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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Wanda Munn
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Wanda Munn on November 2<sup>nd</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with Wanda about her experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your name?</p>
<p>Wanda Munn: Wanda Iris Munn. W-A-N-D-A, last name M-U-N-N.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. When and where were you born, Wanda?</p>
<p>Munn: I was born in Brownwood, Texas, which is 17 miles from the geographic center of the state on September 13<sup>th</sup>, 1931. I was a Depression baby. So I had all that background and the joy of being a native Texan.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] How and why did you come to the area to—how and why did you come to work at Hanford?</p>
<p>Munn: Well, in technical terms, I’m a retread. I decided in midlife that I needed to finish a college degree, and I wanted to do it in some discipline that was really challenging and had great contribution capability for the planet and especially for my nearer community. When you make those decisions in your 40s, you have some knowledge of what you’re doing. And it was not an easy one for me to do, although I did an asset-liability framework in my mind of what I could do, what—I was a divorced mother of two children and had the responsibility for a declining mother and a dependent sister. So it was incumbent upon me to do this as quickly as possible. I only had about a year’s worth of actual college credit, most of it at the University of Texas, much earlier in life. When I decided that I was going to go for nuclear engineering, my friends and colleagues were actually horrified. They all could understand my going out to find myself somehow, but a technical degree like nuclear engineering was a real stunner to them. They were fond of saying to me, but Wanda, you’ll be over 40 by the time you get your degree! And my response was, I’m going to be over 40 anyhow. I’d rather have it with this degree than not have it with this degree. So because my prior material was not actually engineering, it had been medicine, I really had to start from scratch. I didn’t have any money and essentially sold everything but the children, and I couldn’t find a good buyer for them. [LAUGHTER] But I tried to do a four-year curriculum in three years and managed to do it. But it wasn’t easy, and I don’t recommend it. [LAUGHTER] Nevertheless, by the time I had finished my engineering degree at Oregon State University—I was living in Corvallis at the time—I had fallen in love with breeder reactors. This was in the mid-‘70s, and in the mid-‘70s, the big game in town as far as breeder technology was concerned was right here at Hanford. The Fast Flux Test Facility was in the process of construction at that time, and it was the most exciting technical thing on the horizon. I was delighted to be able to come here and interview for a position there. And that’s exactly what I did. I became a member of the Westinghouse Hanford team that was constructing that reactor. And never looked back. It was a wonderful choice for me. A very exciting time, building on the shoulders of the giants that we’d had here three decades earlier. And I have never regretted a day of it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Excellent. So, tell me what kinds of work did you do at FFTF?</p>
<p>Munn: I was—for the most part I was a cognizant engineer. Westinghouse had an excellent program at the time of rotational program where you had an opportunity, if you chose to do so, to work in three different aspects of the construction, design, startup process. I originally chose to go into plant operations. It seemed the most exciting to me and we were actually building the structure at that time. We—I did two other rotations which made it possible for me to go all over the site, actually. When I say the site, the site that I’m talking about right now is the FFTF site, what we refer to as the 400 Area. It did not include the old production reactors and the waste projects that were underway by Rockwell Hanford at that time. I had been the cognizant engineer for the reactor system for a variety of the other head compartment systems. For the longest period of time, my responsibility was the sodium systems, especially the sodium testing system and the gas sampling systems. During a long period of time, I also worked in nuclear safety, which, again, took me literally all over the plant. It was a very exciting time. The Fast Flux Test Facility was a flagship. There’s no question about it. It was the most advanced research and development reactor in the world. Not only at that time, but no one, to my knowledge, has exceeded the capability that we had, nor the type of long-term vision that we had at FFTF. It was a specialized group of men and women. More men than women, obviously. That, of course, was another aspect of the times. And if you want me to talk about that, I can a little bit. It may or may not be interesting to your audience.</p>
<p>Franklin: I would love for you to talk about that.</p>
<p>Munn: As anyone who lived through that era knows, a woman with a technical degree was not welcomed, nor did they actually have access to many portions of the engineering technology. There were a few. I was not what I think of as a first wave, but I was certainly the second wave. The first—whoa. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to—</p>
<p>Emma Rice: Overload the circuit?</p>
<p>Franklin: Overload the circuit.</p>
<p>Munn: Cause—yeah, I didn’t mean to overload anything. We—</p>
<p>Franklin: Did we—yeah, I was going to say—so we--</p>
<p>Vargas: No, we’re fine on the camera.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Vargas: It’s battery-powered.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, great.</p>
<p>Munn: Okay, very good, that’s fine. We just—I had as my mentors women, several of whom had had careers in the military. It was one of the few real engineering doors that were open to them at the time. And the woman who was the technical vice president for Westinghouse Hanford at the time was Lieutenant Colonel Arminta Harness, recently retired from the Air Force and NASA. She had worked on the Space Program and had known me as a result of our interaction in the Society of Women Engineers. We called her Minta. Minta was the last of the two-year-term national presidents for the Society of Women Engineers. And she and her colleagues had been among those who were not allowed to go into other forms of engineering in the public sector, because they had two routine answers that they heard from potential employers. One was, we don’t have a women’s restroom in our building. And the other, that I thought was probably closer to the truth for most of them was, we accept the fact that you could do this work—not can, but could do this work. However, if our clients knew that the work was done by a woman, it would never be accepted. Now, that probably had some ring of truth to it, but nevertheless, it was almost an insurmountable barrier for those women. But as anyone who knows anything about the social history of the United States knows, in the ’60s and early ‘70s, there was a real revolution in this regard. I think it’s a spin-off of what happened during World War II. It rather astonished people that women could take the jobs that men had left and had done such a fine job with them while the men were away from the country. But it was just assumed that when they returned, of course, they would return to their positions, whatever they were, and that the women would go back and put their aprons on. There’s nothing demeaning about that, except it was pretty infuriating for the women who had shown for five years that they could do these jobs and had done it very, very well, to be told now that—not that they—they would no longer accept that they couldn’t do it, but they were told that they should not do it. And therefore were not going to be allowed to. These were the women who had daughters who were not going to accept that as an answer. So as the social process began to move, and the legislative process began to bring itself to bear, more and more employers were finding it necessary to hire a certain number of women in order to fulfill the requirements of a government contract. This was both an enormous opportunity and a terrible detriment for those of us who were living in that time. That social action, as a matter of fact, was a part of the reason why I had decided to go into nuclear engineering. It was the first time the doors were really open to do that. But the two-edged sword was very easy to see if you stood back one step and looked at it. That is, these women were going into a milieu where the individuals who occupied those spaces had thousands of years of history behind them, of being world leaders, commanders of all they surveyed, and they had only two interactions, they—well, I take it back—three interactions they’d ever had with women throughout their entire lives from the time they were infants. The women with whom they had ever interacted had either been caretakers, sexual objects, or clerical employees. There were no other options. That was their interaction. Now, women had been doing reasonably well in small entrepreneurial businesses of their own for quite some time. But this was a different thing. This was high technology. The fact that people like Admiral Grace Hopper were making the beginnings of the Digital Age come to life were not seen by the general public. That was such an outlier; it wasn’t commonly known. But as those of us who came into this profession during this period of time learned very quickly, the people in power were all masculine, as one would expect. But they had no experience in how to deal with a female colleague. Females, yes. They had females around them and a basic part of their lives forever. But dealing with a woman on a level playing field in a technical way was not an experience that they even knew anyone who could relate to them. So the first thing they thought was, one: you’re only there because you got a leg-up; you’re being given a free ride because you happen to be female. And the other thing they thought is: and if the free ride gives you as much power as we’re afraid it’s going to, you’re going to take my job. So as we went in, we had to do two things. One, we had to prove we really were engineers; we really could do the work. And two, we had to prove to them that we were colleagues of theirs, not interlopers who—we all know the general story about how women got ahead in that time. We had to prove that wasn’t on the slate, and that we were not going to take their jobs. This ain’t easy. And I’m very, very glad that I was older at the time this occurred, because I’d been accustomed—you know, I’d grown up with these guys. I knew who they were. I knew what they were like, and I understood what their lives were. So, it wasn’t hard for me to understand the disturbance that was going on in their intellectual world. But younger women coming in at the time didn’t understand that. They saw this as being some kind of real repression of some sort—an attempt to keep them from fulfilling their potential. This, in my view, was not the case. I still see that quite often, that sometimes women in technical fields have a tendency to think that they’re playing the minority card. But that is, in my view, no longer true. The concerns that I had at that time have long since passed, and I’m glad that’s true.</p>
<p>Franklin: What was—I’d like to step back a bit, and thank you for that. I think that was a really illuminating aspect, and I might have you come lecture my US History class on women in the workplace at some point.</p>
<p>Munn: I’d be delighted to do that.</p>
<p>Franklin: What was—so, going—coming back to your motivation to go back to school, what was it—was there a moment, or when did you realize that you wanted to—when and why did you realize that you wanted to go back to school?</p>
<p>Munn: Okay, now this is really getting down in the weeds here, but that’s okay. The reason I left the University of Texas was to marry. [COUGH] Excuse me. As I think I mentioned. I was in pre-med. I had grown up with great ambitions. It had never occurred to me that there was much that I couldn’t do because I was female. It occurred to me that there were limits to what I could do because of my intellectual prowess, but I had always been drawn to medicine as a child, and had actually hoped to go into psychiatry. Which I’m glad I didn’t do. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is, I left the university to marry. I was 18. Because I had graduated from high school at 16. I had chosen pre-med because that’s what had been in my head for a long, long time. It was science, it was technical, it was beneficial: it was all the things that I wanted my life to be. But marriage interrupts that kind of thing. It takes you to a different kind of world, a different kind of setting. My then-husband was in the Air Force, and so I followed him in the Air Force. He was an enlisted man. He was from a working class blue collar family. No one in his family—a large family—no one in his family had ever gone to college. This made absolutely no sense to me—why one would not advance their education in a period and in a place where it was difficult, but it wasn’t all that difficult to find a way to pay tuition. You know, why not? There’s state schools all over the United States. Choose something and go there. So it was rather difficult on my then-husband, because he was not prepared for college work at all, and I was just fairly insistent that he was going to do that. So he had a great deal of remedial work to do, and this essentially meant that I had spent about seven years of my life trying to assist him in his studies, and essentially support the family in doing so. He did finish not only his bachelor’s degree but also his master’s degree and was in the education field. During all that period of time, I was essentially doing professional work of one sort or another for individuals who held authoritative positions, but whose shoes I could have filled easily. I did not have what I call my union card: I didn’t have a college degree. Further, I did not have the technical training to do the kinds of science and technology that really and truly interested me. So in the ‘70s, I found myself the divorced mother of two, as I said, and with considerable family responsibility. I knew that I could not continue to support what is now a rather large number of people on the salaries that I was able to get as a glorified administrative assistant. By the way, there’s been a change of terms. In that period, the term administrative assistant did not mean a secretary, although my secretarial and clerical skills were very high. That was not the real reason I had the post. I actually was an assistant to the person who held the title, whether it was physicians, accountants, insurance people, academics—that’s what I did. But there’s a factor of about two, sometimes three, in the monthly salary of those individuals and in mine. So you don’t have to be a follower of Dr. Einstein to be able to work out the math. You know, it doesn’t take very long. I needed a professional salary. And besides that, intellectually, I had been spinning my wheels for 20 years. And I was tired of it. I was absolutely tired of it. I wanted to be doing something that was challenging me, and in which my contribution was a contribution. Not a contribution to the person who was doing the contribution. It isn’t that I wanted to be recognized for that; I’ve always been of the school that it’s amazing what you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit for it. I didn’t care who got the credit for it. I just wanted to be on the ground floor. That’s all.</p>
<p>Franklin: So for all the degrees—the things you could have chosen in what we now call the STEM fields that would make a solid difference, why nuclear engineering?</p>
<p>Munn: Can you think of anything else that’s more challenging and more imaginative? I can’t. At the time, it took me a while to measure down to engineering. I started with thinking of medicine, still. But when I realized the amount of time and the amount of money that was going to be necessary for me to do that, not to mention the time—the concentrated daily schedule that’s necessary for that kind of thing, given the family duties that I had—it seemed like an impossibility. So I had to rule out medicine. Besides which, it would have taken me seven years to get to the point where I could actually get to hands-on anything. That—I didn’t have that much time. I had to do this in—and I had no money. As a result of that, I really had to do something in a much shorter time. And it seemed to me that three years was all I was going to be able to handle. Now, when you take that away and you start looking at the other science things, the biggie at the time also was computer technology. We were just getting out of the room full of server stages, and every college campus finally did have a computer center where you could go in the dead of night and run your deck which you had typed. [LAUGHTER] It was still unknown to the general public. I happened to own the first 35 that was sold at the Oregon State University bookstore—the first handheld computer. [LAUGHTER] It’s still on my desk, as a matter of fact. But that was—it was an exciting time then, but I—what little I knew about computer technology, I knew the detailed precision that was necessary to do this. I’d already known—had the experience of trying to make a computer do what I wanted it to do instead of what I had told it to do. And knowing that the misplacement of one character could demolish the efforts of a whole deck just did me in. I couldn’t handle that kind of concept. I knew I would not be a good computer engineer. Too much real detail oriented in that. Being a big picture kind of person makes a difference. So I set that aside. The other thing that really seizes the imagination is something that so many people don’t think about—that is the basic requirement for any life anywhere is not food, clothing and shelter. It’s even more basic than that. It’s energy. If you don’t have adequate energy, there is no way you can do any of the things that you have to do to survive. The energy picture right there right then was easily as muddled as it is now, and possibly even more. I had looked—thought about mining, too. It just really sounded dull to me. Just dull. I’d been raised in Texas. Petroleum engineering was a big thing at the time. Oh, for crying out loud, you look around in the dirt, you find oil, you think you might have oil, you drill for oil, you either have it or you don’t have it. Then you either have success or not and you move onto another well. That just—that didn’t sound like much of a thrill to me, either. So long as I couldn’t be there to watch the well come in, what’s the point? This gets—there was, of course, a great deal of hoo-ha about solar, wind, ocean current—all those things were very big in the human imagination at the time. I kept thinking, really? No. Not really. Excellent for specific purposes. Useful? Oh, my, yes. Pursue it by all means. But the biggie? No. I already knew that there were only two concentrations of energy that could possibly serve an industrial society. And I’m all for industrial societies. And I knew that that was carbon-based fuels and nuclear. Well, let’s see. Which is the most interesting of those? Gosh, it didn’t take me long to figure that out. So, to me, it was just a pyramid. You start at the bottom and you work up, and the star of the fleet as far as I was concerned was nuclear engineering. How fascinating can you get?! My word. Totally unknown until less than a few decades before. And now the most incredible amount of power. Energy that we’ve never even been able to imagine, we’ve got it, we know how to control it, we can do whatever we need to do with it. With breeder reactors—hey. The only place I know you can make enormous amounts of electricity and still be creating more fuel at the same time. Don’t know anything else that does that. Highly imaginative, and not getting good press at the time, either.</p>
<p>Franklin: I wanted—and I think you might have answered some of the question, my next question. But you mentioned that your friends and colleagues were terrified that you chose nuclear engineering.</p>
<p>Munn: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why was that?</p>
<p>Munn: Too hard. Underwater basket weaving, popular psychology, you know, art, the many of the social sciences, the things that do good things for society but don’t require that much in the way of focused knowledge of some sort. That’s—you know, it takes a lot of work, but it takes a different kind of brainpower. We really live in two worlds, you know. C.P. Snow pointed that out in his books quite some time ago. We live in an enumerate world and an innumerate world. There’s nothing wrong with either of those worlds, it’s just that they don’t communicate well. And a significant number of people are math-phobic. Have been most of their lives and probably will be most of their lives. But the only way you can explain most things in science is numerically. So you either see that as a form of language, or you don’t. And I was able to see it as a form of language. Please don’t misinterpret me; I am not a good mathematician. But I do see the mathematic relationships in things. I see the mathematics in color spectra. I see the mathematics in music. I see the mathematics in what we’re doing here right now. And many people don’t see the relationship between these technologies and mathematics.</p>
<p>Franklin: You had mentioned earlier some of the challenges that women of your generation—or in the generation—the time at which you entered the workforce, you mentioned some of the challenges that women were facing. Did you—were there any of those challenges specifically at FFTF, or can you kind of describe how that was to be a woman at this newly—this brand new reactor?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. One of the things that was very frustrating about it was that we did have a number of women who, in their lexicon, were breaking barriers, and I was glad they were there. They were doing semi-technical jobs. Many of them non-professional jobs, but nevertheless requiring interaction with the hands-on people who were on the floor putting things together, and doing cool things, like being able to stand over the open reactor before it was filled and feel how far it was from one wall to the other. Those are the kinds of things people don’t get to do. I got to do those things. It was wonderful. But we had a couple of things. Women had never been taught anything but dress codes. And knowing how to dress in a true working engineering facility was not a common thing. We would, for example, one of our Society of Women Engineers sections when I was visiting had a woman come and talk—a popular topic of the day was dressing for work. Dressing for work essentially meant dressing like the woman who was speaking to us who was an attorney. Now, the toughest physical barriers that she faced in her workplace were the carpet in the courtroom, trying not to slip down on marble floors. This is not the challenge that we faced in the workplace that we were talking about. So clothing alone became a big item for many of our young women who were coming in. They had been taught to dress attractively and a little bit sexy, you know. Always that little bit of come-on. And it was a bit of a challenge to convince them, first of all, that if you were going to be working in a plant, you don’t even consider wearing a skirt. I’m sorry, you just don’t. You’re not going to be able to walk across the grids. You are not going to be able to climb ladders. You are not going to be able to go where your male colleagues have to go to do their job. If you’re going to do this job—you can’t do it while you’re worrying about your femininity. I’m sorry. You can do that if you want with color. We lucked out there, didn’t we? It’s okay for women to wear any kind of color they want to. So you can be very feminine in your clothing, in terms of color. But I’m sorry, the long tresses that are so popular today? You’re not going to go in a working plant with this lovely, flowing hair that looks so good in a commercial, but is rotten when you’re walking around operating machinery. You don’t want to get pulled into that headfirst. No kidding. So—and there’s the business of the shoes. Even after my plant—the plant that the FF team put together—even after that was completed, in order to get there, if I didn’t want to walk two-and-a-half miles around the plant on concrete, I was going to have to walk across crushed rock. This is an operating plant. You know, we’re not dressed up for Sunday best. We’re working here. So why do you have on those heels? You’re going to have to walk across crushed rock. Why would you do that? I know it looks nicer with this particular outfit—fluff, fluff. But I’m sorry; that’s not why you’re here. So I had—the woman that I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite mentors, Arminta Harness—had what she called the Ten Commandments for a Woman Engineer. Most of them were humorous, but none to me was more humorous than what I believe was number seven, which said, Thou shalt not be sexy at the office, even if thy cup runneth over. I thought that was extremely humorous, and it still remains my favorite commandment to young women going into engineering. Thou shalt not—that’s—wherever else you want to be sexy, you may, but please don’t bring that to the workplace. So I have had one or two confrontations with—in each case, they were a technician or a runner for some of the construction people—but young women who insisted on wearing provocative t-shirts, especially. I’ve made a couple of them rather angry by telling them that I spent a great deal of my life trying to teach the men who are working here that I am their colleague, I’m an engineer, we’re building something together here. What I may think of you or what you may think of me otherwise has no bearing on why we are here. We’re being paid to do this very important job, and it will be done right. Don’t distract these guys with something like this while I have to come along behind them and tell them that this has to be done in a different way. And they’re not listening to me. They’ve still got you hung up in their mind. Tsk. Don’t do that. Those are—they seem a little strange now, given what transpires in today’s workplace and given the clothing that we have now. Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed as an individual that we as women have finally been allowed by the males who occupied those positions to allow us to use the capabilities that we have to perform the same kinds of functions, and yet you have—it never occurred to me that dress, as we see it now, was going to devolve into this, and to me devolve is the appropriate word. Never occurred to me that we would get so far afield from keeping our eye on the ball and staying focused on the task at hand when we’re in professional positions. But, hey. The world moves on. Brave new world.</p>
<p>Franklin: Indeed. Were there any—did you face any kind of discrimination or attitude from your male colleagues at FFTF at first? Or was it—it sounds like you’ve described a pretty congenial relationship. Were there any instances that stand out?</p>
<p>Munn: Well, there were one or two. But they only happened once. When they happened, I felt it was my responsibility both as an older female worker and as a real professional person to clear the air and make it very plain—not try to send double messages ever. And I think—when you’re dealing with human—rational human beings, you don’t have to keep doing the same thing over and over again. All you have to do is clear the air, make the straight statement that needs to be made, and you’re fine. And I have had to tell a couple of my—of people in my management chain, look, the last thing I want to be is where you are. At the time, it was assumed that a woman with a technical degree and an MBA was a really hot ticket. So of course, naturally, what the idea was—came to work at FFTF, and a year later started working at the Joint Center for Graduate Study, which is the origin of the facility we’re in right now. It’s now morphed into Washington State University Tri-Cities. It’s wonderful. But at the time, there were four regional colleges that had been pulled together, interestingly, by one of the people that was very instrumental in that was a man named Leland Berger, who was just—we just lost Lee last week. He was one of the people who were instrumental in putting together the conglomerate of universities to make it possible for the people who were working on the Hanford Site at the time to be able to pursue graduate degrees. It was a difficult proposition for someone who came here, especially if they were going to be a long-term worker, individual leader, here on the Hanford Site. They’re very far removed from any campus. So doing master’s work was very difficult to do. The whole concept of the individuals at the time who put together this consortium of universities was so that people could live here and, sure, it takes longer because you’re working full-time, but evening classes that are taught by fully-accredited universities made it possible for us to do that. So my MBA’s from the University of Washington. Go Huskies! Sorry about that.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s okay.</p>
<p>Munn: Nevertheless—I’m not forgiven. Nevertheless, it was a concerted—a really concerted program, and it was almost impossible to take more than six hours a term, because you’re working full time. And at the time, we were in acceptance, testing and startup at FFTF, which meant that my days were easily ten hours long, and I don’t mean four tens. [LAUGHTER] I mean, work days were easily more than ten hours—ten hours or more. And whenever we had actual tests running, when we had things that were going on 24/7, quite often through the holidays and through weekends, we worked. But that meant classes were relegated to evenings only, and you didn’t have any spare time to do a lot of off-campus work. So we did have a challenge in that regard, but I think most of the people who were trying to do all of those things at the same time recognized that the benefits outweighed the problems that we were having to face in doing it. Scheduler problems are very hard. I was a fortunate person in being able to get by with about five hours’ sleep a night. Did that for a long, long time without any real detriment. But you do burn out on that after a while. We’ve been fortunate in so many ways in this region. The academic opportunities that we’ve had, despite the major problems that we have—not the least of which was isolation, geographically. Not isolation, but harder to get from here to there than it is a lot of places.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm. Can you describe—</p>
<p>Munn: Did I answer your question? I’m sorry.</p>
<p>Franklin: No—yes.</p>
<p>Munn: Good, all right.</p>
<p>Franklin: You did, and then you actually answered another one I was going to ask you.</p>
<p>Munn: Another eight or ten. Yeah, sorry.</p>
<p>Franklin: So, can you describe a typical work day at the FFTF?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. Typical work day. Up at 5:30 or 6:00, something like that. Breakfast for the kid or kids still at home. Out the door before 7:00, because the traffic was terrible. The traffic was not just the work folks going out to Hanford; we also had three private sector commercial nuclear plants being built at the same time. So the construction traffic going out to the Hanford Site was pretty scary. You needed to take plenty of time, because heaven knows what was going to happen on the way. By 7:15, needed to be through security. Security is not often a time-consuming thing, because you do it every day and it’s routine. But you know that anything that you’re carrying has to go through the x-ray, and you know that you, yourself, have to go through x-ray. You are likely to need steel-toed shoes whether you take them on or off—whether you put them on at work or whether you put them on beforehand depends on whether you want to take off heavy boots and walk through barefoot or not. And it depends on whether or not there’s any real hang-up on the way in. Usually there isn’t. But, nevertheless, you have to take time to assure that you’re going through security or not. Then the place that you parked was never—it was impossible to park in a place that was near to the security gate that you had to go through. So, there’s a little bit of a walk to get to security, and then from security, there’s a little bit of a walk to where you’re going to be. You’re expected to be in your workplace and working at 7:30. Not just arriving at the facility at 7:30. So if you’re going to get coffee or if you’re going to have to wait a little bit for your computer to boot up, any of those things, you need to be in your office by 7:15, because at 7:30 you are truly expected to be ready to go. Much of the management in my part of the world was ex-Navy nuclear trained, and precision, as far as time was concerned, was important to them. So you learned fairly early that it became important. You didn’t have the enormous amount of flex hours that I observe people having now. That just didn’t exist. By 7:30, you had either documents that you were having to deal with on your desk, or you were dealing with the material that was being incoming by that time on your computer. If you had a computer on your desk, interestingly, it was—I had been onsite for probably five, six years before engineers actually had computers on their desks. That was—we’re so accustomed to that now, it’s interesting to think back, how—in my lifetime--comparatively recently, it’s been. And I was one of the few people who was ranting and raving about that, because most of the new engineers who were just coming out of school had just learned—they’d just been computer-trained. This first batch of computer engineers who were computer-trained at school. The others were completely on the ground for those. So there were very few literate people in terms of computers around in the mid-‘70s. There just weren’t a bunch. We had access to the computer facility down the hall, but you had to get computer time much the way you did in college. There was only one real server, and you had to go there to do what you needed to do. One of the first things I did in the circles that I moved in—the engineering circles I moved in—the first thing that we did at FFTF was the Plan of the Day. We called it the POD, and the Plan of the Day was usually at 8:00, which meant you had time to get your hardhat and walk from wherever you were to wherever the POD was being held. And I took—I had a hardbound journal about this size that I kept notes in. You had to keep notes, because too much was happening in too many different ways and it affected you in one way or another. You need to remember who said that and when it was going to be done. So you took your journal, you put on your hardhat. You had to have your hardhat everywhere you went. I’m sorry about the hairdo. That’s tough. You had hardhat hair if you were working onsite. POD could take anywhere from half hour to 45 minutes. They didn’t like to tie people up, because they wanted—the object was to try to get you to your workplace with your instructions for the day by 8:30. But that’s sometimes hard to do. Nevertheless, Plan of the Day, POD, was first thing. After the POD—not everybody attended. It was rare for me not to attend, for one reason or another, whatever position I was in, something was usually happening and I was required to be there. Certainly, after I went into nuclear safety it was a daily thing. I didn’t have a choice. I needed to be there, had to be there. And the plan of the day often—the individuals who were way up the management chain from those of who were there, quite often would appear to give specific instructions about some aspect of what we were doing at that time which was very crucial. We all were aware of what the timeline needed to be. Project management was key to how things were done in that particular facility. And they were done on time and in budget. There wasn’t any question about it. It didn’t matter what it took, you stayed and did it. And it was a team effort. I was never privy to any discussion about doing it any other way. This was an enormously devoted team. So, after the Plan of the Day, you had your marching orders for the day; you knew what you had to do. And you went to wherever the action was for you that day, and you did that. We took a half-hour for lunch. Depending on where you were, for a brief period of time, you had access to cafeteria food. We had a cafeteria in the 300 Area when most of the planning and engineering was going on there. We had a cafeteria for a short period of time in the 400 Area during construction. It didn’t continue. As many people brown bagged as not. Almost all of us had a lunch pail, and it was not uncommon for an entire group, an engineering group, to remain at their desks and working through the lunch hour—through the lunch half-hour. It was expected that you take a 15-minute break for coffee, twice during the day. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It was expected, otherwise, that you’d be at your desk, or if you were going to leave your workplace, in every engineering group I was in, we had a sign-in/sign-out board at the door of our group structure, wherever that was. And you always wrote where you were going. If you weren’t going to be obtainable at your desk, then you had to be reachable at wherever you were going. So you signed out at the time, and when you signed back in, you erased it. I got tired of writing Reactor Facility when I was going to the reactor, and started writing BRT. This was an enigma for about a week, until finally my immediate manager couldn’t stand it anymore, and he said, all right, Wanda, we know where you’re going but what does BRT mean? It meant Big Round Thing. But it became a common usage. We were going out to the big round thing. We were very fond of the big round thing. We were going to make sure it was built right and that it operated right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what is the big round thing?</p>
<p>Munn: The big round thing is the containment dome in which the reactor—the Fast Flux Test Reactor itself was located. It’s quite a structure. Probably the safest place that I could find myself. I can’t think of a safer place to be, actually, than in that particular facility. I was—there was never any trepidation about going there, either in terms of construction or machine activity, or in terms of nuclear safety. Never concerned.</p>
<p>Franklin: How did you transition into nuclear safety?</p>
<p>Munn: How did I--?</p>
<p>Franklin: How did you trans—you mentioned that you had started during construction and that later on you started working in nuclear safety.</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, well, it’s seamless.</p>
<p>Franklin: Seamless, okay.</p>
<p>Munn: Absolutely seamless, yes. During the first years, we did not have an engineering building where the engineers themselves could work and stay. It was all constructing the facility itself. It’s a very exciting time, because just moving the huge vessels that had to go inside that containment building had to be barged up the river, offloaded here in North Richland, and taken by tractor across—directly across—the desert to FFTF. Because they weighed so much that it was impossible to do it in any other way. They were in a J sling, transported across. And the lamps and cranes were some of the largest and most spectacular in the world at the time. Those lifts were—placing those huge vessels was a sight to see if one has not been privy to that, then you’ve missed a very exciting—it’s slow. It’s like molasses. Nothing happens quickly. But it was done in a remarkably precise way. But it was entirely seamless. If you were in engineering at FFTF, then as the actual operation of the facility proceeded, your location and what your responsibility was likely changed as well.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. When did the FFTF shut down?</p>
<p>Munn: Shut down in the late ‘80s. Only operated for about a year. We went critical for the first time in early 1980. And we did our first power demonstration later that year. So 1980 was the key year for startup at FFTF. You bear in mind, we didn’t operate the way a commercial power plant operates, because we were a research facility. And what we had going on inside of the reactor was experimentation. We were proving that all of the materials and all of the equipment that were necessary to operate a fast reactor could be done safely and within the bounds of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing agreements. So that this could move from a research and development technology to a commercial technology. That’s what we were doing at the time. So we started up and shut down according to what the tests were in the reactor at that time. It was very important that those materials have the length of exposure and the density of exposure that was necessary in order for us to show how that particular equipment or that particular material reacted under the worst possible conditions.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And so how long did the facility operate for as a research facility?</p>
<p>Munn: It operated about a decade.</p>
<p>Franklin: About a decade.</p>
<p>Munn: Uh-huh, yes. And it was closed down in increments. There were a number of individuals and organizations that tried very hard to persuade the Department of Energy that the Fast Flux Test Facility should be continued to be operated as a producer of medical isotopes. It was one of the few facilities that could do that, because of the enormous range of flux that we were able to provide to the material inside. Although it had not been built specifically for that purpose, we were able to show that we could have produced a number of very unusual, very rare, very much needed isotopes. And could pay for about 70% to 80% for the operating costs of the FFTF. The response that we got back was, no, we won’t consider that unless the entire cost could be covered. This didn’t make any sense to me, because the many—there was no other facility in the DOE complex that paid its own way completely. You know, that just—that wasn’t why. The organization was funded by Congress. But we never quite understood the politics. There was general consensus among the folks that I knew that the shutdown was a political activity and not really and truly a technical one. Because we had fulfilled our mission. The original mission was to prove, as I said, that the materials and machinery that’s necessary to operate an advanced reactor could be—could meet NRC requirements. We’d proved that we could do that. And what we were attempting to do was to convince the establishment that there were other extremely beneficial uses for this machine and that we should continue to run it. But since the decision had been made not to pursue the advanced reactor concept in the US—I really shouldn’t get into that, because I get pretty rabid when I think about the terrible destruction that was done to the nuclear technology in the United States during that particular period. But that’s water under the bridge and can’t be undone. But because that advanced program had been shut down, and we had fulfilled the original purpose, then the position was, you’re toast.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was this work taken on in the private sector, then? Because you mentioned—</p>
<p>Munn: It would have been taken on in the private sector. Now, what we do in this country is a little odd. We have over 35,000 procedures a day in the United States that require manufactured isotope of some kind. We get over 90% of those isotopes from other reactors outside the United States. So, we in our medical profession and maintaining the health of the nation rely heavily on other nations’ ability to produce these and to transmit them to us in a period of time where they’re still useful. Because when you’re talking about medical isotopes, you’re talking about short-lived isotopes. They have to be—they have to give off their energy quickly in a precise way in order for it to be useful. If you’re going to keep them for long periods of time, the high density of energy that you need has dissipated because of the half-life of isotopes. Now, we could talk about that for a long time, too. But the sad thing is that we could have had that facility operating right up to this day, in my personal opinion, producing isotopes. And we opted not to do it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you—or are you willing to speculate on the political motivations for shutting the program down?</p>
<p>Munn: I think the political motivation is—was then, and still is—more fear than any other single thing. The most commonly misunderstood physical phenomenon in this world, of which I’m aware, is nuclear radiation. We have—we, being the technical community and the nuclear world—have allowed other people to define our terms and define our reality. It was a serious mistake. We spent the first 20 or 30 years of our existence telling people that this was an extremely technical science they shouldn’t worry their heads about; we’ll take care of it. And then when you’re dealing with an educated public—and we do have an educated public here—you’ve sold them short. And you’ve allowed them not to be learning on the same curve you’re learning on. That—to me, that should have happened. And we have technical people arguing about whether or not one additional millirem or gray or whatever unit you want to use is more dangerous than it actually is. And how one of anything can begin a huge cascade of cancer in anybody—this is all statistical garbage. It’s not true. It cannot be. But that aside, you know, we send people to policy-making positions—we elect people to policy-making positions who attempt to do a good job but who don’t know how things like radiation work. And when we have folks with concrete financial agenda going to them saying, these frightening things are happening to people and they’re happening because of this dreadful thing we call radiation, and it needs to be stopped. Then how can you expect a policy to allow an advanced technology to continue when the basic response to the word is fear? We’ve done it to ourselves to some degree. But we’ve allowed policy to continue when it just should not be—perhaps I’m overstating the case, but I don’t believe so. I truly believe fear of radiation is what has hamstrung humanity’s best hope for a continuation of adequate energy supply indefinitely.</p>
<p>Franklin: What about the linking between nuclear and weapons, that was strengthened—started in World War II and strengthened throughout the Cold War? Do you think that might have a role in people’s perceptions of nuclear power?</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, of course it does. One of my favorite comments is the one made by someone much more observant than I that if the electric chair had been invented before the electric light, we would have no electricity today. And I think that may be an apt comparison. We also have a tendency to believe that the effects of that—of nuclear weapons—are much more long-lasting than they actually have been shown to be. But that’s not a good headline, you know? Why bother with that? That doesn’t raise anybody’s ire and doesn’t even start a good argument.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s not quite as bad as you thought, but it’s still pretty terrible.</p>
<p>Munn: It’s pretty terrible, yeah, there’s no question. So are wars of all kinds. I wouldn’t want to be in Syria right now, either.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. When did you retire from the Hanford Site?</p>
<p>Munn: I left with Westinghouse. I always said that I would. The political and managerial aspect of what transpired changed rather radically when Westinghouse took over the large responsibility for the full site in 1986. Prior to that time, Westinghouse Hanford had been a rather small organization. We only had—what—3,000 or 4,000 employees, and we concentrated in the 400 Area. We were research and development. When the bid was made for the larger contract that covered all of the Site and took in the waste sites, the old production reactors, took on all of the legacy of the World War II—of the original Manhattan Project, a great deal changed in how things were operating. Then, later, in that period when we—when the decision was made to go back to having multiple contractors rather than just one or two, then it became very uncertain in my mind what one was likely to be able to expect to do to fulfill their job requirements. And I had said, always, I came here for research and development on advanced reactors. I have been a part of that throughout our ability to do it. That’s now gone; Westinghouse is leaving the area, so am I. So that means that the end of 1995, I retired and ran for city council.</p>
<p>Franklin: And did you win? Did you make it to city council? Were you city council?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. Yeah, I was. The next four years, which was a very interesting period in Richland city planning, as well. That’s another whole program. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you tell me about some of your professional service? I see that you are a member of Health Physics chapter and a member of the American Nuclear Engineers and a member of the Society of Women Engineers.</p>
<p>Munn: Yes, I’m a fellow of SWE—of the Society of Women Engineers. In 1976, when I became a senior in the department at Oregon State University, I was carrying an incredible load, trying to get through that last third year. But we had been, for a couple of years, we’d had a group of females—female engineering students—on campus that we had wanted to morph into a student section of the Society of Women Engineers. I was elected chair of that group, and that year we did become a full-fledged student member—full-fledged student section. So I was the initiating chair of that student section. The same year, the fellow who had chaired the American Nuclear Society’s already very well-established student section just made the announcement, oh, Wanda will take this for me next year, because we’re having a regional conference and there’s a whole lot that needs to be done. So Wanda can do that. Oh, good. So I was chair of both student sections on the Oregon State campus during the ’76-’77 year. And we did, as I said, we chartered the SWE section and we held the regional meeting for the ANS section. And somehow I managed to survive that. I’m not sure how. But when I came to—I came here—the Joint Center for Graduate Study had an interesting program that allowed an internship during summer for students. And so, as an, actually, still as a sophomore in the summer of ’76, I was here as an intern working in the FFTF offices at the time. And that was the year that this professional section, the Eastern Washington section of SWE was chartered as well. So I happened to be here during that charter. So for all intents and purposes, I’m a charter member of the current section. The Health Physics Society—in both organizations, I have been active throughout my life, both locally, regionally, and at the national level. I was inducted as a fellow of the Society of Women Engineers a few years ago. And I’ve served as—on the nominating committee and a couple of the other national committees for that organization. The American Nuclear Society—I’ve held all of the local offices and still remain in the position of—I’m called the historian. It’s kind of an honorific sort of thing. But I’m still very active in the local ANS section. I’ve chaired the National Environmental Sciences division for ANS. And I’ve received the national award for public information from ANS, along with a couple of other accolades of one type or another. The Health Physics Society, I’ve never belonged to the national organization, but stay closely connected to the membership and to the local Columbia chapter of Health Physics. The two—the American Nuclear Society and Health Physics Society overlap each other in interests so strongly that it’s almost impossible to be busy in one and not busy in another. So those three organizations have been a constant in my life since the mid-‘70s.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Can you talk a bit about—I understand that you were invited to—that you’ve had your hands in both helping with the NIOSH and the EEOICPA.</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so I was wondering if you could both tell us what those are and then kind of talk about your involvement. And I guess we’ll start with the NIOSH.</p>
<p>Munn: Okay, NIOSH I think is an acronym that I think is familiar to most people in the technical world. It’s actually the National Institute for Safety and Health that applies to everybody who works—has a workplace—in the United States. NIOSH was chosen to be the governing agency—I should say the administrative agency for a bill that was signed into law during the very latest days of the Clinton Administration. It was put together as a legislation to compensate workers in all aspects of the Department of Energy’s weapons sites during the entire period from the 1943 early activities here to the present. One thinks of the weapons complex as being the three major DOE sites: Hanford, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge. The truth of the matter is there are over 230 sites that are covered by this particular act, because there were institutions that ranged from just over a mom-and-pop shop to Bethlehem Steel that were involved in one way or another in what we term the weapons complex. PANTEX in Amarillo is a huge facility as well. The Portsmouth facility. There are—you know, it—as I said, it goes on more than 230 sites. The concept here was that there were people who had been seriously—whose health had been adversely affected by their work in these communities. And of course, there is some of that that’s true. But the real impetus of this bill was to compensate people who had cancer as a result of radiation exposures that they had suffered. Now, one needs to begin, from my perspective, by understanding that there is no evidence of a statistically significant increase in cancers in any of these populations. And yet our Congress says—states that they believe folks have been dying like flies as a result of having been exposed to the radiation that they worked in. This organization was then, in accordance with the law, put together during the first years—first two years of this century. And President George Bush was charged with the responsibility of putting together an advisory board for this group as required by law. So, that was done in 2001. Our first meeting—I was requested by the White House to be a member of that group. I accepted, and became one of the original members of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. This is supposed to be the citizens’ advisory portion of the energy employees act with the long name to which you referred.</p>
<p>Franklin: EEOICPA?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. Energy Employees Occupational Illness and—</p>
<p>Franklin: Compensation?</p>
<p>Munn: Compensation Act, right?</p>
<p>Franklin: Something like that, yeah. We missed the P, but—</p>
<p>Munn: Yeah, that’s—I’m not sure. That activity has gone on now from that time to the present. I’ve been a member of it during that entire time. It has now distributed more than 13 billion, with a B, dollars to people across the United States who have a situation where they both have cancer and they also have worked at one of the complexes for more than 250 days. And this is not the appropriate place for me to state my real concerns about that. But I do not believe that this is a reasonable approach. The local newspapers are—I shouldn’t say newspapers—the local newspaper is a member of a national newspaper chain. And that newspaper chain just last year or the year before ran a series of articles about this particular action with a great deal of really, really heartrending material about people’s lives that have been ravaged by cancer. And there’s no way one can shortchange that. But I take issue with the assertion that those things are a result of workplace when there’s no evidence to show that’s the case. Nevertheless, that’s a continuing concern, and one of the frightening things that people continue to say over and over again with respect to our technology.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and/or living in Richland during the Cold War and afterwards?</p>
<p>Munn: It was, I like to remind people, a cold war. The purpose of all that was the assumption that if you work from a position of absolute strength, that you can deter the use of the weapons that we don’t want to use by someone else. And that if we’re assured, ourselves, we’re not going to be first strikers, then it gives us a feeling of protecting ourselves by being strong. That is a reality of the time in which we live. It can be changed in a number of ways. And politically, probably will morph into other things continually throughout human history for as long as human history continues. But being here during that time, was—would seem frightening to many people. It was never frightening to me; quite to the contrary, it was interesting in the extreme. But you must bear in mind that I actually was not involved in the nuclear proliferation issues. Quite to the contrary, the technology that I was dealing with was utilizing plutonium—we used mixed oxide fuels—was utilizing plutonium as a fuel to create electricity and to make nuclear isotopes—medical isotopes. And it used the plutonium and the other weapons materials as a fuel to create energy that we needed domestically and at the same time generate more fuel that can be used to continue to generate electricity ad infinitum. That seems like pie in the sky to so many people, but it is not pie in the sky. It’s a technology over which we have control, and we can do it. So, the way the weapons program is viewed is not something I can truly address appropriately, simply because that wasn’t a part of my life. I didn’t—I wasn’t horrified by it. I felt that it was a necessary part of the historic time in which we were living. I agree that we’ve done a good job of ramping that down in terms of nuclear arsenals. But the concept of not maintaining strength in that regard is extremely unwise to me. Being in Richland is living in a cocoon. It’s very much like living in an advanced university community. The people with whom you interact and the things about which you talk, the way your lives are lived is connected to, but not the same as, what transpires outside the cocoon. Because it is so densely populated with people and with ideas that are concentrated on a limited number of activities. So I’ve never felt anything but extremely safe in Richland. I have a hard time getting my mind around the fears that we—in my efforts to provide information to folks, I’m continually running across people like educators and physicians, especially in the Seattle area and in the heavy-population corridor on the west side of the state who are fearful of driving down Highway 240, for absolutely no reason except that they think there’s a mysterious ray of some kind that reaches us all. And they can’t understand what I’m talking about when I say, hey, the heaviest radiation you’re getting is—you’re absolutely right, it’s from the biggest reactor. We can’t control it; it’s completely out of our hands. You call it the Sun; I just call it a great big reactor. Yeah, that’s where you’re getting your radiation. Whether you’re driving down the highway that surrounds the Site, or whether you’re on the beach in Waikiki. It doesn’t really and truly matter. You’re being irradiated.</p>
<p>Franklin: Or if you fly on a plane, right, you’re exposed to higher background—</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
<p>Munn: If you live in Denver, hey. Or I can move from Richland to Spokane and almost double my external exposure. Because we have very low exposure here in Richland, contrary to popular belief. But the sad thing about this entire time, from my perspective, is the facts don’t matter. What people feel in their gut matters. That’s what’s driving us as human beings; apparently, it always has. Living here is a true experience. I’ve enjoyed it. I’m always surprised when people say there’s nothing to do in Richland. My problem is—probably because I’m continually invested in technical activities of some sort—my problem is, I don’t have enough time on my calendar. But it’s true. It’s an interesting, interesting place to live for a technical person, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. It’s been a fascinating period of life. I’m very fortunate to have lived to be an ancient old lady. Very long in the tooth. And unfortunate that so many of my colleagues have already gone to their reward. Many of us feel highly rewarded, however, for having been here, having been a part of history. I have no feel for how much of this history is going to be written and how much of it’s going to be accurate. We all know, history’s written by the people who write history. And that’s very rarely the technical folks. So, what you’re doing with these oral histories, in my mind, is exceedingly important, not just to the technical community, but I think it’s very important for us now and in the future to hear the actual words of the people who were there. Remember the old—you may be too young to remember the <em>You Are There</em> little snippets of history that we used to get in the movie houses from time to time, and later on television. It’s nice, I think, to see the folks who were there, hear their words, and get some feel of the perception they had of their reality. It’s been a great ride, all the way from Model As to joint activities and the space crafts.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, Wanda, thank you so much for such an enlightening and well-delivered interview. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Munn: Thank you. It’s been a wonderful, wonderful time to be here. Appreciate you, appreciate what Washington State University, and the national system are doing. It’s been a delight. And thank you to the long-gone Westinghouse Hanford Company. That was—and the Fast Flux Test Facility was and will always be an outstanding member of the research and development community. A facility like no other. We were very honored to be a part of it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much.</p>
<p>Munn: Thank you.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/RXmA9oJF9IU">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
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01:35:43
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
300 Area
B Reactor
K Basins
K Reactor
T Plant
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
late 1970s-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1980-1995
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Minta
Admiral Grace Hopper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Wanda Munn
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Wanda Munn conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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11-02-2016
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2018-31-1: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Relation
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<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/24">Wanda Munn, Oral History Metadata</a>
300 Area
Atomic Energy Commission
B Reactor
B Reactor Museum Association
Bechtel
BRMA
Cold War
Department of Energy
Flood
Floods
Hanford
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K Basins
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K-Basin
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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
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Safety
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F08e2a82e15be87724cc35f3cc14a3127.mp4
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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Jerome Martin
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p class="MsoNormal">Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1<sup>st</sup>, 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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jerome Martin: Yes, I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe it was earlier.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Not originally.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: The first name was John—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he’s not.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what about Lyon?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What’s that?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, give or take.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: In the US, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Ah!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, mainly that room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: 155 millimeters.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this--</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: --device. It boggled my mind.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Maybe I should come back.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I came back in 2001.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did—oh, sorry.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Very interesting project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yep, that was the one.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you helped design—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And tested.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Interesting story.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I moved here in ’76.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Really?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I can imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We were trying to help them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay, just curious.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I heard about it of course.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But I’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Well, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Emma, did you have anything?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emma Rice: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I believe we did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I hope so.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The most lasting impact.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: You do?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. Thank you.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1<sup>st</sup>, 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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jerome Martin: Yes, I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe it was earlier.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Not originally.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: The first name was John—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he’s not.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what about Lyon?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What’s that?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, give or take.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: In the US, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Ah!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, mainly that room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: 155 millimeters.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this--</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: --device. It boggled my mind.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Maybe I should come back.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I came back in 2001.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did—oh, sorry.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Very interesting project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yep, that was the one.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you helped design—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And tested.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Interesting story.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I moved here in ’76.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Really?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I can imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We were trying to help them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay, just curious.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I heard about it of course.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But I’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Well, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Emma, did you have anything?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emma Rice: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I believe we did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I hope so.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The most lasting impact.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: You do?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. Thank you.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:02:44
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
300 Area
B Plant
N Reactor
Plutonium Finishing Plant
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1976-2006
2001-2006
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Herbert M. Parker
Ken Hyde
John Jech
McCluskey
Mason and Hanger
Dade Moeller
Bill Bair
Ron Kathren
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
2001-today
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jerome Martin
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Jerome Martin conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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06-01-16
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-15-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
300 Area
B Plant
Battelle
Cold War
Department of Energy
General Electric
HAMMER
Hanford
Livermore
Los Alamo
Los Alamos
Manhattan Project
N Reactor
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Park
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
River
Ron Kathren
Safety
Sun
War
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe569ea39d2b6ee7a52c2712dfe05f0ad.JPG
eb77089662d22082b1f797feab5fac35
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Keith Klein
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Tom Hungate: Rolling.</p>
<p>Robert Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Keith Klein on February 7<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Keith about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?</p>
<p>Keith Klein: Keith Klein. K-L-E-I-N.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And K-E-I-T-H?</p>
<p>Klein: K-E-I-T-H, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, great. Tell me how and why you came to work at the Hanford Site.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, I suppose it started as—born in the early ‘50s, and at that time, atomic energy was the stuff of comic books and intrigue and power. It was, you know—whenever the planet was threatened by alien beings, they’d always convene a meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission. So I think in the back of my mind, I always had an inkling that I’d end up somehow dealing with atomic energy. The path that got me here was actually as an Atomic Energy Commission intern in the early ‘70s. One of my assignments as an intern was out here doing FFTF construction, I think in ’73. After that, a series of assignments, most back at headquarters dealing with all aspects of the fuel cycle. Mid ‘90s, I was dispatched to Rocky Flats, and that’s where I gained experience dealing with plutonium and contaminated facilities and the work force and this kind of the field experiences as a deputy manager out at Rocky Flats. One of the obstacles to getting Rocky Flats cleaned up was getting rid of the transuranic waste. So I ended up getting dispatched down to Carlsbad, New Mexico for a six-month stint with the assignment of getting it open and recruiting a permanent manager. Opening WIPP had eluded a number of people and brought in lawsuits. There were a lot of different combination of technical issues, operational issues, regulatory, political, perception, communications issues—you name it. But I guess I impressed the secretary with that assignment, and next thing you know, he asked me to come out here to Richland. That was in 1999. So I came out here as a manager of the Richland Operations Office then and was here until I retired from federal service in 2007.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Just for those who might not know, could you say what WIPP stands for and what its mission was?</p>
<p>Klein: WIPP is the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, and it was the first deep geologic disposal facility in the—well, in the world, really. It’s in a geologic formation, about a half-mile under in salt beds that are several hundreds of millions of years old and have been—just their very existence shows a lack of moving water, because salt being soluble. And of course disposing of nuclear waste and particularly of things—plutonium-bearing waste, transuranic waste falls in that category. Lot of folks afraid about transportation and is it going to leak out and so forth. But the community there was actually very supportive. The scientific community was as well. But of course there was a lot of—you know, this is falling on the heels of nuclear power, a lot of opponents of nuclear power. It seemed like we’re similarly opposed to solving the waste problem. So it had some similar characteristics as the challenges being faced up here. But that was a very big deal for those of us in the nuclear waste community. It was recently shut down for some operational issues. And when it shuts down it shuts down for a few years. But it was key to emptying out this category waste called transuranic waste from sites around the country including here at Hanford and the national laboratories.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you came out in the early ‘70s as an intern for FFTF construction, what did you do?</p>
<p>Klein: Well, it was FFTF construction. Actually first assignment was dealing with electrical systems then. I was assigned to—it was a Bechtel Corporation doing work out there in the field. I was being mentored by a fellow that was actually in a responsible for the crafts, pulling wire and routing things. So you know that was all part of giving us on-the-ground experience. And this in particular was construction. Later went to a Westinghouse subsidiary that was placing the large vessels, setting the pumps and the heat exchangers and that sort of thing. It was an incredible amount of stainless steel. And quality assurance, obviously, building a reactor is very important. Had to have good records and had to know that things in fact were welded like they’re supposed to be, tested like they’re supposed to be and so forth. And it—of course—you know, then I was part of the AEC Breeder Reactor Program and I think that was what really attracted me to the Atomic Energy Commission, is the idea that a source of energy could make more fuel than it used. And it seemed environmentally benign at the time. I still happen to believe it’s one of the more benign forms of energy, but it’s obviously been beset with a number of challenges in terms of the times—and this comes back to Hanford, actually. The time it takes to do things now and the number of layers and checks and so forth. In the commercial nuclear business, time is money. And the more time it takes, the more costs. And then things getting held up in the regulatory process with interveners, it basically got priced out of the market and became uneconomical. It had also gotten very complicated at the time, and that’s another example. You start adding layers of safety and things like that, you can end up—things getting more complicated and difficult to analyze and manage and deal with. So it kind of collapsed under its own weight there for a while. But there is a new generation of reactors that are coming that are more inherently safe and simpler in a lot of respects. So I think there’s still some hope out there for sources of electrical energy that, in my mind, can be very benign.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm. Thank you. So you came to RL—Richland—in ’99, then, and you were the site—the DOE site manager.</p>
<p>Klein: Correct.</p>
<p>Franklin: For the Hanford unit. Can you talk about some of the progress you made in that position, but also maybe some of the setbacks as well? Because that’s during this kind of shift into this more modern phase of cleanup, right, where most of the production and reprocessing of fuels had stopped by that point.</p>
<p>Klein: That’s a huge topic, Robert.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Klein: But it’s actually one I love to talk about because it was indeed a very daunting challenge. I understand you’ve interviewed Mike Lawrence and he signed a compliance agreement out here, the Tri-Party Agreement. But then he left and left it to others to implement that and get the work done. So he made the commitments and everyone else was kind of left holding the bag. John Wagner, I think did his best to get the ball rolling, but I think during that time there was just a lot of norming and forming and trying to figure out things. There wasn’t a whole lot of on-the-ground progress. I learned a lot at Rocky Flats and at WIPP about what it takes to get work done in these kind of environments. That included both technically and in terms of dealing with the workforce and dealing with the contracts. You know, the people that do the real work here are really contractors to DOE. And depending on how the contracts are written and things are incentivized and how much—just the whole dynamic between receiving the money—you have to go out and get the money from Congress, so you have to convince them that you have a plan, you know what you’re doing, you can deliver, that you’re investment grade. And then you have to deliver, because if you don’t, the money will dry up and lots of other problems. So giving this cleanup some focus, some momentum and just making it manageable, if you will, was one of the biggest challenges. Technically, there were two urgent risks—well, there were actually three urgent risks at the time. Of course the high-level waste that I think everybody knows about. But we had about 18 tons of plutonium-bearing materials that were unstable. These were things that when they shut down after the Cold War were left in various forms: alloys, residues, oxides, pure metal. And plutonium can be very reactive and exothermic. So it really needs to be stabilized, lest your—you have some real problems. Recall high school chemistry, you put a little sodium in the water—it’s that type of thing. So dealing with the plutonium—and again, I had the experience there with Rocky Flats—was a second urgent priority. And the third one was the spent fuel that was left in the K Basins. There were about 2,000 tons. That was about 80%, 90% of the DOE inventory that was left in the K Basins. This fuel was prone to oxidizing dissolving. And as a result of that, just deteriorating. So it was losing its integrity and creating a lot of sludge on the bottom. So even the act of moving it would create these clouds and you couldn’t see. The Site had been experimenting with different things to try to package up and dry out this—and stabilize this spent fuel so it could be stored in a dry, inert, stable, stable environment. So that was a second major challenge. And then of course there’s all this contaminated groundwater underlying the Site. Billions of gallons that had been dumped into the soil. You know, the soil here is something called a vadose zone where it’s got this dry sand and gravel mixtures and then there’s—can be basalt layers under that that are relatively impermeable, and you know, the water table that’s about where the Columbia River level is. So the center portion of the Site is built up. But long story short, waste in both liquid forms and then solid forms of waste have been buried in several hundred sites around the Hanford Site. So figuring out what we’re going to do with all those waste sites and with the contaminated groundwater was another set of challenges. And then of course there were, depending on how you count them, 700, 1,500 contaminated buildings out there that needed to be dealt with. This coupled with—right when I came, a legislation had been passed setting up a separate office of river protection to deal specifically with the high-level waste and the high-level waste tanks. So part of my job was helping to get that set up and transferred. Dick French was my counterpart dealing with that. The national lab, PNNL, was also actually under the Richland Operations Office at that time, but after a couple years it was decided similarly that the office of science—you know, it’s such a different focus that it was better off separated out. And from my standpoint, these were all good things, because there’s plenty of challenges to go around. So when I came, I guess my biggest challenges were how do you help manage, mobilize, organize efforts to get confidence that you have a plan for dealing with these things. We had these regulatory commitments, but it’s people that clean these things up. It’s not paper. You can sign anything you want; it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. So this kind of comes down to contracts, understanding the workforce, what motivates them, and basically how to enable them. So my job is one of enabling. I mean, there’s so many smart people out here, it’s intimidating. And impressive and inspiring. And given the latitude, they’ll figure out how to do things. You compare when I came here it was different than it is even now, what, 16, 18 years later. But when I came here compared to like the ‘40s, a world of difference in terms of what it took to get work done. In the ‘40s, they could learn by doing, experiment, play with things, and they didn’t have to get multi layers of permission, or—they didn’t have emails or cell phones or computers. I mean, it was slide rules and hand-written notes and so forth. Which comes back to just how amazing they were. How creative and innovative. Of course, it was under a wartime environment. But contrast that, when I came here—a lot of different regulatory structures put in place—something called the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to oversee DOE. The Atomic Energy Commission was self-regulating. And when environmental laws were passed, which has led to the Tri-Party Agreement, the Department of Energy was out of compliance with a number of these national laws, like the Resource Recovery—RCRA—and the Comprehensive Environmental Liability—CRCLA. So this compliance agreement, the Tri-Party Agreement was basically—this is how DOE was going to come into compliance with these things. Of course, there’s money that’s associated with that. DOE, like other agencies, lives on an annual budget. So you can’t get multi-year appropriations; you never really know how much you’re going to get from year to year. So to make commitments hoping you’ll get the money is part of the whole dynamic of getting work done here. But back to what it takes to get work done. It’s understanding these different laws and regulations. In my mind, I was fortunate, then, that I had good relationships back at headquarters and the trust and confidence of the leadership. So I was able to basically authorize more things on my signature based on my discretion than, certainly, what can be done today. Unfortunately with problems, you get more oversight and more second guessing and so forth. So it’s kind of success-begets-success. But in any event, my focus—and before you can clean up the buildings, you have to deal with the urgent priorities first: things that can go bump in the night. And again it comes back to the top three at the time were high-level waste and the plutonium, and the spent fuels. So the focus was really on the plutonium and spent fuel until you can get these things out of the different buildings, you can’t take down the buildings, that’s—stabilizing these things more important than—you know, the ground water was contaminated. I mean, the contamination was spreading, but you had to remove the sources, otherwise you’re continuing to feed—you can continue to clean up the groundwater, but there’s still stuff coming in, then you’re just kind of halting some progression but not really cleaning it up. So dealing with these different sources was the focus. But long story short, we had some brainstorming sessions with all the contractor heads, KEA, you know, folks that were working for me—how can we make this a simple, compelling, understandable vision? Make this, our task, more manageable? And what we came up with was basically featured three things. We came to call it the river, the plateau and the future. And said, our job is going to be to transition the central part of the Site into a long-term waste management area. The central part of the Site is where the high-level waste tanks are, the reprocessing canyons, a lot of these burial grounds. I mean, we were going to be here for a long time. And that’s also the stuff that’s farthest away from the river. So if you can sort of encapsulate and stop the hemorrhaging there, then kind of in a triage approach, then, that gives you—allows you to start cleaning up the rest. The second part was restoring the river corridor. And there the idea was to clean this up as good as is practical as we could and to make it available for other uses. So these are the reactors along the river, the other waste sites, burial grounds, the areas around the 300 Area where all the research is taking place and things like that. And the third part, the future, was—I guess I viewed this whole challenge out here as one of managing change and transition. And considering that we have 10,000 folks working out here, they need a future. It’s hard enough to ask someone to work themselves out of a job, but to work themselves out of a job without the prospect of other jobs, so—and that’s not something the DOE, the Atomic Energy Commission or others had a whole lot of experience at or are very good at. We’re a scientific and technical community. And most of us, myself included, is engineers. We go into these disciplines because we like numbers and quantities and we’re typically introverts and that sort of thing. So dealing with something as amorphous as the future is tough. But we convinced ourselves it was important and we had all these resources like the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and university systems and all these smart, talented people. There’s no reason why the things we’re learning here, lessons learned and businesses that could develop around here couldn’t be provided for a good socioeconomic environment here, too. And I think the Department of Energy and its predecessors always wanted to be a good community citizen. So just scrubbing out all the molecules but leaving this place an economic ghost town is not the right thing to do. Certainly, we want to get it as clean as we can, but you want to leave the community whole. And it comes back to the sacrifices that were made here going back to the tribes and the folks that were evicted in order to do this and the people that lost their lives helping to build the facilities and operate the facilities in the early years to produce the weapons material. Certainly the communities paid a price here. So the river, the plateau, and the future was kind of our mantra, and that’s how we organized things. Tried to fashion over the years that followed contracts that did that. But in any event, what I did was I sold—as for meeting with Doc Hastings, he was the congressman at the time. Sat down with him. I remember it very well, I was still—had become a—because of Rocky Flats and Waste Isolation Pilot Plant—I had some experience dealing with elected officials and high level stuff, but it’s still intimidating. You know, it’s like, I’m a freaking engineer. So but went to him with—at his office over in Pasco and laid this out. And he liked it, and we had some very good discussions and a rapport. But he lives across the river from the 300 Area, is where his house is. So he looks down, and he can actually see a lot of these things. And of course he’s committed to the community and Hanford and he wanted to give me the best shot possible as well. And I should say, too, due to my homework before I came in here, I learned about folks like Sam Volpentest and Bob Ferguson and I went around and met them and got their ideas, perception of things, and how things work. So I think I was fortunate, had a lot of good support from different corners. Doc went to bat for us, as did the senators, for the funding. They’ve been great supporters here, appreciative of the history and the challenges that remain. We put in place contracts. I brought a contract type they used at Rocky Flats successfully that’s different than the conventional contracts that the Atomic Energy Commission was used to operating under. The traditional contracts are management and operating contracts. And in that kind of contract, it’s for a certain period of time and the contractor’s pretty much graded by how their DOE counterparts felt about how they were doing. And it was a lot of one-to-one counterparts with the contractors doing whatever DOE said at any particular time. So, it can work well when you’re in kind of a steady environment in a production mode, like churning out nuclear weapons material and operating. But at Rocky Flats what we learned is you need a lot more incentive to be creative and innovative. What worked there was having an agreement with the contractors and the contract type and the regulators about, this is the scope of work that’s going to get done, and as long as we stay within this box, basically—you know, leave us alone. And that was my philosophy in this contract that’s called a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract, CPIF, versus MNO which is a cost-plus-award fee. And the amount of money the contractor makes is tied to how well they do this tangible piece of work that you can actually see and feel. So we have an official government estimate that this is how long it should take based on our historical experience; this is how much it should cost. So every dollar you save bringing that in sooner and earlier, you get to save 30 cents on that dollar. So when you’re talking about contracts that cover, you know, five- to ten-year period, you’re talking about potentially a couple hundred million dollars in fees on the table there. Well, at Rocky Flats, what we learned is, particularly the contractors can share that with the employees, that they can get quite creative about how to do things. And they are able to learn by doing. You know, the envelope is a safety envelope; you can’t do anything unless you know it’s safe. So that’s where we focused our attention, is making sure we had a good safety basis and watching that through facility reps and other things. But basically, not trying to micromanage or giving them the freedom, as much as we could, to do things. And having a very good scope. So that’s what we put around the river corridor contract. The idea there is we’re going to blitz the river corridor. And we need this tangible progress, too, to further build confidence that we can do this. Of course, you can’t demolish buildings and excavate sites unless you’ve got something to do with the waste that’s coming out. So that comes back to things like ERDF and the different disposal grounds in the middle of the site—the energy—Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility—huge facility in the center of the site. So this whole thing becomes a huge chess game of sorts where the different pieces are the money and the contracts and the people and the labor agreements and the different technical pieces that have to fall in sequence before you can do things. And in some way, the icing on the cake is actually taking down the buildings. Because by that time, you’ve had to take the materials out. And you can’t take the materials out unless there’s something you can do with them. So whether there’s plutonium and having the equipment in place to stabilize them and then package it and put it somewhere. That’s basically the plan we had: the river, the plateau and the future. And I think the results, I’m pretty proud, speak for themselves. We packaged up all that spent fuel, got it off the river, from out of the K Reactors into the central part of the plateau. We got all the plutonium stabilized. And that ended up being able to—my successor able to ship that actually offsite to Savannah River. And put in place the river corridor contract, which I think has been pretty widely acclaimed and recognized as being successful. And it meant a lot of good things are happening. The folks dealing with high-level waste and the Waste Treatment Plant I think have had some different kinds of challenges and still dealing with a lot of that. But I think you see excellent progress on the rest of the Site.</p>
<p>Franklin: I was wondering if you could speak about the challenge of vitrification as a—I mean, it’s a proposed way to isolate and deal with the waste and it’s been successful at other sites, but seems to have hit snags at Hanford.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, this was not my territory.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Klein: I know a fair amount about it, so I’m tempted to give you opinion. But I did not have responsibility for that, and so—Kevin Smith is the current Office of River Protection manager and he’d be a better one to talk to about that. But vitrification in general was a form preferred by the state and others for stabilizing some components of the waste out there that’s very highly radioactive. It’s interesting—back in the day, some of the components in these tanks that generate the most heat are strontium and cesium: fission products, versus the actinides. The actinides being plutonium, uranium, those type of things. And there’s not a whole lot of that in this high-level waste. But in the old days, they started taking out the cesium and the strontium so the tanks weren’t generating as much heat so they could put more waste in. And we put—before my time, they put the strontium and cesium into capsules. And they’re stored in a water pool up—attached to one of their processing facilities and that was under my purview. Now the process moving that to dry storage. And I only say that because, you know, in my mind, there are alternative forms for managing these different wastes that they can be used. And with fission products, 30-year half-life, rule of thumb is if ten half-lives—these things reduce to a millionth their radioactivity or less, 10<sup>-6</sup>, and basically are innocuous at that time. So thirty years, half-life of ten years, that’s 300 years. In geologic time, that’s nothing. So do you really need geologic disposal for things with fission products with 30-year half-lifes? And if you don’t need geologic disposal, do you really need to vitrify the wastes and put them into these glass waste forms? I mean, basically what’s attractive about glass is it’s not as susceptible to dissolution and water and dissolving. So things can stay pretty much contained, is the thought. But even these high-level waste logs, they’re just going into dry storage anyway. You know, I’m a proponent, I guess, for a lot of these different wastes, that dry storage, I think, is the most economical, efficient, and—I think there’s a reasonable chance our civilization will stay intact for 300 years. You can put these things in dry storage casks and things like that, they’re basically tamper-proof and they cool themselves. It’s just keeping people away from them. I mean, I can talk more about vitrification if you really want, but like I said, it’s really not my bailiwick.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, that’s fine. So you said your three major challenges were dealing with high-level waste, dealing with unstable plutonium-bearing materials and then the spent fuel.</p>
<p>Klein: High-level waste was assigned to the separate office, so that really wasn’t my—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, so—</p>
<p>Klein: --biggest challenge. So it was plutonium and the spent fuel were the two urgent priorities. But the third is really getting on with the cleanup and giving the whole cleanup some momentum and direction and some legs.</p>
<p>Franklin: What do you see as the future of Hanford? Because the focuses of the river, the plateau and the future. And the river and plateau seem to have these concrete goals applied to them. The future does seem harder to diagnose or kind of see, because eventually there is an idea that cleanup will be performed. And then so what do you think the future of the Tri-Cities holds after the danger’s mitigated?</p>
<p>Klein: Science, technology, engineering and math. I think this is, at its heart, a STEM community. And I think that we are very well-suited to grow that identity. We have a great STEM education that’s getting recognized nationwide [UNKNOWN] leading that. We have, I think, STEM employment opportunities. One of the things—my interests after retiring is running something called Executive Director Tri-Cities Local Business Association. And it’s looking at helping build local businesses with a high-tech nature that can help accommodate transition of employees. I’ve been active in promoting provisions in the DOE subcontracts that encourage the prime contractors to contract out more and better pieces of work to companies. So, I mean, I think there’s always been a good support for small businesses, but oftentimes that can be for janitorial supplies or this little thing, that little thing. There’s basically a huge workforce embedded—we call it in the fence—that does a lot of these other things. I’d like to see more, bigger, better chunks of that work able to go to local businesses that can then use that to develop their resumes. I mean, they’re highly incentivized to perform if—one, this is their backyard, their neighbors; two, you don’t get invited back to the party if you don’t do well. And they’re small and they’re very manageable. I think it would be very efficient. We have a number of examples of companies that have grown out of Hanford business or out of PNNL inventions or the expertise that people develop here that’s applicable to environmental challenges around the globe. So I think capitalizing on the lab and its high-tech things they do. We have BSEL right here and WSU Tri-Cities is a good example of kind of the collaborations. But PNNL is in a number of different sectors, and so the leveraging that more to help grow STEM businesses, employment opportunities, research opportunities I think is good. You’ve got the viticulture and the science of wines that is, I think, grown appreciation. Tourism, things like the Manhattan National Park, where people will come and see and appreciate the remarkable things that were done here. And the consequences, good and bad. But I mean it’s just—the stories to be told, people come here from around the world, I think, to see firsthand B Reactor and learn more about what that meant, what it took to get there. You’ve got the Reach National Monument, you have Ice Age Floods. There’s even STEM tourism. So you’ve got STEM education, STEM employment, STEM entrepreneurship. STEM tourism, I think, could really change—when people think of Hanford, instead of a stigma and high-level waste, oh my god, and the images that are conjured up there, I think are somewhat overblown. But instead of that, thinking of Hanford as science, technology, energy and math. This is the place to come to start a business, to get experience, to find good, smart people. I think it would do a good service for the community. And I think the national park would be one of the crown jewels in terms of STEM identity.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Speaking of high-level waste, has most of the danger been mitigated, to your knowledge, of the waste that’s out onsite? Or where—yeah, that’s my question.</p>
<p>Klein: The urgent risks have. I think, for the most part, the High Level Waste Tank have been interim stabilized, which means they’re—most of the things that are a threat of getting out and leaking, they basically got as much water, liquids, out of them as is possible in the single-shelled tanks. Leaks there, without a source of water, something to drive it further down into the water column or out, is mitigated. Double-shelled tanks are getting old and, of course, that’s a—had some leaks there. But even there, they’re double-shelled, so you can detect it and they can be emptied. Of course running out of space there. But the problem with nuclear waste, again, is until you know what you’re going to do with it, you can end up just moving it around. So the idea is you really need to put it in a better form and move it to someplace where it can be more easily managed or basically almost be semi-maintenance-free. We put a lot of stock into deep geologic repository, Yucca Mountain, that’s what we need to manage this high-level waste. But as I said before, I think, a lot of these can be managed quite safely for as long as may be necessary in dry storage still. So in terms of urgent risks, I think they’ve been for the most—mitigated. Now we’re dealing with more chronic, the longer-term risks and there, I think it’s a matter of being smart and getting a more productive. I think the red tape and the bureaucracy and the second-guessing, it’s almost become like a spectator sport with all the different oversight agencies and folks that are from King 5 over on the west side that seems to—and others, they’re really just focused on I’d say the things that can scare people or that might reflect badly on here but without appreciating it, I guess. I mean, there’s—yeah, there’s some mistakes that have been made, are being made, but the bulk of the people here that are good-hearted, well-intentioned, hard-working—you know, we live here, we drink the water here. If something was acutely dangerous, we’d know and we’d be able to deal with it. So I think things here are a lot safer than we appreciate.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you find that, in general, the public is misinformed about both the nuclear materials production process but also the waste and the dangers of nuclear waste?</p>
<p>Klein: I would say, for the most part, the general public is apathetic about it. That there are segments of the public, the media, and others that—with different agendas, whether it be attention or profit or others, that put their own slant on it. But I think that with each new generation of people and understanding the atom that things are getting better. With radiation, you can measure it. It’s very easily detectable. Unlike gasses and chemicals and other things. We as a society put up, well, what are you going to do with the waste? Well, you look at the volumes of waste that are being involved and so forth, it’s really small. But we don’t seem to ask that same question about carbon dioxide and some of these others, yet we’re perfectly content to continue driving our cars and so forth. So I think there is a lack of perspective on these things. In some ways, it’s—the attention to them is important because they’re not going to just go away on their own. I mean, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done and we need to have the resources to do it, and it’s kind of the squeaky wheel gets greased when it comes to budget things. But on the other hand, those things can get out of hand. So I don’t know what the public thinks, but I do have—[LAUGHTER]—I guess I’m an optimist at heart and think that each generation, like I said, is going to be smarter about—you know, what are the real hazards of these things and what really makes sense in terms of dealing with it? But one of my concerns is the less productive, the more inefficient we become: people with hands-on experience are retiring or dying. We can’t afford to lose that expertise. So I’m very much in favor of getting on with these things while we have these people around that know their way around and can deal with these things. Otherwise, we’re going to be wringing our hands and analyzing everything to death and actually doing less work. So that’s one of my biggest fears about all this stuff getting stretched out and prolonged.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you were—it was eight years you were head of—for eight years you were head of DOE RL. How did you deal with the critics? Hanford detractors or critics of the cleanup operation. Were there protests in Richland? I know Mike Lawrence talked about protests, and I’m wondering if you—how did you deal with either the protests or media scrutiny of Hanford?</p>
<p>Klein: You have to develop a thick skin. I mean, it still hurts. You feel it personally, you feel a disservice to all the folks that are working out here, putting their heart and soul into this. They get maligned so easily. How do you deal with it? It grates on you. It just kind of contributes to the stress. But it’s like, we’re all people with feelings and it’s—but the media typically focus on what’s going wrong and what’s sexy or what’s—get people’s attention, either sell viewership, readership, whatever. It just comes with the territory.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Thank you. Do you—you mentioned something pretty interesting a few minutes ago and I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on it. I understand that you probably don’t have an intimate—you might not have an intimate knowledge of the oil and gas industry, but do you feel that the nuclear industry has more unfair restrictions on it than oil and gas does in terms of energy production? Because you mentioned that oil and gas production, people don’t think about their emissions from their car the same way they kind of get this emotional response to nuclear energy. And certainly oil and gas producers don’t have to plan for 50, 100, 3,000 years into the future for the byproducts of the product they sell. I’m wondering if you could ruminate on that a bit more, or if you feel like there’s an undue burden on the nuclear power industry that’s not on other forms of energy.</p>
<p>Klein: I do think it has suffered unfairly for a number of reasons. Some of which I touched on before. I mean, I’m all for renewables, but I think they can only go so far. And it’s about the economics. I think the strength of our country is a lot about our economy. If you have cheap natural gas or—you know, the regulations on coal don’t take into account the cost of these different emissions, whether it’s CO2 or others, then I think those penalize the alternatives. Things like solar and wind have gotten tax breaks and different credits that I think have helped them come to market. Now you can get very inexpensive solar cells and things. And like I said, I’m all for using those where it makes sense. But from my standpoint, I think there’s still a need for some baseload. I think regionally distributed baseload, like small modular reactors, makes tremendous sense. So that you don’t have these vulnerable interconnected, largescale grids, but local communities could live on that, I think. In some areas of the world, they’re able to use the bypass, the residual heat, for steam, home heating and others. So I think, you look into the future, I think there could still be a very useful role for clean, safe, nuclear power without it being stymied by what about the nuclear waste? I think that can all be managed very well. So for future generations, I think—reducing dependence on fossil fuels and making the renewables—and I would consider nuclear power a renewable source—there’s lots of energy in those big atoms. It can and should be economical.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great.</p>
<p>Klein: If we get out of the way.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] I’d like to switch topics to the historic preservation angle of your work. And I’d like you to talk about your involvement with preservation and saving of B Reactor from—and where you started. I know it was originally scheduled to be remediated and that was postponed and then eventually, I think due to pressure from B Reactor Museum Association and other groups, it gained a different kind of status, landmark status and things. I was wondering if you could talk about your role in that effort.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, you know, nine different reactors operating here along the Columbia River—really, nowhere else in the world is it like that. B Reactor being the first large industrial scale reactor in the world. The DOE office, back under the Office of Environmental Management. And their job is to clean up. DOE does have an historian. So you have a bureaucracy that’s basically goal in life is to remediate these sites and facilities and get the liabilities down, the mortgages down and so forth. There’s a lot of pressure to do that. We’re on a course of cocooning these various reactors, putting them into cheap-to-keep mode where basically you’ve removed all the ancillary facilities and reduced it down to a core building and sealed that up and basically [UNKNOWN] that went through all the regulatory processes. If we seal these up, put these into a mode that’s good for 50, 70 years, keep the critters and people out, and have monitors in it and then we’ll come back and the radiation levels will further decayed by then. And we can dispose of these, finally—these graphite blocks and cores. So we’re on a roll in terms of cocooning these reactors. But the—I guess the people—and you can’t help but work at these sites or go out to these facilities and not be in awe of the magnitude of what was accomplished out here from an engineering and scientific standpoint. I mean, to me, it was just remarkable and first time I went out to B Reactor, it—like most people, as nuclear engineers, it’s kind of like Mecca. It strikes you and it just—really, it just hits a chord emotionally. And certainly the folks at BRMA, the B Reactor Museum Association, and others felt—knew that. I think they were instrumental in raising some community consciousness about it. I had a person on my staff, Colleen French, who is now running the national park, who is communications, and she and I, basically, strategized as to how can we stop this freight train from running over B Reactor, considering that I had a mandate to proceed, basically, and cocoon it like the others. Folks on my staff, to be honest with you, were split. There were some people that saw it as an asset and others not—it’s a liability. Come on, get on with it. I lean towards the wanting to preserve it, and I guess, feel guilty almost taking it down. So Colleen and I strategized as to, how do we give this the best shot possible? So we went back and met with the DOE historian and talked to some others, and basically were able to prepare some memorandum decisions that said that at a minimum, we should give this more time and think this out. At a maximum, we should just bite the bullet and preserve it and do what we can and try to be careful. I mean, you can only spend money for things that—it’s government money. DOE goes to Congress, it’s appropriation and it’s money to x, y, and z. It’s illegal to use it for r, s, and—you know. It’s for this purpose and this purpose only. So it started with, I guess, working with the DOE system and other laws and rules that say, you know, under preservation—there are some preservation responsibilities and others and exploiting those to create room to keep it open until folks could get a better sense of, in general, just the role of the Manhattan Project in history and DOE’s role in preserving that, and working with other institutions, the Park Service and others to formalize that. And of course Park Service is struggling with their own—they don’t have enough money to take care of things they already have. So you get into that whole realm of things. But at least we were able to stop the bulldozers, if you will, or the momentum—the cocooning momentum, at least for B Reactor. Potentially with even T Plant and some other things. And I really give Colleen a lot of credit with how hard she worked, too, to help us put together that strategy and create that opening or stay of execution. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you encounter resistance in Washington, DC for—</p>
<p>Klein: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --for this idea? How did you overcome that, to help to show people the value of this?</p>
<p>Klein: Well, I guess, fortunately, I had enough—what—backing and credit or chits that I could dissent, disagree with my management agreeably and get things elevated to a higher level. So it was, I think, agree to disagree. And I credit with my management back in DC in the Office of Environmental Management with how they dealt with it too. And letting higher powers basically decide this, with the help of the historian and others. And I think that’s—you know, the other thing that I did is I listened to Skip Gosling. Clay Sell was the deputy secretary at the time. He was a history buff.</p>
<p>Franklin: So you say at the time, which—what time was this?</p>
<p>Klein: This was at the time when we were struggling with, how do we legitimize preserving B Reactor?</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you know around what year or years this would have been?</p>
<p>Klein: I’m going to guess it was 2003, 2004 timeframe.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Sorry to interrupt.</p>
<p>Klein: Yeah, no, I just—so much of this is a blur in terms of who was where when. You start dealing with DC, it’s like—[LAUGHTER]—all look alike after a while. You know, I can come at it from different angles, Republicans, Democrats, you know, different folks’ emphasis and so forth. So I’m having a hard time recalling who exactly that was. But I remember Clay Sell and I can easily get back to you on when that was.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s okay. I was just trying to get a general sense. So you said Skip Gosling?</p>
<p>Klein: Skip Gosling was the historian that we were working with. Clay Sell was the Deputy Secretary of Energy that was a history buff and who, I think, just, in the end, prevailed and was a decision-maker that enabled preserving this and working with Park Service. Colleen and I had a few different trips back to DC talking to these people and encouraging them—I hesitate to use the word lobbying, because it means something very, very particular, and we weren’t lobbying Congress; it was really within the Department. Although we had, certainly, allies, I think, with Patty Murray and Doc Hastings and others who, again, appreciated the Hanford history and what was done here and its significance.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did the Hanford collection—the array of historic objects and artifacts gathered from Site—was that part of your—what you were in charge of when you were heading the DOE or was that a different—</p>
<p>Klein: No, it was—I mean, that was under my purview. And we certainly had staff. But I must confess that of all the alligators that were surrounding the boat, that was the least of my—it wasn’t high up. I mean, that wasn’t—just too many other things were chomping at me and having to deal with. But I always felt comfortable—I mean, when you get in these positions, you kind of look at what your people are doing and you trust them in doing the right thing and you try to set a tone and direction and values and that sort of thing. So I was very fortunate—we have a very competent staff in environmental analysis and preservation, conservation. Paid attention to the different rules and governing those things. And they took care of it. They were, I think, good stewards.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. How did you become involved with the REACH Museum?</p>
<p>Klein: Ah! At first it was as an ex oficio member of—it was called the REACH Board at the time. I think Colleen actually suggested it to me and them and set that up. I mean, it was an easy fit for me. As long as I was with DOE, I couldn’t be an actual member of the board. So the job was more of advisory and helping them. Of course, by that time, I think my feelings were well known that I did have a soft spot for appreciating the heritage here. Even predating the Manhattan Project, going back to the basalt flows and then the Ice Age Floods. There’s something very special and unique about this area, both the land and the people. And it’s those circumstances and things that gave rise to—I mean, the geology and the setting here is what gave rise to this being a great location for the Manhattan Project and the plutonium production mission. Which in turn brought all these incredible people here and formed a national laboratory that’s self-sustaining and a wonderful thing in its own right. And now lands are getting turned over to the port and being made available for other uses. I think it opens up opportunities for the tribes. But anyway, so the REACH was an easy fit for me to get involved in. And I’m proud to say I’m still—now I’m one what’s called the Foundation. It’s how the management structure of the REACH is set up. But they’ve overcome some very big hurdles. But I think the fact they have is—it’s meant to be, and it’s going to grow and prosper. But we still have some heavy lifts.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Is there—sorry. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford? Or just Hanford in general?</p>
<p>Klein: I guess I’d like future generations to appreciate both the sacrifice and the significance of what happened here. That goes back to the tribes and what they sacrificed to what the early settlers that were evicted sacrificed, what the men and women involved in the construction, design, that relocated out here sacrificed, and the significance being with what was done. I’m still in awe. B Reactor up and running from nothing to up and running in 18 months, come on! I mean, it’s just—without computers and slide rules. These were adventurers, technologically, engineering, scientifically, and even management-wise. People come together. And at the same time, this is all under—because of threat of war. And creating something where people came and did this remarkable thing and have it used to kill people. There’s so many conflicting things about this to be learned so we don’t repeat the lessons of the past, yet showing what we’re capable of doing when we do come together with enough motivation and incentive and liberties. It’s just remarkable. So it’s a tough one to answer, what do you want people to remember? I just hope they appreciate the whole thing. The sacrifice and the significance.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention?</p>
<p>Klein: I feel drained. [LAUGHTER] If there’s something in particular that you’re interested in. Yeah, no, I just feel like I’ve been spouting out all over the place here.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, it was great. You really touched on a lot of really pertinent topics and it’s really nice to have your interview next to Mike Lawrence—you know, just this kind of documenting this post-production change. I think it’ll be really crucial to help people figure out—this is all part of the same story, and how people figure out, okay, what happened when that singular mission was kind of over, and how did this place kind of find its identity after that, that the whole mission had changed. So thank you. And thank you for talking to us today.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, I’m just—it comes back, like the STEM identity. I’m just hoping and optimistic that we can have a future that’s as distinctive and worthy as the significance of our predecessors did out here. Because it really changed the world, when you—it really is mind-blowing in a lot of respects. I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to be a little part of that continuum. Yeah, the fastest eight years of my life. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, thank you, Keith. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Klein: Yeah, you bet, Robert.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/MAy7K26aMgY">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:09:55
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
FFTF (Fast Flux Test Facility)
WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Project)
K Basins
PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
ERDF (Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility)
K Reactors
ORP (Office of River Protection)
B Reactor
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1970-
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1973-
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Sam Volpentest
Bob Ferguson
Kevin Smith
Skip Gosling
Patty Murray
Doc Hastings
Mike Lawrence
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Keith Klein
Description
An account of the resource
Keith Klein first moved to Richland, Washington in 1973. Keith worked for the Atomic Energy Commission and later the U.S. Department of Energy from 1970-2007.
An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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02-07-17
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-04-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Rocky Flats (Colo.)
Carlsbad (N.M.)
Breeder reactors
Radioactive waste disposal
Radioactive waste sites
Hazardous waste site remediation
Columbia River
300 Area
Atomic Energy Commission
B Reactor
B Reactor Museum Association
Bechtel
BRMA
Cold War
Department of Energy
Flood
Floods
Hanford
K Basin
K Basins
K Reactor
K-Basin
K-Basins
Manhattan Project
Mountain
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Park
River
Safety
Savannah River
supplies
T Plant
War
Westinghouse
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe4fc1a4c7495942bf447756ec5e85cfa.JPG
d98e592b247db687cb3749711ea3df5b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Douglas O’Reagan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mark Jensen
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. To start us off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us?</p>
<p>Mark Jensen: My name is Mark Jensen, M-A-R-K, J-E-N-S-E-N.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Great. Okay. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Mr. Jensen on March 25<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Jensen about his experiences working at the Hanford site and living in the Tri-Cities. To start us off, can you tell us a little bit about your life before you came to Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, my mother moved to Richland to teach English at what was then Columbia High School, now Richland High School. She was a single mother with five children. So I started school at Jefferson Elementary in Richland in kindergarten. When I was in third grade, my mother remarried, and I was adopted by my new father. He was a long-time Hanford worker. Anyway, so I grew up in the Tri-Cities. We moved to Kennewick when I went into fourth grade, and I went through the Kennewick School District after that, and graduated from Kamiakin High School in 1974. Went to Washington State University, got a degree in forestry, thinking that would get me out of the Tri-Cities, because there aren’t any forests here. Unfortunately, there weren’t any jobs in forestry. So I came back home to live with my parents, and my dad mentioned that N Reactor was hiring reactor operators. So I applied, and got a job as a reactor operator.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What time frame would it have been that your mother moved here?</p>
<p>Jensen: I was five, so that would have been 1961.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Okay, great. Can you tell us about the schooling, the education, the schools in the Tri-Cities as you experienced them?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, I went to Jefferson Elementary, like kindergarten through third grade. It was in an old building left over from World War II. It was probably a grade school built as part of the Manhattan Project. That’s all long since been torn down. Then when we moved to Kennewick, I went to Hawthorne Elementary school there. Building’s still there as far as I know. And then to Vista Elementary, then to Highlands Middle School—Highlands Junior High in those days. Then the Kamiakin High School which was brand new.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What was life like as a kid in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: It was pretty routine, I guess. Went outside and played in those days instead of staying inside for video games. It didn’t matter how hot it was outside, we’d go out and play baseball all day usually, and things like that. Then just going to school during the school year and doing whatever during the summer. When I was growing up, before my mother remarried, she would work in the summer and I was usually babysat by some of her students. After she remarried, then she stopped working during the summer. But I’m fairly certain that one of the reactor operators I worked with at N Reactor was one of my babysitters when I was second or third grade. But anyway.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When you were sort of a teenager, what sort of stuff did you and your friends do for fun around the area?</p>
<p>Jensen: Usually, after doing our homework, we’d go outside and play basketball, every day, every night. We had a lighted basketball court. We’d play basketball all day Saturday and Sunday. When the weather was nicer, we’d play baseball or variants of baseball, since there were seldom enough people to make up a couple of teams. We used to go to baseball games—minor league baseball games—in the summer. A variety of different team names. There was a stadium in Kennewick called Sanders Jacobs Field that’s long since been demolished. That’s pretty much what we did, just mess around. Go bowling, things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you know what your step-father did at the Hanford site?</p>
<p>Jensen: He was a chemical engineer, and he worked at N Reactor and the older reactors designing systems for decontaminating the reactors. When I was in high school, he worked at the Tank Farms in the 200 Area. He was in charge of Tank Farm surveillance, and that was when the tanks started leaking—the older tanks first started leaking. So we got frequent telephone calls in the middle of the night that there was a leaking tank. Sometimes I’d hear my dad say something on the telephone, and the next day I would see that in the newspaper, as a Hanford spokesman said, kind of thing. That was kind of interesting.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So I guess you were aware of the future environmental issues pretty early on?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. Yeah.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did that impact your life at all? Or was it sort of in the background?</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s just the way things were.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So when you came back and were looking for a job and you first heard about this job at N Reactor, did you—was that something you were sort of excited about? Was it something you were--?</p>
<p>Jensen: It sounded interesting. I knew nothing about it. Not too many people knew reactor operators, although there were certainly plenty of them around here over the years. So I had no idea, really, what that job entailed. But it was a job, and it paid pretty good. So when it was offered to me, I accepted it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What kind of skill sets did it end up requiring you to gain?</p>
<p>Jensen: I had to learn a lot about how to operate complex systems, do valving in a precise, controlled manner so it was done correctly. Not so much working with pumps, other than checking to make sure they were running properly. I didn’t have to do maintenance kind of things. Then once I got my certification in the control room, I had to learn how to operate all of the systems, use the controls in the control room to do that, set everything up properly, and what to do in case of an emergency, or a reactor scram, or upset. Try and keep the reactor from scramming, things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What kind of training was involved?</p>
<p>Jensen: We started out, once we got into the certification program, we went into what we called phase one training. That basically started off with fundamentals training. We got some math and chemistry. Didn’t hurt that I had chemistry in college. It’s kind of funny—the week or two weeks we had in chemistry, I think I learned more than the two semesters of chemistry in college, because the instructor was so much better for the fundamentals class than the professor I had at college. But it might have also been because I was older and a little more mature.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that onsite at Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: It was onsite at Hanford, out at N Reactor. We had some chemistry, math, a little bit of electronics, things like that. Started learning some of the various systems at the plant. Then we went back on shift for several months. I can’t remember now how long, I mean this is almost 40 years ago, so it’s kind of hard to remember everything. So when we went back on shift, we were given a packet of stuff that we had to study on our own and learn while we were assigned to do other jobs throughout the plant. Then we went back into class, into phase two, and studied more systems, and started learning how things in the control room worked. I can’t remember if there were four phases or three phases, but each time after a phase ended, we had an exit exam. Then we went back to shift, with more stuff to do in between the regular job stuff. At the end of all of the phases, we took an eight-hour written exam. Theoretically, if you failed the written exam, they could fire you. Or they could just reassign you as a non-certified operator. Some people did that after they failed. They just said they didn’t want to continue. But generally they gave you a second chance. Well, I passed the first time, so didn’t have to worry about that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How long did that process take?</p>
<p>Jensen: Started probably in February or March of ’81. I was completely certified in June of ’82. So it was probably about a year and a half for the total process. But they were in a hurry to get people certified, because there were a lot of older operators who were getting ready to retire. So they needed to get people in there and get some experience before they lost too many of the older, experienced operators. So after the eight-hour written exam, we had to study for what we called the demonstration exam. That was in the control room, and an instructor would say, okay, Mark, how do you set this console up for operation? You are going to do this job, show me without actually doing it--because it was in the real reactor—how you would do it. Later on, we had a simulator that was pretty much an exact duplicate of the reactor, and then you could actually do the things in the simulator. But for my demonstration exam, it was just point out what you would do. When we passed that exam, we actually got a pay raise. We went from what we called a Grade 18 to a Grade 21, and got a nice little bump in pay. Then you studied for your oral exam. That one, you went before an oral board. There was a representative from operations, a representative from training, and a representative from nuclear safety. They all had a certain set of questions to ask, and any one of them could come in at any time with follow-up questions. So that—I think that took me six hours. And I passed that, so then I was a certified operator. Except that operations would not sign your certificate until you demonstrated that you could handle the jobs. So when I went back on shift, I was assigned to an experienced operator. So we rotated through various positions in the control room, and I followed him around. Initially, he would do things and tell me what he was doing. Then he would have me do it, but he would tell me what to do. And then when he was pretty satisfied I knew what I was doing, he would just sit back and let me figure out what I was doing. And then he must have told the control room supervisor I was ready, control room supervisor told the shift manager I was ready, and the shift manager recommended that my certificate be signed by the manager of operations. Then I could sit on consoles all by myself.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So was there an influx of younger operators at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes, we had quite a few coming through. My certification class, we had three supervisor candidates, and I think we had seven operator candidates. One of them ended up not completing it. All of the rest passed. Some of them, it took them a couple attempts at the eight hour and maybe even the oral board to get certified. Then right after me, there was another class with a lot of other young people. So we got a lot of young people in there, and then that allowed some of the older operators to retire. I think some of them were hanging around a little longer than they might have wanted to otherwise, just because they knew they would have been shorthanded if they left.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was this all at N Reactor?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was it the same training program for all the reactors?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, N Reactor was the only reactor left at the time. They had similar programs at the older reactors. But it evolved over time and got a little more detailed. We had a little more stuff on reactor physics. In the original days, it’s just, this is what you’re going to do, and nobody asked why, because it was all secret. It’s just, do this and keep this needle within this range, or whatever. Later on, you actually started to teach people what was happening. Some of the old operators complained about having some reactor physics stuff in there. Wah, we don’t need this stuff. And they were so good that it’s like, I don’t know that they really did need that. They just knew what to do when something went wrong. But the theory is it never hurts to have too much knowledge.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How many people were working at a given time in the actual reactor?</p>
<p>Jensen: In the control room, or—?</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That, and also—</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s easier for me to say in the control room, but I’ll estimate on the other.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure.</p>
<p>Jensen: Minimal shift in the control room was three operators and a control room supervisor, but we generally had four. There were three positions that had to be manned 24 hours a day when the reactor was operating. One of them, the nuclear console, where you actually controlled the reactor power level, we rotated two people in and out on that: two hours on and two hours off. If you only had three, then, I think the control room supervisor could give you relief. But you weren’t allowed to be there for more than two hours at a time. The other two consoles, you could be there for the whole eight hours on a shift. After my class and the next one went through, they had enough operators that we could get six or more operators in there, which gave a lot more flexibility, both for giving breaks to people, because it can get hard to keep your focus all night long, particularly on graveyard shift, when the reactor ran itself, pretty much. You’re just looking at things to make sure everything’s normal. That gets hard to do. It doesn’t sound like it would be, but it is. It’s pretty—puts a strain on you. So we had more people to give breaks. And extra certified operators to go out throughout the plant and check things, because they could recognize problems that non-certified operators might not. So, let’s say six of us in the control room, a control room supervisor, a shift manager. They were both certified control room shift manager/operators also. So they could do anything in the control room we could. And on a typical shift, you usually had a couple of electricians, a couple of instrument technicians, three or four health physics technicians—radiological control technicians—we called them radiation monitors in those days. Plus supervisors for all of them. And maybe a handful of millwrights, pipefitters, whatever. Mostly, the maintenance people did their work when the reactor was shut down. There wasn’t very much for them to do when the reactor was operating. But there was always work for instrument technicians. They would come in, and if something wasn’t working right in the control room, we’d call them in and they would tinker with it and try to fix it. Things like that. Day shift, there were a lot more people on there. And then during a reactor outage, much more work going on, particularly or the maintenance people. Because that’s when they were tear pumps down and rebuild them and things like that. So there were probably, on days, a couple hundred people out there. On shift, maybe thirty.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. So you’ve sort of been doing this, but could you walk us through a day in the life? What would sort of your average day involve?</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. I’d come to work in the morning, a little bit before eight. And if I were assigned to the control room, I would go in and receive a turnover from the operator whose console I was taking over. We had a schedule that rotated us through. So if you’re one or two, you’re on the nuclear console. If you’re three, you’re on the double-A console. If you’re number four, you’re on the BN console, and I do not know what BN stands for. We used to joke that it was short for boring, because it was the most boring of the three consoles when we were at full power. So if I’m going to be on the nuclear console, I’d come in and there’s an operator who’s ready to leave. He gives me a turnover, tells me what the power level is, if we’re going to be raising power, if we’re at full power, we’re just going to hold power, if there’s any areas of the reactor that seem to want to lose power or gain power. So I get the turnover and then I take over. If I was on the nuclear console, I would work for two hours, and the other operator would come in, and I would give him a turnover and he would take over. And then I would usually give breaks to the other operators, unless we had enough other people to give them breaks. Anytime you take over, you’d get a turnover for what’s going on. Worked the nuclear console for two days, then you’d go to the double-A console. The double-A console controlled the reactor pressure and the primary coolant pump speed, and sending steam to the Washington Public Power Supply System. So you had this big console, went around like this and like this, and there were separate sections for each of the steam generator cells. We had six—five operating at any one time. Occasionally we ran with four operating. We never did all six. There was a reason why; I can’t remember what the reason why was. But always had one in reserve. That one was a pretty busy console during startups and shutdowns. I had full power. It was look around, look at all of the drive turbines for the primary coolant pumps and make sure they’re running at the proper RPM, look at the pressurizer level and make sure it’s at 23 feet. Got very busy on a reactor scram—lots of stuff to do there. And after the day on the double-A console, we went to the BN console. That monitored the secondary coolant system, so we had water coming back from the Washington Public Power Supply System. We sent them steam, they sent back condensate to us. Then we had a secondary system to maintain the pressure of the main steam header. So we had to watch that, plus we had to watch the rupture monitor system, which would check the radiation levels in the coolant water outlet from the reactor tubes. There were 1,003 tubes with fuel in them. The system would compare the radiation level between two adjacent tubes, and if one of them was higher than the other, a red light would come on on this panel. Then you’d go over and push the button to reset it. They’re coming on and off all the time. But if we had a rupture, that meant there was a leak in the cladding on the fuel. Usually, it was a little small pinhole; sometimes—and I never saw this—the welded-on endcap would blow off. Uranium, normally, is not very soluble in water, but when the water’s really hot, then it’s really soluble. And we’re running at 600 degrees or so for the coolant water. So if you had a rupture, you could start dissolving the uranium very rapidly. That’s got all of the fission products in it from the uranium atoms that have split, which are highly radioactive. So you could completely contaminate the primary coolant loop. So you needed to catch a rupture before it progressed too far. That was a frustrating job because those lights are coming on and off all the time. You got to look at those, and it was kind of a bad design, because that panel was here, the other panel was over there, and you had to keep looking back and forth. So that’s why we’d call it the boring console. It was pretty boring at full power. A lot of work there, again, on a reactor startup. We had to set things up to control the main steam header pressure, and that was a lot of work. So it was kind of fun, then. But full power, it was kind of boring. After we cycled through, if we had more than four operators, then we’d have two days where we’re—you could either study, because we always had to maintain our certification, and we had quarterly requalification classes and every two years we had to recertify. Or you could just be assigned to go out in the plant and do various jobs, help out—if it’s needed somewhere, help out some of the operators who were still studying to be certified operators, help train them, things like that. And then you just kept rotating through that. If we had an outage, we only had two places manned in the control room. One was the double-A console, and the other one was the communications console. So you kept contact with everybody throughout the plant, and made PA announcements if need be. Just let people know what’s going on. If we were in charge/discharge operations, you might be assigned to work on the charge or discharge elevator, to set it up for refueling the reactor. Or just—if it’s not a charge/discharge outage or we’re already done with that, you might be going in the rod rooms and doing some valving to assist the millwrights who might be repairing control rod issues and things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I saw you had some pictures there. Could you walk us through some of what those are?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah. Here is a picture. I found this online in the Hanford system a while back, and I was really surprised. That’s me, and I don’t remember posing for this picture. But I am on the charge elevator here. This is the wall, and it’s opposite the reactor and it’s a shield wall and each of these things here are plugs. You can open one up on the elevator side and on the other side, there was a really large elevator called the W work elevator. It actually came off a World War II aircraft carrier for lifting airplanes up to the flight deck. They could pull a plug out there, and they would run a tube through this penetration. Then you would mate it up with the process tube in the reactor. That’s how you refueled. They must have had a photographer up there taking pictures to show other people what goes on there. That was my assignment, and so I obviously posed for this picture, but like I say, I don’t remember doing this at all.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Is that your usual outfit when you were working?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. Those are called anti-C clothes, or—original Hanford terminology was SWP clothing, for Special Work Procedure. During World War II, you didn’t want to say that this was to protect against contamination, because this is all secret what we’re doing. So you’re doing a special work procedure, so you have to wear the special work procedure clothes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So that’s a second pair of gloves there?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah. I would be wearing two pairs of coveralls, a hood, two pairs of gloves and some rubber shoes. And underneath the rubber shoes there’s some canvas booties. So this is not a real high contamination job. If we were actually refueling the reactor, I’d be wearing plastic raingear over that. We used to wear a face shield to keep water out of our face. Later on, we had a hood with a blower unit that provided air so we didn’t suffocate, and that kept water off our face. So that’s about as good as I could get on the elevator. This picture was taken of our crew in the control room. We had started a straight day shift crew. It was so we had more time for training. We worked Monday through Thursday in the control room, and every Friday we had training. And the rotating shifts, when they came in on days, they worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the control room, and then during the week they had training. We formed up this brand new shift. They let it out by seniority, and there weren’t that many people who wanted to do it. Some people, strangely enough, really liked shiftwork. So I managed to get on the first crew. And on our very first day working together as a crew, we had what we call a WPPSS turbine trip—the Washington Public Power Supply System bought our steam, and they had two turbines, and one of their turbines tripped. That had happened before, and the reactor had never managed to ride through that without scramming. Well, we kept the reactor from scramming. And I was on this console here—this is the nuclear console. I was controlling the reactor power level. When their turbine dropped off, the main steam header pressure goes up. This is getting a little technical, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: No, that’s great.</p>
<p>Jensen: The main steam pressure goes up high. That sits on top of the steam generators. When the pressure’s high, water doesn’t boil as easily. And when water boils, you get heat exchange. So we are sending hotter water back through the reactor. That is not as good a moderator as the cooler water. So the reactor power went down very fast. So I had to start pulling control rods to make up for that. In low-enriched reactors, like any of the Hanford reactors, when you lose power rapidly, you start building up a fission product called xenon which is a neutron poison. It absorbs neutrons better than anything else. At equilibrium power, we’re making xenon at a certain rate, and it’s destroyed as soon as it’s made by absorbing neutrons. So the net amount of it in the reactor is zero. But if we lose power, we’re still producing it for several hours at the old rate. But we don’t have as many neutrons in there, so the reactor power will go down and it will just make it worse. So you have to pull rods very fast. So that’s what I had to do. My part was to keep the reactor from going down so far that the xenon would take it all the way down. The other operators were working to keep the main steam header pressure from going up too high, because we had a scram trip on that, because you didn’t want to rupture the steam header. The people controlling the primary coolant loop pressure had to do work on that. It was very exciting. But we survived it, and so they took this picture as a commemoration. One of the people involved was on the nuclear console when they took the picture and he didn’t want to be in the picture. So he’s not in there. But I like this, because if you know what you’re looking at, you can actually see that the reactor’s operating. There’s some indications there that the reactor’s at its 4,000 megawatt power level. And it’s one of the few pictures I’ve ever seen where you can tell the reactor was operating. Then, almost a year later, the exact same thing happened again, and I was in the same place. It was really easy the second time, because I knew exactly what to do. So they took a picture again, for all of us. This is the double-A console. Kept these all these years. As long as I’ve got these up here, this is an aerial photo of the N Reactor complex. Let me see. This is the reactor building right here. Make sure I’m not looking at things backwards. This building over here is the Washington Public Power Supply System. You can kind of see over here there’s some lines that go over, and those are the steam lines going over to them. They bought the steam from us and then sent the condensate back after they ran it through their turbines.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much did you have to communicate with them?</p>
<p>Jensen: Frequently. We called them up--any time we were going to do something that might affect the power level, we would call them up, tell them we’re going to do that. If they were going to do something that might affect the condensate coming back, they would let us know. They would give us some numbers. From there, power generation, which we would compile into a daily report, I think that was the basis for how much money they paid us for the steam. Things like that. So we were in constant contact with them. Usually it was the operator on the double-A console who would communicate with the—we called them Whoops in those days. They didn’t like being called Whoops. Now it’s Energy Northwest. But that’s a habit that’s hard to break. I still want to call them Whoops. And we didn’t mean it anything derogatory in those days, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When you said that the turbine tripped, would that seize it up? What does that involve?</p>
<p>Jensen: I’m not really sure why it tripped. They may have had some valves—steam admittance valves close or something. If they told us why it tripped at the time, I can’t remember. This was 1987 or so. So it was quite a while—almost 30 years ago. The second trip—not sure if it was the same cause or not. I know one time they had a turbine trip and we didn’t survive that one. [LAUGHTER] It was kind of funny. Somebody was sweeping in their control room, and the broom fell and hit a switch and caused the turbine to trip off. So on that reactor outage, they paid for everything we did to get the reactor back up. We had a special charge code. Because it was their fault, so they’re paying for it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That would, I guess, give the reactor xenon poisoning and they couldn’t start up for a certain amount of time?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. If we scrammed from full power, theoretically, you could pull control rods almost immediately and override the xenon building up. But we had a mandated one-hour hold if we scrammed from full power. And that’s so that you will make sure it wasn’t a spurious scram. If it’s something that’s actually not working correctly, so it would be unsafe to operate, you can figure that out. And by doing that—waiting that one hour, it gets impossible to start the reactor up. So our minimum downtime from full power was generally about 23 hours—23 to 24 hours. If we could figure out what the problem was and get it fixed, then we started up the next day. If I was something serious, it might take a few more days, or several days, to figure out what the problem is or correct the problem. And then when we started up, it was kind of interesting, because we had the control rods pulled almost completely out of the reactor before the reactor went critical. And then as the power goes up, you’re pushing control rods in, rather than pulling them out to raise power, until you get to a point—it’s called xenon turnaround—where you’ve burned up all of the xenon that was in the reactor, and now the reactor’s making more of the xenon and then they start coming back out. So those were actually really fun.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How often did the reactor scram?</p>
<p>Jensen: N Reactor was getting kind of old by the time I was there. Some of the equipment was really old, old technology, and getting a little hard to maintain. We usually had two or three scrams in a particular operating run. I’m not really sure how many, because, again, it’s been so long. We would typically operate for a month. And we were in plutonium weapons-grade production mode, and so we only operated for a month, and then we would shut down and about a third of the reactor. But it was unusual to go an entire cycle without at least one scram. And usually they were spurious ones. The ones that caused a lot of them were the flow monitor system, which was a pretty old system. If somebody slammed a door or something somewhere, the instruments would vibrate, and it would give a false indication of low flow, and the reactor would scram. It only took one of the 1,003 flow monitor devices to cause a reactor scram. So that was kind of touchy there.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: And that was automated?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, it was automated. You had this big panel with all these 1,003 dials. Normally, we never changed them. If we swapped steam generator cells out—like cell five was out for years until it got re-tubed, and then we put that one in and took another one out so they could re-tube that one. And we had to adjust all of those dials. Oh, that was a boring job—get them all set exactly right, and then somebody has to go through and check them all. If we ran in that mode with that same balance of steam generators, we didn’t have to do that every startup.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: In the pictures with the other operators, could you just tell us about one or two of the other folks you were working with?</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. This is Dennis Real. Hopefully he won’t mind that I mentioned his name. He still works at Hanford. He started a little bit before me. This gentleman is Bill Terhark. He was a very, very experienced operator. He was one of the ones that you really wanted to have in the control room when things went bad, because he knew what to do all the time. He had so much experience. He went back to the 1950s, operating—probably operated at every one of the reactors. This is Fred Butcher, Jr. His dad had also been a reactor operator, Fred Butcher, Sr. And that’s me, and this is our control room supervisor, Glen Buckley.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you know anything about their backgrounds? Were they also—I guess the one who had most experience probably trained in reactors, but were they all engineers mostly?</p>
<p>Jensen: No, no. Dennis had been a paramedic or EMT before he started working at the reactor. I’m not sure about Fred, what he did. Bill had graduated from high school, joined the Air Force, came out of the Air Force, got a job at Hanford. Typically, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they did not hire engineers to be—and I don’t know what Glen’s job was—or what his background was, before. Most of us, except the older operators had college of some sort or another. When I hired on, they were hiring people usually with a couple years or more of college.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So you were there through the end of N Reactor, is that right?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. In 1987—well, 1986—I think it was in April, was the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl, although really was not similar at all to N Reactor, everybody thought it was, because both reactors are moderated by graphite instead of light-water. So everybody looked at graphite—that must be the cause of why Chernobyl blew up. Well, it blew up because it was a really poor design, and it was poorly operated, and they had a really unusual transient situation and then they had a steam explosion that tore the reactor apart. Well, we decided we would make some safety upgrades. They decided we’re going to shut down on January 7<sup>th</sup>, 1987. Six months of safety upgrades, then we’d start back up. Well, we pretty much knew we were never going to start back up again. They did do all the safety upgrades, spent millions of dollars on them, but—anyway, so we came in on January 7<sup>th</sup> knowing that this is probably the last day of operation for the reactor, and it was our job to shut it down. I was on the double-A console that day. It would have been nice if I had been on the nuclear console, to be the guy actually putting the rods in, but that was Dennis. So we shut the reactor down. Took about an hour. We still had fuel in the reactor for a good almost two years before we defueled the reactor. Because we were going to start up again. And then finally they said, no, we’re going to defuel the reactor and we’ll go on wet layup. So we still had water pumping through the pipes, keep everything wet. Because if you let it drain of water and then it’s damp in there, then things will start to rust. But if you have water flowing through there, that wouldn’t happen. So we went for a few months where we kept all of the pumps running and stuff like that, but no fuel in the reactor. And then they said, well, now we’re going to go into dry layup. So we drained the primary coolant loop and all the other systems, and then we had big fans blowing hot air through there to keep moisture from condensing in there. The thought was, maybe we’ll get the order to start up again. And then they just said, nope. Pulling the plug. Reactor is abandoned, and it’ll go into decontamination and decommissioning. And it’s essentially been torn down now, and what’s left of it—the reactor block itself—is all cocooned. Just like most of the other old reactors.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What happened to your and the other reactor operators’ careers at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: [SIGH] Well, that was kind of a scary time. People thought we’re going to get laid off. Some people quit and went back to school. I remember one guy went to school and got a doctor’s degree in optometry and became an optometrist. There was some programs to help people with that, some money to help people go to college and get something else. Some people just found other jobs and left. And then I ended up staying. I was getting bored with being an operator at a reactor that wasn’t operating, and there wasn’t even any fuel in the reactor. But we still had all the stored fuel, and they needed somebody to be what they called the criticality safety representative, to work with operations and with the criticality safety analyst to make sure we’re still storing that fuel safely, so we don’t have any inadvertent criticality accident. Not very likely, but it could conceivably still happen. So I got that job, and in addition to that I was doing other stuff that you would call nuclear safety work. So I ended up becoming, to all intents and purposes, a nuclear safety engineer, even though I don’t have an engineering degree. And I’ve been doing that ever since.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Who is that, technically, that you were working for at that point? Was it Battelle?</p>
<p>Jensen: No. Initially I worked for UNC Nuclear Industries. That was UNC parts stands for United Nuclear Corporation. They had the contract to run the reactors. In those days, Rockwell ran the 200 Areas for the Tank Farms and stuff like that, and the processing plants. So they ran the PUREX Plant that was extracting plutonium from our fuel. Battelle operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and that does research and design. Right after we shut down, DoE announced that they were going to consolidate all of the contracts. Westinghouse got that contract, so I worked for Westinghouse at the time I got into nuclear safety. Westinghouse went through a contract period and then a renewal period, and DoE typically does not renew anybody’s contract—nowadays anyway—more than once. So Westinghouse left, and then they announced a bid for a new contract. The Fluor Corporation won that one, and so I worked for Fluor for several years. They went through—I think they went through two and a half. DoE gave them an extension on the second done until they could get everything in place. And then the contract was won by the CH2M Hill Company, and that’s who I work for now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Does it make much difference when one becomes—</p>
<p>Jensen: WE used to joke the only difference it makes is in the color of the paycheck. It makes a little bit of difference, because you get some upper management coming in, and they have different ideas on how things should be done. We all joke that we have to educate them on how things actually are done. That’s only half-joking because it’s different than anything else. Fluor had some subcontractors who had never done work for Department of Energy before. So they wanted to do things the way you do it in the commercial nuclear industry. And it’s like, you don’t get to do it that way—you do it the way DoE tells you to do it. So we kind of had to educate them. But it’s a little bit different. There’s a little bit of different philosophy every time.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was there ever any kind of either interest or communication with the commercial sector, in terms of learning or teaching any particular things?</p>
<p>Jensen: We did a little bit. I cannot remember the name of the organization, but it’s an organization that compiles knowledge from commercial nuclear reactors all over the country, and the disseminates that to help everybody. We had some people who would go to meetings there, so I guess we became a member of this group. I never was involved in that, but—So we would hear things that happened at other plants and then see if there were some lessons learned that we could apply. But N Reactor was so different than a commercial reactor that sometimes things that happened at N Reactor, they wouldn’t be able to use at a commercial reactor and vice versa.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How secretive was your work?</p>
<p>Jensen: Not much. There were a few things—security stuff was classified. But what we were doing was no longer secret, hadn’t been secret since 1945. I had to have a clearance—it was a secret level clearance. Mostly that was just to make sure I was trustworthy and wouldn’t sabotage the plant or something. Very rarely did I actually see any information that was classified secret.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I would assume, though, that the plutonium itself—I guess you didn’t see the plutonium until it got through the PUREX Plant?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, well I never saw it. I’ve never seen plutonium. All of that stuff—how it was handled, how it was stored—that’s all part of the security thing, and that was all classified. And would still be, to this day, except we don’t have any plutonium at Hanford—not in any discrete form that you can do anything with, anyway.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So what is it you’re doing again? Could you give us more detail on what you’re doing or what you did subsequent to being a reactor operator?</p>
<p>Jensen: I worked in nuclear and criticality safety for N Reactor until we shipped all of the fuel over to the fuel storage basins at the K East and K West Reactors and I moved over there. I worked in criticality safety for that. When they were storing the fuel, that was fairly easy, because they weren’t doing anything. Then they decided they needed to get the fuel out of the basins because they’re close to the river, and the K East Basin had leaked at least once and maybe twice in the past. So the contaminated water gets into the groundwater and eventually gets out to the river. So we needed to get the fuel off the river, so they built a storage facility in the 200 East Area. We had to build a whole system to take the fuel out of the basin and put it in shielded casks and ship it over thee. So there was a lot of work on that, and all of that had to be set up to prevent criticalities. And also nuclear safety, which is more concerned with releases of radiological stuff to the atmosphere. So you need to keep those releases down below certain guidelines that DoE provides to protect the public.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So was this at all part of this amelioration cleanup efforts at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, that’s the whole goal that we’re working towards: get all of the fuel out of the reactor basins. So we got it all out of the K East Basin first, and then that’s actually been destroyed—the basin has been completely dug up and destroyed, and the area backfilled. The reactor’s prepared for cocooning, but hasn’t been, because they ran out of funding. So it’s in a safe, stable condition right now. K West Basin is empty of fuel, but it has sludge. I still do some work for 100 K, although mostly I work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant now. They’re going to move all the sludge out, and then they’ll do the same thing to the K West Basin that they did at K East. And basically, all over Hanford, that’s what they’re doing is cleaning things out, and getting them ready for demolition. So I work at PFP now in nuclear criticality safety there, and they’ve got miles and miles of ductwork. Some big pipes and some little pipes that are all contaminated with plutonium, and they have to carefully take all that stuff out. Get enough of that out so they can actually start tearing the building down.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Are there any general ways, whether it’s the type of people working there, or morale, or whatever, that the work at the Hanford site has changed over the time you’ve been there?</p>
<p>Jensen: [SIGH] During the operating days, it was fun. Actually fun to go to work and do something that you thought was productive. I mean, you can argue whether you thought we should have been making plutonium for nuclear weapons or not, but the job was very interesting. When the reactor shut down, the morale went down quite a bit, because, for one, people thought they were going to lose their jobs, and two, it’s like, well, even if we stay here for decommissioning, that’s not going to be anywhere near as interesting. And it isn’t. It has its own interesting aspects to it. But mostly, people are pretty professional and here’s a job, we’re going to get all of the fuel out of K East. So people went and worked on that, and we’re going to get all the fuel out of K West, so you work on that. While you’re doing that, it’s satisfying, because you’ve got a goal to work for. PFP—it’s a very difficult job. I think the morale kind of goes up and down. We have successes and then there’s problems you run into. But in a way that’s what makes a job interesting, if there’s problems that you can resolve and get through it, and then you succeed on this task and go onto the next one. But it was a lot more fun to operate than to do what we’re doing now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much longer would you guess we’re going to be doing this--?</p>
<p>Jensen: I, personally, or Hanford?</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Both, why not?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, PFP is supposed to be torn down. It was supposed to be torn down by the end of September this year, but it’s probably going to be about a year off from that. The K Basin—K West Basin has sludge in it. They’re probably going to start removing the sludge in about two years. That’ll probably take about a year to do that and then they’ll start tearing that basin down. There’s still a huge project called Groundwater, where they’re pumping contaminated water, and it’s not just radioactive contamination, there’s a lot of heavy metal contamination in Groundwater. They pump that out, and they run it through processes to take the, like, chromium out of the water and replace it with a type of chromium that’s not as environmentally damaging. That’ll go on for years and years. And then there’s still—all of the old processing canyons are still there in place, and all of those are going to have to be torn down at some point. So, it’s probably decades more work here. And then there’s all the tanks. They’re going to take all the waste out of the tanks and run it through the Vit Plant which isn’t done yet. So years of work left at Hanford.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Interesting. Were you ever interested in the sort of politics of Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: Not too much. The politics were different. In the ‘80s, it was whether we should be making weapons-grade plutonium or not. Nowadays the politics is more like, which project do we rob from to give to somebody else? And political battles in Congress as to how much funding Hanford gets, and things like that. So I try and stay out of all of that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure. So how about life outside of the work plant? Where were you living—still in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes, I’ve been living in Kennewick since I moved there as a kid in 1965.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Where in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s over near Highway 395 as it kind of cuts through the middle of Kennewick.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How has life in the Tri-Cities changed in the time you’ve—</p>
<p>Jensen: The Tri-Cities is a lot bigger. It was pretty small when I first moved here. For several years, it was just slowly growing, and it’s been growing like crazy since. It’s like, they’re always building new schools, and there’s always housing developments under construction. There used to be a lot of orchards in Kennewick, all around. There’s hardly anything now, because they’ve all been cut down and there’s houses there now. Traffic’s a lot worse.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What do you do in your spare time? Any hobbies or--?</p>
<p>Jensen: I like photography, I like to take pictures with film, which is old-fashioned nowadays. And I like to develop the film myself. So far that’s all been black and white film; I haven’t tried developing color film yet. And I like to collect old film cameras that I can still find film for and use those. Up until recently, I was playing hockey—adult hockey, which I started when I was 49, started playing hockey. I’m 60 now, so I’ve been doing that for about 11 years. However, I had quit, hopefully only temporarily because I’ve got some medical issues. My doctor said no hockey until this is resolved. And then I hurt my knee the other day, so I don’t know. That might—even if the other one gets resolved, that might be the end of hockey. I like to go to Tri-City Americans hockey games during the season. I got to Tri-City Dust Devil games during the baseball season. Like to go to plays and movies. I decided this year I was going to audition for a play, see if I could get in. I did not make it, but I’m going to try again, coming up later. Probably this summer. So we’ll see. Never done that before, either. But it always sounded like fun.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any sort of major events or incidents, whether at work or just sort of around the Tri-Cities that comes to mind that are sort of worth commemorating, or worth just sort of mentioning?</p>
<p>Jensen: Kind of the interesting thing—back in 1986, reactor was still operating, and do you remember Connie Chung, the news—she came to the Tri-Cities to do a show on Hanford. Everybody at work was wondering who she’s going to interview. And we’re thinking they’re going to interview, like company president, company vice president, or something. And I remember joking that she should interview a reactor operator like me. And everybody laughed. And about an hour later, the phone rang, and it was the producer wanting to talk to me, and they wanted to interview me that night. And I got permission from the company. Turned out, my dad, who, like I said, had worked at the Tank Farms—he had gone to a public hearing on what to do with tank wastes. The Connie Chung crew had gone to the same meeting, because they were getting background information. My dad spoke at the meeting, and they said, oh, we have to interview that guy. When they talked to him, he mentioned that his son worked as a reactor operator. Oh, god, that’d be great, interview them both. So that’s how I got called up. The company gave me permission, and they did it in my house. I told them, it was my son’s third birthday, and I said we’re going to have a birthday party, but you can do the interview after the birthday party. So they said okay. After I got home, my wife sent me out to buy ice cream, I think. And I’m coming back. When she came back, she was all excited. Connie Chung called personally and asked if they could film the birthday party. So they filmed my son’s third birthday party, and then they interviewed my dad and I in my living room, and then—I don’t know, two, three hours of interview stuff, and they boil it all down to about five minutes. But that’s the way that goes. So that was kind of exciting. I was a minor celebrity for a while.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any other stories leap to mind?</p>
<p>Jensen: We had some interesting scrams in the control room. I talked about the two turbine trip ones that were very interesting. The first one, like I said, I had to pull control rods rapidly to compensate for the xenon building up faster than it’s being burned out. I got that all settled out, and the power level wasn’t dropping, and I had forgotten that--when the main steam header pressure goes up, the power level goes down—well, eventually, they’re going to control the main steam header, and it’s going to go back where it’s supposed to be. And the power all of the sudden starts shooting up. So now I’m shoving control rods in like crazy to keep the power level from going up too fast, because we could scram on a high rate of rise. So I got that all settled out. The second time it happened—since I was the most experienced person on the plant on this upset, I got it settled out from the xenon, and I just got my ear open over here, and as soon as I hear somebody say, main steam header pressure’s coming down, I look over and the power level starts to go up, and I tap some rods in, and it was just like routine. Nothing to it. But another time, we had another accident—well, accident’s probably not the right word. We had another upset. We had a new control system—computerized system for controlling valve positioning. The old system we had was very ancient. It was obsolete when they put it in at the reactor, but they got a good price on it, so that’s why they did that. So we had this new computerized system, and there were two cards in the computer that controlled the valve positioning. The primary card, and a backup card. If the primary card failed, you would transfer to the backup card, and it was supposedly a bump-less transfer. The system wouldn’t even know. The primary card had failed, and so it transferred to the backup card, and everything went perfect. Well, the instrument technicians took the primary card out to repair it, and they came to put it back in. Now, this card controlled the steam valves going over to WPPSS. I was on the console controlling all of that, and I remember, jokingly, I said to the guy—the instrument tech and the engineer, when they came in, they were going to go to the rom below the control room where all of that stuff was. They were going to replace it, and I said, you aren’t going to scram us, are you? And the engineer said, trust me. And they went down—and I was just joking, because I figured, no big deal—and they went down and they put the primary card in and they told it to take over. It took over and sent its signal to the valves, but the secondary card did not relinquish control. So all of the steam valves opened up twice as far as they were supposed to. So our steam pressure goes down, and when that goes down, the reactor power goes up. And the primary coolant pressure also goes down, because you’re boiling water really well in the secondary system, that cools the water really well in the primary system, and cold water contracts. So that pressure goes down, and if the pressure goes down to far, the reactor scrams. So I’m fighting like mad with—somebody else came over to help me—to keep from scramming on low pressure. Other people are working over here, trying to keep from scramming on something over here. And other people over here, and the guy on the nuclear console is trying to keep the power level from going up too fast. We’re running around—it was very exciting. Seemed like it took hours. Probably just took a few minutes. We got it all stabilized out, and I’m looking at the primary loop pressure, and it’s kind of fluctuating and bouncing. And right when it’s going—trying to think if it was going up or down. See, if we cool—it had to have been going up. The secondary card cut out, all the valves slammed shut, and we had the exact opposite thing happen. Now, the primary loop gets hot, everything expands, and we scrammed on high pressure. And then about five minutes later, the instrument tech and the engineer come upstairs. They could tell something bad was happening, and they just looked like—it wasn’t their fault, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When it actually does scram, is it actually just rods, or—I’ve heard some designs where there’s actually just balls that are—</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. The main system was control rods. And you were going like this, like dropping down from the top. The old reactors had safety rods that dropped in from the top. N Reactor’s rods all came from both sides, and they overlapped. All the rods would slam in with hydraulic pressure. We had some hydraulic pumps that would turn on and pump very high pressure hydraulic fluid into the system, and the rods would shoot in. It would take about a second-and-a-half to go in. And you’d get all these enunciators in the control room, and if you were—mmm, it’s pretty boring here at two in the morning, and then all of the sudden the reactor scrams, you were wide awake. Got adrenaline pumping through and then you’ve got all these things you have to do to make sure everything works correctly on a scram, because it causes all kinds of things. The balls were the backup to the control rods. They had to be 75% in in one-and-a-half seconds. If they went in too slow, there was a problem. If they went in too fast, there was a problem, just because they could be damaged. But if they went in too slow, that’s what the ball system was for. There were hoppers on top of the reactor—I think there were a hundred-and-some reactors. And they were full of boron carbide balls. Boron absorbs neutrons. That’s what’s in the control rods to absorb neutrons. If you had one slow rod, it’s no big deal. If you had two slow rods in one column, you would drop balls on both sides of that rod column. If you had three slow rods anywhere in the reactor, you would drop balls on both sides of each of those three rod columns. Then there was also a thing where you could have a complete ball drop—drop all of the balls. If the reactor power level did not decay below five megawatts in three minutes, I think it was, then you would have a complete ball drop. That happened twice. Once, for real, because we had a scram and the rods didn’t go in at all—this is before I started working there. So there’s a scram trip, the rods did not go in, the balls dropped. And the other one was we were starting the reactor up—getting ready to start the reactor up and going through all of these checks on various instrumentation. The instrumentation that would monitor if the reactor power was below five megawatts in three minutes, they were doing the work on that, and they had a procedure that they would run. There were three channels and they would run it on each channel. That included having a switch to put in a couple of different calibrate positions. Basically, it put a false signal into the system so you could see if it’s responding correctly. So an operator and an instrument tech were doing that. They did channel one and it didn’t look right when they put it in the calibrate position. So they went on to channel two to see if it would do the same thing, and they did that. Well, they put two trips into the system. The reactor—what we called the safety circuit—was not made up, and so the system started timing for five minutes. These two instruments said the power level was greater than five megawatts with the safety circuit broken. When the give minutes went up, all the balls dropped. It was kind of innocuous. There was an enunciator that said, any ball hopper open. So the enunciator goes off, and the operator looks up at that. Any ball hopper open. And then he realized what happened. He told the control room supervisor, and the control room supervisor told me that. He says, I looked up at it. And I looked down. And I looked up again to make sure it was actually on. And then he said a few bad words and then he went and told the shift manager that we had dropped all of the balls.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I heard on the old reactor designs, that had to be actually sort of vacuumed out.</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. They used vacuum—they were steel balls, too. And they used vacuums to suck them up. At N Reactor, we had a valve at the bottom of the channel that you would open up, and the balls would drain into a hoist, and then you would lift them all the way up to the top, and put them in a hopper at the top—a big hopper—and then you would load the individual hoppers. That was a horrible, horrible job, being up there loading those hoppers. It was always hot, you had to wear plastic raingear and an assault mask, which—rubber hugging your face, and it’s hard, physical labor, and wearing the raingear and it’s already 100 degrees up there anyway. It was just miserable work. So nobody liked to do that. When we had that big ball drop, my job was to go down underneath the reactor. You could open up those drain valves remotely. So we had Bill here who smoked a lot and was not allowed to wear respirators, he was operating the control panel. But a lot of times, the valves wouldn’t work remotely. So, me, wearing all of this fresh air stuff, would stand by, but would say, 43 didn’t work. So I would have to go back there, trailing this hose with my fresh air, and go back to 43, and open it manually. It was extremely hot, radioactively, down there. I picked up my entire one week’s worth of radiation. We were allowed 300 millirem of radiation, either in a single exposure or in a seven-day period, and I picked up that entire 300 in less than an hour, going back and forth. And most of the time, I was just standing there, waiting. And I’d go back in there, and I’d pick up quite a bit, and I’d open up a valve and come back, and then I was done and left. Couldn’t work in a radiation zone for seven days after that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How often did you have the radiation testing? Or was it the hand-and-foot test—</p>
<p>Jensen: Oh, any time we came out of a contaminated zone, contaminated area, when we were wearing those SWPs, you have to undress in a proper sequence. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this. We had step-off pads. A red pad and a green pad. And when you get to the red pad, before you get to that, you have to remove all of your outer clothing before you step on the red pad. And then when you get to the green pad, you have to remove all of your SWP clothing before you step on the green pads. So you end up coming out there—well, in the old days when there were very few women working in the Area, you’d be coming out in your underwear. Later on they made us wear a t-shirt and shorts. But I kind of lost track of what we were saying there. Oh, the hand-and-foot counters. And then when you came out, we would step into a hand-and-foot counter or a whole-body portal monitor that would monitor our sides and front and back, to make sure we weren’t contaminated. Then usually we would also be surveyed by a health physics technician who’s got a Geiger counter, and he just slowly goes over, checks your hands, checks the bottom of your shoes, makes sure you’re not—don’t have any skin or clothing contamination. If you do, then you’ve got to get decontaminated. And that happens once in a while.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that ever a concern of yours?</p>
<p>Jensen: No. I did get a few skin contaminations. I had to hold over once. I got some primary coolant water in my hair, and there was a lot of radon in the water. Radon is electrostatically attracted to polyester and hair. So it latches on, and it’s hard to get off. I just had to wait until it decayed off. After about--</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did you shave?</p>
<p>Jensen: No, no. I washed my hair several times, and then they just said—come back every hour and we’ll check, and after about three hours they let me go home. Usually, skin contaminations wash off pretty easy. If it’s your clothing, you have to wash the clothing. You don’t get to take that home until it’s passed as clean. Sometimes, rarely, stuff would have to get thrown away. But I never had any serious contamination issues. If you’re careful, if you dress correctly, and then when you come out, you undress correctly, then it’s very rare to be contaminated.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any other sort of stories leap to mind from your--?</p>
<p>Jensen: There’s a few things that happened before I was there that were interesting. I don’t know. We had an accident. It was about three—and this one is an accident—it was about three years before I started work. They flushed a tube of hot, radioactive fuel onto the charge elevator, which is not where it’s supposed to go. It’s supposed to go out the back, and fall into the discharge shoots and then go into the basin. There were workers on the elevator when it happened. They got very high radiation exposures. Fortunately, not high enough to kill anybody. But that was just lucky, I think. So, I don’t know. That was the most serious thing I know that happened there. We did have one—before I was certified, we had one really bad accident where we lost all the instrument air to the plant. Almost every valve functions with air—they’re air-operated: air to open, air to close. A lot of pumps are—the pump speeds are maintained by air pressure, things like that. So we had a scram, and it was a very abnormal scram. But we survived it.</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
<p>Camera man: Okay, hold it out so we see.</p>
<p>Jensen: --piece of fuel out of the reactor, and they pushed all the hot, irradiated fuel out, but we’d done a normal refueling after that shutdown. And, well, now, we’ve got to—we pushed out all the hot fuel, and now we’re going to push out all the un-irradiated fuel and keep it, just in case we start up again. I happened to be walking by when they got the last one out, and they were taking a picture and they said, get over here!</p>
<p>Camera man: Oh, so where are you? Are you down in front there?</p>
<p>Jensen: I am right there.</p>
<p>Camera man: Yep, that’s right.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: You’ve got the [INAUDIBLE] gear guy in back.</p>
<p>Jensen: So these guys are all dressed up in the gear and they’ve got the fuel with them. I think they’ve got the fuel with them in there. There’s another picture that I don’t have that actually shows them holding the last piece. [VIDEO CUTS] There were two certified operators when I was hired on. I think there had been some more who had left. There was another lady who was in the certification program and then she certified shortly after that. In my class, there was one woman and she did not go all the way through, and then in the class after, there was at least one woman in there. So we had a handful of women certified operators. The very first one hired, I’m pretty sure that would have been Martha Coop. I’m wondering who the guy you talked to was who hired her. Because I’m sure I would know him. I just can’t think of who that might have been. The other one was Leslie Jensen, no relation to me, and I think she was the one who babysat me when I was probably a kindergartener or a first grader. She was one of my mom’s students.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: All right. Anything else I should be asking here, any other memories that are worth preserving?</p>
<p>Jensen: I’ll probably think things when I get home.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure.</p>
<p>Jensen: But right now I think I’m—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Great. All right, well that’s been great. Thank you so much for being here.</p>
<p>Jensen: You’re welcome.</p>
<p><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/vzYLT2Ds3-Q">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:16:35
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
N Reactor
200 Area
Tank Farms
WPPSS (Washington Public Power Supply Systems)
UNC (United Nuclear Corporations)
Rockwell
PUREX
PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
K East Reactor
K West Reactor
K East/West Basins
100-K
PFP (Plutonium Finishing Plant)
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1961-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Mark Jensen
Description
An account of the resource
Mark Jensen moved to Richland, Washington in 1961 as a child and grew up in Kennewick, Washington. Mark began working on the Hanford Site in 1981.
An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
03-25-2016
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2017-04-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Kennewick (Wash.)
Nuclear reactors
Nuclear reactor accidents
Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986
Nuclear energy
Nuclear power plants
Nuclear fuel rods
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/26">Mark Jensen, Oral History Metadata</a>
2-East Area
200 Area
200 East
200 East Area
Battelle
Department of Energy
Energy Northwest
Hanford
K Basin
K West Reactor
K-Basin
K-West Reactor
Kennewick
Manhattan Project
N Reactor
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
PUREX
School
Sun
Tank Farm
Tank Farms
United Nuclear Corporation
VIT Plant
War
Washington Public Power Supply System
Westinghouse
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F28a2a31d0a10e6436fafce8d65fec651.jpg
b9619b036e3525d491cc95915e251e35
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb699b96eac222f7a141bc116875ae9d2.mp4
2afe44cc1de41ef0a133dfaf1f298ffc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Douglas O' Reagan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Maynard Plahuta
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Douglas O’Reagan</span>: Okay. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Mayn</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ard Plahuta on Thursday, I guess it’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—sorry, what is the date today?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: 28</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX227234824">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Is it the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">28</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX227234824">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">? O</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">kay. April 28</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX227234824">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, 2016. This interview is being conducted on the campus of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Washington</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Plahuta about his experiences working on the Hanford site and living in the Tri-Cities. To start us off, could you please pronounce and spell your name for us?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yes. It’s Maynard Plahuta. Maynard is M-A-Y-N-A-R-D, and Plahuta is P-L-A-H-U-T-A.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Thank you. Just to start off, could you tell us a little bit </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">about</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> your life before you came to the Tri-Cities?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Okay. Well, I was born in a little old farming com</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">munity in Wisconsin—a little</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> dairy farming community. Big population of 200</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> people. Then </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I grew up there on the farm most of the time and went on to college. Went to</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> University of Wisconsin, first got my undergrad work, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">then </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">later </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I went back</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and got my master’s in business administration. In between those two times, I worked for General Motors, the AC spark plug plant in Oak</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Ridge</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—not Oak Ridge, I’m sorry—Oak Park</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, Wisconsin, which was the Titan</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> missile program for the Air Force, the guidance system—the gyro system. So then I went back to grad school and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">then </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">joined up with the Atomic Energy Commissi</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">on and was assigned out here at </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Richland.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What attracted you to the AEC?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX227234824">
<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, I think part of it was the interest in kind of science and industry and all of that sort of thing. The people from Argonne Lab at the Chicago Operations office came to interview at the campus there. I and another fellow were invited to then go back to Argonne for a further interview, and I was one of the two that was selected to join. At the time, I didn’t know where I would be located. They asked, well, if you had a preference. We aren’t going to pick particular places, but if you had a preference, list the three sites that the Atomic Energy Commission was at that I would enjoy. So I said, well, of course</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the first one was at the Argonne Lab, close by home there. And I don’t remember which I put second or third, but it was either Richland, Washington or Schenectady, New York. I ended up be</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ing in Schenectady for a </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">while</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> basically</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. But I was as</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">signed out here at Richland, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> it was interesting because </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">he says, well, you know, this is not the western—this isn’t the Evergreen State. And I said, well, I learned that by looking up a little more information on Hanford out in the desert. So I came out here with the idea that probably these assignments would be for one year. Because we were on what they called the technical and administrative intern program. So, I was selected on that intern program, and said probably be there a year, an</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">d probably no longer, because we</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’ll probably assign you somewhere else. Well, I came, and I was here until ’71 and then I went back to Sche</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nectady for four years, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> came back and was here ever since.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What sort of jobs were you working on then?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, initially—my graduate work was in</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> labor relations and in personnel</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> management and that sort of thing. At that time, they didn’t call it human re</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">sources, they called it personnel</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> management. So I </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">was, first year out here, probably in the personnel department for about a year. And then that’s when the whole diversification program started here in 1963 or ’64. And I was assigned to look at the unique </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">use permit and work for a fellow by the name of Paul Holstead who had the responsibility for all the lab op</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">erations as far as</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the Atomic Energy Commission was concerned. Th</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">at was very interesting. So that was all start of this</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> whole </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arrangement with Battelle </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">being selected to operate the Pacific Northwest Lab. Now, at that time it w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">asn’t called a national lab yet;</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> it was just Pacific Northwest Lab. And they had that particular use permit, which is no longer in existence, but it was a real ideal situation. And then that led into what they called the Consolidated Lab where they could do private work as well as the government work and all</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> of</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that. So I administered that contract, then, for a few years, or until I went back to Schenec</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">tady. Then I was back in personne</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">l management in Schenectady, though—labor relations area, under Rickover’s program, and that was very interesting. Then I came back here again in ’65 and was in personnel for a while but then back at the laboratory for a while. And I worked on that fo</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">r—oh, gosh, quite a few years, b</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ecause I had a total of 35 years i</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">n. But most of the time was with the laboratory, but then later on, I was asked to take over t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">he responsibilities for the DOE—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t that time was already DOE—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">and the site infrastructure. You know, the roads, the utilities, the sewer plants, the warehouse buildings, the railroads, the—all the utilities, just like running a whole city. It was not the operations of those i</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nfrastructure; it was more the capital </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">improvements and the projects that needed to be done. Either new roads or new utilities or whatever it might be. That was for—I don’t know—four, five, six years. That also included some of the relationship with the tribes in the cultural resource programs and that sort of activity. But then the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> other</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> manager asked</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> us, jeepers</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, you know, I would really like to set up something we never had here at Richland before. That was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> sort of</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a governmental relations program. So he asked if I would be willing to do that. So the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> last—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">oh, probably about the last six years of my career, I was in what they call governmental-congressional relations, dealing—almost </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">daily basis with congressional staff. Primarily congressional staff, some within the state government as well, and the local government, particularly in those sorts of things. So I retired doing that job in ’98.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">O’R</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">eagan</span>: Great. Let’s back up. Could</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> you tell us about this diversification program?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, yeah. That was really interest</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ing, because what the idea was—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hat is when General Electric</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> decided not to continue with their contract. Up until that time, General Electric had one contract for whole site operations. So the idea was two-fold. GE was not particularly interested in continuing doing that particular work, and the community was going through—yes, they still are—the diversification and further economic development for the community. So, there was a big effort there to break up the whole big contract into—I think it was five or six different segments. It was all up for bid, and various people were bidding for it. The laboratory, though, was separated as one of those segments. That was the first one to be authorized, and Battelle came in then operations in July of ’65. But up until—during that whole year, I was kind of working on part of the bid package going out and working on that. But not extensively. But then after the bid was accepted from Battelle, and they put an operation in, it got into this matter of doing this. The diversification program itself was dependent much on what these bidders would propose to supplement the economy here in the Tri</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">-Cities. In fact, that’s how this</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> WSU campus—you may be aware—was part of one of the contractors’ business, that they’d build this facility. Up until that time, GE had a little building down where the bank is—the National Bank down there by the Federal Building—and that wasn’</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t built either yet—to service the program that they established, their educational program, which is very unique because there wasn’t really any nuclear engineering classes in universities—or very few. So they really brought tech people in and really gave </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">them a good background and education in nuclear operations and so on. Now, I said the Federal Building wasn’t built then. It was built then. It was in the process of being built when I came out here in ’63. So that diversification was </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the spin</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">off of a lot of new types of business here in the Tri-Cities. I mean, Exxon Nuclear, which now later is now part of AREVA out here at the site, the fuel fabri</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">cation. That started out a spinoff from</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> some of the activity there. There was just a great amount of enthusiasm at that time, because</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I think</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> there was worries that the government will fold up and the city will kind of dry up and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">blow</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> away so to speak. So that was a very interesting period. There was some very interesting discussions, very interesting foresights of what might happen. A number of those didn’t survive. There were some things—isotope development was one at that time that was a little bit ahead of its time, I think. But there was—the airport was improved by that. What’s now the Red </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Lion in</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> town, but</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the Hanford House, it was called then</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, I think it was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—no, Desert Inn. The Desert Inn at that time was a brand new building they put up at that time. So it was a different time, and rather unique type</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> of activity that was going on in this community at that time.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Were these discussions going on in the newspapers, or just sort of hand-shake meetings?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, they were pretty well open discussions about what they wanted. And there was quite a bit of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">publicity</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> about the fact of what some of these contractors—potential contractors were offering. That was exciting for the people, because some of these were new developments. Like the whole campus here, an original building that was part of one of the contractors’ bids. And the hotels and the stockyards over in Wallula</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> over there, that was another one. A</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nd</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, gee, I </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">can</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> remember all of them, but there were a number. I know the isotope development thing—the isotope separations, I could really say, was one that didn’t quite make it. But anyway, it was a period of time when people were looking forward into the future and what might come, and looking at different types of work, and not so dependen</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t just on the government here. Now, o</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">f course, we’re still quite dependent on the government here, and that’s been—what, 30 years—oh, more than that. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">That</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was 1965, so that’s been a long, long time ago. But a lot has progressed, obviously, from that time. I remember coming here—I wasn’t married at the time. I met my wife here. But, gee, if people wanted to go shopping, they’d either go to Walla Walla or Yakima or something. You know, there was nothing here. The mall out there wasn’t developed. It was—very little here to—and about the restaurants, you’d go over to Prosser to the Red Barn or something if you wanted a good meal. You could always find a hamburger shop here or something like that, but it was quite different then. Of course, my wife grew up here. She was only five years old when her parents came from Schenectady, New York with GE. She can remember—gosh, when hardly anything was going on, and families would just get together </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">because</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> they were from—god, all over the country. So many of them didn’t have any family here, so they created their own families, so to speak. But, yeah, that diversification effort was a great effort. There was much success, much success. I think a lot of what was learned there has been helpful and useful for the community. And I do have to give a credit, though, to Battelle and some of the forward-thinking that they did on what their operations were, very successful. And this Consolidated Lab which most people even in this community don’t understand or recognize, but it was very unique. There was a fellow that was with GE, went</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> over</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> with Battelle, of course, when they took over, by the name of Wally Sale. He was their finance director. Tremendous guy. He and Sam Tomlinson and the DOE—or AEC—I call it DOE, but it was the AEC then—were both very, very instrumental in getting this unique idea established and working there, where it was a fair amount of discipline and very good audit-type processing and very excellent means of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">determining that everything was legitimate, so to speak. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">That the accounting was very precise. It was a unique situation.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: So you were still working with the AEC while you were working on that?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Okay. So they were—even though they weren’t sort of a bidder, or in direct—</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Plahuta:</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> No, no.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: They were still involved—</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, they were the organization or the entity that was accepting these bids and proposals going out and diversify the area. That was—I should also mention, that was a lot to do </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">with</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> some </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">of the local community leaders here, though, too,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was pushing this idea with the government that, no, we got to depend on more than just the US government to keep this economy going. So there were guys </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">like Sam Volpentest and others—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">B</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ob Philips and other people—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">who were working closely with our two senators. They were actively involved. Magnusson and Jackson—Scoop Jackson and Maggie. Very, very </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">obvious. And they both held very high level positions in the government at that time. I mean, they were—there was some thought for a while about Scoop Jackson even running for President. So they both were elevated in the structure of the politicians in the DC area. So, there was a great support there from our local state senators, particularly.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Mm-hmm. Right. So, while we’re still in this early period—you said you’d done some research before you got here. Did it match your expectations?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, yeah. I didn’t really have a whole lot of expectations, really. I mean, I knew that eastern Washington was quite dry, but I didn’t know quite a lot about it. I can remember, I was interested in geography when I was in elementary school, even, and knowing the Plains and the desert area, generally, and the wheat-growing area here, and that sort. But not too much—very extensive. Yeah, I think I surprised the AEC people out of Argonne when I says,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> well,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> yeah, I realized it was dry and a desert. They said, well, jeepers, most people think </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Washington as</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> just</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> being green, you know, the Evergreen State, and don’t even think about it possibly being a desert out there. And when I woul</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">d talk to some of my friends back</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> in Wisconsin as I was going out, the common words were,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> oh,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> you’re gonna be out there in the mountains and you’re gonn</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">a be out there in the greenery</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and all the evergreens. I say, no, no, I’m gonna be out there where the wheat grows in eastern Washington. Really? So I think that’s a misconception a lot of people in the eastern US have of Washington—eastern Washington, you know. They’re correct on the western side, but not on the eastern side. Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What sort of housing did you live in when you got here?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, I roomed with a fellow by the name of Holland St. John. He was a teacher at Chief Joe Junior High here, and the tennis coach there. So I did that until I met my wife and got married, and we then lived in a B house—you know, the government B house, the famous [</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">UNKNOWN</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">], with</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the landlord on the other side—very friendly people, people originally from Tennessee, I believe they were. Just g</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">reat, great folks to be with. We</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> rented that until—because we got married in ’67—until I went back to Schenectady. And then when we came back, I bought a home here in </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">North Richland. Now, currently</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> live in a house that my wife basically gr</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ew up with. It was an H house. We r</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">emodeled the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">whole thing so it doesn’t look anything—all that was remained the same was the four outside walls and one wall inside. And we added on. Anyway, it was one of the government homes that I was originally renting an H house with this roommate. And then when we got married, I rented a B house</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. And the original H house was—Holland </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">St. John was one of the fellows, and the other guy was Sherman. We had the three of us, three single guys who were using that part where they—again, the landlord was on the other side. Wonderful people. That was kind of unique</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> because when I first came and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">went looking, I thought, this</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> A house, B house, that are for rent. I was like, oh, what’s an A</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">B or an H house, C house? But it didn’t take long to figure out, okay, tha</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t’s just the nomenclature that was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> being used for these various types of homes.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Right. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">How did you meet your wife?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: It was actually through church. There was group in our church—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">it </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">was the Christ the King Catholic church, and it was a singles group. That’s how I met her. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">So we got married and we</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’ve had</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> four children. They’re all grown adults now, of course. And we have seven grandkids. Six of them are girls, and finally the one that came along is a boy—the last one. But my two daughters—two of my daughters live here in town with their family. And I got a son in Seattle and another one just south o</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">f Portland in Tualatin—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">suburb of Portland. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">They all—I’m very proud of—they all went on through college. One has got a PhD, the other two of them got a master’s degree. One—and probably the one that’s doing the best, financially, has got just a master’s degree. But the three girls and a boy, and my son has got his master’s out of Purdue in engineering. My one daughter, the youngest one, has got her degree out of Gonzaga in engineering. The other one’s got her PhD in gerontology and the other’s got her master’s in early childhood development. So they’re all doing well. So I’m quite proud of them—of course, as most paren</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ts are. You know how they are, p</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arents. They always think their kids are the greatest</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> in the world</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. So anyway, that’s kind of where I came from—Wisconsin, and all the way out to the west coast and had not been really in the northwest prior t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">o coming out here. I had been in</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> California and some of those areas, but not in the northwest. You know, it’s an enjoyable place to live. But as a lot of people, as you know, here, some of them came for just a short time and they remain here forever. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I married here. So that’s probably the same for me.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Part of what we’re trying to document is sort of the social life around the area, too.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Oh, yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Were church activities sort of a large part of your social life at that point?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, quite a bit. And I was also involved, though—that was before I even met my wife, Yvonne. The little town I grew up in was quite a little interesting town as far as baseball. The area back there in these little towns would have their teams, and they’d play each other. So I was most familiar with baseball, and I had played baseball as a kid. So I helped one of the fellows who, just by coincidence, was also from Wisconsin, from the Milwaukie area. And he was coaching his kids in Little League baseball. So I helped out on that. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Then later on, when my kids got going in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">youth </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">soccer program</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and that was when youth soccer</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> first</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> started, I was quite active in getting it into the high schools and so on, because that was not very popular, not really—like the case of much soccer in the area. So I’m</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> on</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the Hanford High School support team—what do you call it? The—hmm, I can’t think of the title now. But anywa</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">y the supporters have their </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">support </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">efforts</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> to keep them going. So the social life was pretty much tied in with the church, but not exclusively.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Then we—there’d be these events we’d have. We’d go over to the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">coast or d</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">o things together, as a group—h</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">iking. Not as much hiking, probably, as visiting various locations and sightseeing and that sort of thing. So that was kind of pretty much—but the housing was interesting, too, because you hear these stories of people going, and when they get home from work, the earlier days, before my time, going into t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">he wrong house because they</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> got the wrong place. But I can understand that. I mean, it was quite unique. My wife has some interesting stories about how she grew up and talking about what was family life. Their family was way back in New York. They went back once when she was about five or—no, I think seven, she said. And she had, at that time, four sisters—I mean four siblings, and another one with her mother on the way in </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">her pregnancy. And took all the—tied into the car and drove all the way back. Spent more time going and coming than they did back there. But it was a case where she—in the case that they got to know your neighbors well, it was friendly, it was safe, everybody—kids all played out. Where we’re living now, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">we’ve got just that little funny</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> park in front of our place over by the river there. Her father was an accomplished skater, so he decided when he had an opportunity to get the house along the river here, that’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the one</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> he wanted to take it. Not realizing that not too many winters where there’s ice on the snow. But he was the state champion in New York City on ice racing. So he’s got quite a bit of medals and stuff. So she talks about the farm—I mean, the families that would get together on holidays and whatever. It was just a different type of lifestyle. I didn’t experience that myself, but it’s interesting just hearing her talk about those things.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">O’Reagan</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">: Yeah, we’ll have to bring her in at some point. We’re</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> trying to get as many people</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> who sort of grew up here for that as well.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Okay.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, she was only five years old and she came in ’47.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Okay. Yeah, we’d definitely like to interview</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> her at some point. Okay, so let’s see. You were working on the diversification stuff and then you went back to S</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">chenectackey—Ss-</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Schenectady.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Schenectady, yes. And then you came back in—I have it written down here.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: ’71.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: ’75.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: ’75, I mean. I left in ’71. April of ’71, back in ’75.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: And at that point you were working on</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—let’s see</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> here</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—the DOE</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> site </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">infrastructure stuff</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, or was that later</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Well, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hat was much later. I</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was on the laboratory stuff.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Okay.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: It was shortly after. About</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the first year or so was more in the personnel and that area. But then when this whole dive</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">rsification effort came forward.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I think my master’s degree in business and all this kind of led into—and I did have quite a bit of educational experience in contract management and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">contract administration, too. I have that—I don’t know if that played a role or not, but it helped me, I know, in terms of—and it was a whole new type of contract relationship that this Consolidated Lab and the use permit and all that had. So it was unique and interesting just from that standpoint alone. So yeah, at that time up until ’71, it was there, and then came back, worked in the personnel area, in the Rickover program. That’s an interesting story, too, because Rickover was a unique individual, very unique. But his staff was made up of military men, contractor people, and DOE or AEC at that time. And there w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">as no distinction. I mean, you would</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> have a contractor person right along with you and so on. He considered it all just one. It was very unique</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> in terms of the contractor and working relationships. But yet, what was so familiar—you could have these working—I shouldn’t say one </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">by one, it would be even office</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">s or something. But yet, he was very instrumental in saying, I don’t want any social activities between you. So as much as going to the cafeteria at noon, there was a section where the AEC people sat, and another whole section where the contractor people sat. And the military guys could be with either one, but they would—the military people were associated with AEC office—the civilian people. So in that office, there was no distinction whether you were military or a civilian. But in the contactor side, of course they were all civilians.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Is that an anti-corruption effort, or--?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, yeah, and I guess avoiding any kind of potential conflict of interest and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">friendships, so that you got pretty soon with somebody, well, I’ll do you a favor, and vice versa. Very, very, very strong on that sort of thing. But yet, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">he himself seemed just one team. It was just like a football team—you’re the receiver and you’re the lineman. You</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’ve</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> got different jobs. It was unique, and there’s some interesting stories about Rickover, too, but I won’t get into those. But those are very interesting times.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Did you ever get to know any of the contractor people?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Oh, yeah. You would know them on the business side. Definitely. Oh, yeah. You’d work with them every day. Some more, because if it was in your area of responsibility, certainly, you’d be working with them. But, boy, not socially. There was no—I mean, that was a voodoo if you had any social-type activities with the contractors. That was not to his liking. That makes sense, I mean, it would just avoid any possible conflict of interest and that sort of thing. It was an interesting time. But it’s kind of like a lot of people say. I went into military,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I’m glad, but I’m glad I’m out</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. It’s kind of that sort of same analogy. But it was a great experience.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What was Rickover’s title?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Rickover? Admiral.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">O’</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Reagan</span>: Admiral, okay.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Admiral Rickover, yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: So what was his exact sort of authority within the—</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: He headed up the whole nuclear navy.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Oh, I see.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: He was really up there. And in fact, when—I think—which President was it? Maybe it was Kennedy—no, it wasn’t Kennedy</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">it</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was after</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. Anyway, when he was giving some kind of address </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">somewhere, he recognized—I know, I’m Rickover’s boss, but really we’re all—Rickover’s my boss. And that happened with Schlesinger, too, when he was appointed the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, when he was there. He says, oh, yeah. And he made the same kind of remark. I don’t know if it was those exact words. But Rickover was a very powerful individual in terms of his authority. He was kind of all b</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">y himself, because, again, the nuclear n</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">avy was unique, and so he was a brilliant man. There was no question about</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> it. He would pick just the top-notch-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">quality technical people that he could to run his program. The safety was so important to him. The wellbeing of all the military people, and the people who were in the submarines and that sort of thing. So he was really great. But he had a unique way of operations, there was no question about that. He was a strong, strong individual.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: So this period you were working in personnel is also, I understand, the period where you started having more women and minorities being hired on at the Hanford area.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: That</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> is true. There</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was a big emphasis—the period—and following my part of the end there, but in that timeframe of particularly on the college campuses and recruiting minorities and women, which is good. But there was extreme interest in finding qualified minorities and women. There was certainly emphasized that it was—and that’s great. I mean, I go back and think in my thesis for my master’s degree in business administration, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I made some statement then, makes</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> me sound almost like a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">n</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> anti-feminist now. But I was saying we really got to get more women into the technical side, but I wasn’t thinking far enough. We really think a lot—we don’t have many women technicians and stuff. So I was—at that time—thinking, oh, gosh,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> they could be technicians. And not even thinking ab</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">out being engineers, you know, g</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">tting their PhD in engineering. B</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ut at least, let’s—so I started out just—it wasn’t a matter of discrimination, where I said they should be technicians, because there were no—but I said, jeepers, let’s work on that. I had much of my emphasis—because my emphasis in my PhD was the shortage of technical people in the country. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">That was after Sputniks and some of those things going. We really needed development, work hard and see what we can do to get the people interested in getting into the math and sciences and that area. Some people kind of looked at me, you want women to be technicians or something? Yeah, but—you know. Now, I think, boy, I’d be discriminated—I mean, not discriminated, but considered, yeah, you’re very limited in </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">your scope. You should be</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> much broader than that. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Yeah, that was a time when the Sputniks went off and these others, and we were quite behind and Kennedy wanted to get to the moon. And that, though, when I was in, was quite a bit later than that. Not quite a bit, but somewhat later, and the emphasis on trying to get minorities and women as much as we possibly could.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Mm-hmm. So it didn’t—how—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">did it shape your work on personnel at that point, I guess--?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, I don’t know if it shaped it so much, but back to my word of emphasis, to see if we really seek out qualified people. And not that they needed, necessarily, to have had extensive training, but look at the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ir</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> overall education experience and how well they were doing in school. In other words, that they were capable of picking up some of the technical</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. A</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nd whether they had that already knowledge was not quite as important as looking at what’s their basic—I don’t know, I guess I could say basic intellect—but their ability to really take on some of these things. It was not hard to find that. I mean, that doesn’t—I don’t want to imply that the women or minorities didn’t have that. They certainly did. But I think a lot of them, maybe themselves, didn’t realize that they really could do that, that there was no reason why they couldn’t. </span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: I was speaking with a reactor operator in a previous interview who had a degree, I think, in</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> forestry or something non-sort-of-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nuclear, but was still able to become a reactor operator. Was that sort of common that you saw, too, people moving into new fields to get on the Hanford site?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: That was not unusual, no. And that was particularly true—and I noticed you ta</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">lk I was being on—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">with Rickover’s submarine program—we would hire then people who—and that happened out here awful lot—wh</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">o had gone through the nuclear n</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">avy and were nuclear operators. We had a number of those people that didn’t want to stay in the Navy, but we hired on his staff—on Rickover’s staff—in our local office there at Schenectady. Now, that was a small office. The office was not very big. It was relatively small. But we hired a number of those people, and they were good, because they—and many of them had not gone to college yet. They got out of the Navy, they went to college, and then came back. I mean, I remember recruiting two or three or four of those types. And we recruited basically around northeast area, because we were in Schenec</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">tady, in some of the schools around</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> there. Plattsburg, up in northern—which is a civil engineering school up in norther New York, and a number of areas there where we would find students who—not a lot of them, but who had gone back after they got out of service and didn’t want to make it a career, and got their degrees. Some would be in the technical fields; some would not be, necessarily. But most that we hired had degrees in some form of engineering or science or whatever.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Okay. So you were working with the nuclear navy program after you got back from Schenectady—pronouncing it again.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: No, it was at Schenectady I did the nuclear program.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Oh, I see</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, I see</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Okay.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">It’s at Schenectady. So I was here, then went to Schenectady for four years—not quite four years—three-and-three-quarters. And then back here again. And that’s when the diversification effort came about, when I came—no, no, no,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I’ll</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> take that back. That was back when I got back into some of the other Battelle work again, after I came back. The diversification was prior to going to Schenectady.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Okay. So then were you working for Battelle or were you still working for AEC?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: No, I always worked for the government, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">always. It was AEC, and then</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a short period of time, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">it w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">as—what did we call it, even? There</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was a two-year period between AEC and Department of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Energy</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Research</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and Development Administration, I think. Yeah, that was what it was called—Research and Development Administration. And then it became—Congress passed it and developed the Department of Energy. And when they developed the Department of Energy, it expanded a little bit and took in, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">like</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Bonneville</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Power out here was part of that, and a number of activities like that. More than just atomic energy, and that’s when it got a little more involved in</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> laboratories and other forms of—quite a bit. Whether it be climate—today it’s climate change, or climate sciences, as it’s called, and other types of activity. More than just the nuclear itself. But there’s a misconception</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> when </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I say nuclear itself, this, as you’ve probably learned and know, that there’s all kinds of work that dealt with biology and the uptake of radioisotopes and all of that sort of thing. And we had the animal farm out here with the smoking dogs and the miniature pigs—miniature swine, and all of that activity. And then when I was administering the Battelle program and the Pacific Lab, I was also involved in a lot of interagency work. So I was—in fact, one of my responsibilities there was working with all the other agencies in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">interagency agreements. And that meant </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">works like NASA and National Science—al</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">though they didn’t have a lot</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—the NRC, and EPA and others would have work done at the lab. And that would be not DOE work or AEC work, but it was their particular </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">responsibility. But they had the cap</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ability and knowledge out here to do that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. So there was a lot of that. In fact, I was involved in the whole setup of the LIGO</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> facility out here, working </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">with the National Science Foundation. And they had no knowledge of this—had to kind of guide them by hand as to what kind of arrangements they w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ould have between the two agencies</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> for them to use the Department of Energy land out here and their facility and all of that sort of thing. So from very early on, I spent somewhat—a fair amount of my time working with the National Science Foundation to getting the establishment of the LIGO facility out here. That was rather a long interesting experience, too, and all the unique th</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ings that went on doing that. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I just have this—even though I’m not a scientist or engineer by training, I have this kind of innate interest in science and engineering. That was what was so exciting about administering the lab contract, to see the whole variety of activity that goes on out there at the lab. And even, I think, the majority of the citizens of Richland and Tri-Cities do not understand, fully, the broad spectrum of knowledge and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">exposure to all elements of the nature of science and technology that’s available out here to the lab, and what all these experts they have in those all wide spectrum of activity. </span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: In your experience, how kid of secretive </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> any of this work? Was it all kind of out there? Was it kind of compartmentalized?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, there was a lot of secret-type st</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">uff, but there wasn’t as much of</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that, I don’t think—now, I didn’t get involved too much in the production—in the plutonium production. Because the laboratory wasn’t so directly involved in that. That was the big load from the local office, was producing the plutonium, getting that back, and doing all of that sort of thing. The lab was supporting that, and doing that in the nuclear aspects of nuclear science, but there was a lot—an awful lot of work t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hat was not secret. Now, they</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> also were</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, though,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> heavily involved in many of the secret-type stuff. That relates primarily to their strong capability in detection—detecting things. I mean, you’re probably aware that the first moon rocks that came from the moon were here at the site, at the lab, to analyze those, to look at them, what was all made up of? The very first, first exposure to the moon rocks was right down here that Federal Building, anywhere in the United S</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ates that they were shown. That was quite a deal, too. So they have this tremendous capability. Th</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e labs were one of the first—this</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> lab—the first to detect that </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Saddam </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Hussein had used chemical warfare for the Kurds back there, and that was way back time. Tremendous, and some interesting stories of how they collected some of this stuff and how they got these samples. I don’t know if we want to get into it. It was really, really interesting activities in that sort of stuff. Some of the things—it’s not classified anym</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ore, but </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the people out at the lab or </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">some of these guys</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> would go over to Hong Kong, and they’d just brush against somebody </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">to get a hair off of somebody that </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">[UNKNOWN</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">] just get a sample. Or a little dust and dirt came off their shoe, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">they</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> might pick it up or something. Just the most minute quantities of things, and being ab</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">le to analyze and determine. This</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> laboratory out here was the first to decide how big the bombs are that China was dropping, to get the size of those through the air samples and all of that. There’s just this broad knowledge, or capability</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I should say, in detection activities out here. It’s just amazing. And they’ve kept that up in the same way with their r</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">adioisotope program—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the medical isotopes program. So much of that that many people don’t realize of all the spinoffs and benefits that have come from the knowledge that they gained. The first CD was developed out here at the lab. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Much of that. I’m really interested in reading, now, Steve Ashby’s reports bimonthly in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Tri-City Herald</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> about some of the activities going on at the lab. And I </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">miss</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that. I used to get real knowledge about what they’re working on. Of course, it’</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">s been 18 or 20 years sinc</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I’</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ve done that, but that was always fascinating, some of this advanced science and some of this stuff that was really—and a lot of it was development and a lot of it wasn’t. But they’d run into some dead-ends. They’d later on pick it up again, somebody would discover something else, and they’d finally go forth with it.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: When did it become a national lab? Do you remember?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: God</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, I don’t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> remember the year that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. God, I should know that.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: I’m sure we can look it up.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, we can look it up.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Was that while you were working?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Oh, yeah, yeah. It was—god, why should—because that was a big event. And we were pushing quite well at the time to try to get that done. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Yeah. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Golly, that just escapes me. I’ve got to—now that you mention it, I’ve got to go back</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and check that out and see when</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> it was.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What was involved in that?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, it was basically—I don’t want to call it a political decision, but it was basically, I think, recognizing the scope of activity that the labs were involved with. There wasn’t a great urge by the Washington, DC people or any to readily accept that title. I mean, it means a lot. So it was really a lot of background in what the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ir</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> involvement, and what type of work were they involved with, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">and what depth</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> were they involved with and what types—and really focusing a lot on the basic science and that sort. And that’s where I think this lab was a little late</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">r than others, because this lab, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">up until the later times, was more of a support lab on production activities and not quite so much in basic. Now there was some basic on the real basic physics and something to deal wit</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">h reactor operations. But they </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">evolved and grew into this more basic science in a broad spectrum. I think that was one of the criteria. Now, I wasn’t involved in that decision at all. But my understanding is one of the criteria of establishing is that they got a well-established basic science capability. It’s not just specialized in one area or something. That’s where I think this lab was one of the later ones to be</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> recognized as a national lab, b</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ecause they built that up. And one of the things, too, that there wasn’t much knowledge of, because the production was such a secret thing, that that did</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">n’t get much publicity or get</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> papers written about it, and so on. So unfortunately the people that were working on that didn’t get the opportunity to have their findings and whatever presented to the whole world at national conferences and things like that. And that was also true, by the way, in Rickover’s program. Rickover was very cognizant—he was so afraid that the communists had this and that. So that was one of the real issue—there was basically almost the technical people at the capital laboratory</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, the Knolls Atomic Power Lab</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> in Schenectady</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, almost unionized because they really felt that they were being shortchan</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ged. They couldn’t give papers</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> at technical conferences and stuff because Rickover was always afraid that you might reveal something that w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">as highly secret about </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">how to run a reactor and all that kind of stuff. So I think some of that same sort of information or background was kind of holding this lab back</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> because they just didn’t get the publicity in the scientific world, that their discoveries and their knowledge and their ex</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">periments and so on were well-known</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. And I think that helped, because the people in DC who were more knowledgeable of that found that to be a quality that was great for being recognized as a national lab. But a national </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">lab, again, was the idea</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> with broad spectrum of research. So that’s my take of it. You may talk to somebody else and they probably have a whole different presentation in terms of why or how and what was all involved. But just being on sort of the sidelines when that happened, that seemed to me to be what was the key point in helping determine. But there was some political push, no question. I mean, Maggie again, and Scoop—I think that was when they were on, and some of those. Why are you shortchanging us out there in the northwest? And we don’t have—that was the other thing, there was no national lab in the northwest. There was Livermore down in California, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Brookhaven. But why are you guys leaving us out in the north? And that was more form—not the science or technology, but</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> well, don’t treat us as second class citizens. Our lab </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">up there is as good as yours. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> there was some of that out there</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> too.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Did it impact your work, when it changed?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: No, I don’t think so. Well, I shouldn’t say that. One of the things </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that did happen in that regard—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">and I mentioned earlier about these interagency agreements a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nd the capabilities of the lab—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that stimulated more of that. Because I think being—once you’re recognized as a national lab, it just goes along with the credibility that might be associated with the work they’re doing. So I think that resulted in more of this interagency work with the various other g</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">overnment agencies. What it</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> also did—and that was probably the most key element—is bringing in the tie with universities and so on. That was really—and locally, here, that was one of the interests of the people with the lab. They would really have liked to get more—and by the fact being recognized national lab, allowed the universities, and particularly some of the ones heavily involved in the science and engineering, would tend to favor going to a national laboratory. And the research that they were doing in cooperation with the lab itself was more significant</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> more meaningful to them. So I think that was probably one of the biggest benefits of becoming a national lab.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Yet Battelle </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">as an organization bac</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">k in Columbus and others, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hey had a good reputation already of working closely with universities and so on. I mean, they were a research organization. And I think that also helped, too, because Battelle was operating this, and so the people who made these decisions realized that you have a topnotch research company—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">foundation</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> there, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hat that’s their whole world. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I think that also helped in getting it. And certainly the lab pushed for that. There was no question</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">bout it. They wanted to be recognized as a national lab. So there was a combination of these things, I think they all kind of helped and worked together and made it happen.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: So when was it that your work with PNNL shifted over to the next role?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Oh, yeah. Well</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, let’s see. T</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hat was probably in more the early</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> ‘90s. Where—yeah—because—yeah—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">early ‘90s is when I start going in there. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">So most of my career was with P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">NL and</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> some of the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> labor relations. But early ‘90s, when I got into the infrastructure deal and doing all of that, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> then</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> later the last five years in the congressional and governmental relations activity, yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Could you tell us about the infrastructure work?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, that was quite interesting. That was frustrating. And by frustrating I mean, there was always—well, let’s not fi</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">x it until it’s broke. Oh, gosh, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">we used to have some—because it was still working. And particularly that was more emphasis as the role of the site here of not producing plutonium anymore—well, then do we need to keep it? Let</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’s see if</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> it</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> can</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> limp along. Well, what it ended up, in my opinion, a lot of times, we paid a lot more by trying to fix things afterward. We didn’t really have a good preventative maintenance program. Finally got sort of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">a preventative maintenance, but—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">it </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">was tough. Because there was always </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">this thing—there was always a great need of doing this thing, and jeepers, we can’t use the dollars there; it’ll still work for a while. I didn’t have the responsibility for the day-to-day operations of it. That wasn’t mine. Mine was the upgrades and the ca</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">pital equipment and all that. Whether</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> we need a new fire station or whatever it may be. And jeepers, the thing was just limping along on a thread, and something would break. But then we ended </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">up spending a whole lot more. That</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was somewhat frustrating. And the guys that I worked with on the contractor sid</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e had the same experience. But s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ome managers were a little more cognizant of the need to do that than others. And safety—the way we could get things done—[PHONE CHIMES]—was safety more. Because if we could show that there was safety-related issues that went along with it, it was easier to get it appropriated or funded, rather than say, well, it’ll still go along. And that’s the way we often would get something funded, was, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">could</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> show that we really don’t want to jeopardize the safety of the employees or the workers and that sort of thing. But it was not simple. It was pretty difficult. It was always kind of bucking the tide for funding.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Right. That reminds me—so, you were still working at PNNL when the—</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, I wasn’t at PNNL; it was DOE.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Right, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">yeah, okay. B</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ut back during the time when sort of the reactors were shutting down and the transition to sort of amelioration and cleanup got started. Is that correct?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, but that most of the time was with PNNL, still. But it was in ’89</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, is</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> when the real decision was made. So it was shortly after that that I got into</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the infrastructure and that’s where it became hard then. Because we weren’t operating with the mission anymore. Yet you knew darn well that cleanup is going to be here for a long, long time, and why not get these things going so you don’t spend t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">wice as much starting all over </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">new, with something when you could just really do some work at that time to keep this thing alive? This thing, being—whether it be a sewer plant or whether it be a steam plant or fire</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">station or electro distribution system or a railroad or whatever it might be. Because</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> at least I could see</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, it was cheaper because cleanup</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’s gonna last for a while and you need this infrastructure whether your mission is producing the plutonium or whether it’s cleanup. Soon we got </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">some</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> of the people </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">saying</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, yeah, you’re right. But the guys who were doing the cleanup then, too, saying, oh, god, we’ve got so much work to do, we can’t afford to do this. It’ll last another year or two. Let’s fix it next year or upgrade it next year. The evaporator out there is a good example. They finally did it. But there was things earlier they probably could have done to increase its capability and do a better job. And finally they say, yeah, I guess that’s right, we should do it now because we’ll need that thing for god knows how long yet.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What was it like living in this area around ’89 when the shift happened?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, it was a surprise, I think, to a lot of people. Kind of like, oh, gosh, here we go again. That’s when this whole activity—and I wasn’t involved in, but with the B Reactor Museum Association really got its birth when they were saying, we’re shutting down the reactors and going there. But the attitude was, or</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the feelings was that, jeepers, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">it was just doomsday basically. And not fully understanding the scope of work that needed to be done in the cleanup area. It was very little attention being paid to the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> depth of that need at the time.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I don’t think there was much knowledge—excuse me—or basically understanding of how important and significant that’s going to be. So it was a change in times, it certainly was.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Do you think a lot of—or were people sort of in your area worried about their jobs? Or was that, you</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> felt</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, sort of separate from the plutonium production?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, I–y</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">eah, I wasn’t too involved in that sort of aspect. But, yes, the community had a concern. And that kind of coincides with </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the big problem out there that’s now Energy Northwest, but the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">shutdown of those new </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">power reactors. So that kind of came together at the same time, and that was really a shock for the community. It was—you know, a lot of people would leave and say, jeepers, I got to go find something else before I don’t have a job at all.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Right. So in the last couple of years before retirement, you were working on the congressional relations?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, yeah, about five years.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">O’Re</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">agan</span>: Can you tell us about that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> work?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Plahuta: Yeah, about five years prior to</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> retirement. Five, six—something like that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I don’t remember exactly when.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> That was very interesting, too, and you got another scope of</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> how things got done. I got to </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">a point where I was having daily discussions with particularly Patty Murray’s staff and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">prior to that, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Doc Hasting’s staff—staff members. Not that much with the senators or the congressmen themselves, but primarily their staff, and working with them. And somewhat with the state</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> offices, but not extensively. And then more with the local communities—the mayors—the Hanford communities group there. That was quite regularly—and the emphasis that we placed then, I’m not sure still exists, but really wanted to tie in closely to having the local government—the mayors and commissioners and so on—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">knowledgeable</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">what’s going on out here at the site. So there wouldn’t be these sudden surprises. That was the role that John</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Wagner at the time</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was interested in, and that’s when he asked me if I would be</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> willing to</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—it was a new </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">position he was establishing. He just wanted to maintain a close relationship with what’s going on at the site, and I </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">don’t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> know if that’s—I shouldn’t say—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I don’t know if it’s the case now, but I don’t think it’s quite the same as what John had in mind and what I d</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">id for those five, six years. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> when I left, then, they kind of—when I retired, it kind of was sitting in just ebbs there—ups and downs—and it’s probably back more to that way. I really don’t know.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>:</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Sure.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: But shortly after that, too, then, I got on the Hanford Advisory Board. So I had kind of a knowledge about what was going on at the site. So I was very active in the Hanford Advisory Board for quite a few years—for like 15 years or so. But I got so much involved in the B </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Reactor thing that I said, gee—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I didn’t feel like to just go to the meetings and not really contribute a whole lot. So I thought I’d just give up and retire at that point in time, and I found someone who I know real well who’s capable to take my place. I was representing the county most of the time—sort of an alternate representative for the City of Richland first,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> but then later for the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">county</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> most all the time. I </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">wanted</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> to be sure that—and I did find someone who was very, very, well-involved and informative to take my spot there for the county </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">commission</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> now.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: So </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Okay. So before we move on, can you tell me—what was the Hanford Advisory Board?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Oh, that was established—gosh, I can’t remember exactly when, but it’s made up of about 30 different entities—representatives of those entities. It’s statewide and it includes some of the Oregon people, the tribes are on it, most of the government—city governments and county </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">governments</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> are represented. There’s total—like I say, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">about</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> 31. They’re a formal advisory group to the Atomic Energy—Atomic Energy? I’m really going back now—to the DOE to uncover and discuss various elements of ongoing work. And you probably see quite a bit in the paper</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the Hanford Advisory Board meets on a monthly basis—no, I shouldn’t say that—about every other </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">m</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">onth. But then they’ve got committees </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">underneath of it like </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the Tanks Waste Committee and the River Plateau </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Committee</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—there’s five different </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">committees</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. I chaired a couple of those </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">committees</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a couple times, and vice </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">chair</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and so on. And they provide some advice—written advice to the—and it’s—oh, I shouldn’t say it’s just DOE. There’s three </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">parties to this. It’s the State Ecology Department, the EPA, Environm</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ental Protection Agency, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> DOE. So the three agencies are involved in this. They provide—can be anything regarding to the Vit Plant out here now, the tank vapor things—so many different activities. They write formal advice and discussion. It represents all sides, basically. Those that are pro/con, what are the proper words, or whatever you want to say. But it’s a wide representation of the general—not local community necessarily, but the state concerns</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. A</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nd </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">there’s people from Seattle on that, from down in Salem, Oregon, and around the area. That’s been in existence—gosh, I don’t remember when—it was probably around ’90 or something like that, ’91. It’s been—maybe not that long—but it’s been quite active for quite some time.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: That reminds me—I meant to ask, when you were working on the site infrastructure, you mentioned some work with the tribes and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">cultural resources. Can you tell us</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> about that?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah. I personally didn’t get too directly involved. I had a person working</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> for me by the name of Charles Pasternak</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—he has since died</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. He was very, very knowledgeable. He was an archaeology-type thing, too, but he was a forensic expert-type thing, and was very, very closely working with the tribes. Well-respected by the tribes. He was </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">invited into some of those long</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">house ceremonies and that sort of thing. So he worked on that. He was the one that was the primary person for me. I got into a lot of the discussions and so on, but for the day-to-day activities, he was really tops. And would work with the SH</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">O</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> office—the State Historical office in Olympia on stuff—on these writings and stuff. So it was interesting. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">But I didn’t get daily involvement there. I had enough in my other hands to ta</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ke care of. But he was just ace</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> number one on </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">doing</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that. So I got familiar with the process and the operations and what the issues were and that sort of thing. But that was informative for me. He was sort of a mentor to me, to be honest, though, in that respect. Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Do you know sort of how—one of the things I’m also curious about is the development of cultural resources and local efforts to preserve culture, preserve memory. On the DOE side, I know, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">today that’s done through a contract with the Mission Support Alliance. Do you happen to know when that sort of contracting began, or was DOE sort of also contracting while also working on it?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: No, DOE was working primarily at the laboratory </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">out </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">here at Battelle. That’s where—and that’s partly how I got into it, I think, although I wasn’t administering to Battelle Lab at that time. But that all function was under the laboratory. It was after I left that Mission Support Alliance came into </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">existence</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> here. And then they took over a lot of that support type activity. But, no, the laboratory, and Jim Shatters was involved, Mona Wright was involved out there for the lab. Paul Harvey was—not Paul Harvey—Dave Harvey was involved in some of that out there, alo</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ng with the history. And Michel</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e Gerb</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">er on the historic—the Hanford h</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">istory type stuff. So that was all with Battelle. And then that moved it, I think, when Mission Support Alliance—and that was after, basically, after I left. So that was there. But, no, there was quite an interest—not as much as there is today—again, that’s a fault, I can say, of us who were in the department at that time. We really we</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">re</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">n’t on board extensively on the history protection stuff. Although the contractor, Battelle out there, and others were doing that. But I don’t think DOE was following. And then that’s when I discovered that, gosh, we really have a responsibility here. And that’s w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hen I hired this Charles Pasterna</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">k who came over from GSA and had been doing that sort of thing</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> down</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> in Phoenix, Arizona. So I said, we really need—so I hired him. And as I say, he was—that was his livelihood so to speak. And that’s when I think we began then to pick up on that sort of thing. I had an extreme interest in doing it and I got to know Mona Wright real well at Battelle. Tom Marceau was involved in that out there. And Tom can gi</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ve you the whole history there with the laboratory at that time.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What sor</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t of day-to-day work—was it </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Charles Pasternak?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Pasternak, yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What sort of work was he doing? Do you know?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">it</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was this whole cultural resources area. He was, as I say, an archaeology type and that was his training. So he di</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">d all of</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the work </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">a lot </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">with SHPO up there when we got into some of these areas wher</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e they needed—we needed to know </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the 106 process, and all of that sort of thing. So Charles was our main person to follow that. But I had the interest, also, of John Wagner, the manager, even though I wasn’t playing that congressional role at that time. Because he, too, I think, recognized that we needed to do a little bit more there. And in fact—I don’t know if you’re familiar—but he’s </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">one of Cindy Kelly, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">who’s with the Atomic Heritage Foundation---he’s one of the board members there. He had really an extreme interest in preserving the history. As much as he tried, he couldn’t get headquarters people—they</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> always</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> told him, John, you</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> go back and tell them we’re no</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">in the museum business. And that’s what the people here woul</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">d be hearing all the time. But J</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ohn himself was really interested in doing all that. I sat in meetings with him at </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">headquarters</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> where </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">he’d really push hard. And they’d push back, that’s not our—it was their responsibility, but they’d just, yeah, okay, but we don’t want to spend a lot of time on that. So that was—but locally, I think we did well. I think we did very well at pushing that along and I got to give contract—credit to people like Tom and Mona and others out here o</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">n the contractor sit</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e who even pushed us a little bit sometimes. Which was good. That’s necessary. </span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Could you sort of sketch out for us your idea of sort of the history of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">efforts to commemorate the site or</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the work that was done on Hanford? In terms of, up through the B Reactor Museum Association--?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah. Well, my interest was, again, as I learned more about it, was let’s preserve this history of this </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">site</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, because it’s very unique. It’s really unique. And I </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">had to avoid sort of a conflict of interest of joining BRMA while I was an employee of the department. So I was interested, though, in knowing what they were doing and I was in agreement with them and was very supportive when I could be in some of</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">their activities. But </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">shortly</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> after I retired, then—not immediately, but not too long after, I did join as a member of the B Reactor Museum. That was in—well, quite a while later, because it in 20</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">0</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">5, so it was quite a while later that I actually joined them. That was—the more I learned and found out about the uniqueness of the B Reactor and its history and its knowledge and its importance, I really, really got heavily involved. And that’s eventually, here, like a year a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">nd a half ag</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">o—I finally got off</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the Hanford Advisory Board because I was spending so much time—more time on that—and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">not feeling </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I was really contributi</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ng a whole lot. I mean, I’</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">d make my comments and so on at the general meetings, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">but</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> with regard to drafting formal </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">advice</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and all that, which I was quite active in earlier, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">then jeepers, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">get somebody else who has the time and so on</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and I’d devote more time to the B Reactor Museum Association. But, again, I’m, as well as my interest in science and technology, although not being trained in that area, I’m sort of a history buff. As a kid</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> on</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, I could list the order of the Presidents of the United States, I remember. Zing, zing, zing. I can’t do it any </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">longer. I’d have</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> to stop and think about it, get it mixed </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">u</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">p a little bit. But history was </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">another</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> area that I was kind of interested in. I like to read a lot of history books and that sort of thing. I think that was stimulated by my second year in college in a class I took from a history professor who was just interesting. And what I found so interesting about him is he said you can read the book, but let me give you</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> some stuff, some of the trivia-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">type stuff that he knew about some of the personalities and some of the things that he had learned through his research and understanding </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">about</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the true natures of some of these people and what unique features or attributes they had. That, I think, stimulated my interests even more. But it was in existence prior to that as well, but it just enhanced it a bit. Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What sort of stuff has BRMA worked on in the time you’ve been with them?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Oh, gosh. We have done extensive amount of work on some of the modeling to bring up some of the models that we have out there that can describe and portray better the actual activities in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">instruments</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and the equipment in the area there itself. We did that. And of course our big effort was to make it a national park. That’s where most of our time, and that’s where I really got involved with and again working with the other two sites, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos with Cindy Kelly back in American—I mean the Atomic Heritage </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Foundation</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. We’d have monthly phone calls on proposing various kind of language that we’d like to see in the act and working with the Congress. My experience working with congressional staffers helped a little bit there, I think</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> but so did Cindy, who—and I first knew Cindy, basically when she was in DOE—worked for DOE in the headquarters in </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">cultural resource area and all of that area. So that’s how I got to </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">know</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Cindy. And </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">then </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">later on, we kind of met again, then, when we were working on the B Reactor. So the biggest contribution, I think</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was the effort from the very beginning. B Reactor was—not B Reactor, but the BRMA association—B Reactor Museum Association—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">was </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">established formally in ’91, but was actually in ’90 or so when it began to formally—and how that all happened was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> there was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> in existence here at the time—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">we called it the Tri-Cities or maybe they were Richland—I don’t know—Technical Society. And that was made up of all the various tech—whether it be electrical engineers, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">or</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> civil engineers, the chemical engineers, nuclear engineers, the health physicists and so on. They had this net group where there was things in common and commonality. When the announcement was made that they were going to get out of the production </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">business and was going to start cocooning the reactors, the guy says, god, we got to preserve B. The history that goes with it. And I wasn’t part of that, then. But they organized a committee then to discuss further. And </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> when they decided to establish this organization, the B Reactor Museum Association</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> with the sole purpose to preserve for future generations the history and preserve the facili</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ty itself for public access and—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">for preservation and public access. Well, our mission is basically accomplished by g</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">etting it into the National P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ark. That was really keen. And we still have interests; we want to go along and develop the park and do all of those additional types of things and perhaps even taking on efforts to preserve a bit of the history of T Plant as well. Because that is identified i</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">n the park, and of course the pre-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Manhattan </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Project history there with the farms and that sort of thing. But that’s been the key emphasis all along, was to preserve and make it public access to B Reactor. So there was a lot of work and working with the Department of Energy and others to clean it up and get it in shape where you could have these tours. I think it was 2009 or something when they started the tours—the more public tours. But I was involved earlier in that. There was still tours, but the tours were maybe for special groups or activities or maybe a college chemistry class or physics class or something would be coming to see it. Or some of the elected officials or could be any special tours, I think. And then it got gradually working into recognizing that there would be—in fact, when I left in ’98, there was just a memorandum of agreement type between the BRMA organization and Westinghouse the contractor and DOE, what the roles and responsibilities would be. At that time, BRMA would be willing to provide docents—volunteer docents at the time, and do that sort of thing for these various tours. So I was sort of a tour coordinator then, to find out what audiences—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">there </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">would be a difference between some</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">one who was real </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">knowledgeable</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> about the reactor, and ot</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hers who knew nothing about it—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">want to know what the audience would be so we’d pick the right type of tour guide and a person who was more familiar with it, who were comfortable with those kind of tours. So there got to be a fair number of those. But then it formally established, then, when the DOE started </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">saying</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> we will offer these public tours. In 2009 is when it really blossomed into much more greater things, when they announced the public tours and so on. These others were more tours where people would request and ask for them, we’d try to fit them in. And there were fair number—it got to be a fair number of those, and I </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">think</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that’s what convinced DOE that we need to do something, maybe more publicly. And more recogn</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ition of its responsibility in Historic Preservation A</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ct—you know, the Department’s responsibility there. So that’s what we did. But our efforts were then to, as I say, get the thing cleaned up, get it presented well, and have some of these displays and some of the models and some</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">one</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that work</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> close with Cindy Kelly at the Atomic Heritage Foundation who had this interest and this whole establishment she has, that foundation to preserve many of the history aspects of the Atomic Energy Commission and Department of Energy and its role in the Manhattan Project.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> So</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that was kind of where</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> our focus was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the preservation and public access and the models that help educate. And also, and we’re pushing more on that now, is educating students and so on. And we’re </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">holding </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">more and more tours for students, all the way down to the fourth grade, but particularly interested in high school and college students that want to learn more about that. That’s where we’re focusing more now, on interpretation and education and emphasis more on the T Plant. BRMA does the B Reactor Museum</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> doesn’t necessarily relate to the T Plant, but still, that all was part of the Manhattan Project. So our focus is more on the Manhattan Project itself and</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> all of</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> its elements. Which, T Plant is included—the first separatio</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ns plant. Again, amazing plant and amazing work that’s been done there to get it initiated and started and working properly right off the bat, working. So that’s kind of the background there on my involvement. It’s been—the last three, four, five years has </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">been</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> heavily involved in primarily the effort on the Manhattan historic—the Manhattan Project Historical </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Park, to get it established, along with the other two sites. Some of the othe</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">rs in DOE, as well, the Dayton P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">roject had decided not to really join pushing on that, but they—and we had meetings ye</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">sterday again with some of the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks people to have things—a commonality—basic common understanding of the whole project and kind of presented the same way at all three sites. But then each site t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">aking on its own specific role, ours </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">being the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> specific—the development of the plutonium and B Reactor. Los Alamos, more like the weapons development and that sort of thing. Oak Ridge is supplying t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">he enriched uranium and those aspects. They all have</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a more defined role in the broader picture of the Manhattan </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Project</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. </span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Right. Did you ever get any sort of security—when you were making these models, I know there was a lot of sensitivity about export control and classification and all </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that, especially with models. Did</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> you ever get any sort of push back on that?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Not on the models. But what we did do, and that was a surprise, even to the local DOE, I guess they knew about it, but they should have—the reactor graphite that was left over, we claimed that. And thanks for thinking of Gene Woodruff, one of our members who’s a graphite</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> expert, and I mean Gene can go and say, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">oh, that was made a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t Union Carbide. Scratch this one—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that was made somewhere else. That guy. And I remember working with DOE in the laboratory—Gene was one of the top experts in the world. Again, we’ve got experts here—people don’t recognize—of the world. When there would be these </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">inte</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">rnational meetings or [UNKNOWN</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">] Gene Woodruff was a guy to go all over the w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">orld talking about the qualities</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and the purities of graphite and how it’s made and all of that sort of stuff. He’s just top</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">notch. So anyway, Gene and a guy out at the lab—gosh, I forget his name right now, right off the bat—worked with our people in DOE headquarters’ national security to get us the—or to give us the excess graphite was there with the restrictions that it should be used for souvenirs and</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> we’re not to resell it. Of course, now there’s not quite the problem, but we didn’t want the Iranians or others to see how this graphite was made and all the purity and all that kind of stuff. Although I don’t understand, because you could still probably decide that if you had a souvenir made out of a piece of that graphite, anyway. But anyway that was—they just didn’t want a big block of this stuff given—sold or anything to someone. So we said, ah, well, we won’t—chop it up or use it in pieces or whatever. So we made that graphite model and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that was done going through the whole national security system that said it was okay for us to have that, rather than dump it out here at ERDF—out in the disposal facility. So we got all of the remaining what we call old reactor—that’s the B, D and F—that’s the same type of graphite that was in those original three reactors. We got that as well as some processing tubes and we’re in the process of determining how we make souvenirs for the tours that come through in the park. And reminder, we already have what we call—we have these boron balls, too, that are used in the process to help scram a reactor if you need to. We’ve got those, and we’ve got th</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e process tubes. So we also sell</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a little vial of these boron balls, and we collected the dust that we did when we made our graphite model and putting that into little vials. So it’s rather unique to this site. We’re looking at other ways to use some of these and what kind of doodads or gadgets can we make for souvenirs. Because</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> we find that working with the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks people</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> is—oh, yeah, people</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> there’s something unique about the site, they’d like to take a souvenir back. So that may be some of our support, maybe, to keep continuing and give us </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">our source of income there that—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">we’re not a great achiever of gathering a whole lot of money, but it does—and we work more on these models and stuff, working with Cindy Kelly and others on grants and that sort of thing to get our money to build these—make these various videos that we’ve made and these vignettes that goes along with when you’re visiting out there and that sort of thing. So that’s gonna b</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e kind of emphasizing with the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks people how we can best do this and how we can get that accomplished.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Can you tell me about coordinating with the other sites?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah. That’s—we’ve had several meetings with the other sites. There’s, again, another entity. I don’t know if you’</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">re familiar with the E</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">CA, the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Energy Communities Al</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">liance? That was established by</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the former city manager here, Joe King, who established that. And that—I’ll just talk a minute what that is. That’s made up of the sites where DOE has locations: Savannah River, Oak Ridge, Brookhaven—you know, all nine sites or so, that would go forth in more of a lobbying effort to DOE headquarters on funding and what the needs and the issues and problems are there, as far as the local communities. And many of these were in common. I mean, there were particular areas might be unique to one site or the other, but the ot</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hers would all support that. But then</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> also there’s things in common that they really wanted to get DOE to recognize that they got to pay attention to. So that was established quite some time ago. The other communities, then, kind of had a basis on which to start on this national park. And particularly Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. So we would get—the three of us would often have—and Cindy Kelly with </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Atomic</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Heritage Foundation would </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">kind</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> of coordinate these—it was almost on a monthly basis—telephone conferences.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> We’d be talking where we are and how we’re going and what we need to do. And so that was very helpful and it was a </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">cooperative effort. It wasn’t a, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">well, we want that and you can’t have that. It was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a system</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that we all want to work together. And we met last July again down in Los Alamos for a meeting on those three sites plus one or two of the other Energy Community Alliance sat in on some of that. We’re meetin</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">g again in August in Denver. This time at</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Denver because that’s kind of a convenient among the three sites, and it’s also where the inter</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">im superintendent of the National P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ark’s located, so that she can be here. That’s Tracey Adkins and she was here in fact yesterday. One of our local what we call</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> our parks committee that’s not—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">made up basically the elected officials of the community here, the four mayors, the county commissioners of Benton, Grant and Franklin County, and then there’s, besides elected officials</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> there’s the Visit Tri-Cities, TRIDEC and BRMA is on that. We’re more of an advisory group than we are </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">to the mayors. B</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ut the committee is an administrative committee and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> where I and John Fox and BRMA and Visit Tri-Cities</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and others</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> sit on for </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">short-term</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. I guess I call that the working group who gets the work done and so on. And then we get with the mayors and so on. It’s kind of either up or down, you know, that sort of thing. But anyway, the working with the other communities has been a very cooperative effort, and we meet now on phone calls once in a while—not quite so frequently, though, not once the legislation has passed. But we meet like once a yea</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">r or so, just—and now with the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks, too. It was former</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ly just with DOE, but with the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks people actually present and with the interim superintendent of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. So it’s a good relationship and I think it hel</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ps in the overall park and the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks people are interested in working with the communities, too. They’r</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e very—I find working with the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks service very, very interesting and informative and they’re people who are very willing to listen and learn and likewise we try to exchange information and we learn what they’re process is and I think it’s been a very, very good relationship. And I want to give credit to Colleen French here at the local office has been extremely supportive of BRMA and all of the activities and go out of h</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">er way to have—like when we had</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the November 12</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX227234824">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> event out here raising the National Parks flag at the site and working with them. She’s been just tremendously helpful in getting that accomplished.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What’s my question here? Could you give me an idea, if you know, of the sort of size of BRMA over time?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: It’s small. That’s our real problem. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">t’s like most organizations, I find, you don’t find a lot of younger people joining. And that’s a—I think that’s kind of typical of our whole society now. Today, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">most of the mothers and fathers are both working, they’ve got the kids in school, they’re in soccer, they’re in baseball, they’re in football. Their time is very limited. And I find that in a number of organizations I’m in. So our group is very small. It’s—we only have about a total of about 70-some members. But our active members are probably 20 or something like that. And we have a fair number of people who are not in this community. They’re people who lived here or worked here before. One of the assistant general managers for DOE is still a member, living down the—not Los Alamos—but Los Alamos area and also a couple of them down in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">WIPP site down in New Mexico. We</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> find ourselves, I think—and we’re looking right now—what </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">should</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the mission of BRMA be? And we’ve kind of—a couple of us got together the other day on—had a bottl</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e of beer and sat in Hank Kosmata</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> backyard on his patio and just kind of brainstormed a bit. I think we’ll say, for the next three, four, five years, however long, until the park is fully established, we’ll be working extensively with them on assisting in the interpretation activities. We want to emphasize more the education and working with particularly the high school, college kids but also the younger ages. We want to do more emphasis on the T Plant, which is a very key element in this whole process of plutonium and getting the plutonium that was needed for the weapons program. So those—kind of those three are the main activities we want to focus in and decide whether we morph into some o</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ther organization. Because the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">arks are really interested in developing at each of these sites what they call Friends of the Park, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">that’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a common thing among all national parks. It’s sort of a group that </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">supports t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hat local park and assists the Parks D</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">epartment. And the Parks Department is not a wealthy department. They a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">re very limited funding to all</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> parks. They’ve got extreme backlog on the maintenance of all their activities. So they rely heavily on volunteer work, they rely heavily on these funding process of Friends of the Park, and they have a formal structure in developing it and authorizing and so on, because they, again, want to be sure that there’s precise accountability and all of that sort of thing on that if they’re gonna be associated with them. So we’re working this local community o</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">n</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> this parks committee and so on of hoping we can establish that soon. Now, there’s a lot of competition so to speak there, because we’ve got a lot of other things in the community</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> we really want to support.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">W</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e want to support the REACH organization</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hey’re looking for funding. We’ve got the aquatic</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> center</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, you’ve got the performing arts center, you’ve got all of these things. But nevertheless, there’s some people that don’t have to be members of this community that are interested in the Project history of the Manhattan Project and all of that, that you can get various grants and forms and that sort of thing from others. That’s something that we will probably eventually just go out of existence, because we don’t have a lot—I mean, I’m kind of the young kid on the block, actually in our organization, and I’m nearly 78 years old. We got a guy that’s the youngest kid—he’s 65! We call him the little kid brother. We’re losing people. The last two years, we’ve lost the remaining people who were there at startup of the reactor. So the history is kind of disappearing with them in some respects. That’s why I was interested, particularly these interviews that you’re doing here with some of these old-timers and some of the guys that were here, so we get that recorded, and we know what’s there and it’s so important. Of course, as you know, working with you on some of our early recordings that we had with some of our original people that</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> are</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> very, very informative and useful in terms of researchers or anybody that wants to use that information. </span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: So there’s also ways been a lot of interest among the public in the sort of more negative side of Hanford’s history. Has the down-winders and those sorts of groups influenced the telling of the history in your opinion?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Well, you know, we want to be accurate with our history. And we want to tell all sides of the history. That’s been sometimes a little bit of a problem internally, because, well, gosh, those guys, they just dump. But I say, that’s history. We’ve got to learn what the issues were and what the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">problems</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> were. And the same—we get some people when the Parks people decided to have a few of the Japanese people sit in on the scholars’ group. I’m not at all opposed to that. I think we got to tell history. History’s got to be told accurately. And it’s important—we may not agree with some of that stuff, and we may not agree with their opinions or thoughts, but it’s only precisely true that we need to reflect what that history and what those events were. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">So </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I personally am not opposed. But there’s the real strong advocates in nuc</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">lear and there’s the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> anti-nuclear. We’ve got to show that as existing. We’ve got to recognize that. But I don’t think it’s given us any problem—the answer to your question—I don’t think it’s been an issue that creates difficulties or that we found is interfering with whatever we want to do. We’ve got to recognize it, we address it, and we think we try to address it in a very educational basis, in a very precise basis, and not in an argumentative or conscientious-objector-type—well, that’s not the right word either. But we just don’t want to be contrary to them necessarily. Just understanding that they’ve got a different point of view.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Have you sort of followed that controversy in your time living in the Tri-Cities?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, to some extent. I can see both sides. I think we need—particularly</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> I can see the need to reflect on what effect it had upon the Japanese. I really think that’s essential. Some of our people don’t agree with me. They say, well—they’ll say, yeah, that’s true, but, boy, if we hadn’t done what we needed to do maybe a lot more would be dead. That’s true, too, there probably would have. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">We’ll</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> never know for certain, but—we hear of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">people</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and know of people that </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">had probably saved their lives by the fact that they didn’t have to go and invade Japan. We’ve got some of our own members who kind of fit in that category. But I’ll never forget Terry Andre tells the story when she was at the CREHST museum when it still existed and an </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">elderly</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Japanese person came in one day and asked her: Are you an American? She said, yes, I’m an American. Oh, thank goodness. He put a big hug around her. She kind of says, well, what’s that? She says, I would not be alive today if you had invaded Japan, he said.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">Because I was trained in our—I think it was equivalent to the boy sco</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">uts—which we were to be suicide-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">type defenders. And we were supposed to be carrying these bombs, burying us in the sand, along when the Japanese invaded, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">blow</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> ourselves up and try to get as many American soldiers as we could—or Allied soldiers as we could. So that’s one side of the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">tory. The others you hear, but people have really suffered when they dropped the bom</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">bs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> those stories need to be told, and that understanding has to be there so that there’s the pros and cons. And another interesting thing is, when we had the docent training </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">by the Parks people, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">hey were saying, try to not reflect your own opinions. Give them the facts—that yes.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> And they did some role playing talk about when </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">someone says, well, should we have dropped the bomb? And they were playing with all the different ways you might address that particular question. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">And try to </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">say, if they took one position kind of say, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">well, that’s tru</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e, but did you think about this or something.</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Let them decide themselves, but bring it more forth. And I thought that was excellent type comments that the Parks’ interpretation </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">people and their docents, particularly</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> did</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the training, bring forth those sorts of thoughts. I’m in agreement with that.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: You mentioned this sort of pro- and anti-nuclear folks. Has that sort of politics gotten involved in the interpretation of Hanford’s history, do you think?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: I don’t </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">think</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> it’s got involved in the interpretation. Now, there’s people who will be critical of the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">fact</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that either one side or the other hasn’t been displayed enough. And that’s an emphasis that I really respect the Parks to—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I think </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">they mentioned, they got issues in the North and South War—the Civil War. The things down in Andersonville, Gettysburg—these—and the Arizona, and they really understand how best to portray that. They’re the nation’s storytellers, and they really want to hone in on the fact that we aren’t going to try to change anybody’s mind; we don’t want to argue with them; we just w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ant to presents the fact more and let them decide. B</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ut maybe if they’ve got one position, just kind of let them know what some of the other people are thinking, too, and vice versa. So I don’t really see it as an issue or a problem. It’s something we’ve got to address and it’s something that got to be recognized, but we’ve got to do it thoughtfully and doing it with some knowledge of where we’re coming from and how we present that.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Mm-hmm. And you said that’s equally true for sort of the local health impact as well as the Nagasaki and Hiroshima?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: I think so. But again, that’s my opinion. I think there’s a lot of advantages and there’s a lot of disadvantages. I mean, I keep coming back to some counterpoints and that is the whole medical isotopes, and the medical </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">radiation</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> program and so on. I mean, there’s over 20 million </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">radioactive diagnostic procedures in the United States every year. And there’s a likewise amount throughout the rest of the world. There’s not as many therapeutic, but almost. That’s the positive side. Now, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">there’s the negative side—that, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">gee, if you get exposed to it, that’s not good either. So, like most issues, nothing is clearly right or wrong. There’s pros and cons and I think we got to stop and think about those, and each person make up their own mind</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> to</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> where they may fit in that spectrum.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: How have the Tri-Cities changed in your time living here?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: [LAUGHTER] It’s been </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">significant</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">. I see the major growth in housing. Gosh, when I came here south of the Yakima River, there was nothing—none of that whole area. West Richland was small and didn’t go out. The shopping, as I said earlier—there was hardly anything here to do in that sense. The amenities of living in the community, the education of WSU here and various arts performing type groups—just—it’s almost like day and night in that sense. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I just—just amazing me, and I’ve been here a little over 50 years. It was kind of like a sleepy to</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">wn almost when you first come</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—when I first came, I should say. Pasco was the biggest, I think, town at that time. Of course, it’s got its history with the railroad and all of that sort of thing. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">The growth of the housing and you wonder, how could more people keep coming in? Where are they coming from, and where’s all this activity—what’s this base? It’s amazing. But I think the biggest thing I noticed is the shopping and the industry broadened quite a bit. I think most people don’t realize how many small businesses we really have in this community—various </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">outgrowths, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">spinoffs</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> of some of the lab work and some of the other activities. I think we had one golf course here at the time when I came over in Pasco. We’ve got a lot of that. The water sports. I mean, it’s—and the surrounding areas, the win</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">eries and all the vineyards. Yet the one </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">other thing I remember when I first </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">c</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ame and we </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">f</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">irst married, we used to go out and pick cherries or whatever where all houses are now. We still go out to some of the places to pick some peaches and stuff, but a lot of that stuff—and pears—you hardly see around. I can think back in those early days that we did all that. We go now in French’s out there where they have you-pick for peaches I think is one of the most popular places in town in the summertime when it’s peach time that they’re just so busy out there. But it’s changed. It’s just—but you know, a lot of the cities and so on—we’re getting people moving from the </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">rural areas into mor</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e the urban areas, and we’re no</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> different, I think, than some of the other major citi</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">es much bigger than we. But we</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">’re </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">staying—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">following kind of that same pattern.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Mm-hmm. Okay. So as we sort of wrap up here, there are probably—I don’t know—particular stories that leap to your mind from your time working at Hanford or living in the area, or any other sort of stuff I haven’t asked about that’s worth sharing?</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, I don’t know. I think </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">one</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> of the things that comes to mind is my involvement early with the kids in the community in the sports area and then of course, when my own son got into some of that with working with them. The other thing that kind of comes to mind, I said, I remember Christ the King Church, but like everything a growing—I’m in</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">volved in the building committee</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> and making that church bigger, tearing down the old government</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">-b</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">uilt building, all on volunteer-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">type work tearing down, basically. And things of that that you tend to think of not necessarily unique to me, but for a lot of the members of this community, </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">where you saw so much volunteer-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">type effort, community effort, where family didn’t have their own personal family right nearby. And I saw that. My wife can speak a lot more to that, but I saw that early in ’63 still existed, wh</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ere you saw this sort of social-</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">type gathering of—and I don’t think we see that quite the same anymore here in this community. If it is, it’s more like kind of an organized structure, or organized stuff. It’s not just like somebody drops by or you get a bunch of families together and oh, let’s have a Christmas party, or let’s have this, that or the other thing. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">That’s kind of what I witnessed early, and not to the extent—as I say</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> again</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—as my wife did in her family. But I saw that, and I see that kind of disappearing here. Some of the interesting things at work is like—I mentioned briefly earlier about the moonrocks coming back, the smoking swine—I was heavily involved in when they decided not to have the—I should say the smoking beagles and the swine. The swine is one of the closest animals that’s similar to a human. Their skin and all that. So there’s so much testing on radiation effects. A lot of these swine that was just evolutionary and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">helped</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the whole medical field. Wel</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">l</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">, we excessed those, I remember, in the process of excessing, where should we give it to? And</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> it ended up—</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I was q</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">uite heavily involved in that—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">e gave it to the University of Minnesota, because they had quite an extensive program on </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">heart development and heart surgery and stuff like that. They could utilize these swine and they had made a good proposal how they would care for them and continue in breeding them. Leo Bustad was the guy that developed those, like</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> full-grown was 150 pounds,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> was</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> close to a human being, and all those sorts of things. And I thin</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">k back about those sorts of things, about uniqueness, again, of science, of technology, developing these animals so that they—and there, again, you’ve got the other s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ide of those people that are</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">—oh, gosh, you </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">shouldn’t</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> be sacrificing animals. There’s validity to that. And then you look on the other hand—but look at all the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">benefits you get on</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that, and you can do it in a humane way, and all of that. So those things. Some of </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">the</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> stuff, I can’t describe now. I was not heavily involved in classified stuff, but there was some of the work out at Battelle that once it’s unclassified, it’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> just</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> unbelievable some of this stuff that you learn through that sort of thing. Those things often come to my mind, but </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">I still—taken</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> the oath that I’ll keep those to myself. That’s about all I can say about—but I wasn’t heavily involved in that. I didn’t have a super—I had a Q clearance. That’s another interesting story. When I was hired by DOE, they said, well—at that time you had to ha</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ve</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a Q clearance before you could ever come on work and it took about three months to get this Q clearance processed. So I was home back in Wisconsin for about a month, just waiting for the clearance, because I wasn’t going to drive all the way out here </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">and </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">f</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">or some reason to find out th</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">at, well</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> we can’t take you. I m</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">ean, I had no reason to believe that, but I just</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> had to wait out the process. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> that was, again—and that was difficult in hiring early on when we were recruiting college kids and stuff. </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">That was when</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> we still needed that—that everybody needed—well, not everybody, but 95% probably of the DOE and AEC—it was AEC then. People needed a Q clearance before they could get on board. Well, people are anxious, they don’t want to wait around </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">three months. They’re looking for</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> a job. So that was one of the difficulties that comes to mind when I talk </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">about out</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> those sorts of things. But there’s a lot of fond memories and associations with people that you’ll always have. And some unique activities that occurred. And, again, I keep thinking </span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">about working with Wally Sale</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> at the Consolidate</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824">d</span><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"> Laboratory and how unique and different that was and how innovative his approach—and he’s the one that really is the creator of that concept. So anyway, it’s been—it was an enjoyable career.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: All right, well thanks so much for being here.</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX227234824"><span class="TextRun SCX227234824"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Plahuta</span>: Yeah, you bet. Thank you. And I appreciate--</span><span class="EOP SCX227234824"> </span></p>
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Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri-Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:41:53
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
B Reactor
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1982-2016
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1982-?
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Hastings, Doc
Wagner, John
Holstead, Paul
Tomlinson, Sam
Sale, Wally
Volpentest, Sam
Philips, Bob
Jackson, Scoop
St. John, Holland
Ashby, Steve
Murray, Patty
Pasternak, Charles
Wright, Mona
Harvey, Dave
Gerber, Michelle
Marceau, Tom
Kelly, Cindy
Woodruff, Gene
Adkins, Tracey
Fox, John
Kosmata, Hank
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Maynard Plahuta
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Subject
The topic of the resource
Richland (Wash.)
Pasco (Wash.)
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
4/28/2016
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2016-08-16: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.]
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Atomic Energy Commission
Atomic Heritage Foundation
B Reactor
B Reactor Museum Association (BRMA)
Battelle (Wash.)
Energy Communities Alliance (ECA)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
General Electric
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Mission Support Alliance
Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Pasco (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Volpentest, Sam, 1904-2005
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F51d399f9b332ecd3ff88a077a2397164.mp4
b36dcb106c274666d29d9290ef95c177
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Douglas O' Reagan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
William Cliff
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Douglas O’Reagan</span>: Okay. To start off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">William Cliff</span>: Yes. I’m Dr. William C. Cliff. W-I-L-L-I-A-M, C is the middle initial, and Cliff, C-L-I-F-F—</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: All right.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: --like a mountain cliff.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Dr. Cliff on May 5</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX118553515">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Wa</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">shington State University’s Tri-</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Cities. We’ll be speaking with Dr. Cliff about his experiences working around the Tri-Cities community o</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">v</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">er the 20</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX118553515">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Century. To start us off, could you tell us a little bit about your life growing up before you came to this part of the world.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yeah. I was actually born in Idaho, and then we moved around to Oregon and then to Utah. And then got married in 1969 in Colorado. Took a job with NASA in Huntsville, Alabama, and that’s where we moved to and we lived there for about six or seven years. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">There were about seven of us that</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> were from around the United States that were hired to work on a special project at NASA. That gave us qui</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">te a bit of fun. It was electro-</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">optic systems and we worke</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">d on those. And of course we wor</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ked into other things while we were there at NASA as well. Huntsville—if you were raised in the West, Huntsville’s a little bit different. For the first years I was there, I never had an American boss. All my</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> bosses were the old </span><span class="TextRun Highlight SCX118553515"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX118553515">Peenemünde</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> group. The Germans--Von Braun</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX118553515">, </span><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">S</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">tuh</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">linger</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCX118553515">, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">Geissler</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, Horne, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">Dahm</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, Krause, and so on. Very nice people, very knowledgeable people. We went down and I got to work on a lot of electro-optics—laser systems for probing the atmosphere and for looking at flu</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">id flow. After which, I got—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">was over our physics and chemistry experiments in space and was in charge of the first commercial product </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">in space, which was mono</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">dispersed latex spheres. So got involved in an awfully lot of things, and finally got involved in the shuttle. Worked on the heat transfer for the solid rocket boosters and the external tank. So my working time seems like it almost started there just about the time of the shuttle and then sort of ended just about the time the shuttle ended. So I guess it was fate.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What time frame was that?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well, about 1970—well, the shu</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ttle started taking design</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> back in ’69, ’70, ’71. That’s when I was running the code for—of course, we were doing a lot of other things, too.</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Like I say, seven of us were h</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">i</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">r</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ed to work on a special electro-optics</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> project for measuring the wind </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">fields near</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the launch vehicles. Because</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the last decision made before launch is, do I have an atmospheric window? So that was sort of impor</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">tant, too. As a young scientist—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">engineer space scientist, you had all the toys you’d ever want. Because by this time, NASA had become very popular to the American people. And in 1969, with the Apollo-11 launch liftoff and landing on the moon and returning, NASA could do no wrong. As with many times in history, there’s a gloried agency within the United States. At that time, of course, NASA took over. Von Braun, the head of it, could do no wrong. So as a young scientist, I had every conceivable toy you could imagine: laser Doppler systems, probability density analyzers, I had a Mach-3 wind tunnel that I could use at my discretion. We really had a lot of fun for a young engineer.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: So what brought you to the Tri-Cities?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well, the Tri-Cities was very interesting. We had a child, Christina, in Huntsville, Alabama. And before she got school aged, we wanted to come back to the West. Both my wife and I were from the </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">West. It’s just like salmon returni</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ng. You want to come back,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> same place. So we looked around, and I happened to call out here. It looked like I was first going to go to Boulder, Colorado and do some work for NOAA. But I called a friend out here at the Hanford site, and he knew that I did a lot of wind characteristics for NASA. And he said, what would you think about moving out here? I said, well, that sounded like it might be kind of good. So they flew me out, I gave a presentation on laser Doppler velocimetry, which we really were the heads of in the world at that time, at NASA. They had some very, very good people. So I gave a talk </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">on that out here. Chuck Elderkin</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> said, when can you be here, in two weeks? I said, no, no, I</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">’ve</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> got some payloads I have to still get ready for. So signed up to come up here and work for Chuck Elderkin and Chuck Simpson and Bill Sandusky and a lot of these really interesting people in the atmospheric world. And as I mentioned, I think this was the largest atmospheric complex in the United States, because you had to worry about a release going downwind. So you had a huge amount of sensors in this area. And in fact, in my work, in dealing with some of the correlation work that we did, we had seen the work th</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">t had been done out here as well. So I was very interested in this area and interested in the people that were in this area that had done so much scientific work. So anyway, we </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">were hired to come, and my first job was actually repres</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">enting Battelle at--</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I think i</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">t was called ERDA at that time—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">in Washington, DC. So my first six months on the job, roughly, were actually in DC. We moved all of our equipment and cars and stuff out here, and then went to Washington, DC to live for—actually it turned out to be—shoot. I want to say—many months, and then came out here to take the actual job out here. I told my wife, I said, now, I’m not sure what you’re going to think about it. Said, you’re not going to see many trees. And she got out here and she says, I never want to leave. So, one of those people that this was her ideal site. Been very happy ever since then, and she sort of built up—every time I’d go on a trip,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> she’d buy another horse. So </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ended up building a little house with a barn and horses, and each—I remember one in particular that was kind of interesting. I got on a plane—I did quite a bit of overseas work. Got on the plane and they gave me an envelope. And it says, To Daddy. I thought, it’s going to open up and it’s going to say, please come home, Daddy. Well, I open it up and it says, here’s the horse you’re going to see at the barn when you come back. So anyway that was the life of the person traveling.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Where did you buy this—where were you living?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well we were living in a place called Hills West at the time when we came in. This area’s really interesting because it has ups and downs in prices of houses. So we found that it was easier to build than to buy at that particular time. So we built a house in Hills West. Then we were living there, and I was doing quite a bit of overseas work. When we were here, we also then were trained by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for reactor operator licensing exams. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">In fact, the Unit Two out here—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I was the lead examiner for the first group of people that ran the Unit Two reactor here at Hanford. So that was kind of fun, too. So for a few years, I spent about half my time going around to different BWRs around the—boiling water reactors—around the country. But I still think my favorite one is the one that’s right here. Got to do a lot of differe</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">nt projects over time. The Cana</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">d</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">i</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">an government wanted us to blow up some pipelines near Calgary to see if they were accidentally or purposely ruptured where the flow would go. So we went up, and my job was to measure the fluid velocity coming out of these ruptured pipes, which were probably three or four feet down, and they’d rupture and it’d just come up out of the ground. So that was kind of an interesting one. We had one where a fellow named Jim Grier who—great manager—did one with Shell Oil Company to look at taking the mud—the drilling mud from the seas and then putting it back down on the bed. So when you’re drilling for oil you get all these muds and things, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">and now you got to get rid of them. So we had a big project here to look at how you made them into </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">briquettes</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> and then put them back on the seafloor.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: This was all working for Battelle?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yeah</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, yeah</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. You had the opportunity to do a lot of different kind of unusual things. And one I mentioned that we started to look into was one of the commercial companies wanted to know how you could take strawberries and make them stand up so you could cut the tops o</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">f</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">f. So we did a little short project on looking at how you’</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">d use the caly</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">x as a drag</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> device. The caly</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">x, you know, the leafy part which</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> is good for Scrabble. To look and see how you could control the position of the strawberry using a converging fluid system. Anyway, that was kind of interesting.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Do you remember what year you came to the Tri-Cities?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: 1976, I believe.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Great. And you mentioned a couple of names—Chuck Eldritch, something, something like that?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Elderkin. Chuck Elderkin. Chuck was really the person that hired me. I came out and interviewed with Chuck. He was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. In fact, I thought this is really strange. The people at Tri-Cities are very, very nice. But coming in and interviewing for a job, I didn’t expect this guy to take his family and me out for ice cream at night. So he was such a nice man.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: But he was a well-known climatologist?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yeah, yeah. Him and Chuck Simpson and there’s Bill Sandusky. I think Bill Sandusky just retired from the Atmospheric Sciences Department. And they ran the Atmospheric Science Department. There’s an</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">other fellow named Ron Drake that</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> was there as well. But it was very prestigious organization there at Battelle. </span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: One of the things we’re interested in finding out is what was created, what was invented, what was discovered out there on the site? It sounds like climatology was cutting edge out there.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Oh, I think so. I mean, you really had to have your game plan in place, in case something happened. We’ve all heard of cases where the down-winders were saying</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> something happened and</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> we were affected. So you’ve always had a very good Atmospheric Sciences Department out there. I was trying to think of some of the other names that were extremely interesting to me. Coming out of NASA, I had heard of this group and these people, so I was very excited about coming. And then, like I say, we went to Washington, DC and we had one ch</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ild and two golden retrievers, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">nd to live in DC for a little while. And if you ever have a thought it was tough to find a place with a child, think about two golden retrievers and who wants to let you stay in an apartment with two golden retrievers and a child. Anyway, we had quite a bit of fun. And then we had to drive all the way across the United States. My wife would fly between stops, and I would pull our boat and the dogs and catch up with my wife, Nell</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, and Christina our daughter, as</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> we came across. So it was kind of an exciting time for us. I don’t think I’d have the energy to do it again. [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: You said your wife really liked it when she got here. What was your first impression?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well, I was born in Idaho and lived in Utah, so this was very familiar kind of territory to me, and I loved it. In fact, one of the first things I did was get in my car, and I just drove out through the Area and up</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> through</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> by Othello and up by all t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">h</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ose little lakes and the backwater, look for fishing areas, and go down and talk to the fishermen and stuff. So for me, this was an ideal location. And it turned out for my wife it was an ideal location. She could do all the things that she wanted to do with the animals. And I could do everything I wanted to do with the fish—and the steelhead and the salmon. Loved fly</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">fishing </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">for the steelhead up here. Probably one of the most significant events in that was that my father was out fishing—he loved to fly fish, too. And I told him, as you go down this river, I said, look over your shoulder, split those two big rocks right there, and when you do you’ll have a steelhead on. And he goes down there, and bang, this huge steelhead comes on. Just—he said he never had a fish fight like that in his life. He said, but one thing, Bill, I had</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> to take him the extra step. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> anyway, it’s been a wonderful area for us, and like I say, we’ve had a lot of people over. The work really became significant for us in 1989. US Customs Intelligence Service, Eleanor Lusher called Ed Fay at the Department of Energy and asked if someone would write a couple of articles, one on hafnium and one on zirconium. Ed asked if I would do it. So I wrote these two training bits for Customs, s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ent it to them. Next thing I kno</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">w, I got a big beautiful plaque from the Customs Intelligence Unit head at New York. And then Bill Wiley liked that so well, he gave me one, too. So that got us sort of started. And then in ’94, US Customs and I began training. Co</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ngress approved a budget to do Weapons of Mass D</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">estruction training for the non-weapon states of the former Soviet Union: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. So that sort of started us off. And the </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">first thing we did, we did border</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> assessments to find out what they could do at a border and what they couldn’t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> do</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. And we found one location that if they had—if the smuggler went across the border down </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">a ways</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, they couldn’t chase him because they had no gas. So some of the places were pretty rough. But then we went back in the countries and we did the training based upon our assessment at the borders. Then things just sort of took off from there. We began training more and more and more countries, going overseas. One </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">of the problems that we had was</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> when we went overseas—I actually carried a suitcase that was filled with strategic metals, if you will, to show and do training on. But it was very, very heavy. And we couldn’t carry any radioactive material with us at all. And we couldn’t—they didn’t have any trucks or things to pull something through, and there were very few radiation detectors. So we decided that we had to find a place where we could have trucks, cars, set up exercises just like you would have at a real field position, and be able to use real radioactive material, and specifically weapons-grade uranium and weapons-grade plutonium. Because these are two items that, without them, you don’t build a nuclear weapon. At the same time, back then, most smugglers and customs officers around the world were afraid of them, thinking </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">that they’re highly radioactive. W</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">hen in fact, through your training you find out that the weapons-grade materials are the least radioactive materials that you’re going to be working around for most of the time. The industrial isotopes are the rough ones, so to speak. So we got </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">the Pentagon, Harlan </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Strauss, we got the Department of Energy, of course, with us. We got the State Department, Pat O’Brien, Non-Proliferation Disarmament Fund. We selected the HAMMER site as the site where we could do all of these things. So there were actually four groups of people putting out customs—trying to think. Customs—there were actually a couple different people that we worked with. But we put these four agencies together, combined them together, and came out and set up the training. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">We looked around, where could we do the training? Well, it just turns out that the HAMMER site was just being developed, and it was the ideal </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">place. We</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> drove through the HAMMER site, Customs, State and the Pentagon and I, and we saw a little building out there that is actually a rest stop. But it looks exactly like a border </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">crossing in a third world country. We said, this is it. This is the place we got to do. So we then teamed up with HAMMER, and from that time forward it was all a wonderful partnership. In fact, people coming in could not tell the difference between if you were a PNL pers</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">on or a HAMMER person. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I remember one time, Niko</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">lai Kur</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">chenko, a Russian, the head of the Russian delegation came in and he had this beautiful Russian hat. And I thought, oh boy, oh oy, I wonder if he’s going to give it to me. Well he didn’t. He gave it to HAMMER. And I thought, oh man. But anyw</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">y, that’s been a wonderful relationship to where PNL and HAMMER worked together and you wouldn’t—couldn’t tell on</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">e from another. So that—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">in September of 1997, HAMMER did the dedication of the HAMMER site. At that dedication, we had Hungarians and Slovak Customs all in full uniform, for the dedication. That was the first class we had. And the classes have sort of continued ever since. So it was sort of a remarkable marriage, I would say, of the two groups.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: W</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">hat does HAMMER stand for?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Hazardous Material Management and Emergency Response Training Center. It’s actually the Volpentest HAMMER Federal Training Center. That’s the nice thing about HAMMER, is you can do things there that you really can’t do anywhere else in the world. And that is, we’re able to bring out the weapons-grade plutonium from PNNL, weapons-grade uranium, put it in trucks and cars and pass the through the portable monitors and have the people respond, pull them into what we call secondary and do the searches. But it’s with the real thing. And like I said, the first few years, some of the people were very much afraid o</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">f going up </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">against those materials, thinking that they’re highly radioactive when in fact they’re not. But even the Russians—the [INAUDIBLE] wouldn’t let the Russians use their materials to train on. So we had—I think</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Russians were here four times for the actual tra</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ining at HAMMER. And then we ac</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">u</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ally ran a rail test, where we had a railroad train go by the 300 Area here. It car</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ried the special nuclear materi</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">als. And when I say special nuclear materials, I mean the weapons-grade plutonium and uranium-enriched</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> and</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the isotope 235, and uranium-233. So those things that are fissionable that you can make the weapon out of. Anyway, it was kind of interesting because the train test, the Russians wanted us to evaluate one of their portal monitors. These are large monitors for looking for radioactive material. I think </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">it’s the only time that test has</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> ever been run. In the end, we’ve had over 60 countries out there, at HAMMER. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">As you know, we took a little tour the</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> other day and saw all the different</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> facilities</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> that have been built, and the State D</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">epartment has built three really nice facilities for the training. The very first training that we did at HAMMER, we actually had phone lines to each participant coming out of the ceiling. Of course, now, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">in </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">the new buildings and stuff, you got good simultaneous interpretation, the headgear, and you can do it in the field as well if you want to. Normally, in the field we do consecutive translation. But it’s a wonderful facility. As we’ve gone around the world, we’ve seen how people smuggle things and we’ve built traps that look like how the smuggler does it and then we train the people on how to find it. Kind of exciting.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: What had been your jobs, your involvement in each stage of this?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: My involvement?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Mm-hmm.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Was I was the manager of the program. We called it Interdi</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ct RADACAD</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. Interdict for the i</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">nterdiction of </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">materials, commodities and components associated with the </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">development or deployment of a Weapon of Mass D</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">estruct</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ion. And then RADACAD</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> for Radiation Academy. Well, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">you </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">can imagine what happened</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> on that</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">—people </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">immediately picked up RADACAD</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> and that’s what</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> it became known as</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. And one I forgot to mention, Terry Conway was the main customs officer we dealt with. He came out, and he was the one t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">hat thought up the term RADACAD</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. So that term</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> actually belongs to him. But I’ve gotten calls from people in Washington National Security Council and peo</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ple say, what does this RADACAD</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> mean? What does it stand for? So we made it to very high parts of government and actually got to be a line item there for training. Andrew Ch</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">urch at State Department in the—I want to say in the training area there—Andrew’s specific area—he’s the one that actually sent most of the countries, or a lot of the countries to us. Department of Energy has sent a lot of countries to us. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">The Pentagon, with Harlan, sent quite a few to us. But they always came in as a joint effort, if you will. Andrew Church, Export Control Cooperation, ECC, and the State Department, is probably the first group that actually provided funding out and spread it—it would go through Customs to go to us. And he’s—Andrew’s still there. He’s still a good sponsor, livin</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">g sponsor, if you will. Oh! N</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ow that we’re talking about it, can I bring this out?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Yeah, please.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: This is kind of a cute little storyboard. Of course, you probably can’t see too much of it. But this actually shows one of the classes from Azerbaijan that </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">came to visit us. M</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">y wife probably has had 40 separate nations at her home where she would spend three days preparing food so they have a banquet at the house. Some of the nations have been there to the house more than once. So this is the </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">Azeris</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> here giving</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> my wife a souvenir</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. She got so many souvenirs that she had to build a case there at the house to put all the various souvenirs in. Ali here was a boxer for the Azeri Olympic team.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: And then he went into radiation safety?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Customs, yeah. [LAUGHTER] Went into customs. Yeah, it’s interesting, the people that come and take the training, when they go back home, and then we go back and visit them in maybe six months or so, they will have moved up in the organization. Getting a certificate from RADACAD was a very, very big thing for most of these countries. It actually meant almost an instant advancement. This is when the missile came in that</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> you saw the other day, the SCUD</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> missile which is on loan to us from the State Department. Some of the exercises that they’re doing. </span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Could you t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ell us a bit more about the SCUD</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> missiles for the camera</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Got a call one day from a friend there at the Non-proliferation Disarmament Fund, said, Bill, do you want to have a missile out there to look at? And I said, sure! And then all of the sudden, one day it shows up out there, and the driver said it was the strangest thing he’d ever picked up. He said he went over to—I guess by the State Department where the</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">y</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> had it, and he said I wonder who’s going to be driving that. So he drove it out here </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">and brought it out to HAMMER for</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> training. And—oh shoot, one of the pictures I think I brought with me—I know I’ve got it over there some place—is Bill Gates. Bill Gates came through and toured the Hanford site, and the last stop was there with the missile. So I’ve got a picture there with Bill Gates and I, looking over that missile. Kind of a fun toy.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Do you know how the State Department got the missile?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: It was provided by the Soviet Union.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: And the fear was that that would be—somebody would try to drive that out of the Soviet Union?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>:</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Oh, now that one is one that’</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">s been cut up, as you could tell. It’s been set up as a demilitarized system, so it cannot ever be used. In the United States, however, there was one that did come into the United States legally, supposedly, and demilitarized. And my understanding was</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> that another one came in that C</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ustoms took and they had the paperwork from the first one and it was drivable and everything else. So you’d think how could something like that every go through a country? But they can. So I’m not sure where that missile is right now, but Customs took it over and if they did all the paperwork right and demilitarized it, the person probably got it back. Let’s see. I thought maybe one of these we we</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">re holding—oh. Harlan Strauss. Oh, m</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">issile components. Anyway, this is sort of a fun one. And then Customs gave us this </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">plaque here from the Northwest Laboratory for the Interdict Training Program, 2004. Now the nice thing about this is we continuously got letters from customs officers sayin</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">g it’s the best training they’</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">d ever had in their career. So when people walked out of the training, they actually felt comfortable. And you’d always ask them, well, what’s going to happen if someone comes across and your radiation alarm says you’ve got plutonium. They say, I’m going to stick right there and handle it. Years ago, they’d say, I’m going to take off running as fast as I can. So just that little bit of knowledge is very helpful. We have had people, of course, that just don’t like any radiation. Some people contend that a little bit of radiation has made the human species actually better, if you will. And that if you have a small amount of background radiation, it’s </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">more healthy</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> for you than none. It’s </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">called hormesis, so it actually—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">your body upregulates itself to take care of itself a little bit better.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: How is HAMMER run? What is sort of the organizational structure of it?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well, HAMMER actually is a training facility that’s headed by Karen McGinnis, who does a wonderful job of making sure that the site needs are met. It’s actually set up for the Hanford cleanup to give all the specialized trainings so that the person in the field is safe. That’s pretty much it. It has, I think, about 50,000 man days of training a year. Every person on the Hanford site there that deals with radioactive materials is actually trained right there on the HAMMER site in the radiation building, the one that we too</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">k a tour of the other day. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Volpentest</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> certainly was a forward-thinker,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> in</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> knowing that you needed to hav</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">e something like this for the Hanford site, and knowing that it’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> going to be a major cleanup</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> facility. </span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Do you know much about Volpentest’s role in getting all of this organized?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Volpentest was the key person with the willpower and the tenacity to—my understanding is that he thought the project up, he fought in Washington, and he fought in Washington, and he fought in Washington. And I wish I could remember hi</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">s words one time when—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> HAMMER—not a dedication, but like ten-year anniversary. He said something about, they said what was so hard? He said, just again, and again, and again, you just had to be persistent to do it. And then finally, he got it and it’s, like I say, it’s the best training center in the world. You can do things out there at HAMMER that you can do nowhere else. We have brought in containers, we have fiber optic scopes to look behind walls, you can bring the special nuclear materials out there, and you can drive through the scenarios. And we mock-up. We mock-up our international seizures. In fact, one that we were accredited with in May of ’99 was a Bulgarian seizure where a fellow had gone out of Romania and up into Turkey and was coming back</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> through Bulgaria, Josef </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">Hanifi</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. He got to the border there and the Bulgarians had just been out training at RADACAD. They noticed that he seemed a little bit nervous. So they questioned a little bit and finally </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">they sent him over to s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">econdary. So they moved him</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> to secondary. The car was perfectly clean. No</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">body should be driving that car;</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> it was way too clean. They found—a screwdriver was the only piece of equipment in the entire car. They were about ready to let him go, and apparently then he offered them a bribe. They s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">aid, no, no, we got to find it</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. So they started looking and they found a little piece of paper with a star on it, which was a Kurdish separatist group. So they said, okay, now we’re going to look a bit more. And the next thing they found then was what we call a passport. This is a piece of paper that gives the isotopic items that are in an element. It always goes with the material. When you get something that’s very sensitive, whether it’s radioactive or not, you’re going to have this spike assay, or what we call a passport, with it. And if you find it, the other stuff is there. So here it was and it said uranium-23</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">5, and said 99.99% uranium-235—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">which w</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">e train everybody, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">if you see that, you know that’s at least a parti</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">al. You do not enrich uranium to</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> that amount. But now they knew what they were looking for. All their sensors—none of their sensors would work. I mean, the handheld radiation devices weren’t going off. Then finally the guy remembered the screwdriver, and he picked up a tire pump. The tire pump was like one he had but it was heavier. So he looked at matched them up and pulled it apart. And sure enough the compression cylinder inside the pump had been pulled apart and a lead pig—when I say lead pig—a lead isotope holder—radiation holder—they pulled it out and it had uranium-235 in it when they pulled it apart. It’s a great example to show that uranium-235 is easily concealed. Because you put it in there. One of the pagers that I brought with me that are used all around the world for detecting radiation was laid actually up against it and it still showed zero. Trying to reach around, see if I can open this up. This is the one we saw the other day. This particular one is my favorite. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">We’ve distributed thousands around the world. There’s actually several makers of these. This particular one is Sensor Technology. But you just turn it on, and then you wear it. As soon as it turns green it’s ready to pick up any radiation you’ve got. Very, very sensitive, and yet—this water bottle is just about the size—about like that was the lead pig that was in the container. So put it on the outside and if you press the button there</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">—[</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">DEVICE BEEPING] Reads zero. You’ve always got a little bit of gamma background radiation, but it read zero. And then of course as you pulled it </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">open, pulled the top off and</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> expose the little amount of radiation, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">then </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">the thing goes wild. So that was one of the seizures that we were accredited with. And in fact, the customs officers that made that seizure were brought to the United States and brought out to HAMMER again to give a little talk to everybody on how they did it. So it was kind of interesting. We had a couple of other seizures, too, that were quite interesting. The Bulgarians, when they first were over here the first time they actually made another seizure. So they were extremely dedicated. </span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Had there been any particular—I don’t know—international politics or sort of big events that have shaped what people are looking for </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">at</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> HAMMER, or HAMMER’s mission? I’m thinking like—as the world’s sort of security concerns change, has that changed what HAMMER is looking for?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well, HAMMER, of course was really set up to handle the cleanup of the Hanford site. But the society area, if you will, has been a blessing for the world of bringing people in for training. Just going</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> back in history, in December 14</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX118553515">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> 1994, Josef Wagner, who is well up into the nuclear world in the Czech Republic, was actual</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ly caught by a man named </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">Kamil</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">Klozerski</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, the second command of the criminal police in the Czech Republic. And he was carrying with him 2.72 kilograms of 87.7% enriched uranium, which is almost weapons grade. That sort of set the tone for the world, I think. Because that had been brought down from Moscow by train, by car, and gone through a lot of different country border crossings, and it sort of showed the world that there really wasn’t any way of catching or stopping it at that time. So after t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">hat, you began seeing the portable</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> monitors, began seeing the radiation detectors </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">and things of that nature start cropping up. In my mind, there was sort of a changing segue way, I guess</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> for the world. Now the United States, I guess, lacked behind a lot of the other countries in putting up portal monitors and stuff because we sort of consider ourselves isolated. But as recent events have shown us, of course, we’re not. So the United States then took up and protected all</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> of</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> its borders with these large portal monitors. And if you walk off on the plane and you look very carefully, your customs officers will be carrying something like this. Normally, it’s just called a personal radiation detector. This particular model is called a pager from Sensor Technology. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">So the United States is doing a </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">real</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> good job with its people and getting its people trained for detecting radioactive materials. There’s been several seizures around the world. I guess maybe I’ll leave it at that. There’s been less than what we call a significant quantity</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> bag quite a bit that has actually been seized. We know that a lot of nations and a lot of groups who’d like to have the material. So as we talked about the other day, if the IAEA says that if a country has eight kilograms of plutonium, you could not discard the fact that they may have a full-up weapon, or 25 kilograms of uranium-235</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> or eight kilograms of uranium-233. So that’s sort of the baseline, so for nuclear smuggling, we always compare that. There’s been 18 seizures since 1992 of weapons-usable material. And when we say weapons-usable, we mean greater than 20% enriched uranium-235 or plutonium. So there’s not been a lot. And there’s a lot of equipment out there to try to stop it. But as we saw with the Bulgarian seizure, certain things can be fairly well-masked. A lot of times, people will ask, well, hey, a small number of grams you found, like in the Bulgarian seizure, you’re not going to make a bomb out of that. And the answer is yeah, that’s correct. Normally what happens on a smuggling operation, they’ll give you a very small amount of material, and if it’s good mat</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">erial, they’ll give it to you</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> to take and analyze. And then they’ll say, we’ve got three more kilograms or five more kilograms back there. So when you see the small ones, they become very important, because that’s what people are trying to push and say, this is a sample. We had a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> case out here where zirconium—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">which is non-radioactive, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">but is used in reactor systems—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">smuggler sent us a small piece that we analyzed, and it was really, really nice zirconium. A custo</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ms officer was embedded with hi</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">m and he was saying he was from Iraq and he wanted to buy it for Iraq. So it went on, and they’d give us another piece, and it wasn’t quite as good, but it was still good nuclear-grade zirconium. So eventually, customs arrested him, and he h</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ad five tons of zirconium th</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ere waiting to go to Iraq. It was stored in the World Trade Centers. I went back and looked at it. It was kind of interesting. Oh, I had one other—I got another picture over there some place where I showed two—that Eleanor Lush</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, who</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> we talked about that actually the program started with, her and another person using a piece of our equipment to look at roofing tar from Venezuela. It was suspected that something was hidden in the roofing tar. Why are you buying roofing tar from Venezuela, which probably the cost of shipping it is as much as the material’s worth? So here at PNNL, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Dick Papas and Jim Skorpik</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> had built some equipment—some acoustic equipment—to look and find chemicals that—actually it was originally developed for looking at chemical weapons. And in this particular case, it was for looking through this tar keg to see if somebody had accidentally hidden a rubber ball in the middle or something. But anyway, we worked on several cases. [DEVICE BEEPING] With customs. And it was always kind of fun. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I was called in on one case where I was able to go and testify, was the first to testify for the US government against some smugglers. So it was kind of interesting, back in Brooklyn. Anyway we had sort of a fun life. The HAMMER site, like I say, sort of came as a godsend for doing this. They were built up to handle and move materials around in a method—and they’re on the Hanford site, so you can actually use the radioactive materials. And of course we used not only the weapons-grade which we talked about several times, but we also used the commercial items, because those are ones you’re going to find most often. That is the </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">cesiums</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">cobalts</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">things of that nature. We have those in the training as well, and the people have to identify what they are.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: You mentio</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ned testifying—was that because--</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">just as an expert witness?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yes.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Or were you actually involved</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> in--</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: No, no, just as an expert witness. Yeah, no, no just as an expert witness on what we had analyzed.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: How has your sort o</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">f day-to-day work changed over</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the time that you’ve been working at HAMMER?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Oh,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> not—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I’m just pretty much retired and I get to do the fun things I want to do, and I get to do kind of an outreach and talk t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">o the people that we’ve with over the years,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the various agencies: </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">the</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> State Department, the Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of the Defense and Homeland Security. I really don’t do much anymore. If a class comes in, I’ll maybe give a talk on nuclear smuggling and maybe a couple of other little talks. </span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: When did you retire, or start to retire?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Pardon?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: When did you start to retire?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: 2011.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">O’R</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">eagan</span>: Okay. What was your sort of day-to-day </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">b</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">efore that?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well, when we had t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">he classes, of course it was—phew</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">—early morning to late afternoon, but it was a labor of love, setting them up and getting all the people. When the training went on, I one time, somebody asked, well how many experts do you use? And I counted up, I think on one class, 27 that you would run into. 27 different experts you’d run into in that class. We had peop</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">le from Oak Ridge, for instance,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Steve Baker would come down and that’s where the uranium enrichment was, and so he would talk about uranium enrichment. We had the MSIC people come in—Missile Space Intelligence Co</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">mmand—come in and they’d talk a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">b</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">o</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ut some of the missile systems</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> that we had. So I guess I really wouldn’t call it work; it was kind of fun. And then HAMMER is even more fun. I go out there and </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">it’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> sort of like a large family that you blend into. My wife keeps saying now, when are you going to really retire? I think that day is coming pretty soon.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: You mentioned going around looking for fishing spots when you first got here.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yes!</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Is that a big hobby of yours?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yes, I love to fish. To me, this was a very interesting and exciting area because I went up there in the desert area where these—all of the sudden</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, there’s water</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> and there’s fish in these lakes. I watched the people catch them and how they did it. I’d go down and talk to them. So then we’d begin doing that, and go</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> with friends, and we’d walk into a little lake called Virgin Lake, which is about a mile walk-in, so </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">there’s not a lot of people. Haven’t been there lately, though. But, yeah, I love fishing, and my dad took my brother and I out. I think—I think he said we were either three or four when we first started going out and going fishing. I remember him buying these old bamboo fly</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">rods, which would be very expensive now. And I remember walking and holding the tip down, snapping the tip off on the ground. My dad said, no</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, no, Bill, you have to</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> hold it up. So that was in Idaho, when we lived in Idaho. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I guess I’ve been sort of lucky: I’ve always found something that was fun to do. Even when I went down to NASA, I remember they came out </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">looking, like I say,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> for seven of us from around the United States to work on a particular p</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">roject. It was kind of a thrill</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> to be able to go down and sort of play and have all the toys you ever wanted as a young engineer. It just seemed like my life said, well, here’s the next thing, here’s the next thing. So I guess the next thing probably is we’ll maybe settle down even more. Maybe one day do a full retirement. Although I still like talking about nuclear smuggling and talking with the people. When I was in the Czech Republic, and actually it was December of ’95, and we were talking with the criminal police there. So I spewed out all we’d heard, about Josef Wagner and any co-conspirators and stuff. And they said, oh, well</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> we thought we were going to tell you about that. No. But it was interesting because they were really into it. And when the breakup of the Soviet Uni</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">on occurred, I said, what have </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">you noticed? He said, well, people think they’re free. But he says, people think they’re free to do whate</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">v</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">er they want, so we’ve seen an increase in murders and really hard crime. Which I never thought about, because under the dominant rule, nobody dared do anything. Then after they broke up and were free, they could do all these different things. So the criminal police actually had their hands </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">more full</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, I guess. The Josef Wagner case was just a very special case.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: How have the Tri-Cities changed in the time you’ve lived here?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Oh! More people in my fishing spots! Yeah, the Tri-Cities have gotten many more peo</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ple. In fact, we live up on Kee</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ne Road, which is part of Richland, going toward Yakima there. The traffic has gotten almost unbearable at rush hour. I mean, it really is amazing. Wh</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">en we built our house, 1990, Kee</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ne Road was a little two-lane road that did this. As you drove along the road, and if you come up over this rise, you’d see our house. But the house would look like it was a stick figure, just looked like—because you would look through one octagonal window, straight through to another octagonal window. So it looked like there was no depth to the house. It was a very strange feeling. And then the next thing you know—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">whoom</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">then they came and bladed</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> out the road, mad</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">e it a four-</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">laner</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, and the first </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">thing happened was they cut it a little too steep at the end of our driveway, so our driveway went like</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">that. And I had to call them up because it snowed and I said, I just slid into the road. So they came back and fixed it. City of Richland has been very good. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">But we’ve certainly enjoyed it, like I say, we’ve had a pretty good life here.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Have you followed local politics at all?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: A little bit, but not too much. I mean, the national politics have been something interesting to watch, kind of fun to watch. I always watch the n</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ews and hear the people say—it’s a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> very fun thing to be watching and going over. Anyway, I don’t get involved in politics very much.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Okay. Let’s see. I guess that’s most of our sort of preset questions here. Anything else that comes to mind that I haven’t thought to ask?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Hmm. I’m just trying to think of some of the fun little projects that we’ve done in the past and the people who we’ve worked with. Seems like we’ve always had some—well, it was kind of interesting, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">because I used to do quite a bit of research. When I was at NASA, we built these large laser systems for what they call</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> a</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> coaxial laser</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> system—for actually looking at wind for p</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">robably 20 kilometers out or so. Very, very accurate. And when I came here, one of the first things I did was I went back and I got with our old NASA people and set </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">up a program to scan San Gorgonio</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Pass with an airplane flying over and taking the wind velocity measurements, so you could see. And now there’s large wind turbines down th</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ere—wind turbine farm</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> and stuff. And that’s what we wanted to assess, was how deep did that maritime layer go as it came down from the coast. So that was sort of fun, as it led to the stuff we did at NASA with the laser Doppler systems</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. But we did it</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> out here at PNNL. And then I got to work with a fellow named Jim Davidson. He was over our national security back then, and probably one of my very favorite bosses, if you will. So with him, I got to be—my training—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission training—and with Jim, I actually be</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">came one of the US advisors for</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the International Atomic Energy List, which is now the Nuclear Suppliers Group. So all those things you wanted to keep away from Russia and China, there was a thing called </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">CoCo</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">m</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, which was NATO plus Japan, minus</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Iceland. And we’d meet in a secret place in France and in England</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> and go over all these lists. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> one of the jobs that I had with Jim was to work on that International Atomic Energy List, to be sure that we’d try to</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> keep sp</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ecial things away from Russia, so that they couldn’t reprocess materials, or they couldn’t do this, or they didn’t have that</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> per se. So that was </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">actually kind of fun. And I thi</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">nk that I probably enjoyed Jim as much as anybody that I’ve ever</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> done</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">—he’s retired now. I think I mentioned, he’d be an interesting one to talk to because he gave</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> perhaps the best tour</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> I’ve ever had</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> of going out through</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the Area and dealing with the old reactors. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Anyway, he got us involved in a lot of very interesting, interesting things. Oh, one—do we have time to bring over a picture?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Yeah, sure.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Maybe we can take it. This is just a short picture of some of the things that go on at the HAMMER site in training. These are many of the people who are involved in the training. This particular picture, I think was interesting because we’re holding an eight-kilogram ball of Tungsten, which has the same density as plutonium. As a result, you can see how small that is. So if you’re smuggling, if I’m smuggling drugs, I’m going to have a large area. But for smuggling nuclear materials—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">the </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">special nuclear materials, you don’t need a lot of space. Where with drugs, you’re going to smuggle it and you’re going to have it where you’re going to</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> have</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">take</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> it open, put it back in, take it open, put it back in. With weapons of mass destruction, you may only make one carry. So it may be completely sealed up. Maybe welded. But the size of the materials that you’re going to be dealing with don’t have to be a lot. Not going too much detail, this is over in Hol</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">land, when we were in Holland. You s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ee the big Dutch shoe, there. I don’t know if you can see that or not. Oh, this is nice. This is where we—one of the buildings that was turned over to HAMMER from the State Department. Karen Nicola. Oh, shoot. Jim Spracklen</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. Jim Spracklen was at</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> DoE for a long time and he really was a blessing for HAMMER. He just has been so supportive of everything at HAMMER. Of course there’s the missile again. Paul Van Son was the State Department person. I believe that this one was</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> where</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> they handed over the State Department building that we took a tour in the other day. So, yeah, at the signing of the turnover here, this is Karen McGinnis, who’s the head of H</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">AMMER, the director of HAMMER, who’s v</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ery, very supportive of all these activities.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Do you know how she became director of HAMMER?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: No, I don’t.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: We’ll have to see if we can get her in and ask her.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yeah. I’m not sure if I want to show that one too much. This is a picture down in Mexico where we’re putting on a little bit of training for the Mexican National Police. They loaned me their gun. So I look like I know what I’</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">m doing. Anyway, that was some Weapons of Mass D</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">estruction training that we did. This is the interesting picture, to m</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">e. This is Eleanor Lusher. This is</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> the lady at Customs Intel in New York that actually started us getting involved in the training aspects of it. And that’s the roofing tar from Venezuela that we</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> went up to inspect</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. This is an ultrasound system that was put together by Dick Papas and Jim </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Skorpik</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> at PNNL to evaluate if there </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">was</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> things that were accidentally being left inside of the roofing tar. Roofing tar is an ideal thing, because you can’t go through with an x-ray or anything. So if there’s something inside of it, you can hide it very well and it can get through. Except if you’re using an ultrasound system. Ultraso</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">und goes right on through it. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> it’s real</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ly kind of interesting. But anyway</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> that’s one of the few pictures we have of Eleanor. And Eleanor, I believe, retired th</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">is year—i</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">n fact, at the first of the year. But she was central in bringing us a lot of cases. Remember the case we talked about in New York and stuff? That’s where we got it from. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Now, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I should point out—that’s one of the interesting things that we’ve done over the years. We</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">’ve</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> worked for a lot of different sponsors. We began working with Eleanor here at Customs back then. Of the thousands of customs people that we’ve dealt with, they’ve all been the nicest people you could ever imagine. So, one after </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">the other after the other, very, very </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">nice people to work with. So I guess I take my hat off to Customs and training </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">their people to deal with people on an everyday basis. This is a picture by the missile that’s out there. That’s Bill Gates. He came in. He’s actually kind of excited about seeing the missile. He was actually excited about old Von</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Braun stories that I told. Any</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">w</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ay, kind of </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">c</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">u</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">te. Did you get that picture?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Camera woman</span>: Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>:</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Good. During the training, we use a lot of different types of material—training material. This particular one here is actually put out by the Department of Energy, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Dr. Noel </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span class="SpellingError SCX118553515">Medding</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. If you want to know everything about radiation in a single sheet while you’re eating, this was an ideal training aide. We always tell people at your Thanksgiving you can put this down in front of you and say, well, when Aunt Martha takes her mammogram, she’s going to be receiving so much radiation. And if the conversation dies down, you’ve got something to talk from. This particular one is a radiation playing deck. We always say it’s a field training manual for radiation. It has four chapters, thirteen pages in each chapter</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> for a total of 52. So each one of them actually gives you a different item on radiation. You didn’t get one the other day. </span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Camera woman</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">: What’s that?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: That’s for you.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Camera woman</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">: Oh. Thank you.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: We also built some other cards which don’t have very many left on, but rather than having hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades as your suits, you had missile, chemical, biological and nuclear. So you had your four Weapons of Mass Destruction as your primary suits. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">In fact—see if I can open this one up. So each one of these, you’ll deal with the different technologies associated with them: missiles, or chemicals or biologicals. Like this one here says Nuclear Terrorism. If terrorists have it, they will use it. Oops. Well. One of the things we do train on—this is going to be hard to see—the Man Portable Air Defense Systems. Man PADs. We heard about those an awful lot. Two things when we say weapons of mass destruction, we </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">also </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">normally cover Man PADs and we cover r</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">adiological dispersal devices—i</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">n </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">other words, just casting radioactive material around. Can cause quite a bit of economic damage. Well, maybe I left it in the bag. Oh, for crying out loud. I could</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> have</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> search</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ed</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> that all day long. Okay, here you go. Here’s my two favorite cards. Of course, we have the card with the picture of the SCUD missile coming in. And then we have a card—this is Pat O’</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Brien, State Department, the one that’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> help</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ed</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> with all the buildings. And he and I are over there in Poland, and this is one of the SCUD missile engines that they left in Poland. Most of the SCUDs were destroyed in these countries. </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">State Department let them keep a couple of engines and a couple of missiles, you know, for the museums. That’s kind of embarrassing, huh? This one—special nuclear material signatures. It says gamma and neutron—tells you what plutonium has, and what uranium has. Plutonium has gamma and neutron you’re going to detect, and uranium is going to have the gamma you’re going to detect. But if you play it left-handed, like a left-hand person would, then what you’re going to see is going to be the little nuclear weapon. If you play it like a right-hand person would be, you’d see spades. Okay, these are very special, so be sure and don’t lose them. The cards turned out to be probably one of the best training aids that we had. Because people—you give them this big book, or you give them this disc, people end up not looking at them.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Mm-hmm.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Then the Field Exercise building, which you were in the other day. This actuall</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">y came as kind of a surprise to</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> me. We’d worked on getting the State Department to support that for a long time. And the State Department always wanted to support it—the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Fund. But we finally got them to build the building. Then they were going to dedicate the building, and they said Bill, you got to come, you got to come, Bill. And the reason they wanted me to come was because they put my name in there </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">saying—</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">dedicating the building to me. So now I have to make a big deal out of it.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: That’s great.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Anyway. You get it all?</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Camera </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Woman</span>: Yup, got it.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: This is a nice one, because here’s Sam Volpentest. Sam, who as we mentioned, was the thinker behind the HAMMER site. And so there he is, and there I am, showing some of the different sensing units that we have. Remember we talked about the Bulgarian seizure and the people that made that seizure noted around the world? Anyway, there they are. There</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">’</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">s two of the three guys. The other guy had retired. But they came out and gave us a talk. Here’s Jim </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">Spracklen</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> and I. L</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">ike I say,</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Jim</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> is one of them that’s been behind this program forever and now runs the RADACAD program. Really, really a good guy. This is the Dutch. This is Pat O’Brien, and he’s the one that built the Port of Entry Building that we saw the other day</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, NDF</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">. And he’s the one that sent—oh, just say he’s one that’s provided a lot of the support tools. If we look at it, Customs provided people for training. The Pentagon provided some funding and selected the nations. The State Department provided all kinds of training materials, so all of those—most of those Conex boxes, the big Conex boxes you saw out there, and a lot of the equipment out there were originally purchased by the State Department for our group program. Then</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> this one</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> here is just one of the storyboards. Let’s see what else we got here.</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Paul Van Son.</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Of course the famous picture of the missile coming in. The missile was kind of a cute story. I came in, and somewhere or other the local news found out about it. So they had the missile and we were trying to put it into a little building out there. I never even thought about this, but—it was Tri-City Herald, and they had the people there. Next thing I know is they’re cornering me and turning me around to talk to me. Next thing I knew, </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">I turned around and one of the ladies jumped up on the missile and was riding the missile. So it was kind of cute. But they didn’t know if they would be let to do that or not. So this is kind of nice, because you’ve got a nice picture of Sam Volpentest in there. Earlier, we had one of Karen McGinni</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">s, the director of HAMMER. Patty</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> Murray. The HAMMER site’s had all the political people out there, it seems like, for a long time. They stop in. Very supportive.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Well we can hopefully maybe get a scan of these at some point. If you could maybe bring </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">back in another time, we could get our intern team to scan copies of these. Then we could have a version of them.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Yes. You certainly can.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Great.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Well, let me just say, this is one of my favorite ones. This is an Army program for the 120 mil</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">limeter Abrams M</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">1 Tank Cannon. And this was a special—very special projectile that we built at PNNL and fired, actually</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, down at So</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">co</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">rro</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">, New Mexico. But this is what we call a streak camera picture. Normally, when you take a picture you open the shutter and you open it and you get a shot. In this particular case, you got a shutter that’s open and you strip the film across. So depending on how fast you strip the film across, you get a different picture coming out. But the projectile there is going at</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">like a mile a second. So you got to do something pretty fast. So anyway that’s one of my favorite pictures. And this is the only time that this—you can sort of see that the projectile is still exhausting out of here, sort of like a rocket exhaust. And this is the first time that this had ever been accomplished. In</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> 1989. So VAGAS stood for Very high b</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">urn</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"> rate per pellet A</span><span class="TextRun SCX118553515">nd Gas Assisted System. So it was sort of an acronym. You can tell it’s not spelled like the normal Vegas. But I love this picture and in fact I had to run around looking—I had to take this out of my house to bring it in.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: Great.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: I told my wife, she said it was okay.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">O’Reagan</span>: All right, well, thanks so much for being here.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX118553515"><span class="TextRun SCX118553515"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Cliff</span>: Hey, thanks for inviting me. You guys didn’t think you’d get bored to death like this, probably.</span><span class="EOP SCX118553515"> </span></p>
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Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri-Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:10:41
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
248 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
300 Area
Boiling Water Reactor
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1976-2016
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1976-2011
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Elderkin, Chuck
Simpson, Chuck
Sandusky, Bill
Grier, Jim
Drake, Ron
Lusher, Eleanor
Fay, Ed
Wiley, Bill
Strauss, Harlan
Brien, Pat O'
Conway, Terry
Church, Andrew
Gates, Bill
McGinnis, Karen
Volpentest, Sam
Papas, Dick
Skorpik, Jim
Baker, Steve
Nicola, Karen
Spracklen, Jim
Van Son, Pau
Medding, Noel
O’Brien, Pat
Murray, Patty
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with William Cliff
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date Modified
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2016-07-25: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.]
Subject
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Richland (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Hanford (Wash.)
Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Richland.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
5/5/2016
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
300 Area
Boiling Water Reactor
Department of Energy
Fishing
HAMMER Site
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
NASA
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland (Wash.)
Volpentest, Sam, 1904-2005