on the recovery of americium-241 as part of the reclamation activities. And it was a chemical process. Inside this chemical process were criticalities tanks, small tanks like this, long, inside of a glovebox. Earlier in that summer, there had been a labor dispute, and the plant was on strike. And so the process had been shut down. Well, what was going on was americium was loaded onto the ion exchange medium inside this long column. When the dispute was settled and we had several days of reviews, conducting interviews with the contractor people, are you ready to restart? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? And finally they were authorized to start. Well, what happened is that when they poured strong nitric acid on that ion exchange column to take, you lose off the americium. The americium had decayed the resin beads of the ion exchange medium ‘til it was kind of an organic gunk. And that acid reacted with it, and that violent chemical reaction blew open that column. It breached the glovebox, and it sprayed chemicals and americium all over Mr. McCluskey. And he was taken to an initial decontamination spot onsite, and then downtown. But my job, when I got there, was to fend off the media. What had happened—as soon as this became knowledge, and the media got hold of it, here they come in helicopters, landing inside the secure area of 200 West. The guards were going nuts. I mean, here’s these people that are not supposed to be there! Eventually, they didn’t do anything but try to manage it and bring them over towards the building, the end of the building, where behind the building walls was this processing cell where everything had taken place. And they were standing there, I was standing there outside talking to the media, trying to explain what happened. And I had an alpha copy machine. I was standing there, showing them that there was no contamination on my feet, there was no contamination around. They were panning everywhere with their cameras, and they found a sodium hydroxide feed tank that had just a little bit of salt cake around the valve on the outside. Non-radioactive, nothing—I mean it was a nothing tank. And they filmed that like it was the biggest thing since sliced bread. And I remember I went through all this and—to find out that it made the national news. But I didn’t get to see it, because I was out there. [LAUGHTER] But it became a non-event. It was not a disaster, there was containment, there was—all the safety things worked as well as they should. The public was never in any harm. But that was a—
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] So, what happened, then, with the room, or whatever, where the incident took place?
Craig: Oh, they sealed that room off right away. And then it remained sealed up until very recently, when they went in and took it apart. And processed it for disposal.
Bauman: Did you know Mr. McCluskey at all?
Craig: No.
Bauman: Okay.
Craig: No. He was a chemical operator. I didn’t know who he was, hadn’t met him. But it was one of those things that—
Bauman: Right.
Craig: --Happened.
Bauman: Well, thanks, again for sharing that story. Glad we remembered to do that.
Craig: What was funny about it—I was trying to stand up. I used to be able to do this. I could stand there and hold my foot up and balance. And then I realized I couldn’t do that.
Bauman: Oh, watch the microphone there on your—
Craig: Oh, yeah.
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.
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.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jerome Martin about his experiences working at the Hanford site and his involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. And you—just wanted to use your legal name to start out with, but you prefer to be called Jerry, right?
Jerome Martin: Yes, I do.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name—
Martin: Okay.
Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010.
Martin: I believe it was earlier.
Franklin: Or possibly earlier. And some of the Parker Foundation videos, as we know, were lost. And so this video is an attempt to recapture some of the information that would have been in that oral history, but also add some other information, and also to give you a chance to talk about your involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. So just as a introduction to whoever views this in the future. So why don’t we start in the beginning? How did you come to—you’re not from the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Not originally.
Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Well, a little quick history, I got my bachelor’s degree at San Diego State College and then I was a radiation safety officer at San Diego State for about three years. Then I had an opportunity to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where, again, I was a radiation safety officer and on the faculty of the physics department. After several years there, an excellent opportunity came up for me here at Hanford with Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. So I moved here in 1976, and had a great opportunity to work with many other more senior people here at Hanford that had been here since the beginning. One of those, of course, was Herbert M. Parker. He was former director of the laboratories under General Electric, and then retired, but stayed on with Battelle as a director. I had a few opportunities to interact with him, and was quite impressed. I have heard stories about, he was a rather demanding taskmaster. And I could kind of imagining myself trying to work for him, but it would have been a challenge.
Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record?
Martin: I’ve had an opportunity to review many of his publications. They were quite professional and very well researched, and in many cases the leading authority on several topics. So I was very impressed by his publications. I didn’t have a direct opportunity to work for him, so I don’t know about his management style or other things. But that was the thing that impressed me the most, was his publications.
Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research?
Martin: His early professional career was in medical physics. He was at Swedish Hospital in Seattle for many years. Then he was called upon, as part of the Manhattan Project, to set up the safety program at Oak Ridge. He did that for about a year or so. Then he was called upon to do the same thing here at Hanford. So he came here and established the entire environmental safety and health program for Hanford. Of course he had all the right background to be able to do that, and he was able to recruit a number of really talented people to help him with that. So I think Hanford ended up with what could be known as the best environmental safety and health program, among all the early AEC and then DoE laboratories. One of the things that impressed me most by that program was the record keeping. And I had an opportunity to work on that in later years. But the way the record keeping was designed and set up and maintained was quite thorough. It was designed to be able to recreate whatever may have happened according to those records. It turned out to be very valuable in later years.
Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker?
Martin: I don’t recall the name of the individual that set it up, although I know Ken Hyde was involved very early on. He may have been at the very origin of it. But I’m sure Parker certainly influenced the rigor with which that program was established. In later years, John Jech was manager of the record keeping program, and then my good friend, Matt Lyon, was the manager of that. I worked with Matt, then, on American National Standard Institute’s standard for record keeping. We incorporated into that standard virtually all of the fundamentals that Parker had established initially.
Franklin: The first name was John—
Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H.
Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living?
Martin: No, he’s not.
Franklin: And what about Lyon?
Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde.
Franklin: What’s that?
Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Yeah, give or take.
Franklin: So you mentioned that the record keeping was designed to recreate an incident as it happened. Do you know of any such—or can you speak to any such times when that record keeping system was crucial into a safety issue?
Martin: The one that comes to mind is one of the more I guess infamous incidents here at Hanford. It occurred just around the time I arrived here in 1976. It was sometimes called the McCluskey accident out at the 231-Z Building. There was an explosion in a glovebox that resulted in very significant contamination of Mr. McCluskey by americium-241. And the response to that incident, and then all the following treatment of Mr. McCluskey was very well documented. In fact, those documents then became the basis for a whole series of scientific papers that described the entire incident and all the aspects of it. So that was one major case where excellent record keeping was very valuable.
Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey?
Martin: He survived for about ten years after the accident. He initially had very severe acid burns and trauma. But he was very carefully treated for that. The americium contamination that he had was gradually eliminated—not eliminated, but reduced substantially. He survived for another ten years after that incident even though he had heart trouble. I know several people that assisted in his care, and it was quite remarkable what they were able to do and what he was able to do.
Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work?
Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976.
Martin: Right.
Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle?
Martin: Well, I worked in what was called the radiation protection department, later called health physics department. My first assignment was called ALARA management. ALARA stands for maintain our radiation exposures as low as reasonably achievable. I would monitor the exposure records of Battelle workers, and watch for any that were the least bit unusually high, and then look for ways that we could reduce those exposures. And I monitored other things like average exposures and the use of dosimeters and things of that nature. The overall assignment was to generally reduce the workers’ radiation exposure.
Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort?
Martin: I think we were very successful, and it went on for many years, even after I had that assignment. I remember one time, looking at a report that DoE put out annually on radiation exposures over all the major DoE facilities. Those average exposures, highest individual exposures, and things of that nature. Battelle and Hanford had among the lowest averages of all the other DoE facilities. So, I believe it was a very effective ALARA program here at Hanford.
Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available?
Martin: Oh, yes.
Franklin: Oh.
Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE.
Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes.
Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall.
Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what—
Martin: Right. Well, I started getting involved in management at kind of the bottom level. I was an associate section manager, and then I got an assignment as section manager for the radiation monitoring section. I was responsible for all the radiation monitors—or as they’re now called, radiation protection technologists—the radiation monitors for Battelle and two other of the contractors here at Hanford. It was kind of ironic that I was located in what used to be the 300 Area library, and my office was on the second floor. And my office was the former office of Herbert M. Parker, when he was director of laboratories.
Franklin: Wow!
Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker.
Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for?
Martin: I did that two or three years, and then another opportunity came along in 1979—no actually, it was ’79, but I guess I’d been on that management job for about a year and a half. In September of ’79, which was about three months after the Three Mile Island accident, we had an opportunity to make a proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide support for their staff in emergency planning work. At that time, NRC was making a big push on all the power plants, all the nuclear power plants across the country to enhance their emergency planning programs. So we began about a ten-year project with NRC to supplement their staff. The NRC established the requirement for annual emergency exercises at each of the nuclear power plants, where they had to work up a scenario, and then they would activate their emergency response staff to demonstrate that they would know how to handle that accident scenario. We served as observers. We had teams of observers with the NRC staff. We did a total of 800 of those exercises over a ten-year period.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel.
Franklin: Yeah. So that would have been—so you said for power, would that have been for all of the power reactors in the United States?
Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time.
Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries?
Martin: I didn’t personally, but we did have some staff that went to a similar kind of program with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and visited foreign nuclear power plants. Some in France, that I recall.
Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants?
Martin: In the US, yeah.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: Actually, that was the number of reactors. There was a fewer number of plants, because many of them are two or more reactors at a site.
Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors?
Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time.
Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work?
Martin: That’s an excellent question, because that was in this period. Of course, the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986, and I was working directly with NRC at that time. I was project manager on that NRC contract. When Chernobyl happened, there was an immediate reaction, and NRC had to study the Chernobyl accident as well as we could, and then determine what could be applied to US power reactors by way of improvements and emergency planning. One of my managers, Bill Bair, was part of a US delegation led by DoE and NRC to actually visit the Chernobyl area shortly after the accident, interact with the Russians, and do lessons learned that was turned into a series of DoE and NRC documents that tried to extract as much useful information as we could from Chernobyl and apply it here in the US.
Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States.
Martin: Not exactly. The Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel. There were a few reactors in the US that also did not have containment vessels, but they had other safeguards. The N Reactor was one of those. Unfortunately, I would call it an overreaction of the US government to a reactor with no containment. Severe restrictions were put on N Reactor, and some re-design was required that ultimately led to the end of N Reactor. It’s interesting to note that at that point in time, which was about 1986, 1987, N Reactor had generated more electricity from a nuclear reactor than any other plant in the world. So it’s unfortunate it came to an early demise.
Franklin: And—sorry, my ignorance here on the technical aspects. You said some of them don’t have a containment vessel. What does a containment vessel look like and what role does it play, and why would there would be reactors with one and without one?
Martin: Well, N Reactor went back to the early—the late ‘50s, I believe when it was designed. It was designed similar to the other reactors here at Hanford that were intended for production of plutonium. But N Reactor was a dual purpose, in that it also generated 800 megawatts of electricity. But it had a similar kind of design to what you see out at B Plant, for example. So it didn’t have the same kind of containment vessel that other modern pressurized water reactors or other nuclear power plants have that is designed in such a way that if there is reactor core damage, any radioactivity released can be contained and not released.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion.
Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the—
Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment.
Franklin: Okay. Excellent. So after—obviously the demise of N Reactor, ’86, ’87, is kind of the end of operations—or I should say of product production—product and energy production on the Hanford site. So how did your job change after that? And what did you continue to do after the shutdown?
Martin: I wasn’t directly affected by N Reactor shutting down. And the other production reactors had been shut down before that, so I wasn’t really directly involved in that. But I had yet another opportunity came up that turned out to be really a challenge for me. The Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas is the primary assembly and disassembly facility for nuclear weapons. At that time, it was managed by a company called Mason and Hanger. Mason and Hanger had that contract for many years, and DoE challenged them to rebid the contract. So Mason and Hanger reached out to Battelle for assistance in teaming on environmental health and safety. So my manager talked me into being involved, so I went down to Amarillo and visited the plant and worked with the team there on the proposal that had to be presented to DoE. And we won the contract. Of course in the fine print it said I then had to move there.
Franklin: Ah!
Martin: But it turned out great. By that time, my family was pretty well grown, kids were through college. So we moved down to Amarillo, and I went to work at Pantex. We really enjoyed that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Amarillo’s a very nice town, a lot of nice people. The work at Pantex was very challenging. I enjoyed that very much, too.
Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant?
Martin: Well, I was manager of the radiation safety department down there for three years, which was my original contract obligation. During that time, we were very closely scrutinized by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, which was an organization established by Congress to be a watchdog over DoE. Their method for watching DoE was to watch the contractors very closely. So they would scrutinize everything we did, and then challenge DoE if they found something. They pushed us in a way that was good, because one of the things they promoted was professional certification. I’m a certified health physicist, certified by the American Board of Health Physics. At the time at Pantex, I was the only one we had there. But the DNFSB pushed us to add more, so I got more of my staff certified. There was a similar program for technicians called the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists, and at the time, we had two of my staff that were registered with NRRPT. Again, they pushed us to promote more training. By the end of that three-year period, I think we had ten of our technologists registered and certified. So we really improved the credentials of our staff. We instituted some new programs, again, related to ALARA radiation reduction. Probably the most interesting or challenging day of my life occurred down there in 1994. We were working on disassembly of the W48 program. The W48 was a tactical weapon used in—that was deployed in Europe—it was never used. But it was a very small, cylindrical nuclear weapon designed to be shot out of a 155 millimeter howitzer, which is amazing just to think about. But the plutonium pit in this device was surrounded by high explosive. It turned out to be rather difficult to disassemble this particular design of nuclear weapon. It also turned out that the plutonium pit had a relatively high dose rate, compared to others. So the workers were getting some increased exposure to their hands in the process of working on this. So we were concerned about their extremity dose. So we worked up a method for doing a classified videotape of the disassembly operation, so that we could study each step in the process to find ways to improve worker safety. Providing shielding, remote tools, things of that nature. The process on this was to take the plutonium pit and high explosives and put it in liquid nitrogen bath for a period of time. Then bring it out and put it in a little tub-like, and pour hot water on it. The HE would expand rapidly and crack off. And for the most part, it worked very well. Well, there was this one particular pit that we were working on when we were doing the videotape for this study. Apparently the HE wasn’t coming off the way it should, and so they had to repeat this process over and over. They brought it out of the liquid nitrogen, poured hot water on it, and the plutonium—the cladding, the beryllium cladding on the plutonium pit actually cracked, due to the severe temperature change. The workers who were working on this were trained very carefully that if that cladding on the pit ever cracks, get out of there fast, so you avoid a plutonium exposure. So that happened. One of the technicians heard an audible crack and saw it on the surface of that pit. And they all evacuated immediately. They got just outside the door of this special facility, and they called our radiation safety office, and fortunately my three best technicians were standing there by the phone. They said, pit had cracked. And so they got over there as fast as they possibly could. They recognized the danger of having an exposed plutonium pit, and how that can oxidize and cause severe contamination very quickly. They decided to put on respirators to protect themselves, but they didn’t bother with any of the other protective clothing because they wanted to save time. So they made an entry where the cracked pit was, still there with the water bath on it, and the video shooting this picture. They took samples right on the crack and on the water and all around it. They managed to take that plutonium pit and get it into a plastic bag and then they doubled bagged it and then they triple bagged it and sealed it up. Then they came out. Of course, the samples revealed that there was indeed plutonium contamination coming out of that crack, but they had contained it very quickly. When we made a later entry to retrieve the video tape that was still running, and we looked at the timestamp on it. From the time the crack appeared until they had it in the bag was seven minutes.
Franklin: Wow!
Martin: That’s about as fast as you can possibly expect a response team to come in and secure a situation like that. And so, following that, of course we had the incident debriefing, and I had to chair that. But we very carefully went through and recorded every little thing that happened from the time they were working on the disassembly to the time they exited. Got that all documented, and then the videotape of course documented all of that. The scrutiny by Department of Energy, the Amarillo office, the Albuquerque office, Headquarters, any number of others—we had a lot of attention that day. It was a long, hard day at the office, but very exciting. Following that, we had to debrief many other investigation committees and others. But we had that videotape to rely on, and that just was invaluable. That’s my—that was probably the most exciting day of my life, down there. [LAUGHTER] Got a follow-up to that. That W48 weapon was designed by Livermore. They came in at a later time and did a post-mortem on that cracked pit. And when they did, we discovered that the amount of plutonium contamination there that was available for distribution had it not been contained, would have totally just made that facility useless. I mean, extremely expensive clean-up, if it ever got done.
Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility?
Martin: Well, mainly that room.
Franklin: That room.
Martin: But it was a very big room, and a very valuable room, specially designed. But the quick response of our radiation safety technicians and getting that contained saved that room and millions of dollars in expense.
Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell?
Martin: 155 millimeters.
Franklin: Wow. And what is the—I don’t know if you know this—but what’s the explosive power of that—is it—I guess it could be—
Martin: Well, it’s just like the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 20-kiloton fission device. The plutonium pit is designed to implode and cause a super-critical reaction.
Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of—
Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this--
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Martin: --device. It boggled my mind.
Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever—
Martin: There’s quite a large number of different nuclear weapons. Many of them were tactical weapons used in Europe—or deployed in Europe during the Cold War. Many other more modern ones are part of Polaris missiles and other large bombs that can be deployed by B-52s or B-2s.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: Yeah. There’s quite a wide range of different models and designs. I didn’t know that at the time, but it’s fascinating. I remember one day standing in one of the disassembly rooms, and they had this nuclear weapon in a cradle standing there on the floor, and they had the top off of it. And I could just look down in the top of it. I couldn’t touch it, but I could look in there and just see the engineering in one of those things was just amazing. Just beyond belief.
Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine.
Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford.
Franklin: It’s okay.
Martin: Maybe I should come back.
Franklin: I think that’s a very interesting story. I certainly—I’ve also, like I said, heard of plenty of bombs—ICBMs, missiles, but I’d never quite heard of a howitzer-type fired weapon. But also just the fact that your team and your field was able to prevent a really nasty incident is pretty amazing.
Martin: Right.
Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill.
Martin: Well, like I mentioned, the professional credentials. Two of the three technicians who responded were certified by NNRPT. And they had the right kind of training, knew what to do, did it very well.
Franklin: Great.
Martin: I had an opportunity a year later to nominate them for a special DoE award for unusual—not heroism, but effective response. And they won the award that year.
Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex?
Martin: Well, the first time, was in ’96—no, I’m sorry, in ’93—and I had a special appointment back at DoE headquarters in Germantown. So I went back there for two years to work with the branch of DoE that was like an inspector general—the internal inspection branch, if you will. Very similar in scope to what the DNFSB—Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—was doing. Scrutinizing all the DoE operations at the national labs and other facilities, and trying to always make improvements.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So I worked with the DoE headquarters staff on many different audits that we did at other DoE labs. At the time, I specialized in dosimetry, both internal and external dosimetry, and other operational health physics parts of the program.
Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities?
Martin: Well, I had a couple other interesting assignments in there. After DoE headquarters, then I went back to Pantex for three more years. And then another opportunity came up on an old facility near Cincinnati that needed to be decommissioned—decontaminated and decommissioned. And I went to Oak Ridge first, worked with the Foster Wheeler Company on the design of what became the largest radon control building that had ever been done. I was the radiation safety officer for that project at Oak Ridge in the design effort. And then we moved to Cincinnati for a year and I worked at the Fernald facility in actually building this radon control facility. What we were trying to deal with were these large concrete silos that contained residual ore material from the Second World War. They have to go back to—when the Manhattan Project was trying to bring together the necessary uranium in addition to the plutonium that was produced here at Hanford, they were using a rich pitch blend ore that was coming from what was then called Belgian Congo in Africa. It was shipped from there up the Saint Lawrence River to a facility near Niagara Falls. And then it ended up being processed to extract as much uranium as possible. But there were these residuals. They ended up in these concrete silos near Niagara Falls, New York as well as this Fernald facility, just outside of Cincinnati. So we had three big concrete silos that—I don’t recall—they must have been 80 feet in diameter and 50 feet high. So they held a lot of uranium ore residuals. It contained a fair amount of radium, which gave off radon gas. This facility was located not too far from a residential area. So it became a greater concern for getting it cleaned up. We put together this radon control facility that had these huge charcoal beds and you could pipe—you could take the head gas off of this silo, pipe it into these charcoal beds where the radon would be absorbed, and then the clean air would circulate. So you could fairly rapidly reduce the concentration of radon inside the silo to much lower levels. In the process, the charcoal beds got loaded up by absorbing radon. There came a point where you had to heat up that charcoal to drive off the captured radon. We devised a clever scheme with four different beds where we could kind of keep one of them recirculating on all times and have the other three working.
Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off?
Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated.
Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that—
Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too.
Franklin: Oh!
Martin: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--?
Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to—
Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon—
Martin: Oh, if it escaped from the silo. If there was no control of it—a certain amount of radon was escaping from the silo. For the most part, it’s a light gas, it just goes up and the wind blows it and disperses it. So it was very difficult to even measure anything offsite. But there was that concern there that we were dealing with.
Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue?
Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah.
Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life.
Martin: Yeah. So I did that, what amounted to ten years of offsite assignments. About that time, my wife and I got tired of moving. So we came back to the Tri-Cities, and our kids are here. I came back to work at Battelle for another few years before I retired.
Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle?
Martin: I came back in 2001.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006.
Martin: I retired about four years later. And the last major project I worked on was also very interesting. It was the project for customs and border protection. It was to install radiation portal monitors at seaports. This was shortly after 9/11, and there was a concern about dirty bomb material being imported by any means. We had one part of the project dealt with seaport, another part airports, and a third part postal facilities.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: So I worked on the seaports part, and I had the Port of Los Angeles was my assignment. Another one of us had Port of Long Beach, which is right next door, which are the largest seaports on the West Coast and have the largest number of shipping containers coming in. So we devised a method for monitoring those shipping containers as they were unloaded and making sure nothing was coming in that way.
Franklin: Did—oh, sorry.
Martin: Very interesting project.
Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors?
Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: Turns out they were so sensitive, they would detect any kind of elevated background radioactivity. For example, kitty litter is a little bit elevated in background. Any kind of stone product, and there are various granite and other stone products imported from different places. Those had a high enough background activity that they would trigger our monitors. So we would run all these containers through a set of monitors, and any that triggered that amount would then be sent over to a secondary monitor, where they’d examine it more carefully, verify what was actually in the containers, sometimes inspect them.
Franklin: So recently our project staff got a tour of some of the facilities at HAMMER. And I believe we saw one of those monitors. Would that have been the same?
Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns?
Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through.
Martin: Yep, that was the one.
Franklin: So you helped design—
Martin: We helped design—oh, I didn’t really get involved in design. That was done by some real smart people out here at Battelle. But I was onsite trying to get them installed.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: And tested.
Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating.
Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle.
Franklin: Yeah, it sounds like it. Sounds like maybe I need to go get a job over there. Maybe they need a traveling historian. So, where—what have you been doing since you retired?
Martin: Well, for about five years, I worked for Dade Moeller, which is kind of a spinoff company from Battelle. And they had a major contract with NIOSH—National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health—as part of an employee compensation program for radiation workers. Initially, the way this was set up was we got the actual radiation exposure records for former employees and examined their measured radiation exposure, and then did some other calculations that would tend to take into account anything else that they might have been exposed to but was somehow not measured on the dosimeter and many other factors to kind of add up their maximum possible radiation dose. And then that was compared—this is where it got a little complex. There are many different types of cancer that can be caused by radiation at a high enough level. Some types of cancer can be caused by a radiation level lower than some others. So it depended on what type of cancer the individual had as to which—how we measured their maximum possible radiation exposure to the likelihood that that cancer was caused by radiation. We did a careful calculation using probability and determined that if their cancer was at least 50% probable that it was caused by radiation, then they were granted an award. Well, we did that for several years in a very careful, scientific way that was well-documented. Then it became political. A lot of former workers, then, applied for another category within this overall compensation program that they called Special Exposure Cohort. Which meant that it didn’t matter how much radiation exposure they had, if they had the right type of cancer, they could get the award. And it’s kind of degenerated that way. But for many years, I think we did it right. I also had an opportunity to work on another part of that project where we did what we call the technical basis documents, where we reconstructed the history of how radiation exposure records were developed and maintained at each of these different sites. Every one varied a little bit. I did the one for the technical basis document for Pantex in Amarillo, because I was familiar with that. But I got to do several other interesting sites, one of which was Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Going there and interviewing some of these old-timers and looking at their old records, I found that there was a chemistry professor at what was then Iowa State University. He was called upon by the Manhattan Project in 1943 to help them improve their methods for extracting uranium metal. The old process that had been used by the Curies and other early scientists was really quite inefficient. But this professor developed a method used in a calcium catalyst that was very effective. He was able to purify uranium metal much quicker and in larger quantities. The story was that he would have to get on the train every Sunday afternoon and go to Chicago for the meeting with the Manhattan Project and report on the progress of his research and so on. One week after successfully isolating an ingot of uranium metal, he took it with him in his briefcase. Went into the meeting with Manhattan Project and clunked it on the desk, and passed it around. He said that this is a new method for producing substantial quantities of uranium metal. All the scientists around the table kind of poked at it and scratched it and so on and didn’t believe it was really uranium, but it was. And they finally decided that he had made a great breakthrough, so they sent him back to Iowa and said, make a lot more, fast. And he did. So he had the material they needed, then, for the Manhattan Project.
Franklin: Wow.
Martin: Interesting story.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation?
Martin: About ten years ago—almost ten years ago—my friend Bill Bair and Ron Kathren and a couple others on the Parker Board invited me to participate. Matt Moeller was chairman of the board at that time—invited me to participate, and I just joined in, and found it very rewarding. I really appreciate what the Parker Board does in the memory of Herb Parker and in the sense of scholarships and other educational programs. So it’s a pleasure to contribute to that.
Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76?
Martin: I moved here in ’76.
Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them?
Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado.
Franklin: Okay.
Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here.
Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--?
Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Martin: In North Richland. It was a very different community, but one that I came to know and respect. Because at that time, education was really paramount in the minds of parents and the school system. And my wife was a teacher. So we really took an interest in that. My kids got a really good education here in Richland. Went to Hanford High, and then did well in college. One of the main features of Richland at that time, I think, was a superior education program. Some of the other history of Richland with old government housing, and then we got a new house, and things like that are entirely different, but also very interesting.
Franklin: And is that what you kind of are meaning when you say it was a different community? I guess I’d like to unpack that a little bit more. How—in what ways was it different?
Martin: Well, a large part of Richland was originally government housing, and you only had to drive through town, you could see all the evidence of that. And then on the north side of Richland, they had opened up—beginning in 1965, I believe—development of newer private housing. We got here just in time to get in on a new house, and worked out fine for us.
Franklin: Great. Was there—being next to a site that was primarily involved in product production, plutonium production—was there a different feeling about the Cold War in Richland per se than anywhere else you had lived in the United States at that time?
Martin: There definitely was different feelings about the Cold War and living anywhere near a nuclear power plant. I remember when we were working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at many different reactor sites around the country. In many cases we would have public meetings to introduce the local folks to what we were trying to do to improve the emergency planning. There was a lot of concern about living anywhere near a nuclear power plant just a few years after TMI. I tried to explain to people how I live within 30 miles of nine nuclear power plants. But I understood radiation. I understood the risk, and I understood what could go wrong or how to deal with it. And it didn’t concern—didn’t bother me that much to live here. I found that to be generally true of a lot of people in Richland that were part—working at Hanford and were well-educated. They understood the risk and they could deal with it. Whereas many other people were just afraid. And I attribute that to what I call now about a 71-year deliberate misinformation program on the part of mass media to scare people about radiation.
Franklin: I like that. I’m writing it down. How do you feel that the—do you feel that the ending of the Cold War changed your work at all? I guess the reason why I ask—
Martin: It did.
Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material.
Martin: Yeah. I was in Germany in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down. I was also there in Berlin in 1984, and we actually crossed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin on a special tour.
Franklin: Really?
Martin: It was quite amazing. I was in Berlin for a meeting of the International Radiation Protection Association. I took my whole family; it was a tremendous adventure for them. But we were able to be part of a special US Army tour that went through Checkpoint Charlie. I think they did this once a week. And we had a little tour of East Berlin while it was still under the control of the USSR. We visited their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they had a little ceremonial changing the guard there. And we visited the square in Berlin where Hitler had burned the books that one night in 1939. And then we visited a huge Russian war memorial, and there was a building there where the Germans had surrendered in 1945. There was quite a story about that. But I was really impressed with this huge Russian war memorial. There were five mass graves that each held 100,000 soldiers. It was done in kind of the Russian style, with statues and other honorary symbols to clearly show their respect for the lives of all those soldiers. But that was an impressive sight. But I was there again in 1988 just before the Berlin Wall came down, and you could kind of see the end of the Cold War coming. So it was a great opportunity that I had, working for Battelle, being able to travel like that, and do many exciting things.
Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side?
Martin: Yes.
Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy?
Martin: It was quite unusual. I was scheduled to go to Russia a week after 9/11. It almost got canceled, but I managed to go. I was giving—they were having a conference for young scientists and trying to introduce them to international concepts of radiation safety. So I gave my paper and four others that we did to that group. It was located at what was the Russian equivalent of Los Alamos, their design facility. There weren’t very many Americans had been in there up to that point. So I was watched very closely. [LAUGHTER] And not allowed to see much, actually. But it was a very interesting exchange. The papers I was presenting were prepared in both English and Russian. And then we also did what they called a poster presentation, where we had a big poster with diagrams and everything—again translated to Russian. So we were able to put these up at this conference for these young scientists. They, I think, got a lot out of it because it was in their language so it was easy for them to understand. Working with an interpreter was a new experience for me. I would give this oral presentation, so I’d say one sentence and the pause. The interpreter would repeat that. I’d say the next sentence, and—kind of an awkward way to do an oral presentation.
Franklin: I can imagine.
Martin: But their hospitality was very good. This was in 2001. So the Cold War had been over for quite a few years. But we were trying to establish better relations. I think it was quite effective in doing that. I had another opportunity to work with Russian scientists on an NRC program, again where NRC was trying to provide training to their equivalent Russian inspectors for nuclear power plants and explain to them some of the ways that they did inspections, things they looked for, how they documented findings and things like that. We had four Russian inspectors and their interpreter come over from Moscow. I was their host in Washington, DC, and we worked with them there with the NRC headquarters for a week, providing training. And then we brought them out to Idaho to the Idaho National Lab, north of Idaho Falls, and went to a large hot cell facility at Idaho. A hot cell is where they have a heavily shielded enclosure with mechanical arms that do things on the inside. It was quite a sophisticated facility and somewhat unlike what the Russian counterparts were used to. But it was a good learning exercise for them. We kind of went through a demonstration of how we would do an inspection—a safety inspection. So, I had those kind of opportunities to interact with Russian scientists and found that very exciting. Very interesting.
Franklin: Did you find that there was anything that you had learned from them at all? Or do you feel that the US was much more advanced in radiation protection and health physics?
Martin: Well, I kept my ears open when I was talking to them, but they didn’t reveal much. [LAUGHTER] So, we didn’t pick up much that way.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: We were trying to help them.
Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant?
Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think.
Franklin: Okay, just curious.
Martin: I heard about it of course.
Franklin: I’m sure. That must have been a pretty big deal from the standpoint of both countries. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about?
Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention.
Franklin: Sure.
Martin: I’ve been talking about all the varied experiences I had, and excellent opportunities over the years. But I think one of the perhaps most impressive things that I was able to do was to be able to hire several good people into my organization. I won’t mention names, but there were several that I call superstars that are now leaders in the field. I was able to bring them in right out of college or from another job, and hire several really good people that certainly enhanced our program, and then gave them great opportunities to grow and expand. Like I say, they’re now leaders in the field. That was one of the most rewarding parts of my job.
Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them.
Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, okay, good.
Martin: But I’ll do that.
Franklin: Well, good.
Martin: We’ll do that.
Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you—
Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine.
Franklin: Emma, did you have anything?
Emma Rice: No, I’m fine.
Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much.
Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target?
Franklin: I believe we did.
Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s okay.
Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting.
Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch.
Martin: I hope so.
Franklin: And I think there might be a couple things that merit some more research in there that personally, for me, I’d like to find out some more about.
Martin: Oh, okay.
Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing.
Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER]
Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask—
Martin: Sure.
Hungate: You’ve been involved in a lot of things over a broad range of time and experiences and I just kind of wonder what you would feel is the one—maybe the item or two that you’ve worked on that will leave the most lasting impact?
Martin: The most lasting impact.
Hungate: Or that you wished had been developed more that didn’t quite complete, you’d like to see more work done on it, it was either defunded or it was—
Martin: Well, I’m thinking of several different things now. I’ll just have to think it through. The work we did with NRC to improve emergency planning on nuclear power plants I think was very effective. And that’s still being maintained today. Work we did with DoE at Pantex on nuclear weapons. You mentioned the end of the Cold War, that’s when many of these tactical nuclear weapons in Europe were brought back and declared obsolete, and so we were doing a massive disassembly operation on those. I learned a lot about nuclear weapons and found it fascinating. We implemented some methods at Pantex that I think are still in use in the maintenance programs that they do now. But we were able to, I think, substantially improve on radiation safety at Pantex. Certainly to the point where we were finally blessed by DNFSB and DoE. I think the quality of that program has been maintained. There’s several other projects that I’ve worked on over the years, but I guess there’s no one thing that stands out that I would be concerned about that it was defunded or ended or somehow went downhill. I’m sure that’s happened, but I haven’t kept track of everything.
Franklin: Being as nuclear power and nuclear weapons have different objectives, and you mentioned this retirement of a lot of nuclear weapons, do you feel that nuclear weapons still have a role to play in security—
Martin: I do.
Franklin: You do?
Martin: Yes. Because the Russians still have a lot of them, China has some, the French and English have a few. It’s what I call the mutual deterrent, which is a term that’s been used. It just means that we don’t ever want to use one again, but if any one of those countries had some kind of an unbalanced advantage, it could be used. So if we have this mutual assured deterrence, it keeps that in balance. So it’s important to maintain that stockpile.
Franklin: Interesting. Thank you.
Hungate: Okay.
Franklin: Great.
Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. Well, thanks for being here, first of all. To start off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us?
Sue Olson: Sue, S-U-E. Olson, O-L-S-O-N.
O’Reagan: Okay, thank you. And I am Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral interview here as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. It’s February 5th, 2016. This interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So just to get us started, would you please tell us something about your life before you came to Hanford? Where you were growing up and so on.
Olson: I was born in Claude, Texas. I graduated from Panhandle High School as valedictorian in my class. I went to Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. Then went to University of Texas in Austin, Texas. I was—[COUGH] Excuse me. I was in college in an accounting class at the University of Texas in Austin when World War II was declared. I heard the President declare World War II. So at the end of that year, I took a civil service test as clerk typist and I started working for US Corps of Engineers. I first worked at Pantex Ordnance Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and I had to transfer to Tyler, Texas to an army replacement training. And then after that, I received a teletype that I was to enter in for Hanford. We had received a teletype from a lady who had transferred up here, and she had said, don’t come here. It’s rattlesnakes, sagebrush, and dust storms. [LAUGHTER] So I transferred to the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. And Manhattan Project had three areas—I worked for the army major who was in charge of one of the areas there. DuPont was the contractor there. And at Oak Ridge, I met Robert Olson, who was with me at DuPont. Before I met him, he worked at the University of Chicago to work on the Manhattan Project—he worked on at the University. And he transferred to Oak Ridge; I met him there. We were married there, and then we transferred to Hanford, with DuPont. We arrived here October 1st, 1944.
O’Reagan: What sort of work did you do at Oak Ridge?
Olson: Well, he and I were at DuPont getting ready to work. The work on the Manhattan Project was to develop the bomb. That was what it was for. And he worked at Oak Ridge.
O’Reagan: Do you know what sort of—was he working in chemicals or physics? Do you know what sort of work he was doing there?
Olson: No, because it was all secret.
O’Reagan: I see. And did you say you were also working there as a clerk?
Olson: I worked as a secretary for the Army Major, who was in charge of the X-10 area in Oak Ridge.
O’Reagan: Okay. When you arrived at Hanford, what sort of work did you undertake here?
Olson: Oh, I signed up to be secretary and DuPont was the contractor here for the first year or so. And they sent me out to 200 West Area to be in the stenographic pool. I was the only secretary there. There were several departments, and all the departments brought their paperwork in to me. [LAUGHTER] And I took dictation for all of them who wanted to write letters of any type. Then they sent another girl out—another secretary out, but she couldn’t take dictation. So I did all of that. There were several departments. I don’t remember the names of all the departments, but it was a major process.
O’Reagan: Was it similar to what you were doing at Oak Ridge, or was it a new kind of work?
Olson: It was the same kind of work, secretarial work.
O’Reagan: Right. What was your impression of the Tri-Cities when you arrived? Was it like you had been warned?
Olson: No. [LAUGHTER] We drove along the highway south of town, and Bob looked over and said, there it is. And we could see a few houses. We went to the hotel to check in at the hotel, and the hotel was called the transient quarters. [LAUGHTER] The hotel in Oak Ridge was called the guest house. We were in the hotel about three days. Then we moved into—at that time the houses were assigned to people. There were only the two of us, and so they moved us into a one-bedroom prefab on Winslow Street.
O’Reagan: In Richland?
Olson: Winslow Street in Richland. And there was one street behind that, and behind that street was desert, all the way out to the river.
O’Reagan: What were your impressions of the house? Did you like the house?
Olson: Well, the house was adequate. It was 600 square feet.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Had a question and it went right out of my mind. [LAUGHTER] Okay. So could you tell us, what was an average day at your job? You said you took dictation, but what other kinds of work—
Olson: Typing. In 200 West Area in 1944, it was typing. Except for the people who dictated. One man came in one day and he dictated the evacuation process, which took him several hours to do it. And the evacuation process—if it had ever had to happen—the process was that it would be on buses—cattle car buses. [LAUGHTER] The seats were on the sides of the bus, vertically, not horizontally across as they are in most buses. But there was never an evacuation process. There was preparation for it, if it had happened.
O’Reagan: Interesting. I understand the transportation to get to jobs on the Hanford site was difficult. Did you take buses?
Olson: Well, there were buses. There were buses, yes.
O’Reagan: Was that a long commute?
Olson: Yes. I don’t remember the number of miles, but it’s a long commute from Richland into the West area.
O’Reagan: What was your husband working on?
Olson: He worked on—it was a group of scientists that were—13 or 14 or 15, something like that—and they wrote the separations process. Which was part of the process.
O’Reagan: I guess that was probably a different part of the Hanford site from where you were working?
Olson: No, it was in 200 West Area, too. Yes. And it was a group of scientists who had transferred from Oak Ridge along with Bob.
O’Reagan: Right. Could you please describe Hanford as a place to work? It’s a broad question. Let’s see—what were some of the more challenging aspects of your job?
Olson: Well, that I typed for eight hours a day. I typed or took dictation eight hours a day. No coffee breaks, nothing like that, and everything was confidential. Nobody discussed their job with any other person.
O’Reagan: I would guess you would have had to have had pretty high clearance to be taking dictation on all these sensitive matters. What was that process like?
Olson: Well, I worked in Two West and then I transferred to B Plant, and I went to 300 Area. My next job, I worked for Wilfred Johnson when he was assistant general manager. And I worked in the 703 Building. I had Top Secret clearance there. So I had kept the filing cabinet locked. I took dictation from him. The rest of it was the type you’re making phone calls.
O’Reagan: When did you find out about what the goal of the Hanford site was, to make the weapons?
Olson: When the bomb was dropped, I read it in the local paper.
O’Reagan: What was your reaction?
Olson: I was happy. That the US was going to be safe.
O’Reagan: Right. Do you—trying to think how to phrase—is that your impression of that’s when everybody around you found out as well, or was it sort of a general surprise that the—
Olson: Yes. It was a surprise to everybody, I think. That’s my opinion. Except the men like my husband who were working on it.
O’Reagan: Did you continue working at the Hanford site after the war?
Olson: Yes. I worked there for ten years.
O’Reagan: Did your work change substantially once the war was over?
Olson: Well, as I said, I worked as a secretary in 200 West, and then I moved to B Plant. And I worked in B Plant, and then I went to the 300 Area and was a secretary for the head of metallurgy. And then I had the job as—I was then an executive secretary for Wilfred “Bill” Johnson. And I retired after that period.
O’Reagan: Did the workplace environment change in that time? You mentioned there were no breaks at first.
Olson: Change in what way?
O’Reagan: You mentioned it was very focused work during the war, no breaks, really concentrating to get the job done. Did that become more relaxed eventually, or was it still the same pace?
Olson: Not in the jobs I worked on. Everybody was there to work.
O’Reagan: Interesting.
Olson: No coffee breaks, nothing like that.
O’Reagan: Interesting. How about—can you tell us something about your life outside of work during the wartime?
Olson: We skied. Bob was from Wisconsin. He was a skier. And I grew up in Panhandle, Texas, and I did not ski. But I took lessons. And we skied on weekends.
O’Reagan: Where would you go?
Olson: We went to the closest one, over by—the closest one, which was south of East Richland. Tollgate. We went to Tollgate and skied there. And then we went up to the Snoqualmie Pass, and we skied there when it had only three rope tows. Before they put in any kind of lifts. It was—and I don’t remember the year for that, but—shortly after we got here, we went to Snoqualmie Pass.
O’Reagan: Did the social environment—did life in Richland change for you outside of work once the war was over?
Olson: Well, there were a few more activities, because while the war was going on, there was nowhere to go. [LAUGHTER] We had a friend from Oak Ridge we played bridge with part of the time, and then we skied weekends.
O’Reagan: Did you feel it was easy to meet new people when you moved here?
Olson: Did I feel--?
O’Reagan: I’ve heard some people say that when they first got here, they had a very easy time meeting people; I’ve heard other people say when they got here, they were so focused on the work, they didn’t get to meet as many people—
Olson: Oh, no, no, because we had friends from Oak Ridge who were transferred who were scientists. And people who were at work in that kind of work. So we visited with them, and they—we all had a little group, all the people that came from Oak Ridge. So we had several friends.
O’Reagan: Let’s see. Could you describe any ways in which security or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work?
Olson: Well, of course. [LAUGHTER] No visiting, no coffee breaks—we worked.
O’Reagan: Did the secrecy continue outside of work? I’ve seen in some communities that people feel that they can’t talk about the work, and that sort of gets—someone last week was describing how she sort of felt she had to be on her guard about speaking about her work. She was afraid of that. Did you feel any sort of sense like that?
Olson: We didn’t discuss—we did not discuss work, because we were busy with whatever we were doing—playing bridge or dancing or skiing. So there was no reason to discuss work.
O’Reagan: Sure. When you retired from being a secretary, you mentioned you eventually got into real estate. Is that right?
Olson: Yes.
O’Reagan: Was that right away, or did you have a [INAUDIBLE]
Olson: No, it was not. My husband died in 1974, and so I was at home. I did volunteer work for 20 years. I had no plans to go back to work, but after his death, I decided to work in real estate.
O’Reagan: Will you tell us about your volunteer work?
Olson: Oh, yes, Kadlec Hospital Auxiliary, and Mid-Columbia Symphony Guild, and Girl Scouts. All types of volunteer work.
O’Reagan: Great. What kinds of things did you do at the hospital?
Olson: Volunteer work. I would go down at 7:00 in the morning, and I answered the phone in one of the departments—I think it was the children’s department, that was part of what I did.
O’Reagan: And when you started getting into real estate, can you tell me about that?
Olson: Yes, yes. I took classes at CBC. I studied hard for it, and I passed the test. I started to work for a company called—let’s see—Sherwood and Roberts. They were a company that had offices in this state and California and some other state. I worked for them four years, and then I transferred to other companies.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Did that job change over time? I know the communities started expanding during that period—
Olson: Oh, well, yes, there was more work as the company got larger.
O’Reagan: Could you describe any ways in which you think of the Tri-Cities as changing over the first couple of decades you lived here?
Olson: Well, it got larger. Larger, and they built more houses out past Winslow [LAUGHTER] Winslow Street. Well, of course it changed. There were more activities. Everybody was more—and there were people transferring in and out from large companies. There were a lot of people who came here who had worked for other companies that came here. And some had worked for General Electric or whoever the major contractor was.
O’Reagan: Let’s see. Of course, during a lot of this era, the Cold War is going on as well. Did you feel that that was something sort of just off happening in the world, or was that something that you felt impacted your life?
Olson: The Cold War?
O’Reagan: Yeah, of course, there’s sort of this global conflict going on. There’s a lot of still building nuclear weapons, there’s thinking about use of nuclear weapons. Some people have described sort of a fear during that time, and other people have described they were happy—they went about their work and it didn’t bother them.
Olson: No, there was no fear to me personally. I was happy to see that the US was doing a job extremely well. I hoped it would continue to be good.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Let’s see. This is a general question. How would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the period that you lived here?
Olson: I think they should all be very proud of it, because it ended the war.
O’Reagan: Right. Is there anything that you think children growing up today might not know about this period?
Olson: I have no idea whether they know or not.
O’Reagan: Sure. Is there anything you think, beyond—sorry, I have to—trying to think through, just—as people have lived here for some time start thinking back on their lives in the community, how they would like people to think about the history of the local community? I guess you’ve answered that to some degree: we should be proud about the contributions of the time. I guess what I’m trying to get at is—what was different in, say, the ‘60s or the ‘70s, in living in this era than it is today? Anything come to mind?
Olson: I don’t think there was anything different from living in any good community or city.
O’Reagan: One of the local community leaders here—we understand you knew Sam Volpentest—
Olson: Yes.
O’Reagan: --who contributed a lot to the local history. Would you describe your knowledge of his impact, what he was working on when you got to work with him?
Olson: He was a major impact. He saved the Tri-Cities time after time after time. He made contacts in Washington, DC and he kept them. He flew back and forth frequently. Without his perseverance, the Tri-Cities would never have become as good as it had been. He kept sure that Hanford was going, which, at that time, was a main project in the Tri-Cities. And the best one producing.
O’Reagan: I always like to ask—what have I not asked about that I should be asking about? What else should I be asking you about?
Olson: Oh, I don’t know. Nothing else. [LAUGHTER] I think you asked very well, thank you.
O’Reagan: Well, if anything comes to mind, or anything you’d like to expand upon comes to mind, we’d of course love to hear it.
Olson: All right, thank you.
O’Reagan: But otherwise, thanks so much for being here. It’s been very interesting.
Olson: Thank you.
O’Reagan: All right.
Northwest Public Television | Trent_Frank
Frank Trent: Well I don't know.
Robert Bauman: I just let people tell their stories is really what the primary thing is. I have some questions to try and help it along a little, but--So we're going?
Man one: Yeah.
Bauman: Okay, great. All right. So maybe before I ask any questions, if I could have you say your name and spell it for us.
Trent: Okay. My name is Frank Trent. And I live in Richland, Washington.
Bauman: And the last name is T-R-E-N-T?
Trent: Yes.
Bauman: Okay. Great. And my Name's Robert Bauman. And we are conducting this oral history interview on February 12th of 2013 on the campus at Washington State.
Trent: '14.
Bauman: What's that? '14.
Trent: [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Thank you. You would think by February I would have figured--
Trent: You want to start over?
Bauman: No, we're good. I'll just say 2014. It's still this form that has it. There we go. So I wonder if we can start by maybe just telling us what brought you to Hanford. How you came here? What brought you here? And maybe your initial impressions of the place?
Trent: Well, I first came here in 1950, in the winter of 1950. And we came over the pass. At that time, it was—there was no Snoqualmie Pass at the time. It was the one out on 410 highway going over the mountains. Closes every winter.
Bauman: Not White Pass, huh?
Trent: Nope.
Bauman: I don't know.
Trent: Maybe it'll come to me. Anyway, we came over the pass in the back of a Deuce and a Half truck. And it was a whole company of us. And pre-military set up here. And we came in and there was snow about 200 feet in the air where they plowed it often, blew it into the mountains. And all you could see is walls of snow on both sides. But anyway, we came on in down here and lived in a pup tent. You don't know what those are probably. You do?
Bauman: Mm-hmm.
Trent: And two people teamed up. And here you had something about the size of a blanket. And it was thinner than a blanket. It was called a--the material was made like a tent material. And we called them pup tents. There was two people. And each person carried a half of it. And then when you went out into the fields or combat or wherever, you set that tent up. And that's where you lived. Well, it was pretty cold here. And we wound up burning anything we can get a hold of. It's a wonder we didn't kill ourselves. And these little pup tents, they only had a little opening you could make, or you'd get too much stuff in there--air, cold air.
Bauman: Do you remember any specific things that you burned?
Trent: Show polish. Anything that would get heat. Paper, shoe polish, anything. And that was the worst I guess. And we had one guy freeze to death. I don't know. It was cold. I started driving a water truck. And I wound up in the back of the water truck. It was a Dodge, 3/4 ton Dodge pickup. And it had a cover on it. So I slept in there. And during the night, the water container froze and busted. And I got water all over there and it froze. And I was sleeping in ice. [LAUGHTER] Me and another guy. But that was the shock of it when you got here was there was nothing here but desert. There was a few trees, but people hadn't started raising too many trees at that time. If they did, they weren't very big. That was my--and when we went out, we went out on the Project and stayed out there for three weeks. They had four groups. One group was off all the time. And the other three was covering around the clock. And we set up 120 millimeter gun emplacements, set up in a diamond formation. And then off to the side in the openings of the diamond formation, there was four 50 caliber machine gun nests. And we could fire. And we did. We fired tracers, and every so often, a tracer would come out. They were timed so that every so many shells, and then a tracer would come out. That way you could follow that tracer with your—aiming your gun. But they were also hooked up to, at a later time, to the radar. And there was radar guided. Anyway, that was the emplacements. And we had a full crew there 24 hours a day. And we went up to Yakima and took our guns with us. Two of them I think is all we took though. They were beginning to set up that firing range up there. And we were doing pretty good at shooting that thing. And evidently, the radar got off a little bit with their calculations. And wound up, we shot the cable off just off the tail end of the airplane. They left. They didn't want any more. They says, we're going and we're ain't coming back. So that's part of it. Anyway, that's the beginnings of my arrival here.
Bauman: Where on the site were you?
Trent: Are you familiar enough with the old Y? You go through the first barricade, then you drive for, I don't know, about halfway to 2 West, 2 East. Maybe not quite that far, but there's a turn off there. Goes back towards, still 2 East, that 2 East area. And then you go on down and pick up 2 West. And we turned off just after that barricade out there at the Y. It may be two miles down from that Y area, there was a turn-off. And there was dirt, gravel and dirt. That's the old military highway road. And we were back in there probably five or six miles. You could see Rattlesnake very plainly from there. And a later time, when they built that road down through there going out to Yakima—Horn Rapids High Road—and at a later time, why, you could see that road and traffic on it from out there. Because I went out there with a group on our 50th military reunion and we made a new visit there. And cars were going by. Then there was no road back there. Anyway, at that time, if the cars that had been there--we were that close to where the highway's at now. There's a big knoll out there, just a rounded hill of sand. And that was between us and the Rattlesnake Mountain. So that'll give you a general location of where we were. It was A Battery, 518th.
Bauman: Okay. So where were you from originally? Had you ever been to this part of the Northwest before?
Trent: No. I come out of Harlan County, Kentucky. Lot of hills down there, rolling hills, but nothing mountainous like we know them now. Born and raised on a farm. Family of 17—18, counting me. And one mother and father. And we raised everything we could raise to eat ourselves. And the only thing we bought was stuff like staples that you had to have that you didn't grow. My dad was a coal miner, and the older boys actually raised the foods that we needed. Fed the animals, and ate the animals. And then in, let's see, October the 8th, 1949, I and two other guys from that area joined the service. I rode a bus. It was raining, about 6:15 in the morning. Got on the bus and never looked back. We went from there to Harlan and got in a military bus. And they drove us to Corbin, Kentucky. And that's right in there near Knoxville. And from there, we got on the train. We went to Louisville and then to Fort Knox. So that's how I got to that. Then we spent three or four months, I don't remember, in basic training. And then we shipped out in trucks for this side of the mountain, for Washington. Well first, we came out by train. And then we got into buses and trucks and went up to Fort Lewis, and Fort Lewis over here. We were selected as the first group to arrive in the Tri-Cities to help set up.
Bauman: Oh, okay. So how long were you at Fort Lewis then?
Trent: Just long enough to not want it. We did a lot of advanced basic training, crawling through mud and dirt and dust. And when you come out of there, you couldn’t see nothing but eyeballs. You was hot and then you put your arm down to crawl forward and then shooting over top of you with tracers. And the dust would puff up and it would stick to you, sweat on your body. So that was an experience.
Bauman: Yeah. So you said when you were out of the site, you were there for about three weeks. Then you'd have a week off, then you’d go back. So in terms of food when you were out on site, what sort of food did you have? If you were in the tents all the time?
Trent: Well at the beginning, before we really got set up, we was eating what you would call combat type rations. They'd come in containers and it was dished out after it was heated up. Our stove was a Bunsen burner under pots and pans. And we’d go through a line and dunk our mess kit in the boiling water and get any germs off of it that way. And then we ate dinner, and then we come back and had another container we dunked it in and brushed it out. And then dunked it in clean boiling water again. So that's how we kept stuff kind of sanitized. And a lot of people got dysentery from it. But mostly, it wasn't—we didn't have it too bad. Food wasn't too bad. And at a later time, after we got to set up, we had a regular mess tent and cooks. And we ate good. Sand in it, but we ate.
Bauman: So did you know anything about Hanford before you came here?
Trent: No, and I didn't know anything after I got here. But none of us did. We just knew we was guarding this installation, and we would be on around-the-clock duty. If you were asleep, the alarm sounded, everybody went to their stations. And we had a number of planes come through. And we had to get our big guns on it. And we would track it until they gave us the order to shoot. We only shot one time out there. And that was basically to settle the guns in and orient them so when they shot at something, they got fairly close. Those 120 millimeter shell casings were probably about that long. And the projectile was probably about that long. And they were timed: after you shot one of them into the air, they were timed to the target. And then they blew up. And supposedly it would supposed to knock down anything within a—I think it was 75 yards radius. So it could get anything in four directions. And we come close to getting the target plane. Yeah, it wasn't funny to the pilot, but it was funny to us.
Bauman: So then when you had a week off, where did you go? Did you go to town?
Trent: We had barracks in town. And that's the barracks here in North Richland. If you're coming up George Washington Way going north and you come to that rise in the road, and then you can level and go down toward Battelle. Just as you cleared the top of the road, there was a steam and boiler plant, steam generating plant just off to the left. And then the road that went by that—that was one of the first roads. We generally would turn on that. All of that area back down in there was barracks. And you can still see some of the pedestals that they sat on. And then over on the other side of GW Way there was—no, I guess it's still on the same side. They just add roads dividing the camp. And we were fairly close to a service station over on the highway, highway Stevens if you're going out to Hanford. We were just off of that a little bit—our outfit was. And from there, whoever was ready to go in and go back out, why, we took off in Deuce and a Half trucks. And we'd go out in a convoy and relieve the other outfit that was out there. And while you were gone, your camp was taken over by a new group. And that rotated.
Bauman: So, on sort of a typical day, what might your duties be? What sorts of things might have happened?
Trent: Scavenging. We made trips around out there. They probably figured out what we were doing, but they didn't seem to bother us because we didn't have nothing but tents at first. And so we'd scavenge enough stuff until we could put some stuff together to get in out of the wind. We couldn't get away from the sand though. But we did that and then done our duty. And we went off duty in the late afternoon and after dinner, we was off for the evening unless you got an alarm, an alert. And immediately, whatever you could get on, why you got on, and you got on those guns. Got everything turned on and adjusts your azimuth and elevation, and be ready to fire whatever come through if you were told to fire.
Bauman: So how long did you have just the pup tents? At what point did you [INAUDIBLE]?
Trent: It's probably about two months. And they come in and put up what we called a trip tent. And it's big enough to hold about ten people, five bunks down each side. And then later we put in wooden floors in them, and so we'd raise them up off of the ground a little bit so we wouldn't be sleeping right next to the ground. So, they brought it all out, and we had to put it together.
Bauman: And so how long were you doing this? How long were at Hanford in this capacity?
Trent: I was out there almost three years, And this discharge here. And by then, I was married and had one kid when I was discharged. Discharged in February of '53. And from that point, I found whatever I could to work at. But it wasn't much for a while. Finally I put in an application for General Electric, and they hired me. And that was my first trip as a civilian out to Hanford.
Bauman: You mentioned you got married. Did you meet your wife here?
Trent: Yes. Her dad came in '43. Actually, he came in 1940 out to the Northwest. And he went back to Memphis again. And from that point, he was working just across the border in Arkansas, out of Memphis. And some guy come through, I guess from the government, and put the word out, anybody want to transfer or go move to Washington? We've got a project up there we're building, and we need help. Anybody we can get to go. And he came out with that group and worked out here. And a year later, she came out. Well first off, he came in '40, went back and came back in about '43, in '43. And then he was here about a year, and then the kids came out. They came out by railroad, and no supervision. I think she was 12, my wife, 11 or 12. Her mother had—she would have been 12--because her mother had died earlier, tuberculosis. And she came out, and the rest is history. He stayed here and raised his family and worked at Hanford and wound up--one day, they came in and they had nobody that could really read a blueprint and follow it. And so they come around looking, and somebody said, go see Mac. He'll do that. And that was the beginning of his rise, which didn't go very far. He was some kind of a maintenance supervisor out there. And they come and got him and he said, let's see your prints. And he looked at them a little bit. Yeah, he said, I can build it. So they took him over there and he built the building for them with a crew. But they'd already started building. He had to tear it all down because it was wrong. And then after, I don't know, maybe six months, seven, I was in passing, and went into the drugstore at O’Malley’s—you remember where that was at? Okay. That had a little soda fountain in there. And I went in there and me and another guy and ordered a milkshake. And she said what kind do you want? I says, any kind you got. I don't know, just a milkshake. She figured she'd fix me, so she went back there and made me a suicide milkshake. Everything in the fountain went in it. That drink’s pretty good. So that's where I met my wife, 1950. And we were married in December after that.
Bauman: That's a great story.
Trent: Raised three boys. One of them is a Microsoft jet pilot. Flies for Microsoft. And one of them, well at this particular time, is in Edmonton, Canada—construction manager of some kind, hot spot guy. And the other one, Frank, is working in construction over on the west side. And he is living in Brown's Point in Tacoma, right on the ocean.
Bauman: Yeah. So you mentioned at some point you got a job with GE. What sort of job was that?
Trent: Anything to get on. I started out doing manual labor and mowing lawns. And I probably had about five or six months of that. And then I was transferred to White--not White Bluffs—Riverton. And I was doing maintenance work and oil changes on the railroad engines. And many times you'd have oil clean up to your elbows. And I don't know what they did with the oil. We drained it out into containers, and they disposed of it. Probably illegally, in these days. And from there then I went to work at 2 West. And I worked T Plant, U Plant,--at T Plant 221-T, 224-T, those two plants. And then I worked also, that was T-Plant. And then U Plant, I went to work down there. They needed people down there, so they sent me down there and done the same thing down there in U Plant, because the areas were almost identical in operation. And then the stuff that came out of there went to REDOX I believe. And they run through the procedures there, separating stuff out and boiling it down to what they were really looking for. And so anyway, we handled a lot of powdered uranium in that 224 Building. And after it was centrifuged, the heavy metal uranium powder was thrown out to the sides and stuck to the sides of the centrifuges. And the liquid was settled back down and drained back out and recycled back through I guess. I don't remember exactly the procedure. And we'd ship that uranium out of there and put it in barrels. And it was shipped out, I don't know where it went to. Maybe some of it went to Oak Ridge, I don't know. And then that was in operations. And we worked the hot zones. And they had us when we'd go into one, we'd have the RAMU people. They'd check you in, and when you had up to your limit on exposure, you'd come out. Go in and take samples and clean up in areas that were really hot spots.
Bauman: When you did those sorts of things, what sort of protective clothing did you wear?
Trent: Well, we would go in and change into SWP clothing and hoods. We had our regular shoes and we put covers over the shoes, plastic over the covers. And your pants legs were all taped down so that nothing could get through. And gloves, of course. And it was all taped down. And the last thing that went on was a mask. You had a canister of air. And I think you had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes and you're out of air. You better be out of there, or at least close enough where you could hold your breath and run to get out of there. Yeah, we worked the hot zones quite a bit. Sometimes we'd have to work until we were triple exposed to get a job done. And then of course we was relieved out of that until we were even with the scale of exposure. So that when you back in, why, they basically had you at zero exposure for starting back up. There was a lot of sitting time, because they had to have the people. And if you didn't keep them there, you didn't have the people to do the jobs. So rather than fire them, they'd put them on clean work. And if they didn't have that, you sat in the lunch room and played cards. Then from there—I went in and later, I went from the 2 West Area to the 100 Areas, and was in power operation there--boilers, refrigeration, air conditioning, and pumping stations that pumped water for the reactors.
Bauman: So you were at several places on site then?
Trent: Mm-hmm. I worked 100 B, C, D, DR, 2 West, not 2 East, but I'd been in 2 East a number of times. 2 West, I think that's about it out there, Riverton of course, at the beginning I was in Riverton. That's the old railroad station that hauled stuff in and out of Hanford.
Bauman: So of those—of the different places on site that you worked at different jobs that you had, did you have one that you enjoyed the most?
Trent: I enjoyed operating equipment--boilers, steam engines, pumping water, of course, electric, diesel generators. We had on our river pump station, we had pumps down there that'd pump 105,000 gallons per minute each of water. And if something happened to those pumps, then the diesels come online automatically. Now the diesel size was the PT boat that John Kennedy used when he was in the service. They were two diesel generators of the same size that came out of the—or were installed in the PT boats. And they were pretty good size. They would pump the same amount of water as the big electric box. The lines, I don't know what size they were now. I seem to remember 100, 102 inches in diameter. Pretty good sized piping. And if something happened, the scram, why, of course, they had to have water and generally pumped through with the diesels if something happened to a pumping station. So you always had backup. There was one incident in the 200 Area's power house. We had a backup generator down there generating electricity to use in case of power outages or whatever. And they were set on automatic standby. And my father-in-law was at that with his crew, was there doing work in that area. And it was in an open, kind of an open area. The showers were in that general area too. Never had a problem with any of those diesel generators. And they were in there eating dinner. They set a row of lockers up to separate the area. And that was where they ate. And that's where they went in and took showers before they went home. Or they come out of hot zone, they still had to take a shower. And they were in there having dinner, and for some unknown reason, nobody hung around. They ate their dinner, and they got up and went out back to the job and whatever they were doing I guess, early. And the generator tripped and came online. There was something wrong with the governor. And a diesel generator when it turns loose like that, and it can't get fuel from one place, it'll get it from another. It went on up to critical speed and blew up. And it embedded metal about three inches into concrete, solid concrete. So that's how bad—it could have wiped out everybody in that room. It wiped the room out. All their lockers and everything, that was gone. But that was one of the incidences that I remember that happened.
Bauman: Do you have any idea roughly what time period that might have been?
Trent: Phew, no, I don't. It would've been in the low '50s, early '50s. Because he went to work there in 2 West when I first came here. Yeah, his crew worked 2 West, 2 East. So they rotated around, wherever they were needed. But that happened to be in the 2 West Area where that generator blew up. Nobody was hurt. Pure luck.
Bauman: Earlier when you were talking, you mentioned that when you were in the army stationed out here, you didn't really know anything about Hanford or what was going on?
Trent: Well, we know we were guarding the installations there. And we knew that workers came in by buses and left by buses. And then later years—first you couldn't drive a car out there of any kind other than government. And then later years of course, that was relented and people could drive out there to their area. But mostly we were in and out of there in buses. And we came in nothing but bus to the 1100 Area, which is over here, off of Spangler, south of Stevens. And we came into there and unloaded there in a big parking lot in there while we had our cars parked there. So that's the routine. Everyday, we get up, the buses come through town and picked you up, all you to the 1100 Area. You changed to your area bus and get on there and it'd take you to right straight to your area, and off of there and check you through the security. And the same way when you come out. Security would check you out, you'd get on the bus, they'd haul you home.
Bauman: Was there at some point that you ended up driving your own car out? Or would you take buses?
Trent: I did a couple of times, but it wasn't worth it. There's too much fuel. But fuel was cheap then, compared to now. Still, you had to—and we came out when John F. Kennedy came out here. The whole family went out. And I was at that time working at 100 N Area. And we got 100 N Area up. And I was on duty the night they went critical and put the reactor in operation. That was the first dual purpose reactor, 100 N.
Bauman: Do you have any specific memories about when President Kennedy was here? What the day was like, or remember anything about him arriving?
Trent: The only thing I know is we were--they had the place set up for visitors to come in. And they had a lot of chairs. And a lot of it was standing room only because they didn't have enough chairs. They were getting ready to build the Washington Public Power Supply System’s generating system out there. And the pumps, those pumps I swear that they were longer than this room, each pump, steam-generated or steam-powered. And that was 109 N, was that generating place. And people were rotated shift-wise the same way—ABCD was the shifts. And of course, the fourth one was off. And then while that one was off, a spare would come in. So actually it's five crews. It was interesting. I worked water side of it for a lot of years. We had one guy that worked out there that was scared to death of something he couldn't understand. And he could not understand the big piece of equipment operating. And he was scared of it. And one night on duty—our shift was, and the chief engineer said Frank, can you get down to 181 real quick. I says, well, yeah. So anyway I headed out, grabbed the first pickup I could find in the parking area there and drove it down to 181. Both diesels were running backup. Don't know what happened, still don't. Anyways, I found him. He was sitting back in a corner away out of sight of the diesels. He was standing there in a corner shivering, just scared—petrified. So I got him out and put him out in the pickup. And I say you stay out there and let me take care of the problem here. So anyway, I guess I took care of the problem and then got him out there. So I got the generators under control and asserted the diesels under control, put them back on automatic and standby. And then the other pumps of course, got them going in the order I was doing the job. And I went and got him back out there. And when I reported in and wrote the incident up, he came to me, I don't know, very short time thereafter. And he says Frank, I'm going to quit. He said, I'm married, I've got three kids. I can't get into the military. And that's what I want to do. So he said I'm going to divorce my wife and I'm going to volunteer for the Coast Guard. And he did that. And the next thing I know, he put a transfer in from the Coast Guard into the military, army. And they accepted him. So he got into the military even though he was married. And a few years down there, well I guess it was nothing but two or three years, or a year or two. Anyway I got a call from my son who was a warrant officer flying helicopters down in Louisiana, Texas and Louisiana area. But anyway he--I guess, yeah, it was Texas. Killeen, Texas. He said do you know a Dave Eggar? I said, yeah. He said you won't believe this, but he's the guy in charge of training us in these helicopters. [LAUGHTER] And he had went through the school, learned how to fly the helicopters, and wasn't afraid of them at all. And he wound up leading that group that my son was in through their training program. And my son flew choppers down there. He already had his private pilot license. He got that before he got out of high school. And anyway, he spent his time in the military and he started flying with them. Wound up at his own company with two jets and a chopper and a little fixed wing, twin engine plane. And then 9/11 went and wiped him out. His business went to nothing. So then he started with putting his pilot's license out there, his experience in getting letters out. And he got a call one day from Microsoft people and went to work for them. He's still doing it, all over the world.
Bauman: Yeah. I wanted to ask you, you had mentioned when you were in the army here and you would have you week off, you stayed in barracks. Once you got married, what sort of housing did you have?
Trent: The first house we got was a small--I think it was about a 20-foot trailer, used. And a lot of the early Hanford people would move trailers in out there. And added onto them as a matter of fact. But as they had kids in a small trailer, where do you put them? You put a room on it. And that's what we did, we lived in that trailer. And then we lived there up until I was discharged. And then we bought a trailer. And I was working for a guy that didn't like the idea of me buying a trailer. It was a single wide. But it was about, I don't know, probably 50 feet long, somewhere in that. It may not have been that big. It was big enough, it had three bedrooms. And bought the trailer and moved it in and set up in and fat, dumb, and happy. But he didn't like the idea of me working for him who was selling trailers and buying it from somebody else. So he fired me. [LAUGHTER] So that was our first home. And then we were forced to move out of the place out there next to the Battelle area, just south of Battelle. We had to move out of there because I wasn't in the military anymore. When I did go to work for GE, we got a house, prefab. I think it was a--first one was a two-bedroom. And then we got a three-bedroom house. And we lived there until they started selling the town back to people. And I was interested. They set it up in blocks. So they would complete the transfer of one block by contracts to the owner that lived in it. And some of the prices were, for the two bedrooms, were like $2,500. And three bedrooms was just slightly more, like $3,000, $3,200. And I don't think any of them ran over $5,000, any of the homes. And lo and behold, I got an eviction notice. I was laid off in between. And two days after they evicted me and I got out of that house, they sold my block. So I didn't get a house. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, that was kind of how we got started. Finally, I left here and worked down in Colorado for about a year and a half, two years. And put in a transfer back there, a transfer or quit and came back to—I was out here on vacation a week's vacation, ten days I guess. And I dropped by the unemployment office and they said yeah, we'll put you back to work. So anyway, I went down and terminated. Gave them my notice and came back out here and went to work. And I worked there until—see I don't remember now, '50—hmm. Late '60s, because I left the project completely in '68. And I was out there one day and boss came in and said, Frank, he said, I understand you talked to so and so. He’s an instrument guy, a contractor that installed instrumentation and tubing for those instruments. I don't remember his name. And he told you were a job was at. And I said yes, he did. Anyway, he said, did you go down for an interview and talk to those people? And I said no. He says, why don't you do that? I said why? I was working at Battelle. Well, he said, you never know. I said yeah, I can go down and talk to him. I went down and interviewed. Went on back out. Still hadn't heard nothing from him and boss came by again and asked me about it. I said, don't know, just sat in there fat, dumb, and happy waiting for things to happen. And then his boss came down and he says Frank, you take that job if they offer it. And after three months, if you decide you don't like it, you come back and we'll put you right back where you're at. You won't lose no seniority or anything. Lo and behold, it was the beginnings of the university here in North Richland. And I came down here and they put me to work. Punched out construction and—helped punch out construction and get them out here. And got everything in operation and moved the staff in. And the rest is history. I left here in 1995, right at 30 years retirement. With military, I had more than enough time for—I think it was a year and a half. 27 and three-quarters or something like that years--and then of course I had five years of service to attach on so, retired with 30 years.
Bauman: When you look back at your time looking at Hanford, overall how you assess Hanford as a place to work?
Trent: Well compare that to where I came from, and it was a gold mine. Because we were hand-to-mouth. And we had to raise everything by hand or horses or whatever, and some cows, and raised all of our eats and stuff like that. So, we worked. We didn't have no spare time. From the time I was seven, I had a hoe in my hand working. And my brothers, the same way. Girls took care of the house, the boys took care of the outside. We had a pretty good sized garden. And we also had large acres of corn and beans, cornfield beans, potatoes, large patches of potatoes. So we have plenty to eat. Never did lack stuff to eat. But when you look at the lifestyle, and you didn't know where your next shoes was going to come from or your clothes, because money—cash money was hard to come by. And dad worked the coal mines, so he didn't make a lot, but enough to feed his family and keep going. So it was pretty nice to get out here where you can make a decent living. I think I was making--I think I was making about $75 a week, net out, when I first started.
Bauman: When you first started working for GE or for--?
Trent: With GE, yeah. And I also worked the 300 Area. And I helped start up the Sandcastle out here, Battelle where they're at now. The first buildings, there was three of them. And I was down there to get the equipment started and get it running. So I did that until the union got me and forced me out. So that was another reason it made my decision easier to leave there. I had four layoffs from Hanford due to cutbacks. And seniority, it didn't matter who you were or whatever. Seniority won. The other guy sat there and laughed at you and said I told you. You'll be out there working your tail off and he'll be sitting on his fanny reading or whatever. Doing his job, but nothing extra. You get a guy that would get in there and work, it didn't matter. If you didn't have the seniority, you were gone. So I got caught in four layoffs. No, three. The fourth one I quit and came down here. But it was a nice way to make a living.
Bauman: Well, I want to thank you for coming in today and telling us about your experiences both in the Army and working at Hanford. Appreciate it.
Trent: Same.
Bauman: Thanks very much.
Trent: You bet.
Northwest Public Television | Snyder_Wayne_1
Wayne Snyder: That was always the worst thing when I worked was public speaking. I don't know how they do it. All three of my children are--they all speak about their professions. My son sings publicly and everything, but they came from a dad who isn't that much around—
Robert Bauman: Not much for public speaking?
Snyder: Oh Amos, if you stay down, it's okay.
Bauman: Okay, we good? All right, let's go ahead and get started.
Snyder: Okay.
Bauman: Let's start by just having you say your name and spell it for us.
Snyder: Okay. Wayne Snyder, W-A-Y-N-E, S-N-Y-D-E-R.
Bauman: All right, and today's date is September 4th, 2013.
Snyder: Correct.
Bauman: And we're conducting this interview in Mr. Snyder's home—
Snyder: Right.
Bauman: --in Richland. So let's start by maybe having you tell me about how you came to Hanford, how you heard about the place, when you came.
Snyder: Okay. Well, I was at University of Colorado. I graduated there in 1950 in chemistry, and GE was one of two outfits that interviewed me. They were offering a salary of $54 a week, and that beat out the government job in Rifle, Colorado doing oil shale by about $5 a week. So I accepted this, thinking I was going to the General Electric research laboratory back in Schenectady, New York, but wound up--oh, no, you're going to Hanford. We need to people out there. So I got on the—well, my parents came to my graduation; they put me on the train to Richland. And I got here in the middle of night in Kennewick, and I had only a bus ticket from Pendleton to Kennewick. GE was supposed to pick me up, but they didn't. So I was fumbling around with all my luggage, all of my worldly belongings, and looking for a motel. A lady came by and said, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm trying to get to Hanford or to Richland, if you know where that is. She said, oh yeah. She said, I'm picking up my son who is just off shift down here. Can I give you a lift up to town? So we pulled into Richland, and it was about midnight by this time. And the city lights were pretty much on, and I thought, wow. You know, it looked to me at that time kind of like Las Vegas, all lights lit up, very contemporary. Bell Furniture had its lights on on its sign. And the building I went to was the Hanford House, which was called then the Desert Inn, a structure that preceded the existing building. And it was an old army facility, and everything looked like army around here. And I went in, and I said, I would like to get a room for tonight if I could. And they said, sure. I said, first I got to tell you. I have a check for $35, if you could cash that it would help me to pay for the place. And they said, oh sure. So I spent the night, on the second floor, woke up and looked out my window. And it was the most bare—just place without any life or anything except for the big river that I could see flowing by. And I thought, oh God, if I can just earn enough money to get a car, I'll get out of here. But I'm here later, all this time. Excuse me, my voice is cracking on me. And so I was taken over to the 703 Building, which was at that time where the Federal Building is today. And it was the headquarters for all of the Hanford site General Electric company top dogs, and the AEC, as DOE was in those days. And it was a white—just white, wooden building like everything in town, looking like an army camp, and a big building though. It had a main hallway that extended, I think, five wings, and so you would go in the building, and here's the big lobby. And I was taken to a place where they would interview me again, I think. And they said, oh you're a tech grad aren't you? And that was because I was wearing a blue sport coat and a tie. And he said, oh, yeah, you're not coming to dig ditches. you're coming to be a professional. I said, well, that's good. And so they oriented me and told me where I would be working, and asked if everything was going well. I was living in a dormitory in North Richland at that time, and that was about—what it is, six miles out of town from the Federal Building. So they made sure I could get the bus and get to work and stuff like that, but told me I'd be working out at the bismuth phosphate process, the 200 East 271 Canyon. It's the building that today they are just calling the Queen Mary. Its sister building is, the 271-T. But 271 was the B Plant, and it did the batch processing of all of the irradiated fuels in the 100 Areas, dissolved them up, separated them out by this bismuth phosphate precipitation process. Refined them through pretty much a high concentration plutonium nitrate solution. And that went on off to the 330--233 B, which was over in Two West Area. And you are not interested in the rest of the process, because it just gets boring. But anyway, I got out to work. I took the bus out, which became a very, very common thing every day. Run out and catch the bus, and go 30 miles through the desert to the north and get to the 300 Area. Excuse me, the 200 East Area. And go into my little building, which was the analytical laboratories associated with the big processing canyon building. And there I did various analytical tests, you know, determining how much plutonium in the solution, what were the concentrations of the fission products, and what was left? And we started out with the initial dissolution of the batch process, and they would dissolve up in nitric acid. I don't know how many--fuel slugs, we called them in those days--they are now the fuel element. But they were about eight inches long, and about that big in diameter. And a whole batch of them would get dissolved up—you know, half a ton or something like that. And then we would measure all of the concentration of the various elements as it went through the precipitation process. And we took it through the lithium--the wait a second--hafnium fluoride. I'm getting confused here. This has been quite a few years ago--through a concentration and there the f-10 p sample went on to the Two West Area where the oxalate precipitation took place. And at that time, that was the end of the processing at Hanford. It went through a plutonium solution, plutonium nitrate, was bottled up in very safe containers and shipped to either Los Alamos, or to, I believe, Oak Ridge. And Los Alamos was able to go ahead and make metal out of it from which they fashioned to the various bomb pits. And we sort of ended there, but a few years later, as a matter of fact I worked at it, they built what's now called the Plutonium Finishing Plant. But it was at that time the 234-5 Building, and I worked there again as an analytical chemist in the analytical laboratories. And we were measuring the purity of the plutonium, the amount of extraneous materials. And unlike the bismuth phosphate process where we were worried about the radiation—the very high level gamma irradiation—over at 234-5, we were worried more about contamination from the plutonium. Plutonium gives off no radiation that penetrates anything, but if you ingest it, you've had it. And so we'd be in gloveboxes and protective clothing, and I don't think we had anything over our faces. But I remember reaching through the glovebox and refining all of the plutonium. And then I was a spectrometer. We did a spectrometric analysis of the old fashioned kind, where we burned it off, caught the rays that came off of it, and then we could read all of the barium, the cesium, the plutonium, everything in it. And that would go back to the processing, and if it was determined clean enough and everything, it would then be sent on—the metal from which it came--would be sent on to Los Alamos for processing. But very quickly after that, they built the lines, the ABC and whatever line, which went ahead and processed the metal—the plutonium metal into a shape, which was then shaped into the bomb pit that was being built at the time. And it's not thought of that Hanford ever really handled the metal or produced weapons—weapon parts, but we did for quite a few years. And that seems like a long part of my life, those three years from 1950 up until 1953, when I was kind of tired of that. And I think they were tired of me, perhaps, out at that area too. I interviewed for and got a job in radiation monitoring. And the nice thing about it, it was the first time I lived closer to town. It was--that facility was officed in the 300 Area. And it was day shift. That other time I worked shift work the whole time. This was ABCD shift. It was 24/7. The plants were operating constantly. And so I would be working day shift, then swing shift, then graveyard shift, and it's rotated, so that you were cut out of your night life for every two out of three--let me get it straight--weekends. And all my buddies that I was with in the dormitories had all--they were day shift. And they worked Monday through Friday, they would take off weekends for the mountains or for the rivers or for the fun times. And I would get to go every third long weekend. I was off from Friday morning graveyard until Wednesday afternoon swing shift, so I had what's called a long weekend which is four full days of fun and playing except, there was nobody around that I liked, that I enjoyed. There were a lot of people worked those shifts. But most of them were operators in the production plants, or were at least a part of the continuing plutonium production and not into research or other more fun things like they did in 300 Area. Well, I was able to do that for about two more years or so, and in 1955, I was interviewed and joined a group called the Graphite Group. This group was involved in studying graphite, which is the main moderator. It's that big black block in the center of the reactors which slows the neutrons down to absorption velocity, so that they get struck in the 235 and cause it to fission, or are absorbed in the 236, and ultimately through neptunium become plutonium. And the graphite was swelling badly in the reactors. It was a fairly low temperature thing in the reactor, and the power level was around 250 megawatts. I think that was the design level. They ultimately got to operating up over 1,000 megawatts, so that was a lot. But anyway back to the graphite. I would get samples made and little cylinders and get them shaped up by the machinists, and then we would irradiate them in the test holes in the reactors. I would work out at the reactors quite often. We would be putting samples in the test holes. Getting them out, putting them in, taking them out. And then I could measure the graphite samples, as to how much dimensional change they had made. And at that time, all of them grew slightly, very slightly. But in the full size reactor, it was enough growth that the reactor was beginning to really buckle. It sunk in the middle and grew on the edges, so that the process tubes which used to go straight through the reactor began to be a shape that started higher, sunk down in the center, and went out. And they got so bowed that eight inch slugs or fuel elements would not go through them. And they would charge them in for re-irradiation—or for their first cycle, they would almost not go through those process tubes. The process tubes were aluminum. They were surrounded with water which cooled them, and the fuel elements then did its thing, fission, and made all this heat and fission products and stuff that we're still trying to get rid of here at Hanford. But that was really fun because it was day shift, it was not doing analytical chemistry. And I was working with more people who—well, all of the tech grads who did analytical work were really fun, but it got me in with the crowd, like John Fox as a matter of fact. And it just seemed more like what it was supposed to do with my life—a highbrow chemist in a research setting. But with my bachelor's degree, that wasn't the best preparation for highbrow scientific work. And I did some artwork back in those days. It was always a phase of mine. And when I got my chemistry degree, I really wished that I had gotten a bachelor's in fine arts, but I knew that would pay for nothing. [LAUGHTER] So I decided, well, to make it in fine arts, I better do something. So my wife and I got married, and we went off to Mexico where I produced a portfolio of artwork. It was a good enough to get me into one of the best commercial art centers in the country. It was called The Art Center in Los Angeles, California. And there again, I loved it. But I lasted about, oh, four months, I’ll say, into the first quarter. I was doing very well, but the people who were assigning the work would hang over you. And they would evaluate what you did, and they would find it lacking, because it wasn't as professional as they were. And so I enjoyed it though, but I thought, if I'm going to have a wife and maybe a family, I’d better earn a living. So I called my old boss at Hanford. Said, you know this art stuff isn't really working for me. Is there anything back there that I could do? He said, well, come on back, Wayne. So I joined the Graphite Group again briefly, but they let me interview around until I found something that would be a more likely career, something that would actually let me promote in career and stuff. And I joined a job—joined a group called the Programming Group, and it was the first of an outfit being put together that looked at the whole plant's operation. And they were responsible for resolving all of the programs that were going on. So we did the report writing and the final merging of all of the Plutonium Recycle Program, was the primary source of this stuff. And the plutonium recycle program went on from about--I'm going to say '58. I was married '58, so this would be '59. And as a matter of fact, again, joining with John Fox, who was one of the designers of the PRTR. And we were, at that time, probably rooming together in old Bauer Day house which were the first nongovernment owned houses in Richland. Spokane built of an outfit called the Spokane Village, which are the—oh, what would you call them, honey? The houses along George Washington Way, between it and Stevens north of the old Uptown area, those white, two-bedroom, three-bedroom buildings with white, I suppose, asbestos shingles and stuff. Anyway, where am I going from here? You can cut for a second.
Bauman: You were talking about rooming.
Snyder: Yes, thank you. Yes. And so Gerry McCormick and Fox and I got together, and we decided we'd rent one of the Bauer Day—we would rent a Richland Village house. But they would not rent to single people, so we tried the Bauer Day place. And they said, yeah, we'll rent you a house. So we got together. And I worked for Graphite Group, and Gerry was in chemistry on the separations process. And Fox was designing the PRTR. And we just hit it off well, and we were--not to brag, but we were one of the classy bachelor quarters in town. So now I'm preceding my art career, but before going there I was working in this stuff, having all this fun. We'd have--I was day shift of course—weekends off. John and Gerry were, and we'd have parties with 30 some people or so attending. And lots of people came, because we would have lots of hard liquor. And just had a good time generally. So that lasted for a while, but then when I got married, I came back, joined this programing group that I talked about earlier, got involved in the whole site more or less, and reported to a pretty high up guy, Larry McEwen. And he thought that I would be able to help publicize Hanford to the public. I would put together a small exhibition center, a room that showed the process in its entirety, and add some examples of fuel elements and various solvent extraction columns and things like that. And that was really fun, and I enjoyed it. And reported to Larry, and this was right reporting to Herb Parker who of course became the head of all the laboratories. But, another kid, Art Scott, and I were asked to help him write his annual talk, and so we met with Herb which was quite high level thing for us. And we scraped and bowed and did the appropriate things and came together with a script that he could use for the big annual meeting.
And he would go through it, and he would laugh. And he would say, we don't say things like, further on in the evening we will get into. He said, that would kill the talk right there. People are bored and no way would they like to hear, longer on at some time, while they still sat there. But any way, Art and I did okay. And he then joined an outfit called measurements, which was all new in those times. It was a group assigned to measure the progress of the company. How well were they doing? Were they meeting program requirements? And he did that. And I joined--left the Programming Group. And my boss there Kelly Wood said, Wayne, you're going nowhere. He said, you're going to have to do something else if you expect to have a career. And at that time, an offer came up from the technical information crowd. Chris Stevens was manager of a technical library, and they did this work called reviewing reports for declassification. And so it sounded pretty good, and it was more permanent. And so I joined that group, which was much more of a service job again. So I discovered my real career was in service work; it was not in science and engineering and research and that kind of stuff. And so I got over, and I joined Chris Stevenson, and this is a group of about 35 people in the Technical Information Group, most of which processed all of the technical reports that were created at Hanford. We had the technical library, which provided all of the technical information from worldwide scientists and engineers would need. And I reviewed these new technical reports for the appropriate classification: could they go out unclassified, or should they be confidential, or should they be secret? And everything at Hanford was born secret. Unlike the Department of Defense, which wrote stuff and then decided whether it was sensitive, here stuff was sensitive, period, before it was reviewed and allowed to be unclassified. So I would review all of these reports, as boring as they were, and identify things would have to be deleted in order for them to be unclassified. And most of them were high technical reports. They were not about the production programs. They were not about how much plutonium was produced and things like that. It was about the Plutonium Recycle Program; it was about advanced research in materials; it was about lots of interesting things. And so I sort of acquired a knowledge of things that were going on around the whole site, mainly research.
Bauman: About what time frame was this that you were doing this?
Snyder: Time frame? This would be 19--this was about 1980, I think, when I interviewed with Chris Stevenson and was hired into this Technical Information Group. And that was my career then. I had worked at Hanford for seven years before going to Art Center, and I worked for them for a couple more years, from 1950 and joined the group in 1960, the Programming Group. And so this would have been '63, I think, was when I joined Technical Information Group. Am I off on dates here badly? I hope not. Anyway. It was kind of boring, but I was the classification officer, did all this reviewing, and gained some awareness of how important the information was that supported a technical outfit like Hanford was, partly research and a lot of production stuff. And progressed in that far enough to where when Chris Stevenson resigned, other than just being a reviewer of reports or classification, I became a candidate for running the whole thing. So I became manager of Technical Information section in 1963. And then Battelle Memorial Institute came in and got the contract to run the research parts of Hanford, and the work I was in joined Battelle. And that was, I think, 1965. Things changed a little bit with Battelle. It was a more behavioral kind of a company. GE had been very strict, very much old style corporation, very line management, very much more like normal business. And Battelle came in, and they were used to doing contract research. They would have people come in and say, we have this problem in our material studies for zirconium or something, could you help us solve this problem? So Battelle was used to doing the same kind of research as the Hanford laboratories, but on a much broader scale; more kinds of technology were looked at. And it was a good outfit to work for, and as a matter of fact, I retired from them in 1990. And I had progressed in the technical information work enough that I was really enjoying my job as manager of that outfit. There were about 40 staff members, I'd say, who reported to me, primarily women, but a few professional guys in the technical information work. That I—well, I enjoyed the women too, but the guys, at that time--I shouldn't say this--but were more important than the women, so you tended to associate with guys instead of women in the technical side. And very soon after that, probably ten years, women really came to the front of course in science, and they became bosses around here. But my work had primarily been in a more traditional work through my early career, and through a whole different kind of work as a manager of technical information, being responsible to provide all of the current ongoing world information in science and technology to the Hanford scientists and engineers for their needs in conducting their programs. So that was a very satisfying thing to do, and it acquainted me even further with all of the kinds of things that were going on at Hanford, but without being responsible for making the reactors operate or making the research programs work and things like that. So that a good career. And like I said, I was married in '58, went off to Los Angeles--Mexico and Los Angeles--and then came back and spent the rest of my life, pretty much, in a technical information career. And it's been good.
Bauman: I would go back a little bit. You say when you said you first arrived, you lived in the dorm?
Snyder: Yes. At that time--
Bauman: Could you talk about that a little bit? Where was the dorm? What was the dorm like?
Snyder: Sure. Initially, the City of Richland of course was all government owned. DuPont had had set up, and followed by General Electric company, setting up dorms for single women who were working onsite, and dormitories for single men. And the dorms for men were called M1, M2, M3, M4, whatever. And the women's dorms were called W. What W to do with it? And I was in M9 for a short time. And the company decided set up this dormitory for the single tech grads, and they didn't have an empty men's dorm so they set aside one of the women's dorms, W21. It was built on what would be the parking lot of Albertson's grocery store right now, down on Lee and Jadwin. And that was where I met Fox and McCormick and all these other guys that I still see occasionally today. But it was a whole different style. It was amazing. How could guys be shunted off into a supervised dormitory, practically a continuation of your freshman year in college? We had a house mother even, who made sure we were behaving, not having women into our rooms, and things like that. [LAUGHTER] And today kids would just have a—they would up-rise against this kind of thing. But all of us were pretty pliable. And we were still earning a living. I did get above $52 a week, finally. But still not earning great bucks at that time. So the dormitories, they were $11.50 a month, and the beds were made daily by maids that came in and helped clean up our rooms a little bit. So it was--
Bauman: How long did you live in the dorms?
Snyder: I lived in the dorm for two years. And then that's when I joined the group in Bauer Day house, and became friends with—you know. It's amazing how many people who started then are still alive and still at Richland. And even today we'll get together with maybe 15 guys who were part of dorm W21, and three of which, we're really still close friends. And so--
Bauman: I wanted to ask you about, what was it like living in Richland during the 1950s? What was Richland like as a community?
Snyder: Okay. It was--the government township made people feel very irresponsible about—they would rent a house, but the government owned it. So you have--you just paid your rent, $30 a month or whatever and got the comfort of having all of your fuel delivered weekly. And I think you did pay for groceries and things, but the town had a little bit of a government town—a company town situation. And people were good—the higher level--it was supposed to be a community that was totally non-status. Workers, and top dog managers, and presidents would all live in mixed up neighborhoods. You might live next door to a plumber, and there might be an electrical engineer in the next one. But that never worked, and the highbrow executives of the site did get all the houses along the river, which was called pill and skill drill hill, which was the doctors, the dentists, and the executives. And the rest of the population got nice houses, and no problem with it. But again, they're all government owned, and everybody rented them. But came 1958, this government town was sold to the occupants. The government got out of being responsible for any landlord responsibilities or any government--any town operation. And it—my dog is barking, you hear [LAUGHTER]--anyway, it changed. People really owned their own homes. And property was opened up where you could buy property and build your own house. So instead of all this very much alike, six or seven different kinds of houses were built, a large number of them, you now owned them, so you took care of them. But new property was available so that you could build your own house. And that all happened in 1958. The town got a mayor. Fox's first predecessor was a lady named—I can't remember. It was more of a—there was a city council. The city council worked with the General Electric Company and the AEC people to start running our own city. And then in '58 when it was all sold, they literally became the honest government for the town. And they had to set up company-owned, company-operated—I mean privately owned, city-owned fire departments, police stations, and all that kind of thing. By that time, private industry had come in and built the large chain grocery stores like Safeway, and Albertson's, and all those. And the health business had been all company owned, but the Kadlec Medical Center was set up, and it was private again. You went to doctors who were your own. The initial facilities were very primitive. They were just like government military operations. The hospital where all my children were born was just an old clapboard building that could have been any army fort in the country. But it turned private, and it started building on an enterprise basis more so. I bought one of the lots a little bit north of town, and by that time, I had three children in the Bauer Day house. But we built a larger home up on--a block off from the river but--up on Enterprise, which still exists. And the home we built, we had an architect, and we contracted it out. So it was very much a private-type operation. It was not a development house or something. And we lived in that house until two years ago, until 2000—was that it? No, 2011. We had built our house, and we had lived in it then until, like I said, 2011. So it just became a regular community, a regular life. The whole country's looking at Hanford. It was very accepted when it was an important part of defense. We were building weapons as fast as we could to keep up with Russia. The whole Cold War lasted that long period of time, so it was very solid employment. But it was not looked at negatively like today. Today, Hanford being the biggest waste dump in the world is not thought of really highly by a lot of environmentalists and other people like that. [LAUGHTER] It's slowly being realized, but up until that time, it was very patriotic. People thought, yay, we've won the war. We'll continue to be safe; we'll have the biggest arsenal in the world, be able to maintain our security and safety. And then when that was no longer that important, and they shut down the Hanford plutonium operation, the taking care of all the waste products that had been created, stored in the big tanks, stored in crypts and things like that, became a negative to the environmentalists. And so then Hanford site is still accepted and known to be important, but didn't enjoy that win-the-war patriotism, everyone thought highly of you, type situation.
Bauman: I wonder about, especially during those early years in the 1950s, any community events that stand out, that you remember?
Snyder: Oh, yeah. There was no real social facility in the town. There was the VFW, the Veteran Foreign's where they had a bar and a dance place. The city itself provided a lot of recreation in the way of athletic courts, tennis courts, swimming pool, and that. But pretty much, you made up your own entertainment. And things were formed like the Dormitory Club, and they would go on hikes at least two to three times a month during the summer. And the Alpine Club would go on climbs. And the athletic events, the local softball teams and things like that went on. But pretty much you made--you used those facilities, but you were responsible yourself to. If you wanted to have a party, you had it in your home. You didn't have a party in some commercial facility. There were no real bars or things like that. There's one place I remember though. When the government sold off the town, and the facilities were no longer needed, people may remember what was called the Mart. And it was like the dining halls out in the Areas. It was a big facility that serve meals to the people who worked in town or people who were off shift and need to go eat. And so it was a huge cafeteria where food was served in great quantities at low price, but when the place sold off, that became pretty passé. You know, people were no longer interested in living like a company town. You're more interested in having clubs built and things like that. And so early on, this Mart building, which was an eating hall mostly, had in the back end of it a little bar with a guy whose name I forget, played a Lowrey organ. And those were the most popular thing in the world with Carmen Miranda and other such names who played that. So we would go down there and dance, or we would go there and have drinks and stuff. And the VFW was popular. And there were other places that got built ultimately. The—what was the Red Robin for a while was earlier on a V-named guy. Anyway, it was a regular commercial eating place. There were places to dance, and there were—something like that. So the early town was pretty much, do it on your—do-it-yourself with your own friends. You didn't get to do anything. A big thing though was the Richland Players, a community acting group, was initiated. And the Richland Light Opera Company, who put on pretty much Broadway musicals, came about. And they did really good work. And Richland Players—I can't recall the names of the plays—but some of the musicals that went on with Richland Light Opera were like Annie Get Your Gun, and Show Boat, the ongoing things. They still produce good plays and good musicals. So that was kind of a way to entertain yourself, and would we spent a lot of time supporting groups like that.
Bauman: I wanted to ask you also about things like Atomic Frontier Days or any things like--
Snyder: Oh, okay. When I first came here the Atomic Frontier Days was an annual celebration of the town, very much like any small Western town. And there was a parade, and there is a Miss Frontiers Day elected. And there was the beard growing thing, who could grow the biggest beard. And a little later on, it turned into the Water Follies, which was the whole Tri-Cities, and that was the beginning of the very big scale hydroplane racing, the Unlimiteds. And they raced on the Columbia right out of Kennewick. And so the Frontier Days folded totally, and Tri-City Days, or whatever it's called now, came into being, which is a much more lavish production, much more important.
Bauman: I know President Kennedy visited the Hanford site in 1963.
Snyder: Right.
Bauman: I wondered if you were onsite at the time, if you have any memories of his visit?
Snyder: Yeah, he came out to inaugurate the N Reactor. It was the first reactor that was not like the old original reactors that didn't produce any power or anything. The N Reactor both produced plutonium, but it also took the heat off the reactor operations with a big turbine and made electricity. And Kennedy came out—that was a pretty important thing nationwide, at least in the nuclear industry—and told people how great they had done and how important it was. And I didn't go out to it, but many of my friends did. And Kennedy was--everybody really liked President Kennedy—anyway, Democrats did. And I was a Democrat, so that made it one for one. And it was just a big deal. Earlier than that, other Presidents had done things out here, like—oh, the McNary Dam when it was built. I think it was President Eisenhower, may not--might have been a little later that--came out and dedicated that facility. And then even after that, we had President Nixon come and visit. And he landed in his helicopter in the new Battelle buildings, the Battelle research area, which was quite glamorous and very beautiful compared to the old facilities, and gave us a good spiel. And this was while he was still somewhat in vogue, you know, before the Cooks bit and Watergate and things like that. [LAUGHTER] And we all loved him, and we waved him off. And we were glad that he dipped his wings to show that he approved of the place. But so the site later on--and even early on with like the McNary Dam and things--had some national popularity, or some popular awareness at least. A lot of people really never did know of Hanford, and may still not, but at least it's a well--a better-known facility. And its purpose is, I hope, better understood by the public, creating an atomic bomb. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Are there any--were there any incidents, events, things that happened that--during the years working a Hanford that really sort of stand out in your memory?
Snyder: It doesn't pop into mind. That's not a good statement is it? [LAUGHTER] But it was pretty much an even-keel life for me. It just flowed nicely. You worked hard, you earned money. But you were not--you didn't become a national figure, and that was okay. It's just—it gave a whole bunch of us--I think the '50s were considered to be the best generation’s support that ever happened. It was a good time, and excuse me, a good time to live. I'm getting cracked up.
Bauman: I wonder what you consider, like, the most challenging aspects of working Hanford, and maybe the most rewarding aspects of working there.
Snyder: Of course rewarding was earning a living. A satisfaction in what you did, your coworkers, the local community—that was a big plus. No single event that stands out, like I won a Nobel prize or anything like that. [LAUGHTER] But very good, and so that was a very plus thing that stands out. Negative, other than some of the change of the environment, the Cold War ended, thank goodness, and our--the need for Hanford became less, so there was just some less feeling of being critical to the well-being of United States. We still feel it's very important, but not as critical as it was in early days.
Bauman: You talked a little bit earlier about the Cold War and the importance of being part of that, sense of patriotism.
Snyder: And earlier than the Cold War even. The Korean War, and there were still some wars going on, but no atomic as it was called in those days. No nuclear weapons were required.
Bauman: Right. Most of the students I teach now were born after the Cold War.
Snyder: Yeah.
Bauman: After the Cold War ended. And they have no memories of it, and know very little about it, so I guess my question would be, what would you like today's younger generation or future generations to know about working at Hanford, Richland during that period?
Snyder: I think to some degree Hanford has a negative connotation. And I guess I would like for it to be known--excuse me--Can we just cut it off for a second?
Bauman: That’s fine.
Snyder: Whoa!
Bauman: It's okay.
Snyder: I told Peg I might do this.
Bauman: Mm-hmm, it’s all right.
Snyder: I guess we can go on. I'll compose myself.
Bauman: Sure.
Snyder: Oh I was--I would like for it to be known that—I can't say it.
Bauman: Okay, it’s all right. We can skip to something else if you want. That's fine.
Snyder: I don't know. Excuse me. I have no idea why this is becoming so real.
Bauman: It's all right.
Snyder: Are you leaving, hon? Oh, aren't you going to go to the store?
Peg Snyder: Well, I can't get the car out, so we're just going to go a couple of blocks.
Bauman: Oh, my car’s in the way.
Peg: That's okay. We're going to go in a couple of hours.
Snyder: What's wrong with the car? What's wrong with the car?
Peg: They’re parked in front of the garage.
Bauman: We're parked on your driveway.
Snyder: Oh, okay.
Man one: But we can--I can move stuff if you want.
Peg: No big deal.
Snyder: Maybe—are we about wound up, do you think?
Bauman: Yes, I just had one or two items—one or two questions.
Snyder: I see. Well, I was trying to say, the acceptance of Hanford--the need for it--I would like to be known.
Bauman: One of thing I want to ask you about is, I understand you were very involved with the Richland Library.
Snyder: Not the Richland Library, no. The Technical Library at Hanford.
Bauman: Okay. That's what you were talking about in terms of the declassification.
Snyder: Yes. And the provision of technical information—books, reports, anything that provided that.
Bauman: Okay, great. All right. Anything that I haven't asked you about that you would like to talk about, that you think be important to talk about?
Snyder: No, I think I pretty well covered my relationship at Hanford. It's been a good one. And you've done a good job.
Bauman: Well, I want to thank you for talking to me today and letting us come to your house--
Snyder: Oh, sure.
Bauman: --and interview you. We really appreciate it.
Snyder: You're more than welcome.
Bauman: Thanks for--
Northwest Public Television | Craig_Philip
Philip Craig: My name is Philip Craig. P-H-I-L-I-P. C-R-A-I-G.
Robert Bauman: Great. Thank you. And my name is Robert Bauman, and we are conducting this oral history interview on June 24th of 2015 on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So, Mr. Craig, why don’t we have you start, maybe, by just telling us a little bit about your background. Where you came from, how you came to Hanford, and that sort of thing.
Craig: Well my how I came to Hanford started back in high school. I had a high school chemistry class. I liked what I saw. And I knew that the Hanford Project was down the road—I was living in Selah, Washington, and the Hanford Project was very interesting to me. And I even wrote a term paper on Hanford, because I really wanted to work here. So, I went on to Whitman College, graduated from high school in ’56—or ’52, I’m sorry. Graduated from college in ’56, and then went on to Washington State College, then, now Washington State University in Pullman, and did a year of graduate work in chemistry. And at the end of that, I came to Hanford for my very first job. And lo and behold, that was exactly 58 years ago today: June 24, 1957. And it was quite an experience, let me tell you. The first thing that struck me, of course I had to have credentials to get in the building. And in those days, we didn’t have badges like you have today that are on a cord around your neck. We had a little plastic folder with our ID in it, and you’d pull that out of your pocket and flash it open to the guard sitting at the entrance desk. And then you could go on into the building and find your office and take it from there. The most interesting thing, I think, about it all was it was a very formal setting. For years we wore suits, ties, long sleeved white shirts only—couldn’t have colored shirts—and the ladies wore dresses. Far more formal than today’s environment. Security, of course, was very paramount. I mean, we were in the years where the Soviets and the United States was competing. And so the Hanford site, being one of the two principal sites manufacturing plutonium in the United States, the other one being Savannah River, most of the stuff in terms of total production and that sort of thing was top secret. A lot of it was not—it was secret, but security was paramount. I remember in my little office cubby hole—it was a room, it wasn’t just a cubby hole, in abig room—we had a three-drawer file cabinet with a combination lock. And I could take a piece of paper out of that file, put it on my desk and work on it. But if I had to go to the bathroom, it went back in the combination file, locked it, go down the hall and come back and you had to unlock the combination and start all over again. And the very first thing they had me do is they handed me about a three-inch black three-ring binder with a red coversheet, marked secret. This was the PUREX operating manual. Now, PUREX stands for Plutonium Uranium Extraction, and it was the chemical process that is used to take irradiated uranium from the reactors, dissolve it in acid, treat it chemically, and come up with a plutonium nitrate solution. And I had to read this manual in about a week. [LAUGHTER] It was pretty daunting.
Bauman: Now where was your first office? Where on site?
Craig: It was on in the 703 Building, which is about where the Federal Building is today. The last part of the 703 structure—it was a herringbone structure. We had offices coming off a main corridor, and there was about six tiers of those. And the very last one is still standing, and the city offices are in there. But later on, the Federal Building took over.
Bauman: And what was your first job title?
Craig: Physical—let’s see. Physical Science Administrator, I think it was. The other thing about the environment is that you handwrote all your reports, and then gave them to a secretary who typed them. There was no computers. So, it was kind of a laborious process to do that. I needed to check out a government car, which I did in the motor pool, and drive out to the Area to PUREX, and see what was going on most every day, drive back, write the daily report, mark it all secret, send it up a line to my boss. But that government car, let me tell you—it was not air conditioned. So those days were pretty warm. But we got it done. About two months later, after getting into the PUREX part of it, the fellow who was a companion office mate had been handling the plutonium shipments. And he went off to Washington, D.C. for another job. So I got the job of accepting plutonium products on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission and the US government. So it was a very formal process. The products were in two forms. After the plutonium nitrate left PUREX, it was sent over to what is known as the Z Plant. And in that plant, by a series of chemical operations, it was converted to a metal button about this big and it fit in a tuna fish can. It weighed something close to two kilograms. So that was the first product. The second product were manufactured, machined weapon components. And I won’t talk about the exact details of their size and shape at this point. But nonetheless, Hanford was in the business of making weapon components. So my job was to accept this product and make the shipment, every couple of weeks or so, to Rocky Flats. Rocky Flats was about 15 miles northwest of Denver, and it was the receiving site for the plutonium as buttons. They would take that metal and cast it into weapon component shapes and machine those and so on. And of course the other part was the shapes themselves, they’d go up in pieces themselves, and they would go into an inspection process and eventually assemble parts of the warhead.
Bauman: So when you say—you’re accepting them from the contractor, or--?
Craig: I was accepting these materials from the contractor. I mean, General Electric Company was the contractor, and their job on a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract basis was to run all these processes. And there’s hundreds of people involved in this. But at the end of the line, I had to make that transition from Hanford to the next step. So it was a couple of months into my first job, my buddy left for Washington, and here I am, learning how to actually accept these components. Now, you need to understand that plutonium was very radioactive. It emitted some gamma radiation, but not huge amounts. I mean, you could actually handle it. But it also emitted alpha radiation. And so it had to be contained in some kind of container, like a can. And then you could hold it in your hand. Interesting. It was warm. It was—the radioactive decay—was producing heat. So this can felt like hanging onto a 60 Watt lightbulb. Now, the other part of the business of plutonium is that if you got too much of it together in one spot, you had a criticality event. And of course, the bomb itself was designed to make a lot of it go critical at the same time, and that created an atomic explosion. But the point is that if you’re handling plutonium, it had to maintain a certain degree of separation at all times. In the chemical processing plants, they used different sized columns of chemical solutions and whatnot, depending on what was going on. And that was to maintain this critical geometry, so that you didn’t have any kind of criticality event. And after the plutonium was made into these buttons we called them, and canned in the tuna fish cans, they were stored in a vault. And the vault had pillars of metal rods, and little rings on that rod that you could put a can in. But it maintained the separation. So on shipping day, what we would do is we operators of the plant would go into the vault and take these cans and very carefully put—I don’t remember exactly how many—something about five or six cans in a little red wagon. Just a little kid’s wagon. But there was spacers in there so that these things didn’t get too close. And they’d bring it down the hallway to the room that exited to the building where it then could be handled further. And this assembly area, in this room were birdcages. Now a birdcage is a metal frame that’s about this big, this big, and this big. And in the middle was a metal pot with a lid. And the idea was that you took—one at a time—one of those cans from the red wagon, and you put it in the pot. And then I think the birdcage held like three buttons. Then there was a lid, and a bunch of bolts in places where you could put a wire with a lead seal on the end. And my job was to squeeze the seal closed with an imprint and record, of course, what the identity of those cans were, and the weight, and that sort of thing on paperwork. And at the end of that, I would sign this receipt for this material, and give it to the contractor. The weapon components varied a little bit differently, depending on the size and shape of the weapon component. Eventually, those were a much bigger birdcage, and it contained a couple of pieces of weapon material. The business of shipping, then—I owned that plutonium for maybe 15 minutes [LAUGHTER] before the government. Then I would transfer it to armed couriers, AEC couriers. They were not only armed with side arms; they were armed with machine guns. This was serious stuff. And they would load these birdcages into a truck, and eventually ship that off to Rocky Flats.
Bauman: How often did these shipments--?
Craig: Well, every couple of weeks or so.
Bauman: And so, they were shipped by truck then, to Rocky Flats?
Craig: That was a method used in later years. They didn’t really like shipping by truck that well. We actually had another system that involved—all I’m going to say is it involved rail. Because the exact details was highly classified.
Bauman: And did the amount that was shipped vary significantly, or--?
Craig: It varied, yes. Depends on how the production was going and what the requirements were on the other end.
Bauman: Oh, okay. Sure. And so how long did you do this, then? How long were you--?
Bauman: Wow.
Craig: So I shipped a lot of plutonium.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
Craig: The other thing that was kind of interesting—I was explaining to you about the criticality. I hadn’t been on the job more than, I don’t know, a couple of months, shipping. I knew what to do, I knew the whole process, and I knew the sensitivity of it. One day one of these chemical operators who worked for the contractor had gone to the vault, and he came down the hall carrying about five tuna fish cans in his hand, and holding it with his arm like this. Well, that was absolutely high risk criticality event waiting to happen. And he walked in the room, and I said, ooooh. Just stop right where you are. And I instructed one of the other operators, take one of the cans from him and put it in the birdcage very carefully. And we got that shipment loaded and we were on our way. And then I went to the manager’s office—the plant manager’s office. Now, this fellow was like 60 years old. Kind of a salty southerner with—I mean, he was definitely in charge. And I’m 23 years old. Fresh out of college, wet behind the ears. And I gave him a real lecture about safety. And he didn’t like that. He called my boss. And my boss said Mr. Craig was right: you really almost had an accident today. That’s the end of that story. There was more to the whole weapons system. Since I was in the whole process, one of the small cogs—there was uranium coming from Oak Ridge. There was plutonium—some plutonium—and tritium coming from Savannah River. There was high explosives coming from Pantex. And then Hanford plutonium. This all had to be scheduled into what was known as the US master nuclear delivery schedule. It was the weapons document for all the weapons made in the country. It was a top secret document, and representatives from each of these sites got together, usually in Albuquerque, New Mexico, or at the Rocky Flats Plant. And we handwrote this schedule. There was no computers. There was a spreadsheet format, yes. But we didn’t have computers to do all that. Everything had to be balanced. This whole process had to bring all these materials together for processing at Rocky Flats. And so, about once a year we got together to do the master nukes schedule. I found I was pretty fortunate to be a part of that. I was pretty young. But it was a challenge. I had a lot of help, of course. But I was very impressed. One of the things that kind of scared me though was—and let me check on the date. October 22 to 24, 1962. That was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were in Denver and Rocky Flats to work on these schedules. Now, that was ground zero for the Russians. If they were going to attack the United States, that probably would have been one of their targets. And it was kind of scary working there for those two days. I was very thankful that President Kennedy convinced Khrushchev to back off and no ill things happened.
Bauman: Were you here when President Kennedy came to Hanford in ’63?
Craig: Yes, yes.
Bauman: Do you remember that?
Craig: Oh, I remember that. We got to drive out and see him out at the reactor site. It was quite an experience. I think that was one of the only Presidents I’ve ever seen in person. And it wasn’t long after that, you know, a couple months or less, that he was assassinated in Texas.
Bauman: Do you remember much about that day?
Craig: It was hot! [LAUGHTER] It was still warm when he was here visiting. But it was a big event. There was thousands of people out there in the desert. But it was very thrilling experience to see the President come.
Bauman: Sure. So, you said you were working on the shipment from ’57 to ’72. So did that process change much over those years, other than shifting from—
Craig: Well, yes. In about ’66, we quit making weapon components at Hanford. And the process moved to Rocky Flats entirely.
Bauman: So that part changed.
Craig: Yeah. That part changed. But the plutonium buttons didn’t.
Bauman: And so then in ’72 then, how did your job change? What did you start doing at that point?
Craig: Well, the other significant activity that I was involved with was in 1968. The site was in a state where we had 149 single-shell waste tanks and 28 double-shell waste tanks. Actually, that’s not quite right. There were four short of that on the double-shell. And these were boiling waste tanks. The others were not boiling waste. But it was all liquid, and we were concerned about the integrity of the tanks and the lifetime of the tanks. And so at that time, the Atlantic-Richfield-Hanford Company, ARCO, was the contractor. And two of their engineers, Sam Beard and Bob McCullough and I co-authored a document that was called “The Hanford Waste Management Briefing.” And the purpose of this was to explain the Hanford situation to our headquarters—our AEC headquarters staff, and Congressional staffers who were then going to be funding what is now known as the Tank Farm projects. And this document was a briefing document, and the key—one of the key charts that we were particularly proud of is to try to show people how complex the business of the Hanford waste system was. And this chart shows what happens to a ton of uranium that’s been irradiated and then processed at PUREX, and the wastes that come out of that whole process. And some of it’s boiling waste, because of high levels of radioactivity that are in that particular section of waste, and some was non-boiling. For example, you’re dealing with—for that ton of waste—680 gallons of non-boiling waste and 220 gallons of boiling waste. And in the non-boiling tank, you have 900 pounds of salts, chemical nitrate—nitrates and so on, and about 350 curies of radioactivity. But in the boiling side, there’s 230 pounds of salt, but 300,000 curies of activity. That’s why they’re boiling. And then there was a low-level stream that had like 55,000 gallons of waste that went to a crib—a crib is like a septic tank—tile field—and the swamp, which is just an open pond. There was another 560,000 gallons went there, but their radioactivity was less than a tenth of a curie. I mean, it was just negligible. On the solid side, there was about ten cubic feet of solid waste. There was about 10 million cubic feet—I’m sorry—of gases that came out. And here’s the number that it was radio—a surprise to everyone that it was published. It was secret then, but it’s been declassified since. Out of that ton of fuel came 530 grams of plutonium and four grams of neptunium. So the chemical process that started with a ton of material and ended up with just a very small amount. So it’s kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Because these wastes were boiling, we’d started building—had started building double-shell tanks. A double-shell tank is a steel tank within a steel tank within a concrete barrier. And this diagram in that briefing document showed what a double-shell tank was all about. These were million-gallon tanks. And in those days, it was about a dollar, maybe a dollar and a half a gallon to build those tanks. A million-million half dollars for one of these big tanks. Far, far, less than what they would cost today.
Bauman: Yeah.
Craig: At any rate, we made this presentation to the staffers and the ultimate activity was to remove as much as water as we could from the single-shell tanks so that we ended up with a salt cake that was not going anywhere. We isolated cesium-137 and strontium-90 by another chemical process, carried out in B Plant, to bring those short-lived emitters of radiation to a point where we could encapsulate those in steel cylinders. That was done and they’re stored. I think they’re still stored that way, but I’m not entirely sure. I kind of lost track of what’s happened since. We also built—were recommending that they build four more double-shelled tanks and that’s why the number finally grew to 28 double-shell tanks. And then, of course, it ultimately led to the pretreatment plant that’s in the process out here now, and the Waste Vitrification Plant.
Bauman: You mentioned one of the reasons for doing the report was there were concerns about the integrity of the single-shell tanks. Were some of them leaking at that point, or just concerns that they might leak?
Craig: I think at that point there were some that had displayed a little bit of leakage, yes. There’s other documents that showed some leakage, but, again it wasn’t into the concrete overpack, if you will. There was some, of course, got into the soil column, but it was not a series breach, and it wasn’t any radioactivity that got down into the groundwater. But we were afraid that it would. I mean, 1968, these tanks have been—the initial ones—had been built in 1944! ’45, ’46. So there was some that were approaching the end of life, and those tanks are still there today. And that’s why they’re so concerned about trying to remove some of the waste from these tanks and process it.
Bauman: So, who initiated—was this ARCO or AEC that sort of initiated the study that you helped write?
Craig: Oh, I think it was—collectively, the Hanford folks at engineering—folks on both sides of the contractor and the government were saying, we got to do something about this. Anyway, I think that’s about all I want to say about the creation of that document. I thought it would be interesting for you to look into if that ever showed up in the REACH literature as the kickoff document to get this thing going.
Bauman: Right, right. Yeah. And did you continue to be involved after this report in some of the tank—waste management end of things?
Bauman: Right. So, you were involved with that in—
Craig: I was involved in—
Bauman: About ’85?
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Yes. And then I left the—at that point, this will be—okay, you can go back on. At that point in 1985, I left the government, went private, went to work for a packaging—an engineering and design company that designed high-level waste shipping containers for use on transportation. They started off—their first big project was the Three Mile Island cask, to move that waste. And then from that, I marketed to the government a high-level waste—any kind of high-level waste that could be put into a cask and removed. And then the TRUPACT-II cask for use in transferring transuranic waste, or primarily plutonium waste, from the government sites to the waste isolation pilot plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico. And from there, I got involved on a couple of other organizations. Eventually, in 1991, I went to work for Lockheed. In 1996, Lockheed, along with—well, Fluor Daniel was the primary contractor, but we were on the Fluor Daniel team, and Lockheed was to manage the Tank Farms. So we came full circle, and I helped Lockheed win that contract.
Bauman: Right, you did come full circle.
Craig: So then, Lockheed moved me from—I was then living in Federal Way, and Lockheed rewarded me by moving me back to Hanford and letting me work on the Hanford site in ’96. And I did that until December of 2000. And there I was involved in the new contracting method. Instead of cost-plus-fixed-fee contracting, it was cost-plus-incentive-fee. And what we would do was we would create a document for a scope of work, a performance agreement. And the contractor would say, here, DoE, this is what we’re going to do for you, and here’s how long it’s going to take. And DoE said, okay, if you do that, we’ll pay you this fee, and if you don’t get it done on time, we’re going to cut your fee. And if you don’t do it well, we’re going to cut your fee. And my job was to, at the end of the work performance, was to write up the actual work done in a document to present to DoE that says, okay, pay us the fee. We were very successful in getting our award fee. And then I gave it all up in December of 2000, after 43 years.
Bauman: I wonder if I can go back—and this is really interesting stuff, fascinating career. I wanted to ask you just about the community, when you arrived here in 1957, what was Richland like at the time? Could you talk about that a little bit? And did you live in Richland, or--?
Craig: Oh, yes. Yes. We were allowed to rent from the government a B house—half of a B house on Haupt. This was June 1957. And by then—a couple of months—the government started selling off the town to private citizens. And we were in the first block to be sold. The senior owners in the other end of the B house bought the B house. And at that time, we moved to the other side of town, into a ranch house, because that had been sold to its owner. This is kind of an interesting, because the ranch house that the owner—I mean the resident who was able to buy it bought for like $7,700. And then when we bought the ranch house, I think we paid like $9,500. And of course, those ranch houses today sell for over 100. The town was very—initially of course, it was very caste-oriented. I mean, if you were a contractor, management, you got to live on the river. If you were a lowly government GS-7, you got to live in a B house. And there was a certain level of, you know, if you weren’t in this class, you weren’t part of it, you know. And I think that’s changed dramatically over the years. It doesn’t make any difference who you work for and how much money you make and all that stuff. People have changed for the better.
Bauman: Anything else about the community that stood out to you at the time?
Craig: Well, the first thing that Richland did was they had to celebrate their founding as Richland. They set off a mock atomic bomb, and it was a bunch of fanfare out in the park, and made a poof of smoke that was to represent a mushroom cloud.
Bauman: So, was this at Howard Amon Park?
Craig: Yeah. It was.
Bauman: Anything else that—memories that stand out, either about in community of Richland, or your work—any stories or memories that really stand out to you that you’d like to share?
Craig: I feel confident that this waste document that shows particularly how much plutonium was made, that was a very revolutionary thing. I mean, the idea how much of material you got out of a ton of uranium was—
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Very classified. And to see that declassified and whatnot. It’s—
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Craig: Kind of mind-blowing. But there’s the document. And it’s legitimate to talk about.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Not sure I want it on the local news tonight, but—[LAUGHTER]
Bauman: So I don’t know if you want to talk to us about the McCluskey incident and your involvement in that?
Craig: Well, at the time, I was responsible for the Z Plant operations. And so, one morning, early, about 4:30 in the morning, I get a call from the plant that there had been an accident out of the plant, and I needed to get out there. And so I threw some clothes on and got a government car and went out to the site. What had happened was the plant had been operating on the recovery of americium-241 as part of the reclamation activities. And it was a chemical process. Inside this chemical process were criticalities tanks, small tanks like this, long, inside of a glovebox. Earlier in that summer, there had been a labor dispute, and the plant was on strike. And so the process had been shut down. Well, what was going on was americium was loaded onto the ion exchange medium inside this long column. When the dispute was settled and we had several days of reviews, conducting interviews with the contractor people, are you ready to restart? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? And finally they were authorized to start. Well, what happened is that when they poured strong nitric acid on that ion exchange column to take, you lose off the americium. The americium had decayed the resin beads of the ion exchange medium ‘til it was kind of an organic gunk. And that acid reacted with it, and that violent chemical reaction blew open that column. It breached the glovebox, and it sprayed chemicals and americium all over Mr. McCluskey. And he was taken to an initial decontamination spot onsite, and then downtown. But my job, when I got there, was to fend off the media. What had happened—as soon as this became knowledge, and the media got hold of it, here they come in helicopters, landing inside the secure area of 200 West. The guards were going nuts. I mean, here’s these people that are not supposed to be there! Eventually, they didn’t do anything but try to manage it and bring them over towards the building, the end of the building, where behind the building walls was this processing cell where everything had taken place. And they were standing there, I was standing there outside talking to the media, trying to explain what happened. And I had an alpha copy machine. I was standing there, showing them that there was no contamination on my feet, there was no contamination around. They were panning everywhere with their cameras, and they found a sodium hydroxide feed tank that had just a little bit of salt cake around the valve on the outside. Non-radioactive, nothing—I mean it was a nothing tank. And they filmed that like it was the biggest thing since sliced bread. And I remember I went through all this and—to find out that it made the national news. But I didn’t get to see it, because I was out there. [LAUGHTER] But it became a non-event. It was not a disaster, there was containment, there was—all the safety things worked as well as they should. The public was never in any harm. But that was a—
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] So, what happened, then, with the room, or whatever, where the incident took place?
Craig: Oh, they sealed that room off right away. And then it remained sealed up until very recently, when they went in and took it apart. And processed it for disposal.
Bauman: Did you know Mr. McCluskey at all?
Craig: No.
Craig: No. He was a chemical operator. I didn’t know who he was, hadn’t met him. But it was one of those things that—
Bauman: Right.
Craig: --Happened.
Bauman: Well, thanks, again for sharing that story. Glad we remembered to do that.
Craig: What was funny about it—I was trying to stand up. I used to be able to do this. I could stand there and hold my foot up and balance. And then I realized I couldn’t do that.
Bauman: Oh, watch the microphone there on your—
Craig: Oh, yeah.