1 50 7 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fcf048689636f43deed4c23ae7d4d4d14.jpg dc383eed74d4438fdac9c7ad9c068eca https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F3841380e69217cef6aa70840d8479a53.mp4 e48c0d6128bcde0bbba8a20ce7f31cef Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bauman Robert Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Tyler, Bill Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Northwest Public Television | Tyler_William Robert Bauman: Now you can give it right back to her? William Tyler: Yeah, I plan on it. Man One: Exactly. All right, get this off your face there. Bauman: Does your daughter live here in Richland? Tyler: She lives right across the street from me. Bauman: Oh, does she? Oh, there you go. Well, you can really give it to her then. [LAUGHTER] She can't avoid you. Tyler: Well in fact, we work together at HAMMER. Man one: I’m rolling. Bauman: All right. Well I think we're ready to get started. So let's start by having you say your name and also spell it for us. Tyler: My name is William T. Tyler. W-I-L-L-I-A-M, T, T-Y-L-E-R. Bauman: And you go by Bill? Tyler: Bill, yeah. Bauman: All right. And today's date is August 28th of 2013. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So let's start, if we can, by maybe having you talk about what brought you to the area. When did you come to work at Hanford, and what brought you here? Tyler: We came out here on vacation from Oklahoma in 1947 to see my dad's brothers and sisters. And we were going to stay for a week or so. And my dad applied for a job here and got it, and we stayed. I thought it was the end of the world. This was not a pretty place in 1947. But I went in the Navy in 1950, got into the nuclear program and came out here in 1955. Went to work at Hanford. Worked as an HPT until '82, I believe. And then I went into management in health physics. Bauman: So HPT, you mean health physics technician. Is that was HPT is? Tyler: Uh-huh. Sorry. Bauman: That's okay. So how old were in 1947 when you came on vacation? Tyler: I think I was 15. Bauman: Okay. What sort of job did your father get? Tyler: He worked in transportation. Bauman: And you already had aunts and uncles who came here? Tyler: Yeah. Bauman: So you said you thought this was the end of the world. What do you mean by that? What are your first impressions of the place? Tyler: [LAUGHTER] Well, my first impression is we got here July the 5th. And my aunt and uncle had a little cafe on downtown Kennewick, on Kennewick Avenue. And it was about 104 degrees out. And we were driving down the street looking for it. And my dad says, man, I wouldn't live here if it's the last place in the world. And back then there was not a lot of trees. There was in Kennewick, and a few in Richland. But every time the wind blew, it was dusty and the tumbleweeds flew, and a lot of dust storms. In fact, they call them termination winds. Because everything was booming out in Hanford and every time the wind blew, people didn't like that and they'd just pick up and quit. So they called it termination winds. Bauman: Do you know when your aunt and uncles came here? Tyler: My aunt was born here in Kennewick. My uncle came out here in '37, '38, somewhere along that area. Bauman: Oh, okay, so you'd had relatives here before the Hanford site. Tyler: Oh yeah. Bauman: And so when your family first came in 1947 and you dad got the job and stayed here, where did you live? Tyler: We lived in Kennewick for a year. And then we got a house in Richland in 1948 at 635 Basswood. Bauman: That was a government home then? Tyler: Uh-huh. It was ranch house. And we moved in Thanksgiving Day of '48. And my future wife moved in next door the same day. I didn't know that was my future wife, but it turned out to be. And I still live on Basswood. Different house, but-- Bauman: So did you go to high school here then? Tyler: I went to Kennewick. I started in Kennewick because that's where we lived and I didn't want to transfer. So I rode the intercity bus every day to Kennewick and back. I graduated in 1950 and then somebody in Washington wanted me to join their services. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: So how would you describe, outside of your first impression, how would you describe the community of Richland in late '40s, early 1950s? Tyler: It actually—it was a very good place to live. I didn't realize it at the time. It was smaller, much smaller--probably 5,000 people in each of the cities. It was a good place to live if you could ignore the wind blowing and the dust storms and that sort of thing. But it kind of grows on you. I know I wouldn't live anywhere else. Bauman: In those early years when you were here in the '40s and '50s, do you remember any particular community events that stand out in your mind? Tyler: Yeah, Atomic Frontier Days, the Grape Festival in Kennewick, and then the fair. Nothing big or spectacular, but it was something to do. Bauman: Can you describe Atomic Frontier Days a little bit? What sorts of things-- Tyler: Well, normally they had a queen and a parade of course. And it was just kind of a—I don't know how--just a parade and kind of a get together type thing for the people that lived here. Bauman: So let's talk about your work a little bit now. You said you started working in '55. Tyler: ’55. Bauman: So can you talk about who you worked for at time and a little bit more detail about what sorts of work you did? What area of the Hanford site you worked in? Tyler: Okay, I started February the 22nd, 1955. And my first work assignment was 200 West Area tank farms. And then I went up to the REDOX facility which was a separations facility. A couple months later, then I went to U Plant. And then I went to T Plant, which were all separation facilities. And then I went over to PUREX in December of 1955. That was prior to startup. We started up our first spiked run was I think March or April of '56. And I worked there until '62 I believe. When I worked there, we also was switched with the 100 Area HPTs, or RCTs, or radiation monitors for exposure reasons. Because they got a lot more exposure than we did, so we would switch with them. And I got to work in all the 100 Area reactors except N when they were running, and some of the 300 Area. Bauman: So just about everywhere? Tyler: Yeah, I worked basically in every facility out here except 234-5. Bauman: And so was GE the contractor? What contractor did you work for? Tyler: GE. They were the prime contractor. And they left here in '66 I believe. Then Rockwell and Westinghouse and Fluor Daniel and MSA. Bauman: So as a health physics technician, what exactly did that mean? What sorts of things did you do on a daily basis? Tyler: Well as you know, there was a lot of contamination, radiation. And our job was to set the dose rates if people were going into a radiation area. We would go in, set the dose rates, stay with them. Got to make sure that the dose rates didn't increase while they were in there. We surveyed them out when they were done with the GMs and alpha detectors to make sure they didn't take any contamination home with them. And that was our prime responsibility. We maintain control of personnel exposure rates and their contamination, if they had any, and made sure that everything was as clean as we could get it. That's the short and sweet version. Bauman: Yeah. And you did that, obviously, at all these different areas you worked at on the site? Tyler: Everywhere, inside, outside, burial grounds. Bauman: Were there ever any incidents while you were doing this where people did have excessive exposure or anything along those lines? Tyler: Yeah, there was a lot of them. When GE came here--well, they were the prime contractor. Back in those days, you really couldn't talk about your job. You could say that you worked at Hanford and that was pretty much it. But yes, there was a lot of good memories and bad memories. Some really high exposure rates almost on a daily basis, because everything was running. And what will go wrong probably does. And it was very interesting work. It was something different every day. It's the kind of job that you look forward to doing and working. I did. I really enjoyed it. Bauman: So what was the process or procedure if someone had an overexposure? Tyler: Well, you had your dosimetry, which—Battelle read that. So you know what they got. And that's the record that's with you forever. At that time I think we worked--[PHONE RINGING] Shit. We worked under a 50 millirem per day limits, or 300 a week. And sometimes you would exceed that. But we were issued dosimetry everyday when we came to work. And you had a film badge which was read I think once a month. But they kept a running record of your exposure. That's why when we, when 100 Area radiation monitor--[PHONE RINGING] Hello. Can I call you back, Ian? Okay, thanks. Sorry. I don't know how to turn it off. Bauman: So we're talking about the dosimeter-- Tyler: Yeah, they kept records of all your exposures. And then every month they would send you a copy or let you know what it was. But if before the end of the year was out, if you were running short of exposure, then they would transfer people--particularly the radiation monitors--to different areas. And they what they were doing was using our exposure instead of--and letting their people cool down a little bit. It was just a way of equalizing the dose rates to the personnel. And it worked good in theory. And there was some--and I probably shouldn't say this—but there was some little minor ripples in the water, because people accused the other people of hanging back and now I got to come save you, that sort of thing. But it was all in fun. Everybody knew how serious the job was. And that was just part of their job. Bauman: And so how long did you work as a health physics technician then? Tyler: I think until 1982 and I went into management in health physics. At that time, they called us managers. And I was the manager of East tank farms until 1988. And then I transferred over to the West Area environmental group and took that over. My responsibilities were all of the outside radiation contamination areas. Burial sites. '89 I retired. Came back three months later and went to work in the environmental restoration part-time. And I did that until 1995. And then when Bechtel came in, I left there and went back to health physics side and become a evaluator at HAMMER for radiation protection, which I still do. Bauman: So you still work for-- Tyler: Two to three days a week. Bauman: So you mentioned earlier the sort of secrecy of some aspects of Hanford. Obviously secrecy, security were a very important part of. I wonder if you could discuss that at all, any ways that impacted your work? Tyler: GE had a very rigid plan of how they wanted things to go. And security of course was top secret. If you went—and a few people did--they go down and have a beer at the bar and they get to talking. And you never know who you're talking to you. And there was cases where people didn't have a job the next morning. Because security would overhear them. And you were pretty much done. So people didn't talk about their job. They didn't even talk about it with their family. Security was very strict. When you—well, for instance, when you go to work in the morning or if you're on shifts, same thing. You would catch the bus at the bus lot. Get on the bus, go through the barricade at the Y. If I was going to PUREX, we'd go up, pull in to the front gate of PUREX. You'd get out, off the bus. Go through the badge house. Pick up your dosimetry. Go out. Get back on the bus. The bus would pull inside the gate. Get back on the bus. Go down to PUREX. Get off the bus. Go through their badge house. And they would check your lunch bucket and all that. And then go into the building. And then in the evening, just reverse that process and back out again. So they were very strict. If you drove your car, you could not drive it past the main gate of East Area. You parked outside. And when you could drive inside, security would check the glovebox and the trunk and whatever was in the car. So it was very regimented. Bauman: I wanted to ask you about, in 1963 President Kennedy visited for the opening of the N reactor. I wondered if you were there and have any memories of that event at all? Tyler: I was not there because I was on shift at that day, or I probably would have been. Bauman: Mm-hm. Obviously, one of things that happened with Hanford is the shift from focus on production to focus on clean up. And I wonder if that shift impacted your work in any way? Tyler: Yes. Like I said before, I was the manager of East tank farms. And my office was at Semi Works, which is in 200 East Area, which was a pilot plant for PUREX. Semi Works was running. We were doing strontium cesium runs. But then when the edict came out that we were going to phase out and clean up, one of the first facilities--well I think it was the first facility—that we started tearing down was Semi Works. And D&D did the work. But we shut it all down and demolished the building and just imploded it in place. Built a dirt berm over it, cleaned it up. Most of the cells and the tanks are still in place, but they're full of grout. And then there's concrete over it. And what we did was tear down—this was approximately a three-story building with three stories underground. So when we tore down the building—it had a lot of piping and columns—we tore down the building and left the west wall standing. And we filled everything we could get inside like the basement and concreted it in place. And then we undercut the west wall. And this is probably four foot thick. And got a couple of Caterpillars and chains and hooked it over the top of the west wall. Pulled it down over like a lid. And then dirt berm over it, and there it is. And the stack that was there—the exhaust, the big stack—they imploded that and laid her right alongside the building. One guy did that. We deconned it first, and he came in, and a dynamite expert told us where we was going to put the stack and put a stick out on the end in the ground like they do now on the TV. And laid that stack right down on that stick, all by himself. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: So that definitely did make for significant changes then, the shift from production? Tyler: Very significant, because that was kind of pilot test for all the other anticipated deconning and decommissioning they we're going to do, which is still going on. Bauman: Let's shift now and talk a little bit about HAPO. I wonder--I know you've been involved with them quite often. I wonder if you can talk about your involvement when you became involved in HAPO and how that came about? Tyler: Well let's see. First, HAPO was a GE acronym which stands for Hanford Atomic Products Operations, which was the name of GE's part of this. GESA, which is another credit union down the street, was the General Electric Supervisors Association. GE was very particular about their managers or supervisors were a step above the blue collar worker. And I think they still maintain that. If you were a supervisor, it's white shirt and tie. And you don't fraternize with--So when the credit committee wanted to get started, that's the name they chose, just HAPO. And it's '53. And I was looking at one of the early--the record book. And I think there's five or six of the charter members of the first—that I worked with that were radiation monitors just like I was. But I never joined HAPO until my wife was--she likes C First. And I never joined HAPO until I think '71. And then a friend of mine that I worked with talked me into getting on the committee that approved loans, credit committee, which I did. And then I got invited later to go on the board of directors and got voted in and been there ever since. I really enjoyed it. It's a great credit union. Bauman: So is it the board of directors then, primarily is it either current or former Hanford employees? Tyler: No. It used to be when we were federal, you had to work out here to join HAPO. And then they relinquished or changed the bylaws so that anybody could join HAPO. If you give them $5 and signed up, you were a member for life. But initially it was you had to work here to join. Bauman: And you said you didn't join until '71. What led you to decide to join at that point? Tyler: The guy I carpool with, one of them, convinced me that I should do that. [LAUGHTER] And I didn't like C First. I never did like C First. But my wife liked them because you got at the end of the month, you got all of your checks back. And she liked that. But I joined HAPO and started my own checking account. And then she finally joined shortly after I did. And now the rest is history. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: So, I know you weren't part of the formation of the credit union. But I wonder if you can talk about it a little more? If you know more, were the employee unions at Hanford involved in the credit union, establishing that? Tyler: Yes. Bauman: And anything you can talk about that? Tyler: Helen Van Patten was one. GESA started it first. And then the blue collars said well, we got to have one of those. The first store was down by the Spudnut Shop. I think we had one or two employees. And everything was in a ledger, handwritten. Joe Blow borrowed $25. It was very basic. But fortunately, it kept growing and membership increased. Bauman: So the unions saw it as a way to provide credit union opportunities-- Tyler: Right. Bauman:--for blue collar workers or laborers or whatever? Okay. So I want to—going back to your work at Hanford, what are some of the more challenging aspects of your work, and maybe some more rewarding aspects of your work? Tyler: That’s a good question. Probably one of the most challenging was the responsibility when you're out on a hot job where the contamination levels are great and the radiation levels are great, and you have a whole crew of people. It challenges you to--it's always in the back of your mind that something's going to happen and I'm not going to see it, or I'm not going to catch it. And somebody's going to get overexposed. And that's always in the back of your mind. Because--and I have to beat my own drum here for a bit—radiation monitoring and health physics now, whatever they are, it's a very challenging job. You're responsible for--you're taking care of people. And they trust you. And they expect you to look out for them. And it's a lot of responsibility, but most everybody accepts that gladly, because they know how important it is. Because you're responsible for--you could get somebody really overexposed, and who knows what the consequences are? As far as rewards for that, I think is the satisfaction of when the job is done, that you knew you did your best job. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got overexposed. Nobody got contaminated. And the job got done. Bauman: Were there any events or incidents or anything, sort of unique things that happened during your time working at Hanford that sort of really stands out to you? Tyler: When I first hired in, like I said, I went to REDOX. One of the problems they had shortly before I got here was they had a ruthenium—they ran some ruthenium and they played it out in the stack. And then it broke loose. And it kind of went out in the desert and on the ground. And you had ruthenium chunks of—it looked like white paper that built up on the inside the stack and then finally broke loose and fluttered out and went everywhere. And one of my first jobs with a GM and a walking stick was walking out through the desert and finding these things. Little specks, big specks, didn't have any trouble finding them. [LAUGHTER] They were very hot. And I remember we used the KOA cans from T Plant, which were little round cans, metal cans about that big around, about this high with a snap-on lid. And that's what we put them in, with dirt for shielding. And then buried them. But there's been a lot of incidents of hot burials from PUREX. I remember some where we used a burial string. We used a locomotive, a whole bunch of flat cars. And then at that time, they'd build big wooden boxes. And I recall one big one that had enough lumber in it to build two B houses. Huge—it sat on two flat cars. And we put it in, and we took readings over the top of the tunnel as it went out of the tunnel towards the burial ground. And it read greater than 500 R. And as you know, 500 R for an hour is a lethal dose rate to 50% of the people, 60%. And then you go down the railroad track behind B Plant, pull it across the highway which patrol barricaded the road. So you pull the string across the road and then back it into the burial ground. And then you had to sink—this box was built on skids. And a big long steel cable lay on another flat car, three or four flat cars away from it. So you would pull that. And you would pull it down into a burial trench. And the Cat would be down there ready. And the train would back up and they would grab that cable, put the eye on. Hook it to the Cat. And then the Cat skinner would pull the cable off. And the train would move up until the boxes sit here and the cables here. And the Cat's down here pulling. And then we'd get up to the--and there was a dock where you could slide it off. And you would turn that box and pull it in. Pull it down into the trench, down to the other end, wherever you wanted it. Unhook the Cat. Leave it. Pull the Cat out. And then they would backfill that box. And that's the way they did the burials. And it worked great except when the box collapsed unexpectedly. Bauman: Then not so great. Tyler: Yeah, that's not a good--that happened once or twice. Bauman: During your years working out there, were you ever concerned about your own safety, health, protection, in any way? Tyler: Well as stupid as it may sound, no. I never was. Because I always figured I knew what I was doing. And I received some very good training in the Navy, which helped. But I never worried about it. I always trusted me. Bauman: Were you a member of a union when you were working at Hanford? And what union was that? And I guess, what sort of relationship did the union have with management here at Hanford during the time you were here? Tyler: Good and bad. [LAUGHTER] I used to be chief steward for the radiation monitors. I went through two negotiations. And after the last one, I decided I didn't want any more of that. Chief steward's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it. Bauman: What does that mean exactly? What—chief steward-- Tyler: Well, you're the union rep plant wide for all of the HPTs. And I had this grandiose idea that I could just change everything. It's a great idea, but it doesn't work. It's a job that somebody has to do. And it's a job that is thankless. Because somebody's always mad at you. Whatever you do, in some of the people's eyes, you could always do better. And it's just not a good job. [LAUGHTER] But I enjoyed it. You learn a lot. And you learn both sides of the fence--how the company thinks and how the union thinks. And then you try and compromise. Bauman: Were there ever any times you were here where there was a strike or any sort of-- Tyler: Two--'66 and '76. Bauman: And were those sort of across the site? Tyler: Yep. And in '66, after we settled the '66 strike, GE left. Bauman: Was that one of the reasons they left? Tyler: Yeah, well, they had planned to leave. And then that's when--because when GE was here, they were the only contractor. And then when they left, they kind of broke it up into the 200 Areas and the 100 Areas. And it's always been different contractors, not just one prime contractor. Bauman: Do you remember what some of the key issues were in '66 and '76 in terms of-- Tyler: Wages. Wages were always the key issue. Well, I take that back. '66 or '76 was, they were going to do away with the buses. And that was a key issue for everybody. It didn't happen, but it was a--that was when they spent all the money redoing the bus lot. And then a couple years later, they did away with the buses anyway. But we did get air conditioned buses. Before we had old buses, the old green buses. Well like the ones sitting down at-- Bauman: The CREHST Museum? Tyler: Yeah. Those were some of the newer ones. The older ones were international buses that looked like a truck. Cold in the winter and hot in the summer. But they worked. When they did away with the buses, see, that did away with a lot of jobs in the bus lot. Maintenance, everything there, which was a lot of people. Bauman: So part of that was about jobs and issues of transportation? Tyler: Mm-hmm. Bauman: Anything I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about or that you think we should talk about? Tyler: Well, we've covered pretty much every--well, we've covered pretty much everything I think. I don't really know what you're looking for. Bauman: Just your experience. That's why I wonder if there's something that you experienced some event or something that I haven't asked you about yet that you think would be important to— Tyler: Well. When I retired, I took the first early out and then got bored to death and came back. When I was in the environmental group in West Area, a good friend of mine was an environmental manager outside the site. But he talked me into coming back part time and become a waste shipper and a waste handler. Which was--I'd never done it. I knew what it was. But I finally relented. I enjoyed it. It's entirely different. Because I was kind of burned out on radiation protection, and I wanted to do something different. Didn't want to retire, but I wanted to do something different. So I went to the classes and become a certified waste shipper and a waste handler. And we took care of all of the sites outside of 200 East, 200 West. All the burial sites, all the drilling sides, the river, pretty much everything. And it was very interesting. Until '95, when I decided I didn't like the contractor. [LAUGHTER] And I went back to health physics. Bauman: Most of the students I teach now were born after the Cold War ended. Obviously most of your career, the Cold War was going on during most of the time you were working at Hanford. So I'm wondering what you think would be important for young people today and people in future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War? Tyler: I'm trying to remember. We had the strike in '66. And there was almost another strike four or five years later. In fact midnight was the deadline when we were supposed to go on strike. And at 11:30, we got a notification that the President had put a stop to the strike because of the situation with the Cold War thing. And I think that's the first and the last time that ever happened. But as far as-- Bauman: So then about 1970 or so? Tyler: Early, yeah, '71 or '72 maybe. No, it was before that, because I was still on shift. It was probably '68, '69 maybe. But as far as the Cold War, it's still going on in different forms—my personal opinion. You look back at history--and I've lived through a lot of it--nothing has really changed. Like what's going on now, and the Bible says there'll be war and rumors of war. And that's correct. Because whatever our President does—whatever he does is going to be wrong in a lot of people's eyes. It's kind of like if you don't do it, you should have. And if you do do it, you shouldn't have. [LAUGHTER] It's a different type of cold war. Instead of—we used to worry about Russia. And I'm not too sure that—maybe we should still be worrying about Russia and a lot of other countries that--Things have changed. But they haven't—the basic things that caused the Cold War hasn't changed. There's all kind of weapons. I don't know. Bauman: All right. I think that's all the questions I have for you. Tyler: Okay. Bauman: I want to thank you for coming in today. Tyler: Thank you for having me. Bauman: Pleasure to talk to you. Tyler: Good. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:47:27 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 244 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 200 West Area U Plant T Plant 100 Area 300 Area 200 East Area Tank Farms Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1947-2013 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1955-1995 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Kennedy, John. F Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bill Tyler Description An account of the resource An interview with Bill Tyler conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Subject The topic of the resource Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site. Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Nuclear weapons plants--Waste disposal--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site. Nuclear waste disposal Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-8-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-18: Metadata v1 created – [RG] Bechtel Building 200 East Building 200 West General Electric GESA (General Electric Supervisors Association) HAMMER HAPO (Hanford Atomic Products Operations) Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Richland (Wash.) T Plant Tank Farms U Plant https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1e70e5f6902f36a8dce5b5ec4f9229c3.jpg 2299143b7462e91e44a8263168c065d0 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F668060df69888e4182ac2a6dd4aa0020.mp4 1c1a7cedc234e0082608686d3d8c0ae2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Bauman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Samuel Moore Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Northwest Public Television | Moore_Samuel </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Robert Bauman: My name is Robert Bauman, and I am conducting an oral history interview with Samuel Moore, correct? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Samuel Moore: Right, Samuel-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: This date is July 9, 2013. And the interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. And I'll be talking with Mr. Moore about his experiences working at Hanford site, living in Richland and so forth. So maybe let's start actually from the beginning, if you want, could you tell me how and why you came to Hanford, how you heard about it, how you got here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Okay, I'm going to tell you how I got here. My father was working at a cook in the mental section of Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. And he came home, and he says, there's a better job at Hanford, Washington. So he left and came out. Then he told them that I can't be here without my family. So they put us on, I think it was a troop train, and it stopped in Pasco and set us off. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Could you--where is Camp Chaffee, Arkansas? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: It's east of Ft. Smith and that, so. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And how old were you at the time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: About eight. And then we come in--put us off of this I'll call it a troop train, because there was a zillion soldiers on it. And it picks up and they took us to Kennewick to a place called Naval Housing. And that's where they put the people coming in for Hanford workers to stay until a house was available. And we stayed there, and then from there we moved to this nice little square building which had a flat top, set up on stilts. And it was called a prefab at 1300 Totten Street. And that means that we lived at the end house. The telephones were on the telephone poles at the end of the block. So when the phone would ring you were told to answer the phone and go get whoever it wanted who. So that's the way we started in Richland. And we lived there for I don't know how long. And then we moved to different houses around Richland until I graduated from Columbia High School, which was Columbia High School in Richland at that time. Now it's Richland High. And then after that I did a short job with a construction company. And then I went to work for General Electric, running one of their blueprint machines when they were getting ready to build the REDOX Building and the PUREX Building. So I'd go, I was the first one in to warm up the machines and run them for a while. And then after while I got uplined and I could deliver those suckers out into the area. So that was my starting with General Electric then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Okay, so let me go back a little bit. So what year did your family arrive then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: 19--it was either 1943 or '44. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Okay. And your father, was he a cook here also? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: No, no. He'd come out and he was a, as we call them today, rent-a-cop. He was a patrolman out there. And he worked as a patrolman ‘til he retired. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And you said that your first job was with General Electric, and what year would that have been? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: About 1953 or 4. Then I went from there, like I say I was in the blueprint sections and all that. And then I had a job—I got a chance to become an engineer's assistant. And then when they were going out and building different things, so that helped me get into the other sections of General Electric and so on. And when that one cut, I transferred into radiation monitoring. And that was when they had the Hanford labs, and the old animal farm was at 100 F Area. So I worked in that group until--I forget what year it was. I'm not good on years and dates. But when they decided they were going to re-tube all of those reactors out there in the hundred areas and so they could put bigger slugs in them and all that stuff, I worked on that until about 1957. And they said, guess what? We're not going to pay you anymore. So I left here. But I stayed with the government job. I went to the Nevada test site and blew all the plutonium up that they made out here. So then I came back to Hanford in 1960. So then I was still in radiation monitoring and worked all kinds of different places, tank farms and everywhere else out there that I could think about. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: So it sounds like you worked all over the Hanford site. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: All over the Hanford site, that's right, yes, everywhere. And I worked a lot of the times at the burial grounds in 200 West Area. When they would take the big wooden boxes to PUREX and REDOX and they'd fill them. And then they'd pull them up, and they'd put a big long cable on the whole string of cars, and that box was way down that string of cars. And then when they get up to the burial ground, the train and it would coordinate, and they'd pull it back. And as the cable would come around, and when the box got to the trench, the train would stop. And they'd just spin it around and down in a trench. And then we get the honor of riding the bulldozers to set those freights so they could cover them up. That was one of the deals. And the other times I worked in a lot of the tank farms and pulling pumps and putting new bearings in those pumps and all that kind of stuff. It was an experience, believe me. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Yeah, I'm sure it was. So a lot of this was with radiation monitoring? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: It was radiation monitoring. And I was in radiation monitoring until 1980-something. And I had a little problem out there, and they wanted me to release some stuff. And I said, uh-uh, not me, it ain't mine. So they said, well we've got this other section over here that you should be in, so I got into the safety part with respiratory protection. And I was trained to repair the breathing air things, like the firemen use. I was trained to do that, fix the PAPRs, and the escape packs, and all that stuff so. And check over places for where they—oxygen levels to where they could go in and work and all that, so that was my last eight years of Hanford, was in the respiratory section I'll call it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And so when did you retire then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: In 1994. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: So almost 40 years minus the years that you were with-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, yeah. Well as the way I said, when I came back to Hanford in 1960, they told me it was a temporary job, it would probably only last six, eight months. Well, I found out that at Hanford a temporary job is pretty permanent. It only lasted 33 and 1/2 years. It's a temporary job there, so I guess at all turned out pretty good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: I guess you could consider that temporary. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Temporary, yeah. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: So many interesting things that you've worked on. So let's go back to the early years. First, in the 1950s and you talked about radiation monitoring, something with radiation, you did blueprint and stuff, but then radiation monitoring? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: And then radiation monitoring, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Okay, and some of that was with animals? Is that right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Well, I went into the animal farm on some certain times, but I wasn't assigned there for anything. The big one I was assigned to was what they called the 558 project, which is when they re-tubed all of the old reactors. And that was, you'd go in and set dose rates for all the people when they're working. And so it was a deal. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And now Hanford, of course, is a highly secure site, right, lots of security, secrecy to a certain extent. Can you talk about that at all? I mean, in terms of getting to work or at work, how did that impact you? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Most of the places where I was, the secure part of it wasn't that strict. But other places like, some of those buildings, yeah, they were really a strict situation. And when I go back a ways, when my dad and we lived in this—I call it the slum house on Totten Street--nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew. I didn't know what the guy next door was doing, and they didn't know what my dad did. Until I think it was 1944 or '45 when they announced what they were really doing here. And it was kind of a shock, that deal, so. That was my deals of the secrecy out there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Now, did you have to have special security clearance? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yes, yes, I did. I had special clearances, yes. I had everything but the very top secret one. And that was real handy because when I left here, I went to the Nevada test site. I had to use the same secret pass. And then the same thing when I come back. It was very, very--what am I trying to say here? I mean, I'm an old guy. I'm just about at the end of the road here. Most of my work, like I say, was the tank farms, and those places, where secrecy was not involved in that. And it was like times when you'd have a spill, you dig it up and prepare it to the burial ground. A lot of that was the work that we did. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And you said your first job was at General Electric. Obviously, there are different contractors. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Now, who all did you work for over the years? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Well, we went to General Electric. Then it went to there was one called Isochem, Rockwell, oh there's a whole slug of them, I can't remember all of them. So it seemed like every time you'd turn around, they were turned over to somebody new. But it was Westinghouse when I decided I would better leave before I had a real problem. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: So can you talk about what was happening there toward the end that made you want to leave? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Well, I was, like I say, I was working on the PAPRs and all that kind of stuff. It got to be a real drag, you know. And everybody was doing that then. It got to the point where every time you turned around, everybody was wanting this, and wanting this, and wanting this. You're only one person. And I was a guy that did most all the fixing. So I decided--to my wife, I said--I call her the voice from the other side. She said, what's the matter? And I says, well, before I mess up on one of these pieces of equipment and kill somebody, I think I better retire. So we just decided, okay. And she worked for the Hanford Project, too. And of course she was much better off than I was. She worked for one of the big managers as a secretary. So we just decided that was it. And we had our nest eggs saved up and said, okay, it's retired and we're going to see the world. And we did that until my one eye decides to go bad. Then we had to stop. Other than that, I'd probably been in who knows where. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: While you were working at Hanford were there any significant events, or sort of, things that have happened that sort of stand out in your mind specifically? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, and I was trying to think. It was about 1962, graveyard shift, 233-S, it caught on fire and it burned. And it was a big mess. That's where I wound up with my shot of plutonium in my bones, as I'll say, from that fire. And, of course, back in those days you didn't know what was what, so they worked on it and cleaned it up. And but there's a couple of contamination things that sticks out in my mind. One of them is, we used to bury the material from 300 Area which is, I guess you would call a Westinghouse, Battelle or somebody. And we used to dump them into caissons in the backside of the 234-5 Area. And we had one of those that kind of broke open and messed us up a little bit. Took us maybe six, eight, hours to get cleaned up so we were able to go on our merry way. But those are the only two that really stick out in my mind. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Did you miss any amount of work as a result the exposures when you had those? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Nope. Nope. They just cleaned you up and said go back to work. You all have to remember that back in those days, all of the things that happened in a lot of places, we didn't know. We didn't know what the repercussions was going to be. We didn't know that. Now, this is why we're paying for a lot of stuff right now is because we didn't know how to do all that stuff. But like I say, there's a lot more people that know a lot more about that Hanford stuff than I do. Like I said, it's been many a year since I worked some of those places, too, that I can't remember some of the stuff. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Sure, sure. The radiation monitoring group, how large of a group was that? And how many employees do you know, have an idea who worked-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: There was probably about 60 or better. But each company, I think, had a group of their own. The 200 Areas had one big group. The 100 Areas had a group. And then 300 Area had a group, so you put them all together there was probably more than 60-some. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Okay, and just to—you said there was a fire in, you think about, 1962. Was it the 200 Area? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yep, in the 200, down behind the REDOX Building. That just, poof, was it and it went, so. And I think the reason they had the fire was because somebody had some greasy coveralls and stuff and didn't take care of them the proper way, and the first thing you know, poof, they were on fire. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And this was where there was radioactive material? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, it was back in the radioactive area, so everything got messed up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And at the time you probably didn't know necessarily everything, but you've had some health problems since then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but I won't say that my health problem is caused by the contamination that I had or was dumped with. I've had quite a few of those. I've had a melanoma cancer in this ear, and I had a very large contamination that got in that ear and area. So I've had to have some surgery done there, skin grafts and that kind of stuff. But so far it hasn't slowed me up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: I'm going to shift gears a little bit here. Were you working here in 1963 then when President Kennedy came to? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And do you remember at all? Were you there that day? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: No. Well, I was on a project that day, but I was not out where he was. I was one of the, I guess how would I say this, the lower steel, so I took care of the work over while everybody went to that. But yeah, I was here. I came back from Nevada on September 13, 1960, and I worked till '94. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And then I wanted to ask you a little about Richland. So other than when you first got here, it sounds like you lived in Richland most of the time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: How would you describe Richland as a community at the time, as a place to live? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: It was very good because at that time, when you were there, you didn't even have to worry about locking doors. I mean, everybody was—it just one big thing. It was a government town and everything would deal like that. And nobody really did—didn't have the vandalism or anything like that around town. And as you probably know that, if you're familiar with Fred Meyer’s on Wellsian Way down there, that was a swamp deal, because that was where Richland got their drinking water. Like I said, I lived in 1303 Totten the very first time and then we moved from there down to on Benham Street. And I don't know how to say this, other than the way I normally say that, but that was down where we called the turd churn. That was the sewage plant down there. Then from there I moved back up to Swift. And then in--I was trying to think when it was, 1963 or so, they did away with the old irrigation ditch that came through Richland and goes underneath Carmichael, because that's where they flooded the cattail place down there for the drinking water in Richland, and let it seep down and pump it up. And they busted everything up and back about then I was reading the Villager, I think it was, the Tri-City paper, and there was a lot for sale on Totten Street. So I bought it and went out and looked at it. It was the old irrigation ditch. And I built a house over the old irrigation ditch, and I still live there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And you—when you first arrived you were a child. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: What was it like going to school? I'm assuming that there were people from sort of all over, right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: All over. Yeah. And you just walk to school. And it was, like I say, there was no buses or anything, you could walk to school. And everybody just seemed to fit right in, you know. Nobody had any qualms whether I was from Arkansas or anywhere else. But like I say when the first house there in Richland, Wright Avenue was the last street in town. And beyond that was one of the most fabulous cherry orchards that there was. And when you were a kid you'd slip over in the cherry orchard and get cherries and take them home to your mother. And she could make you some jams, jellies, or whatever pie, or whatever. But it was a deal. There was quite a group of kids that came from all over the country. And they just seemed to fit in, none of this gang thing or anything like that. They were just, everybody was all buddy-buddy, you know? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: You mentioned you went to, what was then Columbia High School. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: How about elementary and middle school? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: And in elementary school when we moved the one that I really remember was Lewis and Clark down on the south end of town. And I went there until one of the, I'll call them students decided to burn it down. And they burnt Lewis and Clark down. And so a lot of us were told to go up to Marcus Whitman and finish off the year up there. So we did that. And then them from there on Carmichael, the junior high, was being built and I think they opened it up at about a mid-year. And I was one of the ones I went there the mid-year into Carmichael and then over to the high school after that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And so what year was that the Lewis and Clark burned down? Was that like in the late '40s then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah. But the funny part of it is, not too many years ago they arrested a fellow down in Portland. And he was laughing about burning the building down. So I guess they couldn't do anything to him, but they found out who burned it down now. Yeah. Well, there was Lewis and Clark, Marcus Whitman, Sacajawea which was right there by Central United Protestant Church was the old Sacajawea school. And then there's Jefferson which is still going. And our fabulous people are trying to shut it down, move it, and do something else with it. But who knows what's going to happen. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Do you remember when you were growing up and going to school and living here at that time any community events, parades? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Oh, yeah! Atomic Frontier Days was a big—the big, big thing. I have breakfast with a group of Columbia High graduates and I can't remember what her name is, but she was one of them that used to run for the Queen of Frontier Days. And there was a couple others. But that was the big thing. And they used to take—Howard Amon Park turned into booths, and just like a big fair down there. So it was things, and then all a sudden they decided to move everything around to the Tri-Cities. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And was that in the summer? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, that was always in the summer, you know. And then the big hydroplane races, they would come in, but they were the old ones that had the 1,200 or 1,300 horse-powered gasoline engines in them, the noise makers. But that was about the extent of the things. And if we go back I can remember the floods came through and when they build all the dikes that they're tearing down now. But I don't think they got to worry about that, being as the dams are still functioning. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Do you remember some of the floods? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Oh yeah, I can remember the flood deals, when they built the road up to going to the Y. They had to build all that up because you didn't get to Kennewick when the flood was on. Well, it was right up to the George Washington Way road there by wherever the guy that has the petrified stumps down there. The water was just across the street from his house, was right up to the edge there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: So I want to go back now to Hanford itself and your work experiences there. You talked about some specific things you did and some specific things. How would you describe Hanford as a place to work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Hanford was a real good place to work. It was really good work, and good place to work. Mainly I think because you didn't know everything that was going on. So you knew that you had your section, what you were doing, and you didn't want to make waves or something like that. But to me, Hanford was a good place to work. There was a lot of--I had a lot of good friends that came up through the, I call them the ranks. They were, like I worked in the blueprint and there was guys that drove the mail trucks. We wound up as a real knit group of people there. They work out of the old 703 Building, which part of it's still there. And we used to have Coke breaks and go back there. And everybody put a quarter in the pot and then get your Coke bottle. When it was all through whoever had the bottle that was from farthest away got the kitty. So it was a good place to work, really. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And I guess is there anything you would like future generations to know about working at Hanford site? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Well, I would like everybody to know that where this country really screwed up was when we dropped that bomb and blew up everything. We kept everything too secret. They should have let everybody know what that was and what was happening. Today we would have had a better deal of doing what they're doing today if they'd done that, I think. Now that's my opinion and no one else's, but if they would have just let them know what was going on, and what happened, it would have been a lot better. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And then is there anything that I haven't asked you about in terms of either your job at Hanford—or jobs, I should say, at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: No. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: Or living in Richland? That I haven't asked you about, that you'd like to talk about? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: No. Like I say, Richland was a good place to live, though, and Hanford was a good place to work. I mean you did your job, and everybody else did theirs, and everything worked out just fine. There's a lot of things that I'm not too sure of what happened. But a lot of those places they did have things when they were doing experiments for the Navy and all kind of stuff out there. But I didn't get in on any of that stuff at all. It was one of those deals, you go in and you dress out, and most the time the monitors were the first ones and the last ones out. So that was the deal. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: When you did that, did you wear a badge? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, TLD, thermoluminescent dosimeter. So you always had a badge on. I understand that some of the guys used to take theirs and set them aside so they wouldn't get too much radiation, so they would be eligible for overtime. But I wasn't into that overtime route. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And so how would you know? How did it register that you had too much exposure? How was that read? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Well they put it into a meter that would read what the thermo was. And the original ones were--what am I trying to say? Film, there was a film. And they would read the film of what, how much had been exposed to that. And that's how they got your dose rates there, how much you took. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And did that change at some point to some other method? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, they used the film badges to start with. Then they flipped over and they found out they could use these, what did I call them, thermoluminescent detectors, which is you put at charge on them. And I guess the radiation would discharge the charge. So they'll know how much was used off of it. And then you had pencils that you read, that would tell you, that would read if you were supposed to take, let's say, 50 MR. Well you'd set that when you come out, you'd be there and there was always time keepers. There was a time keeper in that group that was taking how much your exposure was, and how long you had been there, and calculating it to when you should get yourself out. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And they would let you know that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: And then they'd tap you on the shoulder and say, go. So then they’d go out. And then there would be somebody out there that would get them undressed and check them, clean them, and make sure they were all, no contamination on them and either send them to lunch or home. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: And that sort of procedure-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: That procedure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: --throughout the time-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Throughout the whole time I was there, yeah. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: All right. Well thank you very much. I really appreciate your being willing to come in and talk to us. And very interesting-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: Yeah, like to say, there's things out there that my mind just doesn't pick up on them right now. So probably middle of the night at one o'clock, I'll wake up and say, golly, I should have told him this. But no, that's the deal. But really, Hanford was a good place to work and to me, it's been real good to me. I got a good retirement off of it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: All right. Well, thank you very much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: You bet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Bauman: I really appreciate it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: You bet. And seeing now that he's got the shut off, I'll tell you about my week. I took my motor home and went to Ilwaco. You know where Ilwaco is on the Columbia River? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Man three: Yeah, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX100368582"> Moore: On the way over there. </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:35:10 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 250kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) 703 Building 100 F Area 200 West Area 300 Area 234-5 Area 200 Area 100 Area Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1953-2013 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1953-1994 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Samuel Moore Description An account of the resource An interview with Samuel Moore conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-06-16: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/9/2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region 100 Area 100 F Area 200 Area 200 West Area 234-5 Area 300 Area 703 Building Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 Kennewick (Wash.) Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F949c34824c3baa683668f048b76a3f7c.jpg a7532e182135be110ec23c9c1739ee92 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff4c175dd0e7d7618799f999a667b9b3a.mp4 8ac495b3421b632f99b868b055771a34 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Bauman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joe Soldat Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div> <div> Northwest Public Television | Soldat_Joe Robert Bauman: Okay, all right. Well, we'll go ahead and get started. All right. What I'm going to have you do first is say your name. And then spell it for me. Joe Soldat: Okay. Joseph Soldat, S-O-L-D-A-T. Bauman: Thank you, and my name is Robert Bauman. And we're conducting an oral history interview. Today's date is August 6th of 2013. And the interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. And so I'm talking today with Joe Soldat about his experiences working at the Hanford site. So I wonder--let's start by maybe you tell me how you came to Hanford, what brought you here, how you heard about the place. Soldat: When I graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in chemical engineering, I worked for a while at the Denver General Hospital, which was associated with the university. And they lost their research grant. So I heard from somebody that there was a place called Hanford. So I wrote a letter to the employment department at GE. And I got a thing back, of course, that says, we got your letter on file. But it wasn't too long afterwards they called me, and told me to come. So I agreed to come out, sight unseen, on the train. And I got off to train. I looked at all the sagebrush, like everybody, and said, oh, I'll give it a year or two. That was 1948. And I stayed on the project for 47 years. Bauman: Ah. And so you arrived in this place of sage brush and desert. Soldat: Yeah. Bauman: What sort of housing did you find? Soldat: Well, when I came they put me in a barracks in North Richland, the old military barracks--small rooms for two people with a closet and a dresser. And showers were down the hall. Maid came in once a week to change the linens and towels. And I was paying $0.20 a day for rent. Eventually, I got to move to Richland--the dorm M4. And on the corner right now is a bank where M2 used to be. And M2 became a motel for a while—some guy bought it. And then it finally became a bank. But my wife-to-be lived in the women's dormitories with W numbers. And so we finally met, and ended up getting married in '52. Bauman: So did you live in the dorms for about four years from about '48 to '52 then? Soldat: Yeah, before I got married, yeah. And we managed to get a house. Because I was in radiation protection, we had some small priority on getting housing. And we picked out a pre-cut on the south side, three-bedroom. So we lived there till '63. And moved in a ranch house where I live now on Torbett, in a remodeled ranch house with an extra bedroom. Bauman: About how large were the dorms that you lived in? Soldat: The dormitories? Well, I'd say maybe as big as from here to that wall square. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: About how many people lived in the dormitories as a whole? </div> </div> <div>Soldat: On the whole, I don't know. They had--since I was on weekly salary, I had one kind of dormitory. Those that were hired on monthly salary had a little fancier ones. And the women had their own real good ones with a fence around it.</div> <div> <div> Bauman: So what was Richland like in the late '40s and early '50s in the community? Soldat: Well, when I finally moved into town, the town, essentially, was closed. If you didn't work there, you couldn’t live there. You could come in. There was no fence around it. But if you retired, you had to go somewhere else to live. There was no retirement housing. And the city, when I got my house, supplied oil, or coal, free for the housing. So the rent was fairly reasonable at that time. And they had the federal government until, I think it was '58, when they sold houses to us, and got their own government. One of my friends, Bob McKee, was on the church council. And he became, eventually, mayor of Richland. His funeral is coming up Thursday. He died away back in the spring. But they delayed the funeral for relatives, I guess. But, anyway, I got a reasonable price for my house, I thought. It was like about $9,000 plus, because I had put up a fence, and a little thing for storage of garbage cans and stuff. They thought it was the enhanced above the original value. So I got a little better value. We had the option of taking a buy back offer. If you wanted to sell the house back to the government in x number of years, they would give you a 15% discount on your house. But I didn't opt for that. I figured by then, I was going to stay. [LAUGHTER] They had a cafeteria in a building next to the 703 Building, that old Quonsethut-shaped building, that later became commercial facilities. But we could go in there for breakfast and get meals that were partly for military style, like powdered scrambled eggs and stuff like that. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: And what about entertainment at the time you were living in the dorms? Were there things to do entertainment-wise? Soldat: Oh, okay. The people that lived in the dormitories could join the dorm club. We did all kinds of things. We had parties, dances, skiing, bike riding, hiking—everything before all these individual groups were established. So they covered the whole share. I learned to ski a little bit at Spout Springs, made it down the beginner's hill. Bauman: And you said you met your wife during that time? Soldat: Yes. Bauman: Was she working also at the Hanford Site, then? Soldat: She was a secretary. And she worked for a while. We got married in June, and in December, she had to quit because she was pregnant. They would not allow, at that time, pregnant women to work after fourth or fifth month. And then she never did go back to work. But she got involved in things like volunteering at the Red Cross, and Republican Women's Club, and all the things kept her busy. Bauman: Did you meet as part of some social activity? Or was it on the job, at work that you met? Soldat: She did all this being a housewife, all those things. Bauman: But how did the two of you meet? Was it at a-- Soldat: I'm trying hard to remember. Bauman: Oh, okay. [LAUGHTER] Soldat: I think I was introduced by a mutual friend, a guy that I used to bowl together. That's the other thing we had for entertainment in Richland, was bowling. And I liked doing that. But one of the guys I bowled with, we went to the restaurant. Next to the Richland Players Theater used to be a drug store, and they had a little cafeteria in there. We went in there, and we met these two women. And he knew one of them. The other one was going to become my wife. [LAUGHTER] </div> </div> <div> <div> Bauman: Let's move now to the work you did at Hanford. What was your first job? Soldat: My first job while I was waiting for my clearance was in what was the bioassay lab in 700 Area doing statistical analysis of the results of the analysis of employees’ urine for radioactive contamination. I wasn't allowed to know everything I was analyzing. But I did a statistical analysis. I had a orange card, which allowed me in, because I didn't have my clearance. Theoretically, I was supposed to be escorted in and out. But there was such a mob of people going in and out they never bothered to ask me whomy escort was. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: So where was this at? Soldat: 700 Area, 703 Building—the old one. And the bioassay lab was inside the 716 Building, I think it was. Bauman: And so how long did you do that? Soldat: I did that--well, I came in August, '48. And it was five months before I got my clearance. Then I went out to T Plant as a radiation monitor in training. Bauman: And how long did you work there? Soldat: Oh, gosh, I worked there for a couple of years. And then I got transferred to environmental monitoring. Out there in 2-East Area, environmental monitoring people were housed in an old Quonset hut next to the coal pile. You had to go in and sweep your desk off with a broom every morning to get the coal dust off of it. [LAUGHTER] And I stayed there for a while. I did some projects, calibrating some instruments, and other things. And then we moved to 329 Building in 300 Area. I think it was in the early '50s. And I stayed in environmental monitoring work ever since, through the rest of my career, writing impact statements, deriving equations for calculating dose to the public from releases at Hanford in food, and water, and air, and stuff like that. And my models are still being used some places. I was--we didn't have a lot of data. But I learned from the turtle you don't make progress unless you stick your neck out. That’s how they do. Sometimes throw darts at the chemistry chart on the wall. And say, well, this one should behave like that one, and put together what we could know. And my coworker Dave Baker was a computer guy. I'm not very good at computers. But he computerized a lot of my equations and stuff. Between us, we agreed and what kind of factors to use. There was some literature from the fallout studies. There was a fellow named Yoka Ng, N-G, in California who had to put together a lot of data for the fallout branch on concentrations of various chemical elements in soil and plants, which made it very easy for me to predict the update of the radionuclides. Bauman: So, what kind of findings did you have at some of your research about things that happened at Hanford in terms of the air, and water, and so forth? Soldat: Well, depends on what you want. It all started in '58 when Jack Healy gave a paper at the International Atomic Energy Symposium. And he talked about what we were measuring in the environment, and the kind of findings that we had. And we eventually created a maximum individual person who ate big amounts of food, and drank milk from cows, and fish from the river, and all that. And then we calculated the dose he would get from concentrations in these things. And things were generally below the limits that they had at those times. Originally, in the early years the limits for the public were the same as workers. It took them a while to figure out that there are, perhaps, more sensitive people in the public because workers were all health screened and everything. So they lowered all the public limits by a factor of ten to be safer. And we also had to put controls on releases to the atmosphere. The manager of the radiation protection department—it call was called health instruments at first—set limits for the reprocessing plants, and how much iodine they could release, and other things. And they worked hard during those years in the '50s and '60s putting in new cleanup equipment on the stacks—sand filters. And then eventually PUREX had fiberglass filters to remove the particles and stuff. So I've installed sampling equipment on all of the stacks, and the separation there is, some of them before and after the cleanup so they could see what the efficiency was. And I kept track, by going to the operating gallery, what kind of metal they were processing, how old it was, how much it had decayed, so we could relate things to what we were finding at the stacks. That data is still around. And when they did the dose reconstruction under Bruce Napier, they used a lot of my old data about the stack releases. Fortunately, Bruce had an office next to me. [LAUGHTER] So we communicated. </div> </div> <div> <div> Bauman: So you worked there for how many years at Hanford? Soldat: 47. Bauman: 47, you must have seen a lot of changes in technology, instrumentation, those sorts of things? Soldat: And administration. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. GE, at one time, I think it must have been in the '50s, decided that they would have no job description titled assistant, or under-secretary, or whatever like that. There would be no committees doing any administration. Every job had to have a written, definitive description specifying the duties, and the authorities, and the obligations. And it worked well for a long time. And then before that, when I wanted to get a paper cleared, I had to go through about half a dozen signatures, including public relations, of course. But then later on, I--essentially with my boss and one guy from public relations--they all had to clear my public papers. And it worked out well then. Then Battelle took over, reorganized things a little bit. And a funny thing happened. I had a secret clearance with GE. When Battelle took over, they decided that they didn't want to have too many secret clearances to manage. So they lowered my clearance and several other people’s. I want to the library to get a report I had written in 1949, classified secret. They gave it to me on microfiche. I read it, and I asked for a full printed copy. The remark I got eventually was, you can't it. You're not cleared for it. What are you going to do, brainwash me? [LAUGHTER] So Battelle had to raise my clearance back to what it was before. Bauman: Because you had written secret reports? Soldat: I talked about iodine releases to the environment, and measurements inside the 200 Areas. Bauman: I understand you were involved in a comprehensive food model? Soldat: Yeah. Bauman: What was that? Soldat: Well, about the late '60s, Westinghouse had a project to try and calculate doses to the US public from a large nuclear economy, especially reactors, and ignoring the waste part. And they needed to know what would be in food, and water, and air, and everything. And a fellow by the name of Bill Templeton who was an aquatic biologist worked with me at first. And then, finally, he said, okay, Joe. You're doing all right. So he turned me loose. But I had a fellow, Dennis Harr, who came to Hanford from Alaska. He was a forest hydrologist. They assigned him to me to help look up the factors I needed. He came here to WSU--or to Pullman, really—and looked up all of thinking about how much a cow eats, how much water they drink, and how many acres of this and that is growing. So he was very helpful looking all that stuff up for me. I just sat down and wrote an equation. I had heard that in the Windscale accident that the iodine they released stuck about 25% to plants. So I used that factor. And I added that stuff from Yoka Ng with the soil to plant ratios. So I modeled the uptake from soil, and combine all that in a big long equation with about 21 parameters. And I gave a paper on that at an ANS meeting in the '70s. And I also developed a diagram—a pathway diagram I call it--with all of the lines from all of the sources going across and interacting. And then at the end, they combined for the dose at the end. And that got published, too, in my '70 paper. And I did put all that stuff together with some other things for Reg Guide 1.109. It included my calculated dose factors for people of four ages--four years, 11 years, 17 or 16, and adult, because the organ sizes are different. So the doses are different. That was in there, my food model was in there, and then I developed a model for exposure to sediment in the Columbia River. Dick Perkins had measured three or four radionuclides in the sediment in the Columbia River as best you could, because it's awful rocky on the bottom. And analysis of that told me what the relationship was between the water and the sediment, assuming it had been running for many years, and had time to come to equilibrium. So I developed the equation for that, which included the radioactive half-life of the elements. And that was used in several instances in impact statements about--I think it was '59, they had something called a Calvert Cliffs Decision, in which they were trying to build a reactor. And the government was forced to do an environmental impact statement on every existing reactor and every new reactor. First rule was 100 pages’ length. But it still grew, because people were copying what other people had done. Well, this flew, so we'll put it in. Then they add unique things to their site. And it kept growing and growing. But there were 50 reactors that had to have impact statements. And they split it up three ways between Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, and Hanford. And I got involved in the Hanford one. First time I used my sediment model was for plants on the shore of Lake Michigan, and exposure to people standing on the shoreline--first time I used it off-site. And we calculated the dose someone might receive from the sediment contaminated from the water which came from the reactor outlet that was diluted before it got to where the fishermen was. So that was added to the impact statement, along with the fish, and all the other stuff that we normally did. </div> </div> <div> <div> Bauman: Hanford, of course, when you first arrived was all about production. But at some point that shifted to cleanup. Did that shift impact your work in anyway? Soldat: Well, yes and no. [LAUGHTER] It changed exactly what I was doing. But I was still doing environmental stuff. For cleanup—well, before that we were doing impact statements for new things at Hanford, like a front end for PUREX to do 100 N fuel, and all kinds of stuff. Afterwards, I was doing impact statements and studies forproposed cleanup. There was a big, fat three-volume document--I think it was SWASH 1400, it started out. It ended up being ERDA 1400. And in there, they studied every possible waste source, contamination source, potential for accidents and exposure. And I did a lot of those calculations. So one thing they wanted, which is very current today, they wanted to know, what would happen if a tank leaked? They said, what would happen if 1,000 gallons of tank leaked all at once? So I got a guy, Andy Reisenhauer, in the water department we called them. He was doing ground water studies. And he figured it out. With this modeling, he showed how small the contaminated area would be, and how, essentially harmless and well-confined to the immediate vicinity it was. And I get all upset now a days about the clamor about everybody that don't understand what's going on, even the governor. [LAUGHTER] At least he tried. </div> </div> <div>Bauman: So when you started working for GE, what other contractors--you worked for Battelle? Is that right?</div> <div> <div> Soldat: Yeah. Battelle just took over everything we were doing. Almost all people came directly to Battelle. There were a few that stayed in the 200 Areas the reprocessing areas. But some of them later came to Battelle. So a few stayed out there, worked for the various contractors they had. But it was nice, because having been altogether in GE, I could still communicate with those people when I needed information and data on releases, and access, and things. I could talk to them directly. I didn't have to go up and down the channels. Bauman: You mentioned earlier that you had written a secret report. And you had to go back and look at it, they initially told you you couldn't. As a site that, obviously, emphasized security and secrecy, I wonder if you could talk about how the emphasis on secrecy and security impacted your work in anyway. Soldat: Well, I told you what happened to me when I was working in the 700 Area. And I got here in '48. In '53, they renewed the Q clearances. I got called in the FBI for interview. They said, when you were in college—that's like in '46 or '47--you attended a meeting of, I think it was, SDS, which was supposed to be a Communist-related organization. They had a meeting in the park. They were complaining about their treatment. And it was a big hullabaloo. And I decided I'd go down and see what was going on. Apparently, they had spies watching all these people. So they started asking me questions about that. And I explained it away to their satisfaction. They said, do you ever read The Communist Manifesto? I said, no, but maybe I should someday. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: When you first started working there, did you take the bus out to the site? Soldat: Pardon? Bauman: When you first started working there, how did you get to the site and back? Did you take the bus out? Did you drive a car? Soldat: There was no background checks when I first came, because I had that work card. It took them five months to do all the investigations of relatives and friends to find out if I was reliable. And I finally got my Q clearance. But they may have reviewed things other than that one I know about since. But the FBI was doing it at that time. Later on, they farmed it out to a different government agency. And I don't think the checks were quite as thorough at that time. But you couldn't drive through the project like you can today. When you want to go to the west side, you can drive down towards Vantage through the project. It's all right. But it used to be all sealed off. You had to go around by Robinson's barn to get where you're going. Bauman: And when you went through security at the gate, did you have to show a badge? Soldat: Well, after I got my clearance, they checked everybody's badge going through. At one time in 300 Area, they had a badge rack. You would put your badge in the rack to go home. They didn't want you taking it off site. Well, one thing, you might get exposed from TV. [LAUGHTER] The old TV sets had a relatively high energy coming out at the bottom. Some kid sat there with his feet under the TV set, he might get a little bit of exposure. And so one day, I wore some radiation dosimeters, those pencil dosimeters on myself while I was watching TV at a distance. And then I put some by the TV set to compare the readings. And there was a small difference. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, at first, I thought security was a little lax because of the way they were letting you go through 700 Area, first few months. But it got pretty tight afterwards. </div> </div> <div>Bauman: Were there any events or incidents, anything that happened—accidents of any kind, that happened when you were working at Hanford, or strange occurrences? Anything sort of stand out in your mind?</div> <div> <div> Soldat: Well, there was a few, of course. They had limits they set on the releases for iodine-131. They had an experiment in which they wanted to have short cooled fuel, which would have more iodine in it, to released short-lived inert gases like Xenon and Krypton to the atmosphere so the Air Force could fly around with a plane and measure it. As I figure out, the idea was they could fly around Russia and see what kind of production they might be having from what they could detect in the air over a facility. Well, when they had—it's called a green run, when they had that, the iodine came out. And there was a little bit of to-do about that in later years, and people being exposed. And even before the iodine releases were controlled, there was quite a few releases. But in later years, I used my rules of thumb I learned, and my models to predict what doses probably were in the early years before they had reconstruction done. And I came probably within a factor of two of what they spent millions of dollars to calculate. [LAUGHTER] But that was one thing. And then they had some fuel that was mislabeled, and it was short cooled, that released iodine in the 200 Areas. And we went out and studied the vegetation on the project, and all around. Well, it turns out the iodine was held in the tanks for a while. And the vegetation that we measured didn't have any until they transferred the solution to another tank. Then the iodine escaped. And then we could find it on the vegetation—we found it in the Pasco area, and West Richland. And the meteorological group predicted it would--according to the weather, it should be high in north of Pasco. Well, it wasn't high there. It was higher in Benton City than it was in Richland. And there was a Benton City farm that had milk. And we sampled that milk every day for a long time, and plotted the curve as it decayed. And I backtracked it for a couple of days that we had missed. And I calculated the radiation dose a kid might have drinking that milk. And the standard model was one liter of milk a day. And I calculated all that. And we couldn't get the kids to come in to get a thyroid check for awhile. The mother was reluctant. Finally, he came in months later. And at that point, I predicted the thyroid burden ought to be 70 picocuries. And it turned out, he was measured 72 picocuries. Then something really interesting happened with that. Some anti-nuclears said that I had reported on this thing, and the dose was less than a fraction of the limits. So it's all right to die by a fraction at a time. Somebody else picked that up, and said I had pin pointed the death of a small child drinking that milk. So some guy from Oak Ridge, his name was Piper, investigated all this stuff, and tried to put everything straight, and straighten out all these misconceptions. But you can see what happens to the press. Bauman: So what time period was that? Soldat: That was in '63. It's all published in Health Physics Journal, and all that stuff. They had an iodine symposium in 1963—a biology symposium. People all over the world came here. And we met in the old community house, this little anteroom off to the side, with swamp coolers. And it was 116 in Pasco. [LAUGHTER] It was a mess. But we published a whole book of the papers. And I have a couple in here, at least by abstract anyway. I learned alot about the different factors, again, and improved my knowledge of what was going on. Bauman: So when there were releases of iodine, you were involved in calculating the-- Soldat: Yeah. Bauman: Measurements? Soldat: Yeah, another thing I did was I stood out by a met tower wearing a respirator device that measured my breathing rate by volume. And they released iodine--I think it was 135 or 132, a real short half life--that another guy and I could stand there and inhale. And then we went and got our thyroids counted, and watched the decay, and integrated the whole thing. And my total dose was probably about ten millirem, compared to the limit, which was 1,500 a year at that time. Herb Parker got real mad, because we hadn't checked with him to see if it was okay. He said we should have our thyroids examined before we did it. [LAUGHTER] </div> </div> <div> <div> Bauman: So you were used as test subjects? Soldat: The other release was from REDOX--ruthenium--there was two rutheniums: 106, and 103. And the scrubber in the plant that was supposed to remove these from their exhaust failed. And it released about 40 curie of ruthenium out the stack. It was detectable on Wahluke Slope, and all the way up just southeast of Spokane. It missed all of real good farms, and everything, fortunately. So we went up collecting a lot of samples from that. Then there was a contamination on Hanford itself on the roofs of some of the buildings and the ground. So that was all cleaned up. I spent some time monitoring transportation workers who were going around picking up particles around the 200 Areas. The other thing that happened is they found radioactive rabbits and coyotes--BC trenches, in 2 East Area. They disposed of waste which had cesium. And, of course, it's a salt relative to sodium in the nucleic chart. And the rabbits got in there were eating the waste with the cesium, and digging down. And the coyotes were eating the rabbits. And so we were finding this contaminated environment, and traced it down to that. It didn't travel more than a mile or two. Rabbits have a very short range. They don't travel more than a couple miles. And so that had to all get cleaned up, and covered over, put to rest. There was a few things like that. Bauman: Did any of these incidents or releases--were there ever any that you looked at, studied, calculated, and found that it was a risk to employees, or to the public at all? Soldat: No, most of them were--the release of the strontium, the highest concentration found at Wahluke Slope across the river was--if a guy stood there and breathed the whole time the cloud time went by, he might have got 80 milligram to the lungs. And, of course, at that time, we were getting 100 milligram a year from radiation. And the limit to the public was 1,500. So, really, it wasn't that significant. Bauman: I wanted to ask you about a little bit different part of it. President Kennedy visited in 1963 to open the N Reactor. Soldat: Yeah, I want to see-- Bauman: Were you there? Were you part of it? Soldat: I was standing far back in the crowd. And I could barely see the President. They opened up to the site to the public to go there. And I rode with a friend. And he and his son went with me. We watched that thing. Bauman: Do you remember anything else about that day? Or just being really far away? Soldat: Well, I remember when the helicopter landed with the President inside it, kicked up an awful lot of dust. I was glad that maybe it wasn't all that contaminated for people to breathe. Bauman: Do you remember any other time when any dignitaries came to the site? Soldat: Yeah, I just noticed something I looked at this week. Nixon visited Battelle facilities, the main research building. And Ronald Reagan was here one time. </div> </div> <div>Bauman: I wondered what you would consider the greatest challenges you had during your years working Hanford, and the greatest rewards?</div> <div> <div> Soldat: Well, I don't know. The least of my challenges was working with administration, because usually they managed to turn me loose when they found out what I was doing. I think that the challenge was finding data in the open literature that I could use to put into my models. I'd go to the library in those days, you would ask for literature, and sit down, and read it, and take notes—not like today. So I found things, eventually, from researchers in Russia who had studied uptake and radionuclides in fish, and studies at Oak Ridge on fallout in cattle, and all these things. But finding data was a little hard, not because it was classified. But it was in the open literature, and you had to think about where it might be located. That was one of my most challenging things. The other challenge was to learning how to use Word Perfect. [LAUGHTER] My secretary forced me to learn it. She helped teach me because she couldn't read my handwriting. That was a challenge for a while. I still have trouble with computers. But I think the biggest reward was all of the recognition I got from management, and Health Physics Society, and other groups. I got a file about that thick that I labeled Kudos. And when they have the recouplex incident in 234-5that had a solution that wasn't handled right. And it had a nuclear reaction, in an outfit called recouplex. We worked a week or so overtime in evening, and around the clock some of us, working on the effects of that, and the dose to the people. And I had measurements of the stack gases. And I predicted from the stack gases how many fissions had occurred in that pot. And then the other guys, the real nuclear experts, came and did theirs. And we agreed within a factor of two again. But, yeah, it never really did much off-site again. It dissipated before it got anywheres. We plotted the path, and by the time it reached the boundary of the site over towards Pasco it was essentially nothing. Because whenyou have a nuclear reaction like that, you generate a lot of short-lived radionuclides with seconds, and minutes, and days. And so it really wasn't that effective off-site. Bauman: What was the time period of that incident? Soldat: I want to say April '62, I guess. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: Being involved in environmental monitoring, and monitoring the effects of releases and that sort of thing, did you at any point—it seems like at some point, nuclear power became--like, certain groups opposed that, right? You hadgroups that became opposed to nuclear power, and the use of-- Soldat: Obtained what? Bauman: Opposed to nuclear power-- Soldat: Oh, oh. Bauman: Anti-nuclear stuff. Did you feel that at all at work, I mean or stuff you were involved in? Soldat: Well, yeah--well, there are people off-site who--that story I told you about that small child. And then there was another guy, he worked at the University of Pittsburgh. I'm trying to remember his name. He predicted all the dire results of fallout from strontium-90. He gave a talk at strontium-90 symposium in biologyput on here one time. And he came to me and says, I need to get my slides remade. What he was doing was correlating the concentration of strontium-90 in milk and leukemia in children. Well, this curve went to pot. And he decided he needed to summarize, average it, over two years. And eventually that went to pot. It didn't work. So then he eventually tried four years. And he asked me if I could get his slides rebuilt for his talk so he could use them for a four-year average. So I went to Bill Bair who was the manager of the symposium. And he said, sure, we'll do it for him. And they did. And he used them. Of course, a lot of people in the audience knew better than to believe what he was saying. </div> </div> <div> Bauman: Is there anything that we haven't talked about yet that you would like to talk about? That I haven't asked you about? Soldat: Well, I got some awards. I don't know if you're interested. The local chapter Health Physics Society gave me what's called a Herb Parker Award for Distinguished Service. And then I got elected fellow of the National Society. And then I got the National Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the Health Physics Society, which was sort of a review of my total career, and all the, quote, the great things that I had done. The environmental section in the National Health Physics Society established an award for environmental radioactivity measurements type of stuff. And a fellow, a friend, Jack Corley, who worked here, and I got the first ones that they awarded for that as distinguished service. And then I got a plaque from Bill Bair when he was retiring. So he's such a nice guy, he awarded about three or four plaques to employees outlining their distinguished careers. I was one of them. And it's for all the work I had done on radioiodine. So I got that plaque. Bauman: And you're involved in the Herbert Parker Foundation? Is that right? Are you part of that? Soldat: I volunteered not to get involved in the Parker Foundation. I let Ron Kathren, and Bill Bair and Dale Denham, and all these guys do it. I worked for a little while after I retired for Dave Muller and Associates to help with the down-winders case, writings some papers on it, and releases, and another one with Jack Selby on plutonium releases from the 200 Areas that were used in the hearings for that business. I haven't really--well, people call me up every once in a while and ask questions—pro bono. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: Overall, how would you assess your 47 years working at Hanford as a place to work? Soldat: For me, it was a great job. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had wonderful people, except maybe one case of this one boss. But totally great people, and I felt like I was doing something worth while. And it was useful. Later on, it got to be where everybody was writing impact statements, which are not a product. It bothered me a little bit. Even I got involved. And those were kind of necessary. EPA at one time says, we need you to calculate the effect of this dose out to the year 10,000. I said, what? So I got out my business card. And I changed it from environmental engineer to science fiction writer. [LAUGHTER] But I had a great time. I tried to get in the army when I first graduated from high school. And I couldn't because of my ears. And the Navy wouldn't take me because of my eyes, the program for officers. So I ended up—third choice was out here to do my part. [LAUGHTER] Bauman: Well, I want to thank you very much for coming in today, and sharing your stories with us, and your experiences. I appreciate it. Soldat: I hope it's been useful. Bauman: Yes. Thank you. Soldat: Yeah, just carrying this around helped me remember. </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:53:44 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 209 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 700 Area 2-East Area 329 Building 300 Area 200 Area N Reactor 703 Building 716 Building Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1948-2013 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1948-1995 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 McKee, Bob Baker, Dave Healy, Jack Templeton, Bill Harr, Dennis Perkins, Dick Andy Reisenhauer Parker, Herb Corley, Jack Kathren, Ron Bair, Bill Denham, Dale Muller, Dave Selby, Jack Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Joe Soldat Description An account of the resource An interview with Joe Soldat conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-06-30: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Pasco (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 8/6/2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 2-East Area 200 Area 300 Area 329 Building 700 Area 703 Building 716 Building Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 N Reactor Pasco (Wash.) Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd35964aec193b1b7fd28948c24cf64e1.jpg ffbf5469442b4c402cf5a627b074bd5d https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd33967aae97ba9a6a5cefd32188558af.mp4 492460847de1bc4edcc96e8b10af6349 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Bauman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sally Slate Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Robert Bauman: Say your name and spell your last name for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Sally Slate: Okay. Sally Slate. S-L-A-T-E. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Okay. My name’s Robert Bauman and today’s date is August 5th of 2015. We’re conducting this interview at Sally Slate’s home in Richland, Washington. So let’s—if we could, start by having you give us some background information on when you came to the Tri-Cities, what brought you here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Well, I was a new graduate from the University of Idaho in June of 1955. I guess I was attracted to this area because I was going with a young man that still had a couple of years of schooling, and I wanted to be kind of close to the University of Idaho for him. Unfortunately, we broke up. [LAUGHTER] But I came as a tech grad for GE. These were three-month assignments where we rotated different assignments. My first assignment was to open up the chemistry lab at PUREX building that was still under construction. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And were you familiar with Hanford before you came here? Did you know much about the place? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yes, I was, because we have an atomic energy site near southern Idaho, and my father was working there. So I was quite well-informed. In fact, I’d taken some classes in nuclear energy. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And had you been to Richland or the Tri-Cities before? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: No. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And did you have a first impression when you arrived? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Well, everybody had told me that I was going to hate it, that it was desolate, sagebrush. I came here and I thought, gee, I’m at home! Snake River’s just around the corner. And [LAUGHTER] sagebrush, I’m well-acquainted with. Potato fields? Yes. And also, I felt very comfortable. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: So you said your first job was opening up the chem lab at PUREX. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Can you describe what that was like? What that work was like? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: It was doing a lot of dish-washing. Because everything had to be taken out of the boxes, we had to figure out where to put it in the lab, we had to get the equipment set up and tested. There were two or three of us doing that job. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And can you maybe explain what PUREX was, for [INAUDIBLE]? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: PUREX is the separations plant that was—the fuel went in on one end of the building and made a continuous run and we got the plutonium and uranium separated at the end. The REDOX Plant, you had to do it in batches. But this was a continuous process, so it was going to be a little more efficient. As I say, it had not been—they were still under construction at the time that I was out there. And unfortunately, when we got here, nobody had Q clearances, and they thought that we needed Q clearances. So they set us in the unclassified library until they finally figured out that, oh, our clearances are all sitting on somebody’s desk and he’s on vacation, and you don’t need a Q clearance anyways, so put them to work! [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: So that was your first job. Where did you go from there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Oh. The next job was at the REDOX Plant. It was not really a happy experience. I wanted to be in the lab. As a woman chemist, I don’t think they appreciated women chemists in the lab at that time. It was trying to put together a compilation of all of the procedures that were being done, and trying to classify them so that if we got some kind of an assignment, you had to—okay, we need this analysis done. What procedures do we have available to do it? And it was well before the capabilities of our computer systems and everything now. I just didn’t appreciate that assignment. Then I went into the classified library as an abstractor. Where I had to read all of the classified—we were one of four—reading classified materials that came in. Everything from books to reports and anything generated that came into the library. We had to write a small paragraph about what the—without saying anything classified. We did bibliographies, computer searches. Except it wasn’t a computer search, it was a search of the index cards and made up answered questions that would come in. That was an interesting job. But it wasn’t as fun as being in the lab. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And how long did you work there in the classified library? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Well, that was pretty much—well, that was a permanent position. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: I worked there until I had been married and was expecting a child. And then they required me to quit. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Okay. So you talked about being a woman chemist and it didn’t seem like you were really welcome in the lab, or that they wanted—were there other women chemists around at the time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: There were a few. There was a couple of others. Actually—let’s see. I’m thinking as the abstractors, the other chemist who was an abstractor was a mathematician. And the other woman was a mathematician. They were drawing the abstractors from the scientific fields, because you could teach somebody to be an abstractor, but you couldn’t teach the scientific part of it as easily. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Right. So was it a GE policy that when you were married and— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: --you had to quit? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yes. Five months, period. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh, you had five months after you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: After you got pregnant. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: After you got pregnant, that you could work and then you had to quit. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: That was routine. When I got to working in Idaho for Argonne National Lab, they said I could I work as long as I wanted. As long as I could do the job. Phillips Petroleum says, we think you’re pregnant. Prove it that you’re not. Otherwise, you’re gone. There’s definite bias there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: They didn’t want us riding the bus. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: And I was riding a bus 75 miles each way. Twice a day. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Do you know when that policy changed? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: I don’t. Because my next experience out here was in the ‘70s. And by that time, the policy had changed. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Sometime in between there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Sometime in between. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Yeah, it changed. So let’s talk about transportation. You said you had to ride a bus out? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Pretty much every day? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Here in Richland, we had the buses. They would pick up at specified places along the—in town. Or you could drive your car out to the big bus lot, and leave your car there and transfer to the bus that you were going to be going out into the Area on. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Okay. And where was the lot at? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Oh, go out Stevens, on the left-hand side as you go out Stevens. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: They’ve transformed it into—part of it was an area where the police are doing training. After they had just redone the parking lot and spent millions doing the parking lot, then they decided, oh, we’ll close the buses down. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: I wanted to ask you about housing when you arrived in Richland. What sort of housing was available, or wasn’t available? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Well, when you first come, you check into the Desert Inn, which was the only hotel in town. Then you check with the Housing Authority, and the housing office assigns you housing according to your job, and your status—your marital status. And being single, I was assigned to one of the dormitories. And we still see the dormitories around. W-5 was just off of Lee—Lee and Knight. It was definitely a dormitory. It had a house mother. Doors were closed on the weekdays at 10:00 at night. The doors were locked. It was later than that for the weekends. But you had a little room, furnished. If you took the furniture out and put your own furniture in, you couldn’t get their furniture back if you changed your mind. It was cheap. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Do you remember how much it cost? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: I don’t. But something--$20 a month or less. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And so how long did you stay in the dorm then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: I stayed in the dorm until—well, I went into a private apartment with a friend. And then we got married and went into a two-bedroom prefab down here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh, okay, sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: In the south end of town. When those houses went up for sale, we could have bought that house for $1,875. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. We thought it was too small for us, because by then we had two small children. We bought a pre-cut. Three-bedroom pre-cut from a friend. They didn’t want the house, but if they had just moved into the house that they were going to buy, they would have had to remove all of the improvements that they’d put into the house, which included the wall-to-wall carpeting, drapes, electrical for a dryer, a fenced-in backyard. All of that would have had to have been removed. And they would have lost all of that investment. So they bought the house and sold it immediately to us at a slightly higher price to accommodate for their investments. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: How would you describe Richland in the ‘50s? I know it was a government town, still, when you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: It was government town, yeah. Everything. The schools were—GE ran it all for the government. Police department, schools—just about all of the—anything that had to do with the town. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And did that change significantly when it sort of became its own city, then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: It was very gradual. They started selling the houses—we became a town in October of ’57? ’57. And the houses were being sold in ’58. Early ’58, we bought our house on Smith. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: I know one of the events from the community happenings or things was when President Kennedy came to visit in 1963. Were you here then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: ’63, we were not. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh, had you— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: We had left. Took a while to wander around to Idaho and Washington, but kept coming closer and closer, and finally said, we got to go home. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: You talked about having to get a—well, you thought you had to get your Q clearance, then didn’t have to get a Q clearance. What was security like at Hanford at the time? Would that impact your work—I mean you were working in classified libraries, so that part-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yeah. You could get into—up to the 300 Area. But there was a barrier there. You couldn’t go through the barrier without a clearance. You had to have at least a Q clearance—or not a Q clearance, a Nil clearance is what they called it, was the beginning clearance. But then to get into the 200 Area, and to get into Two West, you had to have a Q clearance. That was just—you had a badge and it had your type of clearance on it. If you were working around the areas where there was a lot of radiation or potential radiation, then you’d wear pencils, and you might wear a ring. The ring would be checked weekly, and if it showed anything, then they would check your badge. Badges were changed out, I think, on a monthly basis. I never was in a situation where I accumulated anything. You had hand and shoe counters that you had to check into the building and check out of the building—using the hand and shoe counters to make sure you weren’t carrying anything there. Because those would be the two areas that would be most apt to pick up something. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: So where was the classified library located? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: In the 300 Area. The building is still there. I don’t remember the building number. It was across from 319. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And you mentioned—so you got married in— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: In March of ’56. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Okay, and did your husband also work at Hanford then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: And what area did he work in? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: He was at Three West Area. The REDOX area. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: We happened to be riding the same bus together. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Is that how you met? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Actually, we met at the Mart cafeteria. That building on Lee and Knight that has Sirs and Hers Barbershop and had a gun shop in there. But at that time it was a 24-hour cafeteria. There was a drugstore in part of it. And there was a jewelry store up front and a little lounge area, the Evergreen Lounge, in the back. We’d just—I’d just gotten off of my first day of swing shift. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: And he had just gotten off work. We were in there having coffee. The girl I was with knew him, and knew the other fellow that he was with. But then I discovered that we rode the same bus. Or, rather, I made sure we rode the same bus. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: So how was Hanford as a place to work, then? I know you talked about not really being able to work as a chemist [INAUDIBLE] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Well, I don’t think it was any different than working anywhere else at that time. Because there were restrictions everywhere. My original plan when going to college—I wanted to be a veterinarian. And after one year of pre-vet being the only girl in the School of Agriculture, I was told there was no way in hell that a woman would be accepted into the School— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Oh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: --of Veterinary Science. And that I needed to choose something else. So, I went into chemistry, which is another love that I had. I was one of two women—first two that had graduated in chemistry in five years from the University of Idaho. And now, you know what percentage of women are. Far more women than men. And the same veterinary school now. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> [PHONE CHIMES] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Sorry about that. Talking about Richland, I was going to ask you one other question about the town. In terms of entertainment or things to do for fun, what was there in the area in 1955, ’56? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Well, pretty much the same things that we have now. The Richland Players was a movie house at that time. The roller skating rink was there. We could ride horses—we could rent horses out on Van Giesen. Boating. Pretty much the same mix of things that we have now. At that time, we had the symphony, we had Richland Players, although they were having their plays in the schools at that time. But those were the things—and bowling. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: So when did you move away from Richland, and when did you come back then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Oh. We left in ’58, ’59. We left in ’59—June of ’59. And we came back for good in ’71. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Had the place changed a lot in that time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Grown! Yes. Not so much Richland. Although it was beginning to grow. But the areas between Richland and Kennewick that used to be grapevines and all kinds of farmland where Columbia Center was getting started and it just—I didn’t know my way around. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Are there any things I haven’t asked you, or anything you’d like to talk about that you haven’t had a chance to talk about yet, in terms of your work at Hanford, or--? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: At Hanford? Of the early years? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Yeah! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: I don’t know. I enjoyed it very much. It was very mentally stimulating. And even the recreational things that were here were—because we had the symphony, we had the Richland Players. And it’s good to see that they are growing. If we’d only get our performing arts center. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: I’m with you on that. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: We’re with you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: And they’re saying 20, 30 years, and I don’t have that many years left, I’m afraid. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Well, I want to thank you very much for letting us come to your home and interview you, talk to you. I appreciate your sharing your experiences with us very much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Well, it’s been kind of interesting, thinking back to those days. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: I had a quick question, comment. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yeah? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: So when you were in the labs— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: What would you do? What were you doing in, like the PUREX or the—what sort of thing would you do? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Oh. Well, the laboratory was an analytical lab. And they were divided into hot sections and cold sections. The hot section would receive the really radioactive materials that had to be handled in big glass-enclosed, with lead—a glass so wide. But I was never involved in that real high level. By the time I got things, it was down to the very low level radioactive materials that we could handle in a hood with ventilation. We wore just a lab coat. I’m trying to think if we even, in those days—I don’t think even at REDOX that I was involved with anything higher than just very low level materials. And we would separate out the plutonium or the uranium out of the fraction that we got, and would pipette it onto steel planchets. Little steel discs. And then the discs would go downstairs to the counting lab, and would be put into the counting lab and they would determine how many counts per minute were coming off of that. That would tell them the amount of radiation that there was, the amount of material that there was in that. We did everything in duplicates and triplicates, to make sure that we hadn’t made a mistake. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Most everything was done triplicates. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: So you didn’t work in the hot cells because of gender? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: No, no. I didn’t work in the hot cells because I didn’t work in the—I was never assigned to it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: But that wasn’t a gender-based— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: No. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: I was trying to— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: No, I don’t think it was gender-based at all. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: The other question I had was—so, GE and stuff, if you were five months pregnant, then that was the time to separate. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yep. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: Did you have a job to come back to, or that was terminated? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: [LAUGHTER] You had a job to come back to if there was a job available. That was part of the reasoning, they said, oh, that going into the classified laboratory was perfect for you, because there’ll always be a job available. Little did they know that computers were coming along, and computers were going to do all the abstracting and all the bibliography. You’d punch in a question and they’d come out with all the answers of here’s the materials that we have available on that subject. So computers did away with that job. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Right. Had your old job been available, would you have had it, or would you have had to reapply? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: I would have had to reapply. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: Yeah, it wasn’t an automatic thing. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Slate: You were expected, as a young married mother, to stay home with your children. At least until they got into school. That wasn’t to say that there weren’t people who went back to work right away. But it was not the usual thing. Of course, I wanted to be able to stay home with the kids. By the time I had three, I had to go to work. [LAUGHTER] By that time, I started looking around and thinking, well, what can I do? I can go back to school and get a job as a teacher. So I got my teaching degree. And I taught school for five years until we decided we got to go home, we got to come back here to Richland. And that’s when I got back into the chemistry. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: All right, well, thank you again very much. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man three: Thanks. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Bauman: I really appreciate your time and letting us come in here. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX184015053"> Man one: Okay. </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:30:46 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 223 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area 200 Area Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site Sally Slate passed away on July 26, 2017. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Sally Slate Description An account of the resource An interview with Sally Slate conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-19: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Kennewick (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 8/5/2015 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 200 Area 300 Area Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 Kennewick (Wash.) Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Richland (Wash.) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6def293024de6ae911e0e7f7654db62f.jpg 9ec40ce58e39904d570570fa414e867c https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F56b6ceb732b954b73e93a462ffedb9c0.mp4 e1ae7cc2fa0eb43e1b50797353e49a45 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Bauman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Robert Colley Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Northwest Public Television | Colley_Robert </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Robert Bauman: Okay, great. Let's start by just having you say your name and spell it for us. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Robert Colley: Okay. Robert Gibson Colley. It's—spell-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: The last name. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: C-O-L-L-E-Y. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay. Great. Thank you. And my name's Bob Bauman. And today's date-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Bauman? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Bauman. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Oh, okay, Bob Bauman. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And today's date is November 20th, 2013, and we're recording this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So let's start maybe by having you tell us when you came to Hanford, what brought you here. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. I was at Spokane Air Base, and the general came in and he said we're going to have to reduce the Korean Air Force pilots, but we'd like to keep you in Reserve, Ready Reserve, and you'll fly every other weekend for the next 20 years. And we'll guarantee you a job somewhere. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: And so that was on Sunday, and on Monday morning I came to work here in 1954. And it was about a month before I came to work. And I came to work as—nuclear physics—radiation monitor. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay. And so how long had you been in the service prior to 1954? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: I came off active duty on Sunday, and came to work here Monday. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: When did you start in the service? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Oh, in—when did I start? In 1942. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay, yeah, oh, in '42, okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah, in 1942. And I had three years of cadet ROTC at Walla Walla. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Oh, okay. All right. And so then you came to Hanford in 1954 in nuclear health physics, you said? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: I— </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Nuclear health physics? Is that where you worked? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: I worked for General Electric. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: For General Electric. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Uh-huh. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And so could you—what sort of work did you do? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Nuclear health physics. And after I came here, I went and got my tech degree from inside while I worked there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And what was the area like when you came here in 1954? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Well it was riding buses to school, and they gave us homes. And we brought our families here. And went to work by bus. Buses picked us up right in front of our house here in Hanford and took us to work and brought us back. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And where was your house? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: 1940 Benham. 1940, 41 there. It was a duplex. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: A duplex. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: An eight-house duplex. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: And my children started school here that year. A boy and a girl. And they started at Lewis and Clark School just up the street. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And so working in nuclear health physics, what sorts of tasks did you do? What sort of things did you do at your job? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Anyplace that anybody worked, we had to be there. And we had to know that the area was clear, the work area was clear, what dose rate they were getting, and set a dose rate for them to work there for a certain length of time. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So you were all over the site, then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. I was—in those days, everybody worked all over the site, wherever you were needed. But I actually went into U Plant my first day out on the project, and that was the beginning of U Plant, T Plant, REDOX. And then I went to Dash 5, and then I went to the PUREX start-up again. I was there for two years. Then went back to Dash 5. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay. So essentially you were setting rates for workers? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yes. Uh-huh. We went in and we checked the air. And checked the clothing requirement that these people would wear, and what their mask levels would be. How much--we'd find out exactly how much they were going to take and how much they were allowed to take for any one day. And generally in those days, unless there was something very special where you took a double, why, you normally took 15. And that was it. If it was a very special job where it was dangerous to pull somebody out in the middle of a job because of the radiation level. Sometimes they would take a double. Then they'd go into overtime. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So did you have to wear any special clothing or carry special-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Everything was special. From the time we walked in and changed clothes, we never our clothing again until we took our shower and went home. We wore special underclothes, special--if we lost our clothes due to some spill or something, we could strip down to our underclothes and get out and still be clear. If we went past that, why, then we had a body contamination. And we would normally clean up whoever got contaminated. And depending whether they were working with uranium, plutonium, americium or whatever. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Did it happen very often where--were there very many times when a worker was contaminated and you had to clean them up? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Everyday somewhere. And they had to be cleaned up and nasal smears given before they were left to go home. We had to have them perfectly clean, or we had to keep them and give them more tests. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So how would you go about cleaning someone up who had been contaminated? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Well, if it was skin contamination, why, we could take off a layer of skin. We'd put on--I forget what the name of it was, but we’d put it on and it would take a layer of it off. Until it's a layer perfectly clean. And if they were clean, then they could go home. If they weren't, why, we had to keep them over. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And if they had to--if you had to keep them over, what happened? You would run tests, did you say? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: No, we'd just have to keep cleaning on them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: I mean, working with this type of thing, there's some spill, something or other, something contaminated or something broke loose or something didn't go right. And everything had to be cleaned right down to no contamination detectable. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Mm-hm. And so when someone was contaminated and you were involved in cleaning them up, was it just you? Or was there more than one person? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Oh, no, no. Depending on whether he was a junior or a senior, and after he got to be senior, why you were always the one to clean somebody up. And the juniors would watch. And so they would be prepared sometime, too, in the future. You went through a six-month training period and preparation so that you become a monitor. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And how long did you work then in nuclear health physics? How long were you at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: 34 years. Approximately 34 years—just like a little bit--. I went there in--I didn't work there until in January of '55. And I retired in August of '86. I think I figured out about 34, almost 34 years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And that whole time you were in health physics? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yep. The only time I was gone was when I was on active duty with the Air Force, once a year. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Never lost any time. We had a lot of different things happen, but every 15 months, when we had accidents of some sort, spills or contamination levels above level, something like that was always there. Even with fires and explosions and stuff like that. And we--I guess the worst right off the bat was when we had—I can’t think—a place where they mixed in Dash 5. But they had a spill, and had a double. And so they got everybody out in about 10 or 15 minutes. I mean, just real quick. Just walked away. Just left things like they were. And then three of us went back in. We knew each floor exactly. We knew where every crevice was, or where every box or anything was where something might be that might be of value. Most of them might walk away from it and not know it's there. So we had to go back and go through--because we knew all these buildings. We did work down there day after day for years. And we knew where everything was, even if it was just even a change of clothes. We checked everything. And we finally--we were allowed an hour. We were in 1,000 R dose rate. And we were allowed an hour. And we took 100 R. And we were only supposed to take a little bit each day. But it was classified at that time. And no one ever knew how much--except we knew, and the health physics people knew. And we took, in less than an hour, we took 100 R—body. And that's many years of working out there. You normally took three R a year—a whole year. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: And we took 100 R in less than an hour. But no one was left in the building, and we were very fortunate. Everything that would run was still running. And then they would come in to help shut it down and get things cleaned up again. But they brought us down in patrol cars from the Badge House, and we just had so much time once we got out of the patrol car. And we would be back there at that place. And if we weren't there, they would come to look for us. But there was three of us, and the other two boys are all gone. I was the oldest out of the bunch, but they died young. We never knew for sure whether we would--I never felt anything from 100 R. I didn't feel headache-y or sick or anything. And they allowed me to come back to work the next day. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: But that was all classified at that time. And nobody--they got it okayed from someplace. But I never had any ill effects from it. I took my maximums every year in all those years, and never had any ill effects that I knew of. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Do you know roughly what time period this incident was? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: What? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Roughly what year that would have been that that happened, that incident? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: You know, I used to remember exactly right down to the hour. [COUGH] But that seemed like it was '56? '55, '56? Gosh, they've got all the records there, but I--it was fairly soon--no, it wasn’t ‘58. It had to be '60. Because I'd been here a long time then. Got everything back up and going again. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And you said you didn't experience any ill-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Pardon? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: You said you did not experience any ill effects. Did the other two men who were there with you, did they experience any ill effects from that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: I don't hear very good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: I'm sorry. You said you didn't feel sick after that at all. Did the other two men who were in with you, did they get sick at all from that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: No, not to my knowledge. Never had any ill effects. I've always had pretty good luck. I went through the Air Force Cadets, Army Air Force Cadets, back at the [INAUDIBLE], and pretty good shape and stayed in good shape. And we would fly 50, 60 hours at a time towards the end there. And no ill effects from that, either. Except you get tired and you switch off with crews, you know. And we'd go from here to California or over to China or someplace. Always someplace on the earth. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Yeah. Were there any other sort of major incidents that you remember from the time-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Well we had A 80--about 10 years later, and I was right in the middle, turning people out. The people that were injured during the blast were taken to Kadlec in special rooms. And they were kept there for all--this was when--I'm thinking to think of his name. I can see him, but I can't--he was the one that got hurt the worst. And he was down here, down at Kadlec, for years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Oh, was that McCluskey? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: McCartney, yeah, McCartney. Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: I see. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. He was just quite a guy. And he was an operator out there. And got him out, and we got him downtown and took the—[LAUGHTER] I can't think of all these names. The thing that we took him downtown in. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Ambulance? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Ambulance. And took it back, checked out it. It was wildly contaminated. And went and buried it. [LAUGHTER] That was what happened to it! But I worked 91 doubles to get that straightened out. We didn't have enough people to keep the place going, and so we'd ask for overtime. And I put in the most doubles that anybody has ever heard of. 91 doubles, straight days. 91 doubles. 16 hours a day. But I'd been used to that in the military, or more. But not that many days at a time. And we finally got back to normal hours. And but this wasn’t ever—but they stopped going more than two and a half days at a time overtime after they got it straight, before they could get back to work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So during those 91 doubles, was it still working on cleaning up after the incident-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah, mm-hm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: With-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. And they got the point for—they didn't ask for it, they just accepted I'll be there and I was. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: You mentioned that the ambulance, you'd buried the ambulance. Do you knew where it was buried? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Out there in Two West. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: In Two West. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. But I believe those were about ten years apart. The Dash 5 and the--or the--gosh, I can't remember that name, but the poor fellow that blew up there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: McCluskey. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: No. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: No? Oh, the first one. I don't know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: The first one. I can’t—it gets away from you when you get up in your 90s. If you don't use them, why, you forget them. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Any other incidents that stand out in your-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Well we had lots of little ones, but they, we could take care of them. They were generally out there. Once in a while, we'd bring somebody down for a cleanup down to the hospital here. But somebody was with him at all times. And never a chance of spreading anything. Of course then homes were surveyed here every so often by the monitoring people, just to check. Just to spot check here and there. Rounds for people that lived here. And once in a while, you'd get something, maybe a bathroom or something room, somebody had come from the project home, well then that started a whole different series of things. Your buses had to be re-checked. Everything had to be re-checked. Never left anything for chance, because it doesn't go away. But once in a while, you'd find a little bit in home. But nothing really drastic, and nobody was ever fired for bringing home the—just something that was overlooked at the time. They bypassed a monitor some way or another. They got--or they touched something and then went into a clean area, and they thought they were still clean and they went home with it. But no, there was always right orders. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So you said you worked there for almost 34 years. Did the equipment change over time, the equipment that you used? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Our detection equipment didn't change. We had the Geiger counters and we had alpha—I'm trying to think of the sampling equipment that we used and the detection equipment, and the air sample stuff, and that. And no, in that length of time, nothing had changed yet. But they changed fairly soon after that, I understand. And got a little more sensitive equipment. And people had more schooling after--things that were brought—when you can find instruments going that can detect this much easier. That's what they brought in later. Real handy. Real nice. But other than that, why, Geiger counters and Junos, and that was the things that they had when they started, and that's the things that we had. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And how about when you had to clean someone up, did that sort of process stay pretty much the same? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. First you use the normal equipment. If anything higher level, a Juno or alpha, so we'd detect it. And then if it was larger than that, why, they were left out there and cleaned up out there. It wasn't until we got down to the very minor things that we couldn't--it was on skin or in skin, on clothing. But we had just—in real clean rooms. So if there was any on them, we could get it real quick. And I don't recall anyone knowingly took any in home. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Everybody was pretty respectful of that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So did you have to wear a certain kind of gloves? Do you have to wear a mask or something? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yeah. Depending on whether it was fresh air or whether it was a salt mask, depending on what kind of work we were on, they were sealed when we were working in the canyons, in the cells, were sealed down tight. And then we had somebody check us as we came out. And so we never carried anything out. We took some time to--sometimes it took longer to get out than it did to do the job. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So obviously there are a lot of precautions that were taken, a lot of safety measures. Did you feel then—obviously you-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: I don't remember anybody knowingly took any shortcuts-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: --In order to get a job done. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Mm-hm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Everything was always in a hurry. Everything was on a schedule. Well, sometimes when you're working with contamination and radiation, it just don't work on schedule. And we'd have to hold. They had people on overtime one way or another, but we couldn't let them go. We'd have to call the job off, till they cleaned it up. And when they got them cleaned back where they could handle it, then turn 'em loose. But we were always with them. I mean, by turn 'em loose, you mean they could go to work, you know. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Whether it was mechanical or something else, or flow of contaminated material. They had a lot of high-level stuff there. Some of that stuff could--if you get it on you, if you didn't get it off real fast, you could get hurt. There were several times that thought the people were going to get hurt, but it turned out that they came out okay. But they did have it on them, but if they hadn’t have gotten it off of them, why, they would've been in trouble. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Mm-hm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: But it seemed like—if you worked there, stay clean. Stay clean. And never took any shortcuts. A shortcut could cost you your life. I don't remember anybody ever dying from it or anything like that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Given the sort of materials that were there and the job you had, did you feel that Hanford was a safe place to work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: How's that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Did you feel that Hanford was a safe place to work? Was there-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, sure was. And everybody was built around doing the job, getting the job done. But I don't recall any job that was carried on unsafely. It was caught--right in the middle of some pretty--something semi-nuclear, or whatever, we stopped and took care of it there, and then started back again. But that was the way of life. That was the way you did it. And no one ever considered taking shortcuts. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Right. What was the most challenging part of your work at Hanford, and maybe what was the most rewarding part? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Safety. Keeping people safe and taking care of their internal, external safety. And the contamination, always watching for contamination internally or externally. When you went home at night, you felt okay. But some people took a tremendous amount of radiation. But it was radiation, it wasn't contamination. So you didn't worry about going home or exposing your family to anything. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So as you look back over the over 30 years that you worked at Hanford, how was Hanford as a place to work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Good. Yeah. Everything was taken care of. They got you to work. They made it so that you didn't worry about coming to work. And that was good, because a lot of people were, you know, had some pretty high--there were some lethal dose rates out there if you had to get around them, and you took very, very small amounts of it. And so you didn't really worry about--I mean the only time was when we had some criticality and some of us would volunteer. But we would volunteer because we were older. We weren't having families. We--well, I don't know. We would take the necessary precautions. We'd back off if something didn't seem right and look at it again from another angle. So if someone took an overdose, it'd be because of too many days of overtime. And they finally got that down to where if you had taken so much dose rate for a number of hours, why, you couldn't take anymore. And it was always within the safe limits. I don't remember anybody getting an overdose of radiation. Except for us that had to in order to find out if our buildings were clear. And there was nobody left in them. To search the buildings, we had to take an over amount. And it was supposed—like in our big building, Dash 5, there were only three of us volunteered. But there's three floors, and we knew before we went in about how much time it would take to go to every room on every floor. So that we wouldn't leave--if anybody fainted, had a heart attack or something like that in getting out would still be there, because nobody's back in that building for two or three days. You were just clicking and clacking away. [LAUGHTER] You just--kind of different sounds, you know, make you feel a little anxious because all the alarms were going, and which alarms are the ones that you're watching for that might be external. And dose rates or contamination or type of things like that. Most of the contamination bells were all around [INAUDIBLE] were going off. And we had to find where that spread was, how bad was it, and what it was going to take to clean it up. And it took quite a while. But they'd give people their maximums and send them home. That's where you got all cleaned up and back to work again. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So did you have to have--you talked about safety. Did you have like regular safety training, did they have that at Hanford? Did you have to-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Yes. Yeah. Everything was safety. And you had special meetings. If you were going to do a special job, say down in one of the cells or something like that, you had training on it, a dry run training in another cell that was clean. So you knew exactly what you were going to handle, how long you were going to handle it, how many people it was going to take to handle that, and which sets of dose rates. They would only take maybe an overtime of—of one overtime--not overtime, but taking a double in exposure. And then if it took 10 people to do that, you just lined up 10 people and dressed them and got them ready, and you got the others out. And so nobody took any extra over what they were supposed to take. And then their badges were red. And they knew right then that's where they were going to--whether they were okay or not, if they were concerned about it. And once in a while, you'd open up something that, in trying to get that job done, you'd open up something else. And then, of course, we were right there, and our instruments were—and we're dressed, too, so our instruments would tell us right there we were taking it from that, right here. And then we could do—tell them they could work two inches, five inches, a foot, two foot, or arm’s length, and then what the dose rate would be. So tried to keep everybody as healthy, as good we could. And it went off pretty good. Everybody felt comfortable with it, anyway. Maybe sometimes--everybody's human. Sometimes they make little boo-boos. But if you caught them, you never let them back in again. You know, some people will just for some reason or another, they just want to get into trouble. And when you find out that person, you get him out then. You never let him go back in. He's a hazard. So he'd be put on a cold job somewhere here on the project, or he's fired. But never played around with him. I don't remember people by name as to any particular one, but-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: I want to go back. You mentioned earlier that when you first came here and moved into a house, you took a bus to work and it would pick you up in front of your house. How long did you do that? How long did you take the bus to work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: You know, you think you—that was a big thing for people to drive. And some people didn't even have cars. They'd pick you up. And you got a bus stop real close to your house. They go all through Richland here. And they'd pick you up, they'd bring you back and drop you off back at your house. But it was--gosh, I never did drive to work. I always took a bus. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Took the bus. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: But during that--towards the end of that, some people were driving. And depending on where they worked and what job they did and if they had to move around with it. And they could drive to the Project parking lot. And then they had to go over to--well, just like the rest of us worked. No, it was so gradual, that never—and those dates were all so familiar at the time, boy! We were going to be able to drive, and they were going to go take the buses clear off. And that would have been a big day. And I'm trying to think. Just, I can't remember. But they sold the houses in '58. So I know it was--we'll say it was before then. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And so did you buy a house then after '58? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Uh-huh. Yeah. I was allowed one house, an A house. And I'd already been in it for 10, 15 years. I lived in that house 40 years. Or either had it for 40 years. I bought it, and then I kept it a long time. We paid $7,200 for an A house. All told, before I sold it, I built a new house out in Keene Village. And we got $109,000 for it. But needed fixing up a little bit here and there, you know. But really a good house. Very easy to heat and easy to--they were comfortable, nice rooms. And they're all--most all of them are still standing! [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: And do you remember anything else about the community of Richland at the time in the 1950s? Were there any special community events or things like that that you remember? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Well my spare time was with military. So I didn't have much spare time. Towards the end, I flew to China for 12 years. Every other week, never missed a week. And worked here full-time. But I was flying the old C-141s. That was quite a drop from B-52s and 36s. [LAUGHTER] But it was a mix, good mix. But everything, regardless of where you went, if you--like in Japan, had family there. I had to have somebody go with me because of my job here and my Air Force job. Classification all the time. Never talked about it. They knew that you worked here, and that was good enough. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, it was a lot of classification. Some jobs were, gee, you were afraid to talk to anybody. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: So could you tell your family what you did at Hanford at all? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: No. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: They didn't really know what sort of job you had? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: As far as my family was concerned, my children were going through grade school here. And my wife didn't work. She just took care of us all. What they read in the papers or from things like that. And they know better than to ask. Because it was classified. But they'd got used to that in the Air Force. SAC was, boy, it was as much or more so than Hanford. But you got so you just lived with that. Gosh you never--but also you remembered a lot of those things for a long time even after you could've maybe talked about them. But this time nobody was particularly interested. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Was that difficult at all to be working and then come home and not be able to talk to anyone about your job at all? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: No. When you got off the--out of your building, why, we just didn't do it. Once in a while, they'd say, where do you work? And they'd say oh, you know, or something. Try to not answer. But if you did, why, you'd tell them what building you worked in, yeah. And every building had a classification about it. They wanted you to--if you worked in that building, you didn’t have any business talking about it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Is there anything from your experiences working at Hanford that we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to talk about or think you should talk about? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: Oh, yeah. There’s things, things, oh gosh--at the time, there was a lot of things that I would like to have talked about. But now I can't remember anything right off-hand. Anything you'd like to talk about, it was classified. And you'd go to specialty school, special this, special that. And guards. But I enjoyed working there. I worked lots of overtime because I enjoyed the job. My outside interests was the military, and every spare minute that I had, why, I was with that either in Walla Walla--I was base commander at Walla Walla in the Reserve side, recovery units. So I was pretty busy all the time. I was looking ahead to either here or there. And then when I retired from the military, then I had more time to work here doing things, and with my family. Go places and do things. But it all worked out good. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Well I want to thank you very much for coming in today and sharing your experiences with us. I really appreciate. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: I'm sorry I can't remember a lot of things. Gosh, it's surprising me. When you stop using it and you weren't supposed to talk about it, then you just disappear it. I mean, unless someone mentions something, and then brings it up to you. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Well you did a great job. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Colley: A lot of years! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX33073153"> Bauman: Some really interesting stories, so, appreciate it. </div> Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:42:38 Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview U Plant T Plant Dash 5 Building Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1954-2013 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1954-1986 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 251 kbps Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Robert Colley Description An account of the resource An interview with Robert Colley conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11/20/2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-07-21: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. Dash 5 Building Hanford (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Richland (Wash.) T Plant U Plant https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fef770d057cbd7fcd5e879acb0e88b207.jpg 4163a90a24db7d167a6eaea91a7561ee https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F607e136b0c77f3d9db0c55df91e50740.mp4 9f34d5ceebf274acb1217462d6100458 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Bauman, Robert. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Copeland, Harold. Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri Cities Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:49:48 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 602 kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 200 Area N Reactor Plutonium Finishing Plant Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) 3000 Area T Plant 184 steam power plants 1100 Building 100 Area 184 Building Dash-5 Building 221-T Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1947-2013 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1947-1987 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Windchimer, WW Hall, Lee Hill, Verne Lettingham, Jay Copeland, RW Galloway, Elijah Chein, Yao Madison, Web Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Northwest Public Television | Copeland_Harold </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Robert Bauman: Well, we can go ahead and get started with the interview. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Harold Copeland: Sure. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: So first I'm going to have you say your name and then spell it also. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Yes. I am Harold Copeland, Harold Curtis Copeland, H-A-R-O-L-D C-U-R-T-I-S C-O-P-E-L-A-N-D. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: All right. And my name’s Robert Bauman and today is August 6, of 2013. And we're conducting oral history interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And so we're going to be talking about your experiences working in the Hanford site. So I wonder if we could start by having you tell me first, how you came to Hanford, when you got here, any first impressions of the place, any of that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: My wife and I came here from Denver, Colorado in October 1947. I was working for the Bureau of Reclamation. They were decentralizing their main office, sending people to all the field offices. General Electric came in recruiting and they had received word of this decentralization, looking for engineers. So there were a number of us that thought that's a good opportunity, so we came out here, 1947. We're driving our little three-window Ford Coupe and towing my Harley motorcycle on back. And the first impression of Richland was pretty grim. We came into town and all we saw were these flat-topped, prefab houses. They didn't have their peak roofs yet. And there was dust in the road and not hardly any trees. But we came here. General Electric said there's a job for five years. Well, for the first four or five years, we kept thinking, when do we go back to Colorado? I grew up in Colorado. See, it's a neat place in Fort Collins and I graduated from CSU there, so naturally, it was like home. But after five years, we began to like this place. We had the Columbia River, the Yakima River, had the Blue Mountains, the Cascades, and the ocean, and fishing in the ocean not too far away. So we made it our home for all these years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: And when you and your wife first came, what sort of housing did you live in first? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: They were building houses rapidly. The A and B houses, a lot of those were up and people living in them and prefabs, as I mentioned. Our first few months, we were living with Lee Hall and his son, 700 Sanford, in a two-bedroom prefab. And a wife and I got the small bedroom. She was pregnant when we got here. December 7, the Pearl Harbor Day, but in 1947, our first daughter was born and there was pretty cramped conditions with the baby beside the bed and then a two-bedroom prefab, well, the crying at night. She had not gotten used to sleeping at night. But Lee Hall said he had one bad ear. He says, put her out in the living room and let her cry out there. I'll just turn my good ear down and I won't hear her. So we did and the crying session and nothing happened from it. Finally got the message to Diane that she was supposed to sleep at night, so that was nice. And Lee Hall was so glad to have a woman in the house to do cooking and do furniture. She did curtains and changing paint and putting a woman's touch on the house like women can do that men don't have any idea about. Well, she did that and he was very pleased to have us with us, but they were building the pre-cut houses. And we get in along about in the '48, it was probably in March or April, the pre-cut houses were ready to be occupied. We moved to a two-bedroom pre-cut. Lee Hall was most depressed and dejected because we were leaving and taking all his good drapes away. So we lived at 700 Sanford for several years until about, I think it was 1973, our second child was born. So on the housing list, we were eligible for a bigger house, a three bedroom. We were in a two bedroom. It so happened I was working with the engineer, Verne Hill was his name. And he lived out on Atkins. And he said, they had a housing list. Big board behind the glass, a housing list was posted. You'd go down and apply for housing that became available. Verne told me his next door neighbor was moving, so I applied for that house before it was posted, see? So I was first on the list of eligibility for the house and we got the house at 209 Atkins because of Verne. And it—they were well-built houses, number one grade lumber, and it's been a very durable and good place to live over the years. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Where was this housing list that you mentioned? Where was that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: They had sort of a housing department located in the vicinity, very close to where the Richland Police Department is, across the street from the Federal Building would be. But they would post this housing list and people that were eligible to move would go in and apply. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: And how would you describe the town of Richland at the time in the late '40s and early '50s? What kind of place was it to live? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Very safe place. Good schools. Good housing. No crime. Everybody that worked at Hanford had had their background checks. They wouldn't hire any criminals or background violators. So we could leave our cars unlocked, we could leave our doors unlocked, and it was a very safe place. The main thing was security for the plant. The plant operation security was very, very strict then, but living conditions were very good. They had 700—420 Wright Street. We rented the house. $38 a month. It's a two-bedroom pre-cut called a U house. And the electricity was furnished, the water, the sewer. They even give you grass seed to plant your lawn, and if you had some maintenance to be done in the house, call them up and they'd come and fix it. The wind blew a lot. There were no ranch houses at that time. And the wind came—they started building the ranch houses. The soil was all very fluffy and stirred up and we would get one of those terminator winds as they were called, the way they would blow dirt into our yard. And there was a terminator wind and there was probably three to four inches of sand blew into our front yard. The way they took care of it was the fire department came out with their tanker trucks and hoses and hosed this off of our lawns. They also learned, they gave you the plant seed, but they only gave you enough seed for just about one quarter of your lawn at a time. When you get it going, then they give you seed for the next section. Trying to water it and keep it growing, the whole thing they learned, was too much for the residents. So it was a very safe, good place to live. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Do you remember any community events, any special events sort of things in the community during that time? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Community events, the one that comes to mind, there were probably some but I can't think of was the boat races. And it was called the Atomic Cup, which nowadays is not politically correct. They call it the Columbia River, then it was the Atomic Cup for several years. And it used to be a nice place to go and watch the boats, but recent years, they're so crowded and unruly people that I don't have any reason to go down there. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Let's talk about your work in Hanford then. What was the first job that you had when you first came to Hanford in 1947? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Well, my degree is in mechanical engineering and that's what I was doing in Denver with the Bureau of Reclamation. They came out here and I had an engineering job in the--I think they call it the 1100 Building. It was a single story Army barracks type of building. It was in the location of, I would say where the parking lot is now on the lower side of the Federal Building. That was its location. And so I worked there until I got my Q clearance and then I was sent to 200 Area after I got the clearance. After I got to the 200 Area, they were in search of instrument engineers. No college courses taught instrumentation. The one up in Yakima was teaching good technicians and the one up at Milwaukee had good technicians, but no engineering. Well, I'd been in the Navy and my training in the Navy was with electronics gear: radio, transmitter, receiver, sonar, LORAN, and there might have been something else. So I had a lot of this electronic training and I had one semester of electrical engineering at Colorado State. So I transferred over to instrument engineering and shortly after I got to the 200 Area and followed that through all my time there as an instrument engineer. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: So what sorts of duties did you have then? What sorts of things might you do on a typical work day? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Well, I would work with the instrument technicians, help them with their work. If they needed new parts, I would go write purchase orders. If some of the instruments were getting old and wearing out and needed total replacement, I would write orders for those and oversee the installation and help the craftsmen, the instrument techs with calibration. There's one funny story that I just can't forget. Most of my work, some, not all, but most of my works in the 184 steam power plants, which provided the steam for emergency use during outages. And this took place at the N Reactor, at the 184. And he was an instrument specialist. And he was the--what do you call them? The steward. He was the instrument steward for their craft, Jay Lettingham. And we'd gotten all these new Foxborough DP cells in that we were installing to replace some other instruments that were obsolete. There's a much, much better system and we were in this little instrument shop in the 184 Building and I was reading the manual and he was trying to turn the screws and nuts to get it calibrated. And he tried and it didn't work and he tried and it didn't work. And then what he did, well, he said, here, you take these tools. And so I did it and showed him how to do it. He being a steward, see, I wasn't supposed to pick up a tool or touch one, but he had me do it. [LAUGHTER] I thought that was a real amusing situation, but we got along. We worked as a team. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Mm-hm. And how long did you work at the N Reactor then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Well, N reactor from about 19--probably '66 to '87. I retired in 1987. But my first work was assigned in the 200 Areas. And I was fortunate. One day, I got in on the startup of the 234-5, which they now call the Plutonium Finishing Plant, but in those days you're probably aware that they named the plants and the facilities in a name that did not relate at all to what they did. See? Plutonium Finishing Plant would have been giving away a secret, so it was 234-5. Everybody referred to it as the Dash-5 Building. I was there on the construction and startup of 234-5, mainly working on heating and ventilation. Had three big air supply filters and washers and fans for the building and it was a real tough ventilation because there were three separate pressure zones. The office zones were the higher pressure and then there was an intermediate zone. And the zone where the hoods and the work was done was the lowest pressure so that all contamination wouldn't flow from the work area to the shops and clean areas. And it was very difficult to get those pressures to be stable and maintained. I got in on the construction and startup of REDOX plant. And then I also got in on the construction and startup of PUREX. Now, part of the PUREX work, I had an office under Webster in the 3000 Area, North Richland, where we were working on design work and approving drawings and specifying the type of instruments to be procured. Then I got to go out to the field and saw them being installed. And I worked for Copeland, R. W. Copeland. That was a coincidence. No relation that I know of, but he was a good guy to work for. He was, I think, Blaw-Knox Construction, if I remember right, that he was in charge of all the construction there. So I got well acquainted with a lot of welders and pipe fitters and electricians, and everybody worked together. It was a very cooperative effort in those days. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Your first job was with GE, right? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: General Electric, yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: And then what other contractors did you work with? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Well, it was, I think about 1964. GE's contract was running out. They chose not to want to extend it and so United Nuclear came in and took over the contract for the 100 Areas and I think Westinghouse had a contract. There were several contractors for the 200 Area, so Uniroyal and couple others. I don't remember the name, but anyway, United Nuclear took over the 100 Area, so I worked for them and retired for them. And the plant was down in 19--I got my neat belt buckle. 20 years, 1964 to 1984. So the plant went down in 1984, but I retired in 1987. The neat thing I remember doing there, our maintenance work could only be done when the reactor was down. The reactor running was producing plutonium and steam for the steam plant. That was a money earner, so the downtime was kept at a minimum. When it went down for good and we thought that it was always going to restart, we went in and replaced a lot of tubing and instruments, valves with upgraded material, upgraded design. And we thought—I believe that that plant was in better condition, had better equipment than when it first started up and we always had that hope that—we didn't have any doubt at that time--that it was going to start up again and that all this good stuff in it was really going to run good. But then because of the Chernobyl incident, the politicians shut it down. It didn't make a scientific and engineering gradual shut down, which would have saved a lot of money in handling nuclear fuel and processing it. But they shut her down because of Chernobyl. And I'm not a real good nuclear physicist, but they think it's a two factor or an n factor. You'd have to talk to a nuclear person. But it was designed in this N Reactor so that it would not run away and meld itself like the Chernobyl plant did. It was impossible, but the politicians didn't know that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Obviously, security, secrecy were a big part of the Hanford site. Can you talk at all about how that part of it impacted your work at all in any way or any interesting stories about security? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Yeah. Some of the security men would hang out in restaurants or bars. I never experienced this or saw it happen, but I've heard about it. And if the customers in there talked anything between themselves or anyone else about anything, the work they were doing or what was going on out there, they were out the door. And most people knew that and obeyed it very, very strictly. For a long time, my wife and my daughter, see, they didn't know what I did out there. I couldn't tell them. I'd go to work in the morning and come back in the evening and ride the bus. So it was that tight. And another funny story, the kids in school were talking about what does your daddy do out there? Of course, they didn't know. And they'd say, my daddy is making toilet paper. He brings it home and his lunchbox. [LAUGHTER] It was one of the answers that the kid that didn't know what's going on was doing because, I guess toilet paper at the times was not readily available, but there was still always lots of it out at the plant. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: JFK, President Kennedy came to visit. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: What's that? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: President Kennedy came in 1963-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: --to dedicate the N Reactor [INAUDIBLE] came. What are your memories of that day? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: He dedicated the reactor. Well, I was working that day and didn't see it, but my wife and daughter went out and got to watch Kennedy designate. He moved the radioactive wand over the receiver and the motorized shovel, big, earth-moving shovel, scooped the first scoop of dirt out there, so the way I heard about it, he started it up. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Okay. Were there any events that sort of stand out in mind from the years working? Any unusual happenings or strange occurrences, sort of, when you were working out at Hanford at that time, or funny stories? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Yeah, I think of one that was very amusing. The instrument techs who I worked with, all of them were a bunch of good guys. They would play jokes. They had subtle humor and played jokes on people, harmless type of things, nothing to harm. This occurred in the 221-T, the separations building in the 200 Area, 200 West. And I'd often go over there early in the day, see the instrument foreman, what he was going to assign to the technicians and what was going on, what was to be done that day so that if it involved something that I needed to know, I would be there to hear about it. And one time, we had these ring balance instruments, we called them pen draggers. They had little pens. They would make a mark on a round chart, a moving chart and they were a very small pen with ink in them and made a very small line. And we were having this, I guess, a safety meeting was finished and we were talking to this--they had a secretary. The instrument foreman had a secretary. I think she was Eleanor, but I'm not sure. Well, one of the guys rigged up one of these ink pens, held it about waist height and he had a squeeze bulb with water in it and he squeezed it right at Eleanor. So she became all wet on her front side there and everyone was smiling and giggling and she didn't know what was going on until she looked. [LAUGHTER] You couldn't see the stream it was so fine, see? It was a fine stream. I thought that was funny! Another one in the same building, at quitting time, the guys that have their lunch buckets set on the workbench and when the bell rang, it was time to go rush out and get on the bus and go home. So this one guy, he was especially quick at grabbing his bucket and getting out so he could get a seat on the bus that he wanted. Well, we had a lot of lead bricks. They're the same size as red bricks that we have. This was a lead brick. They put it in his lunch bucket and he came along and grabbed this lunch bucket and all he got was the handle on the top part. [LAUGHTER] That was a funny one. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: I wonder what you see as were some of the more challenging aspects of working at Hanford were and what were some of the most rewarding parts about working at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Challenging and rewarding. Well, the challenging, and to a certain respect of keeping the secrecy of the plant, one of the challenging things was the dust storms called the terminators. And the rewarding thing, I think, was the men that I got to work with. They were all good guys, cooperative, pulling together. There was no territorial protection. If somebody knew something that the other guy didn't know, he would share it. That was very rewarding to me. There were different technical problems that I was faced with during the time, which we were able to take care of and never had any bad accidents. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: And you were there for 40 years-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: I imagine you must have seen some changes take place. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Many. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Either technological changes, or instruments. I wonder if there were any changes that you saw that you thought were important? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Yeah, there were a lot of changes. The older instruments in the power houses were--can't remember them. But they ran on a five to 25 psi signal. Then we got these newer Foxborough instruments and then they were three to 15 psi. And before I left, they were going to forward a 20 milliamp electrical instruments and controls. And the computer age was just getting started when I retired. And they would allow computer measurements—I was in the 100 Areas by then, of course—instruments, they would measure pressure temperature and position, could be done with computers, but the control the people had, the men, the operators had to maintain control. They allowed no computer control of the reactor. That was a limit at that time, but that's gotten past that, present day. But we had computer programs on the old IBM cards, punch cards, that punched the little square holes, and there was a giant computer in the basement of the Federal Building. There was a Boeing computer facility and all the cards went down there to be processed and problems and answers, solutions work out from that. That was just the beginning of that age that I just got in on the start of it, but not anymore. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: The site, of course, at some point, shifted from focus on production to focus on cleanup. I wonder if that shift impacted your work at all, the sorts of things you did? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Yeah. Well, to back up a little bit more, at one time, we had nine reactors up and down the river operating. And N Reactor was a first one in the country and maybe in the world that produced power. It was one of the first power reactors, of which there are quite a few of them now. So that was a neat thing, but--give me your question again. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Oh, I was asking about the shift from production to cleanup. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: To cleanup. I got in on a little of that before I started working at N reactor, the other BDF and DNDR were all being shut down and I worked for Wind Chimer, WW Wind Chimer. We were on--I was probably for about a year--helping with some of the cleanup on that and our motto, our mission was, drain and dry the piping and store the mercury. That was our mission that we were doing. The other groups were doing other things, but I know that we were tending to that for the shutdown. And at that time, it was shut down, not that we were not involved in the cleanup yet. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: But the shutting down of some of the reactors. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Mm-hm. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: I wonder if you could—so in a sense, overall your experience working at Hanford for those 40 years-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: What about the overall? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Yeah, what's your overall assessment of your 40 years working at Hanford? What are your thoughts about-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Oh, very proud. Very positive. I'm proud that I was able to work out there and support the Cold War effort. My first job out of college was with Fairbanks Morse, Beloit, Wisconsin where they made the diesel engines for the submarines, the OP, opposed piston engine. So I got to help with the war effort. Then I got the letter from my draft board that said, greetings, you are a selected volunteer, so that's when I got into the Navy. So I got into the Navy parts and then, as I told you I didn't have to get shot at, but I was working during the war time, then out here for the Cold War. So I had those three parts of my life, I think, contributing to the growth and the safety of our nation. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: I want to ask you about your running. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Oh, yes. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: At some point, you got involved in running. When was that, and how did that get started? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Elijah Galloway. Dear, dear friend who’s gone now. He was the Brown Shoe Air Force, that's the Army Air Corps. Before the Air Force—the present day Air Force was formed, the Air Corps was a part of the Army. He said I was part of the Brown Shoe Air Corps. So he flew missions and did things, but one of the jobs where he got started running was CIA, Russia. Both he and his wife got trained. They had probably most of a year of training in Russian and how to conduct themselves as observers, but really getting spy information, but they were just called observers over in Russia. And then he participated in all the Russian parties. They had lots of caviar and vodka and pretty soon he was overweight. And his doctor, when he went to Germany for a checkup or leave, he said, you need to lose weight. So he encouraged him to start a running program, which he did. And he lost weight and he lost weight and whenever he would go out on one of these surveillance programs, he'd just go out walking, then he got to running. He'd count the number of insulators on the power pool, just simple stuff that he could observe while he was out, then there was always a Russian counterpart that was with him and following him. He was a runner. And pretty soon, Elijah got so good he could run out and leave this guy. [LAUGHTER] And so one time, the story he told me, he went out for his run with his counterpart, Russian guy, and he finished his run and then he told the Russian guy, well, let's go out and run your course. Now, I want to run your course. He was too tired to do it. [LAUGHTER] He was a specialist on antennas, jamming and communication, that was his specialty in his work. He had an electrical engineering degree and antennas was his thing. And so he was involved in a lot of that communication and jamming for the US over there. The one amusing thing that was taught to his wife. The Russians would have a big parade. They would have these big wheel movers with the missiles on them and they'd have a big parade celebrating how great we are. And Elijah and his wife, Beryl, would have their trench coats on and have their Leica cameras down at waist high, just barely pointing out between the buttons. And they would take pictures and just the time they'd click, they'd go, [COUGH]. And there were always Russians around spying on them. If they heard a camera click, well, then bad news for them. But they could cover this up with [COUGH]. Just cover it up the click of the camera. That was one of the neat stories that he told me. But from his experience with losing weight, he retired and his home was in San Antonio, Texas. And he couldn't stand being retired. And he'd gone to school with Paul Venter, a name that I mentioned. I think it was probably at Whitworth. I'm not positive, but he knew Paul and he kept in touch over the years and Elijah didn't like being retired and he had this electrical degree and Paul says, why don't you come up to Hanford? There's some jobs here. Elijah came up here, got a job. He was my office partner and I think I already told you part of it, that he and Jerry and I, in my office one day, Elijah said, let's go out on our noon break and go for a little run. Because it had meant so much to him and he felt so much better getting down to a trim weight that he wanted to influence other people to enjoy that same feeling and the euphoria—the endorphins get into your body when you're running to where you just feel like you're just going and can go forever. Of course, you can't, but you have that wonderful, elevated feeling. He wanted to share that with everybody and I wanted to share it with other people too that I have run across in my running years. So that was Elijah. It was about 1972 that this happened and I started running and within a year later, I ran my first marathon. He coached me on how to train for a marathon. It feels good, but don't keep going further than, you know, increasing not more than 10% or a few miles each day. Hold a very strict schedule of gradual training and conditioning. Because if you do try and get too much, you get injured, disappointed, then you quit running. That has happened, so one thing that he taught me and another people. And so we ran the old Cheney Marathon up at Cheney, Washington. And that Cheney Marathon only lasted, I think, about three years and they discontinued it. But the neat thing, I still hold the first place for 50 age division at the Cheney Marathon. No one came along later and beat my record because the marathon was stopped. [LAUGHTER] A lot of other marathons, why, someone else comes along when they turn 60 and they beat my record. That's how I got started running and I'm a advocate of—if not running, I swim or bike or kayak, whatever suits your fancy, whatever you feel good doing, do it, but keep doing something. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Sounds like you were running pretty regularly at your last time period working at Hanford. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Pretty regular. My routine for many years was up at 4:30. Do my toileting, strap on my shorts and shoes, out the door at 5:00. I'd run 7 miles in an hour and I was back to the house and Evelyn would have breakfast. I'd quick shower and get breakfast and then I'd catch the bus at 6:30, about a two-block walk from my house, catching the bus. That was my routine, seven miles every weekday morning and then six miles at noon with the guys at N Reactor. So I got 13 miles a day, weekdays. Saturday was the long run day. Do 20 or 22 miles. You have to have some long distance training to train your body to learn to burn fat when you run out of glycogen. And the person I did that most with was my dear Chinese running friend, Yao Ming Chein. “Chee-in.” We would meet Saturday and run our 20 to 22 miles. Sunday was a rest day, so I'd ride my bike about 15 miles. That's a different exercise. It rested your running muscles. But Chein, I remember, he would, at one of our wedding anniversary parties, Yao Ming and is wife were there and I was introducing him and he says, Chein, E before I. He says I before E and everything except Chein, C-H-E-I-N. It wasn't C-H-I-N as Chin, but he was Chein. That made a difference to him. So he's still around. He lives over in Bellevue. I talk to him every once in a while. We formed a—a lot of marathoners, you form a bonding, a marathon bonding with these people that you run 26 miles with and you look for them and wonder how they are and if they're not at the next marathon, you wonder if they're ill or accident or anything happened. It's a bond that, it's hard to describe, but it's there. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Is there any things that I haven't asked you about in terms of your working at Hanford that you think is important to talk about and would like to talk about that you haven't talked about so far? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: There's one more funny that I didn't include. We were working at the PUREX plant, 200 East. And this instrument specialist, Web Madison was his name, he--to back up a bit, they needed instrument technicians that could find work and work on instruments. So they were looking for watchmakers, all search the country. Watchmakers would qualify. They knew how to do fine, delicate work. Well, there were a lot of watchmakers out there because there was no training for them early on except, later they had the Yakima, forget the name of it, instrument school and the one in Milwaukee. But Web had tooth problem, teeth all decayed. So he had upper and lower plates, all new plates. Had them built by the dentist, you know, nice. And then the one thing that I'm leading up to, if an instrument needed a part and you couldn't buy it, they could make it and they could build parts that were broken and replace them, they were so good. So Web got his new teeth and he looked at them real close. He built himself a set of stainless steel teeth, a whole set of stainless steel teeth. And one night when he come off shift and through the badge house, the guard always looked at you and looked at your badge and he'd know who you are and he knew who he was. They checked him out. But he flashed those stainless steel teeth at the guard and the guard just about fell over. It was a riot. [LAUGHTER] Another thing they did, they were practical jokers. Another thing they did there to the going off shift, I didn't observe this, but I heard about it. An instrument tech, they were getting ready to go off shift and they called up at the badge house and said, we're going to flush the phone lines. And we want you to unhook your phone, take your phone off and just hold it while we flush the lines. And so he did that and they took some air nozzle and made some noises. It sounded like flushing noises. And then he went up to check out to catch the bus and they really ribbed that guard. What in the world are you doing on the phone. Oh, they had him put it in the basket. They had him put it in the wastebasket. What are you doing in the wastebasket? Practical jokes like that. There are so many of them that—so, good to think about. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Yeah. Well, I want to thank you for coming in today and sharing your stories and experiences. I appreciate it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: It was my pleasure. I am hopeful and I'm sure that what you're doing will be very educational and important to your students over the coming years. So I want to thank you for doing this work. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Bauman: Well, I'm glad to be a part of it. Thanks again. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX243576330"> Copeland: Mm-hm. </div> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Harold Copeland Description An account of the resource Harold Copeland was an instrument engineer on the Hanford Site from 1947-1987. An interview with Harold Copeland conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by Mission Support Alliance on behalf of the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Nuclear instruments & methods Nuclear weapons--History. Nuclear weapons industry Nuclear weapons industry--United States--Employees. Nuclear weapons plants Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-04-22: Metadata v1 created - DMO 2016-07-08: Metadata v1 created -[J.G.] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 8/6/2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 100 Area 1100 Building 184 Building 184 steam power plants 200 Area 221-T 3000 Area Cheney (Wash.) Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Dash-5 Building General Electric Hanford Site (Wash.) N Reactor Nuclear waste disposal Plutonium Finishing Plant Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Richland (Wash.) Running Secrecy T Plant United Nuclear Corporation United States. 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Title A name given to the resource Post-1943 Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Description An account of the resource Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Robert Bauman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Steve Buckingham Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Northwest Public Television | Buckingham_Steve </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Robert Bauman: We're going to go ahead and start if that's all right. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Steve Buckingham: Okay. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: So if we could start by just having you say your name and spell it for us? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Okay. It's John Stevens Buckingham is the full name, and it's S-T-E-V-E-N-S, B-U-C-K-I-N-G-H-A-M, just like the palace. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: All right. Thank you. And today's date is November 13 of 2013-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: November 13, 19--2013. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: 2013. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: 2013. [LAUGHTER] I'm still in the last century. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: And my name’s Bob Bauman, and we're doing this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So if we could start maybe by having you tell us how you came to Hanford, what brought you here, when you arrived? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Okay. Well, first of all, I'm a native Washingtonian. I was born in Seattle, grew up in Pacific County. Went to Washington--graduated from high school in 1941, and went to Washington State College, at that time, in chemical engineering. Well, of course you know the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th of that year. I was able to finish off my first year at Washington State, and came back, the second year, the sophomore year, there were just mobs of people on campus recruiting for military. I tried several of them. I tried to get into the Navy V-12 program, but my eyes were not good enough. But I was able to get into an Air Corps program that they were looking for meteorologists. So I signed up for that. I had to get my dad to give me permission, because I was only 18 at the time. [LAUGHTER] But I was able to finish my sophomore year. I had just begun my freshman, my first semester, and I had just started the semester, my second semester, when I got the call to report to active duty. And the program that I had signed up for was this pre-meteorology program. And actually, it was kind of a neat situation. I was sent to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. And it was a little bit of a cultural shock, coming from a rather conservative Washington State to go to Reed College. We could smoke in classes. We could go up to a girl's room in the dormitory. [LAUGHTER] And they sang rather interesting songs on campus, too. [LAUGHTER] But Reed has very high scholastic standards, and I think the best math professor I ever had, I had at Reed College. But we went--we just had almost normal college classes: math, and physics, and geography. It was an interesting experience. Well, after a year at Reed, and also being in the military--because I think we must have had about--we had, what, two flights of cadets there, and we were all in uniform, of course. And after one year they decided they had enough meteorologists, so most of us were looking around for another program to get into. And I applied to go into communications, because I had a lot of physics background by then, and was accepted in that. They sent me to—oh, gosh, I can't even think. It was North Carolina. It was the first time I'd ever been down to the South, which was another cultural shock. [LAUGHTER] To see separate drinking fountains for black--colored and white. That's where we went through, essentially, Officers Candidate School. But the communications part of it was spent at Yale University in New Haven. That was about—oh, I think that was about six months that I was there going through communication. We had to learn all about radio and communications. But there is where I got my--I was commissioned, then, as a second lieutenant in the Air Corps. And about the time that I--just before I finished there, one of my friends had gone up to Yale University--to Harvard, because they were looking for people to work in radar. Well, why not? [LAUGHTER] So I applied, and was sent up to New Haven--not New Haven, up to Harvard. And there we went through a very intensive training on electronics, getting all the background on electronics. I used to kind of laugh. If you dropped a pencil on the floor went to drop to pick it up, you'd be behind three months. [LAUGHTER] It was really intensive training. And after that training, then they sent--most of us went downtown in Boston and worked on the top floor of a building that overlooked the harbor, developing radar they were working on. And that was really kind of interesting. But that was kind of temporary. That was just to give us some practical experiences. So that--then when that part of the training was over with, they assigned me to the 20th Air Force, which was the big bombers that were getting ready to go to Japan, and sent me to Boca Raton, Florida. And that was kind of another goof-off. We were just--we had to go on training exercises, flight training exercises once a week. So I got to fly all over Florida, all over the Caribbean. [LAUGHTER] Just goof-off things. It's really kind of almost embarrassing, because we'd go fishing and stuff like that on the boat, because they'd always had to send a boat out in case a plane went down in the ocean, and so we could go out on the boat and fish. While I was at Boca Raton, then the Japanese surrendered, and the war was over. Well, what are they going to do with all of us that had been trained? [LAUGHTER] I went out to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and they were bringing B-29s back from overseas. And all we did was remove the radar equipment from B-29s and stash it someplace. Well, I guess they decided they really didn't need us anymore. So I was able to be discharged and get back to the Washington State College to pick up my second semester sophomore year. Well, I had accumulated so many credits in going to these other colleges. So I went and talked to the dean, and he says, well, why don't you just switch to chemistry? Get your degree in chemistry or general, and then come back for a master's degree. Well, I had been on the East Coast for two years, and I did not like it back there. Being a--my mom and dad lived out in Pacific County yet, and I wanted to get home. I had two job offers when I graduated from college. One was in Troy, New York, and the other was here. General Electric was--had on the campus quite a bit of recruiting people, because they were getting ready to develop a new separation process called the REDOX process. And they were looking for people with scientific background, chemistry and so forth, to work there. Well, I grabbed the opportunity, and I arrived here on the 26th of July in 1947. I remember the day. [LAUGHTER] And that was really--it was very interesting, because Richland was--GE was really operating under the old DuPont system yet. It was the organization was still the one that DuPont set up during construction. We were in the technical department. And I was sent out to the 100 Areas, waiting for my clearance to come through, and we were just analyzing the water that went through the piles. And then when my clearance came through, they sent me to the 300 Area where they were developing this new separation process, this REDOX process, and we were doing the analytical control for REDOX process. And that was--of course, the development was using just uranium and other chemicals that didn't have any of the radioactive, really highly radioactive material other than uranium. But it was really very interesting, because a whole new line of metallurgy was being developed there. The metallurgy in—old metallurgy was stuff like smelting, and electrolytic, and stuff like that. Well, the chemical separation process they used out at Hanford was a carrier precipitation process, which did not allow them to recover the uranium. So this is why they were developing this new solvent extraction process, so they could cover both plutonium and uranium simultaneously. That was really quite a remarkable new metallurgical process that they were really developing here at Hanford, because how do you contact organic and aqueous phases, and stuff like that? And what kind of a contact? They had all kinds of ones that they were working with there in the 300 Area, and it was really very interesting. We were doing all the analysis for it. And then I was there maybe a little over a year, and they decided we needed to have a little experience with “real” material. [LAUGHTER] So they sent several of us of to be shift supervisors, out of the 200 Area, and the 222-T and 222-V Plants. That's where we got to work with real material. And it was just another training program. They were still--they had begun construction on the REDOX Plant. And about that time, then there was a little bit of an accident down in Texas, where a ship loaded with ammonium nitrate blew up and practically wiped out the city of Texas City. [LAUGHTER] And that was what we were using as a salting agent in the REDOX process. Well, that set the REDOX process into a big delay. What are you going to do with--we can't use ammonium nitrate. It's just plain too hazardous. They began looking at new salting agents at that time, and it took, oh, maybe six months or so before they finally came up with a new salting agent. Well, we just kind of fiddled around a little bit out in the labs. They were closing the business phosphate process labs. They combined them into just one lab. So several of us just kind of floated around doing other work that was kind of related to the REDOX process. For a while, I was in standards, where we were making radioactive standards they used to control the counting machines and all that kind of stuff. And it was not that interesting. Well, I had an opportunity then to go into an organization that was still there in the old 3706 Building in 300 Area. It was called process chemistry. And they were the ones who were working on the chemistry of the REDOX process. It was just--to me, it was just an absolute perfect fit, because I liked to monkey around with experiments and do research type stuff. And it was a neat bunch of people that we were working with. Some of them I still kind of chortle when I think of some of the stuff they pulled. [LAUGHTER] But I was able to move into that, and I was the third person to move out to 222-S, which was the laboratory for the REDOX process. And that's where we were, for our final laboratory was out there. And I stayed in that most of my working career. I did take a couple years to go over to work on writing the waste management tech manual, because they were--that was another process. We got to work in every new process that came along. We concentrated a lot on the REDOX process, because that was new. And then that chemist down in the Hanford laboratories discovered tributyl phosphate, so that opened up the whole new PUREX process. That had to be developed. And all the chemistry that went in to that development, we worked with. And then they decided they had to do something with the waste, and there was an outfit came in that was going to separate out fission products out of the waste. And we were going to have a big fission product market. Well, we separated out a lot of strontium-90 and cesium-137. And the strontium-90 was all right, because they could use that as a heat source for places where they didn't have much sunshine, deep space probes and so forth. The cesium, unfortunately, the capsule we set someplace leaked, and we had a little bit of embarrassment. That had to be cleaned up. So Isochem had taken--that was when the companies had separated into all these different companies. And the waste management just kind of petered out. We still had waste management we had to do something with. So I continued just working on it, but went back to the process chemistry laboratory. I finally ended up manager there for several years until I retired. But it was a real experience, that's all I've got to say. I feel like I was very fortunate in being able to work with so much new technology. And I think one of the more interesting ones was, we were recovering--out of our waste, we were recovering neptunium-237, and I had set up a small demonstration process in the laboratory. And for three years, I was the total source of neptunium-237 in the whole United States. [LAUGHTER] And that 237, when we first started doing it, we actually would convert the 237 to an oxide, and mix it with aluminum, and make a fuel element out of it that we stuck in B reactor to make plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 is a very unique isotope of plutonium. It is non-fissionable, but if you get a ball of it about the size of a golf ball, it's generating so much heat, it'll actually glow red. So they use it as a heat source for deep space probes. So we were working on snap programs and all this is really fascinating new technology. And I just feel very fortunate that I had been able to have a finger in some of this stuff that's really far out. We were looking--you know that one time they were going to convert that big building next to the FFTF into a facility just to process plutonium-238. That was another program that didn't ever develop. But we kind of had fingers in just an awful lot of stuff over the years. Some of the stuff I kind of laugh about. There was a--they developed silver reactors to remove iodine from our off gases coming out of the plant, because of the iodine contamination. And one of the silver reactors at the PUREX Plant blew up. [LAUGHTER] Well, it was not serious. It was all contained. But we had to try to figure out, why did that darn reactor blow up? Why did they have a reaction in there? And I still remember one of the old chemists, Charlie Pollock. He was the one who was in charge of it. But I still remember him making mixtures and putting it outside the lab door on a hot plate and standing behind the door to see it, was he going to pop? [LAUGHTER] We did an awful lot of innovation like that. It was just really--I think we did have a good time mucking with this stuff. I jokingly say that--every Monday we would have what they called a process meeting where the chemists and the process engineers would get together to discuss what we're going to do this week. And I always said we just got together to see how we're going to screw the plant up this week. [LAUGHTER] There was so much new technology, and every week somebody would come up with a new idea. They were the biggest pilot plants in the world, really. [LAUGHTER] Both the REDOX one and the PUREX one, just developing these processes. The whole--you know, when we first came here, we were living in dormitories. And the men's dormitory was on one side of town, and the women's was on the other side of town. We'd meet in the cafeteria. [LAUGHTER] And I still recall, when we were working shift works, we would gather in the cafeteria after swing shift, and we'd still be in there talking, or doing something with the guys who would come in for breakfast to go to work on day shifts. [LAUGHTER] Graveyard was always hell, because you didn't have time to do anything but sleep and eat. [LAUGHTER] And swing shift was kind of bad because the movie house, the movies didn't start until 4:00, and so we could go to any movies or anything. But it was tolerable. We formed an organization called the dorm club, where we went on--made a lot of camping trips, had a few beer busts. I tell about, I was social chairman for a while, and I found a big bargain on beer, Pioneer Beer. It was made by the breweries that they opened when they were doing construction during the war. It was not very good beer. I think I had five cases hidden under my bed in the dorm for weeks until I got rid of it. [LAUGHTER] But most of us met our spouses at that time. And it was really a unique situation early on in the late 40s and early 50s, because almost all of us had been in the same boat. We had started college. We'd been called into active duty during the war. We'd finished active duty and returned to college to finish our degrees. So we all had had the same type of experiences. Some of them were pretty hairy. In fact, I well remember one of my roommates was telling about being in the Philippines, and sitting on his bunk during one time, and said a big old snake crawled up between his legs. [LAUGHTER] I think I would have been of the roof and never come back down if that had happened to me! [LAUGHTER] But you know we had all had similar experiences, and it was our first time, really, that we were making any money that we could do things with. We could buy cars, and bought cars. So we went on just all sorts of trips. We learned--most of us learned to ski. And those ski trips, that was still was fairly new in the State of Washington. There was a rope tow up in the Blue Mountains at Tollgate. And, oh gosh, I think a season ticket cost $5. [LAUGHTER] And we would—went down, and I think we initiated the chairlift at Timberline, down at Mount Hood. We went to a lot of places just when they were first opening. So, in fact-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: How long did you live in the dorms, then? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Well, let's see. I lived in the dorms several years, and then an acquaintance was able to get an apartment over on George Washington Way, and he asked if I wanted to share this apartment with him. You had to share. [LAUGHTER] You couldn't just live in one by yourself. So I then lived in that apartment for a couple of years, until I got married. Then we had a B house. [LAUGHTER] And that's where we were living when they began selling Richland out. And we were junior tenants in the B house, and way down on the move list, so there wasn't much chance of getting a decent house. My wife and I bought a lot over in Kennewick. And we didn't have much money, but we had a lot of energy, and we did an awful lot of building our own house. I think--I'm still living in it 54 years later. [LAUGHTER] So—but it's been--Oh, I don't regret a day of the work that we've done here. It's been challenging and interesting. After I retired from full time, I did a lot of part time work. I helped—was declassifying documents and I was a tour director, taking people on tours of Hanford. And I worked at the old Science Center down on the Post Office, before that became CREHST over there, where it is now. And the Visitors Center out at Energy Northwest, I worked there. And the FFDF Visitors Center. So it's been a wonderful life, really. [LAUGHTER] Fun. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: I wonder, when you arrived in--was it July 26th of 1947? What was your first impression of Richland, or of the place here? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: [LAUGHTER] Well! When I graduated from college, when my folks came over to graduate, and we came back through here. And I still remember going on the old highway, looking over, and seeing the stack of the old heating plant that used to be downtown in Richland, and thinking, oh gosh, do I really want to come here? And it was a little different. Of course I had worked in very highly classified stuff during radar during the war. So I was used to the classification. But Richland was really different. You just didn't talk about your work at all. You kind of knew what your buddies did. And there was the separation technology people, there was the pile technology people, the fuel technology people. You kind of knew what they did, but that's all. You didn't really know any details. And you never talked, we never talked about it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: You talked about the chemistry of the REDOX process. Could you explain sort of what that means, in terms of REDOX, what the process was? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Yeah. The fuel is dissolved, of course. They take the jackets off with sodium hydroxide, and then you dissolve the fuel in nitric acid. And then they used this solvent, it’s an organic solvent. The stuff we used was Hexone, for what the chemical name is methyl isobutyl ketone, which is a paint thinner. And to make sure that we could extract, this Hexone would extract uranium and plutonium from aqueous phase into this organic phase. Well, you needed to add a salting agent to be able to improve that extraction. These were done in what we called columns. They were packed columns. They used some stuff called Raschig rings, and they were about 40 feet long. The feed would come about the middle of the column. The organic things would come in at the bottom of the column. And then there'd be a scrubbing agent came in up at the top of the column, and that would scrub some of this stuff out. Oh, it was a complicated process. Then we would oxidize the plutonium--or we would reduce the plutonium through a three valence state, and that wouldn't extract. And that was the separation column. And then you'd have to run both of these stuff through similar columns to clean it up. It was—really, it was kind of a marvelous process. It was a whole new metallurgical processing. It was something that hadn't been done, really, until we did here at Hanford. So just developing all these little techniques was quite a chore. And it worked! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Then you said you were shift supervisor in the 200 Area? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Yeah, in the laboratories. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: In the laboratories. So what sort of work did that involve at that point? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Well, that was, then, that process chemistry that we were doing. But whenever there was an upset with the columns, there was all sorts of things, like the columns would occasionally flood, and they would just emulsify, and they couldn't get the organic and the stuff to separate. But why was that happening? And things like that. Sometimes the chemistry would get off a little bit, or we would get a carryover for some reason or other. It just—it worked, and it worked very well. But we were able to recover both the uranium and the plutonium. So we weren't putting uranium out in those old waste tanks. Then, you know, when we developed the PUREX process, we used the tributyl phosphate in a more dilute phase to go back in and recover that uranium we had stored from the old bismuth phosphate separation process. So you name it, we did it! [LAUGHTER] I kind of jokingly say that--you know, when DuPont was building this place, the war manpower boards told them where they could recruit, and they did a lot of recruiting in the South, because that was not highly industrialized. So that's why quite a few Southerners came up here to work. Well, Southerners are rednecks. [LAUGHTER] They can make anything work. And I really, I sincerely think it's a lot of the ability of those people to be able to do things, why this place even succeeded. And when you stop to think that that original construction and everything took place in 14, 16 months, it's just mind boggling. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Given the sort of materials you were working with out there, why don't you talk about safety issues? Was safety emphasized quite a bit? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Oh, you betcha. You know, DuPont was a stinker on safety because they made gunpowder. You've heard the story about them getting criticized for making big profits doing gunpowder during World War I. So when they took over the contract here, they said they'd do it for cost plus $1, and they only received $0.80. [LAUGHTER] I think that's kind of an interesting story in itself. But DuPont was really--boy, if you saw something was unsafe, that was corrected right now. You didn't need to continue working in the unsafe condition at all. And I kind of laugh a little bit about. I think we were safer out at the plant than we were in our own homes. We'd have these dumb safety meetings. Once a week you had to go through a safety meeting. Sometimes they were boring as hell. [LAUGHTER] But the other thing was that when we didn't have any accidents for a certain length of time, we'd get a prize. I still have some of the prizes we won over the years. That was another thing. When GE was taking over, we could get GE--we could buy GE products at employee cost. You wouldn't dare buy a frying pan unless it was GE. [LAUGHTER] So there were many little advantages. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: I wonder, of the different things you worked on at Hanford, what were some of the most challenging aspects of the work you did, and what was some of the most rewarding? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Well, I think one of the most rewarding ones was this neptunium-237. That was really a fun project, because about once a month we'd have to start up this little pilot plant, and you had to run it 24 hours a day for about a week to separate out this 237. That was a very challenging and very rewarding project, because it had a lot of interest. That, and the fact that it was also highly classified. They kept changing the classification, I think every month, you'd have a new name for it. One time it was Palmolive. [LAUGHTER] Let's see, what were some of the others? Birch bark. You never knew what you were supposed to call it from one month to the next, because it was a very high-priority thing. Also, when we had--they begin shipping most of it back to Savannah River, because Savannah River could make the 238 easier than we could here at Hanford. But I would separate out this 237, and I'd have to deliver personally to the mint car. That was the car that took the plutonium down to Los Alamos. I'd have to take that 237 up in a cask and put it on that mint car. [LAUGHTER] So there were a lot of little things like that. Some of the challenges, we had some technical problems over the years that were real problems. Like we had a ruthenium problem out at the REDOX process that was a little bit of a challenge. We spewed some plutonium out on the ground out there. And plutonium is kind of a nasty stuff, because it doesn't absorb. It migrates towards the river fairly fast. So there were a few of those little things that were a bit of a problem. Also, then, during the Cold War, when production was so critical—you know you just didn't shut down for hell or high water. And we were running out of waste storage space. We came up with a way we could treat the waste and make it crib-able, so we could put it just to a crib, an underground crib, like a dry well. And that was kind of a dumb thing to do. [LAUGHTER] But it was necessary, because we had to get plutonium out, somehow or other. And we didn't have waste storage space. It takes too long to build a waste tank. And some of the interesting little things is some of the crushers found that nice salty stuff down in the soil, and we had an awful lot of hot poop spread around in the desert at various places. [LAUGHTER] Some of those challenges were kind of challenging! We didn't get too involved in it, but somebody was getting involved in it, and we always knew who it was. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: So the situation where you said that you sort of spewed a little bit of plutonium, was that at PUREX? What happened with that situation? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Oh, they were recovering americium from the plutonium down at 234-5, and they had a criticality event down there. That was a very challenging situation. I happened to--the engineer who was in charge of that was a good friend. He was at a Boy Scout—at a heat down along the river, and they went down and got him, and brought him back, so we could do some work out there. But that was really kind of scary. That's the only really serious incident. That and Mr. McCluskey’s, when the glove box blew up in his face. And I always blame the union on that, because the union was being very stubborn about settling the strike, and that's why the column had sat with this acid on it for so long. Then when they started it up, it took off. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Are there any other incidents or things that happened during your time working at Hanford that really stand out to you? Humorous things, or serious. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: I can't think. I can think of several humorous situations that occurred, particularly when I was a punk kid supervisor out there in the 222-T Plant. We had quite a few women workers out there, and I swear, I think those women used lay awake at night to see how they could embarrass me. [LAUGHTER] And this one—the hot water tank was in the women's restroom, and it had a check valve in it. Well, the toilets were all these pressure-type toilets. And this one woman went in to use the toilet, and the check valve didn't check. She burned her bottom. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Oh, no. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: And I had to take her to first aid. And she was not at all hesitant about telling me exactly what had happened in detail. [LAUGHTER] I about died having to write up the accident report! Had employee been instructed on the job?, and stuff like that. [LAUGHTER] But I still chortle about that. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Yeah. You talked earlier about how during the peak of the Cold War, there was focus on production, production. At some point, that leveled off, and there was sort of a decreased emphasis on production, and of course, eventually, a shift toward cleanup. But I wonder if that sort of shift away from really high production, how that impacted your work at all? Did that change? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: It didn't seem to change it an awful lot. Those are very complicated processes out there. There not just simple processes, and they seem to have a tendency to something always going wrong. Like we had a situation of the columns flooding. And it was detergents that was put in through the Columbia River, up in Spokane and Wenatchee, up above us. Our water treatment system didn't remove this detergent. It was a phosphate detergent, and there it came through with our water purification stuff that we were doing. I think it gave us a bit of a headache for a while, of why there were these columns flooding all the time, and little situations like that. They seemed to come up, they'd crop up at weird times. Or a piece of equipment would fail, and how do we do it. Just—if you ever go out to the area, as you pass the old PUREX Plant, there's a tunnel that comes from the end of the PUREX Plant almost out to the highway, and there's a vent out there. And that tunnel is full of equipment that failed in the PUREX Plant that they shoved it into this tunnel and left it there. That's got to be cleaned up someday. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: I was going to ask you, President Kennedy came to visit in 1963 to dedicate the N Reactor. Were you present that day? Were you able to see-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Oh, you betcha. They took us—anybody who wanted to go in a bus down to the place where they were going to have the dedication. My wife, and her sister, and my two kids came out. And I don't know how my daughter ever found me in that crowd down there, but she spotted me somehow or other. [LAUGHTER] We were so far back you could hardly see him. But that was the first time they actually allowed people to come on the project, too. So it was really—I think my wife and her sister said they sat for an hour waiting to get through the barricade before they could come out. They were both quite amazed at what they saw when they got out here. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Right. And as you look back at all your years working at Hanford, how would you assess it as a place to work? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Well, some of the companies were much better to work for than others. I really enjoyed working for General Electric, because that's the company I first came to work for here. And Arco was a good company to work for. Isochem was just kind of iffy. They were very small—and I don't--they didn't quite have their act together yet. Some of the other later companies, I thought were just, nah. That was one of the reasons I quit when I did. I quit a little early. I took retirement at 63, because I just couldn't stand the company that was here at that time. They knew how to build airplanes, but they didn't know how to run a chemical plant. That shouldn't be in here. I hope you edit that out. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: [LAUGHTER] You did talk earlier about some of the technology that you saw. I wonder, are there any other examples? Or you could talk about some of the new technology that you saw develop during this time you were there? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Well, gosh, the technology was moving so fast. You know, they had this Fast Flux test--they built the Fast Flux Test Facility. That was all new technology. And the plutonium recycle reactors—that was all new technology. I'm just amazed at the technology that they were developing here. And it was all developed here. We didn't get a lot of credit for it, unfortunately. [LAUGHTER] And I feel kind of bad about that, because it was the cleverness of the people working here that developed some of this technology. Even up there in that--in what they called the old separation plant, the old bismuth phosphate plant, the design of the equipment in that is just very unique. It was the first time that high-level radiation radioactive material was being handled, and they had to come up with a technique of handling it. There was a crane operator--there was a big long crane that ran the whole length of that 800-foot building. He sat in a lead-lined cab behind a concrete parapet. The only thing he had was optics that he could see down into the cells. And how he could take those--you look into one of those cells down there, and it's like looking into a plate of spaghetti. There's so much junk in it, so much stuff in there, pipes. And all everything that comes in has to come through these connectors. And he, the crane operator, had to know which one he had to take off first to get in, and another one in behind it, or something. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Wow. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: And just the technology they went through, and the learning process. I don't know how anyone was ever to do it. I've talked to one old engineer that, fortunately enough, I could take on a tour one time. He came out here with DuPont during the early construction, and he worked on quite a bit of it. He was here, and they gave him a special tour. And I happened to be the one who took him around. It was one of the funnest days I had, because he told me all sorts of things about some of the stuff that he had worked on. He had helped design the cask carts that carried the fuel from the reactors up to the separation plants, and he knew the people who would design the connectors for the separation plants, and some of the design on the waste tanks. To me, some of the stuff that they were able to do here, it still just boggles my mind. There was an awful lot of smart people working on this place, that's all I've got to say. A lot smarter than me! </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: One more question. I teach a course on the Cold War, and of course most of my students now were born after the Cold War ended. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: You know, I wonder, as someone who worked at a place like Hanford during the peak of the Cold War, what you would say to a young person who would have no memory of the Cold War at all, or much of an understanding, what it was like to work at Hanford? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: It was a little scary, because we were surrounded by gun emplacements. And I still remember going home after shift one day, and there was some gun emplacements right at the bottom of the Two East Hill, and they were all raised, like they might be ready, had a warning or something. And you kind of wonder about that. And we went in, we always had to have these--in all of the buildings, we had supplies that we could hole up in case of an attack. And all of us had junk in our cars, an evacuation plan. I know my wife and I did. I had canned goods that I would put in the trunk of the car. And if we were attacked, she was to meet me at a certain places in Yakima, and we were going to head for the Willapa Hills. [LAUGHTER] The Willapa Hills are a very remote part of Pacific county. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Wow, so you did have preparations in place in case, because-- </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Yeah. And some people even built--there were a few bomb shelters built around. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Well, is there anything else about your work at Hanford, or your experience there that we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to share? </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Oh, gosh, there's so many things that went on. I could sit here and talk probably all afternoon about some of this stuff because new ideas would come up that I can't remember. Well, I can remember shortly after I had gotten into the laboratory down at 3706 Building, one of the women that I was working with, she and I did more uranium analysis in one shift than anybody had ever done. [LAUGHTER] We were very proud of that. We just hit every sample size as perfect. And it was--we just were boiling out uranium analysis like crazy. [LAUGHTER] I can't remember now, but it was--there were little incidences like that that were kind of fun. And for a while the coveralls that they were giving us had pockets on them to take the size. They were colored. And there were some of those women, I tell you. I like women, but I think some of those gals that used to work down there had a warped sense of humor. They loved to grab ahold of these pockets and rip. They'd rip the pockets off! Well, they came up behind me one time and grabbed the pockets, of and ripped, and the pockets didn't come off, but the whole seat came off. [LAUGHTER] That was when I was still single, and embarrassed very easily. And I had gotten a blue sock in with my white underwear. My shorts were blue! [LAUGHTER] Oh, they got such a kick out of my blue underwear! I could have slapped them, though. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Oh, that's quite a story. [LAUGHTER] </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: One of the things that we did, I think we were a lot closer. We worked closely with each other. And we'd have wonderful--we'd call them safety meetings in the tavern. [LAUGHTER] They were just--We'd have a lot--we had a lot of parties. But they don't seem to do that anymore. I don't know why. We were more like a big family, and if anything happened to somebody, like a death in the family, we would all rally around them and do things like that, like families did. And Richland was really a very close little community back then. If anybody got into trouble, boy, you sure knew it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Well, I want to thank you very much for coming in today, and sharing your memories and experiences. I really appreciate it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: Well, I enjoyed doing it, because I think it was a very unique time in history. And I'm afraid that we're beginning to lose that, because my--now, I'm getting to the age where World War II veterans are dying off like flies. [LAUGHTER] So many of my friends have already gone, and it's just a little shocking. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Bauman: Right. Thank you, again, for coming in. I really appreciate it. </div> <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX150736100"> Buckingham: You're very welcome. Thank you for asking me. </div> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:58:53 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 5273kbps Location The location of the interview Washington State University - Tri-Cities Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 100 Area 200 Area 300 Area 222-T Plant 222-V Plant 222-S Laboratory Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) N Reactor B Reactor Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor (PRTR) 234-5 Building (Plutonium Finishing Plant) 400 Area / Fast Flux Test Facility Building 3706 Years in Tri-Cities Area Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site 1947-2013 Years on Hanford Site Years on the Hanford Site, if any. 1947-1987 Names Mentioned Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 Pollock, Charlie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Steve Buckingham Description An account of the resource An interview with Steve Buckingham conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 13th, 2013 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-05-11: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.] Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Nuclear weapons plants--Waste disposal--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Nuclear instruments & methods Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection. 100 Area 200 Area 222-S Laboratory 222-T Plant 222-V Plant 234-5 Building (Plutonium Finishing Plant) 300 Area 400 Area Arco B Reactor Building 3706 DuPont Energy Northwest Fast Flux Test Facility (Wash.) General Electric Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 Kennewick (Wash.) N Reactor Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor (PRTR) Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX) Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX) Richland (Wash.)