Everett Weakley: And there I worked in the lead process for years. And then I moved over later—
[VIDEO CUTS]
Douglas O’Reagan: My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Everett A. Weakley on January 13th, 2016. Interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And I will be talking with Everett, or Ev—would you prefer Everett, or--?
Weakley: Just—yeah, Ev or Everett. Either one.
Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. About his experiences working on the Hanford site. Okay, well thanks for being here. So—you were just telling me while we were having some camera issues—I’d love to hear about sort of how you got involved with the Hanford site, what you were working on that brought you here, and then your sort of early years, what you were working on here.
Weakley: Well, they came up to University of Idaho and recruited people. And I was one of the ones they recruited. So I came down here, and they put me on work at the tritium program extraction process. So I was a process control engineer at that time.
O’Reagan: Do you know why they recruited you? Were you working in physics?
Weakley: They were after engineers, especially chemical engineers at that time.
O’Reagan: I see. Did you know anything about nuclear science specifically?
Weakley: Oh, no. We didn’t know squat. [LAUGHTER] Of course. Because we were up at University of Idaho. But it was a lot better than being drafted and sent to Korea.
O’Reagan: How much were they able to tell you about the job before they hired you?
Weakley: Very little. Very little. They didn’t tell us what was going on. They came down here and they put some people—engineers in this job, some in this job. I was selected for tritium extraction.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. Could you tell me about your first experiences on that job? What sort of the first month or two like? Do you remember?
Weakley: Well, they put us on shift work. I think it was called XYZ shift. And it was only five days a week, but it was—changed. So they were going 24 hours a day, but only for five days. It was a glass line at that time. Tritium was extracted and then you had to send it—you had to pump it out through palladium windows—that’s the way they got the hydrogen out, and the tritium and the deuterium. And then we had to collect those in glass containers. It was all hooked up to the system. And then we were designing one for a metal one. So I went in on the metal designs also. And most of that work was done in the shops down in—oh, what do they call it—the old Hanford site. They had a lab—or a place down there, and they did most of the work—construction work. And then they assembled it all. It was interesting work, actually. Because they kept me out of the Korean War, also, so I was happy about that. I didn’t want to go over there.
O’Reagan: Part of what we’re trying to get an idea about is sort of—what was it like working on the Hanford site? Is there anything that sticks out to you about the way things worked? Or the structure, or anything like that?
Weakley: Well, since I was a single guy, they put us in the dorms. They ran out of dorms, so they put us—there was two dorms that were down in the women’s dorm area. So they put us in one of those dorms down there. I remember there was a—what the heck street was that? Anyway, those women’s dorms were right close there, too. And then we’d go up and eat at the Mart, which is still here, but it isn’t called the Mart now. And we’d walk through this field of—I think they were prunes or plums or something like that. And you’d go through there and you’d get attacked by the birds. [LAUGHTER] They would actually attack you during the daytime. So it was a lot of things going on. For dorm club, we’d go down to—oh, the Blue Mountains, and we’d go up to Mount Hood, and hunting and fishing was always what I did. It was a good place. Lot of people. It was interesting, because everybody was new, had come in. It was quite the exciting time to see all these people from all over the United States.
O’Reagan: Did you live in the dormitories long?
Weakley: Oh, let’s see. I lived in there until I got married in ’53. Then we got a B house on Van Giesen Street—one end of it. And I wasn’t the oldest tenant, so I could not buy that anyway. I wouldn’t want it anyway. And then they started selling houses; I got a H house, south end of town and had to remodel that. Had to dig out the basement and all that. By that time, I had several children, so I kind of had to make room for all these kids. Took out the chimney. My wife did not like the coal-burning stove down there to heat the place. So we put in electric baseboard heat. Swamp coolers on the windows. Re-put new—took the chimney out. Had to put new roofing on. All that sort of thing. And later on, we moved to where we are on Pike Avenue now. Then we had more kids. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Keep you busy.
Weakley: That’s right.
O’Reagan: What was life like in Richland in the ‘50s?
Weakley: Well, it was kind of—there was always something to do. Mainly, down along the river in the park. We’d go down there for entertainment in the evenings. There’d be dances. And then I took up square dancing, my wife and I. So that was in different places, but mainly at the end, it was down in the—what do they call it, down there now? At the park. Oh, community house. It’s still going. I think this is their last year. We used to be on what’s now a hole in the ground, on the south end of that building, was where they used to have a structure. That’s where we danced, it was in that. And they had a kitchen in there; everybody’d bring food. It was a nice time. Had a lot of fun.
O’Reagan: So you said—do you feel it was easy to get integrated into the community, to be a part of the community at that time?
Weakley: What do you mean?
O’Reagan: Well, I’m just thinking in terms of your—you’ve been describing a very interesting social scene that people can get into. I’m just thinking, there were a lot of new people coming into town. How—you yourself, of course, experienced this—what it was like to be a new resident in Richland.
Weakley: Well, mainly you were in dorms. So, you were all right out of college. Here you are, a bunch of college kids, here—men, and then college women right next door to them. So there was a lot of dating going on. Then we’d go over to Pasco, to the Elks Club at that time. And on Friday nights, they always had a fish dinner. We’d go over there and dance and eat. That was a good time. That was ballroom dancing, it wasn’t square dancing. That was later.
O’Reagan: So returning to your work for a minute, I guess to some degree you’ve done this, but could you sort of describe a typical work day, and did that change over the long course of time that you were working there?
Weakley: Well, when I went out there, I had to work shift work. XYZ shifts. You’d work daytimes, evenings, and nighttime. I didn’t like that too well. Then when I went to 300 Area, I was all daytime, which I liked.
O’Reagan: How much did the work you were doing change as you got these successive promotions, as you got the new jobs?
Weakley: Here?
O’Reagan: Yeah. I mean, when you were an engineering assistant, was your—I’d assume—if only because it’s decades earlier—how different was your work than when you were principal engineer or senior principal engineer?
Weakley: Well, the added responsibility, of course. And I spent a lot of time in the old reactor fuel and then I wrote a lot of documents on how to—the canning process. And that’s probably in here—I’m pretty sure it is.
O’Reagan: I noticed here, it says that you are an expert on fuel manufacturing environmental issues. I wonder what—when did that become a priority? The environmental issues, was that something that was always part of your work, or did that develop over time?
Weakley: Environmental issues—you worried about what was going out the stacks, especially in 313. We had slug recovery—we’d take the aluminum—the ones that were reject—and they would dissolve the aluminum cans off in caustic, and they always had this exhaust going out. If you didn’t watch it, it would suck out quite a bit of moisture with it, and that would have caustic in it. We had trouble with the women walking by—their nylon hose would disintegrate. And they didn’t like that. I don’t blame them. And you could feel it—you could feel it on your face. They had to fix that up, of course.
O’Reagan: Were safety issues or the environment ever something you were concerned about working there?
Weakley: Oh, yeah, I was always worrying about—And then at the 306 Building, making fuel elements for the N Reactor, I was involved in that—a lot of things. I had to make trips to the aluminum companies that made aluminum products for us. Bought them back east, and some of them in California. So I did a lot of traveling, going to these different places, trying to get improvements made in aluminum ore, and later on, Zircaloy-2. That was Wah Chang made that down in Oregon—made Zircaloy-2 for us. That was interesting. So you’d take a drive down there and visit their plant. And then you’d go to these other places and visit those plants.
O’Reagan: These were to get components for the fuel manufacturing?
Weakley: What’s that?
O’Reagan: Were these trips to get components for the fuel manufacturing?
Weakley: They were making components for—
O’Reagan: I see. How much—let’s go with this. Could you describe the ways in which security and/or secrecy impacted your work?
Weakley: Well, you couldn’t talk about what you were doing, and we knew that. I made a lot of trips—I went to National Lead Company in Ohio at Fernald. That’s the ones that we would get our uranium cores from, for the old reactors. Then I’d go down to Mallinckrodt in Weldon Spring, Missouri, and that’s where they started making the billets that they’d send up to—on Lake Erie. There was a place that’d take the big billets and make smaller billets for the N Reactor. So I was always traveling around. Then at the same time, I was going down to the Savannah River plant and checking on what they were doing, because they had the same people. Like me, engineers that were busy and they’d get together and compare notes, and try to get the lower prices on some things. Especially aluminum components for the old reactors. Nothing much you could do about the Zircaloy: it was pretty well fixed. The only plant I never go to was the one that made the braze rings for the N Reactor fuel. That was back in—and it had beryllium in it. And I never had gone to there. I don’t know—I just plain missed it for some reason. I don’t know why.
O’Reagan: Was it easy to communicate with all the engineers and workers at these plants, or did the secrecy ever sort of inhibit that?
Weakley: Oh, no. If you’re buying, say, Zircaloy stuff, you go right down here in Oregon and talk to them. And that’s what we did.
O’Reagan: Okay.
Weakley: Same way back east on the aluminum plants. Did a lot of traveling. My wife didn’t like that, I don’t think, but we had to travel a lot. And it was old airlines at that time. [INAUDIBLE] had an airline to go to Spokane. You could catch a plane from there, it takes six hours to get into—now takes just a few hours.
O’Reagan: Was it unusual that you were traveling that much? Did other people also travel that much from the Hanford site?
Weakley: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, a lot of people were traveling. It’s hectic now. I won’t get on an airplane anymore, so heck with them. [LAUGHTER] I’m retired; I don’t do that.
O’Reagan: Do you feel the security or secrecy of the place changed much over the decades?
Weakley: Oh, yeah. When I started here it was really secret. They didn’t want the Russians to know anything about making tritium. But the secret got out, because somebody in Savannah River—or down at Oak Ridge probably told them. So nothing we could do about it.
O’Reagan: Right.
Weakley: But oh, yeah, they tried to keep it secret.
O’Reagan: What were the most challenging and/or rewarding aspects of your work at Hanford?
Weakley: Ooph! That’s a tough one.
O’Reagan: It’s a big question. Any particular times that you were working on a project that was really stumping everybody? Any real challenges there that stick out?
Weakley: Well, there’s always challenges to make things safer and better, and don’t dump stuff out into the atmosphere, or down the drain out to the ponds. Because at that time, they ponds along the river. And it discharges—a lot of stuff went into that pond. They tried to clean that stuff up, but—oh, yeah. When you have time to go through this, you will find a lot of things in here that I worked on.
O’Reagan: Is there anything in there that you’re particularly proud of having accomplished? Or that sticks out?
Weakley: Well, I lasted the whole—until I got laid off. [LAUGHTER] That’s an accomplishment—I didn’t get crapped up with anything.
O’Reagan: Did you like your job?
Weakley: Oh, yeah, I liked it. Oh, sure. It was a challenging job. I wrote a lot of manuals. That’s one of the things I did, a lot of manual writing when I was out there. There are still some of those around on the processes of lead-dip canning process, and co-extrusion process. I did a lot of writing.
O’Reagan: Have the Tri-Cities changed much in your time living here?
Weakley: Oh, yeah.
O’Reagan: And how?
Weakley: Oh, yeah, since I came in ’50? Oh, yeah. There’s a lot of changes. They couldn’t even allow the blacks to live in Kennewick. They had to go over in Pasco, for instance.
O’Reagan: Right.
Weakley: So we didn’t see too many blacks, actually. Now towards the end, they started hiring some people in that were blacks. I had no problem with them.
O’Reagan: Yeah, we’re trying to get a sense for how the community has changed over time. I know that’s a vague question. That’s certainly an interesting point about the demographics of it. Anything else about sort of the social life, the number of things going, anything else like that that sticks out to you on how the community’s changed over the decades?
Weakley: Well, I always had been hunting and fishing. So when I came here, I took up hunting and fishing again. Some of the people that I—I belong to the Rod and Gun Club—joined that many years ago, and I still belong, even though I got rid of my guns last year. I don’t go out and dig goose pits in the middle of the winter anymore. That’s too cold. I didn’t like to eat geese, anyway. [LAUGHTER] But I had a lot of good trips hunting down the Blues and up north of Spokane, up in that area.
O’Reagan: One of the things—well, okay. Let me go to this one next. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and/or living in Richland during the Cold War?
Weakley: Hmm. That’s an odd one. Well, for one thing, we couldn’t announce what we were doing anywhere. If you could, you made sure you didn’t. If they said, hey, you’re from Hanford. But it didn’t bother me on traveling too much. Because I’d usually go on to aluminum vendors or Zircaloy-2 vendors. Or I’d go to Savannah River plant, which has got the same restrictions as we have. And it was a free exchange then when you went there or you went to National Lead at Fernald. It was free exchange with the people there. So that was just like being at work. So I had no really problem with it. I didn’t really like traveling that much. But there was nothing I could do about it.
O’Reagan: You were mentioning your collaboration people at Savannah River. Can you tell me more about that?
Weakley: What’s that?
O’Reagan: You were mentioning your training people at Savannah River, is that right? Or just trained people who eventually were at Savannah River?
Weakley: No, they were—I met one of them. But they sent people up in tritium extraction. Because they built that plant for tritium. The guy that was running the tritium extraction plant was one of them that I trained. And the last trip I made down there, I met him and went into the tritium extraction plant with him and talked to him. He gave me a tour of what it was like. It was a lot different than what we had out here, of course. Then they shipped their stuff again to Oak Ridge.
O’Reagan: Okay. So, I’m also interested in how people commemorate their community, how people celebrate the history, or try to remember the history. I understand that you’ve been involved in some of the historical groups around here. Can you tell me something about that? Why you thought that was important, why you got involved with those groups?
Weakley: Are you talking about the Richland Rod and Gun Club, for instance?
O’Reagan: Well, them and also the B Reactor Museum Association and so on.
Weakley: Well the B Reactor Association, I was one of the earlier ones, before they got the Indians out there. It was interesting, because I was on the ground floor with them. In fact, I was in a meeting this week with them. I still belong to them. Just like the Rod and Gun Club, I still belong to them, even though I don’t—got rid of all my guns because I don’t go out and dig goose pits in the wintertime anymore. So it was interesting.
O’Reagan: I always find that there’s an awful lot of things that I don’t know that I should be asking. What could you—what would seem important or interesting that you might want to talk about, or think might be worth discussing that I might have not thought to ask? Anything that comes to mind?
Weakley: Hmm. Not right off the top of my head, it isn’t.
O’Reagan: Sure, that’s fine.
Weakley: [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Yeah. We’re just trying, as I said—we’re most interested in getting a feel for life in the Tri-Cities throughout the Cold War, up to the near present. And just how things have changed over time. What it was like to be a worker on the Hanford plants, how work on the Hanford plant changed over time, what it was like living in the community and getting to know people. So really, a broad set of things, but there’s always questions I don’t think to ask.
Weakley: Okay. Well, you might have some ideas when you go through this later on. They gave me this, had my payroll number on it and all that. My service dates, 6/19/50 is when I came here. And payroll number 51500 was pretty easy to remember, thank goodness.
O’Reagan: As you went through this, did anything—
Weakley: Huh?
O’Reagan: As you started reading through this again, did any memories leap to mind? Did anything about it sort of jog any fond memories or any surprises?
Weakley: Well, we always had surprises. We never knew what was going to happen. Item—let’s see, what is that? Item four.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm.
Weakley: I would ship pyrophoric uranium Zircaloy chips and fines back to National Lead. And we had surprises there, because they were supposed to use metal pallets. Somebody brought in wooden ones. And they put all these things that we had full of concrete and chips and fines in it, and they had to take them over across the street into a building. And when they did that, they heated it up and it broke one of the containers, and it caught fire on the shipping containers. They weren’t supposed to use shipping containers. That was a hell of a mess to clean up. Because we had a fire, had to clean all that up then. But we actually shipped the stuff back there and they recovered the uranium and reused it.
O’Reagan: Well, I think that’s the written questions I have here. There are certainly a lot more interesting stuff here. Again, if anything comes to mind you would like to speak about, we would love to hear a bit more. Also, it mentions here that your historical knowledge of site activities, particularly in 300 Area, has been extremely valuable in the preparation of the RCRA and CERCLA documents and planning. Could you tell me anything about that initiative?
Weakley: Whereabouts are you?
O’Reagan: It’s number five, sub-point A.
Weakley: Oh, okay. I did a lot of document writing and preparations of these RCRA and CERCLAs documents and planning. And I worked with—what’s her name? Michelle Gerber?
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm.
Weakley: I worked a lot of work with her, as she was a kind of historian. You’ve probably met her, of course.
O’Reagan: I know the name, but I haven’t actually met her, I don’t think.
Weakley: You haven’t met her?
O’Reagan: I don’t think so.
Weakley: Amazing. I’m surprised you haven’t met her yet. Anyway. She needed a lot of work. I would find things in 300 Area when we were cleaning out for the old reactors, getting 313 cleaned out. We would find movies. I’d ship that out to her, and then she made a CD out of it, I think. It showed the canning process, which had never been done before. It was—
O’Reagan: Do you think the history of your job is going to be well-preserved? Do you think the records are still there that can reflect on your times, your work? That is again, sort of an open-ended question here. I’m just trying to think through how people will remember this time in history, and sort of the work that you were involved in. You’re mentioning you found this film and were able to get it out there. But probably some materials didn’t make it out, for security reasons or whatever else, or just weren’t preserved. Do you feel that people have an accurate memory of the time as you look through?
Weakley: Well, most of them, I think, do. I always rode a bicycle around, between the buildings out in 300 Area. I would collect lead parts that I’d see laying around and get rid of them—or pick up anything else. So that I would ride those into the building. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: I saw—I was out at the DoE’s artifact collection—historical artifact collection. They have some bicycles out there that I guess were what you were describing, people traveling around the site. Was that common?
Weakley: What do you mean?
O’Reagan: You were using bicycles to get around the site?
Weakley: Well, it was in our area. Oh, I used it all the time. And it had a basket in the back wheels. I’d put something in there—I would collect lead brick or something like that, and put it where the lead’s supposed to be and kind of clean things up. Well, it was a pretty good-sized area, 300 Area, so if you had to go down to the south end for some reason, you wanted to get there and get back.
O’Reagan: Right. Okay. So as I said, I think these are the questions that we had prepared, sort of the general ones here.
Weakley: You might have some questions when you—well, you can use anything you want out of this write-up.
O’Reagan: Yeah, I think this will be a great help. This has been very interesting from my perspective here. We certainly thank you for your time. Yeah, I think that’s at least our first set of questions. But maybe if anything occurs to us, or to you, maybe we could send follow-up questions? Would that be okay, if any questions—
Weakley: Oh, yeah, you can always get ahold of me if I’m around. I don’t go travel too far since I’m 88.
O’Reagan: All right. Well, thanks very much. We appreciate your time.
Weakley: Oh, she’s still back there.
O’Reagan. Yeah.
Weakley: [LAUGHTER]
Victor Vargas: Yeah, we should be good.
Robert Franklin: Ready?
Vargas: Yeah.
Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin and I am conducting an oral history interview with Ann Roseberry on January 25th, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Ann about her experiences growing up in Richland. And for the record can you state and spell your name for us?
Ann Roseberry: Yes. Ann Roseberry. A-N-N R-O-S-E-B-E-R-R-Y.
Franklin: Great. Thank you so much. Tell me how you came to Richland.
Roseberry: Well, I was born here.
Franklin: Okay.
Roseberry: I was conceived here. My folks met after the war. Dad had been active in the Air Force and came here to work for GE. Mom was recruited by General Electric, so she came out from Chicago. When she got here, he was a personnel manager for GE, and he gave her her first day orientation, and promptly asked her out to dinner. So that was 1948.
Franklin: 1948.
Roseberry: Yeah.
Franklin: I was going to say that probably wouldn’t fly with the human resources department nowadays.
Roseberry: I’m fairly certain not. So they married in 1950, and I was born in 1951. And just grew up here, yeah.
Franklin: Okay. And where did you live? Or where did your parents live in Richland?
Roseberry: Okay, they lived at 710 Stanton, which was a precut. Stanton is a little two-block street that runs perpendicular to Lee. So we had a two-block walk to Marcus Whitman Elementary.
Franklin: Mm-hm. Yeah, I live on that street, too, as you know.
Roseberry: Yeah.
Franklin: So what was it—so you, then, would have been about seven when Richland was privatized.
Roseberry: Yes, yeah.
Franklin: So what do you—what can you recall about those—your early childhood or those early years? Maybe from your own experiences or what your parents told you about that early Cold War era, government-owned era of Richland?
Roseberry: Yeah. Well, in regard to the 1958, I remember Mom and Dad talking about showing me a piece of paper that they were buying the house. As a seven-year-old, it wasn’t terrifically meaningful to me, but I understood that it was to them. That same year, my youngest sister was born and we added a room onto our house, the precut. So those actually have more primacy in my recollection than the thing that meant more to Mom and Dad.
Franklin: Sure.
Roseberry: But I do remember that. And I probably, at the time, said—because children do—oh, how much does the house cost? And Mom would have replied, we don’t ask those questions, dear. So just one little example of a culture of secrecy that I’ll—yeah. We—I guess my elementary school years, in some way were both peaceful—the idyllic, small town family life—but punctuated by the air raid drills, where we would get under our desks or go out into the hall and line up against the hall in a sort of a crouching position. Or now what we would call pose-of-a-child in yoga. But as flat on the ground and as taking up as least space as we could.
Franklin: Mm-hm. Did you ever do the kind of drills with the evacuation routes, where the families would drive out to a spot in the desert?
Roseberry: Yeah. We did once, but the school children were bussed. So as we were—I actually have a fairly strong recollection of that, because it was terrifying. That I was alone on the bus. And I remember counting on my fingers, where’s Mom, where’s Dad, where are my sisters? Trying to sort of get a mental picture of where they were. Because even though we knew it was a drill, we were in a bus by ourselves being driven somewhere. So, we never went out as a family in our car.
Franklin: Okay.
Roseberry: Yeah.
Franklin: What did your mother do for GE?
Roseberry: She came out—her training was as an x-ray technician. So, she came out and—I won’t get all the timing of this right, but at one point, she worked for early Kadlec. And then went out to the Project and she was x-raying samples. What they were samples of, I’m not clear. But samples. But inanimate samples. I remember her talking about her work environment and that the badges, they were also radiation detectors and would indicate when the human body had had enough. But she said that she also had frequent x-rays of her hands. And she said that—the term was hot—hot hands—when she had hot hands, it meant that she had had enough radiation and she had to not do that work for a while. So.
Franklin: Radiation from the handling the samples, or radiation from the x-rays?
Roseberry: I think from the samples. There are a lot of things where—we were raised in a culture of don’t ask questions. So often, if I would have asked a question, she would have said, well, they were samples. And that would have been the end of the discussion. So, rocks, pieces of equipment, I don’t know. But something that for some reason she was x-raying, but they would have been giving radioactivity, yeah.
Franklin: Hmm. Do you know where your mother worked on the Site? Did she talk about the Area? Do you know if she worked at 300, 200?
Roseberry: I don’t know. When Dad was out onsite, he was at 200-West.
Franklin: Oh, because he was still personnel manager at that time, or--?
Roseberry: Well, I don’t think so. When we would ask him what his job was, he would just say a manager. And that’s really all I know. In probably the last maybe 10 or 15 years of his working career, he was transferred into the Federal Building. And what he said then was that he was writing or editing technical reports. And he did have a master’s in English, so that’s credible. But I don’t actually know that that’s what he was doing. In the earlier years, it was just, I’m a manager. So questions like that, that a child would ask, we were given an answer and we just accepted the answer.
Franklin: Sure, sure. Did he have any other technical training, besides a master’s in English? Did he have any training that would fit to be more site-specific? Like, production-specific?
Roseberry: I don’t think so. When he was talking about the later years and technical reports, he made the comment that scientists and engineers, their work often needed editing by someone who had a better understanding of the English language. So—and he was a published author; he was a skilled writer. So all of this is very credible to me, but I just don’t really know that he was doing that from the ‘50s through the ‘80s.
Franklin: What kinds of work did he publish or write?
Roseberry: Fiction, primarily. Fiction. He had a book that came out right before Pearl Harbor, Bobbs-Merrill, and he had just started on the author promotion tour when Pearl Harbor was bombed. So pretty much the next day he went and signed up and served stateside in—it was then the Army Air Corps, because he had had an injury. And almost literally to his dying day, that—he felt embarrassed that he hadn’t gone overseas. He felt that he hadn’t really quite done what he should, because he hadn’t been overseas. But then after retirement, he published a couple more fiction books and wrote some family histories, but mostly it was—he was a fiction writer, yeah.
Franklin: Okay. You mentioned that your mother talked about her work environment. Did she ever talk about the gender makeup of her environment, or her experience of a woman working out onsite?
Roseberry: She talked about a couple of men who she worked with right in her unit. And very warmly. Very—it clearly was a comfortable work environment for her. I’m interpreting from what she said that they were older than she was. She was in her mid-20s and very cute. But a very modest woman. Raised in the Midwest, small town in Iowa. So her comments came across as if they were avuncular or fatherly to her—warm, but not anything uncomfortable for her. Yeah. So that’s about all of her comments. I know she was back and forth between Kadlec and the Site during those years. She would have worked roughly from 1948 to 1951. I was born in March of ’51, and possibly she had to quit work before that because she was working with radiation.
Franklin: Are you the oldest?
Roseberry: I’m the oldest.
Franklin: Okay, so after you were born, she stopped working to be your full-time—
Roseberry: Yeah. There were three of us, so she stayed home until the year I turned 13, I believe. And then she went back to work part-time x-ray at the Richland Clinic, which is no longer a clinic. But—and then she worked through until retirement.
Franklin: Okay.
Roseberry: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Can you tell me about growing up in the prefab neighborhood? Because it’s slightly—from what I understand they’re slightly different than the Alphabet House neighborhoods in terms of not only the character of the houses but the income levels of the residents.
Roseberry: Yeah. We were—some of what I will tell you, to give a caveat, is my recollection. And I was a child at the time, so I had my own lens. But in our particular neighborhood, which is to say the one block, every person who lived in that neighborhood had a family member employed at the Project or at the Site. And in those years, it was all the men. The women were home. So across the street was an electrician, next door was Hanford Patrol, next door the other side, was—I don’t know what he did; I know he was a craftsworker. So in our block, all the other families were crafts families, except for ours. That was a very strong distinction, was—you were management or you were the crafts. And what I was told was that in our part of town, there was a conscious desire to mix within a neighborhood so that there would be some management people and some crafts people. In the block up, where you live, we didn’t know as many people. One of the high school teachers lived there at the time. It was close enough that we were allowed to trick-or-treat there. But we—within our own block, we were in and out of houses and borrowing a cup of sugar, and that kind of thing. But it was a very small one-block neighborhood for us.
Franklin: Interesting. How long did your parents live in that house?
Roseberry: Mm. From 1950 until 2013.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Roseberry: Yeah. My dad died at the end of 2004. And Mom stayed in the house until 2013. She had a series of falls. And after the last one, she said, I think it’s time for me to move. So we got that to happen, but—and she was—she had three other friends from the early days who at that time were still living in their homes. Only one with her husband; the other women had been widowed. But for her, this was not an unusual situation, that you would move into a house and you would live there your whole life. At some point, when I was in late elementary school, I know that Dad got a promotion at work. And this would have been before 1958. And so at that time, he was offered the chance to move to a different neighborhood to what would have been considered a nicer house. I remember our talking about that, and I just spoke right up and said, well, I don’t want to move. I like my school. I like my neighborhood. And so he didn’t accept the move. And I don’t remember now where it was. I just remember that to me it seemed really silly. Well, this was our house. Why would we move? This was home, yeah.
Franklin: Do you know if the—you had mentioned that separation between trades—crafts people and managerial. Do you know if that ever caused any tension with neighbors and things like that?
Roseberry: Yes. Not in our neighborhood, not among—this was a neighborhood where in the summer, Dad would cook hamburgers outside on the fireplace he built, and the neighbors would come over and have hamburgers. Or they’d come over and have watermelon, or they’d come over for the fireworks. So none of that happened there. But in the school environment, very much so. There were times where it would come up within the schoolroom. And fairly laterally, I want to say the early ‘60s—at any rate, there was a significant strike out at the Project and another one threatened. That was the time I remember most clearly that there were enough people out on strike that management were being placed in various locations. So Dad was driving a bus during that time. The buses came right into the neighborhoods, so he had a half-a-block walk to get the bus that took him to work. And I remember very distinctly getting into it a little bit with another girl. So—might have been fifth grade—I don’t remember the year, but there were lines drawn. Because her father was in the crafts and he was also—had some position of responsibility in one of the unions. And we didn’t fight, and we weren’t enemies, but we were just never close again. It wasn’t—this discussion happened and the lines were drawn, and we never quite managed to get back across again. But there were some neighborhoods—there were some neighborhoods in the ranch houses where the mix of people who lived there was such that, yeah, it was an issue in the neighborhood. In one case, a family—the same family where the father had quite position of responsibility, and the neighborhood lived across the street from a family where the father was a high-ranking PR person for the Project. And you felt it. You felt it; it wasn’t fighting, but it was tension, I mean—yeah.
Franklin: Sure. Do you remember what that series of labor movements was about?
Roseberry: I do not.
Franklin: Okay.
Roseberry: I do not. And I wish that—because the memory is so clear, I’ve wished that I’d gone back to research it to find out what it was. I remember Dad saying that his concern or management’s concern was that this would be a disruptive enough situation that we would lose—we would no longer have federal funding. And so the other thing that’s unclear to me now is, the strike would have been against the contractor. But of course, all of the contractor money was federal money. So there was real concern that jobs would be lost. I do remember that.
Franklin: Did you ever—given that up until Richland was privatized, you had to work for Hanford to live in Richland—did you ever lose friends or notice people—had people that you knew that left during that time because they lost their jobs at Hanford?
Roseberry: No. And that is a really interesting question to me. I don’t remember ever losing any friends for that reason. And I don’t remember until high school that families were moving in from some of the other secret cities or Savannah River. I remember a family coming in from Savannah River. It isn’t that it didn’t happen. I don’t remember it, and there was no one in my close circle who left. And I really don’t remember much influx. My high school years would have been ’66 to ’69. And there were several families that I remember then.
Franklin: Did you go to Richland High School?
Roseberry: Mr. Franklin, that would be Col High.
Franklin: Col High. Sorry.
Roseberry: That would be Col High. This is essential for accuracy. Yeah. Marcus Whitman, Carmichael, and then Col High.
Franklin: Col High, right. You’ll have to forgive me.
Roseberry: I do forgive you, but I will correct you, of course, because this is so important.
Franklin: Point taken. Would that be the Col High Bombers?
Roseberry: Yes, that would be the Col High Bombers.
Franklin: Okay.
Roseberry: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: And how long—then did you leave Richland shortly after graduating?
Roseberry: Mm-hm. I left in the fall of ’69. I went to Cheney for my undergrad degree, and went through in three years because I had two sisters behind me. Then went to Michigan for my library master’s and then came back and my first job was in Yakima. So—
Franklin: I’m wondering if—you may have been too young for this next question, but I’d like to see what—if you remember. You know, Richland, up until the mid-60s or late-60s was primarily, almost exclusively white.
Roseberry: Yes.
Franklin: Due to housing restrictions on African Americans and other minorities, they had to live in East Pasco. And although African Americans were employed by the Hanford Project, they couldn’t live in Richland—
Roseberry: Houses—right, right.
Franklin: --at that time. So I’m wondering if you could speak to that, having observed—or if you observed discrimination or any civil rights attempts to address it.
Roseberry: Yeah. So in elementary school, at my elementary school at Marcus Whitman, there were two African American families who had children in the school. In second grade, I had a birthday party, and I’d invited people from school. And I remember this very clearly. We had added on the living room, so we’d set up card tables in the living room. And I had invited my friend Kathy Baker. And she didn’t come. And I remember going to the front door watching for her, and wondering why she wasn’t coming to the party. The Baker family is African American. Her mother is still here, Mrs. Baker. I remember—and I asked Mom, why didn’t Kathy come to the party? And in some way, Mom would have said, maybe she didn’t feel comfortable because she’s—in those days, we would have said Negro. And that wasn’t disrespectful. Sorry, I remember this really clearly. And it just made me so sad. She was almost my best friend, and she didn’t feel she could come to my birthday party. My folks were very—whatever opinions they might have had to the contrary, we were raised that race was not an issue. It was not a matter of discussion; it wasn’t—it was an irrelevant thing. I look back now—hold on, I’ll get hold of myself. I look back now and I think of family names that we would have heard. But in our family, nobody ever said, this name tells you that their family came from Russia or Ireland or Germany or—that was not a—we didn’t know to make those connections. It just wasn’t discussed. So, the issue of race was, it just, it wasn’t present in the way we were raised. I didn’t really question in grade school that there were only two families. When I got to junior high, as it was then, I remember two Hispanic families being added. That was at Carmichael. And I may be forgetting somebody. By high school, another African American family and a Chinese family. But at one time—and I’m not sure I could do it right now—but I counted that in my growing up years, we had nine families of color in Richland. So we had some African American families, one Chinese family, and I think maybe by high school three Hispanic families. But I didn’t know that was unusual. I just didn’t know that was unusual.
Franklin: Sure. The children—the African American children that you went to elementary school with, they were allowed to live—the family was allowed to live in Richland?
Roseberry: Mm-hmm, yeah. The Bakers lived over—it’s an area of town just on the other side of Duportail. I’m so bad with directions. There was a little market there, Dietrich’s Market, that’s now Minute Mart or something. But they lived in that neighborhood. And I think Mrs. Baker is still in the family house from those days, too.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Roseberry: Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah.
Franklin: Great. Thank you. Do you remember any later civil—like, any of the later civil rights actions in Kennewick and Pasco, or did you not—have you not connected much with—
Roseberry: I was not—no, I was not connected. We didn’t really have any family friends in Pasco or Kennewick. One exception, a friend of my dad’s in Kennewick on Canal Drive. But the world was very small. You knew people from school, where parents of other children—more strongly in elementary school of course, and then you knew people from your church. And in the people I knew, everybody went to church. Everybody belonged to a church and they went to church. And so we belonged to Central, to CUP. So, that’s how I met children from other parts of town, because I would meet at church. But we didn’t—in the early days, very actively encouraged to stay in Richland. Shop in Richland, go to a doctor in Richland. Not go out to dinner in Richland because there really weren’t many options. But you lived in Richland, you did your business in Richland, and you socialized in Richland. After 1958, I suspect the message wasn’t quite so strong. But still strong.
Franklin: Probably because it had been ingrained.
Roseberry: It had been ingrained, uh-huh. And there was still—even after Richland re-formed as a First Class City, all of that secrecy and deliberate attempt at isolation was still very present. Because we were in a very strong part of the Cold War. So the secrecy did not—and the fear—did not go away once Richland re-formed as a city. But no, I was unaware of those. In high school, a man named Duke Mitchell, who has come back—homecoming king? Anyway, one of those dances where someone is king and queen and there’s an election, and he was. So in some ways, you could say that this community was not—
Franklin: And I’m sorry, who was this?
Roseberry: Duke Mitchell.
Franklin: Is that CJ’s son?
Roseberry: CJ’s oldest, yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
Roseberry: So he had a very strong position of leadership in the high school. Liked and respected. I couldn’t really answer adequately about how it felt or how it was. I can report that, yeah, he was held in acclaim. He was class president, too. I—once I left, I left. I just remember strongly that he was very well-liked and respected. And certainly one of the first things I did when I came back to Richland to be the library manager here was to look him up and say, I need you on the library board. But he could speak to that better than I can.
Franklin: Okay. Did you ever feel—you talked a bit about the duck-and-cover drills that made you kind of feel the fear of being separated. What about later, as you grew up and entered adolescence or early adulthood and knew more about what was being produced at Hanford. Did your feelings toward—what were your feelings toward Hanford? Did they change at all from when you first found out about what was being made there and--?
Roseberry: I never went negative. Partly that is because my dad was—even postwar, he felt that the work that was being done there was patriotic. He still felt that it was protecting the United States. A personal characteristic of his was loyalty. So, he would have valued, in a patriotic way, and defended the Project until the day he died. So that did not occur for me. And I was never afraid in a way that you would be about something that you could do something about it. When we were very young, and maybe into pre-adolescence, I remember that he would try to teach us from the ground what planes were overhead so that we could identify them. Because it was, plane: Russia is going to bomb us. That was our default response. I got as far as being able to distinguish between a small plane, like a Piper Cub, or a B-52, or a jet. I never got—but even those distinctions, if you were—I’m the eldest. I was, I mean, day one, take care of your sisters. So I’m out on the street with my sisters, maybe walking over to the school grounds to play, and a plane goes overhead. And first I look up, try to decide if they’re in danger or not, and then look down, okay, there they are; they’re safe. And it’s not something that woke me up in the middle of the night, or I had emotional problems with. It was just part of where we were. And, again, how did we know that that wasn’t everywhere? So, learn to distinguish. But it was actually pre-adolescent. It was third grade, and we were being taught about the half-life of plutonium. I would say that my strengths have always been on the verbal, not the quantitative side. But even in third grade, I could do the numbers on that and realize that no amount of duck-and-cover was going to save any of us if we were—nuclear bomb fell. But that was, for me, a little bit like, huh. Okay, well, maybe we’ll get bombed, and maybe we won’t. So it wasn’t a fear moment; it was like, hmm, do you guys think we can’t do these numbers and figure it out? But it was really more a moment of clarity than fear. And we just never—living in Richland and reading only the local paper—although Mom and Dad always subscribed to the Spokesman Review, so we did have a paper that wasn’t local. Lots of magazines. But having very limited even television access, news like that just didn’t show up here. And it just—if we weren’t hearing it at home, and we weren’t hearing it at school, we just wouldn’t have heard anything anti. Really, the first time I kind of went, oh, people are upset about this was at Cheney, so that’s late ‘60s, early ‘70s. I took a class called environmental geography. Anyway, one of the field trips was here to Hanford; another was to some of the bunker silver mines in north Idaho where there was, in fact, damage from something that was manmade. And so then I started getting it. But not here. Not here.
Franklin: Thank you. Did the neighborhood or Richland change perceptibly after it became a First Class City to you? Did you notice any changes?
Roseberry: Mm-mm. Not to me.
Franklin: Did the fabric of—or I guess, did the fabric of the neighborhood change while you lived there after it incorporated?
Roseberry: Very little. I think that from 1951 to 1969, on our side of the street, the house at the corner of whatever that is and the house at the corner of Stanton and Lee, those houses had changed out once in 18 years. I don’t think any of the others had by the time I left to go to Cheney. In the mid- to late-‘70s, there were some deaths on the street and some houses changed out. But I think just those two. And those were precuts, the much smaller house. So the one up by Lee, that changed out pretty quickly. They needed a larger house. And the one on the other end, it was retirement or something. But only those two, yeah.
Franklin: When did you come back to Richland?
Roseberry: I came back on May 15th of 2006. That was my—I got here on May 14th. I threw stuff in my car, drove to Mom’s, unloaded the car and started that Monday. And May 16th—I remember it very clearly because May 16th was the day of the bond election for the new library building. And it passed. So those dates are just really clear for me. Yeah.
Franklin: Right. And since that time you’ve been working at the Richland Public Library.
Roseberry: Mm-hm, yeah.
Franklin: Tell me about your involvement in promoting Hanford history and that kind of thing.
Roseberry: Oh! Okay. Well, I really started with meeting Ron Kathren—Dr. Ron Kathren. He has been, for a long time, a library supporter. And I met him on May 16th—the evening of May 16th. The polls had just closed; it had been declared that the bond had passed, and we were walking out to the parking lot together. And I offered him a carrot, my go-to snack, and he accepted. So pretty much it was friendship at first sight. And he started coming into the library and just chatting with me. He’s an excellent teacher among other things. And there was something about his love of Richland and the value he places on the scientific work that had been done here that just—it created or it caught a spark in me. And then I just started thinking about it more and thinking about my parents’ generation having been pioneers of a sort. And this is no disrespect to the people who were here farming at all. But they left the Midwest, the East Coast, and they came out probably on trains and got off to a desert that had no trees. They moved into tents, or if they were lucky, trailers, and then barracks, essentially—dorms. They did work that they had no idea what they were doing. And in the early days, they couldn’t tell their families where they were, what was going on. They just seem extraordinarily brave to me. So the environmental situation that they had to deal with—against—and the work they were doing created this bonding among them that is really phenomenal. They feel that at some level they all care about each other, still. Because they were on this great adventure and venture. Then the more I learned about the science and technology and creativity and innovation that went into that, I just got fascinated. Just got fascinated. And the people who made that choice and stayed, they have a strength that I think is uncommon. And they were—we now look at that and we talk about the effects of an atomic bomb and nuclear waste, which—I’m not stepping away from that. But for them, to have been doing something that they thought was not only very important but maybe vital to the survival of the country. If you can just understand that mindset. I just admire them very much. And they’re a generation that did not complain. Did not complain. You still—no matter how much you probe with my 92- almost 93-year-old mother, she will not complain. She will not say anything bad or—she just won’t. And that’s very, very common among her friends. So I just—I think the combination of the science, but also the creativity that fueled that science, I think that’s what it was. Just started fascinating me. And I also, as a librarian, I understand that the kind of history we have here is singular. We’ll find similarities with Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, but there are three secret cities in this country. Arguably three secret cities in the world. We’re not regular. And I kind of started embracing being weird and finding the ties that we do have with those other secret cities at every possible level: the level of education, the fact that we still expect our garbage to be picked up in certain ways, that we are used to a very sturdy, robust infrastructure—we just have a lot in common. It seemed to me from a history point of view that there was some pretty important history stuff. As the public librarian part of my job—not just my interest, my job—was to collect the stuff, to protect it, to wait for WSU to be ready to have the Hanford History Project, so we could have a real, live, professional archives. And I don’t know, it just—somehow out of respect and admiration, it started being important to me.
Franklin: Great.
Roseberry: Yeah.
Franklin: What would you like—I think you’ve already covered this somewhat, but I’d like to ask it again. What would you like future generations to know about living in Richland during the Cold War and what was done here during the Cold War?
Roseberry: Wow. Respect the science. Respect the creativity. Respect the strength of the people who were here. I might say plan ahead. One of the stories Dad told was—so, context. We were in Portland. My husband and I were living in Portland, and each year in Portland, Nagasaki Day is not celebrated, but noted.
Franklin: And why is that?
Roseberry: The people draw chalk outlines of bodies on the ground in memory of what was left after that bomb, that there would be sort of a—just a charred outline on the ground, because the body had been so thoroughly incinerated, that’s all that was left.
Franklin: Sure, sure. I—sorry, but why Portland? Or why does that happen? Is there a special reason? Is it like a sister city relationship?
Roseberry: I don’t know. I just—from having lived in Portland for 30 years, I would say, that’s just Portland. I don’t have a good—I don’t have a good answer for that.
Franklin: Sure, sure. I was just wondering if there was a deeper connection.
Roseberry: Not that I know of.
Franklin: Okay, sorry.
Roseberry: But at any rate, Mom and Dad were in town, and we were walking, downtown Portland in the city hall area. Dad asked what they were, and unthinkingly, I told him the truth. Never seen him so angry. Never saw him as angry as that. He was saying, we were saving lives, we were saving American lives. Very, very, very angry. When he calmed down a little, I said, you know, people are concerned about the waste, Dad. This aside, there’s a legitimate concern about the nuclear waste. And the reason I laugh, you’ll understand, is he said, well, for Pete’s sakes. They only built those tanks to last 20 years and look how long they’ve lasted! So for future generations, I would say, maybe a 20-year tank for nuclear waste when we already understood the aforementioned half-life—maybe add that element into your future planning, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, 20 years, the life of radioactive material: not a really good match there.
Franklin: Some disconnect, perhaps, between science and then the administrative side of--
Roseberry: Exactly, exactly.
Franklin: --of legacy waste commitment.
Roseberry: And the difference between getting federal funding to, in their hope, finish a war, end a war, and in their hopes, defend the United States, and—oh, huh, yeah, well, now we want to fund something else. We don’t want to fund this. So it’s pretty big picture, but, yeah.
Franklin: Oh, hey, we’re going to need a lot more money for many hundreds of years to come to manage the—
Roseberry: Right, yeah.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s a tough sell.
Roseberry: it’s a tough sell. It’s a tough sell. Garbage cleanup. It’s a tough sell.
Franklin: Yeah, it is. Everybody wants it, but nobody wants to do it.
Roseberry: But nobody wants to do it. So, yeah, I guess, not a question I’ve thought about, but probably that’s what I’d say.
Franklin: Great. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you wanted to talk about?
Roseberry: I don’t know. I have said—maybe a little bit about the hierarchy in Richland, because from a point of view, it has the worst of a military reservation, an academic community, and a company town, where in those environments, at some level hierarchy is all. So even in the later years—I think this is changing—but the division, if you will, between management and crafts or the trades. I think, I hope, that Richland has grown so much, benefitting from people who weren’t born here, that some of that is being mitigated, but—and feel free to eliminate this if it’s in somebody else’s story. But GESA Federal Credit Union was GE Supervisors’ Association. And my dad was one of the founders of that. I have his passbook; it’s number four. But it was only for supervisors, period. Period. So about a year later, I think—I think GESA was founded in 1954, I think. At any rate, approximately a year later, HAPO was founded. So if you were not a GE manager, you could still join a credit union. And now both of them are very, very strong, very community-minded. But lines like that were drawn. And there were some sort of informal, unspoken rules about what kind of car you could drive, according to your status at the Project. And so my dad, not being a scientist or an engineer, was maybe sort of middle. So we had—growing up we had Dodges, kind of a medium. And then, at one point, I was gone, but he got another promotion and he and Mom bought an Oldsmobile, because that was okay. Whereas when I was in grade school and junior high, that—there were people above him in the hierarchy who drove Oldsmobiles. And so that—there’s some big car stuff in this community that sometimes is at the base of—people who weren’t born here or grew up here, they observe things, but they can’t decode them. And there’s no way in the world they would ever be able to decode them. The other thing where there was a hierarchy—and I don’t know that I really have an opinion about it—but certainly, in second grade, I remember actively and clearly, we were given standardized tests. So starting in second grade, we were tracked, according to what they called ability. So in second grade, we took the Stanford-Binet, which was considered a measurement of IQ. And so the result of that, partly, was that even though when I graduated high school—that would be Col High, yeah—I graduated high school, 676 people in the graduating class, but I only really knew a fraction of them. Because even in grade school, we were ability-tracked. That continued through junior high and certainly at high school, there was advanced this and honors this. The focus on academic ability—very, very strong here. So I think for children who were perceived to fall into that, you could not have had better college prep. You could not have. We—my first formal researched-with-citations research project was in fourth grade. We were writing from very early on. We were being taught research skills from very early on. And when I left and went to Cheney, I found that that was not the norm. So the school system here is very, very focused on that. And I benefited from it; my sisters benefited from it. So, I just—I have this niggling sense that that could have been improved or fine-tuned, but because I benefited from it, I wouldn’t be a very credible voice on that. But the whole concept of hierarchy: just so strong here, yeah.
Franklin: And you think still to this day?
Roseberry: To a certain extent. I think more so in the people who are still here who were here in the very early days. Which now would be the ‘50s, because I think most of the people who would have gotten here early ‘40s to build the Project, they’re gone. And the people who arrived just post-war, like my folks, they’re dwindling, you know. They’re dwindling. But the people who came early-ish, I mean strongly in the Cold War era, like in the ‘50s, a little bit. Because that was the Project environment.
Franklin: Right, and there’s a real difference to authority, too, among those. And kind of a—one thing I’ve noticed is a belief in corporate benevolence, and that you’ll be taken care of with—the hard work and things will be rewarded in a corporate environment. That struck me as more present here, I think, due to the nature of the contractor relationship.
Roseberry: I think so, I think so. That—so for that generation, they had world-shaking events, okay? My folks lived through the Depression. My folks both were of an age to understand what Pearl Harbor meant. But I might suggest that my generation, the Boomer generation, had the first conviction that there was not only not corporate benevolence, there was not government benevolence. The World War II generation, they were patriotic. They were responding to those calls from President Roosevelt. My generation, particularly here, learned very early that, um, duck-and-cover wasn’t going to work. That there remains a question, many questions, about the assassination of President Kennedy. That the Vietnam War was not exactly about protecting democracy. So I agree. There’s more acceptance, respect for an authority figure, yeah.
Franklin: Yeah.
Roseberry: Yeah, I think so.
Franklin: Even—you mentioned some big events and kind of betraying of trust. I’d like to ask you about how you think maybe people’s reactions to the Green Run fall into that. Because that happened pretty early on in ’49. But a purposeful release of dangerous material that seems to be accepted by the community as something that happened and maybe shouldn’t have, but did nonetheless. But to outsiders is shocking.
Roseberry: It’s shocking.
Franklin: And a betrayal of trust, because it’s not a corporate—it’s the government. It’s supposed to be—
Roseberry: Right, yeah. And I did not know about that until after I came back in 2006.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Roseberry: None—information about the Project, any of the science, any of the politics—not in the Richland school system. Not there. And in our family, not discussed. Ever. Ever, ever. So I did not know that.
Franklin: Sure. I forgot to ask: did you go to see President Kennedy?
Roseberry: Yes.
Franklin: Or did your family go to see President Kennedy? What was your—what do you remember about that day?
Roseberry: Okay. So, it was very hot and windy and dusty. And we were out in the middle of the desert, okay? However, we were just thrilled beyond any belief. He was—and just my family—but he was a beloved president. People did trust him. They followed him. People—I don’t think during his presidency, you would ever have heard him referred to as Kennedy. It always would have been President Kennedy or the President. Always, always. And partly that was then. But he, as a person and a president, people liked him, they cared about him. Here, we were so—we so completely understood that we were isolated, that that was on purpose, that for someone that important to come here was just—it was amazing. It was just amazing. And we were just thrilled. We all had to submit a security clearance paperwork. Mom just handed to me the papers for my youngest sister who was about seven, yeah. So I remember filling this out—no, she wasn’t even seven. She was more like five, she was more like five. So I filled it out, and there was a space called Membership in Subversive Organizations. And, you know, I thought about—I took this really seriously, and—
Franklin: And that was a voluntary thing that you would fill out, or that’s--?
Roseberry: No, we would not be allowed onsite.
Franklin: No, I mean, that was a form given to someone to fill out, so they would trust that you were being honest about your membership in a subversive organization?
Roseberry: Right, right.
Franklin: Okay.
Roseberry: And I put in that, yes, the only organization she was part of was the CUP Sunday school. But she was a member of that organization. But, I mean, what, to express rye amusement at the vagaries of life, but filling out a security clearance form for a little tiny girl, but we did, and we took it seriously. So we went as a family—I think I got off track, but we went as a family, and it was a big deal. But it was windy, and the wind was blowing up the sand. And it was hot. And the helicopter came in and blew up more sand. But, no, we were just thrilled. Just thrilled. The most important, the most famous person we had ever seen. And, oh, it was big. It was big, yeah.
Franklin: Cool. Well, did you have anything else you wanted to add?
Roseberry: I can’t think—you know, Robert, I could go on for a long time, but that’s—you’ll talk to other people and they’ll either confirm or deny, and—
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Roseberry: But you know, so much was family-centered. And then your school and then your church. Those were the circles. Oh, I guess just one other note and then you should probably just turn the equipment off, but—I don’t know if you’ve heard this or not, but Richland did not appear on any maps or on any road signs. So that piece of understanding that we were secret and that the government didn’t want people to be able to get here, they didn’t want people to know where we were or what was going on. That was—there was just sort of this combination of you just sort of accepted it, and then you’d say, hmm, I wonder why that isn’t true of Pasco and Kennewick. But even a question like that, the answer would be, well, Richland is different.
Franklin: Yeah.
Roseberry: Yeah.
Franklin: Well, thank you Ann. I really appreciated your talking today.
Roseberry: You’re welcome. Oh, I’m really happy to. I’m sorry the Kathy Baker story got me.
Franklin: No, it’s okay. I appreciate it.
Roseberry: But you know, it’s funny, we were so young, but I just remember I just kept going to the front door, watching, where’s Kathy? Where’s Kathy?
Ronald Palmer: Yeah.
Robert Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Ronald Palmer on October 26th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus on Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Ron about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Palmer: Ronald A. Palmer. R-O-N-A-L-D; A for Alan, A-L-A-N; Palmer, P-A-L-M-E-R.
Franklin: Great. So, tell me how and why you came to the area and to work for the Hanford Site.
Palmer: I came to work at the Hanford Site to work on glass for immobilization of radioactive waste. I came here in 1979, November, and worked in the 222-S Building out in the 200-West Area.
Franklin: 222-S. Is there another name for that building?
Palmer: It was next to the REDOX building. It was the laboratory that supported REDOX in the early ‘50s.
Franklin: Okay. And what drew you to—or how did you become a glass person?
Palmer: My technical background. Went to Alfred University in Alfred, New York. Earned a degree in Glass Science. My first job out of school was in Jersey City, New Jersey working for Metro Containers, a firm that made glass jars for beer bottles, mayonnaise jars—those kinds of things. As a quality control engineer, I mainly broke things. I got interested in why glass broke, why and how it fails, and in order to learn more about that, I went to graduate school and did a dissertation on fracture and failure of glass. My thesis advisor at the University of Florida was Larry Hench. Dr. Hench had been the chair for the National Academy of Sciences on what it is we thought we should do with radioactive waste. Turns out, if you put a glass guy in charge of figuring out what to do with nuclear waste, glass gets involved. So I wound up talking with the folks at the—the company running Hanford at that time was Rockwell. They asked me to come out and work on the glass project then.
Franklin: How long did you work on the glass project?
Palmer: I worked on the glass project for just a couple years. Then the funding for that disappeared, and I joined the Basalt Waste Isolation Project, the repository project that was going on at the time.
Franklin: Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Palmer: At the time, the Department of Energy was looking for an underground repository site to permanently dispose of the radioactive waste. There were other sites involved, but the basalt project was one looking at the geological formations underneath the Hanford Site as a place to store the radioactive waste. The basalt flows, which are basically the lava flows left over from the Cascade volcanoes. We built a laboratory in 2221—I’m sorry—2101-M Building in the 200-East Area. It had been a big warehouse and we built a laboratory there with electron microscopes, spectrometers of various types. We were basically a geochemistry laboratory. We were looking at the properties of the basalt rock underneath, in the formation underneath the Hanford Site and the relationship of the properties of those rocks with the glass compositions that we expected to make. So we did some experiments that involved glass and the rock, and simulated ground water, those kinds of things.
Franklin: You mean storing glass in the rock, or--?
Palmer: Well, the glass was expected to be the waste form. So, when you dispose of the waste, you put the waste form—which, what they’ve eventually done is they make the glass and they pour it into stainless steel canisters. The design we used were two foot in diameter by ten feet tall stainless steel canisters. So with the glass in there, you expect, after several thousand years—[LAUGHTER]—the canister has become compromised, and you worry about the reactions between the water, which may come in to the repository, and the glass, and the rock.
Franklin: And so what did you find about that situation? Or can you describe a little bit more the work or the results of that work?
Palmer: We were looking at ways to perhaps slow down the in-flow of water into the repository. One suggested method was to backfill the holes that you’d drill into the ground to put the canisters with a bentonite clay. The water would come in, and it would first see the clay, and the clay would have a tendency, when it gets wet, to swell, and to slow down—if not stop—the in-flow of the water, and therefore extend the life of whatever waste form you’ve put into the ground. So--
Franklin: Okay—oh, sorry.
Palmer: So we looked at various options that we might design into the repository to minimize the eventual damage that you will expect to have happen from water coming into the repository.
Franklin: So that clay, then, would kind of act to plug the leak of—
Palmer: Yes.
Franklin: Interesting.
Palmer: The term we used for that would be engineered barriers.
Franklin: Engineered barriers.
Palmer: So you’d basically find materials that would help keep the water out, and design that—that would be an integral part of the repository design.
Franklin: And were these results adopted here on the Hanford Site or elsewhere, or--?
Palmer: The repository program—the basalt project continued, I think, until 1987. Let’s see. The original Act of Congress that was involved with nuclear waste was in 1982. And that provided for the investigation of three different repository sites. The basalt site underneath the Hanford facility; a formation of a material called tuff outside of Las Vegas, which is called the Yucca Mountain site; and they were looking at various salt formations in Texas and New Mexico and Louisiana and other places as a third potential site. By 1987, they had determined that it was too expensive to look at all three. It’s not cheap to do that sort of research. And they narrowed it down to the Yucca Mountain site outside of Las Vegas. So at that time, I think the other repository sites’ projects disappeared. I was gone from the project by then. I left the project in 1984, so—
Franklin: Oh, okay. And where did you go when you left?
Palmer: I went to—I was out of the nuclear waste business and went to 3M in Minnesota.
Franklin: Okay. And what did you do there?
Palmer: I did research on new glass compositions. In particular, a material called bioglass, another topic of research for my former professor, Dr. Hench. He invented a material called bioglass, which chemically bonds to bone in the body. And as now, it’s being used as a dental material. Not as a solid piece, but as a powder to help with the bone’s—recession of your bones if you’ve got gum disease and that sort of thing. You can place a powder of the bioglass, and then it will help the bone grow back a little bit.
Franklin: Oh, wow, interesting.
Palmer: It’s also being used in toothpaste to help fight gum disease and that sort of thing. So. But I did a little bit of that work for 3M, but not—I also worked on some composite materials that they were designing.
Franklin: So now you’re kind of back in dealing with—later on, you returned to dealing with radioactive—nuclear waste. So can you describe that transition back?
Palmer: I joined West Valley Nuclear Services—there’s a site that’s now called the West Valley Demonstration Project thirty miles south of Buffalo, New York. And I spent 15 years there. During that time, we tested a mockup of a glass melter and how we would run the process. And then built the actual melter and closed that in a hot cell where no one would go to work on it inside. So we had to make sure that the melter would operate remotely without having to send someone in. The West Valley site had only one tank of radioactive waste, compared to the 177 here at Hanford. So it was a fairly straightforward project. We were able to determine the chemistry of the waste in the tank, and that made it easy to just design one glass composition that we used. We made glass—we made radioactive glass from 1996 to 2002. And made 275 canisters—the canisters being two foot in diameter by ten feet tall. And those canisters are now stored—they remain at the West Valley site. Eventually they’ll go into a repository, assuming some repository is eventually made.
Franklin: So did it take six years to vitrify—or sorry, I guess I should ask you—that process is vitrification, right?
Palmer: Yes.
Franklin: So that’s the right word to use?
Palmer: Yes.
Franklin: Okay, so it took six years to do that for one tank of waste?
Palmer: We designed the process to be small and relatively slow. To fill a canister when everything was up and running smoothly was about two-and-a-half days. Whereas the facility running at Savannah River right now—Defense Waste Processing Facility, DWPF, they fill a canister in less than a day. At the Savannah River site, if I remember correctly, had 53 underground storage tanks. So they’ve got quite a bit more than we had at West Valley. And also a variety of compositions, so they had to change the glass composition as things went along. They’ve now made over 4,000 canisters since 1996.
Franklin: Wow. So then it does really depend on the chemical makeup of the tank as to what type of—
Palmer: Yes.
Franklin: So which is why, I guess Hanford’s waste poses a problem in that aspect.
Palmer: Yes, yes.
Franklin: Because of the unknown nature of—
Palmer: Yeah, and at Hanford there’s also a wide variety of compositions in the waste tanks. So the glass compositions can be very different. So you really need to know what’s coming in from the tank the next day in order to make the right mix of raw materials to make the right glass composition. And it’s tricky. Also, if you have to go from one composition to another, you have to know what you have in the tank before you add the new stuff, because the composition is going to change. It’s hard. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Do you think that vitrification is the right choice for Hanford’s waste, given its myriad of compositions in the tanks?
Palmer: When Dr. Hench did his analysis of materials to use to immobilize waste in general, glass is clearly the most versatile. There are other waste forms. There are crystalline ceramic waste forms, there are composite waste forms—a wide variety of things that you can use to immobilize the waste. But the processes for those waste forms are much more complicated. It would be very difficult to, say, design a—one of the waste forms is called a tailored ceramic, where you design crystalline components of the ceramic to immobilize specific radionuclides and that sort of thing. It’s hard enough to do for one composition, but to do for 177 compositions, that would have been very difficult. The glass is clearly the most versatile. Is it durable enough? The expectation is that the glass—the waste form in the repository will stay—the radionuclides are supposed to stay within the repository boundaries for 10,000 years. That’s the bureaucratic boundaries that we have to design for. Some people say, yeah, it ought to be a million years. But who would believe us if we predicted a million years? [LAUGHTER] We have trouble believing ourselves when we’re predicting 10,000 years because it’s tough to run that experiment. From the standpoint of glass lasting that long, there are some researchers out there that have been looking at archaeological glasses that maybe may have been in the ground, say, 1,000 years. And try to look at what glass composition—what the glass started out as. In fact, somebody has done an experiment where they’ve excavated the dirt around the glass object and analyzed what is in the dirt that might have come from the glass leeching out and that sort of thing. They’ve also discovered in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, glass bottles, amphoras, those kinds of things that have been at the bottom of the ocean for 1,000 years. And you can still drink wine out of them. [LAUGHTER] So we like to think if the folks 1,000 years ago made glass that lasts at the bottom of the ocean for 1,000 years, maybe we can on purpose design glass that will last for 10,000 years.
Franklin: Interesting. Why was there the shift—so you started to—you came to work in glass immobilization, and then you said the funding for that program ended. Why was there that shift there in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s?
Palmer: Well, if I remember correctly, the project I was working on was sort of under the table. [LAUGHTER] If I remember—the Pacific Northwest Laboratories—this was before it was a national laboratory—had the responsibility of developing the glass waste forms. And what we were doing was just a very small project compared with what was going on at Battelle Northwest at the time. I think somebody caught us doing that, and they said, you shouldn’t be doing that; that’s Battelle’s job. So they found something else for me to do.
Franklin: Oh, right. So Hanford’s vitrification plant is in the news a lot and is kind of plagued by cost overruns and delays. Being a vitrification expert, is that kind of—I mean, I’m not looking for you to criticize them or anything, but is that kind of the norm? Should we have been prepared for how complex this process is? Do you think maybe that that wasn’t communicated or are there actual kind of real problems with the processes being instituted here, in terms of efficiency and actually handling the mandate?
Palmer: I’m a little surprised it’s taken this long. I was back here after we finished the work at West Valley, I came out to the Project that was—let’s see, Bechtel had just taken it over along with—it was the Washington Group then. And I came out—the Washington Group was the organization that was running the West Valley Project, so we were brother organizations. So I came out to work with some of the folks in the group to try to put together procedures, figure out what we expected to have happen over the project. So I remember coming back here and I think I still have a bumper sticker that says Glass in 2007. [LAUGHTER] I probably got that in 2003. So I’ll hang on to that. For it to have gone out this long, I don’t know. I do know for having spent a lot of time at West Valley, the West Valley Site, instead of—well, here the Hanford Site is 570 square miles. The West Valley site is 200 acres. [LAUGHTER] The Department of Energy folks, who were our overseers, were right down the hall. They’re not miles away as they are out here. West Valley’s also in the same time zone as the DOE headquarters in Washington. It’s not 3,000 miles away and three time zones away. I think geography means a lot. [LAUGHTER] When you’ve got the folks you’re working with and have to solve their problems, when you’ve got them down the hall and you can talk to them day in, day out, it makes it so much easier to get the job done. And then when they can call their folks in Washington where things have to get done in a relatively straightforward manner, I think that helps quite a bit. So it’s the fact that Hanford is so big and it’s so far away from the people who ought to be thinking about it more. But they’re in Washington, DC—what do they care about what happens in Washington State. It really—it’s not primary in their minds. So you sort of get sent to the back of the room.
Franklin: Oh. How does that compare, though, with—you said the Savannah River site has created about 4,000 canisters. How long has that process—has there been similar delays or situation there? How come that process is kind of up and underway—or can you describe—I guess my question is, can you describe the similarities or differences between what’s being attempted here and what’s being attempted at another large site like Savannah River?
Palmer: Savannah River always seemed to have priority over Hanford. Probably because it’s closer to population. And the environment around the Savannah River Plant is a lot wetter--[LAUGHTER]—than the desert out here. So if the tanks leak out here, they leak into the desert. If they leak at the Savannah River Site, they leak into the Savannah River, which feeds several million people. So the Savannah River Site did get more attention in the early days. They’ve done a very nice job getting their plant up and running. We worked closely with them when I was at West Valley. We talked with them all the time in terms of their day-to-day almost troubles and tribulations. We designed—the melters were designed a little bit differently and the canisters were a little bit different. The West Valley canisters had a large mouth and it was a 16-inch opening. Pretty easy to hit the hole with the glass coming out of the furnace. The Savannah River canisters had a much smaller diameter hole and that led to different processes for welding the material shut. But we could compare notes in how you’d do that and how the melters worked. We were operating in parallel, I think—let’s see, if I remember right, Savannah River started their process up in March of ’96 and we started in June.
Franklin: Okay, so you were doing the same thing at the same time.
Palmer: Right.
Franklin: So they’ve vitrified a lot of their waste, but there’s still no current long-term repository. Waste is still being stored at individual sites, waiting. So really, that’s kind of the other step of this process, right, is finding a—or what are your thoughts on that situation, on the—do we need one or two major long-term repositories to kind of collect all the waste in one area, or is better to keep it spread out at its separate sites?
Palmer: It’s going to be wonderful when we get all the liquid waste out of the tanks and immobilized somehow. I’d like to think that—I’m a little prejudiced—that glass is the answer to that. And now that we’ve got the tank empty at West Valley and the material in glass, and Savannah River will get there eventually—they might be halfway through? I’m not quite sure how long they’re going to take to get it done. But it’ll be nice to have those canisters of high level waste somewhere, and the high level waste out of the ground. And with any luck it’ll happen here at Hanford, too. There’s no rush to get those canisters of glass into the ground. We expect that they’ll be stored safely somewhere in some kind of a building, some kind of a structure, that will keep the water out, keep the animals away and whatever else. So you kind of hope that that’s going to happen. And if there—there’s talk about reopening the Yucca Mountain project again. It was always kind of funny—everybody complains that they shut it down a few years ago, and that that was a political action. Well, picking Yucca Mountain was a political action in the first place. In 1987, when they decided to go to just one repository, if you look at the state of Nevada versus the state of Washington versus, say, the state of Texas, Nevada has the least number of representatives in Washington. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Ah, a-ha.
Palmer: So it basically was a political act to create that there. So it doesn’t bother me that it was a political act to have shut it down. It may be reopened again. Harry Reid, who’s the senator who asked President Obama to shut it down—Harry’s retiring. So maybe it’ll reopen. I remember, maybe 25 years ago, I went to a PTA meeting, the New York State PTA meeting, and the national president was there. She was from Las Vegas. And I asked her about Yucca Mountain. She said, you and I need to talk. [LAUGHTER] She was not happy about Yucca Mountain, and she was amongst those who were really fighting against even looking at the site. There was a—let’s see. When I was in Minnesota, it was about 1985, I believe, the Department of Energy was looking at a potential second repository. They were looking, first of all, at those sites out west. And then they started to look at granite formations, say, in New Hampshire. The Canadian Shield, which is outstate in Minnesota. So there were folks agitating in Minnesota—oh, my god, they’re going to bring nuclear waste here. And I remember going to a meeting of the local congressman and hearing people shouting about it. And I sort of—on the way out, I mentioned to him, I said, why don’t you just let DOE come in here and discover that it’s really not the place to put it? One of the main things you need to worry about is how do you get all the materials that’s elsewhere to the repository? And the weather in Minnesota in the winter’s not so good. [LAUGHTER] It would make it difficult to bring material in. And in addition to the weather interfering with construction of the facility to begin with. So there were a lot of good reasons not to put it in Minnesota. So it was just a lot of fun to watch the action going on with the anti-nukes, locally, and as well as the people who might have been more in favor of it. I also remember there was—one of my colleagues at the basalt project was back in Boston. I think he was at MIT, giving a talk about the repositories. And he said he noticed some of the kids in the back were sort of dozing off when he was talking about repositories in Nevada and Washington and that sort of thing. And then he suddenly mentioned that—maybe in New Hampshire. And he said—the kids sat up and paid attention all of the sudden. It’s up the street. [LAUGHTER] In New Hampshire. Yeah. So it gets people’s attention when it’s close at hand.
Franklin: It’s a real nimby issue.
Palmer: Yes.
Franklin: How did the work at Hanford—your work at Hanford—kind of inform your later work? Because you started your private sector career at Hanford, right?
Palmer: Yes.
Franklin: So how did that inform your later work?
Palmer: One of the most important aspects of handling radioactive materials is a quality assurance program where you—those of us were doing research on the basalt project, our first thought was how do you do quality control, quality assurance on research? How do you ensure that your experiments are right? Because you’re supposed to be investigating unknown things, so maybe quality control, quality assurance, is too much controls on your process. When it first was imposed on us, we were very concerned about how we can do that. But then we talked to the folks who were quality assurance experts, and they said, oh, what we really have to do is control the process. Control—make sure if you’re using a particular instrument, a spectrometer, whatever, make sure it’s been calibrated, make sure it’s working properly, make sure you have standards to compare against your unknowns. So the quality assurance aspect of it actually made our work a whole lot better. We had to think about it a little harder, but that’s okay. [LAUGHTER] In fact, when I moved from here to 3M and did research there, I kept those thoughts in mind: okay, I need to do research on new materials, on new products, that sort of thing—but how do I set up my experiments so that I know I’m getting the right answers? Or defensible answers, if not the right answers.
Franklin: Where at least you know the process is defensible.
Palmer: And that turned out to be an important part of my work at West Valley. So learning that quality assurance was a good thing has been a big help to my later career.
Franklin: Can you describe Hanford as a place to work?
Palmer: [LAUGHTER] It’s a different place. It was first very strange to get out here and you see people on the corner waiting for the bus and everybody’s wearing a badge. That was a—coming, especially from a college campus—that was a very different experience. I guess I got used to it, but I wasn’t happy with the atmosphere that that sort of creates—having to wear a badge and that sort of jazz. And I remember when I was at 3M, there was somebody coming in and wanted to make everybody at 3M—I worked in their research facility in St. Paul, which was several dozen buildings. They wanted everybody to wear—somebody was coming in proposing that everybody at 3M wear a badge, for corporate security and that sort of thing. My opinion of that was that would change the atmosphere of the research park. Later in my career, I worked for Corning, Incorporated in Corning, New York, and they’ve taken it to an extreme, I think. [LAUGHTER] When you get up from your desk, you’re supposed to turn your computer off. Because even the guy next to you isn’t supposed to see what you have on your computer screen. And you have to wear a badge, and you need the badge to go from building to building. Or from parts of the building to other parts of the building. It created an atmosphere that I wasn’t happy with. I felt that it’s necessary at Hanford, where you’re working with hazardous materials all the time. But I wasn’t—I thought that in a corporate world, I thought it was a little bit of overkill. But the folks at Corning, Incorporated have decided that—[SIGH]—they need to have everybody keeping their mouths shut whenever they needed to keep their mouths shut. Although if you go out at night and you sit in a bar, and you listen to the guys talking at the table next to you, you might find out some things that you—[LAUGHTER]—you wouldn’t find out hanging around the quarters of the research park. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right. What were the most challenging and/or rewarding aspects of your work at Hanford?
Palmer: Most challenging, I think, was—some days, getting to work. Taking the buses out to work. Although that, eventually, once you get used to it, you get reading done on the bus. There was—for a couple of years, I lived in Kennewick, and I took a van pool. So I would get up in the morning walk to the corner, and pick up the van, and spend an hour and then spend another hour at the end of the night, coming home. At the time, I subscribed to two magazines: I subscribed to the New Republic, which was weekly, and on the left side of the political spectrum, and I subscribed to William F. Buckley’s National Review, which was every two weeks, and on the right side of the political spectrum. I was obscenely well-informed. [LAUGHTER] Because I read them cover-to-cover, because I had the van pool time day in and day out. I worked with a lot of interesting folks. And I’m spending this week here getting together with some old friends. Since we were done making glass at West Valley, a number of those folks are out here now. And about a dozen of us got together last night, and it was a lot of fun to see some folks that I hadn’t seen for ten years or so.
Franklin: Oh, that’s great.
Palmer: The aspect of working on a project that the whole world thinks they know about—oh, nuclear waste. One of the things—the most common comment you get is, do you glow in the dark? And it doesn’t matter—that happens at technical meetings, that happens at PTA meetings, that happens on planes going back and forth. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: It happens to me every time I go to a conference. At least once. Somebody thinks that they’re the first person that thought of that joke.
Palmer: Yes. [LAUGHTER] So it does make for interesting cocktail party conversation. Because everybody has an opinion.
Franklin: Yeah.
Palmer: And—why don’t we just put it on a rocket and send it? Well, rockets never explode, right?
Franklin: No!
Palmer: [LAUGHTER] And even before Columbia and Challenger had their problems, I went to a meeting in Cocoa Beach, Florida down the street from the Cape, and remember talking to someone who worked at Cape Canaveral for a long time and some of the tests that they did. They had one rocket that they called the Titusville Express. Titusville is the next town over, and the rocket went up and hung a right, and fortunately went over the city of Titusville into the water. But that’s not what it’s designed to do. So if you put radioactive materials on those kinds of things, you’re going to make a mess in the water someplace or wherever it comes down. So one of those—a glib, easy answer to—the further away you are from the project, the more answers you have to solve it. That’s true in a lot of different ways. People have—oh, we can solve that problem. It’d be easy; just do this. Ah, well, no. [LAUGHTER] So that makes a lot of fun. And now, as we’ve been talking about now writing a book on the history of this topic, and it’s a lot of fun digging in the background and trying to figure out how people 100 years ago were treating radioactive materials. As they started to understand that, yeah, we ought to take into account time, distance and shielding and those kinds of things. It took a while for them to figure that out, and people got hurt, and died from not knowing.
Franklin: Right.
Palmer: And in some cases, though, I’m finding as I read more, there’s a lot of cases where they did know, but they just left the door open [LAUGHTER] on the cyclotron, that sort of thing. Some of the guys who were working on that were basically cowboys. They just treated it like your standard, old—oh, whatever’s going on in the laboratory, and okay. The stream of electrons in the cyclotron, if they left the door open, somebody was getting irradiated, but they didn’t think—you couldn’t feel it, so what’s the big deal? But you need to keep that door closed. It’s kind of funny to read about the people who—smart people, gone on to get wide renown in physics and that sort of thing—but they left the door open on the cyclotron because they didn’t figure it was a big deal. Or they were just careless.
Franklin: Right, or maybe had a sense of invulnerability--
Palmer: Yes.
Franklin: --when it came to their own mortality.
Palmer: Physicists have a way of thinking they’re invincible.
Franklin: Were there any major events that happened if the Tri-Cities while—I guess you only lived here for five years?
Palmer: Yeah.
Franklin: Were there any major events in the Tri-Cities when you lived here that stand out to you?
Palmer: Mount St. Helens.
Franklin: Oh.
Palmer: It was May 18, 1980. And we had been watching—over the previous year, we would be able to see some of the minor eruptions that had been going on. And I think—if I remember right—it’s 160 miles from here. It was Sunday morning when it happened, and somewhere around 8:00 or something like that. My wife and I were in the grocery store. We were way in the back of the grocery store, and a friend came in and said, wow, did you see what the mountain did this morning? And—no. We’d been inside whenever it happened, and came out and you see these puffy clouds. It kind of looks like cauliflower. The ash falls in like pockets. That day everybody basically stayed inside, because our cars outside got covered with dust. I talked to a friend who went to work that day and took the bus out to the 200-West Area. And he said you couldn’t see the front of the bus from the back of the bus inside the bus.
Franklin: Wow.
Palmer: So it was a dusty day. They had just bought a new fleet of buses that were all air conditioned. The ash chewed up the air conditioning. So we didn’t have that new fleet of buses that summer, so we all rode un-air conditioned buses that summer. And a lot of people wore the face masks for most of the summer going out on the bus during that summer.
Franklin: Oh, wow. So how—did that impact the work at Hanford at all?
Palmer: I don’t know that it impacted the work to speak of. It certainly woke us up to Mother Nature’s power. I remember there was someone here who had—a photographer—who had been going back and forth to Seattle, and he would stop at the St. Helens area and take pictures. He’d gone over the Saturday before. I saw him give a presentation on this afterwards, so this is all secondhand sort of thing. He stayed—he decided he’d stay the night on the south side of the mountain. He took some wonderful pictures the day before from that particular angle. The next morning, it blew, and when it blew, he was facing south, away from the mountain. He didn’t hear a thing. Because the explosion went north and all the sound and all the ash went north. He was talking to somebody and the guy said, look around. He turned around and he could see the plume going off. And he went back to the same places where he’d taken pictures the day before, and had the same picture as the explosion is going on. So it was quite an opportunity for that guy to get those kind of photographs.
Franklin: No kidding.
Palmer: Then the police were coming through, chasing people out. You got to get out of here. Because the snowcap was melting and the floods—the Toutle River, I believe, was being overflowed. He had to get out of there in a hurry, although he kept stopping every once in a while, taking pictures. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: As any good photographer would.
Palmer: Yes. And the cop would come and say, you’ve got to get out of here. And I remember we—later that summer, my father came out to visit. My father was an eighth grade science teacher. So we had a good time taking pictures and collecting ash for his science class and that sort of thing. We drove around the south end and came up Interstate 5 and saw the destruction from the flood, and drove over to where the Toutle River had washed out some small bridges. And you could see where—the river had gone down to its normal level, but you could see it was ten foot up on the banks, and then there was a mark about ten feet up in the trees above that where the water level had been. So it was mighty powerful.
Franklin: Do you have any memories of the social scene or local politics or other insights into Tri-Cities life?
Palmer: We were part of the Jewish community—Temple Beth Shalom. It’s a small temple. There’s not a whole lot of Jewish folks here. But they had been here along—from virtually the beginning of the Project. The temple was founded in 1950. When we were here around 1980, there were still people who were part of that founding organization.
Franklin: Wow. I’m sorry, where was that located?
Palmer: Thayer Street, south of Lee.
Franklin: Okay.
Palmer: I haven’t been there for a while, so it’s—and I understand they’ve remodeled it. So I’m not sure I would recognize—I think I would recognize the building if I were to drive down it, but I haven’t done that yet. I may do that later this week. There were quite a few interesting people who were part of that organization. There were chemists and engineers who worked out at the Site, and were also part of that organization. There were doctors in the local community who were part of that congregation. And I still have friends who are part of that here, and I expect to see them this week. We didn’t do a whole lot of other things. I was—it was just my wife and I when we came out here. We had a son—my wife’s named Ellen Goldberg Palmer. My son was born here. My older son, Michael was born August of ’82. So he has roots here, but I don’t think he’s ever been back. [LAUGHTER] So one of these days, we have to bring him back and see where he was born and that sort of thing. We later had a second son born in Minnesota. So my sons are connected to the two biggest rivers in the continent. One the Columbia, one the Mississippi. Although neither of them really remembers having been near them. They were both raised in Buffalo, so they don’t remember much about either Minnesota or Washington State. We were very much involved with the synagogue. There were also quite a few mixed marriages. I’m not Jewish. We decided we’d raise the kids Jewish, but that’s all right. That wasn’t a problem. But there were a lot of other mixed marriages as part of the synagogue. Because of the wide range of beliefs of the synagogue, it was always an independent organization. There are a variety of Jewish movements—the two major ones are Reform and Conservative. Reform being a little more liberal; a Conservative rabbi would never have married my wife and I, because they just don’t believe in that—in intermarriage. And we had some trouble finding a Reform rabbi that would do that. But the synagogue remained independent for many years. Until something—it was never clear to me exactly what happened. We took a vote and it was always 50/50, and they decided not to affiliate with either the Conservative or Reform movement. But then somebody decided, we really need to do something. So they had another vote, and it went Conservative. So they needed to have—they felt they needed to do something with the Sunday school and have some sort of official imprimatur of one of the movements. And that caused a split. [LAUGHTER] Especially among those of us who were mixed marriages. And we had a meeting a couple of weeks later in our house, mainly because we hadn’t had enough money to buy furniture for the living room yet, so we had a place where we could have lots of people meet and have chairs around. We actually created another synagogue for those of us who felt we should be more liberal than the conservative end of it. And that went on for a couple of years. I think it’s consolidated again. But I don’t know exactly what the status of the synagogue is now. So even amongst small congregations, you can have big divides. There’s a joke that somebody told me. They sent a Jewish astronaut to the moon to establish a community. And they ask him, why two synagogues? And he said, well, that’s the one I go to, and that’s the one I wouldn’t go to on a bet. [LAUGHTER] So you can always expect—three Jews in a room, you’ll have ten opinions. [LAUGHTER] But politics? I don’t remember much about—I wasn’t much involved in that. I was too worried about day-to-day working and family life. Because I was new at both. I didn’t worry too much about other things. But, yeah, Mount St. Helens was the big one, and our relationship with the Jewish community. That was the two big social parts of our life while we were here.
Franklin: Okay. Could you describe the ways in which security or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work?
Palmer: Not very much. The work we were doing was publishable. We did have to worry a little bit about the composition of the waste. I think some of that might have been proprietary. Because knowing what was in the waste would give information about what was in the material that created the waste, which was for plutonium to make bombs. So I think some of that information might have been proprietary. I didn’t have to worry about it because I didn’t work on that part of the business. I do remember, at the Battelle library in the 300 Area—which was a wonderful place to go; the books there were—it was just a fun place to look around—there was a room down the hall that you had to have special permission to go in that had a lot of the processing information that was proprietary. And I always wanted to go in there, but I don’t think—my clearance wasn’t high enough. We had Q clearances then, and I don’t think they even have that anymore out here.
Franklin: Yeah, not to my knowledge.
Palmer: But the secrecy aspect didn’t affect me very much.
Franklin: How has the attitude towards nuclear waste disposal changed from 1979 until now? Both within the industry and without?
Palmer: I think a lot more people know about it than before. Especially because of the national hullaballoo over Yucca Mountain. People worry about that a little more than they—they probably didn’t know they had to worry about it. [LAUGHTER] and suddenly there’s a big squabble over it, so, gee, maybe I should worry about this. The other facility that’s been in the news lately is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, WIPP. About two years ago there was an accident there. It was a small explosion underground and they needed to figure out exactly why it happened and now what can they do to prevent it from happening again. So I don’t think it’s up and running just yet. They’re still sorting out new procedures and that kind of thing. But, yeah, people are hearing about it more. I don’t remember anybody really—I mean, if I talked with old friends about nuclear waste in 1979, they’d say, say what? They really didn’t know what was going on and they had no idea of where the materials were located. But nowadays, they do worry about it more. There are folks with the nuclear power plants, we all know that there are the spent fuel being stored at all the nuclear power plants and folks are starting to be aware that—is this the right thing to do? There may be—it seems to take time for people to want to solve problems. [LAUGHTER] It’s just—it’s like the kids in the MIT classroom. Okay, that’s Washington State, I don’t need to worry about it. You know, wait a minute, it’s in New Hampshire; maybe I do need to worry about this. And if you suddenly realize that, yeah, that nuclear power plant down the street? Okay, there’s no radioactivity coming from it, but there is this other stuff that maybe can cause a problem.
Franklin: There’s spent fuel being stored there in the area that wasn’t designed as permanent storage for it.
Palmer: Right, right.
Franklin: How has the approach to nuclear waste disposal changed from 1979 until now? Or has it?
Palmer: I don’t know that it has. I’d like to think we’re smarter about it. I’d like to think that we have better solutions for it now than we did then.
Franklin: Such as?
Palmer: The immobilization processes. Eventually we’re going to have to ship the materials from one place to another. They’ve done tests on shipping casks and designed them so that they’re not going to fail. And there are folks who are still working on new designs for shipping, say, spent fuel—I’m sorry, I think it’s called used fuel now—from reactors where they’re stored now to—there may be some intermediate storage facility, or some permanent storage facility. I suspect that we may eventually go to some kind of an intermediate storage facility. And where that would be is a hard question to answer. They’re now looking at the process of siting a repository at—I forget exactly what the buzzword is for it, but it’s basically an informed—that’s it—informed consent of the community. For instance, in order to site the WIPP project at Carlsbad, New Mexico, they basically got buy-in from the community. From the mayor to the chamber of commerce, to the local citizens. There are other folks in the state of New Mexico who would rather it not have been there. But they live in Albuquerque, and that’s a couple hundred miles away. So now you worry about, what do you define as community? Is it the people who live in Carlsbad? Is it the people who live in New Mexico? Is it the people who live in the Southwest? So the concept of informed consent is absolutely necessary. But defining it is very hard to do.
Franklin: Right. Because you don’t always get to choose—as a project planner you don’t always get to choose who has buy-in or who feels like they should. You don’t get to exclude some people just based off of your own—they get to choose whether or not they feel—
Palmer: Yeah, and in the past, we’ve done horrible things where we just ignored people. There are places in the Southwest where they had uranium mines. And downstream from the uranium mines were the Navajo. There were—I’ve read somewhere, I’m assuming it’s true—is that there was never cancer in the Navajo Nation until there was uranium mill tailings nearby, coming in the water supply from upstream. The informed consent, will hopefully help us not ignore some people who ought to be part of the process.
Franklin: Right. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and/or living in Richland during the Cold War?
Palmer: We tried. We tried really hard to do the right things. I do remember—hmm—early ‘80s, Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 as President. He was a little more hawkish than Jimmy Carter before him. I got promoted to a manager’s position, and I got invited to—the vice president of the Site, who every once in a while got new managers together to give them a little lecture and welcome to management. [LAUGHTER] And I remember him saying something about—yeah, Reagan’s going to put us back to work. We’re going to build more bombs and do all that sort of thing. And I think I said at that point to myself, I got to get out of here. [LAUGHTER] Because if that was going to be the attitude—I mean, cleaning up the mess is one thing; building new stuff that goes boom in the night? Nah, I didn’t want any part of. And that was—some of the reputation that those of us who worked at Hanford is that, you know, yeah, we want to make more bombs. No, a lot of us are here because there’s a mess to clean up. And we were chemists of all kinds of varieties who wanted to know: okay, what is it that we have to do to make this not a problem anymore? And it’s a good intellectual problem to try to solve, and an engineering problem to solve. And we don’t want to make new things that disrupt the community. We want to take care of the mess.
Franklin: What about the—there’s kind of an inherent contradiction in there, though, right? In that you find joy in solving the problem and fixing the problem, but without the bombs—without the desire to make the bombs, we wouldn’t have the waste to clean up, and you might not have come here. You’re certainly—your life, part of your life’s work is encapsulating waste, which—there is waste from energy plants, but you seem to have spent much more time dealing with waste from production plants. So I understand maybe not wanting to see new—more new waste being produced, but that’s kind of an interesting relationship that I think you have with waste.
Palmer: Yes. I wasn’t around to make the decisions in the first place. I’d like to think that I’m around to make some personal and professional decisions now. Let’s say, when you go to the grocery store, you have these plastic bags. I—in the back of my car—I always have with me the reusable fabric bags when I go to the grocery store.
Franklin: Yeah, me too.
Palmer: So I don’t create the mess in the first place. I think that may be one thing that I’ve learned, looking at the history of what we’ve done with radioactive materials and radioactive waste, specifically, is that we could have done better if we’d have just thought about it a little bit. There’s new problems all the time coming on. There’s new industries coming on. Genetically designed organisms—genetically engineered organisms, those kinds of things. There’s nanomaterials. All these are new industries, and we hope that they’re thinking about the potential for problems. Having worked a little bit with some of the folks in the nanoparticle business, they were looking at those problems from the beginning. When they’re designing their materials, especially in the ceramics field. I know people who were there, at the beginning of designing new materials, and they were absolutely looking at potential harm that the materials might do.
Franklin: Do you think that same kind of forward-thinking was there at Hanford, during the World War II or Cold War, but that the importance of the initial mission overweighed concerns about the legacy of nuclear waste?
Palmer: Yeah, they were in a hurry. So cleaning up garbage was, at best, a second thought. They got it out of the way, and put it somewhere where it wasn’t going to bother anybody for a while. They’ll worry about it later. And it took them a while for later to show up. They suddenly noticed—I think it was about 1973, when they noticed, oh, there used to be 100,000 more gallons of waste in that tank than there is now. I wonder where it went. That was also the time when organizations were created to look at environmental issues. The EPA was founded in—what, I think it was about 1970? It was one of Nixon’s—
Franklin: That sounds about right.
Palmer: One of the good things that Nixon did. EPA and OSHA for that matter. I remember doing things as an underground in the laboratory that you cannot do now. I mean, using benzene to clean glassware. Not going to happen now, but it happened in the ‘60s as a routine thing. That’s how you cleaned the glassware, was boil it in a pot of benzene, because it did a nice job of cleaning the surface of Pyrex.
Franklin: Oh, yeah, I’m sure it did.
Palmer: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Palmer: Yeah. That was another thing, is that I probably got exposed to more dangerous materials working in a chemistry lab than I did working in a radioactive lab. [LAUGHTER] I know we took care of doing things in 222-S. Although there were some laboratories I didn’t really want to go into. [LAUGHTER] But you learn how to do good science and good laboratory experiments from the folks—the woman who worked with me as a lab technician, Sadie Kunkler, had been there since before I was born [LAUGHTER] in that laboratory. She started working there in 1950. So she had 30 years of experience of how to work in a laboratory, and how to—
Franklin: This was here at—
Palmer: At Hanford, in 222-S. She taught me a lot, an awful lot, in terms of how you work in a laboratory. There were parts of laboratory experiments that I was not competent to do. [LAUGHTER] But she was very, very good in the laboratory in terms of making sure things were clean. And when you’re doing experiments where you’re trying to measure small amounts of material being leeched out of a glass with water, everything needs to be clean. The water has to be pure. If you’re looking at dissolving glass, it’s mainly sand, silica. If you know anything about the dust that’s in the air, it’s also sand. So your materials—in order to do a proper experiment, you need to keep the dust out. Otherwise, your experiment is not going to be a—
Franklin: Well, you have to purify your water, too, so there’s no silica in the water.
Palmer: Right, right.
Franklin: Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about before we—?
Palmer: We covered a lot of stuff that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. [LAUGHTER] Thank you.
Franklin: Yeah, thank you.
Palmer: I’m going to be talking to some other old friends this week, and I will—I think you know some of them. Steve Buckingham is one who’s been part of this program. Michael Kupfer is another one that I worked with at 222-S. I hadn’t—I called him yesterday, and he wasn’t sure who I was—again? What? We haven’t talked in—I haven’t talked to him in over 30 years. So, we’re going to get together and talk some more. And I’d like—Mike was here and had some very interesting experiences in the lab, working in glass and other projects. I think he might have some interesting things to say. There was one thing I think that actually got me the job. Working with glass at high temperatures is a tricky thing to do and one of the crucibles that you use is platinum. When I was in graduate school, somebody in the laboratory was making glass and used, as a centerplate in the furnace, silicon carbide. Silicon carbide can take the heat okay. But if you happen to drip a little bit of glass on the silicon carbide centerplate and have it next to the platinum crucible, the platinum crucible will dissolve. What happened in this particular case, the guy left the crucible with glass in it in the furnace, and he came back several hours later and it was gone. You allow the furnace to cool and you take out the centerplate, then you can see a ring of platinum that had been the crucible. It was now part of the centerplate. When I came out to Hanford, and went out to dinner with the folks who were interviewing me, they mentioned that they had a problem—they weren’t sure what happened. They had a bunch of—maybe half a dozen crucibles on a centerplate. And some of them dissolved. They caught it before they were all disappeared, so I eventually got to see it. But some of the crucibles had been eaten away. Because I had that experience before, my response was, oh, you used the silicon carbide centerplate. And they said, yep. And I think that got me the job. The fact that I had had that experience and so—that was the kind of experience they were looking for. Someone who would not make that mistake. Because those little platinum crucibles are, you know, 1,000 bucks a piece or more.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s not a cheap material to work with.
Palmer: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Kind of a happy accident, huh?
Palmer: Yeah. Well—a happy experience for me to have that available in my list of things that I’ve done.
Franklin: Yeah, especially during an interview. Well, great, well thank you so much, Ron. It’s been a great interview.
Palmer: It’s been good, thank you.
Franklin: Okay.
View interview on Youtube.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Wanda Munn on November 2nd, 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?
Wanda Munn: Wanda Iris Munn. W-A-N-D-A, last name M-U-N-N.
Franklin: Great. When and where were you born, Wanda?
Munn: I was born in Brownwood, Texas, which is 17 miles from the geographic center of the state on September 13th, 1931. I was a Depression baby. So I had all that background and the joy of being a native Texan.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] How and why did you come to the area to—how and why did you come to work at Hanford?
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.
Franklin: Excellent. So, tell me what kinds of work did you do at FFTF?
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.
Franklin: I would love for you to talk about that.
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—
Emma Rice: Overload the circuit?
Franklin: Overload the circuit.
Munn: Cause—yeah, I didn’t mean to overload anything. We—
Franklin: Did we—yeah, I was going to say—so we--
Vargas: No, we’re fine on the camera.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Vargas: It’s battery-powered.
Franklin: Oh, great.
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.
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.
Munn: I’d be delighted to do that.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Munn: Yes.
Franklin: Why was that?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Franklin: It’s okay.
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.
Franklin: Mm-hm. Can you describe—
Munn: Did I answer your question? I’m sorry.
Franklin: No—yes.
Munn: Good, all right.
Franklin: You did, and then you actually answered another one I was going to ask you.
Munn: Another eight or ten. Yeah, sorry.
Franklin: So, can you describe a typical work day at the FFTF?
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.
Franklin: And what is the big round thing?
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.
Franklin: How did you transition into nuclear safety?
Munn: How did I--?
Franklin: How did you trans—you mentioned that you had started during construction and that later on you started working in nuclear safety.
Munn: Oh, well, it’s seamless.
Franklin: Seamless, okay.
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.
Franklin: Okay. When did the FFTF shut down?
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.
Franklin: Okay. And so how long did the facility operate for as a research facility?
Munn: It operated about a decade.
Franklin: About a decade.
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.
Franklin: Was this work taken on in the private sector, then? Because you mentioned—
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.
Franklin: Can you—or are you willing to speculate on the political motivations for shutting the program down?
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.
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?
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.
Franklin: It’s not quite as bad as you thought, but it’s still pretty terrible.
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.
Franklin: Yeah. When did you retire from the Hanford Site?
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.
Franklin: And did you win? Did you make it to city council? Were you city council?
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]
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.
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.
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.
Munn: Oh, yes.
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.
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.
Franklin: EEOICPA?
Munn: Yes. Energy Employees Occupational Illness and—
Franklin: Compensation?
Munn: Compensation Act, right?
Franklin: Something like that, yeah. We missed the P, but—
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.
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?
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.
Franklin: Or if you fly on a plane, right, you’re exposed to higher background—
Munn: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
[VIDEO CUTS]
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 You Are There 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.
Franklin: Well, Wanda, thank you so much for such an enlightening and well-delivered interview. I really appreciate it.
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.
Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much.
Munn: Thank you.
View interview on Youtube.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Michael Lawrence on February 1st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Mike about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Michael Lawrence: Michael J. Lawrence. L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E.
Franklin: Great. Thank you. So, how did you come to the Hanford Site?
Lawrence: I went—I grew up in Washington, DC. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and I went to the University of Maryland and lived at home when I did so. And I was a physics major. Between my junior and senior year of college, I was fortunate enough to get one of five internships at the Atomic Energy Commission. That internship had me working in a division of the AEC, or Atomic Energy Commission, called the production division, which was responsible for, among other sites, the Hanford Site, because of its production of plutonium. During that summer, I actually shared an office with an individual who was responsible for the operations and missions of the N Reactor which was located here. So I had an opportunity to learn a little bit about Hanford at that particular point in time. When I graduated from Maryland with my degree in physics the next year, I had already been offered and had accepted a full-time job with the Atomic Energy Commission when I went back to the production division again to work. I was working on isotopes programs and other things when I was called into the director’s office one day. It just so happened that several years previously, in 1969 I believe, President Nixon had signed the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and one of the provisions in NEPA called for something which, at that point in time, was not known at all. Something called an environmental impact statement. You had to do environmental impact statements for any major federal projects, and our division was responsible for two projects that were going to occur in the early ‘70s here. One was the design and building of the quite a bit. And also had a sense of what it was going to be involved dealing with the public on important and issues that were of concern to the public, like the Z-9 crib and plutonium production. Because one of our hearings for those environmental impact statements was held down in Portland. And I can recall going down there, and there were demonstrators in radiation contamination clothing protesting and all the rest. And you got a chance to see just how the public felt about it. But that was my first instance of dealing with Hanford. Then later in the mid-‘70s—again, I’m still back in Washington, DC; AEC had become the Department of Energy—and I was responsible for a program to manage and store commercial spent nuclear fuel. And that program, the contractor and site that was helping us out was the Savannah River site in South Carolina. But because of the heavy burden they had, I decided it would be best if we changed the management of that program, or the contractor working on the program from Savannah River to the Hanford Site and to the Pacific Northwest National Lab—at that time was Pacific Northwest Lab; it wasn’t a national lab, but PNL. And so I started coming out again and working with the people here. So I had a pretty good understanding of the community and what was out here, and I liked it. But in the early 1980s, in 1982 to be exact, after several years of very, very intense negotiation back in the halls of Congress, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed by Congress which set up a process and legal requirements for identifying, selecting, licensing, building, operating, and funding a geologic repository for commercial nuclear waste from commercial reactors and defense waste from the production of plutonium, primarily either at Hanford or at the Savannah River plant. I was one of several people called down from where I was working in Germantown, Maryland, down to Washington, DC to work on the direct implementation of that act. Obviously, that was a very—it was controversial, it was huge, and the new Secretary of Energy at that time—his name was Donald Hodel, who had formerly been the administrator of Bonneville out here in the Pacific Northwest—he was very familiar with the issues involved. And I got an opportunity to meet and work with him rather closely. And after several years of doing that, he asked me to come out here to be the manager of the Richland Operations Office.
Franklin: Wow. Thank you. That’s really fascinating, with all of your lengths between DC and to here. Did you—I want to ask—you mentioned a hearing in Portland where there were demonstrators. And that—I think it fits pretty well into what we hear a lot about how the west side and the east side of the state think about Hanford. Did you find a pretty supportive public here in Tri-Cities when you would come and hold meetings here in the area about, like, for example the Z-9 crib or other projects? Did you find a pretty supportive public?
Lawrence: I wouldn’t use the term supportive, I would use the term very informed and knowledgeable. They understood, to a greater degree, what the risks, what the concerns were, what the precautions were. Not universally, obviously. There were—and I have a good example of what a protestor would be. But basically, they seemed to be more informed, and certainly they were more knowledgeable of the situation. So the further away you went, the less direct knowledge people had of the situation. And so consequently—and it’s understandable, you know, they really didn’t have the same—they didn’t know people who worked at the Site. They didn’t—couldn’t appreciate the values that they had, their sensitivities. So that would be more the way I would describe it.
Franklin: Okay.
Lawrence: What was interesting, and I just had alluded to, was after coming out here—this was in 1984; I came—arrived in July of 1984. And at the beginning of that year was when the PUREX Plant, which processed the fuel coming out of N Reactor and reprocessed it to recover the plutonium, had just gone back into operation after a number of years of being mothballed. This was all part of President Reagan’s buildup of our military strength and weapons complex to more or less challenge the Russians or the Soviet Union in their ability to do so. And so we were gearing back up, really, the plutonium production mission at the Hanford Site. It was obviously very controversial here in the Northwest. And it was just starting up, and there had actually been a leak from the PUREX Plant right after it started up. And what I found when I arrived here in July was that even though the people on the Site—the contractor and the officials here—were saying, no, this is what it was and this is what the effects were. There was very little credibility. People would not believe them. And there was a strong opposition to what they were doing. That was a challenging situation to walk into where you really don’t have any credibility. But the first week I was in town, first week as manager, down in my office in the Federal Building, which is up in the northeast corner of the Federal Building, seventh floor, looking out over John Dam Plaza and the park, and I looked out on the street, and there’s a person with a big sign and billboard saying, Mike Lawrence, carpetbagger, go home. And he’s just sitting on the park bench in front of the building. And I—you know, I’ve just arrived in town, and I’m looking at him. His name was Larry Caldwell. He was known to everybody in town; he liked to protest. And I’m looking down at him and I—I sort of like to engage. I don’t like to ignore things. So I said, you know, I think I’ll go out and talk to him. Well, that caused quite a stir. But I walked down and walked across the street, walked up to the park bench, introduced myself, sat down and we started talking. I wanted to find out, well, since you don’t know me, why do you call me a carpetbagger, why do you want me to go home? Let’s talk. And it was funny because in the midst of discussing this with him, I happened to glance back over. And if you’re familiar with the Federal Building, it’s just full of windows. Every window was filled with faces looking out. [LAUGHTER] They said, this is our new manager and he’s out there. Security was very concerned. But you know? It worked out fine. Larry told me what his problems were. He didn’t like the mission. I told him, I said, I understood that. I had a job to do; Congress had appropriated the money, and I’d been given a job to do, and I was going to do it the best I could. But I was going to do it trying to do it in keeping the public informed of what we were doing and being as upfront and—now the term is transparent. We didn’t use that term back then—but as transparent I could be in handling it. So that was my first direct encounter with a protestor, if you will. But I thought it turned out pretty well. But that gets to a broader topic that I’d like to address, and that is, as I said, the Department and its contractors, I found they didn’t have credibility. And I’m not saying it was anyone’s fault, but it’s my opinion that it’s very easy for organizations—Department of Energy, Richland, Hanford—to lose credibility. And the only way you regain that credibility is through individuals, by really engaging with people so they get a sense of who you are or who the people are doing the work. And so we tried from the very beginning back in 1984 to go out and to meet with the public, to engage the public, to be as open as we could to explain our perspective and what we were doing. Obviously, we didn’t expect everyone to agree with us; some people were just diametrically opposed to it. But you’d like them to at least sense that the people doing the work shared some of their values, shared their concerns, in doing their work. The best example I have of that is—I believe it was in 1985. Again, Hanford, because of our role going back into the nuclear weapons complex had been quite controversial. I received a call from the pastor of the Catholic church down in Kennewick, St. Joseph’s. And he said, Mike, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the three bishops—Catholic bishops—in Washington State are having prepared a letter—very, very critical of Hanford, its operations, and the people who work there. And he said, I just think that it’s being, I guess—a focal point was being headed up by a person in Yakima where the bishop was a Bishop William Skylstad. And I happened to have met and knew Bishop Skylstad from my own personal dealings with the church. And so I thanked the priest in Kennewick, and I called up Bishop Skylstad, and I said, I’d really like to come—I understand you’re having some work done on behalf of yourself and the other two bishops, and I’d like to really come and talk to you about it. And so I actually took the president of Rockwell Hanford, who operated PUREX, his name was Paul Lorenzini—very, very intelligent, smart guy—with me. And we went to meet with Bishop Skylstad and he had the individual who was writing this who happened also to be a member of the Hanford Education Action League in Spokane. And, you know, I read what they had prepared. It was talking about the Department of Energy is lying about this, and they’re poisoning, and they’re making these intentional releases. And in discussing that, after a while, Bishop Skylstad said to me, he said, Mike, Mike, calm down. He says, you’re taking this personally. And I looked at him and I said, Bishop, of course I’m taking it personally. When you say the Department of Energy is lying, who is that? Who is it that you’re saying is lying? And it was amazing, because he just stopped; all of a sudden, it dawned on him. He said, oh my goodness, I never thought of it that way. But you had to put a face in front of the organization. And that helped a lot. Now, the letter still came out and it was still very critical. But it wasn’t as accusatory as perhaps it was. It says, we’re opposed to the mission. That’s fine; that I understand. But when you get into the motives and the ill will of the people, that’s where it goes a little too far.
Franklin: Mm. Right. The difference between unintentional or passive action and then direct action.
Lawrence: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Franklin: I wonder if you could talk about what it was like in the early ‘70s to actually—to physically get to Hanford from Washington, DC. Was it still very—was travel still kind of tough to get to Hanford? Or was there easy air travel or car travel? Or did you find it to be a little still off the beaten path?
Lawrence: Well, it was a lengthy trip. Coming from Washington, DC, I would fly from Washington, DC to Chicago, Chicago to Seattle, then Seattle to Pasco. And usually that was like going United, and then I think there was—it was called Airwest—Hughes Airwest, owned by Howard Hughes. Then it did get significantly easier later on when Northwest Airlines had a direct flight from Dulles Airport in DC to Seattle, and then you’d fly back over here. I always used to enjoy those trips. I mean, air travel was a lot different then than it was now in that it wasn’t as—a chore and the like. It was a little bit more creature comforts in traveling as well.
Franklin: When you mentioned NEPA and the need for the EIS, Environmental Impact Statement, and digging at Z-9 and I’m sure probably a couple other facilities—did that also trigger any kind of cultural resources work, archaeological digs? Were there ever any—was there any cultural resources work or things found?
Lawrence: In the ‘70s, no. I mean, that work was right in the middle of the 200 Area. Which is—it still today is the most concentrated area. I believe, if I recall correctly, the EISs probably said—would address that. But not—I mean, EISs then were maybe 100 pages long. Now they’re—[LAUGHTER]—multiple volumes and many thousands of pages long. But I wasn’t aware of any. I think the first real instance of dealing with Native Americans and their concerns was with a project we had on the center of the Site called the Basalt Waste Isolation Project, or BWIP, which was on Gable--
Franklin: I was going to ask you about that next.
Lawrence: --which was on Gable Mountain. But I’ll let you ask about it.
Franklin: Well, no, I was going to ask if you—you talked about the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and finding a geological repository. And I was just going to ask, I assume that’s BWIP, then, that is the—
Lawrence: Yeah, and, actually there’s a slight difference there. But the whole idea of the geologic repository, especially since I had been responsible for that program before coming here, led people to suspect or conclude that it was a foregone conclusion that Hanford was going to be named the geologic repository for the United States. And actually, when I came here, that Nuclear Waste Policy Act had set out a process for narrowing down until you had three sites that you would thoroughly characterize. We had gone from nine sites to five, and when I came out here, there were five sites under consideration. Once I was here, it was narrowed down to the three finalists, if you will: Hanford for basalt, Nevada for tuffs—that’s the Yucca Mountain Site—and in Texas there was a salt formation called Deaf Smith County. And so that was being looked at. Now, BWIP itself was not the geologic repository site. It was a test facility built into Gable Mountain—and Gable Mountain, of course, rises up and the geologic repository was going to go down several thousand feet. But it allowed the scientists to put heaters into basalt rock to see how the rock responded to it—expansion, contraction, did it attract water, was it pushed away, and the like. It was actually a quite successful project. We learned quite a bit about how basalt rock would interact. However—getting back to the cultural resources—during that period, we also found out that the Native Americans—the Yakamas, I believe—used to use Gable Mountain for vision-quest-type activities and places to send people on a spiritual adventure. This didn’t happen right away, but we finally worked out—because I saw no reason why we couldn’t—with a day’s notice, we let the Yakamas—we said, we will let you come on and go up to the site, and do whatever ceremonies, to do whatever you want to do. We just need to know about it. Obviously there is physical security and there’s safety we had to provide for them. But I think we were able to work out and arrangement with the Yakamas where they would have access. Perhaps not as freely as they would like, but it did allow some compromise to be worked out so they could still perform some of their religious ceremonies there.
Franklin: Sure. So you came—you arrived in July 1984, you said. And that was kind of—that was under this Reagan era mandate of basically restarting production.
Lawrence: Right.
Franklin: Because it had just been N Reactor through most of the ‘70s, correct, and into the early ‘80s. So I’m wondering if you can just elaborate more on that mission and some of the activities needed and the push back—if there was any push back—and the whole thing.
Lawrence: Well, there was opposition, particularly on the west side and in Portland to restarting plutonium production facilities. While N Reactor had continued to operate, the fuel had not been processed and plutonium had not been recovered in many instances until PUREX started back up. So that was the process of really then getting back into plutonium production. That’s what was leading to opposition to what we were doing. We did the best we could to try to go around and to explain at least what we were doing, how we were doing it, how we would interact. I can recall going with my wife to a meeting up in Spokane. I just went up on a weekday night and the Hanford Education Action League had asked me to come up and talk to them. It was clear. It was clear then, that there was very, very strong opposition to what we were doing. A person I remember asked me the question, did I realize that I was acting just like Hitler? [LAUGHTER] I said, you know, I don’t think of it that way. I think about what I do very seriously, and I’m doing something that’s approved by and funded by the government of the United States of America, from the President and the Congress. I have to do it safely, and I have to do it in accordance with the law, but that’s what needs to be done. But, again, it was another effort to try to get out and at least be present, answer the questions; you may not make them happy, but at least you know you’re there trying to interact.
Franklin: And so how many facilities ended up being restarted or brought online from when you got here to when things were shut down? Maybe you could kind of walk me through that process.
Lawrence: Well, as I indicated, N Reactor had continued to operate, because N Reactor, unlike the other production reactors that were at Savannah River, was a dual purpose reactor. It not only produced plutonium in the fuel elements, but the water which passed through the reactors for cooling it was then sent over to a facility operated by the Washington Public Power Supply System to turn turbines and to produce electricity, on the order of a gigawatt of electricity a year. And because of that, we needed to—the cycle of the N Reactor was different than other production reactors: it was on a shorter cycle. That was for production reasons, the type of plutonium we were producing. So N Reactor went from producing what was fuel grade—it was called fuel grade plutonium—for reactor development programs like the Fast Flux Test Facility and ultimately would have been a breeder reactor. It went to making weapons grade, which meant much shorter irradiation periods. Also, prior to their restarting of PUREX, the fuel was just stored. With the starting of PUREX, you would then let the fuel cool in the basin at N Reactor then ship it in casks on rail cars to the center of the site at PUREX where it would be dissolved in PUREX. The waste would be sent to waste tanks, the plutonium concentrate in a liquid form would be sent to the Plutonium Finishing Plant over in the 200-West area, where it would then be converted into a plutonium metal button about the size of a tuna fish can. And that would be then sent to Colorado—Rocky Flats Plant—where it would actually be fashioned into the material used in a nuclear weapon. So it was the facilities associated with reprocessing at PUREX, handling waste from PUREX, and the facilities associated with the Plutonium Finishing Plant for converting the plutonium to metal that were the primary set of facilities that had to restart.
Franklin: And so then N Reactor was the only reactor that was operated during that time?
Lawrence: It was the only production reactor on the Hanford Site at that time. And the only reactor that was producing water that was—steam—that was then used to produce electricity. There was another very important reactor at Hanford that was operating then. It was called the Fast Flux Test Facility, which had just started operation a year or so before I got here. And that was to be a precursor of a commercial breeder reactor. The developmental—the reactor, the full-scale reactor that was going to demonstrate the breeder process was going to be built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee at the Clinch River Breeder Reactor. But they built the FFTF prior to that in order to get a feeling for how the sodium cooling worked, the fuel worked, the interactions. It was a prototype, if you will, to see just how that system was going to work. And quite frankly, the FFTF was a tremendously successful test reactor and developmental reactor for liquid sodium. It operated flawlessly, really. Unfortunately, though, it shut down because the breeder program was canceled and there really wasn’t a need for it. People tried diligently to find a mission, to find a need for it. But it was a—it just wasn’t in the cards, and it eventually—it took until the late 1990s for it to be permanently shut down. But that was the other reactor that was operating when I came out here.
Franklin: Okay. Yeah, I’ve interviewed several other people that worked at FFTF, and they’ve all—
Lawrence: Oh, and they’re very enthusiastic about the FFTF. And I can understand it. It was a great reactor.
Franklin: Right, and a reactor with kind of a different mission than any of Hanford’s other reactors.
Lawrence: Yes, yeah.
Franklin: Save maybe the N Reactor which had a dual—
Lawrence: No, it was very different. It didn’t have that plutonium production role.
Franklin: How long did the production go at Hanford—that ‘80s Reagan era production?
Lawrence: Well, in 1986, the reactor in Chernobyl blew up—April of 1986. That was in Ukraine, at Chernobyl. Of course, there was very little information coming out after the news of that explosion occurred. You couldn’t get in; the Soviets weren’t saying anything about it. But they couldn’t deny it, because you could detect the radiation coming. But people knew, generally, what type of reactor the Russians were operating there. It was graphite-moderated, water-cooled, and very quickly they came upon the fact that, wait a minute, there’s a graphite-moderated, water-cooled reactor operating in the US out of Hanford that’s called the N Reactor. So consequently, I believe it was in the first week of the Chernobyl accident, one afternoon—I guess it was a morning—in the lobby of the Federal Building, it was mayhem. There must have been 50 to 100 people, representatives from all of the television networks, the major newspapers and wire services—all there wanting to do a story on N Reactor, the Chernobyl of the United States. So I got on the phone to Washington, DC and I said, look, we’ve got a problem here. Because we had been told, do not talk to the press about this. This is one of the few times when I was manager here that we were ever given instructions from Washington about how to interact and how to manage the sites. The managers had much greater authority then than they do now. And there was only one manager here at that point in time, as opposed to three that they have now. So we had a lot of leeway, but we’d been told, don’t talk about it because it’s very sensitive; it’s international news and we’re concerned about it. So when I called and said we have this mob scene in the lobby all wanting to talk about and go see the N Reactor, they said, don’t talk to them. Don’t do anything. I got back on the phone and I said, look, there’s stories that are going to be coming out of here. They can either be based on fact or they can be based upon fiction. If they’re based upon fiction, it’s not going to be pretty. And it’s going to be inaccurate. And I said, look, I will not speculate at all on what happened at Chernobyl. I don’t know. I care, but I’m not going to say a thing about that. I just want to explain how N Reactor works and what its safety features are, so that they can see for themselves. So reluctantly but finally, they relented and said, okay, you can show them. Go take them out. So we got a big bus. We put everybody on the bus—it was multiple buses. And we went out to N Reactor. And as you know, that’s about an hour’s drive out. But they were chomping at the bit. And I can remember the look on their faces when they saw—I think they were expecting a little Quonset huts with steam rising out of vents and out of chimneys and all the rest. And when they see this massive building—and in fact we were able to open one of the doors, which was three feet thick of concrete and steel. They looked at that and they were kind of amazed. And I explained to them that although commercial reactors have a system called containment, which is a big steel dome, production reactors don’t. It’s called confinement. It’s different. So it leads to speculation. Well, you know, containment’s going to keep it in; confinement’s not going to do it. And I was pointing out how we had ways of safely venting steam and pressure so it wouldn’t build up, so it couldn’t explode. And we went through all the safety systems, showed them in the inside, the face of the reactor. And consequently, the next several days in USA Today—I mean, it was front page stuff. But at least it was based upon, well, you know, here are all these safety features. It still raised a lot of issues and concerns because nobody knew what caused Chernobyl, so how could we say it couldn’t happen here? We could only say, here are all the safety systems we have to prevent something like that from happening here. Now, ultimately, we found out over time, that what happened at Chernobyl was a physical characteristic called a positive void coefficient. But basically something that didn’t exist in the physics out at N Reactor. But the damage was done. We did need to do some safety upgrades at N Reactor, which we did. But ultimately, in 1988 I believe it was, the Secretary of Energy, John Harrington, in testifying before Congress announced that the US had now produced so much plutonium that we were in fact, quote, awash in plutonium and didn’t need to produce any more. And quite frankly, with that being the case, we no longer had a justification for operating N Reactor. And ultimately it was shut down. To this day, I applaud the hard work and dedication of all the people out at N Reactor. They worked on the safety upgrades and the operation of that reactor, they worked extremely hard and were very, very proud of the operation of that reactor. I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to those people. They did a great job.
Franklin: There’s several things that strike me as really interesting that I want to return to in what you just said about Chernobyl and N. One was one of the last things, that John Harrington, awash with plutonium; the US had produced enough. Did you agree with that statement then? That we were—because that would be, I mean, your boss or boss’s boss.
Lawrence: Quite frankly, I didn’t know what the total plutonium numbers were for the country. I didn’t know what the total demand was. I do know that plutonium has a very long half-life and sooner or later, you’ve got to have more than you need. We had thousands and thousands of nuclear warheads then. So, I mean, I didn’t know for sure, but I knew at some point we were going to reach it, and quite frankly felt we probably had overshot. So I did not disagree with Secretary Harrington on that.
Franklin: Okay, because I mean, we had passed mutually assured destruction quite a long—
Lawrence: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: And I guess, we know a lot more now about our stockpile then than we did then. But it’s a very interesting way to phrase that. We’re awash in—
Lawrence: Yeah, I mean, it conjures up an image that you really don’t want to have.
Franklin: Yeah. I wanted to return to the Chernobyl thing. It strikes me as interesting that this reaction of don’t talk to the press, which is—you can understand in some way, because you don’t want misinformation. But isn’t that the same kind of criticism that we would level at the Soviets? That they were clamming up and not saying anything, and we wished that they were saying something? So this reaction to not say anything on our side is—could have been seen as—you know—being too controlling maybe perhaps?
Lawrence: Well, I mean, it went against my instincts, but it’s understandable. The Soviets were the one who had the accident. Now, if we had had an accident and they said, don’t talk to them, I would have been incensed. But basically, we were just going along and people want to come in and try to write a story and say, you’re just like Chernobyl. Well, in a sense, we didn’t know what Chernobyl was, how could we have definitely refuted that? So I can understand their perspective, because, quite frankly, some people at other sites had been quoted by the press as saying, well, we think this is what happened at Chernobyl, or that happened at Chernobyl. And it was just—it was getting out of hand. So I understood that. That was—my point was, I’m not going to talk at all about Chernobyl, because I don’t know. I do know N Reactor. I do know how it works, and I do know its safety features; that’s all I’m going to talk about. And I was awfully glad they let me do it.
Franklin: That’s good, yeah. I’m wondering if you could talk about—being in charge of the Site here, I’m wondering if you could talk about the effect of Chernobyl on employee morale at Hanford. Did you notice a particular change—what changed as a result of—
Lawrence: I really don’t think I saw any change in the behavior of the people here. They were going about their work. They knew the systems and the procedures and the processes they worked by, the protections that they were given. I’ll tell you candidly one thing that always bothered me then and it bothers me today, is that sometimes people, they get off work and they act somewhat cavalier or bravado about the work they do. Whether it’s to impress somebody or what, I don’t know. But they say, oh yeah, we deal with this. You know, handling it not as seriously as it needs to be. I know on the job, they do and they have to. But then like a macho reaction at the Gaslight Tavern or something like that talking about what they’re doing. That bothers me because it leaves a wrong impression with the public. And it’s certainly not the way we act onsite.
Franklin: I guess I’d like to maybe rephrase that question. Did you see like maybe a level of—or rise of kind of the fatigue of workers, maybe thinking that anti-nuclear folks or that there was a new public perception that this was really unsafe or that there was really an imminent danger at Hanford? Do you think that weighed on—did that weigh on you, or did that weigh on anybody else?
Lawrence: Well, I think there was a sense on their part that there was an overreaction, that people were, in a way, paranoid and exaggerating the risk. They knew the risk. The people who work here know the risk. But they also know the precautions, so they can balance it out. And consequently, they felt like there was an overreaction. But even before Chernobyl occurred, there was an event that put the Site under somewhat of a microscope and an intense scrutiny, and that would have been, I believe it was September of 1985. Now, Chernobyl happened in April of ’86; this was September of 1985 on a Sunday, The Spokesman Review newspaper in Spokane came out with a multiday series on what they called the downwinders. Basically, they were interviewing and writing stories about an area across the Columbia River in Eltopia, Mesa, where farmers had experienced or felt they had experienced undue health effects—a number of health effects and cancers, and even some wildlife—some of their livestock being born with—there was reports of double heads and the like. And this was a major news piece done by a reporter called Karen Dorn Steele, and quite frankly she did an excellent job of researching this and writing it up. And I—you know, this is the first any of us had heard about this. That was on a Sunday-Monday. So, again, trying to engage on this topic, that Thursday, just several days after it had come out, we had a public meeting over at the Edwin Markham Middle School in Eltopia, across the river, with the public to say, we’re here. What are your concerns? This is—let us tell you what we’ve been able to measure and monitor, and you tell us what your concerns are. And I had some people from Battelle who—we put out an annual monitoring report saying, here are the releases, here are the quantities, here’s how they compare with standards and the like. It was somewhat emotional. You know, people are worried about their health and people dying of cancer and the like. But we also knew that we, in our numbers—we weren’t showing anything that should have resulted in something like that. During that meeting, one of the farmers who had been prominently noted in the article, his name was Tom Bailey, he actually got up and said, well, okay, we’re not saying that you’re doing that to us now, or that you’re intentionally doing anything now. But what happened in the past? What happened back in the ‘50s? When he said that, I realized that, although we had monitoring reports going back to the Manhattan Project—here’s what people were measuring and monitoring and releasing—most of those had been classified secret. And they had never been declassified. It wasn’t malicious; it’s just not a simple process to declassify a document. But I knew because of the extent of time involved, they could be. So, I then at that meeting said, you know, if you want to know, we can go back, we can review and declassify those documents and make them available so you can actually see what was being done. That seemed to both surprise but also satisfy. So we came back and started the process of declassifying monitoring reports going back to the mid-1940s. That is a time-consuming and expensive process. But we were doing it. And we were keeping the public—I used to have monthly press availabilities at the Federal Building and we’d talk about that. But we didn’t really have the first batch of documents, which was 19,000 pages deep, ready to release until February. Now, one thing I’d like to make very clear and to get on the record: we’re in the process of doing that—time-consuming and expensive—but in January, one month before we completed and released the documents, a Freedom of Information request was filed for those documents by an environmental group. I’m not certain of who it is, so I won’t say who it was. But it was an environmental group, filed a Freedom of Information request. And we said, wait a minute. We are releasing these; it’ll be ready next month—the first batch. The reason I raise that is because subsequently, to this day, I hear from time to time people say, you released those documents—they were forced out of you by the Freedom of Information request. And I say, that is just not true. We had—if you go and check the record, we had committed to doing that a long time before. Again, getting back to credibility—it was easy to make that charge. In fact, I had National Geographic call me about ten years ago checking a story and that specific point. Because they didn’t know if it was right or not and they were able to research it and confirm it. But anyway, we were able to release those documents. But when those documents came out—and this was a mistake on my part—there was a lot of information there, but where was the understanding? Where was the, if you want to call it, education of the public, so they could understand what they were reading? And very quickly, it was found that one of the monitoring reports from 1949 had talked about something called the Green Run, where fuel that had been cooled for shorter than normal, so there were radioactive elements in it, was dissolved and more radioactivity went up, intentionally, through the stack. Some of the background as to why that was done had to be deleted—because it was still classified. When this document—when that report was found and the Green Run was discussed, there was speculation that it was associated with human experimentation: let’s release it and see what happens to the public when it hits them. That was not the case at all. In fact, I knew from reading the documents, they had delayed the Green Run because unfavorable weather conditions that they thought might be harmful to the public. But nonetheless, since certain portions had to be deleted because of classification, we couldn’t really explain it to people. And that created quite an uproar. It’s normal and naturally you would expect people to think you’re trying to intentionally harm the public or experiment on the public. Ultimately, what we decided to do was that, even though we could not tell the public the intent of the Green Run, congressmen and senators from Washington and Oregon, by purpose of their position, have clearance and can be told. So I went back to Washington, DC with a person here from the lab and in a classified conference room in the rotunda of the US Capitol, we had the entire delegations from Washington and Oregon there, and we were able to explain to them the classified reason why the experiment was done and why it was still classified today. Tom Foley, who was later to become the Speaker of the House, from Spokane, more or less led the group. He appreciated it, but he pushed back. He says, I’ve got to have more to tell the public than that. I have to be able to tell them whether we know, but we can’t tell you. You’ve got to give me a little bit to tell them as to why it’s so classified. So I was able to get on the phone, again, back to the department, talk to them about it. And ultimately we were able to explain that the reason it was done was to allow the US government to improve their methods for determining and detecting what the Soviet Union was doing with their production program. Ultimately, it became known, if you measure the iodine and the cesium, you could cut back and see what they’re producing. And the reason it was still classified was that we were still, back in 1986, using that technique for nuclear non-proliferation detection around the world. So it’s since been declassified, but that was the reason. I felt that was a good use of our government and our representatives to represent the people and be able to explain to the people what was going on. But ultimately that whole—all those documents led us to create something called the Northwest Citizens Forum for Defense Waste, which was 25 individuals picked from a broad cross-section: academia, industry, church leaders—to be given the information and to be briefed on the information and ask and have answers provided for any questions they have. So they could act as the public’s representatives on what was being done. And that ultimately turned into all of the citizens’ groups that are formed at the DOE sites now. Where you have—here it’s called the HAB, the Hanford Advisory Board. But it was the first ever citizens’ group to oversee and look at what was going on at the DOE sites.
Franklin: Great. Thank you for that. That’s really illuminating. Wasn’t it still a calculated risk, though? Sorry, the Green Run, the actual action itself. Certainly there’s still, I think, in the mind of a lot of people—even though it may have been check the release to see how much the Soviets were releasing, there still is a real calculated risk, though. Or do you think that there’s still a calculated risk there—that there could have been some environmental or human population damage resulting from a higher-than-average—or kind of breaking protocol that was set to release that much contaminate?
Lawrence: Well, based on what I was able to look at and the rationale and how it was done, they were doing it at levels such that it would be a fraction of what the public was allowed to be exposed to. Even with that higher amount. It would just be a fraction. And that’s why when weather conditions weren’t right, and they felt it would rise above that, they didn’t do it. There are always risks. And were the standards that they were a fraction of, were they right, were they wrong, were they conservative, were they not strong enough? I mean, hindsight, you can go back and ask all those questions. But based upon the knowledge that they had at the time, they were being conservative. That also happened to be at the time when we were doing atmospheric testing at the Nevada Test Site. And you’re setting off nuclear bombs that people are going out and watching, you know, maybe 20 miles away. I’m not saying that’s right, and we know now it was wrong. But it was a fraction of the exposure that might have existed there.
Franklin: Right. I get—yes. That’s very true and that’s a good point. I guess it just—the only thing that still strikes, at least in my mind, as a difference is that they’re informing the public about the nuclear bombs so people can go and watch them. Whereas the Green Run was kind of this—I think that maybe—
Lawrence: Yeah, it was secret. No.
Franklin: It came out after the fact. And it was like, what else could these guys be hiding? Because, like you said, there was already that level of mistrust there.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Franklin: It just seems like that event can never really shake that level of mistrust in some ways with some people.
Lawrence: In hindsight, that’s true, but it was a very different time. A very different time.
Franklin: Of course. That’s just an interesting legacy. So, thank you for covering Chernobyl so much. I just have one more question. What role did Hanford play in assisting the Soviets—Hanford and Battelle play in assisting the Soviets with Chernobyl? Wasn’t there a team—
Lawrence: None at the time.
Franklin: --that went over?
Lawrence: None at the time. The Soviets didn’t ask for any. Ultimately, and actually when I came back to the Tri-Cities in 1999 and eventually started working for the Pacific Northwest National Lab, under my responsibility was the team we had at Chernobyl helping to build the new sarcophagus, the confinement structure, that now has been completed and rolled over the destroyed reactor. And I’ve been to Chernobyl a number of times and visited on that project. So we were involved in that. But I don’t recall us being asked to provide any assistance or having provided any assistance at that point in time.
Franklin: I was wondering—I’d like to—Chernobyl made me think of another incident, maybe hop back in time real quick and get your perceptions on that. You weren’t here, but I know you were still working in the nuclear industry, and I’m wondering maybe if you’re going to guess what I’m going to ask about, but I’m wondering, in the late ‘70s, the Three Mile Island scare. I’m wondering if you—because you were not here at the time of Three Mile Island, right, you would have been back east. But I’m wondering if you could talk about the legacy of that incident and how that affected people’s perceptions of nuclear—
Lawrence: Oh, it affected everybody’s perceptions of nuclear because—everyone in the nuclear industry had gotten a little sloppy, implying an accident cannot happen, it will not happen. You know, we’ve got all these precautions; the risk is so small, they’re non-existent. Well, nothing is non-existent. Everything is a risk, and if enough things go wrong, yes, you can have a problem. And they certainly had it there. Much more serious than they ever expected it to be. But in hindsight, the fact of the matter is, the systems all worked to contain it. There were never any releases harmful to the public. There was never a single fatality or anything associated with the Three Mile Island accident. I can remember exactly where I was when I heard about it. I was getting ready to go take a run at lunchtime in the AEC—or it would have been a DOE at that time—building. And someone said, hey, did you hear they had some reactor incident going on up in Pennsylvania? You know, it started then and several days later I was getting calls from good friends who we were godparents of their child who lived in Hershey saying, should we evacuate? And I said, follow what the governor says. I really don’t have any firsthand knowledge, but it really did shake people’s fears, because it led people to say, you said it couldn’t happen and it did. And that’s always a problem.
Franklin: That’s such a tough issue of framing, though, right? Because you can either say, well, it could happen but we have really good safeguards so it probably won’t, which leaves open the door in people’s minds to something happening. Or you can say, well, it won’t, we’ve got this under control and it won’t happen. How do you frame—framing disaster seems to be a very tricky subject. Or framing the possibility of disaster.
Lawrence: Yeah. In part, because you can say, just looking at risk and probability, you can say you’re more likely to be hit by lightning than to die from this. And you’re willing to accept one but not the other. It’s what people are associated with. And if they think, I don’t have to deal with that, I don’t even want to deal with that minimal risk. I just don’t want to do it. That’s understandable; it’s part of human nature.
Franklin: It kind of comes to, we see this a lot in current day in dealing with—well, won’t go into that. But there seems to be a—there’s these fact-based arguments but they can’t always counter the emotion-based arguments. And a lot of the response to nuclear seems, in some cases to be emotionally-based and not fact—and immune, almost inoculated against the factual side of it. Which seems to bother many who have a lot of intimate knowledge, a lot of people who worked at Hanford who know the risks can’t ever seem to communicate that to the critics. I wonder if you could expand on that at all, being someone who would have been trying to communicate that to critics of Hanford. And how you’ve dealt with that fact-versus-emotion in your career.
Lawrence: Well you see it—you still see it today. Fukushima is an excellent example of that. Assist you with the nuclear accident first. That tidal wave hits, completely washes over, and the plant loses all power. Now, most importantly that was an avoidable accident. Even as hugely severe as a tsunami was, if they just had have had the secondary generators higher and separated more from the plant, they wouldn’t have lost power, and the reactors would have been fine. In this country, we have that requirement. They didn’t have it there. So that reactor accident, which was catastrophic, it was devastating, could have been prevented if rules that we have here had have been used there. But the other thing—and this is more to the point you made—18,000 people were killed by the tsunami, by the flood, by all of the devastation caused by the tsunami. None were caused by the nuclear accident. And yet all of the attention is on the nuclear accident. And it’s not like, oh, but there’ll be 18,000 in the future—there won’t. You know, looking at the numbers, it’s hard to say if there’ll be any. And people are evacuated now, when perhaps they don’t even need to be, but it’s out of the fear of whatever’s left there. And consequently, because of that, it’s causing stress that have led to heart attacks and have led to fatalities. Are they caused by the nuke—they’re not caused by radiation, but they’re caused by fear of radiation or caused by fear of the displacement. So how do you put that in perspective, where as a nuclear accident has gotten all the attention, but a tsunami that killed 18,000 people, it’s sort of like, well, that’s an act of nature? And so, I really don’t know how to balance that. I do know that on NOVA last month, they had a very good show about that. Because nuclear is a carbon-free source of baseload electricity, and if we’re going to deal with climate change, I know I believe and many people believe nuclear has to be part of the solution.
Franklin: Yeah, I would personally agree with you. I wondered—so, moving past Chernobyl then, you mentioned that as kind of a major—you know, it definitely is a major event in regards to people’s perceptions of Hanford. And you mentioned in ’88 this—awash in plutonium. How did it play out after that? What was the drawdown like? What happened in the community when that—when it was realized that Hanford was—the mission was going to change?
Lawrence: Well, you know, there was fear, because Hanford—the Tri-Cities over time, going back to the ‘50s and ‘60s had gone through booms and busts. And whenever Hanford production was up, the community was good; whenever it was down, homes were for sale, property values dropped and all the rest. So there was a feel, that was going to continue. And if N Reactor was shutting down, PUREX was down, it was going to happen to have a devastating effect on the economy again. Of course, what also happened at the same time was the commitment to the cleanup mission and the negotiation in signing the Tri-Party Agreement, which led to the cleanup mission here, which has continued and kept levels and funding levels right up to where they were and actually higher than in the production days. Maybe not employment necessarily, but it’s close. But also the Tri-Cities has significantly diversified from Hanford. Still very much—we get through $3 billion a year from the federal government between the Site and the national lab in this community, and that’s got huge benefits. But we’ve diversified quite a bit. But, getting to the Tri-Party Agreement, that was a direct result of a legal decision in Tennessee in 1985 that said that Department of Energy sites had to comply with national and state environmental rules. Up until that time, it had been assumed that the Atomic Energy Act, that the department operated under absolved us from that, or we did not have to do that. When that ruling came down, ultimately, it led to getting together with federal regulators in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and state regulators in the form of the Department of Ecology, to find out, okay, where are we in violation, what do we need to change, and how do we do that? You don’t do it instantaneously. Which, obviously, is clear. And that led to the negotiation and the ultimate signing in May of—May 15th of 1989 of the Tri-Party Agreement. But that has provided a rather steady employment, funding, and—you know, I realize it’s taking longer than people thought, it’s costing more than people thought. And fortunately, it’s not an urgent—it’s not the type of crisis where something has to be done immediately or here’s the catastrophic result. It’s a problem in slow motion that the main thing you want to do is get the solution right the first time. You don’t want to go hot with the Vit Plant and then find out it doesn’t work. Because you’ll never—you won’t get around to it again. So let’s make sure we’ve got it right. It’s been an enduring process, and I’m very pleased and proud of the enduring capabilities of the Tri-Party Agreement.
Franklin: And what was your role in the negotiation and signing of the Tri-Party Agreement?
Lawrence: Well, we—the Richland Operations Office had the responsibility and role of negotiating with EPA Region 10 and the Department of Ecology for what the cleanup agreement would look like and what it would entail. And we kept Washington, DC informed of what we were doing and we’d get feedback from them. But it was our main responsibility to do that. Initially a person by the name of Jerry White and then ultimately Ron Izatt who worked for me as division directors had that responsibility of negotiating. And they would brief me every other day and we would get involved. From time to time, I would have discussions with the head of ecology who was Chris Gregoire, who subsequently became governor of the state, on issues that they would rise to our level. Or with Robie Russell, who was the head of EPA regionally, on issues that would come up. But we eventually worked out, basically, the agreement: this would be done and this was the timeframe for doing it. Then it came time to saying, okay, this is what we’ve got. It was in December of 1978 when we had pretty much wrapped everything up.
Franklin: Sorry—’88?
Lawrence: I’m sorry. ’88, yes, I’m sorry. December of ’88. So I went over to Lacey near Olympia where Ecology is located, to meet with Chris Gregoire and her team, and I had Ron Izatt and a lawyer from our team, to talk about what we were going to do. And at that meeting—it was a Friday afternoon—they said, okay, what we want to do now is we want to take this to a court and have a judge bless it, make it law: this is what has to be done. And we couldn’t go along with that, and the reason was that the lawyer for the federal government is the Department of Justice. And anytime you go to court as a US government agency, the Department of Justice represents you. They do not believe in friendly settlements. They will fight everything. I don’t mean that to be critical; that’s just the approach they take. And I said to her, I said, Chris, if you insist on taking this to court, we, the Department of Energy and I, lose all ability to deal with this, and it goes into the hands of lawyers who get paid to fight it. And you’re going to win. You’ve got the law on your side. But it’s going to be two, three years from now at great expense. I said, why don’t we just sign it as an agreement, shake hands on it, and you wait for us to violate it, and then take us to court. And she—we went back and forth on that issue. EPA, by the way, had stepped back and said, if you two can reach agreement, we’ll go along with anything that you say. Because they knew we had the tough issues. And so finally, you know, she said, no, we need it in court. These were her instructions, or this is where the governor wanted to go. And I said, well, Chris, can we take this to the governor? And, fortunately, through my tenure here, I had wonderful relations, a great respect for Governor Booth Gardner, who was the governor at that time. And she said, sure, we can take it to him. Subsequently, the following Friday I went over by myself with her and we met with Governor Gardner in his office in Olympia in the state capitol. And I went through the message of, you know, I don’t have the authority to sign this in court. If it goes to court, Justice will fight it, you’ll win, but it will be two years from now or whatever. Didn’t sway the governor. You know, it was clear: no, we want this—we want the law behind it and make it in a court of law. I must have said the same thing three times. Always slightly different. Maybe I warmed him, I don’t know what. But finally the governor looked at Chris and said, well, Chris, could you live with it as an agreement until if and when they fail to live up to it and then go to court? And she said, you know, Governor, if you can, I can. And the governor says, okay, that’s what we’ll do. And so it was an act of faith and it worked for a long time before it ended up in court. But we would not have had the Tri-Party Agreement when we did in the manner in which we did without his willingness and her willingness to concede on that point and let us move on with it.
Franklin: And so when the Tri-Party Agreement was established, what did that lay out for the future of Hanford?
Lawrence: Basically, it took the entire Site and all the areas in which we were in non-compliance, whether it was currently operating sites—even though the plant wasn’t operating, there were still facilities that were operating that fell under the state, or old sites which fell under EPA. All of those things, and when they would be cleaned up, the schedule and process for doing it. And that’s what it laid out. It also laid out, like, the ability to modify the agreement as you went forward. Because the simple fact was, we were operating with nowhere near the degree of knowledge and specificity you would need to have hard-and-fast deadlines. And the other thing was, we didn’t know, and we still don’t know today, what the funding will be year to year. Okay, or problems that will come up. But there was a process in there to move with it and to let it happen. And that was, I think, one of the best features of the Tri-Party Agreement. And it required parties to act in good faith. And I’m pleased it did.
Franklin: Excellent. Was there anything in there about any of the history at Hanford or preserving any of the historic activity at Hanford, whether—keeping buildings there or documenting the history in some way, or saving equipment or anything used in the process?
Lawrence: Not really, no. I mean, this was all compliance. This was an enforcement order. But we did make sure that B Reactor was going to be one of the last things to be—actually, originally, they wanted all of the reactors out on the Site by the rivers to be decontaminated as best they could, and then they wanted to dig under the reactors, bring in the big crawlers they use at Cape Canaveral to move missiles, put it under there, lift up the block, and take it to the center of the Site. And I thought, oh, my good—and that was to be done early in the process. And we said, let’s move that ‘til about 25 years from now. Of course, subsequently they’ve learned how to cocoon and maybe that’ll be found to be good enough. But, I mean, that was—we didn’t have the level of specificity or knowledge or information that you need to do a good cleanup then as we do now.
Franklin: I know that the B Reactor Museum Association was founded in the early ‘90s, but were there whispers then when you were signing that agreement or afterwards about saving B Reactor or saving something onsite as kind of a testament to the production at Hanford?
Lawrence: There very well may have been. I just—I wasn’t cognizant of it.
Franklin: Sure. So when did you leave working at the Richland office?
Lawrence: I left in July of 1990.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so you were—and why did you leave? Where did you go after?
Lawrence: Well, in part, I went to work for a company in Colorado that was doing cleanup work. But I was only there less than a year when the state department offered me a diplomatic post in Vienna, Austria. Because that was right after the first Gulf War, when they discovered that the Iraqis had a clandestine nuclear program, and they wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency, who was supposed to monitor things like that, to become stronger and more efficient and effective. And the State Department decided that they wanted a person with technical knowledge and ability but who also had had some international experience, which I had in the ‘70s under a Carter program doing international negotiations. So they called me up and I went to Vienna, then, to do that. I left here, one, because the managers’ authorities had been greatly, greatly reduced.
Franklin: Was that a result of the Tri-Party Agreement, or just from the shift or production to cleanup?
Lawrence: In part, it was due to the Tri-Party Agreement in that as we were negotiating the Tri-Party Agreement—we had the responsibility for doing that here, but kept Washington informed of our activities and getting their agreement as we went along. And right after those meetings that I told you about with Chris Gregoire and Governor Gardner, that was in December. In January of that year, a new Secretary of Energy was coming in. Admiral Watkins had been appointed to be the Secretary of Energy. So he was transitioning in, and there was an acting secretary. Her name was Donna Fitzpatrick, who was interacting with him as this transition occurred. Acting Secretary Fitzpatrick—they all knew what we were doing here. But as it happens, the agreement was formally signed in May 15th, 1989. But three months prior to that—what would that have been, February—is when—you have to give a three-month notice before you do something like that, for public comment and the like. As it turns out, everyone was so pleased with coming to agreement that the announcement of agreement was made in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, DC. Governor Gardner was there, I was there, representatives of DC and the Department were there, EPA were there, and it was announced we had reached agreement and it would be signed in three months in May. You know, after the formal comment period and any changes that had to occur. Well, in the normal question-and-answer period that went on, with that announcement, the State said, this is going to be commit the government to be spending $25 billion for the cleanup of Hanford. Now, it just so happened that the very next day was Admiral Watkins’ first day as Secretary of Energy. During that first day, he was to meet with all of the site managers, including myself. That morning, when it appeared in the paper that Washington State says it’s committed to paying $25 billion—whatever that means—the Office of Management and Budget, which, evidently had been left in the dark—I don’t know. I had no responsibility to inform them. They called him up and said, what in the world’s going on over there? What are you doing committing us to $25 billion? We go into the meeting with the new secretary. And he proceeded to just chew me up and chew me down as to, this is the worst thing we’ve ever done, how could we be so bad and stupid, and all this other stuff. And I just sat there, and—you know, you can’t push back, really. You just think—and unfortunately, the former acting secretary, Donna Fitzpatrick was sitting next to him. She knew all about it, but she couldn’t do anything. And it really just set a very bad tone with the secretary. Subsequently, however, as the kudos started coming in about what a good agreement this was and how it showed good cooperation and compliance by the Department, Admiral Watkins was very happy to take the credit for the Tri-Party Agreement. But life was a little uncomfortable out here. And I decided then I was going to be leaving. But I didn’t want to leave in the first year, because I wanted to make sure the Tri-Party Agreement got off to a good start. So, subsequently when I did leave, a lot of it was about the fact that it just wasn’t the same job. And quite frankly, a very important tenet of any management job is never accept responsibility that you don’t have the authority to fulfill. If you don’t have the authority, but have the responsibility, it just doesn’t work. And I didn’t, and I left.
Franklin: Interesting. How did you come back to the area?
Lawrence: That’s an interesting story as well. After I left Vienna in 1985, I was hired by—
Franklin: Sorry, you mean 1995.
Lawrence: ’95, I’m sorry, yeah, I have my years mixed. 1995. I went to work for a company called BNFL, which stands for British Nuclear Fuels, Limited. And they had bought a company in Los Alamos, New Mexico and they asked me to be president of it. I was running the company, and then they subsequently asked me to move back to their Washington, DC headquarters for their US operations as the chief operating officer, which I did. But that was also the same time when BNFL had gotten the contract to design the Vitrification Plant for the Hanford Site. And they had brought in engineers and managers from the UK to head up that project here in the Tri-Cities. So, I’ve gone back to Washington, DC as the chief operating officer of BNFL, Inc., which is the US component. And shortly—not so long after it—I was there less than a year—the manager of the project in Richland came back. And they had signed an agreement of what they were going to do and the government was going along with it. It was basically, for $6.5 billion they would build and operate the plant and process the first so many million gallons of waste, for $6.5 billion. When that manager came back, he indicated—he said, you know—he’s British; I’m not going to do a British accent—but he said, you know, I really—I’m not fitting in well with the community. I just don’t understand those people out there. I don’t fit in well with the community. We need somebody out there who understands things. Well, I love this community. I know this community. They were very, very good to me and my family when we were here. So I raised my hand and said, I know those people. This was our biggest project by far for our company, I’d be willing to go out and head up the project. And so subsequently, I came out to head up the Vit Plant. Within a week of getting here, I had to go and report to the new Office of River Protection, which had responsibility for it, what the status was of our cost estimates. I had only been here a week, so they give me the numbers. And I asked the—are they aware of this? Yeah, they’re aware of this. So I went in and, oh, all hell broke loose. Because the number—it had risen. It was higher than 6.5. And Dick French, who was the head of the project, rightly so, says, I can’t—this is terrible. Your first report—and it’s over budget already. And I knew Dick, and I understood his position. And basically, I said, let me go back and find out what’s going on. I was told you were on board with this. You obviously are not. Let me find out. I subsequently found out that there had been an arbitrary 20% cut in their estimates, thinking they were just going to drive things harder and shave things off and make it cheaper. And I had a—obviously, I had a major problem with this. Because in the beginning, you don’t shave back. You have contingency that’s built in and you work off. It doesn’t work the other way. And so I’d moved back here, we bought a house, I’m running the—and this project is going downhill quick. What was worse was that I tried to tell BNFL, we need to go to the Department and say, this number, $6.5 billion, for the plant and operations of it is not going to work. We need to renegotiate. We need to do something different. And I got nothing but pushback. We would not do this. And I was even—I said, you know, if we don’t do something, we’re going to be fired. And they said, they can’t fire us. They’re not going to fire us. And I said, I’m sorry, I said, I can’t continue to operate like that. So I resigned. Resigned from the project. Didn’t have another job, but I figured, I’ll find something. But I can’t continue with this. And within two months, Secretary Richardson had fired BNFL. Fortunately, a couple months after that, Battelle and Pacific Northwest National Lab hired me to run their nuclear programs. That’s how I came back, and that’s how I spent my first two years back. As managing a dying project and then transitioning to a new job.
Franklin: And how long did you work at PNNL?
Lawrence: Well, I worked from 2000 up until 2008. And during that period, I had responsibility—I was the associate lab director for energy. But in the latter part of that timeframe, I was also deputy lab director for facilities and was responsible for the putting together and funding and getting approved the new—they called it a consolidated lab—facilities that are just north of Horn Rapids Road and two private facilities that are on the campus. And then Battelle asked if I’d be willing to lead a team to manage the national nuclear lab in the United Kingdom. They had put together a team with two other companies to do that. And I said I’d be willing to do that. I had spent time in Europe already. And I went over and subsequently we won the contract in the early 2009. So in 2009 and ’10, I was the director of the national nuclear lab in the UK. And then I retired and came back and retired here in West Richland.
Franklin: Wow, great. Well, thank you so much, Mike. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you’d like to talk about?
Lawrence: Well, I’d like to get on record that I’ve been very, very fortunate in my life to hold some very interesting positions and to work for some phenomenal people. But the job that I enjoyed the most was as manager of the Richland Operations Office. There was a spirit, a camaraderie, a support, a community spirit that I felt there that I’ve just—as much as I’ve enjoyed my other jobs, nothing quite as good as that. It was really, really enjoyable, and aside from my wife and family, probably there was nothing better that had ever happened to us than to move to this area and be involved in these activities. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for coming in today.
Lawrence: Okay, very good. Thank you.
Franklin: All right, yeah.
Lawrence: Thanks.
Franklin: Yeah. That was a great--
View interview on Youtube.
Tom Hungate: Rolling.
Robert Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Keith Klein on February 7th, 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?
Keith Klein: Keith Klein. K-L-E-I-N.
Franklin: Okay. And K-E-I-T-H?
Klein: K-E-I-T-H, yeah.
Franklin: Okay, great. Tell me how and why you came to work at the Hanford Site.
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.
Franklin: Great. Just for those who might not know, could you say what WIPP stands for and what its mission was?
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.
Franklin: When you came out in the early ‘70s as an intern for FFTF construction, what did you do?
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.
Franklin: Mm-hm. Thank you. So you came to RL—Richland—in ’99, then, and you were the site—the DOE site manager.
Klein: Correct.
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.
Klein: That’s a huge topic, Robert.
Franklin: Sure.
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.
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.
Klein: Well, this was not my territory.
Franklin: Okay.
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, 10-6, 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.
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.
Klein: High-level waste was assigned to the separate office, so that really wasn’t my—
Franklin: Oh, okay, so—
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Franklin: Great.
Klein: If we get out of the way.
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.
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]
Franklin: Did you encounter resistance in Washington, DC for—
Klein: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: --for this idea? How did you overcome that, to help to show people the value of this?
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.
Franklin: So you say at the time, which—what time was this?
Klein: This was at the time when we were struggling with, how do we legitimize preserving B Reactor?
Franklin: Do you know around what year or years this would have been?
Klein: I’m going to guess it was 2003, 2004 timeframe.
Franklin: Okay. Sorry to interrupt.
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.
Franklin: It’s okay. I was just trying to get a general sense. So you said Skip Gosling?
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.
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—
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.
Franklin: Great. How did you become involved with the REACH Museum?
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.
Franklin: Okay. Is there—sorry. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford? Or just Hanford in general?
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.
Franklin: Great. Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention?
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.
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.
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]
Franklin: Well, thank you, Keith. I really appreciate it.
Klein: Yeah, you bet, Robert.
View interview on Youtube.
Northwest Public Television | Gustafson_Leonard
Robert Bauman: We're ready to go. So if we could start by having you say your name and spell your last name for us.
Leonard Gustafson: Okay. You ready?
Bauman: Yep.
Gustafson: Okay. I'm Leonard Gustafson. Last name is spelled G-U-S-T-A-F-S-O-N.
Bauman: All right. And my name's Robert Bauman. And today's date is October 16th, as we clarified, 2013. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So let's start, if we could, by having you tell us when you came to Hanford, what brought you here, how you heard about the place.
Gustafson: Okay.
Bauman: Why you came here.
Gustafson: Well, we do that almost any direction. I knew about the place so for a couple reasons, but the main reason was that some of my fellow chemical engineers from Montana State University had come over a year or two earlier. And so when I finished up at Bozeman and started looking for a job, it seemed like I might take at least a temporary assignment at this wartime installation until I found a real job. So I arrived on October 15th of 1950. It's been a little while ago isn't it? 63 years.
Bauman: Almost your anniversary, yeah.
Gustafson: Went through, I guess, the normal procedures. Found out about what was going on in the plant, and security, and a little bit about how to deal with radioactive materials. And then I was assigned to my first tasks. I was what they called a Supervisor-in-Training, and went into the operations part of the chemical processing department. My first building that I went to was T Plant. The T Plant, the bismuth phosphate separation plant. And about all I did there was so learn how to detect contamination and clean it up. I always tell the story that the operators really loved having these young supervisors-in-training come in, because they could hand them a bucket of acetone, or something like that, and bundle of rags, and a cutie pie—which was our instrument for detecting radiation—and send us out to scrub the deck. In the separation plants, and this was common after the crane operator removes the blocks from the cells, he always leaves a little bit of contamination on the deck. So that's a rather regular job. So I learned how to handle the cutie pie. And how to go through the—how to dress. Put us in our white coveralls and learn how to go through what we called at that time, the SWP, Special Work Permit. It's been called many different things. Anyhow, that started me out. After I believe it was about two months in T Plant, I was assigned to the startup of the REDOX operation. Now the REDOX was the first of the solvent extraction plants. So it was essentially near completion there at the end of 1950, the beginning of 1951. So we went through the final inspection processes and started up. And then I was assigned to one of the four operating shifts that operated that building. This was extremely interesting. It was like a great big pilot plant laboratory, and we chemical engineers essentially had the responsibility for operating. We moved into that plant without having much time for a lot of training and procedural preparation. So in order to at least establish some kind of order beyond simple procedures. The operation was strictly conducted by the engineers, by the supervisors. Each shift had eight shift supervisors and two senior supervisors. And initially all the operation was conducted by the supervisors. The operators were just learning at that stage. After, oh, year or so, the operators were ready to run the plant. We didn't need so many supervisors. So in late 1953, I went out on another rather interesting assignment. Engineering at that time was responsible for inspection. We didn't have anything like quality assurance organizations. So engineering inspectors took care of the required inspection of any materials or equipment that we were ordering from Hanford. I was assigned mostly out in the Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky area, New York. I spent a little over a year. It was a very active thing. Frequently I'd turn in an expense account for seven different locations in a week. So is this about--
Bauman: Yeah, this is great.
Gustafson: --where you want to go? I can cut things pretty short if you'd like.
Bauman: This is great. Keep going.
Gustafson: So anyhow, we got into some fabulous big plants and all this sort of thing. Learned a little more about how to build things. Because some of the time we were actually not only assigned for the final inspections, but we went right through all the manufacturing stages. I returned then to Richland in the beginning of 1955. By that time, the PUREX plant was nearing completion. That was the second of the big solvent extraction plants. So I was assigned for the startup and so on of that plant. My final assignment there was basically I was the operating supervisor for C shift. C shift was one of the four shifts that was responsible for operating the plant. By that time, the operators were pretty well trained, so I had about 18 or 19 operators and two chief operators. And there was one technical man also assigned to the shift. I'd have to look upon that assignment as probably the most responsible job I ever had, starting up and running that plant. The operating group was basically responsible for the main process. The shift crews have the responsibility to run it, unless there were some real serious problem or question, we have to find the answers and go ahead and do it. There were many experiences there, but I was--after a couple years, well, I'd been married in the process there at the end of ‘55. My wife was a teacher and it was getting to the point where shift work was not the most desirable. We'd touch base occasionally. So I moved into one of the engineering groups again in the separations department, process design and development. [UNKNOWN], just one who is still around, managed that group. A good friend. And so I spent a couple years in that work. We were basically responsible for new activities or problem activities that the engineering group was supposed to take care of to support the operations. So after two or three years there, I thought it was about time to see some more of the plant, so I moved on down to the 300 Area, and worked with the Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor. So I spent a couple three years there. So that had to be about 1960, 1961, somewhere in there. I didn't get the exact dates. So I went through the startup and operation of the Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor. Now this was not associated with plutonium production. This was really in support of the oncoming nuclear industry for power production, for electrical production. And the reason for the PRTR was to demonstrate that plutonium could be used as well as uranium-235 as the fissile fuel for commercial reactors. It was a successful project. And at that time, projects were completed on time and usually under budget. So it was a success as far as I'm concerned. After that plant is operating and they didn't have much need for me around anymore, I moved on out to the 100 Areas. And good friend of mine, Gene Astley, asked me one day what I was doing. I said, well, I guess I'm about ready to do something else. And so he said, well, come on out work for me for a while. So I went out to the 100 Areas, must've been ‘64 or ‘65, and worked largely with so water plant type problems and questions that were going on. Now we're getting into the area where we're getting about ready to--the Cold War was sort of winding up. So production wasn't the number one priority anymore. There were a lot of questions about what was the future of Hanford and so on at that time. So after working a couple three years out there, I guess not quite, I moved on down to the fuels department and worked with Charlie Mathis, the manager of fuels production at that time—this must've been about ‘65. And my main activity there was mostly planning, what are we going to do with the fuels manufacturing plants in the future? So very, very interesting and we worked along with—Roy Nielsen had a group that was overall Hanford planning at that time. So after a couple years there in the fuels department, I actually moved into Roy's group. And so this had to be ‘67, maybe ‘66, I'm not real sure. With that assignment, one of the things that was done at that time the AEC, countrywide, was studying and planning for what to do with the nuclear facilities and how they were going to support commercial electrical power generation. So they had a group down at Oak Ridge that was called the AEC Combined Operational Planning Group. And Hanford, as well as most of the sites, were responsible for providing two or three representatives. So I spent about a year and a half down there. That was in basically ‘68. Of course, that was quite fascinating, because we were looking at the overall AEC complex and what was the future for nuclear power, essentially. One of the things I got involved with were the nuclear power forecasts. I spend a lot of time at headquarters. Frank Baranowski was the head of the production division, essentially responsible for Hanford, Savannah River, Oak Ridge—all of the main production facilities. I spent some time with him every now and then. Very fine fellow. And so after year and half or so there, I felt it was about time to get back home. And we had actually moved the family there, so we moved completely and sold our house and rented in Oak Ridge. So we came back to Richland at I guess the end of ‘69. And one of the big activities at that time was the FFTF. So I again I went with the FFTF project. So I changed, I had been with Douglas United Nuclear, so at that time I went to Battelle who was responsible for the early FFTF bid. My good friends Astley and Condoda, who were the manager an engineering manager, they did not stay with the project. We Indians sort of stayed with it. That was when the AEC—the Milt Shaw years—decided that Battelle was not adequately competent to take on a project like that. They needed somebody with more, I guess, manufacturing and big project experience. So Westinghouse had been assigned to take over that responsibility by the AEC. So I then became a Westinghouse employee. Spent most of the next, I guess, ten years with the FFTF project until it was a complete and operating. By that time we're getting up to 1980 range. So those were interesting times. We had a lot particularly early conflict. The assigning of Westinghouse to take overlooked project didn't really satisfy what Milt Shaw was after. We had a rather severe conflict. Milt Shaw was finally ousted. I still don't know for sure who was the most influential in getting that because the project was floundering. We moved the AEC representatives from Washington, DC. The most closely associated came to Hanford and became essentially the FFTF project office on site. Most of the closely associated Westinghouse staff who had been in Pittsburgh moved to Hanford. And we were able to work over a local table rather than on the phone and at crazy meetings. And the FFTF came together quite well. I think it was very successful project. Perhaps we didn't finish it under budget, but we did well after it was reorganized. It started up and ran very successfully. Too bad that we couldn't find a better use for the plant. Of course, the liquid metal fast breeder program essentially fizzled. Let's see, from that—well, I'm getting pretty well along and I needed something maybe a little different. So I got into a rather, again, what I regard as an interesting assignment. Westinghouse there somewhere close to the period ‘78, ‘79, ‘80, had been assigned to run a nuclear quality assurance program office. And although Westinghouse Hanford was running that office, we were really a part of the AEC, or what became DoE. The work we did the next few years was largely to try and add something, coordinate the quality assurance programs around all of the sites. Lots of travel involved. Lots of lecturing. Lots of QA audits. I ran so many QA audits that I can't remember. Like I tell people, I got into more parts of Savannah River than most of the people who worked there. I think I was involved in at least 30 audits there over the years. This evolved into--that office—let’s see, it finally closed down in ’87, perhaps. And so I came back to a more conventional Hanford-type quality assurance and did that until I retired in ‘90. One of the last projects that I was on there was an SP-100. We were going to do a space reactor. And SP-100 was an interesting project, but it also never came to pass. Amazingly, ended up back in the PRTR building. Because we cleaned out some of the cells in the PRTR building and were going to put in a big vacuum tank there so we could simulate space for running this space reactor. Let's see, where'd I go from there? After I spent a little bit of time with a number of the waste program projects, including our own, and got into a little bit of the early vitrification plant. I retired in, what, December of ‘90. Spent the next three or four years doing part-time consulting. The main thing that I was associated with at that time was another interesting project. The only really commercial chemical reprocessing plant that was built was the West Valley plant, just south of Buffalo, New York. It was a small, but commercial, reprocessing plant. See, most of the reprocessing was shut down in 1970. And of course, that led to a lot of problems here at Hanford. Early '70s. I could go on about that for hours, but-- [LAUGHTER] Let's see. So I spent a lot of time at West Valley. And that was very separate. It didn't hit the newspapers. But that plant was completed. The waste that they had was vitrified into glass. And as far as I know, it's sitting there ready to go wherever. It could be up the mountain, but who knows. It's a good project in many ways.
Bauman: So you've had a long and varied career in many ways. A number of different assignments.
Gustafson: Yes, I think so. I think I was very lucky to see so much.
Bauman: I wanted to ask you a few questions about some of the things you worked on. So you said you worked at both REDOX and PUREX. Could you explain the solvent extraction, and what that means?
Gustafson: Yeah. Well, you know the purpose of our chemical processing, or chemical separation plants here at Hanford, is to take the fuel that has been irradiated in our reactors and extract from that the plutonium. And get the plutonium into a form so it can then go on down to Los Alamos for the bombs. So the chemical reprocessing plants essentially dissolve this uranium metal fuel that had been irradiated in the reactors, and a small amount of the uranium-238 has been converted into plutonium-239. And of course the atomic bombs can use either uranium-235 or plutonium-239 as their fissile source. So these plants are gigantic. They're 1,000 feet long, great big canyon buildings, as we called them. Basically just involve a lot of chemicals running from one end to the other. We start with the fuel and end up with--in the initial separation plants, they ended up with a waste stream that also included the uranium. Now we wanted to recover that uranium, so that early waste from the B and T Plants, as we refer it, these were the early bismuth phosphate separation plants. The waste from those reprocessed to recover the uranium. And the high level elements that we wanted to get rid of were put back into the waste tanks. But in both the REDOX and the PUREX processes, we actually extracted both the plutonium and uranium. So we ended up with two products. So the uranium could be immediately converted into UO-3 and then eventually back in the metal. And the plutonium could be converted into metal so it could be used for the bombs. So kind of an oversimplification there.
Bauman: And so your work there—your position there was operational management?
Gustafson: I was mostly associated with the direct operation. In the 200 Areas, except I said, after my PUREX assignment I was in just what we call the process design and development. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: And then you talked about this AEC combined operational planning group that you were part of in the late '60s. And you said, one of questions you were looking at was, what's the future of nuclear power? Did the group come up with any conclusions about that at the time in the late '60s, what the future of nuclear power was?
Gustafson: Well, I think we were quite optimistic about nuclear power at that time. Of course, also what was developing was resistance to nuclear power. So our forecasts were extremely optimistic. And although we did end up finally with about 120 operating power production plants in the United States, far short of what we expected. The government had assumed, basically, I guess, overall responsibility to see that the technology is okay. And in particular, to assure commercial operators that they will have enough enriched uranium to run their plants. Because we didn't need that weapons-type material anymore. But see at Oak Ridge they ended up the producing almost pure U-235 while we were producing pure—or near pure—plutonium-239. So either of those could be used for the bombs. But what happened with the commercial power, we had to use about 3% or 4% U-235. Only slightly enriched. But we still had to use enrichment plants, and the government had all the enrichment plants—basically, like Oak Ridge and the rest of them. And so as far as AEC combined operational planning, their goal was to make sure that nuclear power did what it was supposed to do. Provide us with lots of good economic electric energy. And to a large extent, it has.
Bauman: Hanford, obviously as a site, was a place that emphasized security, secrecy. Were you able to talk about the work you did? Was that something that was allowable given the security secrecy?
Gustafson: Yes, there wasn't a great deal of the security concern. It was mostly what are the resources and what can we do with this combination of government and industry to provide good electricity for the country. Economic.
Bauman: I want to go back to when you first arrived in 1950. What were your first impressions of the place here, of Richland, of the area?
Gustafson: Oh, I don't know. It was a temporary stop. [LAUGHTER] Never expected to spend the next 40 years or so working here. It was a great place, particularly for young single people. We moved into dormitories and there were a lot for fine single people, ambitious, and always wanting to do things. Those were good years. We certainly accepted the security. We were part of what we felt was a very necessary effort. We were in the Cold War. And we had to do a better job than the Russians.
Bauman: How long did you live in the dorms and where did you move to after that?
Gustafson: Well, I didn't actually live too long in the dorms. There were four of us, still good friends of mine, except one of them's gone. But we actually moved out to a small place in West Richland. So a number of the people in the dorms were looking for a little better living conditions. One of the problems with those early dorms—in theory we weren't even supposed to do any cooking in the dorms. So we strictly were going from the dorms to the local cafeteria, or a few commercial places that were opening up in Richland. It was a fascinating time, those early '50s. I got married the end of ‘55, so the first five years of single life and included my year plus when I was offsite, skiing, water skiing. Like my crowd, we were essentially the first water skiers in the Tri-Cities. At that time to find a boat, we had to go to Seattle to get one that we could use for water skiing. There wasn't any Mets Marina at that time. So we sort of started the water skiing in the area. Created the Desert Ski Club which was a snow skiing, but also got in the water skiing. Desert Ski Club still exists. So my close associates, we were sort of the instigators that. All went through our time as officers of the club. It was a big social group. Still is, I think.
Bauman: Richland was a federal town when you first arrived. How did you see that change over time from when you first arrived?
Gustafson: It's kind of hard. We certainly enjoyed our early years. We had a lot more individual responsibility on the jobs. I tell one of my stories, I came in at midnight to take over my shift at PUREX. I was the operating supervisor on C shift. And the operating supervisor on swing shift wasn't there. And I'd been met at the door with an assault mask, all of the crew were. And when I went in the building, the operating supervisor who I was to replace wasn't there, but my boss was. And I never saw him again. So, I guess I tell the story that they didn't really tell me I was captain of the ship. So anyhow, we restarted the plant. And it took us a couple months.
Bauman: And about when would this have been?
Gustafson: Pardon?
Bauman: What time period would this have been in?
Gustafson: When was that?
Bauman: Yeah, roughly.
Gustafson: Well, let's see, I guess that was, must have been early ‘57, right? I'm not exactly sure now. It was a different time. Individuals have a lot of responsibility. And we made a few mistakes, but in general, I think we did a damn good job of operating the plants. And safety and radiological exposure, these were major parts of our responsibility and our concern.
Bauman: Yeah, I was going to ask you about safety. Obviously, you said it was very—emphasized quite a bit. What sort of precautions did you have to take on your job? And were there ever any incidents when you were working of someone overexposure or anything along those lines?
Gustafson: Well, I think we operated with a lot of what you would probably expect military officers to have as a responsibility. And you know, you were responsible for your job and you--As an operating supervisor of my C shift at PUREX, there wasn't any other group that was responsible for the training of my operators. They were my responsibility. And if we had to send them to some special training, we'd do that. But the basic training was conducted by the supervisor. They assured whether they were qualified and whether they were able to do their job. I guess that's why when my counterpart was ejected, it was a military type operation, I guess. But I think we did a really good job. Safety was a number one concern. Radiological exposure was also a number one concern. And as far as I'm concerned, from everything I've seen, very, very few people suffered from working in our plants.
Bauman: I was going to ask you about President Kennedy came to the site in 1963 to visit. There was a story in the paper, a while back because it was the 50th anniversary of that. I wondered if you have any memories of that?
Gustafson: Oh yeah. Half the plant was out there. And I was there to welcome him as he came in on his helicopter. We were all out there.
Bauman: Anything in particular stand out to you about that day at all?
Gustafson: Well, I don't know. It's what we all expected at that time. There wasn't anything really unusual about this. Although I came out in 1950 saying, this is going to be a very temporary thing, I think we became--[CRYING] We became Hanford. [CRYING] Didn't expect to get emotional.
Bauman: Well, you built a sense of community, it seems like.
Gustafson: Really did. Those were good years. Really good years.
Bauman: Yeah, I was going to ask you, you talked about a number of different places on site that you worked. Different assignments. Was there one of those that was the most challenging? Or the most difficult? Or maybe one that was the most rewarding?
Gustafson: Well for me, it had to be those first few years with the PUREX plant. I've had a lot of other—what I think—good work assignments over the years. I know of no one who had the variety that I had. Certainly projects likely FFTF, I felt I had a very important role in that. I was one of these so-called cognizant engineers and my system was the main heat transport system. And it included basically the primary and secondary cooling systems. Everything from the reactor on. And the operating conditions for the plant, all of the design events and so on were channeled into that system. So that was a rewarding job, too. And I think we did a good job. As I said, we had a lot of early trouble getting that project going, but finally. So I enjoyed those years. I didn't feel the same individual responsibility that I had with the early time at PUREX.
Bauman: Obviously, Hanford also had the shift from production to a reduced production that you talked about, and then a shift to clean up. I wonder if those sort of mission changes impacted your work and in what ways?
Gustafson: Well, they certainly did. I've been involved in many parts of that. Even during my last few years with generally this overall quality assurance type bit, getting into working with the Washington, DC folks and that sort of thing.
Bauman: And you mentioned when you first came here, you thought it would be a short term.
Gustafson: Oh, yeah.
Bauman: And so for some people was. Some people did come for a short time and left. So why did you stay? I know you had some assigned that took you way to a bunch of other places, but--
Gustafson: Yeah. I don't know. We stayed for lots of reasons. We established a lot of close friendships. And sort of had our crowd of social as well as work relations. And we just became Hanford.
Bauman: Is there anything I haven't asked you about yet in terms of your work at Hanford? Or your experiences that you'd like to talk about that you haven't had a chance to talk about yet? Any stories or things that stand out in your mind?
Gustafson: I have so many stories about Hanford that it's kind of hard to come. Of course, many. My operational years, the most direct part of the operations, were the early years. I have a lot of individual things that happened. Some of them were good, some of them weren't. I remember particularly one incident. I don't want to be called a hero, but it was rather exciting. My operator was unloading a caustic car. And he was properly dressed with his shield and so on, but the hose from the railroad car came loose and it ended up spraying up underneath his protective clothing. And I felt that I was sure glad I was there, only about ten feet away. Because he was just kind of yelling with--You know, caustic getting sprayed into your face is not really good. Grabbed a hold of him and we both got under the safety shower was there. And at least he retained most of his sight. So, that was a situation where—just sort of individual kind of exciting happening, certainly was. I had a lot of other things go on. I feel that I had a lot of important tasks at Hanford. As I said, probably my most responsible thing was when I was still pretty young there, and operating the early couple, three years of PUREX as one of the operating supervisors. Had many chances to do so many different things over the years. Let's see, what would be of--It's kind of hard to come up with individual things that you might be interested in.
Bauman: Well, you've already talked about a number. That's been great. So I want to thank you very much for coming in today and sharing your experiences with us. We appreciate it.
Gustafson: Okay. Thank you.
Douglas O’Reagan: First off, would you please say and spell your name for us?
Maxwell Freshley: My legal name is Maxwell Freshley, F-R-E-S-H-L-E-Y. Not many people around here know me by that name. I go by Max.
O’Reagan: Okay, thanks. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral interview history here on January 11th, 2016. This interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And I will be talking with Mr. Freshley about his experiences working at the Hanford site. To start us off, would you tell us maybe some of your life up, before you came to this area?
Freshley: Well, I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. I graduated from the University of Portland in 1951 with a degree in physics. I was offered a tech grad position on the site here. At the time, it was operated by General Electric Company, and this was—I started work here in June of 1951. Okay. So I guess prior to coming here, my having been raised in Portland, and that’s where I went to school, my extended experiences were rather limited. That’s kind of what happened. So I came here in June of 1951, fresh out of school, I wasn’t married at the time. First place I lived was in the Army barracks in north Richland. I can’t tell you about how long I lived there, but while I was living in north Richland in the barracks, I did not have a car. So being kind of isolated out north was a bit of a challenge. So as soon as I could find somebody who would loan me some money, I bought a brand new Ford and that solved a lot of my problems. And then sometime during that first year, I was moved to one of the dorms in Richland. I think the dorms were located on Lee Boulevard. It was close to—I’m calling it a drugstore. But it was kind of like a Payless. I don’t think that was the right name at that time. But they had a restaurant—they served food in this drugstore. So that’s where I would eat.
O’Reagan: Had you heard about Hanford before you came here?
Freshley: Not really. I really hadn’t heard about it. It was all secret, you know?
O’Reagan: Right. Were you aware of the sort of connection with the atomic bomb before you got here?
Freshley: I’d have to say I was not. Although while I was still going to school—still in school—when was the Nagasaki ignited?
O’Reagan: ’45, I believe?
Freshley: ’45?
O’Reagan: I think so.
Freshley: That—oh, okay.
O’Reagan: It was the very end of the Second World War.
Freshley: Yeah. Well, I might’ve heard of that. Yeah.
O’Reagan: What was your first impression of Richland and this area?
Freshley: [LAUGHTER] First impression was living in the barracks out in north Richland-- [LAUGHTER] was not too great. Of course, my first impression was it was darn hot here, coming here in June. It was very warm. My future wife and her mother brought me to Richland from Portland and dropped me off. [LAUGHTER] So things kind of went from there.
O’Reagan: Sure. So we were going to ask about where you were living, but we already addressed that to some degree. What was life like in the barracks?
Freshley: Oh. I would say very basic. Of course, in the dorm rooms that were assigned, you always had a roommate that you lived with. So I became, of course, very familiar with my roommates. When I moved from the barracks to Richland, I had a different roommate. So I made acquaintances with two people like that. They were both scientists, so we got along really well. In fact, one of them is still living in Richland.
O’Reagan: What kind of work did you do at Hanford, and where on the site did you work?
Freshley: Well, first of all, I worked in 300 Area in 3706 Building. I was—they assigned me a position in the Graphite Group. We were studying graphite, the moderator in the reactors. One of the things that was going on at the time—and I can’t tell you what reactor it was—but the graphite core was swelling. It was—I don’t know if it had come in contact yet with the upper shield, but it was growing. I was assigned to two people in the Graphite Group. We went and extracted samples of graphite from the core of this reactor. The thing that they had set up to do that, of course, was already here. So we were extracting samples—core samples. What the purpose of my job was to determine the annealing temperature of the graphite, so that if they raised the temperature in the core to a point where graphite annealing started occurring, then the core would shrink back and not interfere with the top shield. So I think they were looking for somebody—[LAUGHTER] I won’t say it. But anyway, I was assigned the position or job of taking these graphite samples and investigating the annealing temperature. What we used was a Fresnel diffractometer. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that, but interference rings from this interferometer would be displayed. It was my job to count the rings. It was a very tedious job. I’m sure that these two fellas didn’t want to do that, so they found me, and I did it. These rotations were—honestly I can’t remember whether they were three months or six months, but you would rotate from one position to another. I don’t remember if you could choose your positions—your rotations—I guess it probably depended on whether or not there was something available or not to go to. So I fulfilled my position in the Graphite Group. I didn’t want to stay in the Graphite Group, so I moved on.
O’Reagan: Before we move on, I have a quick question for you. This is a little bit off-script, but I have an undergraduate degree in physics.
Freshley: Uh-huh.
O’Reagan: I was reading a while back that when you started heating up the reactors, it caused that expansion to go back, and that sounds like what you’re describing.
Freshley: Mm-hm.
O’Reagan: But what is annealing?
Freshley: It’s heating to a temperature where the damage caused by the neutron radiation would be annealed physically. So the core would shrink back. But you had to get it up to a certain temperature, and you didn’t want to overheat it, because if you get it too hot, then the core—the graphite would oxidize. That would not be good. But I think the cores were enclosed in an argon atmosphere, as I remember.
O’Reagan: It just surprised me, of course—I expected you get something hot, it expands. But now we’re saying you get it hot and it shrinks!
Freshley: Yeah, that’s right. But when you’re looking at the diffraction rings on the interferometer, you can tell by the movement of the rings when you are reaching the annealing temperature. So either they—and I can’t honestly remember the details here, whether the rings did not move as fast, or whether they might have even changed direction.
O’Reagan: Interesting.
Freshley: So I had an early experience with a graphite-moderated production reactor.
O’Reagan: What was it—you said you moved on from graphite to something else?
Freshley: Oh yeah. My second assignment was in the metallurgy laboratory in 234-5 Building. 234-5 Building now is known as—god. Hm. Plutonium—it’s the one that you read a lot--
O’Reagan: Plutonium Finishing Plant?
Freshley: Pardon me?
O’Reagan: Is it the plutonium finishing?
Freshley: Yeah, Plutonium Finishing Plant where the plutonium buttons were received and machined to a hockey-type shape. Well, they were—actually, they were reduced to form the metal, and I was not involved in that. But I was in the Plutonium Metallurgy Lab, which was at one end of the Plutonium Finishing Plant. I don’t think there are many or any people left around who know of that. I can’t think of anybody that I worked with during that period who’s still around. But we had a Plutonium Metallurgy Lab, and my manager was a very nice fella. This, now, was in the early ‘50s. One thing that he wanted me to do—and I don’t think that what I did was original research, because I think all of the original research was probably done at Los Alamos, which was the renowned weapons facility. He wanted me to investigate the low temperature phase changes in plutonium. So what I did—and that’s important because phase changes in plutonium or any metal creates a dimensional change. And a dimensional change is not something that you want in a weapon or a bomb, because it interferes with the efficiency of the bomb. So here I was, fresh out of school and didn’t know from up. Anyway, I put together what’s called a differential thermal analysis apparatus. Are you familiar with that?
O’Reagan: I know the individual terms.
Freshley: Okay. [LAUGHTER] So that’s what I did. I ran low temperature phase studies on plutonium—pure plutonium to detect these low temperature phase changes, which were very—since they were low temperature, they were very difficult to pick up, because there wasn’t much energy exchange during the phase change. Then, since that was not something you would want in a weapon or a bomb, small alloy additions were added to the plutonium to stabilize the low temperature, so you didn’t have these low temperature changes. All of this at the time was quite classified, which make it extra interesting, I guess. But when I went out to 234-5 Building in the plutonium lab, we were—there were three or four of us—we were assigned a car. So we had a car that we could go back and forth in, to work. That made it pretty nice, because we didn’t have to ride the bus and all of that. Then—this is something else that I doubt very much that anyone knew about at the time. It was the fabrication of plutonium parts for artillery shells. We cast plutonium in what was known as the 231-Z Building. We didn’t do it in the 234-5 Building. 231 was just across the street. In that building, I was not involved in the casting or the machining, but the parts were machined in that building. Then they were brought over to 234-5 Building in the Plutonium Metallurgy Lab. Because plutonium would oxidize and so on—so my job was to produce pure nickel coatings. But I don’t mean coatings like were attached. We used bismuth, which has a low melting temperature and it’s stable, to machine the exact replica of the plutonium part. Then, my job was to make—with electroplated nickel onto this bismuth—and then the bismuth was melted away. My job was to enclose the plutonium parts in nickel. So I had to do that in a vacuum. At first I had to do the electroplating. Then I had to put the nickel—what—the nickel cover, if you want—on the plutonium part, under vacuum, and solder a seal around the edge to make it—so it wouldn’t contact the air. And then it wouldn’t be as—you wouldn’t have to worry so much about contamination. But it had to be done in an atmosphere where, after the nickel part was put on the plutonium part, I sealed it with the vacuum and then it was not contaminated. The interesting part about that—one of the interesting parts—is that we were doing this for the Livermore National Lab, who was also at the time at a weapons facility. There were two: Los Alamos and Livermore. We were doing this for Livermore. As soon as the parts were finished, and I finished them, there would be a representative from Livermore waiting for the part. These parts, at times, were handed off, out the back door of 234-5 Building to this individual, who then took them to town, to the airport. I presume then, they were flown to Livermore. These tests at the time were conducted in the South Pacific—Eniwetok Islands. I never knew anything about the results. [LAUGHTER] Or what happened. But I suspect that these days we have artillery shells with plutonium weapons involved.
O’Reagan: When you were working on all these—all these different processes, what sort of team were you working—were you working mostly on an independent sub-project, or did you have other people you were sort of working with day-to-day?
Freshley: Well, when I did the differential thermal analysis, it was me. And when I was enclosing the plutonium parts in these nickel shells, that was pretty much me. Yeah. The group was small. I would guess—let’s see, there was—oh, three, four, five—I suspect there were less than ten people in the whole group. The machinist—there were two machinists—I guess I shouldn’t say who they were, but—they did very well—one of them did very well in the Tri-Cities. He had a big vision and—
O’Reagan: I ask, because some of what you’re describing sounds—at least to my sort of ignorant ears—like applied chemistry as well as applied physics. Did you have a chemistry background, or was that not really necessary for what you were working on?
Freshley: I did not have a chemistry background other than what you normally get in a four-year program. I did not have a metallurgy background, either. You know? So that all took—I had to get acquainted with that aspect of the world, and I found it to be very interesting. Later on in my life, I was sorry that I probably hadn’t taken metallurgy.
O’Reagan: How much were you instructed specifically what to do versus sort of innovating yourself or figuring stuff out as you go?
Freshley: Well, I’m sure that my manager—he had a degree from Montana School of Mines in Metallurgy. He was a very nice person. He—I’m sure I got instruction and help from him, because I needed it. Here’s this 21-year-old kid, just out of school, doesn’t know metallurgy from up. But I guess I was successful and it worked out.
O’Reagan: Okay. Let’s see. Could you describe a typical workday within those first—you worked there for a long period of time overall, is that right? How long were you working at Hanford overall?
Freshley: Overall?
O’Reagan: Yeah.
Freshley: [LAUGHTER] I started in 1951 and I retired in 1993. Then I consulted for a period after that. So you figure out the years. The first 14 years were with GE, then Battelle came in ’65, and I transferred to Battelle. I had the choice at that point to transfer to either Battelle or Westinghouse. Westinghouse was focused on the FFTF, and the development of that reactor. But I chose Battelle.
O’Reagan: Why did you choose Battelle?
Freshley: I don’t know. I think they were interested in things that I found fascinating. So I switched to Battelle, and have never been sorry. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: So when you were describing—is that amount of time that you were describing up to the end of your time at GE? Or was there still more that you were working on at GE before, or subsequent to—you were describing the different plutonium products.
Freshley: I haven’t gotten to the end of GE yet. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Okay, great. I’d love to hear more.
Freshley: Yeah. And then I got out—I was moved—I got into other things besides plutonium metallurgy. I might say that one of the—while I was at the plutonium lab, one of the technicians was working in a glovebox—do you know what a glovebox is?—that exploded. And it totally, totally contaminated the lab with plutonium. So we spent—the group—spent a lot of time decontaminating that room, and everything in it. We were successful enough that the walls were repainted to secure the plutonium contamination and everything. But then—I don’t know why I changed—but I stayed in 234-5 Building, and maybe—I don’t know, three, four, five years, possibly. Then I got involved in light-water reactor fuel development. That’s where I basically spent the rest of my career. In the late ‘50s, PRTR was under construction. We did—in those days, you were given—at least, in my case, you were given a lot of flexibility to do new things. That was really neat. Then—I didn’t write down the date, but in the late ‘50s, PRTR was under construction, and there was the second International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. We contributed to that publication—there were several publications. I didn’t get to go to the conference, but we contributed to that. Then I got involved in plutonium recycling in thermal reactors. I don’t know if you read this morning’s paper: there was an article there about a plutonium fuel—well, it’s called MOX—mixed oxide: plutonium oxide and uranium oxide, a mixture of fuel. This was at Savannah River, and they were building—or are supposedly building a facility for fabricating mixed oxide fuel for light-water reactors. But there have been some problems there, and it’s way behind schedule and over cost or whatever. But that doesn’t affect me. So I’m not involved in that. But anyway, I got involved in, like I say, fuel development—plutonium fuel development for light-water reactors. We had the liberty of doing a lot of different things. One of them was—oh, when we—at first, we found diluents for the plutonium. We irradiated and tested many diluents for plutonium. It had to be diluted—I mean, you can’t use pure plutonium. So I got into that, and we conducted lots and lots of testing of different diluents for plutonium in the MTR and ETR in Idaho—Materials Test Reactor and the Engineering Test Reactor in Idaho. There was a lot of that, and the post-radiation examination was done in the 324 Building, where the major contamination still exists that they have to remove. It’s in the ground, and it’s a major decon project right now with whoever the contractor is, I don’t know. Anyway, we did a lot of testing in MTR and ETR with diluents. We developed a plutonium aluminum alloy spike enrichment element for PRTR. That was one of the activities. An aluminum plutonium spike element—excuse me—is only for spike enrichment in the core. These are spaced around for different neutronic effects. And the reason—it’s a difficult concept, and I don’t know how we got started on that, exactly, because the coefficient of thermal expansion of aluminum with a little bit of plutonium in it is a lot different than the Zircaloy cladding in which it is enclosed. So there were problems with that. Then—ah, let’s see—then I got into recycling the plutonium in thermal reactors, and that was a major government initiative to dispose of plutonium that was no longer needed. So we made mixed oxide fuels of different types. One of the types that seemed attractive at the time was a vibrationally compacted mixture of plutonium and uranium. That is a difficult thing to achieve, because we had to make plutonium—mixed oxide shot, and we vibrated it into the long rods. I remember setting up a shot tower in the basement of 326 Building to make uranium shot. That didn’t work out too good. We didn’t put any plutonium in 326 Building.
O’Reagan: Is this still the late ‘50s or have we gotten into the early ‘60s yet?
Freshley: Well this would be the late ‘50s. Well, we’re getting into the ‘60s, though, yeah. We did irradiation tests of aluminum plutonium spike elements in PRTR. I can’t remember what the plutonium concentration was, but then we started working on VIPAC, or vibrationally compacted fuel. It seemed like it would have advantages, because you’re not working with the small centered pellets. You can just pour the fissionable material into the tubes and VIPAC—vibrationally compact—it. So that—we did a lot of work on that, on VIPAC fuel, because we thought it would have an advantage fabrication-wise. But it had disadvantages, too, of course. You couldn’t compact it to the density that you would get with the centered pellet. There was another concern about it, and that is: fuel elements and reactors, the cladding fails from time to time. Still does. I think they suspect that there is a cladding failure in the Columbia Generating Station now. We needed to look at how they would perform with a cladding rupture. So we performed a test in PRTR in what was known as the Fuel Element Rupture Test Facility, FERTF. We were brave.
O’Reagan: It sounds dangerous!
Freshley: We put together a test element. The elements in PRTR were 19 rod clusters—I forget how long, but quite long. So what we did--we were adventuresome—we put a mixed oxide fuel element in PRTR, but first we drilled a hole in the cladding. John Fox, who you’ve interviewed, still can’t imagine that we did something like that. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: This probably couldn’t happen today [INAUDIBLE]
Freshley: Oh, no. No way. Anyway, in 1966, we had that experiment in PRTR, and everything was going pretty well until they started cycling the reactor power a little bit. Well, from then on, things went from bad to worse. The cladding failed, but I mean, other than the small hole that we had drilled in it, it ruptured for over quite a distance. When it did that, it swelled, and it came in contact with the pressure tube of the FERTF. It caused that to fail also. So this made a horrible mess in PRTR. The reactor was shut down for I don’t know how long during the cleanup and the recovery from that. I can’t remember—I have some pictures if you’re interested—whether or not we were operating with fuel melting at the time. Because we wanted to get as much heat out of the element—or out of the rods as we could. Now, uranium melts at a little over 2,800 degrees centigrade. So we did a lot of work with not only VIPAC fuel—fuel melting in VIPAC fuel, but also in pellet fuel. Of course, you don’t do that sort of thing in real life. In a commercial light-water reactor—I don’t know what the maximum operating temperatures are in the uranium pellets, but it’s a long ways from melting, I guarantee you.
O’Reagan: So did you get the data that you wanted from this rupture test?
Freshley: [LAUGHTER] Yeah, don’t do it. Yeah, and that was kind of actually the end of VIPAC fuel interest. It would definitely not have been commercially viable to have something like that going on in a power reactor. Of course, we learned what the rupture behavior—probably the worst case of what a ruptured VIPAC fuel might do in real life. So that was kind of the end of VIPAC fuel elements. But it was interesting! A really interesting thing to work with and try and develop. We had various—came up with various schemes for compacting UO2 and MOX with using a Dynapac machine, which is a high-energy compaction machine, to form particles. The ideal particle would have been a sphere in a varying size range, so you can maximize the density during VIPACing. But it didn’t work out. And I didn’t get fired. [LAUGHTER] But there were a lot of experiments. Also with looking at the transient behavior of VIPAC fuel, we even conducted some tests in a test reactor. You are placing pure PUO2 particles next to the cladding. Then doing a transient power test on that to see what kind of behavior you would get: how the PUO2 particle would behave. This was done in a reactor in Idaho called SPERT—I can’t tell you what the acronym stands for right now, but it was an interesting exercise. Had some—maybe the reactor was in San Jose; I’m not sure. Anyway, I had some companions who were working for GE; we worked together on that sort of thing. But then, this would have been in 1975, ’76. The light-water reactor power industry wanted to go to higher burnups. That is, leave the fuel in the reactor longer, so they would have longer times between maintenance shutdowns. At the time, the maintenance shutdowns were probably a year or less. So what happened when they went to higher temperatures and higher burnups, the fuel column in—these are ten or 12 feet long rods—would shorten. The fuel column, then, would shrink—would settle. So that caused a great deal of consternation in the light-water reactor power industry, because they had these voids, then, at the top of the fuel columns. Something we called the irradiation-induced densification occurred. So then there was a big effort, commercially, to find solutions to that, so we had—there was what was called a fuel densification program to solve this problem. The fuel industry—let’s see, how was this—they could not tolerate the core shrinking, and then that led to an understanding, or an investigation of N Reactor densification—just the neutron activity. But then they wanted to go to higher burnups. So they started leaving voids in the pellets to accommodate the fission products associated with the high burnup. That didn’t work out to well, either, because of the column shrinking. So that’s when we launched, or got into looking at the fuel densification behavior. The fuel vendors, then, came up with adding materials into the fuel—god, I can’t think of the name now—that would disappear on the high temperature centering of the pellet, leaving voids—controlled voids in the pellets. And they do that today. So the High Burnup Effect Program was a big program here at the lab for quite a long period of time. As a result of that, the fabricators reduced, by using—I can’t think of the name—reduced the density to accommodate the fission—oh, then they put in pore formers. And we, as the lab, were instrumental in coming up with suitable pore formers that would disappear upon centering, during the centering process, to leave these voids in the fuel pellets to accommodate the fission products. As a result of that, this proved to be very satisfactory. It resulted in a stable fuel column and the achievable burnups were increased significantly. You’re probably aware of the fact, now, that the Columbia—the reactor, generating—the Columbia Generating Station, now, can go on a two-year cycle. Meaning they don’t have to shut down for maintenance every year; they can go two years. So the achievement of satisfactory high burnup in reactor fuel was made. All of the other reactors, now—light-water reactors—use that technique. And in fact, as a result of that, the NRC—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—has imposed a requirement that they test the thermal stability of centered pellets by exposing them to a heat treatment so they don’t shrink any more. Or the shrinkage would be very small. So we were instrumental in coming up with this out-of-reactor thermal test to test the stability, if you will, of the pellets.
O’Reagan: You mentioned working with the light-water reactor industry. Were you working with different groups outside of the Hanford Site and outside of Battelle at that point, or was it still focused within the company?
Freshley: I would say that the company, Battelle, the lab, was instrumental in these investigations. EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, was a partner. In fact, they were kind of the driving force helping us put together a joint program where we had seven other contributors—financial sponsors to this program. We had meetings frequently on the progress of this effort. These seven sponsors came from all over the world: Japan, France, England—of course, the commercial operators in the United States were members. So we had this rather large, difficult to manage international program to develop these advanced fuels for high burnup.
O’Reagan: So this wasn’t classified, or was it more of a sharing agreement with [INAUDIBLE] Not classified then?
Freshley: No, it wasn’t classified. Well, maybe there might have been some—not security, but because the seven sponsors of this program were—they were paying money, you know? And contributing, and they wanted to protect their interests.
O’Reagan: More like trade secrets, then, rather than—
Freshley: Pardon?
O’Reagan: So, more like trade secrets, then, rather than confidentiality.
Freshley: Yeah, but I’d say, most of the—in the United States, the utilities that were operating light-water reactors contributed to this. Another contributor or sponsor was Germany. I can’t remember all of them. That made it real interesting. We had these technical reviews and meetings all over the world. So that made it kind of neat.
O’Reagan: Yeah.
Freshley: Yeah. But the program was very successful. I think I have some documents that describe it, if you’re interested.
O’Reagan: Yeah, absolutely.
Freshley: Okay. And then—I’m not covering this too well—I thought my notes would be more complete but they’re not. [LAUGHTER] Then I got into—this was late in my professional career. There was a reactor in Savannah River, and I didn’t—I can’t tell you the name of it—that produced tritium for thermonuclear weapons. It had to be shut down because of safety reasons. So I got involved in what was called tritium target development for light-water reactors. Because you need tritium for a thermonuclear device. What we did was, the way we did it, we irradiated lithium metal—I shouldn’t say irradiated; we exposed lithium metal to a neutron environment in light-water reactors. The idea being to generate tritium, the gas. Well, what happens is lithium is a metal similar, maybe—low-melting, kind of—to aluminum. It’s not compatible with many cladding or enclosure materials. So we exposed lithium to neutrons to form tritium. In doing that, you had to—because the tritium is an isotope of helium, you had to tie it up some way and contain it. You didn’t want it to get out of the cladding, because we were using zirconium cladding. And then inside of this target, we used a getter for the tritium to collect the tritium and try and keep it enclosed. In fact, I’ve learned recently that there are some commercial reactors back east that have tritium target elements in their cores now to produce tritium for thermonuclear devices.
O’Reagan: I imagine that’s something the government wouldn’t want other places to be doing then.
Freshley: Well, probably not, yeah. You can google tritium production and you’ll get information on the process—well, I don’t know about the detail of the process, but information on producing tritium in light-water reactors. Then as I was nearing retirement, I got out of that and was taken over by a couple other people. But it was interesting, and so that’s kind of—I enjoyed doing this sort of thing a lot. Exploring and testing and so on.
O’Reagan: Was the tritium work also unclassified then, or was that back to the classified world?
Freshley: I think it was in the classified world, perhaps, at the time. Although the lady who currently manages that project at the lab here gave a talk on these elements, these targets, and some of the latest things that they were doing. This was a while back, that she gave this talk. But there were parts of the talk she could not discuss. These parts that she couldn’t discuss are unknown to me and foreign to me, because a lot of that has happened since I retired. See, I retired in ’93—1993. That was—what—25, 26 years ago.
O’Reagan: When you moved from GE to Battelle, did you ever notice any sorts of differences in your work experiences in sort of general terms?
Freshley: No, not really. They were the same people involved, in my case. The big difference is that under DoE at the time—I think it was DoE, maybe AEC—we did not earn credits for service. So 14 years, I didn’t get any—[LAUGHTER]—credits for service which would help my pension, until Battelle came. Then that changed. I do get a GE pension still, but it’s not very much.
O’Reagan: Let’s see. Are there sort of—one thing I’m interested in is how working on Hanford—people’s experiences changed over time as the decades went on, how things changed. Anything sort of leaps to your mind in those regards?
Freshley: Well, one thing that comes to mind to me is things that you do if you’re in the lab and so on, are a lot more regulated now than they were back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Can you imagine opening the door and getting somebody a plutonium part that he takes off with and goes to Livermore?
O’Reagan: Yeah.
Freshley: You don’t do that.
O’Reagan: Right. Let’s see.
Freshley: So things are a lot more regulated now. And I would say a lot more sophisticated, too. I am aware of the fact that AREVA, here, the fuel fabricator, has developed since my time some very sophisticated models on fuel performance. We didn’t have models like that in those days.
O’Reagan: Interesting. One of the things we’re also trying to get at, which is why a lot of this has been very useful, is what was done on the Hanford site that was sort of innovative or hadn’t been mastered elsewhere? Because you hear sort of both sides of the Hanford legacy, and a lot of these are harder to get at without having classified sources. So the unclassified versions people could tell us about are very interesting.
Freshley: Well, I would say, that except for my time in the plutonium laboratory, things were pretty much unclassified. The development of these different fuels—fuel materials—and testing them and so on. I would say that was pretty much unclassified.
O’Reagan: Interesting.
Freshley: Now, I’m sure that AREVA here has some proprietary interests in their fuel modeling these days. But I’ve seen some of it; it’s a very sophisticated code and model.
O’Reagan: What was it like living in Richland, let’s say the ‘40s and ‘50s first and ask for the later parts afterwards.
Freshley: Well, I can tell you my experience.
O’Reagan: Yeah.
Freshley: First, as I said, I lived in the Army barracks. Then I moved to the dorms that were on Lee. This was before I was married. I was here for a year before I got married, and then when I got married, we got access to one of the Gribble apartments. I don’t know if they’re still there on Gribble Street? I think, maybe, Kadlec has taken all of that over now and destroyed all of the old buildings. But they were two-story apartments. They were really nice. Then after that, we lived in that apartment for five years, my wife tells me. And then we bought a ranch house. It wasn’t a purchase from the government; it was after the ranch houses and the other government houses were sold off by the government. This fella was in a position, a management position, in DoE—I think it might have been AEC at the time. And we bought this ranch house from him on Burch Street in Richland. We paid him $10,000 for it. And then from there—we lived there for a few years, and then we bought a house on Howell. And from Howell, we built a house in Country Ridge. That’s where we live now. We’ve lived there for 20—over 25 years.
O’Reagan: Interesting. I was just thinking back on the timeline there. I know for a long time people couldn’t buy houses in Richland. So I guess you got your first place not too long after you were allowed to?
Freshley: Oh, I think it was very soon. I can’t remember his name, but he was in some management position in DoE and wanted to sell his house. So we bought it from him and got the title and made some changes and so on. Yeah, it was among the first government houses that were sold privately.
O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. What was life like in the community around there? Do you remember any sort of community events?
Freshley: Yup. Town Theater was there. Actually showing movies, of course. Mm, I don’t know how to answer that. I would say it was pretty normal. Did a lot of outdoor activities, a lot of snow skiing at Tollgate—I don’t know if you know where Tollgate is.
O’Reagan: I’m new to the area.
Freshley: Oh, are you? Okay. It’s in the Blue Mountains. A lot of boating activities. We had a canoe and enjoyed that. Things like that.
O’Reagan: Great.
Freshley: Pretty normal, I would say. Wouldn’t you?
O’Reagan: Sure.
Freshley: [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Did you ever feel like the sort of larger scale politics of the day ever impacted your life whether—Cold War security issues or changing Presidents or any of that?
Freshley: I can’t relate to that. I was not politically inclined like some people you know. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Sure. Let’s see. This is sort of a similar question, so we don’t have to go into too much detail. Any memories of the social scene, local politics, or other insights into life in the Tri-Cities over the time you lived here?
Freshley: Over what time period? Oh.
O’Reagan: In the time you lived here.
Freshley: Well, like I said, I’m not politically oriented, so if there were these things happening, I was pretty isolated from them.
O’Reagan: Okay. Could you describe any ways in which security and/or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work?
Freshley: No, I really can’t, except 234-5 Building, every time you went out there, you had to have your badge and security. I think even in the Plutonium Finishing Plant, there probably—I think there were—additional security requirements.
O’Reagan: What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford or living in Richland during the Cold War?
Freshley: [LAUGHTER] Well, I wouldn’t know how to answer that. I would say, from my experience, it was very normal. I guess if there were security requirements and things like that, you just kind of got used to it, and you didn’t—it wasn’t something that stood out. I think that’s true.
O’Reagan: Okay. So what haven’t I asked about that I should ask about? What else is there I should be asking about?
Freshley: Well, how do I answer that? I don’t know. I think we’ve covered my experience pretty thoroughly. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Well, we don’t have to dwell on it if nothing comes to mind.
Freshley: No.
O’Reagan: It is an open-ended question.
Freshley: Well, what happened, after we bought our ranch house, the government didn’t come around and change our light bulbs anymore. [LAUGHTER]
O’Reagan: Oh, really? Did you have to—how much of a transition was that once you sort of became a homeowner? Was it--?
Freshley: Oh, it was a good transition, from my standpoint. You could do things—like we made modifications to the house. It was our house. It wasn’t controlled by the government—or owned by the government. So that made a big difference. You had a lot more freedom and so on in what you did and how you did it.
O’Reagan: All right. Well, thanks so much. This is very, very interesting, very useful.
Robert Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Robert Ferguson on December 21st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Bob about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Bob Ferguson: Yes. Robert, R-O-B-E-R-T. Louis, L-O-U-I-S. Ferguson, F-E-R-G-U-S-O-N.
Franklin: Great, thanks. So tell me how and why you came to the area to work at the Hanford Site.
Ferguson: Well, I was in the Army. I had spent three years in the Army and I was at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. And a friend of mine stopped by that was sort of at the end of my obligation, and his father had worked here. His name was Fred Boleros. And he told me about GE here at Hanford. So, it was my first job when I applied when I left the Army, was with GE at Hanford. They accepted my application, and that’s how I happened to come to Hanford.
Franklin: Okay. And what was the job that you applied for?
Ferguson: Well, I came under a program called the—[LAUGHTER]—bear with me.
Franklin: That’s okay.
Ferguson: Can you cut, can we cut, or you’ll cut?
Franklin: We can edit.
Ferguson: We’ll edit?
Franklin: After the fact, yes.
Ferguson: Okay.
Emma Rice: Tech grad something?
Ferguson: Yeah. The tech grad program. It was the tech grad program. It was a program to—for GE to find out what your interest was as well as their interest in you. So, anyway, I signed up for that, and I had three assignments with that. One in operation, one in reactor physics, and one in radiation testing. My permanent job—my first permanent job with GE was as a reactor physicist at C Reactor. But we did physics work—at each of the reactors, there was an onsite physicist and an onsite engineer. We rotated to all of the different eight reactors in the course of our assignments during relief work. But I was permanently assigned to C Reactor—C Reactor Physicist.
Franklin: C Reactor?
Ferguson: C Reactor.
Franklin: Okay, and where is that located in relation to B, D and F?
Ferguson: Well, as you probably know, the first reactors were B, D and F. And then HDR and then H, and then C Reactor in K-East and K-West. So C Reactor was one of the newer reactors, before the K-East and K-West design. And it was collocated with B Reactor in what was called the BC Area. They were right next door to each other.
Franklin: Okay. And was that based off of the same design as the B Reactor?
Ferguson: It was a different design. Higher power level and a little different fuel design. And because it had a higher power level, it had also a higher flow rate.
Franklin: Of water?
Ferguson: Of water, right.
Franklin: Great. And how long did you work as a reactor operator?
Ferguson: Physicist.
Franklin: Reactor physicist, sorry.
Ferguson: Right. Well, actually I was asked—I guess because of my interest in operation—I was asked by GE management to go into their management program, which was an accelerated management program. And so that took me into operations. And so to accelerate the learning process, they had a school in the evening that they sent us to. But also, we had supplemental crews. For each of the shifts, there was a supplemental crew that went from each of the reactors, in the case of outages or in the case of startups, where they needed extra people. So you learned in the supplemental crews, all of the operation of all of the reactors in a very short period of time. So from there, then, I was assigned as a shift supervisor at B Reactor. So I was an operating supervisor at B Reactor. In fact, I was the youngest of shift supervisor that GE had at the time.
Franklin: Oh, wow. Where were the classes held for the management program?
Ferguson: Well, there were two kinds of classes. There were—WSU had—actually there were—WSU and some of the other western universities had a program here. But they were technical programs, and then GE in the same facilities, in what—the old barracks area, near where the DOE headquarters is now, the RL headquarters, in that area. But they no longer exist. They were in huts.
Franklin: Oh, okay, Quonset huts.
Ferguson: Quonset huts, yeah, yeah.
Franklin: World War II—
Ferguson: Right.
Franklin: Had you gone through any other—before you took the tech grad program with GE, had you had any training in nuclear physics or anything?
Ferguson: Well, I had a degree in physics, and I’d also spent a year at Redstone Arsenal at Huntsville, Alabama in guided missiles. So, there was a lot of related work in the guided missile field to the nuclear field as well.
Franklin: And were you in the Army because of the Korean War?
Ferguson: No, I went into the Army from—I was graduated. Went to Gonzaga University and graduated in ROTC, and had a commission. And because I signed up for the guided missile program, I had a three-year commitment then, rather than just two years of active duty.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferguson: But it was—we were on alert in my junior year of the Korean War. And then the Korean War, fortunately, was over in my last year. So, I was able to miss that.
Franklin: Yeah. Can you describe the B Reactor as a place to work?
Ferguson: Well, it was—actually, a fascinating facility. I don’t know, perhaps, if you’ve been there.
Franklin: I’ve been able to take the public tours.
Ferguson: But the operation of the reactors were fascinating. You can picture that there’s eight reactors operating 24/7, seven days a week. At that time, there was pressure for more plutonium for the Cold War. It was during that period of time when there was a lot of tension with Russia. It preceded, actually, the Cuban Missile Crisis by a few years. But anyway, there was intense pressure for production, so we were—GE was very sensitive about the time operating efficiency of the reactors and the power level of the reactors. B Reactor, when it was first designed was designed for 250 megawatts. And when I was last in the control room, we were operating over 2,000 megawatts. We used to—in order to get more power, we used to—Bonneville would lower water from under the dams so our inlet temperature was lower. The operation of the reactors—they went once through the reactors, and so they had to keep the outlet temperature below boiling. And so you wanted the maximum delta t across the reactor, you could get so the lower the inlet temperature, the higher the power level you could get, maintaining a safe margin in the outlet temperature. But also at that time, we were experimenting—I participated both in the physics side as well as the operations side—in the use of flattening of the pile. And by flattening, I mean flattening the flux so you could get more power level, or better distribution and more production, in any one cycle. And so we used—we experimented with splines, which were boron designed things that would go under the process tubes, and you could jack them in actually from the front face of the reactor in order to flatten the flux of the reactors. We also did poisoning at that time of the reactor. A temporary poisoning, so we could start the reactors up at a higher power level. Because the operation of the reactors was very complicated, because you had different temperature coefficients that affected the reactivity of the reactor. So you had a positive graphite temperature, but that was—the graphite would heat up over time. And so that would increase the reactivity, and you had a negative temperature coefficient—fast reactor coefficient. And then the coefficients would change as the amount of plutonium occurred in the reactor. And so the operation of the reactors were really dictated by the design coefficients, but, more importantly, by the discovery of xenon and iodine, which shut the reactors down when Fermi was here. That was—they didn’t even know about the xenon absorption of neutrons at that time. And so when the reactor was first started, it shut down. And they had originally—perhaps you’ve heard this story, that originally the reactor was designed for about 1,500 process tubes. But then DuPont doubled it to 2,004 in order to—for safety margins—and they needed all of that safety margins to override the xenon. But anyway, when you’re at steady state operation, and then you shut the reactor down, then the buildup of iodine that then decays into xenon, and xenon is a poison. So if you were operating at full power and the reactor scrammed, you had a very short period of time in order to bring the reactor up to power level. Otherwise, you were down for 30-hour outage. So that meant that you lost production during that period. So we basically devised what we called quickie plans. This was especially true—we were experiencing a lot of ruptures at that time because we were pushing the envelope of the design of the fuel. It would rupture, and then we’d have to get rid of that, because they’d been once through on the water, the radioactive material would go directly into the river. So anyway, when we had a rupture, we would need to get it out of the reactor. But you only had a few minutes. At that time because of the power levels we were operating at, we only had about 15 minutes to recover. And that meant planning a crew in the rear and the front, and alerting the people in the powerhouse, because you had to bring the water pressure down. But you had to keep plenty of water on the tubes, because otherwise the temperature—outlet temperature would be very high. So you had a very difficult time to valve on the front. So I would go—I would basically stay in the control room and have a supervisor in the front and rear. And then when we shut the reactor down, we would do all of this valving, kick the rupture out, and then restart. And you’d have to restart the reactors to about two-thirds of the power that you were at, otherwise you’d go sub-critical, and you’d be down. So it was a very delicate challenge to start it up to a power level that you could—without running out of rods, then, because also the higher power level, the more reactivity you had. So, it was a—it’s something that I learned in physics, because that’s what the physicist did. He calculated all these transients. So when I went into operations, it was sort of natural for me to be able to manage this kind of thing.
Franklin: Interesting. And so—that’s also, like, kind of real-world application of all of that physics that you had learned, right?
Ferguson: Right.
Franklin: How did—I think it’s hard for people who—especially younger people—to imagine doing all of that without digital technology. It’s always been something that’s really fascinated me. And I’m wondering if you could speak to that or if you’ve ever thought about that at all, that the kinds of—maybe you could talk a little bit about the kinds of equipment you had to work with, and the limitations of using the analog readouts in the control room.
Ferguson: Well, that’s a very good question. The reactors had to be operated when you started them up—what we called a blind startup, because we didn’t have instruments that told us how subcritical we were. So, you had to—the physicist would calculate the reactivity coefficients for the operation, and depending upon the precursor operation, would determine exactly what the startup conditions were. But because we couldn’t measure the subcritical condition of the reactor, we had—we pulled to about—well, it’s called 100n hours subcritical, then pulled into that. But we had people at a PC manually, if you can imagine, manually counting the count rate as we approached criticality. Because if you pull too many rods out, you can get into a fast period, which will shut you down. So we had to do all this manually. And you probably, having seen the control room—you had 2,004 process tubes. Each one of those tubes was monitored for pressure on the inlet and temperature on the outlet. But those gauges had to be manually moved and adjusted by a crew in the front of that panel—the panellette, that whole 2,004 panel in the control room, right to the right of the control panel. Anyway, you had a whole group of people on startup in ladder-like things that would roll those gauges, instrument man on the rear, but he had to keep the gauges within a range, or you’d trip. So as the water pressure came up, you had to roll all of those. But this was all done manually. And then we had ways of—we had devices that calculated the power level, but it was very deceptive. So those of us that had been trained in physics could basically do a lot of those calculations in our head on the power level. Because what I’ve experienced—I’m sure others did, too—that if an instrument failed, say a flow instrument failed on one side of the reactor, it would indicate you’re only at half of the power level that you’re actually at. So you needed to look at other instruments, and you learned to look—like there was an instrument called a Beckman instrument, which monitored the radioactivity on the rear face. So by walking the control room and looking at all these different instruments, you could check one against the other. But it was all very, very, very, manual. And we did our physics calculations on Marchant calculators, you know, the calculators you punch.
Franklin: Oh, yeah, yeah. [LAUGHTER]
Ferguson: We did all our physics calculations on those at that time. And they were just introducing the IBM 650. GE had a computing facility where we would punch the cards and get some central computing for some of the physics work that we did. And that’s also where they kept track of the production in the reactors. If you could imagine keeping track of eight reactors with 2,004 tubes—there were more than that in the K reactors—but the six older reactors. And keeping the production in each one of those tubes was a function of the flow through that tube and the reactivity and the temperature of each one of those tubes. So you had to keep track of how much plutonium was being produced, because if you leave the fuel in too long, the buildup of plutonium-240 builds up. And so weapons-grade plutonium is about 6% to 10%. So we were operating at getting really pure weapons-grade plutonium. Something below the—at least 10% of 240, because it was—in the early design of the bombs, they found that if plutonium-240 spontaneously fissions, it creates a background. And if it’s too high, it’ll get a premature detonation of the bomb beforehand. So that’s why we had to manage the production. And that’s why there were frequent shutdowns. Unlike commercial reactors, where you operate a long time. And that’s why people confuse—plutonium that’s produced in commercial reactors has a high 240 content which is not good for weapons.
Franklin: Oh, interesting, okay. So you’re saying—I just want to paraphrase so that I can make sure I understand. So you’re saying that it was the nature of the weapons process that the fuel would only be in there for a short period of time in order to get—and it’s plutonium-240—which one is the--
Ferguson: Is low. 239 is the weapons grade.
Franklin: 239 is the weapons-grade.
Ferguson: And 240 is the low grade.
Franklin: Right, so that you wouldn’t build up too much 240. So—
Ferguson: And that required a frequent charge and discharge of the reactors.
Franklin: Right, so in some way, then, the energy reactors by nature are just not really meant for weapons.
Ferguson: They’re the opposite of that. You want them to run. The Energy Northwest reactor which I was responsible for building—it was called BNP2 at the time. But they recently set a record of running for over two years without a shutdown.
Franklin: Because you also want—when you’re producing energy, you want a reliable output of energy—
Ferguson: Right, fixed, right.
Franklin: You don’t want to be starting and stopping and have that kind of fluctuation in the grid.
Ferguson: Right.
Franklin: That’s really—I think that’s a good basic point to have established for anyone who’s doing research on that.
Ferguson: But an interesting subset of your question about instrumentation. Rickover, in the nuclear navy, who relied on analog instrumentation and ways of measuring things. Because he wanted people to really run the reactor all the time. He didn’t want any risk of that. So it was a transitional period in the nuclear business. And some of the instrumentation that was designed to detect neutrons was very new at the time. Even the badges that we wore, at that time, did not detect neutrons, both fast and slow. And so we had to do experiments on the front face of the reactors to be able to predict what dosage you’d get from neutrons, rather than alpha, beta, and gamma. Because it was not known then exactly the biological effect of neutrons on the human body.
Franklin: Given that the reactors ran, most of the time they had 24-hour shifts, I’m wondering if you can describe to me kind of an average day as a nuclear physicist operating the B Reactor.
Ferguson: Well, it depends—well, let me answer that by, when you—at that time, you couldn’t drive your car out to the Site. So you came to the 700 Area, and there was a—lights up there that indicated which reactors were running. And that told you, if you were a supplemental crew, which reactor to go to. But anyway, to answer your question, if the reactor is operating normally at full power, it’s very—typically, you’d go in and you had about a 15- to 20-minute transfer process from one crew to the other. We kept a detailed log of the activities during our shift. You’d do a—we would typically do a count of the uranium slugs that were stored in the front face so that we’d keep materials accountability. So we would make sure that from shift to shift, there was a transfer of accountability for the slugs that were there. There was a transfer of any ongoing activity that would be taking place. But during normal operation, we had two operators in the control room and then a chief operator. And then the other operators would be picking fuel up out of the basins. That was all done by hand. If you’ve seen the reactor, the fuel would come out, go down in chutes. But all of those fuel elements had to be picked up by hand through the water—through 20 feet of water, put in the buckets, and then those buckets would be transferred under water over to a station where the railcar would come in from the 200 Area, all underwater. And then that bucket that contained the radioactive slugs would be, then, taken by railcar over to the 200 Area where it would be reprocessed. So, that—typically, then, you’d do maintenance work that could be done when the reactor was running. And then you had a daily routine of walking through the whole reactor. It’s very interesting; you could—Robert, you could tell, after you’d been there for a while, by the sounds if things were okay. If there was a shrill sound where the water pressure coming through, the water flowing through the reactors, and all of the different fans had different sounds. So you walked the reactor—always walked, went to the rear—in the rear of the building is a little place with a lead glass shield that you could look through to see the rear face. So you’d check the rear face for any anomalies, for leakage, or anything like that. And then you’d have your—we always had a health physicist on each shift. He had his rounds to check on the radiation levels in different areas. And different areas were controlled depending on whether there was radioactive material or contamination in the area. We had step-off pads, where you’d go from one area to another. Dual step-off pads, if you had a highly contaminated area. And the people—some of the crew would sort laundry as well. Because we went through a lot of laundry, because you had to change into what we called SWPs, special material when you came on shift. So anyway that would be rather routine. Now, during an outage, or during a startup, then you have a beehive of activity. The place that we—the shift supervisor had total control and authority over the running of the reactor. So even the manager and other people that were there for startup, they would have to leave, because of the intensity of the operation during startup. So, if it were an outage, you went into—you were doing charge/discharge. So you have a front face crew and a rear face crew, and you’re doing a lot of physical work. The charging machines would—you’d have to load them up by hand—load the slugs by hand. So it was—it’s hard to explain the level of activity that was going on during an outage. Because we would have maintenance. We would have some maintenance on the process tubes that had to be removed because they were leaking. So we’d have to—the maintenance people would come in and remove those. So it was very, very, very—it’s like a huge manufacturing operation.
Franklin: Right.
Ferguson: But a lot by hand. So the dichotomy between—you’ve got a very sophisticated—you get no sound from the reactor itself but a lot of sound from everything that runs the reactor.
Franklin: The water and the electronics and everything.
Ferguson: Right. And the reactors were cooled by—inerted by gas by helium and carbon dioxide. And so one of the auxiliary rooms was a place where you controlled mixture of the helium and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the reactor. Because you could change the reactivity by changing the temperature of the graphite. You could heat it up with CO2 and cool it off with helium.
Franklin: Interesting. So how long did you work as a reactor physicist—nuclear physicist and shift operator?
Ferguson: Well, nominally about two years as a physicist and about two years as an operating supervisor. So it was about 50/50 while I was here. I’ll tell you, interesting story. Probably we don’t want to put it on television, but—on September 27th, 1960, I was—it was a Tuesday, and I was starting the reactor up. And I got a call that my wife’s water had broken and she was on the way to the Kadlec Hospital to deliver our second girl. So it was the first time in history a reactor went critical the same time a woman went critical. [LAUGHTER] I could tell you exactly where I was standing in that reactor out there when that happened. I’ll always remember that. And Kadlec Hospital at that time was just Quonset huts, as well.
Franklin: Right, yeah, wow. Thanks for sharing. [LAUGHTER] Where did you—I’m assuming you guys lived in Richland while you worked out at Site, right?
Ferguson: Right, yeah.
Franklin: And so you lived in Richland during—so you would have lived in Richland, then, while it was a government town and then also during the transition.
Ferguson: When we first came here, the government owned the town, and we lived in a B—I was going to say B Reactor. [LAUGHTER] Okay. We lived on Kimball—1524 Kimball in a duplex.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferguson: And then the second home here was a ranch house. But then, while we were there they sold. And when we were first here, GE provided coal. We had coal for our heat and lightbulbs. Those were all provided. I think we paid $47 a month rent at that time. And then the town was sold off. And our neighbors had the right to buy the B house.
Franklin: Because they had been there longer than you?
Ferguson: They were one of the original occupants. And so then we rented from them. So we were here during that transition.
Franklin: Can you describe that transition? What you remember, or your thoughts on it?
Ferguson: Well, it was very interesting. When we first came here, there was—and one of the reasons that the road system is the way it is is because of the security in the town. There was only one road in at the time and one road out. And that’s the way—you had to be cleared in order to live and work in Richland during that time. And so we—you know, we had a bus system that picked us up. We had a—during that time as well, those of us that worked in radiation levels, every month we’d have our urine sampled. And so the people that worked there set their bottle out by the front door to be picked up and monitored. So then as the town—after the town was sold off, then, there was more interest in changing the—upgrading the buildings, painting, and more things like that. So you could see the evolution from a government-owned town to private ownership. More and more attention to yards and things like that. So we—my wife and I—my family experienced that transition. And we left—came here in 1957. I left here in ‘61 to go to Argonne. And then we came back in 1972, and the town had totally changed, then. When we came back, we looked at a couple of houses in Meadow Springs and the realtor told us it would be pretty iffy to buy there, because that may not go. And there was a dirt road at that time between that and Columbia Center. Columbia Center didn’t exist when we were first here. We came back, and here’s Columbia Center. So having left here and come back, we’ve seen this transformation of the Tri-Cities. Rather remarkable.
Franklin: Right. And how come you left Richland in ’61?
Ferguson: Well, actually I was in the control room of B Reactor when we heard about an accident in Idaho called the SL-1 accident.
Franklin: I’ve heard about that.
Ferguson: It was a military accident that killed three military people. Anyway, it’s kind of a long story, but I’ll make it pretty short. Part of the accident investigation indicated that there was no one AEC organization responsible. The reactor was designed at Argonne in Chicago at Argonne National Lab, but built and operated by the Army at Idaho. And they Idaho office wasn’t responsible; Chicago wasn’t responsible for making sure. So anyway, I was recruited by AEC to go to work up with the AEC to set up the safety program for what was then called the Second Round reactors. These were commercial reactors that were built to encourage the development—commercial development of nuclear power. But Argonne had a lot of reactors at the time, both at Idaho, as well as at Argonne. Both thermal reactors, research reactors and fast reactors. And so anyway, I was recruited because they were looking for people with actual physics and operations experience to work in safety. And so, shortly after I was there, I was sent to Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology for an accelerated program in state-of-the-art safety. But then we—anyway, then we did a review of all the reactors under Chicago. And those were reactors at Idaho, reactors at Santa Susana in California, Atomics International reactors. And then we had commercial reactors at Piqua, Ohio and Hallam, Nebraska. And—oh, there were two other ones, anyway, that were funded by the AEC, but privately owned. But the safety responsibility was the AEC. So anyway I went back there because of the emergence of the need for people with actual operating experience. There were only two places: that was Savannah River and here at Hanford.
Franklin: Right. And up until that time, you had not worked with commercial reactors; you’d only worked on production.
Ferguson: Yeah, there were no—no, that’s correct.
Franklin: So can you describe that transition? How was that for you? Even though you would have had operating experience, like we talked about earlier, the operation of the commercial reactor is almost opposite. The purposes are very different. And so I’m wondering if you can describe that transition.
Ferguson: Well, it’s also a cultural transition. And one of the difficulties in the development of commercial nuclear power was because of this cultural issue. Some of the utilities were oversold on the ease with which nuclear power could be used to produce electricity. And so they didn’t understand the need for the training and the quality assurance and the rigorous of operation. And that led to some accidents in the early days, because the utilities really were not sensitive to that. Admiral Rickover was even worried that the private sector, the commercial sector, was not able to manage nuclear. And he was afraid that they would have accidents. And that’s why he built and operated Shippingport, which was one of the first commercial reactors, but it was built by the Navy. But anyway, it was a cultural change. And after the SL-1 accident, it was really a wakeup call even within the AEC for the need for rigorous oversight, rigorous design review, design construction, and operation. The need for safety at all of those areas from the time you procure a piece of equipment, to its built, to its put in operation, and then maintained. All of that was new to the industry. So I actually lived through that transition, I guess, if you would call it that. Because GE was—and DuPont were very rigorous in their safety. Very rigorous. Because people didn’t really know much about nuclear power at that time, or nuclear energy.
Franklin: So you’re saying some of that safety-consciousness kind of came over from the folks involved in production, who then went on to commercial.
Ferguson: Right.
Franklin: I’ve—when talking to people similar to yourself who’ve been in the industry, very familiar with nuclear production and power, I’ve often heard that the nuclear industry is one of the most tightly regulated and safe industries, or focused with safety. And I’m wondering how you feel about that statement, how you would respond to that.
Ferguson: Well, it is, because of the potential or the risk. Even though the commercial, there has been no deaths in the commercial nuclear industry in the United States, the potential is there as well. I can just give you a little feel for that. Three Mile Island was a very bad accident, but nobody was hurt. I was there. I was—fifth day of the accident, I was in the control room of Three Mile Island. It was really a bad accident, but nobody got hurt. On the other hand, I was at Chernobyl after that accident. That was a very, very bad accident. A lot of people were killed in that accident. People don’t really understand that—going back to your question about the rigorous safety requirements—Russia did not have a requirement for containment for their reactors. So, Chernobyl had no containment. You couldn’t build and operate that kind of a reactor in the United States. So, one of the issues that emerges from the rigorous safety criteria is the difficulty in transition to new instrumentation, for instance. Because you had very prescriptive regulatory requirements, it was more difficult, basically, to introduce new design, new equipment. And it’s one of the difficulties of the nuclear industry, unlike cars where you’re changing them often, it’s very expensive to build one. And then it’s hard, as innovation and changes take place, it’s hard to introduce those in the course of the licensing. So our licensing system has changed somewhat. You used to have to have two permits for commercial reactor. A permit to build it, and then another permit to operate it. Now those are combined into one, because you wouldn’t want to spend all the money to build a reactor and then not be able to run it. And for the antinuclear community, they used that as a way to stop the operation—or the startup of a lot of reactors. That caused a lot of expense, too. So anyway, it’s been a dynamic change, but not as rapid as your iPhone and changes like that, which can be made very quickly.
Franklin: Wow, thank you. Really illuminating. I really like that you mention that there was a cultural transition into the commercial reactor, and I assume, there, you’re talking about dealing with utility companies, but I’m also wondering, was there—did you also work with—because you mentioned fast reactors. Did you also work with scientists and people from the university side of operations when you moved into commercial power?
Ferguson: Oh, yes.
Franklin: And was that also part of the cultural shift?
Ferguson: Well, for instance, going into Argonne—Argonne was where the nuclear technology started. I mean, Argonne came from Fermi’s work in Chicago, basically. All of those scientists went to work at Argonne. And they didn’t like to be—scientists don’t like to be regulated or overseen. And so that’s the reason that the reactor—many of the reactors that Argonne worked with were put in Idaho, in a remote area, where you could do a lot of experimentation away from a big city. So that’s where the series of reactors called the BORAX Reactors, where you could actually explode them—pull into a fast period and cause a prompt critical. But you could do that in Idaho because it was so remote. But anyway, it was always a certain amount of tension between research. And one of the current issues right now, there is so much regulation in commercial reactors, it’s hard to introduce any new technology. For instance, Bill Gates is investing in a reactor being designed in China. And he would do that here, but he went to the NRC and it’d take him 24 years to get a permit just to build it here. So, the rigorous licensing process also inhibits development of new technologies. And we don’t really today have a good answer for that. We need to have an intermediate step where you can work on new reactor designs that are not ready for commercial operation yet but need to be run. Because unless you can do experimental work, you can’t develop anything new.
Franklin: But that experimental work is held up by the regulations—
Ferguson: Of the regulations, right.
Franklin: Do you think the public has an inadequate understanding of nuclear technology in general, and nuclear power specifically?
Ferguson: Well, there’s a lot of work has been done with respect to why people fear nuclear which is really very safe, statistically. The probability of being hurt by a nuclear accident is essentially zero. Yet, people will get in their car and they’ll drive their car. So there’s a lot of psychological fear. And a lot of that fear, we think, comes from the use of nuclear technology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In other words, the notion of equating weapons with nuclear power. And that has continued to this day, because many people don’t understand here at Hanford the difference between commercial waste and waste from both the Second World War and the Cold War. It’s a very different issue, but people think of it all as one. And one of the problems is that with the evolution of the organization that manages that. I mean, I worked, when I was head of the FFTF project, I worked for the AEC, I worked for ERDA, and I worked for the Atomic Energy Commission in the same job. And so you can understand then. And that—the weapons program is still in the Department of Energy. I’m a big advocate of removing it, because—and removing the waste from the commercial—to create a separation. As long as they’re managed together, how do you expect the average person to believe that they’re not one in the same thing? Or that the issues are not one in the same thing. So that fear of nuclear is real. And there’s been a lot of work done about why people fear it when it is not really unsafe. And generally you find that the people that work with nuclear are very comfortable with it. And the farther away you get, the more fear there is. For instance, here at Hanford, people are very used to working with it. We have clean water. You go over to Seattle, they want to tell us how to—why to be afraid here at Hanford. Well, we live here. We drink the water, we eat the fish. We’re not fearful of it, because we’ve lived with it. We know it. So a lot of that is proximity.
Franklin: Yeah, thank you, I appreciate you expanding on that. It does give it a troubled reputation, doesn’t it? Since the birth of nuclear energy is related to death and bombings and then was a very visible part of our very large stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Ferguson: And it still is a threat with the proliferation. And it’s a huge threat.
Franklin: And to have a peaceful arm of that, though, I think to some people maybe they confuse both heads of that same—
Ferguson: That’s not unnatural that they would do that. The other thing that’s happened, you know, we had—Three Mile Island happened right after Jane Fonda’s movie, The China Syndrome. And then we had Chernobyl. And then we had the accident in Japan. So these big accidents get a lot of publicity. And there’s a lot of fear that comes from the reporting of that, which isn’t always accurate. Because the nature of reporting is to make things dramatic. And so it gets dramatized in the public. So it probably will take generations to—people to address that.
Franklin: Right. Because certainly our current—where we get our current energy from is also a problematic source of energy, in terms of its political and human and environmental costs.
Ferguson: Right. The irony is that 20%, nominally, 20% of our electricity comes from nuclear. 70% of the carbon-free generation—70% comes from nuclear. And so there is no way the country can ever meet its goal of carbon emissions without a greater use of nuclear power. Because solar and wind are both intermittent. You can’t store them. For instance, if you had to rely on them during the cold weather we just had—we had no sun, it was cold. Where would you get your energy? Where would you get your energy? And the other thing that people really don’t understand is that both wind and solar are nuclear energy. Their source is nuclear energy from the sun. The sun—and the earth gets all of its energy from radiation from the sun. Yet people don’t think of that radiation as bad radiation. They think of that as good radiation. And other radiation, from nuclear power, is bad radiation.
Franklin: Interesting, I don’t think I ever thought of it quite like that before. But it’s very true.
Ferguson: All of the weather comes from absorption of energy from the sun in the oceans, creates the wind, picks up the moisture, delivers it. That’s where we get our hydro power. Solar power—all of that is nuclear energy from the sun. The sun is our source of nuclear energy.
Franklin: Well, even in a way then oil is also from the sun, because it’s decomposed carbon matter—
Ferguson: Originally—
Franklin: Originally.
Ferguson: No, really, it preceded the sun in the sense that it was a part of matter when it was created at the Big Bang.
Franklin: True. So I’d like to go back—tell me about coming back to Richland to work on the FFTF. What brought you back from Argonne to Hanford?
Ferguson: Well, the people—the assistant manager at Argonne for the AEC I had worked with there—and he became the manager of the Richland Operations Office. And then another fellow I had worked with there, Alex Fremling, became his deputy. And so they asked me to come back. They were having a lot of difficulty with the management of the contracts here. And I’d had a lot of experience in project management at Argonne in both high energy physics and reactor projects, and a lot of experience in contracting. So anyway, I came back and I was originally head of contracts. And then shortly after that I was made technical director for the Site. That was at a period when—or at a time, in 1972, when 106-T leak occurred. That was the 105,000-gallon leak that really was the first major leak of radioactive material from the tanks. And it’s the first time the public then became aware of the real problem here at Hanford. And so I was on the investigating committee for that event. And we went back to—Dixy Lee Ray was Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and then subsequently our governor. But we asked for a supplemental appropriation--$20 million supplemental appropriation to start building double-shell tanks. So that’s when we started building the double-shell tanks, thinking that there would be a solution fairly soon. And I can take you all the way back to when I was with GE, I did some—one of my jobs there, I measured some—the radiation level in some of the tanks, because as early as that time, GE was concerned about leaking tanks. Because the radioactive material in the tanks stratifies. The radiation level is different and it creates a temperature stress in the tanks. So we were—as early as then, we were worried about tanks leaking. Now—that was 1958, ’59. Here we are in 2016 and we’ve got leaky tanks and no solution. [LAUGHTER] Not much progress.
Franklin: Sadly no.
Ferguson: Anyway then FFTF was in trouble from a cost and schedule standpoint. So I was asked to set up the FFTF Project Office. And the manager of Richland went back to Washington, and he became head of nuclear energy in Washington. His deputy became manager here—Alex Fremling became manager here and so they—we’d all worked together. And so they asked me to set up the FFTF Project Office.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferguson: And that’s when—in 1973—I stayed here until 1978 and then Jim Schlesinger, the chairman of—Secretary of Energy for DOE asked me to go back and take over the nuclear program in Washington.
Franklin: And what do you feel like you got accomplished from ’73 to ’78 on the FFTF Project Office?
Ferguson: We built the most remarkable fast reactor test facilities that’s ever been built. At the time that I was asked to take it over, there was a member of the—Bill Anders—who was the astronaut that went around the moon the first time. Anyway, he was a member of the AEC. But he helped me get the project office set up based on the way NASA set up their offices: decentralized. But he told me that the FFTF was far more difficult technical job than putting a man on the moon. So the development of the technology that we developed and demonstrated with FFTF was really incredible. And a lot of that technology’s now being given to Japan—to China—for their new development program. A lot of the sodium technology, the fast reactor technology. So we accomplished a lot. But it didn’t—and then it got killed. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, right, it did. I wonder if you could talk about that. What happened to the FFTF?
Ferguson: Well, at the time FFTF was built, the policy of the United States and the Atomic Energy Commission was to reprocess and have breeder reactors. And so that you would take the fuel from commercial reactors, reprocess it, take the plutonium out of it, use that plutonium for fuel for fast reactors. So essentially, by using fast reactors, you have basically an unlimited supply of energy. So that was the policy when FFTF was built. Clinch River was to be a commercial demonstration plant at Clinch River in Tennessee. Clinch River was killed when Carter came in. Carter killed the breeder program because he thought that—first of all, he didn’t think nuclear was going to be here to stay, and he didn’t want to—thought reprocessing would facilitate the spread of nuclear weapons around the world. Because when you do reprocess, you can use that same technology to extract plutonium for weapons. So it was killed for that reason. And Carter was pushing coal at the time, saying we had, essentially, an abundant supply of coal. And so he thought that nuclear really wasn’t going to—it was a last resort, as he put it. Because of our lack of reprocessing, we have influenced the design of Yucca Mountain for the deep geologic storage. Because at the time that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 was set up, there was a conflict between those that wanted to reprocess and those that didn’t want to reprocess. So Yucca Mountain is designed for retrievability. It’s designed for permanent storage of defense waste, but retrievability of commercial waste. So at some date in the future, it could be reprocessed. Because about 90% of the energy value is still in fuel once it’s discharged from a commercial reactor. So anyway, that decision has affected a lot of subsequent issues that the country has faced.
Franklin: How come the program didn’t come back under Reagan?
Ferguson: Well, in January of 1982, I was asked to participate in a—that’s when Reagan was president, and George Bush, Sr. was his vice president. And he called a meeting that I was invited to, to discuss what was going on in nuclear at that time. And at the time, I was head of WPPSS. And the cost estimate—this was post-Three-Mile Island. The cost estimate for plants was going up, they were having delays. And so Reagan called this meeting from executives to find out what could be done with nuclear. Well, as a result of that meeting, then, we were instrumental in getting the Nuclear Waste Policy Act started which he then proposed as a way of dealing with commercial nuclear fuel. Because up until that time, there was no solution to commercial nuclear fuel. So—and there still isn’t.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ferguson: There still isn’t. Because Obama killed—or tried to kill the Yucca Mountain project. But we stopped him from doing that. I was one of the principals—law suit that the courts ruled that he didn’t have the authority to do that. But he stopped it. So now there is no solution, yet, to what to do with commercial fuel. So commercial fuel is now stored all over the United States at all of the reactors.
Franklin: Right, right. How did you become involved with the WPPSS project?
Ferguson: Well, I was recruited out of Washington.
Franklin: So you’re just back and forth from here to Washington and then back.
Ferguson: Well, people that had known about my success in building FFTF and turning that around—and it turns out Senator Jackson was one of those. And so when I was recruited, I’d been in the government 20 years, and I was still pretty young. I didn’t want to leave the government, because I had no retirement. I wasn’t old enough to retire. Anyway, Senator Jackson told me that if I would come out and solve the WPPSS problem, he would make sure I got back in the government. Well, a long story short, I came out and I did solve, I think, the WPPSS problem. But I also had open heart surgery and ruined my health and then Senator Jackson died. So I never went back into the government. He died and I never had a pension. So—[LAUGHTER] so that’s what WPPSS did to me! But anyway, I was recruited—going back to your question—there was a national recruitment because of the difficulties WPPSS was having building the plants.
Franklin: And how long did you work at WPPSS for?
Ferguson: Three years, ’80 to ’83.
Franklin: Okay. And what did you do after that?
Ferguson: I started up a company, R.L. Ferguson and Associates, a consulting company. And we sold that to SAIC. And then I started up another company, Nouveau Tech. And we acquired a nuclear waste facility that’s out here, now it’s called PermaFix Northwest. We acquired that out of bankruptcy from ATG. And then in 2007, I sold that to PermaFix. And since then, I’ve been writing books and consulting.
Franklin: So you’re still not retired.
Ferguson: No. I’m still consulting.
Franklin: Still consulting. But still on—
Ferguson: And I’ve written two books on the nuclear waste issue, so—
Franklin: Okay, great. Well, which two books are those?
Ferguson: Nuclear Waste in Your Backyard: Who’s to Blame and What to Do About It. And the first one was called—I can’t remember the name of it. Something about Obama and Reid wasting money. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Ah. Tell me about your involvement with the Tri-Cities Nuclear Industrial Council, TRICNIC, which later became TRIDEC.
Ferguson: Well, after I left WPPSS, I was asked to be the chair of TRICNIC. Because I was kind of in a period when I was trying to recover for my health. And so Sam Volpentest was the executive vice president, and Glen Lee was publisher of the paper then, and Bob Philips was the president. And they would ask me to be the president of TRICNIC. And then because of the need to diversify the economy in the Tri-Cities, we merged TRICNIC with the Tri-City Chamber, and that became then TRIDEC. And so I was the first president and chair of TRIDEC, when it was formed. And Sam stayed on until his death. He worked up until he died. And then Gary Petersen took over his place to head up the Hanford part of TRICNIC.
Franklin: I wonder if you could talk about working with Sam Volpentest.
Ferguson: There’s been a whole book written about that. [LAUGHTER] Did you read it? The godfather?
Franklin: I have, yeah, The Community Godfather by C. Mark Smith.
Ferguson: Much of my life is in there.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferguson: [LAUGHTER] But anyway, no, yeah, he was one of those remarkable people that you know in your lifetime. He worked right up until he died. I told a story at his funeral—a eulogy—I said, you know, the clock was set right after 5:00 because he wanted to put in a final shift before he died. [LAUGHTER] So he died right after 5:00. [LAUGHTER] But Sam was very devoted to the Tri-Cities and the economic development of the Tri-Cities and spent his whole life on behalf. But he was probably largely responsible for my—or one of the reasons for taking over WPPSS, because he was close to Senator Jackson. I had worked with him in the community on FFTF as well. When I took over FFTF, we not only—the prior head of the nuclear in Washington had testified it would be completed for $187 million. But we didn’t—not only couldn’t you complete it, we ran out of money that year. And Sam was instrumental in TRIDEC—or TRICNIC was instrumental in getting a supplemental appropriation to keep FFTF. That’s one of its early, early almost-deaths. So I started working with Sam in the community at that time. So then when I left WPPSS, I was asked to get more involved.
Franklin: Great. I’m wondering if you can remember or can tell me about any kind of notable events or incidents that happened at Hanford while you were working out there. I think you would have been gone for the JFK visit, which was in ’63, but if there were any other—
Ferguson: Right, I was at Argonne then.
Franklin: But if there were any other notable events or incidents that happened at Hanford while you worked there.
Ferguson: Oh. Other than the leak? 106-T leak?
Franklin: Pretty notable. Or maybe in general in Tri-Cities history, or any—did you ever go to any of the Atomic Frontier Days parades or anything like that?
Ferguson: No, I didn’t, no. I’m trying to think of—well, 10,000 people marched in support of keeping WNP-1 alive. Have you ever seen that picture?
Franklin: Yes.
Ferguson: 10,000 people, can you imagine that?
Franklin: Yes, yeah, that’s—
Ferguson: Supporting nuclear power? Where else in the country could you do that?
Franklin: Not too many places.
Ferguson: Well, I’m trying to think, what--?
Franklin: It’s okay if you don’t.
Ferguson: I really—I can’t.
Franklin: It’s one of my stock questions.
Ferguson: Oh, okay.
Franklin: You know, in case something pops up.
Ferguson: Right.
Franklin: So, I guess—let me look over this.
Ferguson: Probably told you more than you want to know!
Franklin: Yeah, we’ve covered quite a bit. And I just have kind of one last question that’s kind of a wrap-up question. But I’m wondering what you would like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland in the Cold War.
Ferguson: Well, I think it would be very important, and I think it’s even important for this generation to understand the circumstances under which people operated the reactors. There’s been a lot of public criticism about the fact that we discharged waste into the ground. And people just, I think, don’t understand the pressures and the circumstances. The major thing people should understand is that Hanford was very carefully chosen because of the potential risk of an accident or even discharge of radioactive material. The selection of Hanford is unique in the location. The 200 Area, it’s unique in the sense that under the site is a layer of caliche, it’s like cement. Overlaying on that is sand. And they looked up on this as basically a way to hold up the radioactive material and they put it in the ground. And so it wasn’t just people being careless or anything like that. There were the pressures and unknowns. People didn’t know a lot about nuclear, but there was an incredible safety record in spite of all of that. So anyway, I think the big disappointment I have is that the waste hasn’t been take care of, and it’s mostly a political issue than a technical issue. It could have been taken care of a long time ago, but it’s terrible. It’s an issue that has become politicized.
Franklin: Right. Because sites with smaller amounts of waste have been able to encapsulate—begin or even in some cases finish encapsulation programs like West Valley, Savannah River—have been able to deal.
Ferguson: And most of our waste out here doesn’t really have to be vitrified, either. It’s high activity, because of where it came from, by law. It came from reprocessing. But it’s high-level waste, but it’s low-activity waste. And so if you remove the cesium from it, you could basically secure the waste in a cementaceous form and send it to Texas. About 80% of the waste could be done and we wouldn’t even have to build a vit plant. So it’s been—the design of the Vit Plant was wrong from the beginning. The Hanford waste is unique from a lot of different wastes, in that it’s such a mixture of so many different kinds—it’s not homogeneous. So the design of the Vit Plant, rather than have multiple facilities to treat separate kinds of waste, they basically have a pre-treatment plant where they want to treat all of the waste to make it in a consistent form to feed into the melter. Well, the pre-treatment plant is what’s stopping everything. So there’s been a lot of—you know, I’ve lived through about three or four different starts of the Vit Plant. So, I’ve seen it, and it’s very frustrating to see how political it has become, and a lack of science-based decisions that are made.
Franklin: Yeah, I’ve seen some of the bumper stickers, I forget exactly what they say, but I’ll paraphrase here: Vitrification in 2007, or Hanford Vit Plant. You know, 2007 or 2004. And then we’re—it’s 2016 and we’re still waiting.
Ferguson: Still waiting. Still no—
Franklin: Perhaps—as you said, perhaps for a plant that is not the best approach—
Ferguson: Right.
Franklin: --to the problem. Well—
Ferguson: Sam Volpentest predicted before he died that the Vit Plant would never be built because of the cost. And now you’re seeing it being questioned because of the cost. People are saying, why do we have to spend this kind of money? Because it’s—about $3 billion comes here every year for Hanford, including Battelle. But it’s a huge amount of money. It’s like the WPPSS plants. People used to say, well, we have to build them no matter what. Well, they got too expensive and the need for power went away, and so they didn’t get built. So there comes a price when things are not affordable. And there’s not really a risk to the river. The waste needs to be treated and cleaned up, but there’s no risk, really. There’s no health risk. The flow of the river is so great, any material gets in there is so diluted you can’t even detect it. But that’s not a solution. Right after 106-T, Battelle did some studies for us, just what-if studies. And we said, what if all the waste went in the Columbia River? Well, downstream, it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s so dilute. Not that that’s—I’m not advocating that at all. But it just shows you that the risk to the health and safety of the public is not—does not demand what we’re doing with the waste out there. It doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken care of. I’m just—because at one time Sam and I faced some members of Congress who wanted to put a fence around Hanford and not do anything with it. Just leave it there. [LAUGHTER] So, anyway. I’ve been there, done it.
Franklin: So at least we’re away from that solution.
Ferguson: Well, I hope we’re not going back there. But when the price gets so high, people away from here and the demand for money in the budget gets so tremendous, it’s—strange things can happen.
Franklin: They sure can.
[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Well, Bob, thank you so much for coming in and interviewing with us today.
Ferguson: Okay, Robert.
Franklin: I really appreciated it.
Ferguson: I hope I didn’t cover too much for you.
Franklin: You did a great job; we touched on a lot of really great things. So thank you.
Ferguson: Okay.
Franklin: All right.
Man one: So it’s pointing at you.
Philip Craig: So it’s pointing at me?
Man one: Yeah, yeah.
Man two: Exactly.
Craig: Oh, there we go.
Man two: Perfect, perfect.
Craig: There we go!
Man one: Okay, excellent.
Craig: Okay?
Robert Bauman: Okay. Let me know when you’re ready, all right? Then we’ll—all right?
Man one: We are rolling, so on your cue.
Bauman: So, let’s start, first of all, by just having you say your name and spell it for us, so we make sure we have that correct.
Craig: My name is Philip Craig. P-H-I-L-I-P. C-R-A-I-G.
Bauman: Great. Thank you. And my name is Robert Bauman, and we are conducting this oral history interview on June 24th of 2015 on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So, Mr. Craig, why don’t we have you start, maybe, by just telling us a little bit about your background. Where you came from, how you came to Hanford, and that sort of thing.
Craig: Well my how I came to Hanford started back in high school. I had a high school chemistry class. I liked what I saw. And I knew that the Hanford Project was down the road—I was living in Selah, Washington, and the Hanford Project was very interesting to me. And I even wrote a term paper on Hanford, because I really wanted to work here. So, I went on to Whitman College, graduated from high school in ’56—or ’52, I’m sorry. Graduated from college in ’56, and then went on to Washington State College, then, now Washington State University in Pullman, and did a year of graduate work in chemistry. And at the end of that, I came to Hanford for my very first job. And lo and behold, that was exactly 58 years ago today: June 24, 1957. And it was quite an experience, let me tell you. The first thing that struck me, of course I had to have credentials to get in the building. And in those days, we didn’t have badges like you have today that are on a cord around your neck. We had a little plastic folder with our ID in it, and you’d pull that out of your pocket and flash it open to the guard sitting at the entrance desk. And then you could go on into the building and find your office and take it from there. The most interesting thing, I think, about it all was it was a very formal setting. For years we wore suits, ties, long sleeved white shirts only—couldn’t have colored shirts—and the ladies wore dresses. Far more formal than today’s environment. Security, of course, was very paramount. I mean, we were in the years where the Soviets and the United States was competing. And so the Hanford site, being one of the two principal sites manufacturing plutonium in the United States, the other one being Savannah River, most of the stuff in terms of total production and that sort of thing was top secret. A lot of it was not—it was secret, but security was paramount. I remember in my little office cubby hole—it was a room, it wasn’t just a cubby hole, in a big room—we had a three-drawer file cabinet with a combination lock. And I could take a piece of paper out of that file, put it on my desk and work on it. But if I had to go to the bathroom, it went back in the combination file, locked it, go down the hall and come back and you had to unlock the combination and start all over again. And the very first thing they had me do is they handed me about a three-inch black three-ring binder with a red coversheet, marked secret. This was the PUREX operating manual. Now, PUREX stands for Plutonium Uranium Extraction, and it was the chemical process that is used to take irradiated uranium from the reactors, dissolve it in acid, treat it chemically, and come up with a plutonium nitrate solution. And I had to read this manual in about a week. [LAUGHTER] It was pretty daunting.
Bauman: Now where was your first office? Where on site?
Craig: It was on in the 703 Building, which is about where the Federal Building is today. The last part of the 703 structure—it was a herringbone structure. We had offices coming off a main corridor, and there was about six tiers of those. And the very last one is still standing, and the city offices are in there. But later on, the Federal Building took over.
Bauman: And what was your first job title?
Craig: Physical—let’s see. Physical Science Administrator, I think it was. The other thing about the environment is that you handwrote all your reports, and then gave them to a secretary who typed them. There was no computers. So, it was kind of a laborious process to do that. I needed to check out a government car, which I did in the motor pool, and drive out to the Area to PUREX, and see what was going on most every day, drive back, write the daily report, mark it all secret, send it up a line to my boss. But that government car, let me tell you—it was not air conditioned. So those days were pretty warm. But we got it done. About two months later, after getting into the PUREX part of it, the fellow who was a companion office mate had been handling the plutonium shipments. And he went off to Washington, D.C. for another job. So I got the job of accepting plutonium products on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission and the US government. So it was a very formal process. The products were in two forms. After the plutonium nitrate left PUREX, it was sent over to what is known as the Z Plant. And in that plant, by a series of chemical operations, it was converted to a metal button about this big and it fit in a tuna fish can. It weighed something close to two kilograms. So that was the first product. The second product were manufactured, machined weapon components. And I won’t talk about the exact details of their size and shape at this point. But nonetheless, Hanford was in the business of making weapon components. So my job was to accept this product and make the shipment, every couple of weeks or so, to Rocky Flats. Rocky Flats was about 15 miles northwest of Denver, and it was the receiving site for the plutonium as buttons. They would take that metal and cast it into weapon component shapes and machine those and so on. And of course the other part was the shapes themselves, they’d go up in pieces themselves, and they would go into an inspection process and eventually assemble parts of the warhead.
Bauman: So when you say—you’re accepting them from the contractor, or--?
Craig: I was accepting these materials from the contractor. I mean, General Electric Company was the contractor, and their job on a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract basis was to run all these processes. And there’s hundreds of people involved in this. But at the end of the line, I had to make that transition from Hanford to the next step. So it was a couple of months into my first job, my buddy left for Washington, and here I am, learning how to actually accept these components. Now, you need to understand that plutonium was very radioactive. It emitted some gamma radiation, but not huge amounts. I mean, you could actually handle it. But it also emitted alpha radiation. And so it had to be contained in some kind of container, like a can. And then you could hold it in your hand. Interesting. It was warm. It was—the radioactive decay—was producing heat. So this can felt like hanging onto a 60 Watt lightbulb. Now, the other part of the business of plutonium is that if you got too much of it together in one spot, you had a criticality event. And of course, the bomb itself was designed to make a lot of it go critical at the same time, and that created an atomic explosion. But the point is that if you’re handling plutonium, it had to maintain a certain degree of separation at all times. In the chemical processing plants, they used different sized columns of chemical solutions and whatnot, depending on what was going on. And that was to maintain this critical geometry, so that you didn’t have any kind of criticality event. And after the plutonium was made into these buttons we called them, and canned in the tuna fish cans, they were stored in a vault. And the vault had pillars of metal rods, and little rings on that rod that you could put a can in. But it maintained the separation. So on shipping day, what we would do is we operators of the plant would go into the vault and take these cans and very carefully put—I don’t remember exactly how many—something about five or six cans in a little red wagon. Just a little kid’s wagon. But there was spacers in there so that these things didn’t get too close. And they’d bring it down the hallway to the room that exited to the building where it then could be handled further. And this assembly area, in this room were birdcages. Now a birdcage is a metal frame that’s about this big, this big, and this big. And in the middle was a metal pot with a lid. And the idea was that you took—one at a time—one of those cans from the red wagon, and you put it in the pot. And then I think the birdcage held like three buttons. Then there was a lid, and a bunch of bolts in places where you could put a wire with a lead seal on the end. And my job was to squeeze the seal closed with an imprint and record, of course, what the identity of those cans were, and the weight, and that sort of thing on paperwork. And at the end of that, I would sign this receipt for this material, and give it to the contractor. The weapon components varied a little bit differently, depending on the size and shape of the weapon component. Eventually, those were a much bigger birdcage, and it contained a couple of pieces of weapon material.
Bauman: So—
Craig: Hold up.
Bauman: Oh, sure.
Craig: I got to collect my thoughts here. Okay. You can go back on. The business of shipping, then—I owned that plutonium for maybe 15 minutes [LAUGHTER] before the government. Then I would transfer it to armed couriers, AEC couriers. They were not only armed with side arms; they were armed with machine guns. This was serious stuff. And they would load these birdcages into a truck, and eventually ship that off to Rocky Flats.
Bauman: How often did these shipments--?
Craig: Well, every couple of weeks or so.
Bauman: And so, they were shipped by truck then, to Rocky Flats?
Craig: That was a method used in later years. They didn’t really like shipping by truck that well. We actually had another system that involved—all I’m going to say is it involved rail. Because the exact details was highly classified.
Bauman: And did the amount that was shipped vary significantly, or--?
Craig: It varied, yes. Depends on how the production was going and what the requirements were on the other end.
Bauman: Oh, okay. Sure. And so how long did you do this, then? How long were you--?
Craig: From 1957 to 1972.
Bauman: Wow.
Craig: So I shipped a lot of plutonium.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
Craig: The other thing that was kind of interesting—I was explaining to you about the criticality. I hadn’t been on the job more than, I don’t know, a couple of months, shipping. I knew what to do, I knew the whole process, and I knew the sensitivity of it. One day one of these chemical operators who worked for the contractor had gone to the vault, and he came down the hall carrying about five tuna fish cans in his hand, and holding it with his arm like this. Well, that was absolutely high risk criticality event waiting to happen. And he walked in the room, and I said, ooooh. Just stop right where you are. And I instructed one of the other operators, take one of the cans from him and put it in the birdcage very carefully. And we got that shipment loaded and we were on our way. And then I went to the manager’s office—the plant manager’s office. Now, this fellow was like 60 years old. Kind of a salty southerner with—I mean, he was definitely in charge. And I’m 23 years old. Fresh out of college, wet behind the ears. And I gave him a real lecture about safety. And he didn’t like that. He called my boss. And my boss said Mr. Craig was right: you really almost had an accident today. That’s the end of that story. There was more to the whole weapons system. Since I was in the whole process, one of the small cogs—there was uranium coming from Oak Ridge. There was plutonium—some plutonium—and tritium coming from Savannah River. There was high explosives coming from Pantex. And then Hanford plutonium. This all had to be scheduled into what was known as the US master nuclear delivery schedule. It was the weapons document for all the weapons made in the country. It was a top secret document, and representatives from each of these sites got together, usually in Albuquerque, New Mexico, or at the Rocky Flats Plant. And we handwrote this schedule. There was no computers. There was a spreadsheet format, yes. But we didn’t have computers to do all that. Everything had to be balanced. This whole process had to bring all these materials together for processing at Rocky Flats. And so, about once a year we got together to do the master nukes schedule. I found I was pretty fortunate to be a part of that. I was pretty young. But it was a challenge. I had a lot of help, of course. But I was very impressed. One of the things that kind of scared me though was—and let me check on the date. October 22 to 24, 1962. That was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were in Denver and Rocky Flats to work on these schedules. Now, that was ground zero for the Russians. If they were going to attack the United States, that probably would have been one of their targets. And it was kind of scary working there for those two days. I was very thankful that President Kennedy convinced Khrushchev to back off and no ill things happened.
Bauman: Were you here when President Kennedy came to Hanford in ’63?
Craig: Yes, yes.
Bauman: Do you remember that?
Craig: Oh, I remember that. We got to drive out and see him out at the reactor site. It was quite an experience. I think that was one of the only Presidents I’ve ever seen in person. And it wasn’t long after that, you know, a couple months or less, that he was assassinated in Texas.
Bauman: Do you remember much about that day?
Craig: It was hot! [LAUGHTER] It was still warm when he was here visiting. But it was a big event. There was thousands of people out there in the desert. But it was very thrilling experience to see the President come.
Bauman: Sure. So, you said you were working on the shipment from ’57 to ’72. So did that process change much over those years, other than shifting from—
Craig: Well, yes. In about ’66, we quit making weapon components at Hanford. And the process moved to Rocky Flats entirely.
Bauman: So that part changed.
Craig: Yeah. That part changed. But the plutonium buttons didn’t.
Bauman: And so then in ’72 then, how did your job change? What did you start doing at that point?
Craig: Well, take a break for a sec.
[VIDEO CUTS]
Bauman: Sure, that’d be great. Do you want to go ahead and do that now?
Craig: Hmm?
Bauman: Do you want to go ahead and start that now then? Start talking about that?
Craig: Yes.
Bauman: Okay. That’d be great.
Man one: All right, just a moment. Okay, we’re rolling again. Just start whenever you—
Craig: Okay. Well, let’s see, I need the face page of this. Okay, I’m ready.
Bauman: Go ahead.
Man two: We’re rolling.
Craig: The other significant activity that I was involved with was in 1968. The site was in a state where we had 149 single-shell waste tanks and 28 double-shell waste tanks. Actually, that’s not quite right. There were four short of that on the double-shell. And these were boiling waste tanks. The others were not boiling waste. But it was all liquid, and we were concerned about the integrity of the tanks and the lifetime of the tanks. And so at that time, the Atlantic-Richfield-Hanford Company, ARCO, was the contractor. And two of their engineers, Sam Beard and Bob McCullough and I co-authored a document that was called “The Hanford Waste Management Briefing.” And the purpose of this was to explain the Hanford situation to our headquarters—our AEC headquarters staff, and Congressional staffers who were then going to be funding what is now known as the Tank Farm projects. And this document was a briefing document, and the key—one of the key charts that we were particularly proud of is to try to show people how complex the business of the Hanford waste system was. And this chart shows what happens to a ton of uranium that’s been irradiated and then processed at PUREX, and the wastes that come out of that whole process. And some of it’s boiling waste, because of high levels of radioactivity that are in that particular section of waste, and some was non-boiling. For example, you’re dealing with—for that ton of waste—680 gallons of non-boiling waste and 220 gallons of boiling waste. And in the non-boiling tank, you have 900 pounds of salts, chemical nitrate—nitrates and so on, and about 350 curies of radioactivity. But in the boiling side, there’s 230 pounds of salt, but 300,000 curies of activity. That’s why they’re boiling. And then there was a low-level stream that had like 55,000 gallons of waste that went to a crib—a crib is like a septic tank—tile field—and the swamp, which is just an open pond. There was another 560,000 gallons went there, but their radioactivity was less than a tenth of a curie. I mean, it was just negligible. On the solid side, there was about ten cubic feet of solid waste. There was about 10 million cubic feet—I’m sorry—of gases that came out. And here’s the number that it was radio—a surprise to everyone that it was published. It was secret then, but it’s been declassified since. Out of that ton of fuel came 530 grams of plutonium and four grams of neptunium. So the chemical process that started with a ton of material and ended up with just a very small amount. So it’s kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Because these wastes were boiling, we’d started building—had started building double-shell tanks. A double-shell tank is a steel tank within a steel tank within a concrete barrier. And this diagram in that briefing document showed what a double-shell tank was all about. These were million-gallon tanks. And in those days, it was about a dollar, maybe a dollar and a half a gallon to build those tanks. A million-million half dollars for one of these big tanks. Far, far, less than what they would cost today.
Bauman: Yeah.
Craig: At any rate, we made this presentation to the staffers and the ultimate activity was to remove as much as water as we could from the single-shell tanks so that we ended up with a salt cake that was not going anywhere. We isolated cesium-137 and strontium-90 by another chemical process, carried out in B Plant, to bring those short-lived emitters of radiation to a point where we could encapsulate those in steel cylinders. That was done and they’re stored. I think they’re still stored that way, but I’m not entirely sure. I kind of lost track of what’s happened since. We also built—were recommending that they build four more double-shelled tanks and that’s why the number finally grew to 28 double-shell tanks. And then, of course, it ultimately led to the pretreatment plant that’s in the process out here now, and the Waste Vitrification Plant.
Bauman: You mentioned one of the reasons for doing the report was there were concerns about the integrity of the single-shell tanks. Were some of them leaking at that point, or just concerns that they might leak?
Craig: I think at that point there were some that had displayed a little bit of leakage, yes. There’s other documents that showed some leakage, but, again it wasn’t into the concrete overpack, if you will. There was some, of course, got into the soil column, but it was not a series breach, and it wasn’t any radioactivity that got down into the groundwater. But we were afraid that it would. I mean, 1968, these tanks have been—the initial ones—had been built in 1944! ’45, ’46. So there was some that were approaching the end of life, and those tanks are still there today. And that’s why they’re so concerned about trying to remove some of the waste from these tanks and process it.
Bauman: So, who initiated—was this ARCO or AEC that sort of initiated the study that you helped write?
Craig: Oh, I think it was—collectively, the Hanford folks at engineering—folks on both sides of the contractor and the government were saying, we got to do something about this. Anyway, I think that’s about all I want to say about the creation of that document. I thought it would be interesting for you to look into if that ever showed up in the REACH literature as the kickoff document to get this thing going.
Bauman: Right, right. Yeah. And did you continue to be involved after this report in some of the tank—waste management end of things?
Craig: Yes. Actually, I had some side activities that I got into first. From 1968 to 1972, I was the plutonium leasing officer for the government. There was one in Oak Ridge for uranium, and I was the plutonium one for the US. And basically, what I was—what we did is we created a lease document, so the 125 commercial organizations, 40 government agencies, and about 450 colleges and universities could have plutonium material. And we would, in effect, rent it to them for a use charge. Wasn’t very expensive, but it was a charge. More importantly, if they lost any of it, they had to pay for it. The largest users of that lease program were the two reactor fuel contractors. One of them was Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation in Apollo, Pennsylvania. And the other one was Kerr-McGee in Oklahoma. They made reactor fuels for the breeder program at Oak Ridge, and the Fast Flux Test Facility here.
Bauman: Oh, okay. Interesting.
Craig: So that was a way for them to have this material. For the next nine years, I continued to be involved with the PUREX and Z Plant, and the management of both site materials—all of the different types of materials that we had: uranium, and plutonium, and so on. And those materials were about $500,000 to $750,000 in value. I’m sorry, $500 to $750 million in value. But it was a management process. Then later on, from 1981 to 1985, I was able to be involved in the last big development program that I had while I was working for the government. It was called the Spent Fuel Management Program. Now, during this time, the AEC had been in charge—prior to this time, the AEC had been in charge of both the Defense orientation of radioactive materials, and also the development of commercial power reactors. And there was a political hue and cry from about 19—let’s see—1974, I think it was—that the commercial reactor stuff should go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a new agency. And then, of course, a few years after that, about 1978 I think it was, the—oh, by the way, when the NRC was created, they changed the name of AEC. It became ERDA: Energy Research and Development Administration. And then about four years later, they changed it again to the Department of Energy. Well, now we had the government on our side—DoE had an obligation to kind of help the nuclear power industry deal with the long-term disposal of their spent fuel. I mean, as the fuel is burned up in their reactor and is no longer useful, eventually it was going to be encapsulated and sent off to Yucca Mountain. Well, until Yucca Mountain got authorized and built, then they needed an interim storage, and so we developed a concept called the at-reactor spent fuel storage. Several of us—myself and somebody from NRC, and somebody from Battelle, the contract who was working with me, and somebody from the Electric Power Research Institute, representing the power industry—I think that’s about it—we all went off to observe some dry storage in casks in Germany. We brought that technology back to the United States. We worked with the NRC to get it licensed. And now the power reactors of this country are using at-reactor storage in basically steel containers that contain the spent fuel and are just sitting on concrete pads, and the radioactive decay heat is dissipated into the surrounding environment. But all the radioactivity is very well contained in these casks. Hopefully, eventually Yucca Mountain will open. It was part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that I was involved with in those days. The whole purpose of this act was to create a long-term disposal. And NRC was involved in licensing that long-term disposal, and the nuclear power industry was to pay a fee for all this fuel that they were generating to help pay for this. Well, then all this got stopped because of the politics of Nevada and the—it’s going to be restarted, because there was a lawsuit that was settled recently that said that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act should be followed.
Bauman: Right. So, you were involved with that in—
Craig: I was involved in—
Bauman: About ’85?
Craig: --all that kind of stuff.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Yes. And then I left the—at that point, this will be—okay, you can go back on. At that point in 1985, I left the government, went private, went to work for a packaging—an engineering and design company that designed high-level waste shipping containers for use on transportation. They started off—their first big project was the Three Mile Island cask, to move that waste. And then from that, I marketed to the government a high-level waste—any kind of high-level waste that could be put into a cask and removed. And then the TRUPACT-II cask for use in transferring transuranic waste, or primarily plutonium waste, from the government sites to the waste isolation pilot plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico. And from there, I got involved on a couple of other organizations. Eventually, in 1991, I went to work for Lockheed. In 1996, Lockheed, along with—well, Fluor Daniel was the primary contractor, but we were on the Fluor Daniel team, and Lockheed was to manage the Tank Farms. So we came full circle, and I helped Lockheed win that contract.
Bauman: Right, you did come full circle.
Craig: So then, Lockheed moved me from—I was then living in Federal Way, and Lockheed rewarded me by moving me back to Hanford and letting me work on the Hanford site in ’96. And I did that until December of 2000. And there I was involved in the new contracting method. Instead of cost-plus-fixed-fee contracting, it was cost-plus-incentive-fee. And what we would do was we would create a document for a scope of work, a performance agreement. And the contractor would say, here, DoE, this is what we’re going to do for you, and here’s how long it’s going to take. And DoE said, okay, if you do that, we’ll pay you this fee, and if you don’t get it done on time, we’re going to cut your fee. And if you don’t do it well, we’re going to cut your fee. And my job was to, at the end of the work performance, was to write up the actual work done in a document to present to DoE that says, okay, pay us the fee. We were very successful in getting our award fee. And then I gave it all up in December of 2000, after 43 years.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Craig: Cut.
Bauman: That’s a long, fascinating career. Can I ask you questions, kind of go back?
Craig: Yeah, there’s a couple of transition spots I’m kind of worried about, that I kind of sound like an idiot.
Bauman: No.
Craig: I want to—is there any editing we can do?
Bauman: Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it. If there’s any issue we can go back to it later. It’s not a problem. I wonder if I can go back—and this is really interesting stuff, fascinating career. I wanted to ask you just about the community, when you arrived here in 1957, what was Richland like at the time? Could you talk about that a little bit? And did you live in Richland, or--?
Craig: Oh, yes. Yes. We were allowed to rent from the government a B house—half of a B house on Haupt. This was June 1957. And by then—a couple of months—the government started selling off the town to private citizens. And we were in the first block to be sold. The senior owners in the other end of the B house bought the B house. And at that time, we moved to the other side of town, into a ranch house, because that had been sold to its owner. This is kind of an interesting—are you recording?
Bauman: Yeah.
Craig: Oh, okay. This was kind of interesting, because the ranch house that the owner—I mean the resident who was able to buy it bought for like $7,700. And then when we bought the ranch house, I think we paid like $9,500. And of course, those ranch houses today sell for over 100. The town was very—initially of course, it was very caste-oriented. I mean, if you were a contractor, management, you got to live on the river. If you were a lowly government GS-7, you got to live in a B house. And there was a certain level of, you know, if you weren’t in this class, you weren’t part of it, you know. And I think that’s changed dramatically over the years. It doesn’t make any difference who you work for and how much money you make and all that stuff. People have changed for the better.
Bauman: Anything else about the community that stood out to you at the time?
Craig: Well, the first thing that Richland did was they had to celebrate their founding as Richland. They set off a mock atomic bomb, and it was a bunch of fanfare out in the park, and made a poof of smoke that was to represent a mushroom cloud.
Bauman: So, was this at Howard Amon Park?
Craig: Yeah. It was.
Bauman: Anything else that—memories that stand out, either about in community of Richland, or your work—any stories or memories that really stand out to you that you’d like to share?
Craig: I think I’m kind of—
Bauman: Good? [LAUGHTER]
Craig: Completed.
Bauman: All right, well I want to thank you very much. This was really interesting. I appreciate you coming in and sharing stories about your work, and all that you did out there. I really appreciate it.
Craig: Well, you’re more than welcome. I feel confident that this waste document that shows particularly how much plutonium was made, that was a very revolutionary thing. I mean, the idea how much of material you got out of a ton of uranium was—
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Very classified. And to see that declassified and whatnot. It’s—
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Craig: Kind of mind-blowing. But there’s the document. And it’s legitimate to talk about.
Bauman: Right.
Craig: Not sure I want it on the local news tonight, but—[LAUGHTER]
[VIDEO CUTS]
Craig: Details, but I know that he was—
Bauman: Yeah. So, just let me know when you’re ready, all right? We can—
Craig: So this was August, ’76. I don’t know the exact date.
Bauman: That’s all right. I mean, the exact date we have, so—
Man one: Okay, we are ready.
Bauman: Just whatever memories or knowledge you have about it.
Man one: We’re rolling. Whenever you’re ready.
Bauman: Okay. So I don’t know if you want to talk to us about the McCluskey incident and your involvement in that?
Craig: Well, at the time, I was responsible for the Z Plant operations. And so, one morning, early, about 4:30 in the morning, I get a call from the plant that there had been an accident out of the plant, and I needed to get out there. And so I threw some clothes on and got a government car and went out to the site. What had happened was the plant had been operating on the recovery of americium-241 as part of the reclamation activities. And it was a chemical process. Inside this chemical process were criticalities tanks, small tanks like this, long, inside of a glovebox. Earlier in that summer, there had been a labor dispute, and the plant was on strike. And so the process had been shut down. Well, what was going on was americium was loaded onto the ion exchange medium inside this long column. When the dispute was settled and we had several days of reviews, conducting interviews with the contractor people, are you ready to restart? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? And finally they were authorized to start. Well, what happened is that when they poured strong nitric acid on that ion exchange column to take, you lose off the americium. The americium had decayed the resin beads of the ion exchange medium ‘til it was kind of an organic gunk. And that acid reacted with it, and that violent chemical reaction blew open that column. It breached the glovebox, and it sprayed chemicals and americium all over Mr. McCluskey. And he was taken to an initial decontamination spot onsite, and then downtown. But my job, when I got there, was to fend off the media. What had happened—as soon as this became knowledge, and the media got hold of it, here they come in helicopters, landing inside the secure area of 200 West. The guards were going nuts. I mean, here’s these people that are not supposed to be there! Eventually, they didn’t do anything but try to manage it and bring them over towards the building, the end of the building, where behind the building walls was this processing cell where everything had taken place. And they were standing there, I was standing there outside talking to the media, trying to explain what happened. And I had an alpha copy machine. I was standing there, showing them that there was no contamination on my feet, there was no contamination around. They were panning everywhere with their cameras, and they found a sodium hydroxide feed tank that had just a little bit of salt cake around the valve on the outside. Non-radioactive, nothing—I mean it was a nothing tank. And they filmed that like it was the biggest thing since sliced bread. And I remember I went through all this and—to find out that it made the national news. But I didn’t get to see it, because I was out there. [LAUGHTER] But it became a non-event. It was not a disaster, there was containment, there was—all the safety things worked as well as they should. The public was never in any harm. But that was a—
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] So, what happened, then, with the room, or whatever, where the incident took place?
Craig: Oh, they sealed that room off right away. And then it remained sealed up until very recently, when they went in and took it apart. And processed it for disposal.
Bauman: Did you know Mr. McCluskey at all?
Craig: No.
Bauman: Okay.
Craig: No. He was a chemical operator. I didn’t know who he was, hadn’t met him. But it was one of those things that—
Bauman: Right.
Craig: --Happened.
Bauman: Well, thanks, again for sharing that story. Glad we remembered to do that.
Craig: What was funny about it—I was trying to stand up. I used to be able to do this. I could stand there and hold my foot up and balance. And then I realized I couldn’t do that.
Bauman: Oh, watch the microphone there on your—
Craig: Oh, yeah.
Northwest Public Television | Bush_Bob
Robert Bauman: I’m going to have you start just by saying your name, first.
Robert Bush: Okay, my name is Bob Bush.
Bauman: My name is Robert Bauman, and we're conducting this interview with Robert, or Bob, Bush on July 17 of 2013. And we're having this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And we'll be talking with Bob about his experiences working at the Hanford site. And so I'd like to start just by having you talk about how and when you arrived at Hanford. What brought you here?
Bush: Okay. During World War II, I was overseas. My parents were in the area, both of them working. My brother was also here in Pasco High School. When I came home from the service to Southern Idaho, Korean War broke out. Wages were frozen, and so I was looking to better myself. And I applied by mail. I was interviewed by telephone. And I came up here in 1951 to the accounting department, General Electric Company. They were the sole contractor. And for 15 years, in construction and engineering accounting, which was separate from plant operations at that time. And from there, my accounting career followed its path through several successive contractors. From GE to ITT, Atlantic Richfield, to Rockwell, and finally with Westinghouse. When I retired, I was with Westinghouse for one month.
Bauman: You said your parents were here during the war. When did they come out?
Bush: It was '43. 1943 and '44, my mother worked for the original postmaster of Richland, Ed Peddicord. And my dad was a carpenter. Built some of the first government houses called the Letter Homes. They were here about two years, I think. And then they went back to Idaho, I believe.
Bauman: Okay. And what part of Idaho?
Bush: Twin Falls, Idaho. Where I graduated from high school.
Bauman: Okay. What were your first impressions upon arriving in the Tri-Cities?
Bush: That's kind of interesting, Bob. Because I came up ahead of my wife and two--year-and-a-half old, and three-and-a-half-year-old sons. About two weeks ahead of them. And so I found a Liberty trailers to rent—the housing was nonexistent. And I found a Liberty trailer, which means it had no running water, no bathroom. It was like a camping trailer, basically. I sent for them. A brother-in-law who had graduated from high school went directly into the Korean War. He drove them up as far as Huntington. I went on a bus to Huntington and met them, came back. And as we came onto the Umatilla side, and I said, that's Washington. Well, there was no green and everybody was disappointed. But that's the first impression. I mean, there wasn't a bridge over the river in Umatilla. It was a ferry. So you drove around the horn at Wallula. Things were just really different.
Bauman: So you said you had a trailer. Where was--
Bush: In Pasco on a front yard of an old pioneer home, where Lewis Street crosses 10th. That was the end on Lewis Street at 10th. And from there west was called Indiana. And there was about three homes on there. And it just quit. And roughly across from the present day Pasco School Administration Building, which was a Sears building. Across the street there was where this home was. I mean, things have just—in the whole area—have changed so much.
Bauman: And how long did you live there then?
Bush: Until I was called for housing in Richland, which was six months. That was in June, no air conditioning. And finally got into an apartment building, a one-bedroom before with two little boys that slept in the same crib. It was still, basically, wartime conditions. Weren't any appliances for sale and you had to stand in line to get a refrigerator. It was a different world. But we were young, so we could take it.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] And was this in Richland then, the apartment?
Bush: No, that was in Pasco. After that trailer, that was only about two weeks. And then we want into this apartment, the one-bedroom. Then we moved next door to a two-bedroom in a five-plex. And then in December, six months later, I got the first--I got a housing call from the housing office in Richland, which sat where the present day police station sits. And the lady offered me—she said, you could have it Saturday. It was a prefab. It had already been worn and pulled out. And I kind of hesitated. I said, I've already got something in Pasco. Well, she said, I could let you have a brand new apartment. That apartment was brand new. It was so clean. My wife, who was very fastidious, she didn't even have to clean cupboards. And the apartments have now been torn down by Kadlec for that newest building. And in fact, this morning I just went by and took a picture of Goethals Street, which is vacated. And it was quite a pleasant move to come out of a trailer into—a non-air-conditioned cinder block building apartment into a nice, brand new apartment with air conditioning, full basement, and close to work. And at that time, my office was downtown in the so-called 700 Area, which is basically where the Federal Building is--where the Bank of America is was the police station. And that's Knight Street, I believe. From there north to Swift, and from Jadwin west to Stevens where the Tastee Freeze was, that was the 700 Area confines. Probably about 22 buildings in there. The original thing prior to computers, everything was manual bookkeeping or accounting with ledgers. And they came out with a McBee Keysort cards, and it was called electronic data processing. It was spaghetti wire with holes in the boards, that type of thing. That building had to be a special airlock building. And that's the Spencer Kenney Building beside the Gesa Building. That building is built especially to house equipment. And they just went from there. And I moved around my office. And after 15 years, I went into what they call operations. I was onsite services, which—did that for 17 years. And that was probably the better part of--second better job that I had, I guess. The transportation and everything, onsite support services. The whole point there. That job took me all over the plant. I established inventories. I took some of the first inventories of construction workers' supplies and tools and shop equipment, rolling stock. My name was Mud. They thought so much of me they gave me a desk in the corner of a big lunchroom. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: So you did work at various places then?
Bush: Yes. Well, yes. My very first location was in North Richland, then called North Richland Camp, where the bus lot was--the maintenance shops. I'm trying to establish a point up there—what's over there today? There's a big sand dune on your left going by the automotive shops, past the bus lot, where the bus lot was. Opposite that sand dune on the other side of Stevens was a bunch of one-story temporary buildings. That was North Richland Camp. And that's where my first accounting job was there for two or three years. I had been there—I came there in June. And in January of '52, had 22 people along in my department that I worked in. I was a junior clerk at that time. Took me four years to get onto the management roles, but I did. But anyhow, in that room they came in there six months later. After I'd only been here six months, AEC, predecessor to the OA. The AEC has taken over more management, more responsibility. So we're going to be laying off a lot of people. I had only been here six months. And so others grabbed straws and went different places. I always said either I was too ignorant or lucky, I don't know what. But I just sat still and it panned out for the better. I didn't get laid off. I moved from there. But I went downtown to the 703 Building, which stood where the Federal Building is now. There's a building to the rear that the city owns called 703. That was the fourth wing. 703 was the frame construction, the three floors. And the later years, they added a fourth wing out of block building. Made it more permanent. That's why it's still standing today. Now, that was my second location. And then I got on the management role in '55, which meant I went exempt and no more pay for overtime. And went out to White Bluffs site—town site, and that's where the minor construction was located. Minor construction, it's the construction people that are specially trained in SWP, radiological construction work, as opposed to run-of-the-mill construction. And they're the ones that had never had any accounting at all for any equipment, supplies, materials or otherwise. And that's where I had the lunchroom office experience. It so happened that they established--I brought an inventory procedure and established that first inventory during a strike. We had to cut government-owned tool boxes. But still, the workers thought they were private. And we had to cut locks in order to take inventory. And then we feared for our lives when they came back. Pretty rough day sometimes.
Bauman: What timeframe would that have been you were out?
Bush: That was 1955 to '56. A couple of years there, and then another person took over from there and I went into budgeting at that point, from accounting to budgeting. And I did that for--until 1963. And then I moved out to the so-called bus lot, which it was. 105 buses and all that. And I was out there for 17 pleasant years, budgeting, billing rate—Because we were the supplier of all plant services. So we had billing rates to the reactors, and the separations, and the fuel prep, and--whoever. The AEC, everything. We billed them, just as if we were like plumbing jobs. And that I enjoyed. That was probably my most productive period. And from similar work to that, I moved over—Let’s see, I was around when the Federal Building was built, but I didn't get into it. That was built in '69. I didn't get down there until 1980. Went down there a couple of years. And then they moved us out to Hanford Square where Battelle Boulevard intersection is. And I was there--I retired from that location in 1977. My wife and I retired the same week. I've been retired 26 years now at the end of this month.
Bauman: Was your wife working at the Hanford Site as well?
Bush: She worked after the kids were grown, like most stay-at-home moms do. She stayed until the daughter was of age, and then she went to work for a credit union, which was the government credit union, which was merged later on with Gesa. But that was an interesting job. They worked two hours a day, three days a week. Because it was all hand done, no mechanization. And then she got a job offer from the department in the central stores and purchasing department. She worked there eight years. In 1986, the income tax law changed a lot of things for all of us, effective in 1987. It meant that partial vesting was--IRS has to rule on all things like that. And that meant that if you had 10 years to vest pensions, once you pass the 50% point, whatever the vesting period is, then you were partially vested. And so she had 8 years out of 10. So she got 80%. But she had only worked eight years, so it wasn't a very large accumulation. Because I got my full. Of course, I'd been here 37 years I think it was, however that works out. 36.
Bauman: I want to go back and ask you—when you were talking earlier about that period in '55, '56 when you were working out at White Bluffs town site. You mentioned radiological construction?
Bush: Oh, that—those construction workers worked under what they called SWP, Special Work Permit, which meant radiological. They had to wear--the clothing was called SWP clothing then. Today, they call it something else. But they worked under those conditions, so therefore they were subject to different rules. Whereas, construction workers on brand new construction weren’t then—they didn't have any of that to contend with. But once a plant went operational, it became radiologically SWP. This is not an anti-union thing. It's just a demonstration of how things were in those days. They had some old buses that--the original buses in town were called Green Hornets. And they were small. They had chrome bars that went right across the middle of your back. And for 35 miles, that was not very comfortable. When they got the newer buses that you see today, like Greyhound has for instance, they relegated those to the construction workers at White Bluffs. Well, since GE guys worked up at White Bluffs, we had to ride those, too. So all the office workers in the warehouse--GE employees rode one bus. The electricians rode another bus. Pipe fitters rode another bus, even though there were only two or three of them. It was really a segmented-type thing. As close to anything radiological that I came to when I conducting one of those physical inventories—we would be out--all of the construction materials were stored outdoors on the ground. I mean, like stainless steel. 308 stainless steel was pretty high-priced stuff. But the sheets were stored outside on pallets. Well, one sheet is worth thousands and thousands of dollars. So we had to lay down on the ground and count the sheets to do the inventory. This one day—the only time I came close to any contamination, we went back and boarded the buses that evening from White Bluffs. And we saw the guys on the dock there chipping with a chisel and hammer. That meant they were chipping out flakes of contamination. So we asked what was going on. They said, well, we're next door to F and H Areas. And F Area had coughed out something they said. And so I said, well, my crew was outside today on the ground. And if they coughed out because all the--some construction workers could drive their cars. That's the only people. Plant operations people all had to ride buses. No parking lots. So anyhow, those cars were all impounded. Had tape around them. They couldn't go home. And some of the guys, they had to take off their shoes, leave them, and be issued safety shoes in lieu of it. And I said, well, we were on the ground, too. So they proceeded to take us all off the bus and surveyed us with a wand. And they only found a few flakes on our back. And so we were allowed to go home. But that's as close as I ever came to getting contaminated. It's still scary.
Bauman: Yeah. Obviously, Hanford, a site where security was prominent--
Bush: Very tight security, yeah. I was telling the young lady here that across the roadway on Stevens, as you near the 300 Area, there was a real wide barricade, probably eight lanes that you had to go through. And everybody had to stop, including buses. And the guard would get on the bus, walk down the aisle, and check every badge. And at that time, AEC had their own security airplanes. That was the purpose of the Richland Airport was for AEC security in the beginning. They had a couple Piper Cub-type airplanes. And one day we're on a bus going out to work in the morning. And all of a sudden, a plane just zoomed on by. Somebody had run the barricade. The plane goes out, lands in front of them, stops them, and that's how they got apprehended. Another incident of security, yeah, that's the subject? Many years later now, after 1963, and I'm in the transportation assignment. Airspace was off limits to all airplanes over Hanford because they had army artillery guarding it in the Cold War and all that. And a private plane had violated the space. And the AEC planes had forced it down. And once they're down, they can't ever take off. So after a week or so, they sent a lowboy trailer out there, loaded the small airplane on it, proceeded to come down what's the highway and now Stevens. And down where Stevens today, 240 and all that intersection is, there was only two lanes on the road then, not six. But at that juncture there, there was a blinking light. And they had to turn right to go to the Richland Airport. And this guy, the truck driver pulling this low-boy, he had never pulled an airplane before. And he didn't allow for that pull. Well, that blinking light clipped off a wing. And then he got time off. It was not really his fault, that pilot in the beginning. But there's a lot of—I guess full of interesting stories like that on security.
Bauman: Great. Did you have special security clearance to work at Hanford at the time?
Bush: Which?
Bauman: Any special security clearance?
Bush: Oh, yeah. I had Q clearance, which there's one higher than that, that's top secret. But Q clearance meant you could go into any and all areas. And because the nature of my job, I had that my whole time I was out there. Once you have it, they would tend not to take it away from you because it's quite expensive investigation to get it in the first place. I might mention something interesting in that regard. When I first came to work in 1951, why, the PSQ is Personnel Security Questionnaire. And it's about 25 pages long. And you had to memorize it, because every five years, you had to update it. Well anyhow, I filled that out, and you give references. And I have, in the Twin Falls area, a farmer that had been a neighbor farmer in Nebraska, where I was born, to my parents. I gave him as a reference because he had known me all my life. And that would be higher points. About a year or two later--I guess probably a year later I had gone back down to Twin Falls to visit the in-laws and I went and saw this farmer, family friend. The first thing he said to me, Bobby, what in the world did you do? [LAUGHTER] The FBI had come out to his farm and piled on the questions. And I hadn't told him ahead of time I'd given a reference. So they really did very, very tight security. It's probably tighter than it was when I was in the Air Corps.
Bauman: You mentioned riding a bus out to work.
Bush: Yeah, everybody rode it, except those few construction workers in that minor construction area. They were permitted their cars. I don't know why, but no one else drove cars on the plant. Everybody rode on the bus. The bus fare was--of course, it was subsidized. It was a plant operation, like anything else is. To make the liability insurance legal, they charged a nickel each way on the bus, which later on got changed to a dollar or something. But many of the years, we'd ride the bus 30, 35, or 40 miles to work for a nickel. The nickel was just to make it legal. From those old green buses, they came up with some--I forget what they're called. More like Greyhound buses. And then in 1963, the year I went out to the transportation, they bought a fleet of Flxibles. And that's F-L-X. There's no E in it. That's the same kind of flat-nosed bus that the bus lines used today. And they were coaches, not buses. They had storage underneath. And so we had quite a suggestion system on the plant. And you would get monetary award or mention. And somebody said, well, instead of running mail carrier cars delivering mail to all the stops on the whole plant, load the mail onto the now available storage bins on these buses. And that was a pretty good suggestion award, monetarily, to somebody. And they did that. Took it out to a central mail station out there, and then dispatched it.
Bauman: You mentioned different contractors you worked for over the years--
Bush: Uh-huh. The story behind that for the record is that General Elec--well, DuPont built the plant. That's who my dad worked for. And GE came in '46, I believe. And they were here until the group I was in--they phased out in groups. I was the last group to go out. [COUGH] Excuse me, in 196--'66. When the GE phased out, they had a dollar a year contract. Like Henry Kaiser and rest of them did during the war, for the good of the country. But they trained an awful lot of people in the infancy field of nuclear engineering. General Electric trained all those people here and then they opened up the turnkey operations in San Jose and Japan. But anyhow, AEC was still AEC at that point. And then, their wise decision--instead of one contractor, they would have nine. And so there were--the reactors was one. Separation plant was another. Fuel preparation at 300 Area was another. The laboratories, which is today basically Battelle. Site services. The company doctors formed a foundation called Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, which is the MDs that gave the annual exams. And the computer end, it was now getting into the infancy of that, computer sciences corps, we had the first contracts on that. So all together, there were nine contractors. And the portion that I was with went to ITT. They bid, came in and bid. I helped conduct tours of the facility for the bidders. Because I knew all about it and knew the ins and outs on some of the monetary parts that their accounting people would have questions on. We'd walk through shops and all that. Well, anyhow, ITT got the site support--site services. And we had that for five years. And austerity set in in the '70s. Well, '70. They said, we got to get site services' budget down to less than $10 million. And it probably was 13 or 14, I don't remember now. So my boss and another analyst, like myself, sequestered--talk about sequester. We sequestered ourselves in the then new Federal Building for about a week. Almost 20 hours a day, whittling and whittling and working on a budget. And there was only one conclusion. We had to cut everything in half. Went through all that sweat. Went up with our president, Tom Leddy, went upstairs to an AEC finance office, presented our whole case. And the man turns around and says, well, it doesn't make any difference, Tom. Your contract's not renewed anyhow. And so now, Atlantic Richfield, an existing contractor for 200 Areas, somehow the separations plant contractor that is an oil company owned, can all of a sudden manage a site service. And so they did absorb us. But politics were still around in those days. And there were three of us analysts. One had got transferred by ITT up to the new line--newly established Distant Early Warning Line from Russia up to Alaska. So that left two of us. And we waited around. We waited around and never got an offer. And they said, no, we can do it all without you. We don't need you. How come it took so many people anyhow? On a Friday afternoon, the man that I did budgets for saw me in a restroom. He said, you got an offer yet? I said, no, no. I'm working under the table with somebody else. Well, he says, if they don't hire you, I'm going to hire you. And so he went downtown, and about 4 o'clock, I got a call from the man that told me they didn't need us. Said they'd been kind of thinking. So I went over Atlantic Richfield under those. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] And so I'm not mad, not knocking—knocking them, that's just the way things were. And then Rockwell came to town. When they laid off everybody on B-2, I'm trying to think of other--in the community, something might be of interest for the history project. Back into the '50s. Those same green buses, they had, oh, four or five of them that ran in town like a modified transit system. I don't think they had that many riders, but it did. And also, the plant buses ran what they called shuttle routes. And those buses went into Richland on probably six routes and drove around the neighborhoods and picked up workers on the three shifts. And that's why up in the ranch house district, there was the bypass you'll see between homes. The pathways that go clear through lots. Blocks were so long that they had to provide a quicker route to the bus stops. Now, those rides were free because they were shuttle buses. When you got out to the bus lot, you paid your nickel, or a pass, whatever it was.
Bauman: I wanted to ask you about accounting in terms of equipment practices. Were there a lot of changes during the time you worked at the Hanford site? Computer technology come in and change things?
Bush: Oh, yeah. For sure. In the beginning, as I mentioned earlier, all accounting was open ledgers and hand posted. Adding machine tapes at the end of the day trying to balance them all out. And we had that until--let's see. 1970s—I think it was 1977, we got our very first taste of it. Every other desk in a group of about 20 people in cost accounting that I was in. There was cost accounting, general accounting, and so on, property management. But anyhow, we had about 20 people. Every other desk had a monitor. Well, they referred to them as a computer. But they were just the monitor. And down at the end of our building was one printer. And everything was on floppy disk. Every program was on a floppy disk. Nothing was built-in because it was just the infancy. The big computers were down in the Federal Building. And a sub-basement below the basement was specially built for that. But back to our office. Across the hall from us, we had two small computers that are--to me, they're about the size of portable sewing machines. And I can't even remember the names of them because they don't exist today but they were the computer locally. So we wanted to run our work order system, we would phone down to the guy down at the other end of the building, insert the floppy disk from work system and wait. Well, I've got somebody's inventory. You have to wait. Because there's only one place to load up down there. So finally, you would put the floppy disk in. And then, you'd run it, which meant it'd run through it and print. But then you'd have to say, now print it. And they got one printer for the whole building. And so it's pretty interesting. Whereas today, I've got a laptop that I can virtually do everything with. But we graduated from hand posted ledgers right into computers. We didn't have anything in between. All of the reports that came out, came out on--referred to as IBM runs because everything was IBM. It was on paper that's about 18 inches wide with all these little perf marks on it to feed it. And you'd get one report and it would be about that thick. It was not that much information, but it's just so much printing. It's even hard to remember after 26 years how antiquated that is compared to today. But prior to that, it wasn't even the PCs. They called everything a PC. Or, was PC compatible. Because prior to that, the only electronic data processing nickname was spaghetti wire. I'm not very conversant in it, but it was some kind of a board that had a bunch of holes in it. They put wires in it and that went to certain things. But all it did was sort things. It didn't actually calculate them.
Bauman: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the community of Richland. What was that like in the 1950s? I know it was a government--
Bush: In the town? I guess I didn't cover that area. Everything—all houses were owned by government. We rented them. My wife and I and family, we came after the days of free everything. When the coal was free--all the furnaces were coal fed. Some people would convert them later on to oil. But anyhow, they were coal burning. However you got the coal, whether it was government days or you bought the coal from the courtyard, which is down at the end of what's now Wellsian Way. There was a coal yard where that lumber yard is. And that's why those railroad tracks that are abandoned and rundown, that's where the coal cars came in. And I can add something a little bit later about coal cars and the plant. But anyhow, we rented from the government. For example, that brand new apartment that I mentioned moving onto first was a two-bedroom, full basement. Steam heated because--I'll digress a little bit. All the downtown 700 Area, including the Catholic church, central church, the hospital, all 700 Area, including those new apartments, and all downtown shopping area were steam heated by a steam plant, which was located where the back door of the post office is today in that small parking lot. And that one plant furnished steam for everything. Well, back to this new apartment. The steam pipes ran through this full basement. And our kids played—there wasn't any yards. There was just apartments. And they would play in the basement because they were quite small. But they can remember today the pop, pop, pop in those steam pipes. And the rent for that two-bedroom apartment was higher than any other house in town. It was $77 a month. And the reason it was $77 instead of $70 was because it included $7 for electricity. Nobody had electricity meters yet. Even in that new place. So when they did put in electricity meters in all homes later, which had to be—during that time, the year we were there, which is December '51 to December of '52, sometime in that period of time they put the meters in. They took off $7 off the rent because now we're going to pay—and their theory is it was $5 for a one-bedroom place, whatever it was. $7 for a two-bedroom and $10 for a three-bedroom for electricity in those days. And nobody had electric heat, of course. And then, later on they put in water meters. And again, they had to come into your home, invade your home, and put in something. So it was strictly government prior to—well, another—and when I lived in the rental, if something went wrong with the plumbing, they would send out a plumber, but you paid for it, though. But later on when I went to the tall two-story, three-bedroom duplex houses, or called A houses, that was our first house after that apartment. And as I remember, I think the rent was--they had rent districts with low, medium, and high in the more desirable parts of town. And we were on Hop Street across from uptown district where Hunt Street is and Jefferson Park. And I think our rent for that was like $47 because it was not a brand new apartment. And later on, we—I was on the housing list. And you applied and months or years later, you'd rotate up to move into a nicer place or a different location. But in the meantime, up came an F house, which is a two-story single family, kind of a Cape Cod-looking type of house. And that came up on the housing list. However, the caveat was that you had to cash out the present owner who had made some improvements. He had converted the coal to oil, they put in a clothesline, which nobody had clotheslines, and something else. So cashed him out for—I believe it was $750. And if I do that, I could have it, so I did. We lived in that place for 19 years. Our daughter grew up there and got married out of that home. And that's the only home she ever knew. [LAUGHTER] And we were there until 1977 when the real estate market in Richland was—this is community wide. The housing prices were moving 18% a year, about 1.5% a month. And I thought well, I don't need to be setting still. I mean, if I cash out here, and went on. So we sold that home. I listed it. Calder, my father, was very ill. We were going to Spokane. I listed it. A man came by, looked it out. What were you asking? I said, oh, about 17. He shook his head. And I said, too high? He says, no, 27,000. [LAUGHTER] Just to show you how bad things were. And so it sold right away. What are you going to do now? And I said, well. Would you want to try a mobile home? I know a jewel. And in those days, real estate men did not sell mobile homes. But this couple had bought their first house from him, or something. And it was somebody retiring out of postal, wanted to go back to Montana. Never smoked in it, never had any pets in it, no kids. It was the Cadillac of mobile homes. We were there two years, but that was long enough. Then we moved into the house that I'm still in. I'm widowed now for five years. The house we're in now, we've lived in that longer than in any other place. [LAUGHTER] But the community just has changed so drastically. South Richland. People say today they live in South Richland. We lived in South Richland, which was south of the downtown shopping district to the Yakima Bridge. That was South Richland. What is now South Richland out there was Kennewick Highlands. So it depends on who you're talking to today.
Bauman: Yeah. Do you remember any special community events, parades, any of those sorts of things during the '50s and '60s?
Bush: Community events?
Bauman: Yeah.
Bush: Yep. Back in GE days, they had Atomic Frontier Days. And they were a big thing. Had beauty queens in it, rode in the float, and all that. Down at the—[COUGH] excuse me. For Atomic Frontier Days down at the lower end of Lee Boulevard, which is still the same shape today. They set up booths all on there. And it was a really big event. Before we had the hydro races even. People look back fondly on that. Talking about community, again, my mother, I said, worked for the post office, which—it stood on the corner of Knight Street, where it touches George Washington Way. There's some kind of a lawyer office building there today. And the old post office is the Knights of Columbus building on the bypass highway. But she would have to take the mail and go over to where the Red Lion Motel is today, at the Desert Inn, a frame building, winged out basically the same. And that was referred to as the transient quarters. And that was for upper management that were going through and it wasn't really a public motel, per se. But she would have mail for these big wigs over there. So she would have to go over there and have a badge to even go in the front door of that Desert Inn. Talking about badges, something humorous on that. We didn't wear things around our neck in the beginning because it was like a little pocket-sized bill fold. It was a little black bill that had your pass, your badge in it. And at every building you went into, you just pulled it out, flashed it to the guard. It usually was a lady security employee. There were guards in the building, but the person on the desk was a security clerk. But you'd just automatically—you’d open it like that and flag and put it back in your pocket. Every building you went into. Downtown, 700 Area, that first building I've referred to. One day I went into a restaurant and I just did that automatically [LAUGHTER] because it's just so automatic. Then they graduated to having the thing around your neck. And then also, if you worked in the outer areas, you had to wear a radiation badge in addition to your security badge. There was two types and one of them was a flat. And I don't know the difference. One's for beta and one's for alpha. I don't know. And one of them was a pencil shaped. And that's what they called it. And the other one was a flat badge, which was carried in something around your neck. And in all the areas I worked, and the places I described laying on the ground that happened and all that, my RAMs, they call it, never accumulated in my working life to be a danger. I had some, of course. Everybody does in the background. But I never accumulated to a danger point. There were people, some smart aleck people that would take their badge and hold it over a source at work so they could get some time off. Because if you got--what was the phrase? Anyhow, if they got contaminated, they put them on a beefsteak diet. And they stayed home. And they come every day and took a urine sample and all that stuff. But they had a life of riley. So that was nice. But the guys got canned that did that. But they would purposely expose their pencil so they could stay home.
Bauman: So did all employees have those, either the pencil or--
Bush: Only those that worked in reactor and separations areas, yeah. I mentioned these departments. Actually, the first department is Fuel Preparations Department, FPD. The present—the 300 Area--most of the buildings have now been torn down that you don't even see them there. But the north half roughly was fuels preparation department headed for the reactors. They took uranium and encapsulated it in cans, like can of peas in just so many words. And the south half of that 300 Area was a laboratory area, the predecessor of Battelle. So the fuel was prepared there. And it was machined and canned and sent as nickname slugs to the reactors. Then, the reactors loaded into all those little tubes. And then from the reactors, they come out the backside into those cooling pods and all that. And transported in casks to the 200 Areas, which are the separated area, separations. And the reactor area on the face side was not that dangerous. The 200 Areas only work on what they called the canyons, PUREX and REDOX, and those kind of buildings. But those cells were very, very hot. But you had to be measured no matter where you were. One of our site services was a decontamination laundry, called the laundry. And all clothing--I mentioned to you before SWP. Well, SWP, radiologic exposure employees wore whites. Carpenters and truck drivers and all that that didn't work around reactors wore blues. And so they were sorted. And we had different billing rates for that laundry because the blues only had to be laundered and dried. Whereas the others had to be laundered, dried, and decontaminated, checked in separate washing machines. And then workers wore—in the beginning, wore World War II-style gas masks for our air supply before they invented a moon-type suit. [LAUGHTER] But they wore gas masks. And the mask would come back to this mask station, which was part of the laundry. And they took the masks, and they'd take away the cartridge. They'd put the mask in dishwasher machines, in racks. That's how they would wash them. And then they would get them a new filter and package them up. Sanitize them and package them up like medical supplies would be in. I can't think of any other unusual operation out there like that.
Bauman: I want to change gears just a little bit. President Kennedy visited the site in 1963.
Bush: Yep, 1963.
Bauman: I was wondering--
Bush: When they did that, they let all the schools out. And for the first time, non-workers were allowed to go in cars out there. It was a grand traffic jam, but it was quite a deal. And he landed his Air Force plane up at Moses Lake—at Larson airbase at Ephrata, whichever you want to call it. And then helicoptered. And of course, like it is today, there were three or four helicopters. And you don't know which one he's on and all that bit. And here, everyone is gathered out the N Reactor area, which is a dual-purpose reactor. They captured the heat from the reactor, put it through a pipe through a fence to the predecessor to Energy Northwest, which was called Whoops. This was a big deal, a dual-purpose reactor. And N stood for new reactor, really. Anyhow, he comes in and they got a low-boy trailer. They fixed up down in the shops where I worked—my office was. And then built a podium just precisely for the President with him emblem and the whole bit. So I was privy to get to see some things like that. But anyhow, that was the stage. And it was a long low-boy, so it accommodated all the senators and all the local—Sam Volpentest, the guy credited with HAMMER, those type of people. Glen Lee from the Tri-City Herald, you name it. So the helicopter comes in, blows dust over everybody. But anyhow, my wife and kids and all schools were brought out there. And I don't know how many thousand people were out there in the desert. And you could see President Kennedy. He got up on the stage. You get close enough, you could get pictures. Then, that same year in November, he got assassinated. So that was a busy year.
Bauman: Do you remember any other special events with dignitaries like that? Or other--
Bush: Well, I could go way back to World War II. I wasn't here, but I have a family connection on it. All over United States, they had war bond drives for various reasons to help. Build a ship, build an airplane. The one that happened here is not the only one. But they took so much money out of all the paycheck of Hanford workers, which included my dad as a carpenter. And the money they collected bought the B-17 Bomber, which was named Day's Pay. And that bomber—they had a bomber out here, a B-17, so that people could see it, but it wasn't the same one. On the Richland High School wall there's a mural. And that's a rendition by a famous artist of Day's Pay in formation. And so I can say that my parents contributed to that. And that's the story behind that one bomber. Every worker out there, construction or operations, they donated a day's pay.
Bauman: I wonder, what was the most challenging part of your job working at the Hanford site?
Bush: As an accounting person, my most challenging part was learning government-ese. [LAUGHTER] How to deal. And in that vein, that took a long time. But once you learn it, there is a way in the US government, period. As I'm sure there is in certain corporations. Later on, when I mentioned that I went down to the federal building for my--finally got located in that building, there was another fellow and I were old timers in accounting. And that year, they had five college grads, accounting grads come in. They hired five at one time. And they ran them by Marv and I for exposure. This is how things are done. This is how the contacts are. And our basic job was to squire these young fellows around and introduce them to certain counterparts and now DOE. Now, this is how you make appointments with them. This is what you do. This is what you never do. And likewise, with senior management. And it paid off because of those five, all four of them became managers or supervisors, and one of them became my manager within two years. Today, that same man is the comptroller at Savannah River Plant. [LAUGHTER] And so I like to feel that I contributed to them being—partially to them being successful. And so that's a reward. But probably the most difficult thing coming from a private—I worked for Colorado Mill and Elevator, which means I worked at a flour mill district office as a bookkeeper. And that's a small town deal in Twin Falls. To come to work for the government where some of your family despises you because you work for the government, but you had to fight that as well as learn how the government operates.
Bauman: You mentioned earlier, you were talking about coal being used for heat in Richland. You also said you wanted to talk about coal fires going up at the site.
Bush: Oh, what?
Bauman: Coal fires?
Bush: Oh, yeah. Interestingly, the midway power station, substation at midway, is one of the reasons they built Hanford where they did because the Grand Coulee Dam had just been completed and an electricity producer—a major producer. And they put the midway substation down there. That basically was built to furnish huge amounts of power to Hanford, for the reactors, everything. Which in total—because I processed vouchers, I know it was 32 megs. Which today doesn't sound like much, but the whole plant bill was 32 megs when everything was operating. But if the power were interrupted, they had to have a backup. So every area had a huge diesel-powered--like water pumps, where they could pump the water from the river instead of by electrically. They had to be able to pump it because it was critical. Because all the water for the whole plant was taken in at intake water plants near the reactors along the river. The 200 Area water is piped to them in a huge line as raw water until it gets to their place. The backup is these coal-fired steam plants, is what I was trying to say. It got about 30-some cars of coal a day rolled through Richland past the cemetery. In the beginning, the railroad came down from the north, from Vantage area down along the Columbia River. There's a railroad bridge across the river, Beverly I think it is. And it came down to below the 100-B Reactor area. That's where the line ended. And then a plant had its own railway incidentally. It had a 285 mile-long rail line, high line and low line. Then, they built--in 1950, the year before I came, they built the line that we see today that comes from Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car rebuilding outfit is now, there is a roundhouse that it's rectangular in shape. But some 30 cars of coal a day came in here to supply because those plants were—they actually operated the steam plants. They didn't start them up from cold. They just ran constantly.
Bauman: I wonder if you could provide sort of an overall assessment of how Hanford was as a place to work. What was it like as a place to work?
Bush: It was a great place for me. I came out of an area that was the agriculturally-oriented. And the Korean War started. Wages were frozen, you weren't going to go anywhere. I came up here and I got a new start, like pioneers did. I visualized that's what farming pioneers did the same thing. And it opened up a whole field for me, a big corporate field. And it's just been a great place to work. And it was not dangerous to me. I'm not afraid to drink the water here. I'm asked by a nephew in Hermiston constantly, how do you drink the water? And I said, well, it comes out of the river. How can it come out of the river and that plume’s out there? There's so many false stories around here. But working at Hanford, I think, by and large, almost all employees would tell you the same thing. It was a great place to work. The pay was decent. Maybe you didn't get rich, but it was decent. It's in a nice area to live in. When we came back in the '50s, or in the '40s, and before that even of course, shopping was pretty much nonexistent. They went to Yakima, or Spokane, or Walla Walla. That I didn’t—we didn't experience that too much by 1951 because by that time, the Uptown shopping district was built. And there was a men's store. And there was four women's stores. Because GE was the prime contractor, there was an appliance dealer that handled GE-Hotpoint appliances. We got employee discounts when we worked for GE. We also got 10% gasoline discount when we worked for Atlantic Richfield Hanford. But we just grew with the times. And it's just such an entirely different area now than it was. Just the world is different, too.
Bauman: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about? Is there anything you would like to talk about that we haven't talked about yet?
Bush: Now really, work-wise at Hanford, I think I’ve pretty well-covered it. I'll repeat myself. My first 15 years was construction engineering accounting, which is an entirely different field than operations accounting. Operations accounting concerns itself with the reactors and separations and the site services that support them. But I learned a lot by working at Hanford. My family, three adult children live here, are retired here. My oldest son went on Medicare this year. [LAUGHTER] And that kind of puts you in your place quickly. But it's been a good enough place that they stayed in the area. And of the six granddaughters, grandchildren, four of them are in the area. And that's kind of characteristic with a lot of the Tri-City families. They stay or come back.
Bauman: Well, Bob, I'd like to thank you very much for coming and talking to us today. I really appreciate it.
Bush: It's been my pleasure.
Tom Hungate: Okay.
Robert Franklin: You ready, Tom?
Hungate: Mm-hm.
Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with George Boice on July 15th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Mr. Boice about his experiences living in Richland. So why don’t we start at the beginning, that’s the best place. When and where were you born?
George Boice: I was born in Ellensburg. A third generation native of the state of Washington. My father and my grandmother were born in Cle Elum.
Franklin: Oh, Wow.
Boice: We came through this—the tribe came through this territory and crossed the White Bluffs ferry in 1885. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: And went up to the Kittitas County area. And then we came back later. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: What year were you born?
Boice: ’37.
Franklin: ’37. Did your family work at all at the coal mine in Roslyn?
Boice: Yes. [LAUGHTER] Short answers. My grandmother’s brother, Uncle Tony, was a mine rescue worker up there at Roslyn.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: You go up to Roslyn, that is interesting. Ever been there?
Franklin: Yes, I have.
Boice: 27 cemeteries. Just neater than all get out. [LAUGHTER] The different ethnic groups up there. They talk about one Fourth of July, the Italians were going to raise the Italian flag in the main street there. Some of the local citizens took a dim view of it. And some wagons were turned on their side and the Winchesters came out, and the sweet little old lady got out there and got everybody calmed down before the shooting started. [LAUGHTER] But the flag didn’t go up. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. So what brought your family down to the Hanford area?
Boice: My—[LAUGHTER] When they started Hanford—Dad was a firefighter in Ellensburg, had been for a few years. And when they set up Hanford, the first thing they did for a fire department was pick up the retired fire chief out of Yakima. Well, he goes around to the local fire departments and starts hydrating citizens. [LAUGHTER] So, Dad came down here in ’43 as the ninth man hired at the Hanford Fire Department. Always claimed that half of them had been canned before he got there. [LAUGHTER] So he went to work in ’43—June of ’43 at Hanford. We were still there at Ellensburg, and we didn’t come down here ‘til summer of ’44.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Boice: And they were still moving prefabs in, and unloading them with rapid shape.
Franklin: Did your father commute at this time, or did he live on—
Boice: Uh-unh. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Where did he—do you know much about his living quarters or where he lived?
Boice: Yeah, there were barracks.
Franklin: So he lived in the barracks?
Boice: Oh, yes.
Franklin: Okay. Did he come back to visit at all?
Boice: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: Wasn’t but—hell, by the time you get up to the Hanford area, it’s just over the ridge. [LAUGHTER] So he’d come in every couple of weeks.
Franklin: Okay. How many siblings do you have?
Boice: One of each—one brother, one sister.
Franklin: Older, younger?
Boice: Oh, yeah. My brother was born in Kadlec in September of ’45. My sister was—well, they bracket the war. She was born about a month before it started—or right after it started. She was born in December of ’41.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And he was born September of ’45.
Franklin: So can you talk a little more about your father’s job at Hanford? What did he—did he talk much about what he did, or—
Boice: [LAUGHTER] Oh, yeah! You know. The place is building up, it’s trying to erupt. You’ve got construction going all directions. Trailer house fires. He talked about them [EMOTIONAL]—how quick people died in them damn trailer houses. They’d go up in a matter of seconds. And there were acres of them. But yeah, it was—And the amount of nothing to do. I mean, you had time to work and then there was really no recreational facilities. He worked at a grocery store for a while in his off hours stocking milk. He said it was not unusual to work a whole shift with a forklift or a handcart walking out of the stack and filling the same slot behind the counter there. We came over twice to visit him at Hanford.
Franklin: Before you moved—
Boice: Yeah.
Franklin: --in ’44. Okay.
Boice: You drive across the Vantage Bridge, and somebody had gone through with a grader and graded out a dirt-slash-gravel road. And we drove around and down, and across the Hanford ferry into Hanford. Because you could get into Hanford; it wasn’t restricted—the town. Everything else was. So getting in and out of Hanford was no trick. Getting out of the surrounding area was. So my mom and I and my grandfather went down there.
Franklin: Wow. And where did you stay? Did you just go for the day?
Boice: Well, we didn’t—when I was there, we didn’t stay. We just went for the day and went home.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: But Mom talks about going down and staying overnight. [LAUGHTER] She says she was not warned. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Warned about what?
Boice: To keep everything you wanted nailed down.
Franklin: Oh.
Boice: She got up in the morning and somebody stole her girdle. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. So when your family moved in summer of ’44, where did you move to?
Boice: 17-1.
Franklin: 17-1?
Boice: That was the lot number and the house number. It is now 1033 Sanford.
Franklin: Ah.
Boice: It’s on the southwest corner of Sanford and Putnam.
Franklin: Yup. I live right by there.
Boice: We went in there and it was—they had—you can’t describe to people how they had come in there and just dozed the farmland over, staked out streets and planted houses. And hauled them in on trucks and set them down. We were fortunate—I didn’t realize how fortunate it was—in the fact that we had only come about 100 miles or so—we came in a truck. We had our stuff. Mom had her piano. And I can’t tell you how many times women would come up and bang on the door, can I play your piano?
Franklin: Really?
Boice: Strangers off the street. Just because it was there, and it was—so we had all kind of musical stuff. Everybody could play better than Mom could. But we had the piano.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: And she had her houseplants. It was different. But there was no trees in Richland. There wasn’t three blades of grass! [LAUGHTER] You’d come in, you got a garden hose and a plastic nozzle. You hosed down your lot and it immediately became a slick, slimy mud pile. Great for kids to play in! Man, we could slide in that mud across there—it was really cool! And then when it dried up, why, it reticulated like a picture puzzle. So we’re picking chunks up and stacking them up and building houses. And Mom gets up and she’s just madder than a wet hen, so we had to put the lawn back together. [LAUGHTER] But the hose nozzles were so interesting, because when you had a plastic nozzle, but you couldn’t get anything else. There was a hardware store here, eventually, but they didn’t handle stuff like that. This was a war going on. And the ingenuity that went into lawn sprinklers would just boggle your mind! The cutest one I remember was some guy took a chunk of surgical tubing—he got a bent pipe for an uppensticker. And he stretched his hunk of surgical tubing over the end of it, turned the water on, and it was not efficiently watering his area, but he could flail water all over a half an acre! [LAUGHTER] That was one of the cuter ones. There was also no shade and no air conditioning.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: Coming down in a moving truck, Dad brought his carpenter tools, he brought his bench, and he set to work building an air conditioner. Now, this was the dog-gonedest thing you ever saw. He got some burlap sacks and set out there with scrap lumber in the backyard on his workbench just creating shavings out of boards. Fill these burlap sacks with wood shavings for the pads for his air conditioner. He got a motor out of I-don’t-know-what. It was an appliance motor out of something. And he whittled out this propeller out of a two-by-four. And he cranked this thing up and it sounded like a B-29. [LAUGHTER] But it would blow sort of cool air, which raised the wrath of the neighbors. Number one was the racket he was making. Number two was we had air conditioning. So immediately, guys come out of the woodwork in all directions. Guy next door was a sheet metal worker. He came home with parts to make a much better, more efficient fan that was quieter. [LAUGHTER] So they set to work building him one. [LAUGHTER] We made air conditioners—you come up with a motor, and they would come up with an air conditioner. And we would deliver them on the back of my little red wagon. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Where would you put that? Like, would that just go in the window?
Boice: We put it in a window.
Franklin: Oh, okay. And how would you attach it to the house?
Boice: Ingeniously! Most often, they would just build a rack underneath, a shelf on top, and set it up on top there. A houses, you wanted to put your air conditioner—at least about everybody did—set it at the top of the stairs where it would blow out the upstairs and cool your downstairs. They were reasonably efficient. The one thing about all the homemade air conditioners—very few of them, if any, had a recirculating system. So you had to use fresh water. This had two sides to it. You didn’t crud up your water system with alkali by reusing your water. But you did have to go out there and keep moving your hose where it drained out to water your lawn.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Wow. What kind of house did your family move into?
Boice: Well, originally we had a three-bedroom prefab. Prefabs come in three sizes and five colors. And a bunch of very ingenious kids on Halloween 1944 went out and stole the damn street signs. The buses coming back off of swing shift had no earthly idea where they were going. They wandered around town, because all the houses looked alike! [LAUGHTER] Then after a while—oh, let’s see, we moved in in August, and about the following spring—because we started out school at Sacajawea and then at Christmas vacation they changed us to Marcus Whitman. But up there on Longfitt, thereabouts, I was coming home from school and here sits the roof of a prefab right out in the middle of the street. Apparently, this guy was sleeping and a windstorm come along and picked up his whole roof and set it out in the middle of the street. Thereafter they had a crew of carpenters going around fastening the rooves of the prefabs down a little tighter.
Franklin: Because at that time, right, they had flat rooves.
Boice: Flat rooves.
Franklin: Correct? That kind of overhung a bit, something that the wind could really easily—
Boice: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: --grab ahold and pop off. Do you remember when they got the gabled rooves that they all have now?
Boice: No, I don’t, because I was—I think after we left, but I wouldn’t bet heavy money on it. We moved off the prefab in ’45.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And into an A house on Swift. I don’t recall when they put the gabled rooves on.
Franklin: Okay. So what did your mom do? Did she work at Hanford at all?
Boice: No.
Franklin: No?
Boice: She was a stay-at-home mom.
Franklin: Stay-at-home mom?
Boice: It was such an interesting place. The buses ran every 30 minutes. No charge, just go out and get on the bus. One of my main jobs was—because there was no mail delivery, everybody in Richland got their mail general delivery. So I’d take the bus, go downtown, get off at the post office, check the mail, go down to the grocery store—and there was only one—that was a brief period, but then there was only one grocery store at that time. And that’s where that ski rental shop is—kayak rental shop on the corner of Lee and GW?
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Boice: That was the grocery store. The one and only. Shortly thereafter, Safeway opened up on the corner of—southwest corner of Lee and Jadwin. So things picked up. And then there was—they come up with the community center grocery store—whatever you want to call them. There was one at Thayer and Williams, which was the Groceteria. Garmo’s was out there on Stevens and Jadwin—no, Symons and something-or-other. The south end of town was—oh, nuts. He was the one that survived—Campbell’s. Campbell’s grocery store. He specialized in fresh fruit and stuff, and of the whole pile of them, he was the one that really come out of it in good shape. But the fourth one is now the school office, up there by Marcus Whitman. That was a grocery store.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: But you go down, you do your post office work, and then you go and get your groceries, and if you’re lucky you get ten cents. Next bus home. You know where the Knights of Columbus Hall is out on the bypass?
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Boice: That used to be—originally that was the Richland post office.
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Boice: It’s up there at Knight and GW, I think. There wasn’t a whole bunch of shopping centers. The Richland Theater was in existence. The drug store next door to it was there. After a while, the big brown building, which was everything, at that time, when it opened up it was CC Anderson’s. Then there was the dime store, and, oh, we were hot and heavy then. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Can you tell me a little more about your dad’s job? What would a typical day or a typical week look like for someone who worked on the fire department?
Boice: On the fire department, there is no such thing as typical. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: It was wild. In the beginning, they opened up—they were on shifts. Like everything was on day shifts, swing shift, graveyard. In our neighborhood, after my brother was born, we moved down to Swift and McPherson. Dad had come into town by that time. If you go behind the Richland Theater, you look real close, there’s two B houses back there. One of them’s a real B house and the other one ain’t. You look at the B houses over here, and the other one that ain’t is over here. And you look real close at the driveways. That was the original fire station that the City of Richland had going. That was the fire station when Hanford came in. Then they built a fire station on Jadwin in conjunction with the housing building and a couple other things, right across from the 700 Area, which is what they wanted, was coverage on that 700 Area. So that was the downtown fire station. And when they opened that up, why, then Dad came up out of Hanford.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: He wasn’t too long there, and they opened one up Williams off of Thayer, in behind the Groceteria and a little service station up there with a small satellite fire station. Two trucks and one crew. Dad was there for years and years and years.
Franklin: How long did your dad work for Hanford or the government here?
Boice: Like I say, he came in in ’43 and retired in the early ‘70s.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Boice: Rode her right on through.
Franklin: So what did he do when the community transitioned in ’58?
Boice: They bought him!
Franklin: The City of Richland did?
Boice: Yup, the City of Richland bought the outstanding time and he rolled right over.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Boice: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So can you talk a little bit more about growing up here? You said you went to Marcus Whitman and then to—and then what other schools did you go to?
Boice: Well, like I say, there was no shade.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: And very few radio stations. With a good shot you could get in Yakima, Spokane, and Walla Walla, and that was about it. So we sat around in the shade, and my mother read us stories. [LAUGHTER] One of them was a book we picked up in Walla Walla about Sacajawea. She read us the entire story of Sacajawea and the Shoshones and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, et cetera, et cetera. And in ’44, they opened up Sacajawea School. Now, as everybody does, they did their darnedest to convert us kids to saying Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah. It didn’t take. [LAUGHTER] Because there was already Sacajawea State Park and everybody was using the term Sacajawea. But Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah—they tried. They gave it their level best. It didn’t take. But the time that they were doing this, Miss Jesson was a teacher there was giving us the thumbnail sketch about Sacajawea. She did a pretty good job—well, you know, she told you what she knew. And she made mention of the fact that she was married to a trapper, but they didn’t know what his name or anything about him. I says, his name was Toussaint Charbonneau. He got her off a wolf man of the minute carriage for a white buffalo robe. My status went up. [LAUGHTER] And the teachers wanted to know where in the cat hair I learned that. Well, Mom read us the book. But I’ve always liked Sacajawea School. Just kind of a kinship. We went—in ’45, they opened up Marcus Whitman. We went there ’45 was all, because when they broke for the summer, we were over by—we moved. By the next fall we were over in the area where I could go to Sacajawea again. But we were going to Marcus Whitman when Roosevelt was shot—died. So that was the event of the time. You watched the transition of one President to another. The flag ceremony—the whole thing—it was interesting for a kid.
Franklin: I bet. What do you remember about during the war years that kind of focus on secrecy and security? How did that affect your life and your family’s life?
Boice: You didn’t talk to nobody about nothing! [LAUGHTER] I mean, that was just the words. You didn’t talk about—if somebody asks you what your dad does, you talk about something else. It was so interesting here in the last year, I think—time goes quicker now. A whole bunch of us from that neighborhood on Swift went to a funeral—this boy’s mother—well, yeah—Bill’s mother’s 100th birthday, after the funeral they had a sit-down dinner. I happened to sit down at the table with the whole kids of the old neighborhood. And we’re talking about all this stuff, and the secrecy, and the ones you watch out for—this girl over here. Yeah. She didn’t share the secrets with the neighbors when they were talking about who’s got butter on sale. They didn’t tell her anymore. She fried her food in butter. So no one would tell her where the butter sales were when it was available. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Was there any mention of the work going on at Hanford at school that you can remember?
Boice: The one thing of what was going on, and it wasn’t the work at Hanford, because nobody talked about that. But when the Japs were sending over the firebombs—
Franklin: Yeah, the balloon bombs.
Boice: Yes. We were told to write no letters, tell nobody, because they didn’t want it to get out how blinking effective they were.
Franklin: Right. The fear of these bombs from the sky—
Boice: They were hitting, and they were working.
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: You guys are in the right position to find out. But there was a rumor going around that a balloon-loaded Jap had landed out there in the area and they caught him and bundled him up and carted him off before they did any business. Okay, la-di-da-di-da. There’s rumors about one thing and another. And four or five years ago, CNN or one of these, they were talking about the weather balloons. They showed the colored pictures taken out here at Hanford of the balloons landing in the BPA lines and burning up. [LAUGHTER] End of speech, end of story. [LAUGHTER] But I was surprised to find out that something had happened. There was no soldiers attached or anything else, but there was an incident.
Franklin: Yeah, we’ve—there are a couple confirmed reports of—we actually did an oral history with a gentleman whose father had been a patrolman and had seen one of the balloons land and had to chase it down and didn’t realize right away that it was—had explosives attached to it. The others—there’s a couple reports of them touching down onsite. And there was a family that was killed in Idaho where they were picnicking and a balloon came down.
Boice: Idaho or Oregon?
Franklin: I think it was—oh, that’s right, maybe it was Oregon.
Boice: K Falls.
Franklin: Yes.
Boice: You go to the museum in Klamath Falls had the—or when I went through it—I was working down there twenty years ago or so—they had a big display of the family that was picnicking and the kids went to prod on it, and it went off and killed a girl.
Franklin: Yeah. Were there—when you were—so we’re still in the World War II era and we’ll definitely get to the Cold War in a bit—but were there any kind of—what do you remember about like emergency procedures in school? Was there anything special, kind of drills or something during World War II?
Boice: You mean the duck-and-cover?
Franklin: Yeah, that kind of stuff. Was there any duck-and-cover during World War II?
Boice: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Of course—my kindergarten days—now, man. Lived across the street from the college there at Ellensburg, and firebombs were to be worried about. But I was covered. I had a bucket full of sand and a shovel, and it was there on the front porch. When the firebomb came through there, I was going to put my sand on it. So we were prepared. God help us if it landed any place else. [LAUGHTER] But the beginning of the war when I was a kid in Ellensburg was so funny, because we were living right across the street from the college and everything was just the standard college. And the war started, and immediately, there’s all these people running around here that can’t count. Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three, four. I wasn’t even in kindergarten, and I knew about my ones! [LAUGHTER] And there was—you go across the street and around the corner, and there was this one half basement room where I could stand there and watch the guys play shirts-and-skins basketball. And the next time I looked, here’s a skeleton of a single engine aircraft, and a guy instructing people on how to make dead stick landing. Now, of all the damned things for a four-year-old kid to remember, dead stick landings was what he was talking about. And they had this thing skeletonized where they could show the internal workings of all the aeronautics.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: But in Richland—oh, yes. Duck-and-cover fire drills. But they never talked about nuclear, because it was yet to be discovered. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, right. So Ellensburg then quickly became inundated with—the state college there became a training area?
Boice: Oh, yeah. Just that fast.
Franklin: Wow. In your notes here, I also see you mentioned about the heavy military presence and the olive drab everywhere and the cops in Army uniforms.
Boice: [LAUGHTER] It absolutely was. Richland was strictly OD. I think they only had one bucket of paint. But all the vehicles were olive drab. The buses were, on today’s standards, I’ll call them a three-quarter size school bus painted olive drab. The vehicles were anything they could scrounge up, because I remember two GIs in a ’37 Chev coupe, and I know today some farmer had taken the trunk out and made a pickup box out of it. But they scrounged this thing up someplace, painted it OD, and here’s the MPs running around in a ’37 Chev pickup. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] A homemade pickup?
Boice: Yeah. It was years later that I found out—Dad didn’t say anything about it, and he certainly knew—that it was simple, because the war was going on. Everything was prioritized. But they had unlimited supply of uniforms. So they put the cops in soldiers’ uniforms; the firemen were in Navy uniforms. The firemen stood out and were very easily recognizable, but you couldn’t tell the soldiers and the cops apart, because they all had the same stuff on. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. A couple oral histories we’ve done with people that were children in Richland, a couple of them mentioned their fathers had taken them onsite somewhat clandestinely. Did your father ever take you onsite into a secured area?
Boice: No.
Franklin: Did you ever get access to any of that some way?
Boice: No, I did not go to any secured area.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: I was raised running in and out of fire stations. To this day, when I go through the door of a fire station, my hands go into my pockets. You’re allowed to touch nothing. Because you leave fingerprints. [LAUGHTER] It’s just a genuine reflex.
Franklin: Yeah! So you said that you went to Sacajawea, then to Marcus Whitman then back to Sacajawea. Then where did you go to high school?
Boice: We went through all of the—I’ll call it the school construction. They couldn’t build schools fast enough in Richland.
Franklin: I bet.
Boice: We had double shifts. Now they have these temporary quarters—whatever you call them. But we had hutments. Sacajawea had six hutments out there. They built the hutments, and then they went to double shifts. So you went to school at 8:00, and at noon they marched out, teacher and all, and our class marched in, and we went home at 4:30 or 5:00, something like that. So we went through all of that, and then in ’49, they opened Carmichael. A brand new junior high school, man, this is cool! And I was in the seventh grade in Carmichael and I are still the proud possessor of ASB cord 001, 1949, Carmichael Junior High School. The first one they ever gave out. [LAUGHTER] And that was neat, to have a real hard-built school. It was—oh, we had class. After three months, we moved to Kennewick. The Kennewick school system—
Franklin: Your family did, or--?
Boice: Yeah!
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Boice: Dad stayed in Richland, but they were selling off. And if you didn’t have priority, the houses went to the guy that was there first. And in that A house, we were in second, so we were not in line to buy the house.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: So, Dad got a piece of property in Kennewick and we moved to Kennewick. And what a school system mess.
Franklin: Why?
Boice: They were behind. They couldn’t get money quick enough. They couldn’t build stuff fast enough. They had the red brick building—forget what it was called. It had been a high school at one time, and they pressed it back into service. It was so overcrowded you couldn’t believe it. But they finally built the high school that’s there now. It opened in ’52, I believe. ’51—yeah, class of ’52 was the first one to graduate—’52 or ’53. Graduated from Erwin S. Black Senior High School. And it was Erwin S. Black Senior High School one year. Because he was the school superintendent, and they built the school—they named the school in his honor because he had gone to bat and made trips back and forth to Washington, DC to cash some money to use for the school system. Then they got in a shooting match with the Tri-City Herald. [LAUGHTER] And Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard got run out of town, and they chiseled his name off the front of the school. But for one year it was E.S. Black.
Franklin: And then it just became Kennewick High School.
Boice: It became Kennewick High School.
Franklin: Can you talk a little bit more about this disagreement between Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard and the Tri-City Herald?
Boice: It was several things. One of them, there was a book—and I can’t recall—Magruder? McGregor? Somebody. It was a history book, and it mentioned communism. And that was brought up and made a big deal. This was back in the McCarthy era.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: That was brought out. And there was a lot of talk—Black was a certified building inspector, and he inspected the construction of the high school. It was said by a lot of people that it wasn’t up to standards; that the concrete wasn’t what it should have been. And I don’t know what the specs were. I wasn’t into concrete work at that time. I have been later. But I know when we were hanging the benches in the ag shop, where you would put a concrete anchor in the wall ordinarily and it would hold, they didn’t there. And they had to through-bolt through the wall to get to things to hang. So there was—and transfer of equipment and stuff—this was swapped for that, and that was swapped for this—and I don’t remember that, and the only guy I know that did know has died. [LAUGHTER] But one of the kids that graduated from Erwin S. Black, one of the few that was in that class, worked with him off and on and was aware of what went on.
Franklin: When you said that there was a book that mentioned communism, did it mention it in a favorable light, or did it just make a mention to communism?
Boice: More or less, it just made a mention.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: I was on the—oh, we had the open house at the school, and I was one of the tour guides. Yeah, I showed them the book and what it had to say. And I don’t recall anything drastic.
Franklin: So then did you graduate from Kennewick High School?
Boice: No. [LAUGHTER] The military had a hell of a sale. Anybody that enlisted by the first of February got the Korean GI Bill of Rights. And those that enlisted afterwards didn’t. So I drug up in January and joined the Air Force.
Franklin: Oh. Without graduating.
Boice: Without graduating.
Franklin: Okay. Interesting.
Boice: So I served my illustrious military career in a photo lab in Mountain Home, Idaho. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: And how long were you in the Air Force?
Boice: Two years.
Franklin: Two years, and then you were discharged?
Boice: Yes, yup, yup.
Franklin: When you were in school, you mentioned being in school during this McCarthy era, one of the real hot points of the Cold War. Can you talk a little bit about the civil defense procedures and kind of the general feeling of that time as it related to—because I imagine with Hanford so close, and now knowing what was being produced there, that would have been a likely target. It’s a major part of the nuclear weapons stockpile. So can you talk a little bit about that time and just the general feeling?
Boice: Well, you knew what was going to happen—or what they said was gonna happen. It was the duck-and-cover thing. And we had drills. A lot of what they said what was gonna happen—now they talk about getting into water to modulate it. Then, it was one of the things that they didn’t want you to do. Because we had the irrigation ditch that was running right alongside of the schools. But then they didn’t want you to get into it. So, it’s changed. They had the civil defense procedures—Radiant Cleaners, they’re in Kennewick. They had panel delivery cleaner trucks. They were rigged for emergency ambulances. They had fold-down bunks in them; they could handle four people. [LAUGHTER] It was taken serious.
Franklin: Did you feel any particular sense of worry, or did it not seem to really affect you, your daily life or your psychological—
Boice: It never bothered me ‘til years afterwards. When they talked about the Green Run, where they turned a bunch of that stuff loose, just to see what it would do to the citizens and count the drift on it. The people that had—the down-winders, and the people that had the thyroid problems. My sister was one of the first rounds that went to court over that.
Franklin: Really?
Boice: Because she was—we moved into Richland. She had her third birthday in the prefab, when they were still practicing how to build this stuff. And then we moved in on a farm where the alfalfa grew, the cow ate it, gave them milk, and everything was recycled and nothing went over the fence. And so it bothered me, then, that they used us as guinea pigs. But the other hand, they really didn’t know what in the cat hair that they were doing in a lot of cases. The nuclear waste? You’ve heard about the radioactive rabbit turds.
Franklin: I have.
Boice: You have?
Franklin: Yes, I have, but why don’t you mention that?
Boice: I was working with Vitro out here—’72, I think it was. The radioactivity, of course, is settled on the sagebrush. And the rabbits went around eating the leaves, just leaving fat, dumb and happy, and concentrating everything into the rabbit turds. And they were contemplating taking the top six inches of about two or three sections and burying it. Only they couldn’t decide where they had to build the hole. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: When you—you mentioned just a minute ago that you were on a farm, and you had the cows that would have eaten the tainted alfalfa—was your milk ever tested? Or did anyone ever come and--
Boice: Nah. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: test your—Were you ever tested for—or your family, anybody in your family, ever tested for radiation? Because I know that they, at one point, had those Whole Body Counters that they would test—some children in Pasco were tested through those machines?
Boice: You ever been through a Whole Body Counter?
Franklin: I have not been through a Whole Body Counter.
Boice: Depending on where you’re at, there may or may not be a—they’re kind of a joke. Now, when I was working here at Vitro, we went through the Whole Body thing, and they were serious. I mean, before we got cleared out, we went through the chamber, and we were counted. I went to work in South Carolina. They—as far as I was concerned—were very sloppy with their radiation handling and their checking and their radiation monitoring. We had a hand-and-foot monitoring station where we was going in and out of. You stick your hands in and they check it, and your feet were there at the same time. Well, this one time, I come up pretty hot, so I found an RM. I says, that machine gave me a bad reading. Oh, he says, that machine’s no good anyway. Come around to this other one over here and we’ll check you out. Well, if the blinking thing’s no good, why in the cat hair are we using it?! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So, just a second ago, you mentioned you were working for Vitro?
Boice: Uh-huh.
Franklin: What is or was Vitro?
Boice: What was Vitro? Okay. Vitro Engineering—and I don’t know how many times the name changed hands. But these guys were the ones that laid out the City of Richland—laid out the Hanford Projects. These were the strictly insiders. There was pictures on a wall of my grade school buddy’s dad, who I remember being a surveyor in Richland there. And these guys—this has gone on forever, and they were a pretty dug-in organization. To the point that they were not really aware that there was a world outside the fence. They’d heard about it, but they weren’t too sure it existed. [LAUGHTER] But I ended up at Vitro, and we did the Tank Farms that they’re having problems with, the hot tanks? We were in on the modification of that farm. We surveyed in there quite a bit. Whenever they show the pictures on TV, they always show you the evaporation facility. They show you that same picture. Warren Wolfe and I—I say Warren and I—it’s a little—our crew brought that up out of the ground, and we modified the tank farm, and we laid out the construction on that building from the ground right through the top.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And I was very fortunate, because all my surveying experience to that point was with the railroads and pipelines and longline work. Construction surveying was new to me. And I got throwed in with an old boy that was good at it. [LAUGHTER] And I learned a bunch working with him. And rolled right over, later on, into Hanford, too. We got in on the end of that—[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Hanford II?
Boice: Yeah.
Franklin: Oh, as--T-O-O. And which building was this that you and Warren Wolfe and your crew built?
Boice: All I remember is the evaporation facility.
Franklin: What was your specific job at Vitro? Were you a surveyor?
Boice: I was a surveyor. I was an instrument man. You get in the hot zones—we got inside the Canyon Building on several different occasions. And you got suited up, and I was instructed very specifically and emphatically to touch nothing, because anything that got crapped up, they kept. And we couldn’t get the instruments crapped up. But that stuff was so hot that the paper—the Rite-in-the-Rain books have got a specific paper there that has pitch in it or something—it attracts radioactivity like a sponge. And when they kept the notes, then one of us would stay inside and the other guy would get out in the clean zone, and we’d have to transcribe all the notes, because that book was so hot that they wouldn’t let it out of the area. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: There was some weird stuff going on.
Franklin: Any other—
Boice: Yeah, but there’s some I ain’t gonna talk about. [LAUGHTER] Okay. We came so close to having a nuclear disaster, it wasn’t even funny. We were good. We were awful good. And we were fast. And we were set up out there on an offset, and Rosie the labor foreman come over. Somebody said you needed a shot here for a hole for a penetration into the tank. Man, we whipped that out and figured the pull and what it was gonna take. Swung over there, put a distance and an angle, drove the stake in the ground. I figured that Warren checked it, and away we went. We come back in a week or so, or a few days later, we were back in that same farm. And Rosie comes over there and he says, would you guys check that again? Because these guys was digging a hole there and they’re supposed to hit a tank. And we checked it. And I lied, and Warren swore to it. [LAUGHTER] We forgot we was on a ten-foot offset. So they’re digging clear to one side of this tank, and just good solid dirt. Had we been just half as screwed-up as we were, they would have gone right down the edge of that tank with a core drill. And we’d have had ooey-gooeys all over the place. They talked to us. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Kind of a happy accident, right?
Boice: Yeah, we were—I’ll never forget Warren’s work. He’d come back with the boss and he says, name me one guy in this world ever got through this life being perfect. He says, always pissed me off, he’s a damned carpenter. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So you went to—you joined the Air Force, you went to Idaho for two years. When you came back—or what did you do after that? Did you come back to Richland after?
Boice: We were living in Kennewick.
Franklin: Living in Kennewick.
Boice: And I was working at the Washington Hardware Store. And this kid—we were working on cars in my buddy’s garage. And this guy comes through and he’s surveying for the Corps. And he talked that they were setting up a photogrammetry section. Well, heck, that’s what I was doing in the service. So, I beat feet over to Walla Walla to sign up to lay out photo mosaics. And they say, we haven’t got enough work for fulltime at that job. Are you a draftsman? No, I are not a draftsman. He says, would you take a job surveying? You bet. I became a surveyor. [LAUGHTER] And we worked from the mouth of the Deschutes River to Lewiston, Idaho. The first thing was the mouth of the Deschutes to McNary Dam—we mapped from the water level to the top of the bluffs by hand.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: And then we went through, starting in ’58, and we inventoried the railroad. Now, when you inventory a railroad, we inventoried a railroad. Everything they possessed was put down. First, you go through and you measure and put stations—mark station markings on the rails. 80 miles of them. Then you go back and you reference everything the railroad’s got. Ties, spikes, tie plates, rails, joints, joint bars—if the fence moves, how far did it move, from what to what? If the rail changes, if there’s an isolation joint in there, you put that in. When you come to a switch, you measure everything that’s in the switch facility. You go—everything that that railroad has got. You become very, very familiar with railroads. [LAUGHTER] And then we went ahead, and we built railroads clear up to Lewistown. We handled a railroad layout real heavy. When they—are you familiar with the Marmes men?
Franklin: Yes.
Boice: Luck of the draw, I was on that. Because we were the—call it the resident survey crew in that area.
Franklin: Oh.
Boice: And we were babysitting construction. Make sure they got sticks out ahead of them, make sure that things are checked out behind them. They’re putting in a detour, why, check that out. They’re building a bridge, make sure it’s set up right, and check it out when they get done. So, first they call up and they say, there’s a guy down here at the mouth of the Palouse River thinks he hit something, and he wants an elevation on this cave, see where the water’s gonna come when they raise the water behind Lower Monumental, I believe.
Franklin: Yeah, I think that sounds right.
Boice: Is that the dam? So we went down there and run him in an elevation, painted it on the cave face. Happily on our way. Well, they hit pay dirt. [LAUGHTER] They dug up bones. So we were called back. They wanted—because the drillers were in there then doing sub-cell drilling of what’s down there. So we got to come in there and locate their holes so they know where what is. That was interesting. The whole thing. Now that the world has got into this Ice Age floods and stuff, I wish so heavily that I knew then what I know now. Because the layers that they went through were very definitely visible. This thing had been covered in various floods. But it was so interesting, the stuff that they found. Because it became an international incident. One of the coolest cats in the whole joint was Pono the Greek. And Pono run the sluice box. He had been all over the world. When the girls dug everything out, then they took the dirt to Pono, and he washed it down. Pono found thread of somebody’s sewing. Then they found the needle. And that to me was so cool. They had this needle that looked for all the world like a darning needle. How in the blazes they cut that eye in there! This was a really heads-up organization. [LAUGHTER] Interesting. Very interesting.
Franklin: Yeah, that was a very significant archaeological find.
Boice: I’ve got to go back some day and talk to that doctor. At an anniversary of something, we’re down here at Columbia Park, and he was talking and I showed up there with the historical society doing something-or-other. And I talked to him for about five minutes. He mentioned the fact that he wanted to see the guy that painted that elevation. I said, well, you’re looking at him. [LAUGHTER] It was—I got to go talk to him. Because one of the things in their report—they talked that the ditch was dug with a Cat. Now, I ain’t saying they’re wrong, because I didn’t see any digging when I was there. But just—as you’re going up and looking at a hole, and in those days we had looked at a bunch of holes—we were inspectors. They were going behind the soils guys. And it just to me had all the appearance of somebody that dug a ditch with a dragline. And I always figured it was a dragline in there, and somebody said it was a Cat. I don’t totally agree with him. But the bones were so interesting. They said that the one thing about the site was there had been somebody living on it forever. Just, the further down you went, the more primitive they became, ‘til you got past the layer of the Mazama ash, when Crater Lake blew its top. And they went past Mazama ash and suddenly things looked pretty sophisticated. That’s where the needle came from and a few other things. It was neat. I’d have liked to spend more time with them.
Franklin: Yeah. I’m sure you heard about the dam failing and the site flooding after they—because they created the protective dam around the shelter, and that failed and let water in.
Boice: It didn’t fail! The SOB was never built to hold! When they brought us down there to check these drill holes out, the drillers—we had other stuff to do that morning, and we didn’t get down there until 10:00. The driller had a half-a-dozen holes in. I’m talking to this old driller, and he says, they ain’t never gonna keep water out of that thing, because there’s a layer of palm wood down there and it’s gonna leak like a sieve. But they did it anyway. And we’re down there checking on settlement pins and a whole bunch of other stuff when the water’s coming up. But we’re all on the radio, and it’s like a big one-party line—you can hear what’s going on no matter where. And they’re putting in pumps, and the more pumps they put in, the more water they sprayed out, but noting changed. [LAUGHTER] So it’s a lovely fishing pond. But interesting: it was shortly thereafter that I quit the corps and went to Alaska. Within a year-and-a-half, two years, I’m up there doing the same thing, only instead of spotting holes in the ground, we’re spotting oil wells. And sitting in a warm-up shack, talking to a driller, and he made mention of the fact that they had spudded oil wells. Now, when they spud an oil well, they get in there with an oversized auger, like you’re setting telephone poles. And they go down there through the mud and the blood and the crud ‘til they get to solid rock. And then they bring in the drills. And he says, we have yet to spud a well here that we didn’t get palm wood. And that has always sat with me. Now, when they’re talking about global warming—if there has been palm trees growing at the mouth of the Palouse River, and palm trees growing at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it’s been a lot warmer than people are willing to talk about. [LAUGHTER] Just boggles my mind that there is palm wood in Alaska as well as Marmes Rockshelter.
Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting. So you were—Marmes, then Alaska. When did you come to work for Vitro at Hanford?
Boice: That was a pretty short season. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: At Hanford, or in Alaska?
Boice: At Vitro. Oh, at Alaska I worked for various contractors. But Vitro—we didn’t philosophically match. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Ah.
Boice: Their minds were all inside the fence. And I’m too antagonistic. [LAUGHTER] If we had a problem—thou shalt not speak bad of Vitro. And we’re laying out penetrations on top of a tank. And they’re all done. Radius and angle—which radius is—and they had them at different stages there, and other people had been doing them. And this tank had been there for quite a—not quite a while, but every once in a while someone would come in and set some more holes, set some more holes. Well, they didn’t continue their circle around—nobody closed the circle. So by the time we get there ‘til the end, we have to figure out by adding up each and every hole all the way around the circle at every different radius to get the dimensions to where we’re at. Where if the guy had closed out his circle, you could have backed him out and been out of there in about a tenth the time. So I happened to make the statement, I said, Vitro drafting strikes again. And I was a marked man. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: How long in total, then, did you work out on the Hanford site?
Boice: Well, in ’56-’57, or ’57-’58, they were doing a lot of military work out there. And we did the roads up Rattlesnake—was in on that. The road up Saddle Mountain. A lot of RADAR sites. You’re aware of the Nike sites on—
Franklin: Yup.
Boice: --the north side of the river over there?
Franklin: Yup.
Boice: Been there, done that. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So—that wasn’t for Vitro, was that when you were with—
Boice: That was the Corps.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And we also did a lot of work up at Moses Lake.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: All the runway extensions up there, we were in on. They throwed us in the clink. They did not like our very presence.
Franklin: Why?
Boice: Apparently Moses Lake had two different structures. There was the Strategic Air Command structure up there, and there was the Military Air Transport Service. I didn’t know the difference. Les was—we were doing some mapping work. And the three of us were just gonna run some levels out to the next site we were gonna work at. And we took off the BM—benchmark—at the control tower. And we get about two turns out across the flight line there. And a bunch of guys come out, like a changing of the guard or something. Two or three of them stopped to talk to Kirby and George. The other five come out along, and they walked, just formed a circle around me, and they wanted to know if I wanted to go with them. They had submachine guns and a whole bunch of other stuff, and I said, heck, there’s nothing I’d rather do! [LAUGHTER] So they called up Walla Walla and they verified our existence. Then we had to go through security and get badges to—and we’d been working on that thing off-and-on for months. But we just hadn’t stepped in the right zone.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Boice: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: They were just kind of waiting for you, then, to—
Boice: Just different—different bunch of stuff.
Franklin: Right. When you were in school in Kennewick, so after the—or even just after the word was out about the Hanford site, after August 6th, 1945, when you were in school, did they teach anything about Hanford history? Was it—
Boice: Go back to August 6th.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: What a day. [EMOTIONAL] What a wonderful day! I’d been down at the Village Theater—now the Richland Theater. I don’t even remember what was playing. But we came out, [EMOTIONAL] and the bells were ringing. The church down there, they were ringing their bells. And everybody was whooping it up—the war was over! And I’ll never forget, some gal in there alongside the street, she had half a dozen kids with garbage can lids and a parade going, and they’re banging and clanging. And the festivities that the war was over. And then we went back and they came out with the thing and Truman said, It’s the Atomic Bomb, and that’s what we’ve been building. And Mom went over and talked to the lady next door. She mentioned the U-235. And the gal says, they didn’t talk about that, did they? And she’d been keeping files, and her husband had been working on it. And neither of them would ever admit that they knew what the other one was doing. It was that tight. And the security in Richland. The FBI knew everybody in town, because it was not uncommon—it was a regular thing that they would come around and they would talk to you, and ask about him. And then they’d go talk to him and ask about you. It was just—it was what was going on. We didn’t know why. Well, after that—yeah, after it came out what was going on out there, then we knew what was there. But until Truman come out and said, here’s what was going on, we didn’t know.
Franklin: What about V-J Day? Was that a separate kind of a big celebration?
Boice: Yeah.
Franklin: Was that as big as the news of the bomb drop? Or was the bomb drop more of a pivotal moment here in the—
Boice: Well, the V-J Day, the end of the war, was the big day. That’s the celebration that I’ll never forget.
Franklin: Can you talk about it?
Boice: June—you heard about Harry Truman, didn’t you? When he come out to Hanford?
Franklin: No.
Boice: [LAUGHTER] The head of security was a guy by the name of McHale. And Dad worked pretty close with him with the fire department because everything was safety and security and if you had a problem, see McHale. Now, the guy had taken—he was pretty much high up in intelligence—but he had assumed the position of a first sergeant. And Sarge McHale was the guy. No matter what happened, Sarge McHale. Harry Truman did a fantastic job, and made his reputation just going from plant to plant—the Truman Investigating Committee, cutting down waste. And I guess he did a heck of a job. But he come out to Hanford and demanded to be let in.
Franklin: Sorry, was this when he was Vice President or President?
Boice: He was a senator!
Franklin: Senator—Senator Harry Truman. Okay.
Boice: And he comes there and demands to be let in. And of course, the guard says, McHale! And McHale comes over there and meets him head-on. He says, I’m Senator Truman, and I demand to be let in. McHale says, I don’t give a damn if you’re President of the United States; you ain’t coming in here. And he didn’t. Well, years later, and I believe it was when they were dedicating the Elks Club in Pasco, Truman was back up in this area. And he was President. And he come out to Hanford and he looked up McHale. And he said, uh-huh, you son of a bitch, you didn’t think I’d make ‘er, did ya? [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. That’s a great story. [LAUGHTER] But thank you. So after the war was over, was what went on at Hanford taught in school? Was there mention of the work at Hanford that built the bomb? Was that part of the curriculum here in town?
Boice: The local lore.
Franklin: The local lore, but nothing in the school at all?
Boice: Not that I recall.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: Everything was—there was a terrific amount of pride. The Atomic City, the atomic this, the atomic that. The first barber shop quartet come to town, when GE left—no, DuPont left, GE come in, four guys come in from Schenectady, New York with a barber shop quartet. First ones I ever saw. And they were the Atomic City Four. And the next one were the Nuclear Notes. [LAUGHTER] But there was an atomic pride, all over the area. Then there was the people that thought we should be ashamed of it. That we had built this device that killed a whole bunch of people.
Franklin: Now, were these people in the community? Or people outside?
Boice: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Franklin: And this was right at the time—
Boice: Oh, no, no, no. This is--
Franklin: Later?
Boice: Last week? [LAUGHTER] Last few years ago, yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: I got my—I’m still behind Hanford.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: Screwed up and all. Back to Vitro for a little bit. Like I say, they were—the organization that literally purchased and built the city of Richland—now, at that time I was flying, and I was flying out of the Richland airport. And there was an old geezer out there called Norm. Norm flew the bench. He was always on the bench out in front of the airport, there. And if somebody just going up to burn up some hours or play, why, Norm was willing to go along. I saw Norm and I hauled him around and then I went back to work for Vitro. And Pritchard brought this guy through—it was Norm! Norm had been the head of real estate when the entire city of Richland and the whole Hanford Project was bought. He was in charge of it. And he retired and trained his successor, who died. And he trained the next guy, who died. So they had Norm on a retainer. Just to ride dirt on real estate. Quite an interesting character!
Franklin: Yeah, I bet. I think I’d kind of like to return about something we were just talking about a minute ago, where you were talking about people that—especially in the later years that have been critical of Hanford. I’d like to get more of your feelings on that. On how you feel about that, or kind of what part of their argument or their viewpoint that you don’t agree with.
Boice: They were talking about—well, first there was the Richland High School and their bomb insignia. It was felt that they were making a big deal or prideful about this terrible event. And I always go back to a group from Japan that came over and were very critical of Richland for the same thing. And the gentleman who was interviewing them or was talking to them, when they got done, informed them in no uncertain terms, that we were invited very unceremoniously into that war, and we’re sorry if you didn’t like the way we ended it. [LAUGHTER] You get to researching, I’d like to bring up, why didn’t they drop the bomb on Tokyo? Because there was nothing left on Tokyo to injure. If you read about Curt LeMay and the Strategic Air Command and the bombing of Japan, he had eliminated that thing down to—the B-29 was supposed to be a high altitude bomber. And it wasn’t as great at it as it was advertised to be. But they had eliminated the defenses. And they made the B-29 into a low-level trucking company, and they were just hauling stuff over and unloading it. And the firebombing of Tokyo—the movies they showed us in the Air Force was something to behold. I mean, they—it was so much worse than what happened at Nagasaki or Hiroshima, either one. He was told to save two or three targets—clean targets. And when they come over there with the bombs, then they used these clean targets and saw what they could do. Of the four devices—the four nuclear devices, we used—was it four or three in World War II?
Franklin: Are you referring to—
Boice: All but one of them came from Hanford.
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: The first one at Los Alamos was plutonium. And then Hiroshima was Oak Ridge.
Franklin: Yup.
Boice: And then Nagasaki was plutonium.
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: But there’s those that—and there were at the time, there was a big discussion on, should we demonstrate to them what this thing could do? And the big argument was, what if it doesn’t do? What if you drop it and it don’t do nothing? [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Interesting. Can you speak to—or do you remember anything about the Civil Rights era in the Tri-Cities?
Boice: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: There were reports of—you know, it’s known that Kennewick was kind of a sun-down town, and that many minorities were forced to live in East Pasco. And that during the war—
[NEW CLIP]
Franklin: There had been a sizable African American population at Hanford, but that after the war many of them left. So I was wondering if you could speak to the Civil Rights action you might have seen or you might have observed or anything in the Tri-Cities?
Boice: Well, I was up in Lewiston when their civil rights march come through. But it was well-advertised. People knew what was gonna happen. And I was at the hardware store, and there’s a black cement finisher I’d worked with building houses in Pasco. I says, Leroy! You gonna come march on Kennewick? He said, [AFFECTED DIALECT] shee-it. I wantsta live in Kennewick just about as bad as you wantsta live in East Pasco. [LAUGHTER] They had a march on Kennewick—a bunch of people that—I am told, because I was living in Lewiston, and I was in Lewiston at the time. But there’s a group out of Seattle and a group out of Portland come up to Pasco, and they marched across the bridge. They marched down Avenue C, up Washington Street, down Kennewick Avenue. And Kennewick yawned. Nobody particularly cared. They got to the Methodist church, and the groups come out and says, you look hot. Come on in and have some lemonade. They sat down at the church, had lemonade and went home. And that was the civil rights march in Kennewick. But there is—when I was there growing up, there were no blacks in Kennewick. There were blacks in Pasco, and there were no blacks in Richland. With the exception—the guy that run the shoeshine parlor at Ganzel’s barbershop lived in the basement, and they tell me that there was two black porters at the Hanford House. And that was the total black population of Richland.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: But they were not welcome in Kennewick. It wasn’t that big a deal when I was walking down Kennewick Avenue when a couple of black guys—they were bums, hobos—come walking down Main Street, you might as well say. And a cop pulled up and says, the railroad tracks are two blocks down that way. They go east and west. Either one will get you out of town. And they went to the railroad track. I always figured that the blacks wanted to move to Kennewick because they couldn’t stand to live next to the blacks in Pasco. [LAUGHTER] And if you want to get right down to it, well, all that hooping and hollering they do right now, you go down to Fayette, Mississippi, which is 98.645% black, and all the blacks in Mississippi can live in Fayette and nobody cares. Go down to Van Horn, Texas, which is all Mexicans, and they can all live in Van Horn, Texas, and nobody cares. But you let half a dozen white guys go up in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and they just have yourself a storm. Why, these are a bunch of white separatists! If everybody else can live together, why can’t the whites?
Franklin: Interesting. Some might say they were kind of starting a separatist movement up there, I think—claiming their own territory, and—
Boice: So what?
Franklin: Well, living together communally is often different from claiming that you don’t—aren’t subject to the law, the jurisdiction of the United States.
Boice: Nobody said that they weren’t subject to the law.
Franklin: Well--
Boice: They kept trying to integrate Prudhoe, but he kept getting cold and going home.
Franklin: Oh, in Alaska?
Boice: Yeah!
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: They had a heck of a time keeping Prudhoe integrated. Because them black people do not like cold weather! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I don’t think a lot of people like cold weather.
Boice: It was a big joke when we went down south there, to work at Savannah River. Because—hell, we’d come out of here and it was Thanksgiving. It was cold. We got down there, of course, if you’re traveling you’re gonna get nightshift. We left having the cold weather here at night down there. And I says, that’s okay, you’ll get yours come summertime when it heats up. But surprisingly—and I was really surprised that they didn’t take the hot weather any better than we did. I mean, it was miserably hot, but they were just as big a problem as a rest of us.
Franklin: I imagine it’s quite a bit more humid down there, though, with the—when it gets hot, you know. Because the heat with the humidity is—
Boice: Yeah, it is.
Franklin: --much worse than the dry heat.
Boice: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention? Or any question I haven’t asked you that you think I should—
Boice: I don’t know what it would be. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah, we’ve really gone—really jumped all over the place. It’s been great. Anyone else have any questions?
Hungate: No, the only question—you said you’d done some work with the railroad. What railroad?
Boice: Name one. [LAUGHTER]
Hungate: All railroads? Union Pacific, all the different--?
Boice: Yes. Right now they’re talking about the oil trains, and their problems with them tipping over? I wonder how long it’s gonna take them to get to the problem. In the beginning, railroads were 39-foot rails bolted together. Measured mile after mile after mile of it. Then in about, oh, the middle ‘60s—’67, thereabouts, ’66—when they were putting in the SP&S, that’s now the BN—the Burlington Northern on the Washington side. They went with quarter-mile steel. And the first question that we had as surveyors—because you’re constantly working with the expansion and contraction of steel—was how are they going to control that in long rails? Because if you’re working on railroads very long, first thing you realize is do not sit on the joints in a hot day. You get your butt pinched! [LAUGHTER] When those tracks expand. So we brought this up and the first thing they told us was, well, they’ve got special steel and it’s only going to expand sideways. Well, that story lasted about as long as it took when they started putting it together. Because when they started—they’d set up a factory down here, if you’ll call it that. Brought in 39-foot un-punched rail, and just rolled her off, welded her together and ground down the joints and put her in quarter-mile sections. They were very particular when they put it in at the temperature that they laid that down on, where before—you know what a creeper is? Okay, it’s a kind of a hairpin device that you put over the rail so that it will slide less. But in the old days, the 39-foot rail very seldom saw any creepers. When they put that quarter-mile steel together, you saw a lot of creepers. Now they have gone to ribbon rail. They welded the quarter-mile steel together. You drive down to Portland, and you look at that rail, and you’re gonna go a long ways before you see a joint. There at Quinton and Washman’s dip—which don’t mean a thing to you guys—[LAUGHTER] about a mile post from 120-whatever, they have got a creeper on each—alongside of each and every tie. I mean, they were using creepers like they were going out of style. To me, the expansion’s the thing that they got to worry about, but then they should have figured this out because they’re running it. But it’s a factor. You got to factor it in when you’re doing a pipeline, when you’re doing a railroad. When we were doing the pipeline, Maurice Smith of British Petroleum, who was the head pipeline engineer, I had lunch with him. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t like we sit down at a specified lunch—he dropped in at the chow hall I was eating and sat down at our table. So we got to talking about it. And that was the question I brought up, was how are you going to handle the expansion in the steel? And he says—he admitted it was a heck of a problem. And that you got to run as many Ss as you can so that it’ll take up and accordion itself. And when you’ve got a long straight stretch, it’s gonna give you problems. [LAUGHTER] Because it’s gonna go someplace. And that’s the thing that—after they started the quarter-mile steel, a couple of years later, we had a hot summer. The article in the Tri-City Herald called it the long, hot summer, where we had over 90 days of over 90-degree weather. But they were cutting chunks out of that railroad to keep her on the road bed. And at that time, when the SP&S was having these problems, the UP was laughing at them. They said, we tried this stuff in Wyoming. It didn’t work. And they’re using 39-foot stuff, and it was just whistling down the road. But now I see that they’re using the ribbon rail like everybody else. I can’t see how it’s gonna work, but the they’re doing it. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t my role! [LAUGHTER] The other one was the Camas Prairie. And that starts out, oh, about ten miles above Ice Harbor Dam, thereabouts, breaks loose, and goes clear up past Lewiston, up into Grangeville, Idaho. That’s a crazy little river.
Franklin: That’s the one that they filmed that Charles Bronson movie.
Boice: Breakheart Pass?
Franklin: Breakheart Pass, yeah.
Boice: Yeah, that was done up there. You get into railroad history—this area is knee-deep in it. Vollard was the great character in that. He started out with a little portage railroad around Idaho Falls and that area. And then he got the Walla Walla line—I call it the WWWWW&WWW line—Walla Walla, Waitsburg, Washtucna and Washington Wail Woad—which was a money maker. But he ended up getting a lineup from Portland out here. And then when they started building the Northern Pacific, they were building from both ends, and he was hauling Northern Pacific rail over his tracks and taking it out in railroad stock. By the time they got connected over in Montana, he owned a sizable chunk of the railroad. [LAUGHTER] And it was—you get into that railroad history, and it’s just takeover checkers. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much, George.
Boice: Okay! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: It was a pleasure talking to you. And, yeah, thanks for coming in today.
Boice: All righty. Write if you find work! [LAUGHTER]
Northwest Public Television | Denham_Dale
Laura Arata: I feel ready. I think Dale feels ready.
Dale Denham: Yeah. Are you going to ask me some questions to begin with, or just--
Arata: I sure am.
Denham: [LAUGHTER] We're here, huh?
Arata: If we could just start by having you say your name, and then spell your last name for us, please?
Denham: Okay. Dale Denham. D-E-N-H-A-M. I always let people know it's like the denim jeans. Can't forget me. [LAUGHTER]
Arata: Thank you. My name's Laura Arata. It's December 12, 2013. We're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So if we could just start, I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about when you came to Hanford, why you came to Hanford, and what you knew about it at the time.
Denham: Well, maybe it's better if I tell you when I first came in 1947.
Arata: Please do.
Denham: But as a young person, came with my family because my dad was invited to come up here and start a radio station. And Dad was in the radio business since the '20s. And his buddy says, boy, this is just a golden opportunity, and dad said, oh no. The war's over and this place is going to fold. Obviously, he was a bit wrong, but he had been through the Depression and all those kind of things. So we came. My sister and I would come up on the train and spend weeks, because they had a couple daughters. And they moved in in '47 and stayed here 'til '57. So the station today is KONA, but at that time it was KWIE. And it began in that period, and so we made lots of trips. But they lived in Kennewick, so I really didn't spend much time in Richland. They brought us out to see the barricade out here on Stevens, and the bypass to even get to the 300 Area. And at the time, their studios were being built, and so they were doing things in the Hanford House, which is today the Richland Red Lion. So I had some introduction to the Tri-City community. But I came as a graduate student, 1961, as part of a fellowship from the Atomic Energy Commission, which was in Health Physics. And it turns out I was in the first class of graduates of master's degree from the University of Washington. There were like ten of them, ten of us. We came and spent the summer here in '61. I got married that summer also. And we became acquainted with the site by--much like they did most of the engineers, they moved us around on site, kind of give us a familiarity with all the different aspects of health physics, which was radiation protection, basically, for the people and the environment. And so that was my introduction to the place. But while I was here, the opportunity to get a master's, because they didn't have a master's program at UW at the time, because we were the first class. And while we were here during the summer, a program opened up to get a master's by going back for the second year. So I went on back to University of Washington and was able to get my master's. Matter of fact, I was studying rheumatoid arthritic patients looking for ways to use the reactor there at the university to evaluate the gold in these patients, because gold was not a cure for the disease, but it could slow it down and at least make people so they could--so I worked with two individuals. I collected all their urine, because we were looking for activation techniques. And it took me most of the year because the opportunities were great to look to the future, but we didn't have all the technology yet. I was doing a lot of my work using a single channel analyzer and looking at different photo peaks, energy, gamma ray energies coming off of these radionuclides, because we're all full of sodium, and sodium has a very high energy activation product, sodium-24. And so that was a real issue. And I had to try different ways is to subtract that material, or that impact that we would see on the scans. But that was the beginning. And so I completed the degree. And then my wife had been born in Long Beach, California. Her grandmother was still down there. And so got the opportunity to go to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory--it was called Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the time--in Livermore, California. So went down there and spent seven years--no, five years--and then came back up here. She developed some real allergy issues. And the kids were still young, small, a couple years old. So it was a good opportunity to come back. We knew what the area was like. We had spent the summer here, which is a tough time. And of course we remembered--I remembered from my childhood all the dust storms and the running out to grab the laundry to bring it in because it was getting dusty. But I just thoroughly enjoyed the sunshine. And my parents, Dad was from Baker City, Oregon, and mother was from Boise, Idaho. So it made sense, in one sense, that they might select to come here. But Mom didn't get along too well in the heat, and so this was not a favorite place. So that was probably part of the equation, too, that they chose not to even go any further, even though their friends were very successful here and sold out, and bought the station in Hood River and then retired, which is what they all did. So that was my introduction and coming to Hanford. And I served in a variety of departments--I mean, by name, but they all were basically radiation protection, health physics, mostly applied. In other words, I was dealing with how to take air samples, where to take air samples, how to take river samples, how to measure them, what to measure them for. I got into the environmental arena, which was really my long-term interest. And so I was involved in the late '60s in the water monitoring portion of the Hanford program, where I looked at the water in the schools, took water from the public schools, water from the wells, drinking water. We sampled water from the river directly. We monitored the river by passing it through detectors. And this was a period when most of the reactors were operating, so there was plenty of activity, and a real challenge to trace that. Where did it go? How was it going to impact the public? But I worked primarily in the 300 Area until I retired from Battelle in '95. Oh, by the way, that's who I came to work for, was Battelle. And I spent all my career up to that point with Battelle after I'd come back from Livermore. And I took the certification exam in health physics and became a certified health physicist, a diplomat of the American Board of Health Physics. I served on the board for that--certifying other individuals coming along. I taught some of the classes here. We started here when this was the graduate school, the graduate center, long before Washington State University became a part of the community. And so I had a lot of involvement in that arena. I just really enjoyed the field because it was broad enough that we could be concerned about x-rays and radiation that you would get externally from contamination, or get it on your body, in your body, so internal evaluation. But I was primarily interested in keeping the environment clean, which was--And I have to mention Herb Parker because he was really the father of the radiation protection, radiation safety here at the site. And Herb called me up one day--this was in the early '70s--and said, I've got an opportunity for you. I think that you would make an excellent candidate to make this move. And I said, well, I wasn't interested in moving. Well, he says, I think you should come over to my office and let's chat. Well, he had a job in an environmental organization called Radiation Management Corporation. He was a consultant to them, and they were in Philadelphia. And I'd always lived all my life on the west coast, so I wasn't very enthused. But I went, I listened. He sent me back for an interview. I went in December, just about this time, a horrible time to go back there. It was crummy weather. It was wet, dark, I couldn't see anything. But it was a little company, and they were about to grow with the nuclear industry to supply environmental monitoring support for the nuclear power reactors up and down the east coast. So I turned them down. But two years later I got another call and says, gosh, we really need you, and here's an opportunity. You better come. So by '74 I did take advantage, moved back there. And then I think it was Jimmy Carter that desired not to reprocess any fuel, and so the nuclear industry, the nuclear power industry dropped off—well, at least began its diminished increased places, increased sites, increased utilities going with nuclear. So that led to the need—we had too many people, grew fast, but then--And matter of fact, my original boss here, Bob Junkins by name, hired me in '67, and I worked with him for almost two years before I moved to the environmental. I was in the criticality safety, nuclear safety business in that time. And my whole role was to develop a criticality safety manual that we could use to audit and evaluate the users of nuclear material here on the site—Battelle's portion of the site. And that led me--then, with that environmental interest, I moved into the environmental monitoring portion in the late '60s. And that's what set me up for that. I went to Philadelphia, but I had to go find something else. And unfortunately, in that time period, I also got divorced back there in Philadelphia. And my children moved back to the west coast, to Bainbridge Island. So it was now, where do I go? Fortunately, there were lots of jobs. I didn't have any problem finding a job. But I chose to go back to Livermore because I was familiar with the territory and the people. And so I went back there. But it was only a couple of years, because I met a gal that I had dated in high school. And she ran into my sister, and my sister gave me an address. I wrote to her, and she called me up and says, what are you doing for Christmas? I said, I'm taking the train to go see my kids. Well, why don't you stop here and see me on the way in Salem? And we both went to Willamette University. That was where our degrees were from. And I'm still married to her today, 35 years. And we've had a great time here at Hanford. When I did retire, I moved—well, I helped--because she was Vice President of United Way. And so I took on the role of the listener as the United Way representative volunteer at the Reemployment Opportunity Center. This was 1995, when we had some 5,000 layoffs. I was part of that, only I wasn't a layoff. I took a voluntary retirement, early retirement. And through that I discovered that there were other positions available on the site, and Bechtel Hanford had come in as the environmental restoration contractor. And golly, I was involved in all that sort of stuff. So it was a perfect opportunity to send a note—I knew the head of the department from my health physics background and membership—and was offered that opportunity to go to work for them. So I spend another eight years with them. And then to finish my career, so to speak, I retired from them in '06, and then I got a call from Battelle, said, we're doing all these calculating the radiation risks of former atomic energy workers, and we really need some help. Could you do this for us? And that was nice because I did it at home. I would come to meetings with Battelle. And one of my close friends, the two of us kind of worked together, which was great, because we were working at home. I had to buy a new computer and all that because I needed access to much more sophisticated equipment than I had, because I was just a little email and that sort of thing. My exciting things that happened here, my work in the nuclear—criticality safety—that was one of my first papers, major papers, because while I was at Livermore I studied the transuranics, which meant the materials that were heavier than uranium, uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium and so on up the chain. And I got very familiar because I was working with a group of chemists in California as their radiation safety person, where they were trying to come up with these heavier elements. And so I got to know most of that material. And when I got up here and the criticality safety, because that was a concern too. We knew that some of these materials could go critical with the right conditions. So that gave me an opportunity to use that background that I had in knowing these materials, and then to put together, really, a summary. I evaluated the fire safety aspect, the explosion aspects, the radiation—internal as well as external—aspects. So that was one of my real highlights. And that came right at a time when I took the exam to become certified in health physics. The next the set of the exciting things were the working with the environmental, where I got involved with nuclear power reactors and in helping develop criteria for their environmental monitoring programs. You see, we went from Atomic Energy Commission, AEC, to ERDA, Energy Research and Development Administration. That was in '74. And then we became the Department of Energy, and that was about '77, '78. So I went through that period, so I was working for all three agencies, so to speak, just because one followed the other. I think my document that we finally issued on how to use environmental monitoring—that is, what techniques and so on—were recommended by what was called ERDA at that time, but became the DOE position for all the sites. And the way we handled that was, we went out as teams and visited Oak Ridge and Savannah River and Chicago. And we even went to some of the power reactors, or the early--not so much power, but the early development reactors, Idaho, testing, and checking out how they were doing things so that we could then look at a composite and gather the folks. We held a couple of workshops where we brought in folks from all these other sites and said, you know, here's what we see that ought to be the basic criteria. So that was a great opportunity to explore and see other sites. So I visited many of the DOE sites, Los Alamos and Livermore, as all part of that, too. So I had a wonderful time and experience in a whole variety of things, handling these transuranic materials that not a whole lot was known. And you came to know these things by working with them, working on developing shielding, because these materials also—not only external radiation but also neutron radiation, which you get primarily from accelerators, or from particular radionuclides that do give off neutrons as they fission. And so those were areas to explore and develop. But what a great place to have to have worked, to have had my time, and I really don't want to leave the community. We've enjoyed--and my wife, I thought, who really was--after she finished school at Willamette, she stayed there in Salem and went to work. And she's always been in the social services side of things. And she came here, and she headed up Girl Scouts, she headed up Red Cross, and then got involved with United Way. So we ended our careers here, so to speak, but a great place that we have enjoyed. And of course it's far different today than when I came 60 years ago to visit, because the agriculture and all those other things that have occurred as part of the site.
Arata: All right. That was a wonderful overview. I'd like to back up for just a minute to when your father first came here to start this radio station. I know you said he lived in Kennewick, but--
Denham: No, he didn't. It was my father's best buddy. Yeah. They both were in Portland radio stations. Dad, and his name was Clarence McCready, but we called him Mac. And he chose to come, and brought us along to come and see. But Dad refused to come and be a part of the team. Dean Mitchell's the name I can think of right now. He was—and Dean Mitchell, I think, is still in the community, I think he's still alive. And I believe he goes to Kennewick United Methodist Church over there. I hope to see him because I'm going to be speaking at that church here in a couple weeks, actually about three weeks, in January. But I know I linked up with him because I had a lot of pictures from all this development of the radio station that my family—not my own personal family, but our very close family friends. And we only celebrated Easter and Fourth of July with his family. So you can see, we would come up here and be up here, and in a good time of the year, spring. Summer was hot, but these were occasions. Yeah, so my family never did move up here. But they came to visit when I finally settled here in '67.
Arata: Visited. Okay. So do you recall any impressions of the community at that time from your visits, what it was like to be here?
Denham: Well, the things I remember--and even as a graduate student, the rest of the guys--there were four of us came together--no, three of us. Three of us who had all gone to Willamette together--went to UW for our first year, and then all came here, and then went back to UW to complete that program--they all lived in Kennewick, but I lived here in Richland. I couldn't pass up the nickel each way bus. And I lived in on Gribble Street, which is now where Kadlec has taken over those what were two-story apartments and one-story fourplexes. And that's where I lived that summer in '61. And the bus came right down our street, hopped on for a nickel, and whether I went out to our areas or the 300 Area, because we spent one day a week during that time in the 300 Area in classes in the library, because that was an opportunity for us to learn more about the site, and about the profession and the field. So we had people tell us about instrumentation, told us about environment, told us about the various things that were related to radiation instrument development, and different kinds of survey instruments, and so on. And that was a nice part, because coming back a few years later--well, I left here in '62, finished my degree, and didn't come back 'til '67, so I was gone for five years. The bus system was still here, but the rates were different, and I wasn't using the bus then. And I went to work for Battelle, and my office was in the Federal Building. So I was able to walk to work. And I'm a busser, a walker, and I've been that all my life. I did that in Portland. So it was a logical step for me. The fact that I could get around--I was not much of a commercial--I didn't buy a lot of stuff. And so to this day we're not much consumers. And so it was great. There were a few places. I bowled, you know, I played tennis, golfed some, took advantage of the things that were available right here. I had a cousin--couple of cousins still in Baker City, Oregon, so we'd go down for weekends to go down and see them. And he was a dentist, so he took care of my dental needs early on. But once I settled here with my wife and family, it was no longer making those kind of trips for that purpose. We still had the friendship and relationship. I enjoyed just the—well, I guess I wouldn't say I enjoyed the heat, but yet I liked lots of sunshine, and the people. Enjoyed working with the people. And that was a tough part of retiring. And of course, I took care of part of that by volunteering over at the Reemployment Opportunities Center, which was over in Kennewick. And at that point we had moved out to the Village at Canyon Lakes. It was brand new, building that community and retirement. And so I thought, well, we'll get in on the ground floor. We'll be there and get acquainted, and so on. But then the opportunity with Bechtel, but clear out at the north end of the site. And after two years of that long commute, we moved back to Richland. But the opportunities here for my interests, and the opportunities on the job, because I didn't just stay right here, because I was working for Battelle, and we did a lot of—I suppose you would call it contract research because that was Battelle's primary activity. But yet it really took me to visit other sites and to see how we could improve what we were doing right here. And I think that that opportunity—I didn't have to go somewhere else. Yes, I did interview for jobs along the line, along the way during the time. I interviewed at Los Alamos. I interviewed at Rocky Flats and so on. But this was home, so to speak. And so it was a good place to stay. It wasn't—30,000 or so population. And the population of Richland, today I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think it's doubled in all this time. But the boundary where Yakima came in to the Columbia there was kind of the southern end of Richland. There was Richland Y and so on. But I lived essentially all my time within that confines. And of course now there's many homes and developments south, and yet still part of the incorporated portion of Richland. So yes, this was a delightful place, and it still is for me.
Arata: We've heard lots of fun stories about card games and checkers games and different kinds of things going on, on these buses. Do you have any fun stories?
Denham: Well, yes. I tell you, what I used the bus for was sleeping. Being a newlywed and having all these classes and riding the bus every day, I would often take a nap on the way home. And often I'd end up at the end of the bus. Rather than getting off at my stop, I would discover, oh, I missed the stop, so I got a little walk in. [LAUGHTER] But yeah, there were card games on the buses. I was not a bridge player, and that was one of the—I played at pinnacle and hearts. And we played on the job. My goodness, we kept our scores on the blackboard in the office. Yeah, we played hearts. And there were other games, I'm sure, but that's what I remember the most. And I remember, also, we were conscious of our walking hour, keeping track of our weight and all. So we would walk over—after lunch we'd walk over and check our weight at the medical, go weigh on the scales. And I was never a smoker, but one of the guys in the group, even the leader, was a heavy smoker. But one of the guys who was roughly my age--and matter of fact, he went back to grad school, and that opened the door for me to step in and take his job in the environmental in the late '60s. So that was ideal. And that was another thing. We were paying attention to those things that now the society is beginning to look at. So we looked for those kinds of things. I think the working environment was great. In my later years here, before I left Battelle, it was altogether different, because now the opportunities within Battelle were more in the research arena. And that wasn't my forte, it was not my capabilities, not my interest, in going out and trying to obtain contracts and so on. So I found it--and that's—when the opportunity to retire early, I just took advantage of it. My wife had a good job, and so she became my sugar mama to take care of me, take care of us. And we had no children living here. Our children were all grown by then. And so our needs were different. But I missed the people. But yet I was interacting every day, because I was there usually half a day. But some days I'd be there all day. And I kept the hot water hot so I could make cocoa, or soups, or whatever people who were coming to find jobs and to look. We did mock interviews and all that sort of thing. So it was a continuation of that people interaction that I really enjoyed. And of course, when one does retire, a number of my friends have said the same thing. And yet today I don't know how I have time to work, because I'm plenty involved in the community. And so that's part of--my wife and I joined the Gideons, and so that's been one of our major activities in our retirement, that we've served as presidents of the local camps on a geographic basis, and also area directors. And we have a state convention coming up this next spring, so we're heavily involved in that. So we have enjoyed that aspect of life here. And we have a daughter in Olympia, and we have a son—well, a daughter and family in Olympia and same in Portland. Otherwise the kids are south of Eugene and Cottage Grove, and then a son and family in Albuquerque. Neither of the sons—both have PhDs—and neither are involved in the nuclear business. Both of them engineers. One basically what I would call a—well, one's a civil engineer with water interests. And the other is involved in materials engineering, works for Ball Aerospace, so has a lot of involvement in things that I might have had an involvement in, but not from the nuclear standpoint.
Denham: Yeah, the things I remember—like I say, we had activities with other families right here. We were involved in the church. We got involved in the church. I'm in a different church today, but that's where we raised our kids. So it was a good community environment. In terms of what else did I do, well, I think I mentioned I had the children, and we did things with them. We camped. And I wasn't a fisherman or a hunter, so those things weren't part of my interests here in the community. But I remember we would do the sledding and so on when the conditions were right, the snow and Carmichael Hill, because we lived not far from there, we'd walk over there, and swimming pool. Back in the very early days--and let me go back to that for just a moment. Because when we came, McNary Dam wasn't here. So we had to take a ferry to cross from or Oregon to Washington, or we had to take the Bridge of the Gods back, 40 miles out of Portland, and then take that route. And we'd usually come over Satus Pass and come into Kennewick that way. Today you can take Highway 12 and 14 in all the way to Vancouver on the Oregon side--I mean, on the Washington side, excuse me. So that was interesting because this was a free-flowing river. There weren't any dams in that area. And so riding that ferry in a fairly narrow portion of the river was—and these are one- or two-car type ferries. I mean, this wasn't a big ferry like you see out of Puget Sound. And it was difficult to reach the shore. Sometimes you'd get close and you'd have to back up and try again. And then I watched all the highways come in over the Horse Heavens. Because it used to be you could stay on the Oregon side and come around through Walla Walla that way. So it was a whole different—and it took longer. The roads weren't as nice. And so I watched the—several times they've rebuilt the highway over the Horse Heavens. Because we have family in Portland, we go down there every month or two with grandkids. They're about to finish—well, the last one is in his senior year in high school, and the other's in college. And all the rest of our grandkids, except the ones in Albuquerque, are all over 21. So our involvement with them is a lot different than when they were younger. So yeah, it was a different place just because of the getting around. And we didn't have a public transit. We didn't have—in those early days right here. But we had the Hanford buses. And you can see the one down there by the Crehst Museum. And that's what I rode much of the time, up until when I chose my work with Battelle. By then, going out on the site, it was about $50 a month to ride the bus then. It was more expensive. And then I did go through some periods of spending time out on the site, where I'd spend a couple weeks for some activity, work-related, and I would end up being able to take a government car. And I worked in the Federal Building, so it was convenient. We had a motor pool there. So that’s some of the background. I don't know if there's other things that you were hoping to talk about, or remind me of. [LAUGHTER]
Arata: I think I just have couple more questions. One thing I wonder if you could talk about, obviously much of your career at Hanford spans the Cold War period.
Denham: Mm-hm.
Arata: So of course security was a very important concern. Can you talk a little bit about how that impacted your career?
Denham: Well, it certainly did. And I was fortunate in the sense that I had the Atomic Energy Commission fellowship. In order to get that and apply it at the University of Washington, I had to get security clearance. So I was cleared, and that happened when I went to Livermore. Right after I finished grad school, I arrived at Livermore. And because I had a clearance, I was assigned those facilities to be radiation safety person. I know that you know the name Ron Kathren, or have come across Ron Kathren. And Ron Kathren became my officemate there. He didn't have the clearance. So I got to be in places and work things that he wasn't able to—well, he was eventually, I mean, he got the clearance also. And of course, late in my career—like when I went to Philadelphia, I didn't need a clearance back there. And when I came back, yes, I had to get my clearance re-instituted in Livermore, because Livermore is still very much involved with weaponry, or at least the development of materials. And so yes, clearance. But fortunately, I didn't have an issue, and because I had had it really at the beginning when I went to grad school, that didn't impact me. And some of my site visits at Oak Ridge, I had to have special clearance to get into some of the places. One of the things I didn't mention, and I should, I got involved in the decommissioning. And of course, that was the activity with Bechtel Hanford. But the other thing I got involved in was what we call development of an emergency assessment resource manual. We called it HEARM, and they called—because I was working with some gals, too, that was my harem. But it was Hanford Emergency Assessment Resource Manual. Well, our sponsor at DOE headquarters began to see the utility of that at some of the other DOE sites. So we went to Livermore, we went to Los Alamos, we went to Oak Ridge, we went to Savannah River. We developed those same manuals for these other sites. And basically what it was was an identification of the--a safety assessment. And DOE was forcing all to look at the safety of their business. And if something went wrong, how bad could it be? So that's what this manual was, was to identify the facilities and the materials. It was structured originally about radiation, but it became clear that there were also hazardous chemicals and other materials that needed to be of concern. And if they had an explosion, if they had a venting, they had a situation, where would that stuff go? So we developed this. We looked at site boundaries. How far to the site boundary, in what directions, look at wind speeds, all of that. So we combined all of that into a manual so that we could use that here at Hanford, called the Unified Dose Assessment Center, UDAC. And that provided a tool so when an emergency occurred, we knew we had an indication of how bad it could be. We could flip to the page that was Building XYZ, and we could say, ah, this really is not likely to be any kind of an issue. Or just the opposite, that it was an ABC, it was the top priority, the most hazardous materials on the site handled in that building. And what were the projected, from the safety assessments, for the actual use of those facilities? And so that was an exciting kind of thing, because we got into sites where they had more security need than what I had to do for those. And so yes, we got into those. Matter of fact, some of the materials that we developed were basically classified information on how much material is in this building, where is this building relative to the site, and so on. So those kind of things we had to tone down, we had to talk about and find ways. And they became, essentially, not top secret, but at least they were less. And so we provided not only these manuals for right here, but also DOE headquarters got the same copies. So whenever something was going wrong, they're evaluating what's happening out here, or from Livermore, or from Sandy, or Savannah River, or one of the other sites. So yes, that was the emergency management aspect. And Battelle, that was one of the things that I moved from that development into working with the—Battelle had a contract for the 60 nuclear power plants to do emergency exercises. And I even got involved with my wife with the Red Cross, because Red Cross would get involved in emergency exercises, especially for the supply system here. And I remember Mesa School was the first one. And so I got a couple of my health physics buddies, and we would go and be the consultants. Because the farmers would come in and say, well, what should I do? My cows are out there on this potentially contaminated ground. What do I need to do? This was just--these were what-if type exercises. So that was an aspect I guess I just had passed over and forgotten all about. So even had an involvement with my wife indirectly because of that. So with these nuclear sites, I got involved as an evaluator to go out either for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or DOE, and evaluate these exercises. So I was involved not in developing those exercises, but evaluating and being there on site. And also, as a result, I got to go to the Kennedy Space Center and involved in a couple of spacecraft launches that had nuclear materials. And so that was exciting, paid to go. And also got involved in many cancellations. You know, weather didn't turn out right, we'd get thunderstorms or a rain, and you'd have to wait it out for a few more days. Those sort of things. Galileo, I think, was the one major one that we were sending heat sources, radioactive sources into space, so if they were to have aborted—not for reentry, but on the launch, that's why we were there, to take air samples, you know, we were teams spread out. So there's another aspect I'd forgotten about. [LAUGHTER]
Arata: Very cool. You had this multiplicity of great jobs, it sounds like, throughout the course of your career here. Is there anything that stands out as being the most challenging or the most rewarding?
Denham: Well, I think the challenge came later in the career when—as I mentioned, that Battelle was going off in a research wing, and that wasn't where my expertise and my capabilities were. And so a challenge to—if I'm not going to stick around, what am I going to do? Because nuclear power was obviously diminishing with time, especially when you get up in the 90s, and so on. So that became one of the challenges, if I were to retire, what would I do? I was young enough, late '50s, I didn't need to retire that early. And the other side, the side as I shared, I think sort of the three or four major things that I was involved in that I very much enjoyed, one—and I haven't shared this directly—I was involved with Joe Soledad. And I don't know whether you've interviewed Joe, but I know Joe's been interviewed. I just don't know who were involved. But Joe was developing all the criteria to evaluate all these radionuclides that had been released here in Hanford, had been released at other sites, or could be—weren't necessarily all released, but I mean, if they got into the environment and got into people, what kind of doses could those--Well, I was involved with Joe as my mentor. I developed the numbers that went in—in other words, I looked at the decay schemes of each of those radionuclides and then built the numbers that would go into the equations. I didn't develop the equations for how much got into the human body, but I developed if you had radioiodine, or you had strontium, or you had cesium, or you had plutonium, what could that mean inside the body? And so that was a great opportunity that I had developing those, because those became—and still used today—all that environmental pathway stuff that Joe had developed is still in use today, used by the EPA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Yeah, they've added more materials and modified things a bit. But the modifications are more related to, now, more knowledge about some of those decay schemes and so on, but that impact. So that was one of the exciting things. The criticality safety manual. I get the manual done, and I got to move on to something else, because once you've developed the manual, unless you're using it--yes, I was. I was out evaluating criticality safety. I was auditing, basically. Oh, that was, yeah, I could do it, but it was more fun to go out and get involved in the environmental monitoring, choosing which sample, where to sample, what to analyze those samples for, and then write the report to show what this means impact-wise for the site. Going from there, then, into developing what should an environmental monitoring program look like, either for a nuclear power plant or a place like Hanford. That was that exciting and thrilling, and I felt I made a contribution. And then to jump over into, now you understand that stuff, and now relate that to emergency preparedness and evaluating emergency preparedness. Did you take into account? I will have to say, because I was involved in a course, and I've forgotten what the course was called, but it was at the Nevada test site. And we were there--and I think it was only Hanford person there at the time. That's when I was involved in emergency preparedness. And this was a course to really walk us through scenarios and situations, and see the mistakes we could make. We could walk over a wire on the ground that we shouldn't have because it was live, or could've been live, and not recognizing that. You're taking an action for what you see in front of you, but then missing out on something that you shouldn't have done as part of that. And that became part of our evaluation, when we looked at mistakes they would make, not take an air sample, or take it where it shouldn't have been. You should have taken it over here instead of over there, you know, those kind of things. So was able to use all that background and material that I had had as part of my career. I feel like, yes, had I started over today, I think I would've probably gone the environmental, but more from an atmospheric and understanding weather. That was an interest as a kid. I've watched—this is before television—and I would pay attention to the thermometer and what was going on. Is it going to snow tomorrow, or that kind of thing. But otherwise, no, it was great. And the courses and the opportunities afforded by this diverse kind of a field, that when I came, and when I was a health physicist, I didn't know what a health physicist was, but I think I have a pretty good idea today.
Arata: So obviously, a lot of my students now were born after the Cold War.
Denham: Right.
Arata: They don't really understand that time period. Is there anything you'd like for future generations who may be watching this video to know about what it was like to work during that time period and contribute to that effort?
Denham: Well, obviously, one of the things, being here in Hanford, was because we had all these reactors operating, which meant that there was always contamination going into the river, contamination going into the ground. Reprocessing was occurring, but was stopped at a time period. So then we had to—and of course, today we still hear about whether it's from the west side or else around the country. Even our own family ask questions. What about the leaking tanks? What does that mean? And from my perspective, I have an idea what that means. And I think I look at it in a lot different mindset, because I know that yes, it's of concern, and it should be. But on the other hand, it's not going to kill me. It's not going to give me a dose that I won't want to stay here, I won't want to live here. And because, like I said, in the older days, when all the reactors were operating and so on, we had a lot more radioactivity to deal with. But Joe's equation--Joe Soledad--those pathway formulas and equations and so on that we used, we proved with that that hey, yes, there is material out there. It's of low consequence to you and me as residents of the community. And I think that that was probably a kind of thing that we—the scientists, let's say, the science side--were not very successful in communicating that to the public. And I don't think we are today. Because I can remember one of my daughter's friends, when they had the different kinds of sweeteners, and they would say no, we're going to cut those off. And so when her dad worked in the grocery business, he could bring that stuff home, and no, I don't think we want to use that. Again, uninformed about those kind of things. And I think that's the aspect—that we get a bug, a thought of what an impact could be, and yet we don't know the whole story. And I know I tried, but on the other hand, that wasn't my role particularly. But I was aware. And I think that, looking today, we look at so many more things today in terms of hurtful environmental impact kinds of things. I'm thinking just the environmental movement, if you will, because our daughter-in-law is very much involved there, and her daughter is now in college and looking in that same arena. The other daughter-in-law down in New Mexico, that was one of her areas of interest. And she studied bugs and insects and that sort of thing. Today she's not using that, because she's really into health and doing private yoga and exercise training. But the Cold War meant that--well, that's where it was nice when I got to go the other sites, because that allowed me to kind of see, and to put all this together as an understanding of the whole package, and not just what's happening in Hanford or what's happening at Oak Ridge or whatever, to be able to realize that probably some choices—I mean, the making the choice here of Hanford, I think, was a wonderful choice. Choosing this remote location--it's not so remote today, but I think it was an excellent—from all the material, all the information we knew at the time. And yet places like Savannah River, where you've got all kinds of groundwater and all kinds of those kind of issues, maybe that wasn't such a good place, where the ability of stuff to move would be greater than a place like this. And I think what we saw, and what I remember just from the public, my own families—our own families would ask questions, which was very reasonable. And I think the understanding—and we've been watching—I'm digressing for a second, but we've been watching the Presidential wives series on television, so we're going back over the history and seeing some of the things that were going on as this whole business developed in our lifetime, things that we didn't realize, because some was top secret, not shared. And of course, I was perfectly happy to work in a closed environment, where you didn't share everything you did. For someone today, I think that the question aspect of business, and for the future, is always question what you're doing, how can it impact the environment, how can it impact people, how can it impact you yourself? Cellphones, all kinds of things that we use and are in use daily, but do we really know what the long-term impacts of these devices are? I think for the moment we feel quite certain that we're not creating monster issues that become-- But I like the environmental movement, because I kind of put my life together around that, an interest in seeing that we're doing the right things to keep us safe, and yet not say, you can't do that. And of course, the environmental impact statement business. I was involved partly in that too, in helping develop those. I guess my last one that I was involved in was in Tennessee, for the Tennessee Valley Authority, because they were going wide with lots of nuclear. And that was in the '90s, as I recall, when I went down there and was involved.
Arata: Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you'd like to tell us about? Any other stories that stand out?
Denham: Well, of course, we did have accidents. We had things that—yeah, I got involved in a cleanup in the 300 Area, where an underground pipe had broken. And this was americium, was a principal nuclide that had gotten into the ground. And we ended up digging that all up. But just chasing it, deciding where to sample, and digging up and then discovering, oh, the pipe is all corroded. So yes, everything that went down that drain. And so those kinds of things, I really enjoyed those, because you were evaluating a condition that was really an unknown. And I think that's part of what the environmental restoration contract--the Bechtel work that I was involved in, we were doing some of that, too, because we were making measurements and then determining, did those measurements give us what we need to know so that we can take the appropriate steps for remediation? And so I think that aspect, so to speak, of research piece might have been--if I were to start again, I might be more interested in research. But at the time, I was more interested in what we need to know so that we can take the right steps to move forward. I think that those are my observations. I was an enthusiastic worker. I just loved the opportunity and the people to work with. And we did a lot of group things. You know, I can remember back in the old days, Ron Kathren and I would have an equation on the blackboard we were trying to solve, and then leave it up there for a while with getting more information to make things fit. You took the information you had. And I was successful, probably published about, I don't know, 50 different papers in Health Physics Journal. And I also was involved in the Society for Radiological Protection in the British Isles. I gave two different presentations over there in the '80s and '90s, which is always nice to go and experience others. I had even looked at that as a possible exchange.
Denham: And as a result of those visits, I got invited to go to the Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and work on an environmental plan with folks from all over the world. And we had interpreters, because we had Russians, and we had Canadians, and we had French and Germans. And so on—all that was nice. And they paid my way, and I got to spend--matter of fact, I made two trips in the same year on that activity. I had a third one, but the Department of Energy wouldn't allow me to go on the third one. So that adds to your enjoyment, your understanding and working with people who have come from different places, and yet have similar issues and problems, and how are you addressing—especially when we're trying to write a manual, an international manual that would be used wherever, in developing countries as well as advanced countries and so on, to protect people in the environment.
Arata: Is there anything else at all?
Denham: Not that's coming to me at this point. [LAUGHTER] I'm just delighted to have had this opportunity to share with you, even though it's very uncoordinated. [LAUGHTER] I certainly rambled.
Arata: No, that was wonderful. You gave us some great details. That’s always exciting for us to hear about. And I want to thank you so much for sharing with us. We really appreciate you taking time out.
Denham: Well, Laura, it was a pleasure sharing with you and getting to know you. I wish you well in your—
Arata: Thank you.
Denham: --future work and finishing your PhD. I never got there.