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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Robert Parr
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Robert Franklin: And do you like to go by Robert or by Bob?</p>
<p>Robert Parr: Bob.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay—</p>
<p>Parr: If I get going too far, Robert is usually a buzzword that causes me to refocus.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. We will have to put out your full legal name when we introduce you.</p>
<p>Parr: Okay.</p>
<p>Franklin: But then I’ll refer to you as Bob from then on.</p>
<p>Parr: Yeah, okay.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, you ready Victor?</p>
<p>Victor Vargas: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Robert James Parr on November 17<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Bob about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your name?</p>
<p>Parr: My last name is spelled Parr, P-A-R-R. My first name is Robert, R-O-B-E-R-T. My middle name is James, J-A-M-E-S.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great, thank you. Thanks, Bob. So tell me how and why you came to the area to work at Hanford.</p>
<p>Parr: I graduated from WSU itself in 1973 with a degree in police science and administration.</p>
<p>Franklin: In Pullman.</p>
<p>Parr: Pullman, the big campus. And after I graduated, I went into work into law enforcement. I ended up in the late ‘70s working for the State of Washington State Liquor Control Board, long before cannabis, as an enforcement officer. It was a good agency, both regulatory and criminal enforcement. So it was—no day was the same. But when I looked at it, the pay and benefits weren’t what I thought they would be. And then I noticed—I saw an ad in I believe it was either the <em>Seattle Times</em> or <em>Seattle Post Intelligencer</em> that Atlantic Richfield Hanford—ARCO—was looking for people to work for them in their uniformed security group called the Hanford Patrol. So I checked it out, and I found out that their pay was much better than I was working for the state. So I went and interviewed with them at a hotel—I think it was the Doubletree, or is the Doubletree now at Southcenter in Renton, Washington. So I did the interview, and I noticed that everyone else being interviewed, we were all ex-military or law enforcement. So I took the interview, and then they offered me a job. I had previously applied with ARCO, and of course at that time the transition occurred, so it was now Rockwell Hanford. So they offered me a job starting in—I interviewed, I think, sometime in the December timeframe, and then right after New Year’s they offered me a job starting to work in February 1980. So I was married at the time, so we moved over to Tri-Cities, got an apartment, and I had done my physical and all the screening before. And then I started to work for Rockwell Hanford in February of 1980. My initial employment—my initial job was with Hanford Patrol. So, they had their own—they called it an academy, and it was at what is the 1100 Area, which used to be—one of the activities we did at the 1100 Area was the bus lot. Because we had buses onsite. So at the office where the buses were dispatched from, about the back third of it was the Hanford Patrol Training Academy. It wasn’t much, but that’s where I went to work, and initial training was about seven weeks. While I was there, I received my—I already had had a clearance from the Department of Energy—security clearance. So my security clearance showed up, and since I had a security clearance—many of my peers in this class—there were about 20 or 30 of us—didn’t have clearances, so they were work approvals, what we called WAs. But I had my Q security clearance, so I went right to work. My first assignment was in 200-West, 200-East, and 100-N. So I worked out at the north end of the site for a couple months. And then I got reassigned to 300 Area, which was a composite area of—we did fuels production and research there. So it was the contractors—we had Rockwell providing security and fire services and transportation. United Nuclear was operating fuels production for the N Reactor at the north end of 300 Area. We also had Northwest National Labs, Battelle Memorial who was operating in there; they had several facilities. And then Westinghouse Hanford was doing fuel production and research for the Fast Flux Test Facility, which wasn’t online yet, but almost was nearing completion. So I did that for—I was there for quite some time. And then about less than six months after I showed up, I got promoted. The Hanford Project, the uniformed security and protection onsite hadn’t really adjusted to changing times in society there. They issued us revolvers, and that was when revolvers were starting to be phased out. Automatics, or a more modern sidearm, was being issued. So the big change in technology was their alarm systems. Westinghouse Hanford had led the way. They actually wrote the software. We were using computer-operated security system at 300 and 400 Areas, 400 being Fast Flux Test Facility. So I got to get in on the ground floor of that. I participated in the acceptance test process for both 300 and 400 Areas. We brought the system online. It was state of the art. Westinghouse had gone out and found the best equipment and the best systems, and then wrote their own software for the system. So it was much beyond the old analog systems we used to have onsite. Many of the alarm systems at that point, particularly ones at the Plutonium Finishing Plant were technology from the ‘50s and were probably installed in the ‘60s. And here it was the ‘80s—and the mid-‘80s by now. So we did that, and eventually Rockwell, they also put in a similar system at Plutonium Finishing Plant. But they had a problem: the people that they hired to write their software were two guys in a garage. And it didn’t go well. God bless them for trying, but it didn’t go well. So they ended up buying the Westinghouse software and then they had their software people come in and make some adjustments to it based on their equipment. So they were similar systems. So I got qualified to operate all of them, and shortly thereafter I got promoted again. So now, instead of being a supervisor in an alarm facility on a rotating basis, I was now the coordinator responsible for all four rotating shifts, first at 300 Area and eventually at Fast Flux Test Facility. So I did that until 1993. During that time, Department of Energy was also ramping up its efforts on security, trying to be a little more professional and coming into a more modern era. So they had developed a central training academy down at DOE Albuquerque, at that field office. So they came up to Hanford, and they had developed a training program to teach supervisors on security forces how to train their employees. So I took it, and that worked good. But I was also—when I first moved to Tri-Cities I was on Coast Guard Reserve and I drilled at Station Kennewick, a small search and rescue. It’s the navigation station. So I drilled there, but the Coast Guard started downsizing in the Reagan administration. So I shifted over to the Army National Guard, and shortly after I joined the National Guard, they sent me to a school to learn how to be what the Army called an instructor. So all of the sudden I had two pieces of paper—one from the Department of Energy and one from the Army—saying I was an instructor. Well, in 1993 I was offered a job at Plutonium Finishing Plant with the training department. So in the fall of ’93, I left Safeguard and Security, the Hanford Patrol, and went to work at Plutonium Finishing Plant as a—you could call it instructor, but the official job title was Training Specialist. And then they went through several changes, so I think I’ve been a technical instructor, I’ve been a senior training specialist, and so four or five different job title changes; same job. At Plutonium Finishing Plant, they hadn’t quite—they had a vacancy, so they put me in it, and initially my manager’s idea was, well, you can assist someone on a key training project. So I got assigned as the second instructor on several training projects. And then one day, he walked in—the manager walked in, and he was looking for one of the employees that I was paired up with on one of the projects. And he said, well, where is he? And I said, I don’t know. He said, well, are you running that class today? And I go, what class? Because my peer and I hadn’t even talked about it. So next thing I know, I was now the person responsible or person-in-charge at Plutonium Finishing Plant. And it was a program we set up in response to a finding: when you have an event in those days, they would investigate it and then they would figure out what the corrective actions would be. So the finding, the corrective action, was that we would start a training program at Plutonium Finishing Plant for person-in-charge. So we mirrored it after a similar program at FFTF. And next thing I know, I’m running a training program, and we’re putting all the supervisors—the workforce supervisors in the plant are going through it so they can learn how to perform work at the plant. Almost all our work at the plant was done in either procedures or work package. Work packages were usually maintenance- or construction-related. So I got to be the—my title soon became the PIC-meister. Because not only did I have to coordinate their training, but I also had to develop their certification and qualification. So I did that much of the time I was there. And then other programs started going my way. I also ended up teaching Safety Basis. Because at a DOE facility, it’s somewhat similar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-regulated facility, an operating commercial reactor. But their idea is that the Safety Basis is those documents, those commitments that have been made on how the plant can be operated. In other words, to a non-commercial DOE facility, it’s your operating license. So every time we proposed an activity, we had to look—or sometimes even a construction or maintenance package, we had to ensure it was within the Safety Basis. So I ended up teaching that course. So pretty soon my work focus seemed to be emergent training. Anything we had an event or an incident, where training was needed the day before yesterday, it ended up on my plate. So that’s what I did. By that time I was in the Army National Guard, and then after 9/11 happened, the 27<sup>th</sup> of September that year, I got a phone call at work telling me to come in. So I cleared work as fast as I could, came home. My eldest daughter was living with me. She fixed a boxed lunch for me, and I got in the car and I started driving towards Fort Lewis. And that first time I was gone sixteen months. Then I was home and I left again for a year-and-a-half. Went to Iraq twice. And then I came back, and in between that, there was all kinds of little three- to four-week taskings from the Army. And then in 2008, I left for four months, and came back for three months, and then I left in—January 2010, I got a phone call, and the phone call was, Sergeant Major, are you going to be on the plane tomorrow? I go, what plane? Well, you’re flying to Afghanistan tomorrow. Well, thanks, could you send me a set of orders? So they faxed a set of orders, and I walked up to my manager and said, I’ve got to leave. And that was about 9:00 in the morning, and by—before 11:00 I was turning in all my keys, my security badge and everything, and I was leaving. And then I didn’t come home for two years. And I came back, and by that time, President Obama was President of the United States. He used stimulus money to many federal agencies. And the Department of Energy took it, but their approach was a little bit different. While in the Army, we used some of it, but we hired companies to come in to do work for the Department of Defense. Whereas DOE used the approach of having their contractors hire more employees. So I came back and the stimulus money was running out and they were overstaffed. So the next—they offered a voluntary reduction of force, a layoff, early retirement. So I asked my management what my retirement’s worth. And they—so I drove down to, I think it was Stevens Center, not far from WSU Tri-Cities. And I walked in and they went over my retirement with me, and god bless them, they gave me credit for time served. Not like a jail sentence, but my time on active duty with the National Guard. So I raised my right hand and said, I’ll take it. And I left, and my last day was the end of September in 2011. And I had four years of great veteran’s benefits through the VA bill. So I took my veterans benefits and came back to WSU Tri-Cities this time. No athletic eligibility so the university couldn’t screw with me much. And I got another degree.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what’s your degree, what was that degree in?</p>
<p>Parr: The second degree is a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science. So I got to take all those cool classes that—the first time around, I declared my major the first year. And in the early ‘70s, once you declared your major, your goose was cooked, you took what they told you. They offered you a very narrow pathway. So the second time around I got to take fun things like economics and lots of psychology and some English courses. A lot of history. So I think I developed into a better-educated, much broader person.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s really fascinating.</p>
<p>Parr: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Good to see someone come in the social sciences, too, as a historian. So I see here on some of the notes Emma had written up that your father worked at Hanford as well?</p>
<p>Parr: My father was an Army officer. Hanford started out as an Army project. Corps of Engineers and the DuPont Corporation, which was quite a corporation back in the day. It still is. But they did a lot of work for the government in the ordnance field. And the Navy used the approach—because the Navy was heavily involved—not heavily—but involved in the Manhattan Project, and they were doing some of the uranium research. So the Navy ran it through their Ordnance Corps. The Army ran it through the Corps of Engineers, but the Corps of Engineers didn’t have all the resources. So one of the things was, because at the time Hanford was believed to be a viable target in the event of total war. So initially we sided—my father was Coast Artillery which later became Antiaircraft Artillery. So my father was one of the officers that was detailed here temporarily to site the guns. And they did some site work, and eventually that siting work, when they put one of the Nike systems—the missiles, to ring the Hanford Site and I believe around Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane. Some of the siting work that they had done in the ‘40s was used to site the missiles when, I believe, they were being placed in the ‘50s. So my dad was here temporarily. He was one of a lot—a lot of Army personnel came and went. I think people get the—we even had MPs here. We of course had antiaircraft artillery which later became air defense. So for many years there was a heavy Army presence here. It wasn’t totally—it wasn’t like you’d see an Army uniform everywhere, but Colonel Matthias was the commanding officer. And a very unique approach, because his approach was that—and Dad told me about it—his approach was that he was the commanding officer, and he was responsible. Later, when I came back to work here, I didn’t see that same attitude with the Department of Energy. Because one of the things I noticed is—I worked for a lot of contractors. First started looking at ARCO, then it was—when I came here it was Rockwell Hanford, then it was Westinghouse Hanford, then it was Babcock & Wilcox, which a lot of people think of them as the maritime boiler company, but they’re also heavy into the nuclear business. A great company to work for. They were only here for a year. And then it was with Fluor. Then eventually when they broke up all the little contracts, I worked for a company called NREP, which was the training contractor—one of the training contractors onsite. And then eventually after I left, after I retired, NREP went away and they consolidated back. One of the things that I noticed about DOE is a contractor will be—of course they don’t screw with Battelle. It’s hard to screw with those guys because they do great work for a lot of different things, and they’re on the cutting edge of so many different technologies and they’re so important to our national wellbeing. But DOE would start beating up on the contractors. So you know that contractor’s probably going to be on its way out. And Department of Energy over the years—god bless them. They’re great Americans. But they can’t seem to make up their mind how they’re going to run. Sometimes it’s—when I first came here it was five or six principal contractors, and then they went to one big contractor, and then they broke it down again, and then they subcontracted out a lot of work, and then now they’re bringing it back.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you think that has to do with the fact that DOE—higher-ups in DOE are subject to political appointments?</p>
<p>Parr: Not only the political appointments but also the budget process. But I don’t see that constant shifting—you see it in other federal agencies, cabinet-level agencies, but not the extent that DOE does it. It’s almost like, well, we can’t do it. And then oftentimes, I’ve known—I think one of the things that’s responsible for a lot of—for some of the problems—we didn’t have a lot of problems—but some of the events we had out at Hanford were directly related to the field office, Department of Energy Richland. They’re great people and everything, but sometimes I think the guidance they gave, and oftentimes the funding for the program was stopped at the end of the fiscal year, we were told, don’t spend any more money on it, leave it as-is, do something else. Well, that’s kind of what happened at the PRF explosion. But it wasn’t DOE—it wasn’t the field office’s fault? Strange.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you talk a bit more about that event? That was in ’97?</p>
<p>Parr: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Franklin: And you were working at PFP—</p>
<p>Parr: I was in a training group. It occurred on a weekend. So got to work, and you could actually see the—some of the—you had to know what to look for, but you could see the external damage to the facility. And of course, I had been involved in training the shift supervisor. I was at his oral board when he qualified as shift supervisor, because I supported oral—one of the things I got assigned with was supporting the oral boards. So I was at his oral board, and I’d known him for several years, and I thought he was probably one of our better shift supervisors at Plutonium Finishing Plant. But I had—I noticed, as we did it, and then they came looking for the training packages, well, we never—we did initial training on operating of PRF, but it got stopped, they withdrew the money from it. So I don’t even know where the training packages were. But they were concerned—and I noticed that our emergency response to the event was flawed. We didn’t respond well. We hadn’t trained on it, and we hadn’t really devoted a lot of time and effort to emergency preparedness. It hadn’t been a focus. So I got involved in the corrective action. I ended up teaching. We now instituted a drill program at the plant. So I got involved in the drill training program. In other words, how to train people that are working the drills. Many of us were ex-military, so we understood how to run a drill. No big thing. But we had a formal training program. I ended up adding some material to the PIC training program. So there were a lot of corrective actions, and eventually we demonstrated readiness to go back to work. But the issue still was we were told to stop working at PRF. So it just—and we didn’t really devote—we should have devoted time—we should have had the resources to look back at that and figure out what the hazards were that were still remaining in PRF. But we were told not to spend any more money on it. So when it’s the end of the fiscal year and you’ve got no Costco to charge activities to, you don’t work.</p>
<p>Franklin: Our project’s grant funded.</p>
<p>Parr: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: We’re a subcontractor, so I understand. Can you talk a bit about—so you would have been at Hanford during that—and I think on patrol during that transition period when the Cold War ended and when production wrapped up and we shifted into this new phase. I wonder if you could talk about that transition.</p>
<p>Parr: Well, the big transition initially was—and the one was much harder to discern—was the transition from the Carter administration to the Reagan administration. All of the sudden—it was much easier to see in the National Guard, because all of the sudden, new equipment started showing up and you started getting money to train with and send soldiers to schools. But here at Hanford we started getting new equipment. That’s when we—security had pretty much done—we’d upgraded all our alarm systems. But then we started getting money for communication systems, Hanford Patrol’s initial entry training started changing. And I noticed it elsewhere onsite, because we went from kind of a standby mode as far as defense work then, to actively producing material. Really significant change. And that went on for several years. As the Reagan administration ended and we went into President Bush’s administration, the level of effort kind of reached its maximum, as far as funding for defense work. And then I remember when the wall came down, we kind of backed off defense work. And then, okay, stop that, we’ve got enough plutonium. We closed down PUREX. FFTF was going away because they decided that that type of reactor wasn’t going to be it, even though we had received funding from the Japanese to do work. And they couldn’t find research work for FFTF, so they started shutting it down. Even though it was, at the time, it was probably the most modern reactor the Department of Energy had. But we had never, never gone to the idea of making a dual-purpose reactor and producing power. We’d done the engineering studies for it, we’d done some of the preliminary design work, but we never installed them.</p>
<p>Franklin: I thought N Reactor was.</p>
<p>Parr: N Reactor was, but we were going to do that to FFTF. So we’d actually—there was actually a piece of ground at the Fast Flux Test Facility where they were going to do that. And the engineering and preliminary design work had been done. So we kind of shifted from that, and it’s as if we were struggling for a national energy policy—where are we going to go?</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>Parr: So we kind of—and the N Reactor—when Chernobyl went, the N Reactor, I believe, was in a fueling outage—its annual outage. So then we began to look at the fact that the N Reactor was a unique reactor. Very effective, very economical to run. Washington Public Power Supply System had built their generation plant next to it. But the political—Chernobyl caused a lot of—well, obviously, it was a severe blow to the Soviet Union. And the Ukrainian people are still having to deal with it. But the ramifications and fallout from any event in an industry, and nuclear’s probably one of the more visible ones, causes a ripple effect elsewhere. And our ripple effect was we never—we did the engineering analysis, but I think the political outcry was a little bit too much to reopen—or resume production at the N Reactor. Then also we really didn’t need any more plutonium; we had sufficient for national defense. So it kind of became the issue. There’s a lot of politics. So let’s go into that for a minute. Let’s talk red and blue states. Red being the party—a red is a Republican state; a blue state being a Democratic state. We are a blue state. Both US Senators come from the other side of the mountains. In this area we have one voice in Congress that speaks for us, the local congressman. So when even Spokane, which is Republican, too, when it begins to turn against this industry and this area, then politically it becomes no longer viable. Then of course we had—the congressional delegation from Oregon was speaking out against it. So it becomes politically unviable.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. It was kind of—Chernobyl kind of kicked off like a perfect storm to just kind of hurt the nuclear industry and Hanford.</p>
<p>Parr: And then—I believe it was 2000—there was an event in Japan, a criticality at a production facility. And that also caused a wave of consternation. Although it was interesting, because one of the subjects I instructed at PFP was criticality safety. And we were very diligent about it. We did refresher—everyone got a—you got your initial site training and then because you worked at PFP, we had a PFP specific class talking about the risks we had for criticality safety. And then we had an annual refresher course. So we looked at what was going on in the industry, using the lessons learned, and some of the changes in process we were doing to plan. It was usually a one- to two-hour refresher class every year. So we looked at all that. But when the Japanese had their event it was kind of interesting. Some of the experts—or the people I depended on to give me advice on what to put in the training event—were criticality safety experts from Northwest National Labs. And all of a sudden, I’m calling someone—well, he’s not here. Well, where is he? Well, he’s in Japan. Then I realized, okay. So, some of our top people in our industry from right here at Hanford went over to deal with the issue.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. You worked for a lot of different contractors. That’s always kind of a—it’s interesting to me how, you know, because we say Hanford Site, but that really obscures the organization of the site and the work. I’m just wondering if you could talk a bit more about that—shifting between contractors like that, and how that affected the mission of the site, how that might have affected employee morale, and how it kind of affected you personally.</p>
<p>Parr: Well, I think that the big transition—because I got here after Rockwell had come in. So I’m working for Site Safeguard and Security. And I get my paycheck from Rockwell. But I work at 300 Area, which in those days—United Nuclear was about 10 to 15% of the puzzle. Because I knew—I saw what our funding was for security services coming from. But most of it came from Westinghouse Hanford, Northwest National Labs, Battelle Memorial. And I noticed that, working with their security staffs from all four companies, that they were very—Northwest National Labs was very, very different. The people they had working their security programs were security professionals. They were very much into assets protection. Not only people, but information and also property. So assets protection was very big for them. One of the things that I—the first thing that struck me was when I went to work at 300 Area, they’ve got a book—a three-ring binder—and it’s got every one of their facilities with a floorplan and a description of what’s there, is there any special nuclear material there, are there any classified document storage areas? You know, what is the security force protecting? Incredible. No one else had one. Westinghouse was pretty much on the same level. Very much an administrative security. Had great programs. If you needed—if something unusual happened and you needed their management’s approval on it to get it, you were talking on the phone with those people and usually within three to five minutes, they’d be calling you. Incredible. They had a different mindset. They were building FFTF at the time, and they were very much—their corporate and company philosophy was very much on operating reactors. Because they built reactors, they built reactor vessels themselves, so they were very much into that commercial power production. They were a large government contractor, not only for DOE but other agencies. They did a lot of defense work. They did a lot of work for other federal agencies: Department of Treasury, Department of the Interior, Department of Justice. So there was a big mindset of meeting the customer’s needs. Westinghouse was very employee oriented. Of course they were only about 1,500 employees, whereas Rockwell was several thousand more. So it was very interesting working for Rockwell but being in a Westinghouse Battelle UNC facility. So I kind of—we kind of felt like orphans. It’s like—no, I’m very serious. Each one of the contractors had their own company newspaper. So, Rockwell, we’d get it two or three days later. Westinghouse, the day it was published, it was brought by our building, too. Even though everyone that worked in that building except for the janitor—the custodial staff—was a Rockwell employee, Westinghouse delivered it. They reached out to us. And then when they ran the big—at that time, and that’s when DOE field office went to one big contractor—of course Battelle had their own thing. So that didn’t change. But all of the sudden, it’s like the management of my own group was very—they worked in a Rockwell facility at the north end of the site. They weren’t too happy. But we didn’t have any problems making the transition, but they did. There was a lot of turmoil—not a lot, but a significant amount of turmoil in the north end of the site, particularly in Safeguard and Security, because all of the sudden Westinghouse had a successful program and they went out there and they weren’t impressed by some of the programs they found.</p>
<p>Franklin: So that’s the reason, then, for some of that turmoil or hard feelings?</p>
<p>Parr: Oh, yeah. Westinghouse, you didn’t want to lose control of special nuclear material. That’s really a bad thing. And Westinghouse’s standard, how they did their administrative program and their controls, was much more developed, much more thorough. So when they moved in—so now they’re taking over Plutonium Finishing Plant, which had a large amount of plutonium back in the days. They weren’t—it was kind of a shock to Westinghouse. Oh, we’ve got all this—before it was just fuel components. Now they’ve got weapons grade material that’s designed for ultimate defense work—the end use being defense work. So there was a little turmoil there, but then in about six months it all kind of evaporated. And then employees were actually sad when Westinghouse left. Because Westinghouse was much more attuned to employee communication, employee benefits. Rockwell—it was kind of interesting. I remember one time I had to go to east. This is where Rockwell Hanford’s corporate office was. I go out there and I’m walking around and I look, and in all these offices—even in cubicles—because there was some offices, but there was also cubicle land. You’d walk out and you’d see pictures of the B-1 Bomber which was a Rockwell aircraft, when Rockwell still made aircraft. And I’m looking around, and down at Westinghouse, everyone was an ex-Navy nuke or ex-commercial power nuke. But out at Rockwell, they were all refugees from when the B-1 program got canceled, so Rockwell moved all these engineers out here. So it was a very different mindset: the aviation versus naval nuclear and the commercial nuclear industry.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. So you said Rockwell was the aviation.</p>
<p>Parr: Yeah, North American Rockwell, the old aviation company. Probably the most famous aircraft that—I’m sure that they made other ones—but the one that comes to mind is the P-51 Mustang. That was their biggie.</p>
<p>Franklin: You’ve mentioned of the older security systems that were still in place in the 80s and you said analog. Can you give me an example of an analog security system?</p>
<p>Parr: Well, it was a system where the point of where the actual, shall we say, sensor, whether it’s a magnetic or whatever, when contact is broken it sends—you lose connectivity, so it would send a signal and it would—the little mechanical panel would go red and make an audible tone and go red. So kind of a dated technology, whereas--</p>
<p>Franklin: How would you track that from a central area?</p>
<p>Parr: Well, it’d be hardwired, usually to a facility that would be nearby.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Parr: At PFP, the alarm facility—the central alarm facility was a little wooden building—no, I’m serious—</p>
<p>Franklin: I believe you.</p>
<p>Parr: --that was near the main entry point into the plant.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Parr: But a more modern system would—you could actually, you’d get—the signal would—you could actually query the signal to see the strength of signal and is it because the system—there’s a power problem? In other words, is there a problem with the system, or is it an actual alarm? So you could query it back. And there were no microwaves, there were no—they were usually—their presence detectors were very limited in capability and obviously, no cameras—or very few cameras.</p>
<p>Franklin: So like CCTV would have been a big introduction.</p>
<p>Parr: So when they did install CCTV, there was—the fuels production facility was the first one to bring it online. They actually had—you could see the entry point into the secured area, you could see the hallways, you could see the primary rooms where the primary points of value were. And then on the perimeter, they normally had fixed cameras, pan-tilt zoom, but then they also had cameras with low-light capability, with flood lights on them. So it was much—and then there was actually a perimeter fence line and security system. Although at the 300 Area it was kind of dicey, because we were retrofitting a security system into an area where there’d been none. So there was some areas you couldn’t put a double fence line, so we ended up with a single fence line, supplanted with motion detectors—microwave motion detectors. And then they also had a fence that was monitored. They called it a taut wire system, because it was a weapon that if it ever were touched—and sometimes by small animals or tumbleweed—we seem to have some of that out here at Hanford—it would go off. So you’d take a look on the camera, see what it was.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, yeah I bet that would help you reduce a lot of false alarms.</p>
<p>Parr: One year after a fire—we seem to have fires out at—well, range fires at Hanford are not unknown. But we had one fire, and I can remember at FFTF that the debris from the fire kept plugging up our perimeter system for several days thereafter until we got a work crew in there to actually pick up the debris and partially burned pieces and the full tumbleweeds. Because the fire would generate a lot of heat in the air, so not only do you have debris from the fire itself, but you also have debris being moved by the air currents. And the way the wind was blowing off Rattlesnake Mountain.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you—sorry, I’m just looking over some of my notes here, and I wanted to ask you about—oh, shoot. It says here that in the 1980s, you helped during an anti-nuclear protest at the Federal Building?</p>
<p>Parr: Oh, I remember that. No, I didn’t do it. I was on duty that day. And what we’d done is, in the ‘80s we had anti-nuclear protests. And we believed that one was going to be big. So Safeguard and Security and the Hanford Patrol being the uniformed service, they pulled a lot of us in to work that day, and then they took key people—and they actually had buses from Site Transportation, they were going to take care of the demonstrators. Because once they crossed onto the Federal Building property, that was DOE’s area of responsibility, no longer the city’s. So anyway, there’s about—there weren’t that many protestors, perhaps 20 or 40 at most downtown. So there were all these people, and we probably had 50 to 70 people staged and ready to go. Get the buses, put them on the buses, and take them to the federal magistrate. Then all of the sudden, there’s a call come out. There’s people without badges inside West Area at the north end of the site. And apparently—we’re down—I think I was at either—I can’t remember if I was at the 300 Area in the alarm facility or 400 Area—but I’m listening to this, and all of the sudden the frequency’s going crazy—patrol’s primary operating frequency—and then the second frequency, the tactical frequency, is getting busy too. You can hear the voices on the radio, a little bit of stress going on. And we’re all laughing like hell, because, you know, hey, that’s where the weapons-grade material is. Aren’t we protecting that? Of course, we were heretics. We’re giggling, you know. It’s funny because it’s not happening to us; it’s happening to someone else. Because we had additional staff at 300 Area and we had additional staff at FFTF because it’s an operating reactor at the time. So apparently what the demonstrators had done is they walked in from Highway 240, and West Area isn’t that far in. They’d walked in, hopped over the outer fence, a single fence line in West Area—hopped over the fence line in West Area and they’re marching towards—and of course, unless you know West Area, the big, tall, long buildings all look alike. They’ve all got stacks and water towers. You can’t tell the difference between one of the old canyon buildings—one of the old production facilities—and PFP. So, all of the sudden, they’ve got protestors in West Area, but all their resources, except for the bare minimum, are downtown. But then it gets even better. When they got the protestors, they put them on a bus, and they thought they’d just being going to the district court in Kennewick. No, took them to the federal magistrate, out of town.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Parr: Yeah. So, it was kind of funny. But we had gone and—the funny thing was, because of the—they actually, in those days, most of us wore tactical uniform, camouflage or whatever. But the people who were actually going to detain and transport the protestors all had to be in full uniform, you know, pants and shirt and badge. So it was one of the better events.</p>
<p>Franklin: I interviewed a gentleman a while back who worked at PFP who talked about when they would load the product up, and there would be very heavy security and people that almost looked like they were in black ops, or like very—I was wondering, were you ever involved in any of that or did you—</p>
<p>Parr: The Department of Energy had a courier program, and they were based, I think, at Albuquerque at the time. And they usually had a transport vehicle and escort vehicles. They were specially trained to protect the shipments. There’s other ways to move things, but usually once a weapon is produced, it’s turned over to the military, and their transport is their responsibility. But components—whether it’s plutonium or whatever—would usually be transported by the courier group. When they took all the material out—and that happened while I was—probably most of it was done while I was in Afghanistan. It was the same courier group. They had extremely good communications, so it’d always be known where they were, and there were contingency plans in case there was an event. And I don’t think they ever—other than a mechanical failure of a vehicle, I don’t think they ever had an event. And of course protestors were always fixated on, you know, the media was always fixated on the white train. Yeah, okay. [LAUGHTER] I’ve never seen one, but—[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: What were the most challenging and rewarding aspects of working at Hanford?</p>
<p>Parr: The most rewarding one was—I think the people. When I worked in training, I got to know everyone—almost everyone in the plant would come to one of our training events. Some groups needed—the higher-risk job, the more training you got. So it was working with the people. And then some people, it was just a paycheck. But the employees who took pride in their work and enjoyed their work, those were always the fun people to be with. Not that they were there for fun, but just, it was very rewarding to work with them. Now I’m retired and I still see some of them around the community. So it’s always fun to see someone that I spent—you know, worked with. I still see the vice president of the Steel Workers’ Local, because I worked—I got to work closely with him. So to see those people, and to see their successes and to do that. The difficult part, sometimes, was employees who were just there—or people who were just there for the paycheck. Or struggling through personal issues. Being able, trying to help them, or to get—a shift, a work crew doing a work package, they’re people. And the strength of any group is always at the level of the lowest performer. So the performers who were struggling, those were the tough—or the ones who were—sometimes you get cynical. People get emotional. And dealing with the cynicism. I think one of the toughest things I ever had was—I wasn’t involved in the project; I was training, but I wasn’t the trainer for that particular project, but I was doing some other training. They worked hard, they were staging the materials—I think it was the Pencil Tank Reduction at PFP. They were about to take the pencil tanks, clean them up, reduce them in size, and then shift them off to scrap. And they were making hard to get the materials to write the pre-procedures to do the job, get their training in order, and get ready to go. In the aftermath, when Department of Energy said, well, we’re not going to do that right now. But materials had already been—a considerable amount of resources had been pushed in that project to get it ready to go. But then Department of Energy said, well, no, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to take that money and we’re going to use it for something else. Planning at Hanford is always one of our toughest things. Has been for years. There’s so many things we did that—where it never came off, or things changed. Not too far from here are the bus lots at 1100 Area. And the parking lot’s at 300 Area. We spent a lot of money—or the government spent a lot of money improving those parking lots, making sure they had the good drainage and so on and so forth. Improving the bus lot and making it a much safer, much more efficient operation. And then we canceled bus service. A couple years later, I know that our local law enforcement—I think Richland Police Department—used it for a pursuit driving course, that piece of ground, and now it’s gone commercial. But all the things we do, and then all of a sudden—boom—we never realize the full value of what we had spent money on.</p>
<p>Franklin: You kind of—I’m sensing from that and the comment you made earlier about the lack of energy focus—maybe do you see kind of a lack of focus at Hanford or kind of surrounds some activities at Hanford?</p>
<p>Parr: I think when Congressman Foley—Tom Foley—was speaker of the House, and he was from—let’s see, we’re four, I think that’s 5<sup>th</sup> Congressional District, in Spokane. Speaker Foley—and this was probably about the time of the Chernobyl issue and all of that—Speaker Foley proposed, in a public statement, transitioning Hanford from Department of Energy back to Corps of Engineers. And knowing a lot of engineers, Army engineers, they’re great people and they do great things. And I looked at that, and I go, I don’t think that’s the right move. But now looking back on it, and having worked with the Corps of Engineers in both the reconstruction of Iraq, before we withdrew, and then a lot of the work—there’ve been some mistakes—a lot of mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq. But looking at some of the work they’ve done there, I hate to admit it, but I think Tom was right. We should have switched. Because I think the Corps of Engineers is a lot more focused and a lot more planning. Because they don’t look at—oh, we’re going to—I think the Corps looks at the long-term: five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. And looks for a strategy. Whereas I see Department of Energy, particularly—and I know the field offices are all different. What I saw in DOE Albuquerque was different than DOE RL, was different than DOE Rocky Flats. I think the Department of Energy field offices, particularly Richland, focused on the near-term, not the long-term. The near-term being this fiscal year and maybe next. But I see that in working with Northwest National Labs, I noticed they were always looking at where we’re going to be in four, five years. And I think—because with the Army I got to support a couple projects. Then I was in Afghanistan. We were doing something and I needed some reach-back capability. So unofficially I reached back to Northwest National Labs to give me help with something in Afghanistan that I was encountering. And it took me a couple days to find the right person and then get him up on a secure—I’m not Hillary. So I used a secure—all my emails were in a secure system—and to reach out and get that information, so how we could be more effective in Afghanistan. So I saw that kind of work, and I see—dealing with them and watching what they’re doing, they’re looking at the—they look at, they forecast out in the future. What’s it going to be like in ten, 15, 20 years? What’s the end state? I think RL has gotten, or particularly in my time, they were in the survival mode, reacting, rather than planning. I think one of the key losses we had—we had the DOE RL manager one time was a guy by the name of Mike Lawrence. And later he left, but I noticed when he left—I think Mr. Lawrence was—he planned, he looked at things. He tried to anticipate where the federal budget was going and what the program was going to be. And I think after that, it became a more reactive group. And now I continue to watch, and I watch them—we were spending money—apparently taxpayers were spending money on upgrading the Federal Building, because they’re the primary occupant there. And then they said, no, we’re going to move our office—move our staff out to the Stevens Center Complex, which is right off—between George Washington Way and Stevens. So we’re going to move out there. So you figure, oh, okay, that’s going to cost a little money. And then what’s going to happen to the contractor employees there? Well, they’re going to just—the taxpayer owns the Federal Building, but the Stevens Center is leased facilities. So I can’t—I can’t figure that one out. God bless them, but I can’t figure it out.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, we exist in a similar thing here at WSU. Our project is in a leased facility and it seems to be the way that—I would agree with you that that is—there’s more focus recently on our near-term solutions, especially here in Richland, but ignoring the long-term solutions. Maybe because the long-terms are scary. I don’t know. But—</p>
<p>Parr: You’ve got to—what do they say in the Army? Oh. Embrace the suck.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to cover?</p>
<p>Parr: Well, it was interesting being at Hanford Patrol initially and watching them come from a more security force that was designed just to check badges and check classified repositories and respond to alarms, become more a professional force. It was really exciting watching their training group. When I first came here, they’d get up and read a manual and that was your training. Their firearms training was superb. Best I ever had. Probably better than anything I’ve seen, even in—I would put their marksmen up against the best of the best. Whether it’s HRT and the Bureau. I definitely think they can out-shoot the Ranger, but—not criticizing the Army Rangers—but their people can out-shoot Army Rangers. And perhaps, Force Recon in the Marine Corps. I think they’re up there with the more elite organizations. And I think that firearms training was incredible. They took people who couldn’t shoot, and they teach them theory and technique and then work with them and find the faults and get them to correct it to that point. I’ve never seen anything like that in any law enforcement academy or any military training. It was incredible. But the rest of it, there was no lesson plans. Training is always analysis, design, development, implementation where you get up and teach it, and then evaluate it to see if the training took. I didn’t see that in Rockwell’s training program for the Safeguard and Security team force. But eventually to see them as, when Westinghouse took over, they started putting those standards in. And I think Department of Energy did it nationwide. So I think watching that change and transition was exciting. Was great stuff. It was an exciting place to work. And right now they’re tearing down the Plutonium Finishing Plant where I spent, what, 17, 18 years of my life—except for some trips elsewhere. But to see it come down, but then to realize what we achieved there. I was there the day a button caught fire, a plutonium button. That was exciting. Because we were testing out the security system, and—why do we have employees taking off their clothing on camera? What’s going on here? And then call up to building emergency, is something going on inside the plant you kind of should let us know about? And why is the fire department coming? And then watching it go through things, and then eventually watching the cleanup process, stabilizing plutonium, and seeing where that goes. So I’m glad I had the opportunity to come in today to talk a little bit about what it was like to work at Hanford. I remember when he had buses and then we didn’t have buses because they decided we didn’t need them anymore. And then watching the density of vehicles on the highways going up to work onsite. I can remember when they decided that—there’s a four-lane road; Stevens is a four-lane divided highway out to the Site. You know, when you’re doing remediation and you’re constructing the Vit Plant, there’s a lot of trucks and trailers with heavy loads that are in the right-hand lane. So then somebody came up with the bright idea of—and they’re slower-moving. So we’re going to have that traffic in the left-hand lane going northbound, and everyone going, they’re driving the speed limit or those going beyond the speed limit would drive in the right-hand lane. Excuse me? Really? Really. And then there was a thing where we decided to put—you know, how far it is from this place to this place. And we’re going to do it both in the English system and also in metric. Good idea, that makes sense, because a lot of the world is metric. Makes a lot of sense. So then they put the signs up, and they put—the letters are about that high in a 55-mile-and-hour zone. So how close do you have to be to read a sign that’s got letters that are about two inches high, going about 55 miles an hour? Excuse me? [LAUGHTER] And also that’s now—isn’t that kind of like a visual impediment to traffic safety?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, seriously.</p>
<p>Parr: The other one is right up on Stevens in the 300 Area. You’ve got 300 Area—I can’t remember the name of the street. It comes out and goes onto Stevens—we used to have our own highway system out there, so that’s called Highway 4 South. So the traffic is going west onto a north-south—onto a road that’s in the right-hand side is going north. But you want to turn left and to head back into town. So they put a stop sign on a wooden post right at the stop line. Well, that’s right on the edge of the traffic—it’s right on the traffic lane. So about every week or so, low lights, not well lit, you get weather, so all of a sudden, about every, once a week, you’d see the stop sign about ten meters over with the pole broken off—the big four-by-four wooden post. So I remember one time, I go, jeez, that’s not very bright. So I put in a safety suggestion. So they thanked me for my safety suggestion. Rockwell Hanford gave me a little product worth 50, 60 cents. Thank you! Okay, but we’re not going to do that, and we’ve already considered it, and it’s safe. And I got that, and I was working shift work. So I’m going home about 7:00 in the morning. And there’s the stop sign over there, the sign sheared off again. So all of the sudden—it never get installed again. They painted a stop sign, they painted stop letters, they moved the sign back. [LAUGHTER] But my suggestion wasn’t going to—so that was kind of fun.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, thank you so much, Bob.</p>
<p>Parr: Yup.</p>
<p>Franklin: I really appreciate you coming in and giving us a slice of it.</p>
<p>Parr: You know, thank you for doing this, because the Manhattan Project was such an important piece in our history. And being—I’ve been taking a history course and being a former—retired National Guardsman, and the son of a World War II veteran from the Pacific Theater, and seeing the carnage that was Okinawa, and then realizing what the invasion of Japan would have been. I think that puts it all in perspective. And then the work we did—and for me, as a veteran, the big night was the night the wall came down in Berlin. Because that didn’t only put my weekend job in perspective, but it also put the work we’d done out at Hanford. So I think we—the work they do at the national labs, and when we had a criticality safety lab onsite, the work that they did at those facilities—just incredible. I just wish we could have kept FFTF and done power production there. Beautiful reactor. I mean, it had an availability rate of almost 100%. Oh. So. But it’s all about people.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much.</p>
<p>Parr: Well, thank you for having me.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. Don’t forget your coffee there.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/-Tu2YqK6vfU">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:02:15
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
100 Area
1100 Area
300 Area
400 Area
Fast Flux Test Facility
K-West Area
N Reactor
Plutonium Finishing Plant
PUREX
Vit Plant
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1980-2010
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1980-2011
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Colonel Matthias
Babcock & Wilcox
Tom Foley
Hillary
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Robert Parr
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Robert Parr conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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11-17-2016
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2018-31-1: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
100 Area
1100 Area
300 Area
400 Area
Battelle
Cold War
Department of Energy
DuPont
Fast Flux Test Facility
Hanford
K-West Area
Kennewick
Manhattan Project
Mountain
N Reactor
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
PUREX
Safety
Theater
Transportation
VIT Plant
War
Washington Public Power Supply System
Westinghouse
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F3709e8204c8899a93c9c81308951a94c.JPG
84a45b395471c72ce61c06a25b1e3919
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Michael Lawrence
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Michael Lawrence on February 1<sup>st</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Mike about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?</p>
<p>Michael Lawrence: Michael J. Lawrence. L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Thank you. So, how did you come to the Hanford Site?</p>
<p>Lawrence: I went—I grew up in Washington, DC. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and I went to the University of Maryland and lived at home when I did so. And I was a physics major. Between my junior and senior year of college, I was fortunate enough to get one of five internships at the Atomic Energy Commission. That internship had me working in a division of the AEC, or Atomic Energy Commission, called the production division, which was responsible for, among other sites, the Hanford Site, because of its production of plutonium. During that summer, I actually shared an office with an individual who was responsible for the operations and missions of the N Reactor which was located here. So I had an opportunity to learn a little bit about Hanford at that particular point in time. When I graduated from Maryland with my degree in physics the next year, I had already been offered and had accepted a full-time job with the Atomic Energy Commission when I went back to the production division again to work. I was working on isotopes programs and other things when I was called into the director’s office one day. It just so happened that several years previously, in 1969 I believe, President Nixon had signed the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and one of the provisions in NEPA called for something which, at that point in time, was not known at all. Something called an environmental impact statement. You had to do environmental impact statements for any major federal projects, and our division was responsible for two projects that were going to occur in the early ‘70s here. One was the design and building of the quite a bit. And also had a sense of what it was going to be involved dealing with the public on important and issues that were of concern to the public, like the Z-9 crib and plutonium production. Because one of our hearings for those environmental impact statements was held down in Portland. And I can recall going down there, and there were demonstrators in radiation contamination clothing protesting and all the rest. And you got a chance to see just how the public felt about it. But that was my first instance of dealing with Hanford. Then later in the mid-‘70s—again, I’m still back in Washington, DC; AEC had become the Department of Energy—and I was responsible for a program to manage and store commercial spent nuclear fuel. And that program, the contractor and site that was helping us out was the Savannah River site in South Carolina. But because of the heavy burden they had, I decided it would be best if we changed the management of that program, or the contractor working on the program from Savannah River to the Hanford Site and to the Pacific Northwest National Lab—at that time was Pacific Northwest Lab; it wasn’t a national lab, but PNL. And so I started coming out again and working with the people here. So I had a pretty good understanding of the community and what was out here, and I liked it. But in the early 1980s, in 1982 to be exact, after several years of very, very intense negotiation back in the halls of Congress, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed by Congress which set up a process and legal requirements for identifying, selecting, licensing, building, operating, and funding a geologic repository for commercial nuclear waste from commercial reactors and defense waste from the production of plutonium, primarily either at Hanford or at the Savannah River plant. I was one of several people called down from where I was working in Germantown, Maryland, down to Washington, DC to work on the direct implementation of that act. Obviously, that was a very—it was controversial, it was huge, and the new Secretary of Energy at that time—his name was Donald Hodel, who had formerly been the administrator of Bonneville out here in the Pacific Northwest—he was very familiar with the issues involved. And I got an opportunity to meet and work with him rather closely. And after several years of doing that, he asked me to come out here to be the manager of the Richland Operations Office.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. Thank you. That’s really fascinating, with all of your lengths between DC and to here. Did you—I want to ask—you mentioned a hearing in Portland where there were demonstrators. And that—I think it fits pretty well into what we hear a lot about how the west side and the east side of the state think about Hanford. Did you find a pretty supportive public here in Tri-Cities when you would come and hold meetings here in the area about, like, for example the Z-9 crib or other projects? Did you find a pretty supportive public?</p>
<p>Lawrence: I wouldn’t use the term supportive, I would use the term very informed and knowledgeable. They understood, to a greater degree, what the risks, what the concerns were, what the precautions were. Not universally, obviously. There were—and I have a good example of what a protestor would be. But basically, they seemed to be more informed, and certainly they were more knowledgeable of the situation. So the further away you went, the less direct knowledge people had of the situation. And so consequently—and it’s understandable, you know, they really didn’t have the same—they didn’t know people who worked at the Site. They didn’t—couldn’t appreciate the values that they had, their sensitivities. So that would be more the way I would describe it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Lawrence: What was interesting, and I just had alluded to, was after coming out here—this was in 1984; I came—arrived in July of 1984. And at the beginning of that year was when the PUREX Plant, which processed the fuel coming out of N Reactor and reprocessed it to recover the plutonium, had just gone back into operation after a number of years of being mothballed. This was all part of President Reagan’s buildup of our military strength and weapons complex to more or less challenge the Russians or the Soviet Union in their ability to do so. And so we were gearing back up, really, the plutonium production mission at the Hanford Site. It was obviously very controversial here in the Northwest. And it was just starting up, and there had actually been a leak from the PUREX Plant right after it started up. And what I found when I arrived here in July was that even though the people on the Site—the contractor and the officials here—were saying, no, this is what it was and this is what the effects were. There was very little credibility. People would not believe them. And there was a strong opposition to what they were doing. That was a challenging situation to walk into where you really don’t have any credibility. But the first week I was in town, first week as manager, down in my office in the Federal Building, which is up in the northeast corner of the Federal Building, seventh floor, looking out over John Dam Plaza and the park, and I looked out on the street, and there’s a person with a big sign and billboard saying, Mike Lawrence, carpetbagger, go home. And he’s just sitting on the park bench in front of the building. And I—you know, I’ve just arrived in town, and I’m looking at him. His name was Larry Caldwell. He was known to everybody in town; he liked to protest. And I’m looking down at him and I—I sort of like to engage. I don’t like to ignore things. So I said, you know, I think I’ll go out and talk to him. Well, that caused quite a stir. But I walked down and walked across the street, walked up to the park bench, introduced myself, sat down and we started talking. I wanted to find out, well, since you don’t know me, why do you call me a carpetbagger, why do you want me to go home? Let’s talk. And it was funny because in the midst of discussing this with him, I happened to glance back over. And if you’re familiar with the Federal Building, it’s just full of windows. Every window was filled with faces looking out. [LAUGHTER] They said, this is our new manager and he’s out there. Security was very concerned. But you know? It worked out fine. Larry told me what his problems were. He didn’t like the mission. I told him, I said, I understood that. I had a job to do; Congress had appropriated the money, and I’d been given a job to do, and I was going to do it the best I could. But I was going to do it trying to do it in keeping the public informed of what we were doing and being as upfront and—now the term is transparent. We didn’t use that term back then—but as transparent I could be in handling it. So that was my first direct encounter with a protestor, if you will. But I thought it turned out pretty well. But that gets to a broader topic that I’d like to address, and that is, as I said, the Department and its contractors, I found they didn’t have credibility. And I’m not saying it was anyone’s fault, but it’s my opinion that it’s very easy for organizations—Department of Energy, Richland, Hanford—to lose credibility. And the only way you regain that credibility is through individuals, by really engaging with people so they get a sense of who you are or who the people are doing the work. And so we tried from the very beginning back in 1984 to go out and to meet with the public, to engage the public, to be as open as we could to explain our perspective and what we were doing. Obviously, we didn’t expect everyone to agree with us; some people were just diametrically opposed to it. But you’d like them to at least sense that the people doing the work shared some of their values, shared their concerns, in doing their work. The best example I have of that is—I believe it was in 1985. Again, Hanford, because of our role going back into the nuclear weapons complex had been quite controversial. I received a call from the pastor of the Catholic church down in Kennewick, St. Joseph’s. And he said, Mike, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the three bishops—Catholic bishops—in Washington State are having prepared a letter—very, very critical of Hanford, its operations, and the people who work there. And he said, I just think that it’s being, I guess—a focal point was being headed up by a person in Yakima where the bishop was a Bishop William Skylstad. And I happened to have met and knew Bishop Skylstad from my own personal dealings with the church. And so I thanked the priest in Kennewick, and I called up Bishop Skylstad, and I said, I’d really like to come—I understand you’re having some work done on behalf of yourself and the other two bishops, and I’d like to really come and talk to you about it. And so I actually took the president of Rockwell Hanford, who operated PUREX, his name was Paul Lorenzini—very, very intelligent, smart guy—with me. And we went to meet with Bishop Skylstad and he had the individual who was writing this who happened also to be a member of the Hanford Education Action League in Spokane. And, you know, I read what they had prepared. It was talking about the Department of Energy is lying about this, and they’re poisoning, and they’re making these intentional releases. And in discussing that, after a while, Bishop Skylstad said to me, he said, Mike, Mike, calm down. He says, you’re taking this personally. And I looked at him and I said, Bishop, of course I’m taking it personally. When you say the Department of Energy is lying, who is that? Who is it that you’re saying is lying? And it was amazing, because he just stopped; all of a sudden, it dawned on him. He said, oh my goodness, I never thought of it that way. But you had to put a face in front of the organization. And that helped a lot. Now, the letter still came out and it was still very critical. But it wasn’t as accusatory as perhaps it was. It says, we’re opposed to the mission. That’s fine; that I understand. But when you get into the motives and the ill will of the people, that’s where it goes a little too far.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm. Right. The difference between unintentional or passive action and then direct action.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Franklin: I wonder if you could talk about what it was like in the early ‘70s to actually—to physically get to Hanford from Washington, DC. Was it still very—was travel still kind of tough to get to Hanford? Or was there easy air travel or car travel? Or did you find it to be a little still off the beaten path?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, it was a lengthy trip. Coming from Washington, DC, I would fly from Washington, DC to Chicago, Chicago to Seattle, then Seattle to Pasco. And usually that was like going United, and then I think there was—it was called Airwest—Hughes Airwest, owned by Howard Hughes. Then it did get significantly easier later on when Northwest Airlines had a direct flight from Dulles Airport in DC to Seattle, and then you’d fly back over here. I always used to enjoy those trips. I mean, air travel was a lot different then than it was now in that it wasn’t as—a chore and the like. It was a little bit more creature comforts in traveling as well.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you mentioned NEPA and the need for the EIS, Environmental Impact Statement, and digging at Z-9 and I’m sure probably a couple other facilities—did that also trigger any kind of cultural resources work, archaeological digs? Were there ever any—was there any cultural resources work or things found?</p>
<p>Lawrence: In the ‘70s, no. I mean, that work was right in the middle of the 200 Area. Which is—it still today is the most concentrated area. I believe, if I recall correctly, the EISs probably said—would address that. But not—I mean, EISs then were maybe 100 pages long. Now they’re—[LAUGHTER]—multiple volumes and many thousands of pages long. But I wasn’t aware of any. I think the first real instance of dealing with Native Americans and their concerns was with a project we had on the center of the Site called the Basalt Waste Isolation Project, or BWIP, which was on Gable--</p>
<p>Franklin: I was going to ask you about that next.</p>
<p>Lawrence: --which was on Gable Mountain. But I’ll let you ask about it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, no, I was going to ask if you—you talked about the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and finding a geological repository. And I was just going to ask, I assume that’s BWIP, then, that is the—</p>
<p>Lawrence: Yeah, and, actually there’s a slight difference there. But the whole idea of the geologic repository, especially since I had been responsible for that program before coming here, led people to suspect or conclude that it was a foregone conclusion that Hanford was going to be named the geologic repository for the United States. And actually, when I came here, that Nuclear Waste Policy Act had set out a process for narrowing down until you had three sites that you would thoroughly characterize. We had gone from nine sites to five, and when I came out here, there were five sites under consideration. Once I was here, it was narrowed down to the three finalists, if you will: Hanford for basalt, Nevada for tuffs—that’s the Yucca Mountain Site—and in Texas there was a salt formation called Deaf Smith County. And so that was being looked at. Now, BWIP itself was not the geologic repository site. It was a test facility built into Gable Mountain—and Gable Mountain, of course, rises up and the geologic repository was going to go down several thousand feet. But it allowed the scientists to put heaters into basalt rock to see how the rock responded to it—expansion, contraction, did it attract water, was it pushed away, and the like. It was actually a quite successful project. We learned quite a bit about how basalt rock would interact. However—getting back to the cultural resources—during that period, we also found out that the Native Americans—the Yakamas, I believe—used to use Gable Mountain for vision-quest-type activities and places to send people on a spiritual adventure. This didn’t happen right away, but we finally worked out—because I saw no reason why we couldn’t—with a day’s notice, we let the Yakamas—we said, we will let you come on and go up to the site, and do whatever ceremonies, to do whatever you want to do. We just need to know about it. Obviously there is physical security and there’s safety we had to provide for them. But I think we were able to work out and arrangement with the Yakamas where they would have access. Perhaps not as freely as they would like, but it did allow some compromise to be worked out so they could still perform some of their religious ceremonies there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. So you came—you arrived in July 1984, you said. And that was kind of—that was under this Reagan era mandate of basically restarting production.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Because it had just been N Reactor through most of the ‘70s, correct, and into the early ‘80s. So I’m wondering if you can just elaborate more on that mission and some of the activities needed and the push back—if there was any push back—and the whole thing.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, there was opposition, particularly on the west side and in Portland to restarting plutonium production facilities. While N Reactor had continued to operate, the fuel had not been processed and plutonium had not been recovered in many instances until PUREX started back up. So that was the process of really then getting back into plutonium production. That’s what was leading to opposition to what we were doing. We did the best we could to try to go around and to explain at least what we were doing, how we were doing it, how we would interact. I can recall going with my wife to a meeting up in Spokane. I just went up on a weekday night and the Hanford Education Action League had asked me to come up and talk to them. It was clear. It was clear then, that there was very, very strong opposition to what we were doing. A person I remember asked me the question, did I realize that I was acting just like Hitler? [LAUGHTER] I said, you know, I don’t think of it that way. I think about what I do very seriously, and I’m doing something that’s approved by and funded by the government of the United States of America, from the President and the Congress. I have to do it safely, and I have to do it in accordance with the law, but that’s what needs to be done. But, again, it was another effort to try to get out and at least be present, answer the questions; you may not make them happy, but at least you know you’re there trying to interact.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so how many facilities ended up being restarted or brought online from when you got here to when things were shut down? Maybe you could kind of walk me through that process.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, as I indicated, N Reactor had continued to operate, because N Reactor, unlike the other production reactors that were at Savannah River, was a dual purpose reactor. It not only produced plutonium in the fuel elements, but the water which passed through the reactors for cooling it was then sent over to a facility operated by the Washington Public Power Supply System to turn turbines and to produce electricity, on the order of a gigawatt of electricity a year. And because of that, we needed to—the cycle of the N Reactor was different than other production reactors: it was on a shorter cycle. That was for production reasons, the type of plutonium we were producing. So N Reactor went from producing what was fuel grade—it was called fuel grade plutonium—for reactor development programs like the Fast Flux Test Facility and ultimately would have been a breeder reactor. It went to making weapons grade, which meant much shorter irradiation periods. Also, prior to their restarting of PUREX, the fuel was just stored. With the starting of PUREX, you would then let the fuel cool in the basin at N Reactor then ship it in casks on rail cars to the center of the site at PUREX where it would be dissolved in PUREX. The waste would be sent to waste tanks, the plutonium concentrate in a liquid form would be sent to the Plutonium Finishing Plant over in the 200-West area, where it would then be converted into a plutonium metal button about the size of a tuna fish can. And that would be then sent to Colorado—Rocky Flats Plant—where it would actually be fashioned into the material used in a nuclear weapon. So it was the facilities associated with reprocessing at PUREX, handling waste from PUREX, and the facilities associated with the Plutonium Finishing Plant for converting the plutonium to metal that were the primary set of facilities that had to restart.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so then N Reactor was the only reactor that was operated during that time?</p>
<p>Lawrence: It was the only production reactor on the Hanford Site at that time. And the only reactor that was producing water that was—steam—that was then used to produce electricity. There was another very important reactor at Hanford that was operating then. It was called the Fast Flux Test Facility, which had just started operation a year or so before I got here. And that was to be a precursor of a commercial breeder reactor. The developmental—the reactor, the full-scale reactor that was going to demonstrate the breeder process was going to be built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee at the Clinch River Breeder Reactor. But they built the FFTF prior to that in order to get a feeling for how the sodium cooling worked, the fuel worked, the interactions. It was a prototype, if you will, to see just how that system was going to work. And quite frankly, the FFTF was a tremendously successful test reactor and developmental reactor for liquid sodium. It operated flawlessly, really. Unfortunately, though, it shut down because the breeder program was canceled and there really wasn’t a need for it. People tried diligently to find a mission, to find a need for it. But it was a—it just wasn’t in the cards, and it eventually—it took until the late 1990s for it to be permanently shut down. But that was the other reactor that was operating when I came out here.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Yeah, I’ve interviewed several other people that worked at FFTF, and they’ve all—</p>
<p>Lawrence: Oh, and they’re very enthusiastic about the FFTF. And I can understand it. It was a great reactor.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, and a reactor with kind of a different mission than any of Hanford’s other reactors.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Yes, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Save maybe the N Reactor which had a dual—</p>
<p>Lawrence: No, it was very different. It didn’t have that plutonium production role.</p>
<p>Franklin: How long did the production go at Hanford—that ‘80s Reagan era production?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, in 1986, the reactor in Chernobyl blew up—April of 1986. That was in Ukraine, at Chernobyl. Of course, there was very little information coming out after the news of that explosion occurred. You couldn’t get in; the Soviets weren’t saying anything about it. But they couldn’t deny it, because you could detect the radiation coming. But people knew, generally, what type of reactor the Russians were operating there. It was graphite-moderated, water-cooled, and very quickly they came upon the fact that, wait a minute, there’s a graphite-moderated, water-cooled reactor operating in the US out of Hanford that’s called the N Reactor. So consequently, I believe it was in the first week of the Chernobyl accident, one afternoon—I guess it was a morning—in the lobby of the Federal Building, it was mayhem. There must have been 50 to 100 people, representatives from all of the television networks, the major newspapers and wire services—all there wanting to do a story on N Reactor, the Chernobyl of the United States. So I got on the phone to Washington, DC and I said, look, we’ve got a problem here. Because we had been told, do not talk to the press about this. This is one of the few times when I was manager here that we were ever given instructions from Washington about how to interact and how to manage the sites. The managers had much greater authority then than they do now. And there was only one manager here at that point in time, as opposed to three that they have now. So we had a lot of leeway, but we’d been told, don’t talk about it because it’s very sensitive; it’s international news and we’re concerned about it. So when I called and said we have this mob scene in the lobby all wanting to talk about and go see the N Reactor, they said, don’t talk to them. Don’t do anything. I got back on the phone and I said, look, there’s stories that are going to be coming out of here. They can either be based on fact or they can be based upon fiction. If they’re based upon fiction, it’s not going to be pretty. And it’s going to be inaccurate. And I said, look, I will not speculate at all on what happened at Chernobyl. I don’t know. I care, but I’m not going to say a thing about that. I just want to explain how N Reactor works and what its safety features are, so that they can see for themselves. So reluctantly but finally, they relented and said, okay, you can show them. Go take them out. So we got a big bus. We put everybody on the bus—it was multiple buses. And we went out to N Reactor. And as you know, that’s about an hour’s drive out. But they were chomping at the bit. And I can remember the look on their faces when they saw—I think they were expecting a little Quonset huts with steam rising out of vents and out of chimneys and all the rest. And when they see this massive building—and in fact we were able to open one of the doors, which was three feet thick of concrete and steel. They looked at that and they were kind of amazed. And I explained to them that although commercial reactors have a system called containment, which is a big steel dome, production reactors don’t. It’s called confinement. It’s different. So it leads to speculation. Well, you know, containment’s going to keep it in; confinement’s not going to do it. And I was pointing out how we had ways of safely venting steam and pressure so it wouldn’t build up, so it couldn’t explode. And we went through all the safety systems, showed them in the inside, the face of the reactor. And consequently, the next several days in <em>USA Today</em>—I mean, it was front page stuff. But at least it was based upon, well, you know, here are all these safety features. It still raised a lot of issues and concerns because nobody knew what caused Chernobyl, so how could we say it couldn’t happen here? We could only say, here are all the safety systems we have to prevent something like that from happening here. Now, ultimately, we found out over time, that what happened at Chernobyl was a physical characteristic called a positive void coefficient. But basically something that didn’t exist in the physics out at N Reactor. But the damage was done. We did need to do some safety upgrades at N Reactor, which we did. But ultimately, in 1988 I believe it was, the Secretary of Energy, John Harrington, in testifying before Congress announced that the US had now produced so much plutonium that we were in fact, quote, awash in plutonium and didn’t need to produce any more. And quite frankly, with that being the case, we no longer had a justification for operating N Reactor. And ultimately it was shut down. To this day, I applaud the hard work and dedication of all the people out at N Reactor. They worked on the safety upgrades and the operation of that reactor, they worked extremely hard and were very, very proud of the operation of that reactor. I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to those people. They did a great job.</p>
<p>Franklin: There’s several things that strike me as really interesting that I want to return to in what you just said about Chernobyl and N. One was one of the last things, that John Harrington, awash with plutonium; the US had produced enough. Did you agree with that statement then? That we were—because that would be, I mean, your boss or boss’s boss.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Quite frankly, I didn’t know what the total plutonium numbers were for the country. I didn’t know what the total demand was. I do know that plutonium has a very long half-life and sooner or later, you’ve got to have more than you need. We had thousands and thousands of nuclear warheads then. So, I mean, I didn’t know for sure, but I knew at some point we were going to reach it, and quite frankly felt we probably had overshot. So I did not disagree with Secretary Harrington on that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, because I mean, we had passed mutually assured destruction quite a long—</p>
<p>Lawrence: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: And I guess, we know a lot more now about our stockpile then than we did then. But it’s a very interesting way to phrase that. We’re awash in—</p>
<p>Lawrence: Yeah, I mean, it conjures up an image that you really don’t want to have.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. I wanted to return to the Chernobyl thing. It strikes me as interesting that this reaction of don’t talk to the press, which is—you can understand in some way, because you don’t want misinformation. But isn’t that the same kind of criticism that we would level at the Soviets? That they were clamming up and not saying anything, and we wished that they were saying something? So this reaction to not say anything on our side is—could have been seen as—you know—being too controlling maybe perhaps?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, I mean, it went against my instincts, but it’s understandable. The Soviets were the one who had the accident. Now, if we had had an accident and they said, don’t talk to them, I would have been incensed. But basically, we were just going along and people want to come in and try to write a story and say, you’re just like Chernobyl. Well, in a sense, we didn’t know what Chernobyl was, how could we have definitely refuted that? So I can understand their perspective, because, quite frankly, some people at other sites had been quoted by the press as saying, well, we think this is what happened at Chernobyl, or that happened at Chernobyl. And it was just—it was getting out of hand. So I understood that. That was—my point was, I’m not going to talk at all about Chernobyl, because I don’t know. I do know N Reactor. I do know how it works, and I do know its safety features; that’s all I’m going to talk about. And I was awfully glad they let me do it.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s good, yeah. I’m wondering if you could talk about—being in charge of the Site here, I’m wondering if you could talk about the effect of Chernobyl on employee morale at Hanford. Did you notice a particular change—what changed as a result of—</p>
<p>Lawrence: I really don’t think I saw any change in the behavior of the people here. They were going about their work. They knew the systems and the procedures and the processes they worked by, the protections that they were given. I’ll tell you candidly one thing that always bothered me then and it bothers me today, is that sometimes people, they get off work and they act somewhat cavalier or bravado about the work they do. Whether it’s to impress somebody or what, I don’t know. But they say, oh yeah, we deal with this. You know, handling it not as seriously as it needs to be. I know on the job, they do and they have to. But then like a macho reaction at the Gaslight Tavern or something like that talking about what they’re doing. That bothers me because it leaves a wrong impression with the public. And it’s certainly not the way we act onsite.</p>
<p>Franklin: I guess I’d like to maybe rephrase that question. Did you see like maybe a level of—or rise of kind of the fatigue of workers, maybe thinking that anti-nuclear folks or that there was a new public perception that this was really unsafe or that there was really an imminent danger at Hanford? Do you think that weighed on—did that weigh on you, or did that weigh on anybody else?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, I think there was a sense on their part that there was an overreaction, that people were, in a way, paranoid and exaggerating the risk. They knew the risk. The people who work here know the risk. But they also know the precautions, so they can balance it out. And consequently, they felt like there was an overreaction. But even before Chernobyl occurred, there was an event that put the Site under somewhat of a microscope and an intense scrutiny, and that would have been, I believe it was September of 1985. Now, Chernobyl happened in April of ’86; this was September of 1985 on a Sunday, <em>The Spokesman Review</em> newspaper in Spokane came out with a multiday series on what they called the downwinders. Basically, they were interviewing and writing stories about an area across the Columbia River in Eltopia, Mesa, where farmers had experienced or felt they had experienced undue health effects—a number of health effects and cancers, and even some wildlife—some of their livestock being born with—there was reports of double heads and the like. And this was a major news piece done by a reporter called Karen Dorn Steele, and quite frankly she did an excellent job of researching this and writing it up. And I—you know, this is the first any of us had heard about this. That was on a Sunday-Monday. So, again, trying to engage on this topic, that Thursday, just several days after it had come out, we had a public meeting over at the Edwin Markham Middle School in Eltopia, across the river, with the public to say, we’re here. What are your concerns? This is—let us tell you what we’ve been able to measure and monitor, and you tell us what your concerns are. And I had some people from Battelle who—we put out an annual monitoring report saying, here are the releases, here are the quantities, here’s how they compare with standards and the like. It was somewhat emotional. You know, people are worried about their health and people dying of cancer and the like. But we also knew that we, in our numbers—we weren’t showing anything that should have resulted in something like that. During that meeting, one of the farmers who had been prominently noted in the article, his name was Tom Bailey, he actually got up and said, well, okay, we’re not saying that you’re doing that to us now, or that you’re intentionally doing anything now. But what happened in the past? What happened back in the ‘50s? When he said that, I realized that, although we had monitoring reports going back to the Manhattan Project—here’s what people were measuring and monitoring and releasing—most of those had been classified secret. And they had never been declassified. It wasn’t malicious; it’s just not a simple process to declassify a document. But I knew because of the extent of time involved, they could be. So, I then at that meeting said, you know, if you want to know, we can go back, we can review and declassify those documents and make them available so you can actually see what was being done. That seemed to both surprise but also satisfy. So we came back and started the process of declassifying monitoring reports going back to the mid-1940s. That is a time-consuming and expensive process. But we were doing it. And we were keeping the public—I used to have monthly press availabilities at the Federal Building and we’d talk about that. But we didn’t really have the first batch of documents, which was 19,000 pages deep, ready to release until February. Now, one thing I’d like to make very clear and to get on the record: we’re in the process of doing that—time-consuming and expensive—but in January, one month before we completed and released the documents, a Freedom of Information request was filed for those documents by an environmental group. I’m not certain of who it is, so I won’t say who it was. But it was an environmental group, filed a Freedom of Information request. And we said, wait a minute. We are releasing these; it’ll be ready next month—the first batch. The reason I raise that is because subsequently, to this day, I hear from time to time people say, you released those documents—they were forced out of you by the Freedom of Information request. And I say, that is just not true. We had—if you go and check the record, we had committed to doing that a long time before. Again, getting back to credibility—it was easy to make that charge. In fact, I had <em>National Geographic</em> call me about ten years ago checking a story and that specific point. Because they didn’t know if it was right or not and they were able to research it and confirm it. But anyway, we were able to release those documents. But when those documents came out—and this was a mistake on my part—there was a lot of information there, but where was the understanding? Where was the, if you want to call it, education of the public, so they could understand what they were reading? And very quickly, it was found that one of the monitoring reports from 1949 had talked about something called the Green Run, where fuel that had been cooled for shorter than normal, so there were radioactive elements in it, was dissolved and more radioactivity went up, intentionally, through the stack. Some of the background as to why that was done had to be deleted—because it was still classified. When this document—when that report was found and the Green Run was discussed, there was speculation that it was associated with human experimentation: let’s release it and see what happens to the public when it hits them. That was not the case at all. In fact, I knew from reading the documents, they had delayed the Green Run because unfavorable weather conditions that they thought might be harmful to the public. But nonetheless, since certain portions had to be deleted because of classification, we couldn’t really explain it to people. And that created quite an uproar. It’s normal and naturally you would expect people to think you’re trying to intentionally harm the public or experiment on the public. Ultimately, what we decided to do was that, even though we could not tell the public the intent of the Green Run, congressmen and senators from Washington and Oregon, by purpose of their position, have clearance and can be told. So I went back to Washington, DC with a person here from the lab and in a classified conference room in the rotunda of the US Capitol, we had the entire delegations from Washington and Oregon there, and we were able to explain to them the classified reason why the experiment was done and why it was still classified today. Tom Foley, who was later to become the Speaker of the House, from Spokane, more or less led the group. He appreciated it, but he pushed back. He says, I’ve got to have more to tell the public than that. I have to be able to tell them whether we know, but we can’t tell you. You’ve got to give me a little bit to tell them as to why it’s so classified. So I was able to get on the phone, again, back to the department, talk to them about it. And ultimately we were able to explain that the reason it was done was to allow the US government to improve their methods for determining and detecting what the Soviet Union was doing with their production program. Ultimately, it became known, if you measure the iodine and the cesium, you could cut back and see what they’re producing. And the reason it was still classified was that we were still, back in 1986, using that technique for nuclear non-proliferation detection around the world. So it’s since been declassified, but that was the reason. I felt that was a good use of our government and our representatives to represent the people and be able to explain to the people what was going on. But ultimately that whole—all those documents led us to create something called the Northwest Citizens Forum for Defense Waste, which was 25 individuals picked from a broad cross-section: academia, industry, church leaders—to be given the information and to be briefed on the information and ask and have answers provided for any questions they have. So they could act as the public’s representatives on what was being done. And that ultimately turned into all of the citizens’ groups that are formed at the DOE sites now. Where you have—here it’s called the HAB, the Hanford Advisory Board. But it was the first ever citizens’ group to oversee and look at what was going on at the DOE sites.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Thank you for that. That’s really illuminating. Wasn’t it still a calculated risk, though? Sorry, the Green Run, the actual action itself. Certainly there’s still, I think, in the mind of a lot of people—even though it may have been check the release to see how much the Soviets were releasing, there still is a real calculated risk, though. Or do you think that there’s still a calculated risk there—that there could have been some environmental or human population damage resulting from a higher-than-average—or kind of breaking protocol that was set to release that much contaminate?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, based on what I was able to look at and the rationale and how it was done, they were doing it at levels such that it would be a fraction of what the public was allowed to be exposed to. Even with that higher amount. It would just be a fraction. And that’s why when weather conditions weren’t right, and they felt it would rise above that, they didn’t do it. There are always risks. And were the standards that they were a fraction of, were they right, were they wrong, were they conservative, were they not strong enough? I mean, hindsight, you can go back and ask all those questions. But based upon the knowledge that they had at the time, they were being conservative. That also happened to be at the time when we were doing atmospheric testing at the Nevada Test Site. And you’re setting off nuclear bombs that people are going out and watching, you know, maybe 20 miles away. I’m not saying that’s right, and we know now it was wrong. But it was a fraction of the exposure that might have existed there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. I get—yes. That’s very true and that’s a good point. I guess it just—the only thing that still strikes, at least in my mind, as a difference is that they’re informing the public about the nuclear bombs so people can go and watch them. Whereas the Green Run was kind of this—I think that maybe—</p>
<p>Lawrence: Yeah, it was secret. No.</p>
<p>Franklin: It came out after the fact. And it was like, what else could these guys be hiding? Because, like you said, there was already that level of mistrust there.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: It just seems like that event can never really shake that level of mistrust in some ways with some people.</p>
<p>Lawrence: In hindsight, that’s true, but it was a very different time. A very different time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Of course. That’s just an interesting legacy. So, thank you for covering Chernobyl so much. I just have one more question. What role did Hanford play in assisting the Soviets—Hanford and Battelle play in assisting the Soviets with Chernobyl? Wasn’t there a team—</p>
<p>Lawrence: None at the time.</p>
<p>Franklin: --that went over?</p>
<p>Lawrence: None at the time. The Soviets didn’t ask for any. Ultimately, and actually when I came back to the Tri-Cities in 1999 and eventually started working for the Pacific Northwest National Lab, under my responsibility was the team we had at Chernobyl helping to build the new sarcophagus, the confinement structure, that now has been completed and rolled over the destroyed reactor. And I’ve been to Chernobyl a number of times and visited on that project. So we were involved in that. But I don’t recall us being asked to provide any assistance or having provided any assistance at that point in time.</p>
<p>Franklin: I was wondering—I’d like to—Chernobyl made me think of another incident, maybe hop back in time real quick and get your perceptions on that. You weren’t here, but I know you were still working in the nuclear industry, and I’m wondering maybe if you’re going to guess what I’m going to ask about, but I’m wondering, in the late ‘70s, the Three Mile Island scare. I’m wondering if you—because you were not here at the time of Three Mile Island, right, you would have been back east. But I’m wondering if you could talk about the legacy of that incident and how that affected people’s perceptions of nuclear—</p>
<p>Lawrence: Oh, it affected everybody’s perceptions of nuclear because—everyone in the nuclear industry had gotten a little sloppy, implying an accident cannot happen, it will not happen. You know, we’ve got all these precautions; the risk is so small, they’re non-existent. Well, nothing is non-existent. Everything is a risk, and if enough things go wrong, yes, you can have a problem. And they certainly had it there. Much more serious than they ever expected it to be. But in hindsight, the fact of the matter is, the systems all worked to contain it. There were never any releases harmful to the public. There was never a single fatality or anything associated with the Three Mile Island accident. I can remember exactly where I was when I heard about it. I was getting ready to go take a run at lunchtime in the AEC—or it would have been a DOE at that time—building. And someone said, hey, did you hear they had some reactor incident going on up in Pennsylvania? You know, it started then and several days later I was getting calls from good friends who we were godparents of their child who lived in Hershey saying, should we evacuate? And I said, follow what the governor says. I really don’t have any firsthand knowledge, but it really did shake people’s fears, because it led people to say, you said it couldn’t happen and it did. And that’s always a problem.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s such a tough issue of framing, though, right? Because you can either say, well, it could happen but we have really good safeguards so it probably won’t, which leaves open the door in people’s minds to something happening. Or you can say, well, it won’t, we’ve got this under control and it won’t happen. How do you frame—framing disaster seems to be a very tricky subject. Or framing the possibility of disaster.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Yeah. In part, because you can say, just looking at risk and probability, you can say you’re more likely to be hit by lightning than to die from this. And you’re willing to accept one but not the other. It’s what people are associated with. And if they think, I don’t have to deal with that, I don’t even want to deal with that minimal risk. I just don’t want to do it. That’s understandable; it’s part of human nature.</p>
<p>Franklin: It kind of comes to, we see this a lot in current day in dealing with—well, won’t go into that. But there seems to be a—there’s these fact-based arguments but they can’t always counter the emotion-based arguments. And a lot of the response to nuclear seems, in some cases to be emotionally-based and not fact—and immune, almost inoculated against the factual side of it. Which seems to bother many who have a lot of intimate knowledge, a lot of people who worked at Hanford who know the risks can’t ever seem to communicate that to the critics. I wonder if you could expand on that at all, being someone who would have been trying to communicate that to critics of Hanford. And how you’ve dealt with that fact-versus-emotion in your career.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well you see it—you still see it today. Fukushima is an excellent example of that. Assist you with the nuclear accident first. That tidal wave hits, completely washes over, and the plant loses all power. Now, most importantly that was an avoidable accident. Even as hugely severe as a tsunami was, if they just had have had the secondary generators higher and separated more from the plant, they wouldn’t have lost power, and the reactors would have been fine. In this country, we have that requirement. They didn’t have it there. So that reactor accident, which was catastrophic, it was devastating, could have been prevented if rules that we have here had have been used there. But the other thing—and this is more to the point you made—18,000 people were killed by the tsunami, by the flood, by all of the devastation caused by the tsunami. None were caused by the nuclear accident. And yet all of the attention is on the nuclear accident. And it’s not like, oh, but there’ll be 18,000 in the future—there won’t. You know, looking at the numbers, it’s hard to say if there’ll be any. And people are evacuated now, when perhaps they don’t even need to be, but it’s out of the fear of whatever’s left there. And consequently, because of that, it’s causing stress that have led to heart attacks and have led to fatalities. Are they caused by the nuke—they’re not caused by radiation, but they’re caused by fear of radiation or caused by fear of the displacement. So how do you put that in perspective, where as a nuclear accident has gotten all the attention, but a tsunami that killed 18,000 people, it’s sort of like, well, that’s an act of nature? And so, I really don’t know how to balance that. I do know that on <em>NOVA</em> last month, they had a very good show about that. Because nuclear is a carbon-free source of baseload electricity, and if we’re going to deal with climate change, I know I believe and many people believe nuclear has to be part of the solution.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, I would personally agree with you. I wondered—so, moving past Chernobyl then, you mentioned that as kind of a major—you know, it definitely is a major event in regards to people’s perceptions of Hanford. And you mentioned in ’88 this—awash in plutonium. How did it play out after that? What was the drawdown like? What happened in the community when that—when it was realized that Hanford was—the mission was going to change?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, you know, there was fear, because Hanford—the Tri-Cities over time, going back to the ‘50s and ‘60s had gone through booms and busts. And whenever Hanford production was up, the community was good; whenever it was down, homes were for sale, property values dropped and all the rest. So there was a feel, that was going to continue. And if N Reactor was shutting down, PUREX was down, it was going to happen to have a devastating effect on the economy again. Of course, what also happened at the same time was the commitment to the cleanup mission and the negotiation in signing the Tri-Party Agreement, which led to the cleanup mission here, which has continued and kept levels and funding levels right up to where they were and actually higher than in the production days. Maybe not employment necessarily, but it’s close. But also the Tri-Cities has significantly diversified from Hanford. Still very much—we get through $3 billion a year from the federal government between the Site and the national lab in this community, and that’s got huge benefits. But we’ve diversified quite a bit. But, getting to the Tri-Party Agreement, that was a direct result of a legal decision in Tennessee in 1985 that said that Department of Energy sites had to comply with national and state environmental rules. Up until that time, it had been assumed that the Atomic Energy Act, that the department operated under absolved us from that, or we did not have to do that. When that ruling came down, ultimately, it led to getting together with federal regulators in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and state regulators in the form of the Department of Ecology, to find out, okay, where are we in violation, what do we need to change, and how do we do that? You don’t do it instantaneously. Which, obviously, is clear. And that led to the negotiation and the ultimate signing in May of—May 15<sup>th</sup> of 1989 of the Tri-Party Agreement. But that has provided a rather steady employment, funding, and—you know, I realize it’s taking longer than people thought, it’s costing more than people thought. And fortunately, it’s not an urgent—it’s not the type of crisis where something has to be done immediately or here’s the catastrophic result. It’s a problem in slow motion that the main thing you want to do is get the solution right the first time. You don’t want to go hot with the Vit Plant and then find out it doesn’t work. Because you’ll never—you won’t get around to it again. So let’s make sure we’ve got it right. It’s been an enduring process, and I’m very pleased and proud of the enduring capabilities of the Tri-Party Agreement.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what was your role in the negotiation and signing of the Tri-Party Agreement?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, we—the Richland Operations Office had the responsibility and role of negotiating with EPA Region 10 and the Department of Ecology for what the cleanup agreement would look like and what it would entail. And we kept Washington, DC informed of what we were doing and we’d get feedback from them. But it was our main responsibility to do that. Initially a person by the name of Jerry White and then ultimately Ron Izatt who worked for me as division directors had that responsibility of negotiating. And they would brief me every other day and we would get involved. From time to time, I would have discussions with the head of ecology who was Chris Gregoire, who subsequently became governor of the state, on issues that they would rise to our level. Or with Robie Russell, who was the head of EPA regionally, on issues that would come up. But we eventually worked out, basically, the agreement: this would be done and this was the timeframe for doing it. Then it came time to saying, okay, this is what we’ve got. It was in December of 1978 when we had pretty much wrapped everything up.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sorry—’88?</p>
<p>Lawrence: I’m sorry. ’88, yes, I’m sorry. December of ’88. So I went over to Lacey near Olympia where Ecology is located, to meet with Chris Gregoire and her team, and I had Ron Izatt and a lawyer from our team, to talk about what we were going to do. And at that meeting—it was a Friday afternoon—they said, okay, what we want to do now is we want to take this to a court and have a judge bless it, make it law: this is what has to be done. And we couldn’t go along with that, and the reason was that the lawyer for the federal government is the Department of Justice. And anytime you go to court as a US government agency, the Department of Justice represents you. They do not believe in friendly settlements. They will fight everything. I don’t mean that to be critical; that’s just the approach they take. And I said to her, I said, Chris, if you insist on taking this to court, we, the Department of Energy and I, lose all ability to deal with this, and it goes into the hands of lawyers who get paid to fight it. And you’re going to win. You’ve got the law on your side. But it’s going to be two, three years from now at great expense. I said, why don’t we just sign it as an agreement, shake hands on it, and you wait for us to violate it, and then take us to court. And she—we went back and forth on that issue. EPA, by the way, had stepped back and said, if you two can reach agreement, we’ll go along with anything that you say. Because they knew we had the tough issues. And so finally, you know, she said, no, we need it in court. These were her instructions, or this is where the governor wanted to go. And I said, well, Chris, can we take this to the governor? And, fortunately, through my tenure here, I had wonderful relations, a great respect for Governor Booth Gardner, who was the governor at that time. And she said, sure, we can take it to him. Subsequently, the following Friday I went over by myself with her and we met with Governor Gardner in his office in Olympia in the state capitol. And I went through the message of, you know, I don’t have the authority to sign this in court. If it goes to court, Justice will fight it, you’ll win, but it will be two years from now or whatever. Didn’t sway the governor. You know, it was clear: no, we want this—we want the law behind it and make it in a court of law. I must have said the same thing three times. Always slightly different. Maybe I warmed him, I don’t know what. But finally the governor looked at Chris and said, well, Chris, could you live with it as an agreement until if and when they fail to live up to it and then go to court? And she said, you know, Governor, if you can, I can. And the governor says, okay, that’s what we’ll do. And so it was an act of faith and it worked for a long time before it ended up in court. But we would not have had the Tri-Party Agreement when we did in the manner in which we did without his willingness and her willingness to concede on that point and let us move on with it.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so when the Tri-Party Agreement was established, what did that lay out for the future of Hanford?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Basically, it took the entire Site and all the areas in which we were in non-compliance, whether it was currently operating sites—even though the plant wasn’t operating, there were still facilities that were operating that fell under the state, or old sites which fell under EPA. All of those things, and when they would be cleaned up, the schedule and process for doing it. And that’s what it laid out. It also laid out, like, the ability to modify the agreement as you went forward. Because the simple fact was, we were operating with nowhere near the degree of knowledge and specificity you would need to have hard-and-fast deadlines. And the other thing was, we didn’t know, and we still don’t know today, what the funding will be year to year. Okay, or problems that will come up. But there was a process in there to move with it and to let it happen. And that was, I think, one of the best features of the Tri-Party Agreement. And it required parties to act in good faith. And I’m pleased it did.</p>
<p>Franklin: Excellent. Was there anything in there about any of the history at Hanford or preserving any of the historic activity at Hanford, whether—keeping buildings there or documenting the history in some way, or saving equipment or anything used in the process?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Not really, no. I mean, this was all compliance. This was an enforcement order. But we did make sure that B Reactor was going to be one of the last things to be—actually, originally, they wanted all of the reactors out on the Site by the rivers to be decontaminated as best they could, and then they wanted to dig under the reactors, bring in the big crawlers they use at Cape Canaveral to move missiles, put it under there, lift up the block, and take it to the center of the Site. And I thought, oh, my good—and that was to be done early in the process. And we said, let’s move that ‘til about 25 years from now. Of course, subsequently they’ve learned how to cocoon and maybe that’ll be found to be good enough. But, I mean, that was—we didn’t have the level of specificity or knowledge or information that you need to do a good cleanup then as we do now.</p>
<p>Franklin: I know that the B Reactor Museum Association was founded in the early ‘90s, but were there whispers then when you were signing that agreement or afterwards about saving B Reactor or saving something onsite as kind of a testament to the production at Hanford?</p>
<p>Lawrence: There very well may have been. I just—I wasn’t cognizant of it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. So when did you leave working at the Richland office?</p>
<p>Lawrence: I left in July of 1990.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, so you were—and why did you leave? Where did you go after?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, in part, I went to work for a company in Colorado that was doing cleanup work. But I was only there less than a year when the state department offered me a diplomatic post in Vienna, Austria. Because that was right after the first Gulf War, when they discovered that the Iraqis had a clandestine nuclear program, and they wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency, who was supposed to monitor things like that, to become stronger and more efficient and effective. And the State Department decided that they wanted a person with technical knowledge and ability but who also had had some international experience, which I had in the ‘70s under a Carter program doing international negotiations. So they called me up and I went to Vienna, then, to do that. I left here, one, because the managers’ authorities had been greatly, greatly reduced.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was that a result of the Tri-Party Agreement, or just from the shift or production to cleanup?</p>
<p>Lawrence: In part, it was due to the Tri-Party Agreement in that as we were negotiating the Tri-Party Agreement—we had the responsibility for doing that here, but kept Washington informed of our activities and getting their agreement as we went along. And right after those meetings that I told you about with Chris Gregoire and Governor Gardner, that was in December. In January of that year, a new Secretary of Energy was coming in. Admiral Watkins had been appointed to be the Secretary of Energy. So he was transitioning in, and there was an acting secretary. Her name was Donna Fitzpatrick, who was interacting with him as this transition occurred. Acting Secretary Fitzpatrick—they all knew what we were doing here. But as it happens, the agreement was formally signed in May 15<sup>th</sup>, 1989. But three months prior to that—what would that have been, February—is when—you have to give a three-month notice before you do something like that, for public comment and the like. As it turns out, everyone was so pleased with coming to agreement that the announcement of agreement was made in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, DC. Governor Gardner was there, I was there, representatives of DC and the Department were there, EPA were there, and it was announced we had reached agreement and it would be signed in three months in May. You know, after the formal comment period and any changes that had to occur. Well, in the normal question-and-answer period that went on, with that announcement, the State said, this is going to be commit the government to be spending $25 billion for the cleanup of Hanford. Now, it just so happened that the very next day was Admiral Watkins’ first day as Secretary of Energy. During that first day, he was to meet with all of the site managers, including myself. That morning, when it appeared in the paper that Washington State says it’s committed to paying $25 billion—whatever that means—the Office of Management and Budget, which, evidently had been left in the dark—I don’t know. I had no responsibility to inform them. They called him up and said, what in the world’s going on over there? What are you doing committing us to $25 billion? We go into the meeting with the new secretary. And he proceeded to just chew me up and chew me down as to, this is the worst thing we’ve ever done, how could we be so bad and stupid, and all this other stuff. And I just sat there, and—you know, you can’t push back, really. You just think—and unfortunately, the former acting secretary, Donna Fitzpatrick was sitting next to him. She knew all about it, but she couldn’t do anything. And it really just set a very bad tone with the secretary. Subsequently, however, as the kudos started coming in about what a good agreement this was and how it showed good cooperation and compliance by the Department, Admiral Watkins was very happy to take the credit for the Tri-Party Agreement. But life was a little uncomfortable out here. And I decided then I was going to be leaving. But I didn’t want to leave in the first year, because I wanted to make sure the Tri-Party Agreement got off to a good start. So, subsequently when I did leave, a lot of it was about the fact that it just wasn’t the same job. And quite frankly, a very important tenet of any management job is never accept responsibility that you don’t have the authority to fulfill. If you don’t have the authority, but have the responsibility, it just doesn’t work. And I didn’t, and I left.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. How did you come back to the area?</p>
<p>Lawrence: That’s an interesting story as well. After I left Vienna in 1985, I was hired by—</p>
<p>Franklin: Sorry, you mean 1995.</p>
<p>Lawrence: ’95, I’m sorry, yeah, I have my years mixed. 1995. I went to work for a company called BNFL, which stands for British Nuclear Fuels, Limited. And they had bought a company in Los Alamos, New Mexico and they asked me to be president of it. I was running the company, and then they subsequently asked me to move back to their Washington, DC headquarters for their US operations as the chief operating officer, which I did. But that was also the same time when BNFL had gotten the contract to design the Vitrification Plant for the Hanford Site. And they had brought in engineers and managers from the UK to head up that project here in the Tri-Cities. So, I’ve gone back to Washington, DC as the chief operating officer of BNFL, Inc., which is the US component. And shortly—not so long after it—I was there less than a year—the manager of the project in Richland came back. And they had signed an agreement of what they were going to do and the government was going along with it. It was basically, for $6.5 billion they would build and operate the plant and process the first so many million gallons of waste, for $6.5 billion. When that manager came back, he indicated—he said, you know—he’s British; I’m not going to do a British accent—but he said, you know, I really—I’m not fitting in well with the community. I just don’t understand those people out there. I don’t fit in well with the community. We need somebody out there who understands things. Well, I love this community. I know this community. They were very, very good to me and my family when we were here. So I raised my hand and said, I know those people. This was our biggest project by far for our company, I’d be willing to go out and head up the project. And so subsequently, I came out to head up the Vit Plant. Within a week of getting here, I had to go and report to the new Office of River Protection, which had responsibility for it, what the status was of our cost estimates. I had only been here a week, so they give me the numbers. And I asked the—are they aware of this? Yeah, they’re aware of this. So I went in and, oh, all hell broke loose. Because the number—it had risen. It was higher than 6.5. And Dick French, who was the head of the project, rightly so, says, I can’t—this is terrible. Your first report—and it’s over budget already. And I knew Dick, and I understood his position. And basically, I said, let me go back and find out what’s going on. I was told you were on board with this. You obviously are not. Let me find out. I subsequently found out that there had been an arbitrary 20% cut in their estimates, thinking they were just going to drive things harder and shave things off and make it cheaper. And I had a—obviously, I had a major problem with this. Because in the beginning, you don’t shave back. You have contingency that’s built in and you work off. It doesn’t work the other way. And so I’d moved back here, we bought a house, I’m running the—and this project is going downhill quick. What was worse was that I tried to tell BNFL, we need to go to the Department and say, this number, $6.5 billion, for the plant and operations of it is not going to work. We need to renegotiate. We need to do something different. And I got nothing but pushback. We would not do this. And I was even—I said, you know, if we don’t do something, we’re going to be fired. And they said, they can’t fire us. They’re not going to fire us. And I said, I’m sorry, I said, I can’t continue to operate like that. So I resigned. Resigned from the project. Didn’t have another job, but I figured, I’ll find something. But I can’t continue with this. And within two months, Secretary Richardson had fired BNFL. Fortunately, a couple months after that, Battelle and Pacific Northwest National Lab hired me to run their nuclear programs. That’s how I came back, and that’s how I spent my first two years back. As managing a dying project and then transitioning to a new job.</p>
<p>Franklin: And how long did you work at PNNL?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, I worked from 2000 up until 2008. And during that period, I had responsibility—I was the associate lab director for energy. But in the latter part of that timeframe, I was also deputy lab director for facilities and was responsible for the putting together and funding and getting approved the new—they called it a consolidated lab—facilities that are just north of Horn Rapids Road and two private facilities that are on the campus. And then Battelle asked if I’d be willing to lead a team to manage the national nuclear lab in the United Kingdom. They had put together a team with two other companies to do that. And I said I’d be willing to do that. I had spent time in Europe already. And I went over and subsequently we won the contract in the early 2009. So in 2009 and ’10, I was the director of the national nuclear lab in the UK. And then I retired and came back and retired here in West Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, great. Well, thank you so much, Mike. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you’d like to talk about?</p>
<p>Lawrence: Well, I’d like to get on record that I’ve been very, very fortunate in my life to hold some very interesting positions and to work for some phenomenal people. But the job that I enjoyed the most was as manager of the Richland Operations Office. There was a spirit, a camaraderie, a support, a community spirit that I felt there that I’ve just—as much as I’ve enjoyed my other jobs, nothing quite as good as that. It was really, really enjoyable, and aside from my wife and family, probably there was nothing better that had ever happened to us than to move to this area and be involved in these activities. I’ve really enjoyed it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for coming in today.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Okay, very good. Thank you.</p>
<p>Franklin: All right, yeah.</p>
<p>Lawrence: Thanks.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. That was a great--<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/SiYN7OCJOAs">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:23:14
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
200 Area
B Reactor
Fast Flux Test Facility
N Reactor
Vitrification Plant
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1972-1990
2000-2007
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1972-1990
2000-2007
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Donald Hodel
William Skylstad
Paul Lorenzini
Howard Hughes
John Harrington
Karen Dorn Steele
Jerry White
Ron Izatt
Chris Gregoire
Robie Russell
Carter
Governor Gardner
Donna Fitzpatrick
Admiral Watkins
Dick French
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Michael Lawrence
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Michael Lawrence conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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02-01-17
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-15-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
200 Area
Atomic Energy Commission
B Reactor
B Reactor Museum Association
Battelle
Cat
ceremonies
Dam
Department of Energy
Fast Flux Test Facility
Hanford
Kennewick
Los Alamo
Los Alamos
Manhattan Project
Mountain
N Reactor
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
PUREX
Quonset hut
Quonset huts
River
Road
Savannah River
School
Sun
VIT Plant
Vitrification Plant
War
Washington Public Power Supply System
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe4fc1a4c7495942bf447756ec5e85cfa.JPG
d98e592b247db687cb3749711ea3df5b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Douglas O’Reagan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mark Jensen
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. To start us off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us?</p>
<p>Mark Jensen: My name is Mark Jensen, M-A-R-K, J-E-N-S-E-N.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Great. Okay. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Mr. Jensen on March 25<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Jensen about his experiences working at the Hanford site and living in the Tri-Cities. To start us off, can you tell us a little bit about your life before you came to Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, my mother moved to Richland to teach English at what was then Columbia High School, now Richland High School. She was a single mother with five children. So I started school at Jefferson Elementary in Richland in kindergarten. When I was in third grade, my mother remarried, and I was adopted by my new father. He was a long-time Hanford worker. Anyway, so I grew up in the Tri-Cities. We moved to Kennewick when I went into fourth grade, and I went through the Kennewick School District after that, and graduated from Kamiakin High School in 1974. Went to Washington State University, got a degree in forestry, thinking that would get me out of the Tri-Cities, because there aren’t any forests here. Unfortunately, there weren’t any jobs in forestry. So I came back home to live with my parents, and my dad mentioned that N Reactor was hiring reactor operators. So I applied, and got a job as a reactor operator.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What time frame would it have been that your mother moved here?</p>
<p>Jensen: I was five, so that would have been 1961.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Okay, great. Can you tell us about the schooling, the education, the schools in the Tri-Cities as you experienced them?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, I went to Jefferson Elementary, like kindergarten through third grade. It was in an old building left over from World War II. It was probably a grade school built as part of the Manhattan Project. That’s all long since been torn down. Then when we moved to Kennewick, I went to Hawthorne Elementary school there. Building’s still there as far as I know. And then to Vista Elementary, then to Highlands Middle School—Highlands Junior High in those days. Then the Kamiakin High School which was brand new.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What was life like as a kid in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: It was pretty routine, I guess. Went outside and played in those days instead of staying inside for video games. It didn’t matter how hot it was outside, we’d go out and play baseball all day usually, and things like that. Then just going to school during the school year and doing whatever during the summer. When I was growing up, before my mother remarried, she would work in the summer and I was usually babysat by some of her students. After she remarried, then she stopped working during the summer. But I’m fairly certain that one of the reactor operators I worked with at N Reactor was one of my babysitters when I was second or third grade. But anyway.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When you were sort of a teenager, what sort of stuff did you and your friends do for fun around the area?</p>
<p>Jensen: Usually, after doing our homework, we’d go outside and play basketball, every day, every night. We had a lighted basketball court. We’d play basketball all day Saturday and Sunday. When the weather was nicer, we’d play baseball or variants of baseball, since there were seldom enough people to make up a couple of teams. We used to go to baseball games—minor league baseball games—in the summer. A variety of different team names. There was a stadium in Kennewick called Sanders Jacobs Field that’s long since been demolished. That’s pretty much what we did, just mess around. Go bowling, things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you know what your step-father did at the Hanford site?</p>
<p>Jensen: He was a chemical engineer, and he worked at N Reactor and the older reactors designing systems for decontaminating the reactors. When I was in high school, he worked at the Tank Farms in the 200 Area. He was in charge of Tank Farm surveillance, and that was when the tanks started leaking—the older tanks first started leaking. So we got frequent telephone calls in the middle of the night that there was a leaking tank. Sometimes I’d hear my dad say something on the telephone, and the next day I would see that in the newspaper, as a Hanford spokesman said, kind of thing. That was kind of interesting.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So I guess you were aware of the future environmental issues pretty early on?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. Yeah.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did that impact your life at all? Or was it sort of in the background?</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s just the way things were.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So when you came back and were looking for a job and you first heard about this job at N Reactor, did you—was that something you were sort of excited about? Was it something you were--?</p>
<p>Jensen: It sounded interesting. I knew nothing about it. Not too many people knew reactor operators, although there were certainly plenty of them around here over the years. So I had no idea, really, what that job entailed. But it was a job, and it paid pretty good. So when it was offered to me, I accepted it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What kind of skill sets did it end up requiring you to gain?</p>
<p>Jensen: I had to learn a lot about how to operate complex systems, do valving in a precise, controlled manner so it was done correctly. Not so much working with pumps, other than checking to make sure they were running properly. I didn’t have to do maintenance kind of things. Then once I got my certification in the control room, I had to learn how to operate all of the systems, use the controls in the control room to do that, set everything up properly, and what to do in case of an emergency, or a reactor scram, or upset. Try and keep the reactor from scramming, things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What kind of training was involved?</p>
<p>Jensen: We started out, once we got into the certification program, we went into what we called phase one training. That basically started off with fundamentals training. We got some math and chemistry. Didn’t hurt that I had chemistry in college. It’s kind of funny—the week or two weeks we had in chemistry, I think I learned more than the two semesters of chemistry in college, because the instructor was so much better for the fundamentals class than the professor I had at college. But it might have also been because I was older and a little more mature.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that onsite at Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: It was onsite at Hanford, out at N Reactor. We had some chemistry, math, a little bit of electronics, things like that. Started learning some of the various systems at the plant. Then we went back on shift for several months. I can’t remember now how long, I mean this is almost 40 years ago, so it’s kind of hard to remember everything. So when we went back on shift, we were given a packet of stuff that we had to study on our own and learn while we were assigned to do other jobs throughout the plant. Then we went back into class, into phase two, and studied more systems, and started learning how things in the control room worked. I can’t remember if there were four phases or three phases, but each time after a phase ended, we had an exit exam. Then we went back to shift, with more stuff to do in between the regular job stuff. At the end of all of the phases, we took an eight-hour written exam. Theoretically, if you failed the written exam, they could fire you. Or they could just reassign you as a non-certified operator. Some people did that after they failed. They just said they didn’t want to continue. But generally they gave you a second chance. Well, I passed the first time, so didn’t have to worry about that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How long did that process take?</p>
<p>Jensen: Started probably in February or March of ’81. I was completely certified in June of ’82. So it was probably about a year and a half for the total process. But they were in a hurry to get people certified, because there were a lot of older operators who were getting ready to retire. So they needed to get people in there and get some experience before they lost too many of the older, experienced operators. So after the eight-hour written exam, we had to study for what we called the demonstration exam. That was in the control room, and an instructor would say, okay, Mark, how do you set this console up for operation? You are going to do this job, show me without actually doing it--because it was in the real reactor—how you would do it. Later on, we had a simulator that was pretty much an exact duplicate of the reactor, and then you could actually do the things in the simulator. But for my demonstration exam, it was just point out what you would do. When we passed that exam, we actually got a pay raise. We went from what we called a Grade 18 to a Grade 21, and got a nice little bump in pay. Then you studied for your oral exam. That one, you went before an oral board. There was a representative from operations, a representative from training, and a representative from nuclear safety. They all had a certain set of questions to ask, and any one of them could come in at any time with follow-up questions. So that—I think that took me six hours. And I passed that, so then I was a certified operator. Except that operations would not sign your certificate until you demonstrated that you could handle the jobs. So when I went back on shift, I was assigned to an experienced operator. So we rotated through various positions in the control room, and I followed him around. Initially, he would do things and tell me what he was doing. Then he would have me do it, but he would tell me what to do. And then when he was pretty satisfied I knew what I was doing, he would just sit back and let me figure out what I was doing. And then he must have told the control room supervisor I was ready, control room supervisor told the shift manager I was ready, and the shift manager recommended that my certificate be signed by the manager of operations. Then I could sit on consoles all by myself.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So was there an influx of younger operators at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes, we had quite a few coming through. My certification class, we had three supervisor candidates, and I think we had seven operator candidates. One of them ended up not completing it. All of the rest passed. Some of them, it took them a couple attempts at the eight hour and maybe even the oral board to get certified. Then right after me, there was another class with a lot of other young people. So we got a lot of young people in there, and then that allowed some of the older operators to retire. I think some of them were hanging around a little longer than they might have wanted to otherwise, just because they knew they would have been shorthanded if they left.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was this all at N Reactor?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was it the same training program for all the reactors?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, N Reactor was the only reactor left at the time. They had similar programs at the older reactors. But it evolved over time and got a little more detailed. We had a little more stuff on reactor physics. In the original days, it’s just, this is what you’re going to do, and nobody asked why, because it was all secret. It’s just, do this and keep this needle within this range, or whatever. Later on, you actually started to teach people what was happening. Some of the old operators complained about having some reactor physics stuff in there. Wah, we don’t need this stuff. And they were so good that it’s like, I don’t know that they really did need that. They just knew what to do when something went wrong. But the theory is it never hurts to have too much knowledge.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How many people were working at a given time in the actual reactor?</p>
<p>Jensen: In the control room, or—?</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That, and also—</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s easier for me to say in the control room, but I’ll estimate on the other.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure.</p>
<p>Jensen: Minimal shift in the control room was three operators and a control room supervisor, but we generally had four. There were three positions that had to be manned 24 hours a day when the reactor was operating. One of them, the nuclear console, where you actually controlled the reactor power level, we rotated two people in and out on that: two hours on and two hours off. If you only had three, then, I think the control room supervisor could give you relief. But you weren’t allowed to be there for more than two hours at a time. The other two consoles, you could be there for the whole eight hours on a shift. After my class and the next one went through, they had enough operators that we could get six or more operators in there, which gave a lot more flexibility, both for giving breaks to people, because it can get hard to keep your focus all night long, particularly on graveyard shift, when the reactor ran itself, pretty much. You’re just looking at things to make sure everything’s normal. That gets hard to do. It doesn’t sound like it would be, but it is. It’s pretty—puts a strain on you. So we had more people to give breaks. And extra certified operators to go out throughout the plant and check things, because they could recognize problems that non-certified operators might not. So, let’s say six of us in the control room, a control room supervisor, a shift manager. They were both certified control room shift manager/operators also. So they could do anything in the control room we could. And on a typical shift, you usually had a couple of electricians, a couple of instrument technicians, three or four health physics technicians—radiological control technicians—we called them radiation monitors in those days. Plus supervisors for all of them. And maybe a handful of millwrights, pipefitters, whatever. Mostly, the maintenance people did their work when the reactor was shut down. There wasn’t very much for them to do when the reactor was operating. But there was always work for instrument technicians. They would come in, and if something wasn’t working right in the control room, we’d call them in and they would tinker with it and try to fix it. Things like that. Day shift, there were a lot more people on there. And then during a reactor outage, much more work going on, particularly or the maintenance people. Because that’s when they were tear pumps down and rebuild them and things like that. So there were probably, on days, a couple hundred people out there. On shift, maybe thirty.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. So you’ve sort of been doing this, but could you walk us through a day in the life? What would sort of your average day involve?</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. I’d come to work in the morning, a little bit before eight. And if I were assigned to the control room, I would go in and receive a turnover from the operator whose console I was taking over. We had a schedule that rotated us through. So if you’re one or two, you’re on the nuclear console. If you’re three, you’re on the double-A console. If you’re number four, you’re on the BN console, and I do not know what BN stands for. We used to joke that it was short for boring, because it was the most boring of the three consoles when we were at full power. So if I’m going to be on the nuclear console, I’d come in and there’s an operator who’s ready to leave. He gives me a turnover, tells me what the power level is, if we’re going to be raising power, if we’re at full power, we’re just going to hold power, if there’s any areas of the reactor that seem to want to lose power or gain power. So I get the turnover and then I take over. If I was on the nuclear console, I would work for two hours, and the other operator would come in, and I would give him a turnover and he would take over. And then I would usually give breaks to the other operators, unless we had enough other people to give them breaks. Anytime you take over, you’d get a turnover for what’s going on. Worked the nuclear console for two days, then you’d go to the double-A console. The double-A console controlled the reactor pressure and the primary coolant pump speed, and sending steam to the Washington Public Power Supply System. So you had this big console, went around like this and like this, and there were separate sections for each of the steam generator cells. We had six—five operating at any one time. Occasionally we ran with four operating. We never did all six. There was a reason why; I can’t remember what the reason why was. But always had one in reserve. That one was a pretty busy console during startups and shutdowns. I had full power. It was look around, look at all of the drive turbines for the primary coolant pumps and make sure they’re running at the proper RPM, look at the pressurizer level and make sure it’s at 23 feet. Got very busy on a reactor scram—lots of stuff to do there. And after the day on the double-A console, we went to the BN console. That monitored the secondary coolant system, so we had water coming back from the Washington Public Power Supply System. We sent them steam, they sent back condensate to us. Then we had a secondary system to maintain the pressure of the main steam header. So we had to watch that, plus we had to watch the rupture monitor system, which would check the radiation levels in the coolant water outlet from the reactor tubes. There were 1,003 tubes with fuel in them. The system would compare the radiation level between two adjacent tubes, and if one of them was higher than the other, a red light would come on on this panel. Then you’d go over and push the button to reset it. They’re coming on and off all the time. But if we had a rupture, that meant there was a leak in the cladding on the fuel. Usually, it was a little small pinhole; sometimes—and I never saw this—the welded-on endcap would blow off. Uranium, normally, is not very soluble in water, but when the water’s really hot, then it’s really soluble. And we’re running at 600 degrees or so for the coolant water. So if you had a rupture, you could start dissolving the uranium very rapidly. That’s got all of the fission products in it from the uranium atoms that have split, which are highly radioactive. So you could completely contaminate the primary coolant loop. So you needed to catch a rupture before it progressed too far. That was a frustrating job because those lights are coming on and off all the time. You got to look at those, and it was kind of a bad design, because that panel was here, the other panel was over there, and you had to keep looking back and forth. So that’s why we’d call it the boring console. It was pretty boring at full power. A lot of work there, again, on a reactor startup. We had to set things up to control the main steam header pressure, and that was a lot of work. So it was kind of fun, then. But full power, it was kind of boring. After we cycled through, if we had more than four operators, then we’d have two days where we’re—you could either study, because we always had to maintain our certification, and we had quarterly requalification classes and every two years we had to recertify. Or you could just be assigned to go out in the plant and do various jobs, help out—if it’s needed somewhere, help out some of the operators who were still studying to be certified operators, help train them, things like that. And then you just kept rotating through that. If we had an outage, we only had two places manned in the control room. One was the double-A console, and the other one was the communications console. So you kept contact with everybody throughout the plant, and made PA announcements if need be. Just let people know what’s going on. If we were in charge/discharge operations, you might be assigned to work on the charge or discharge elevator, to set it up for refueling the reactor. Or just—if it’s not a charge/discharge outage or we’re already done with that, you might be going in the rod rooms and doing some valving to assist the millwrights who might be repairing control rod issues and things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I saw you had some pictures there. Could you walk us through some of what those are?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah. Here is a picture. I found this online in the Hanford system a while back, and I was really surprised. That’s me, and I don’t remember posing for this picture. But I am on the charge elevator here. This is the wall, and it’s opposite the reactor and it’s a shield wall and each of these things here are plugs. You can open one up on the elevator side and on the other side, there was a really large elevator called the W work elevator. It actually came off a World War II aircraft carrier for lifting airplanes up to the flight deck. They could pull a plug out there, and they would run a tube through this penetration. Then you would mate it up with the process tube in the reactor. That’s how you refueled. They must have had a photographer up there taking pictures to show other people what goes on there. That was my assignment, and so I obviously posed for this picture, but like I say, I don’t remember doing this at all.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Is that your usual outfit when you were working?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. Those are called anti-C clothes, or—original Hanford terminology was SWP clothing, for Special Work Procedure. During World War II, you didn’t want to say that this was to protect against contamination, because this is all secret what we’re doing. So you’re doing a special work procedure, so you have to wear the special work procedure clothes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So that’s a second pair of gloves there?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah. I would be wearing two pairs of coveralls, a hood, two pairs of gloves and some rubber shoes. And underneath the rubber shoes there’s some canvas booties. So this is not a real high contamination job. If we were actually refueling the reactor, I’d be wearing plastic raingear over that. We used to wear a face shield to keep water out of our face. Later on, we had a hood with a blower unit that provided air so we didn’t suffocate, and that kept water off our face. So that’s about as good as I could get on the elevator. This picture was taken of our crew in the control room. We had started a straight day shift crew. It was so we had more time for training. We worked Monday through Thursday in the control room, and every Friday we had training. And the rotating shifts, when they came in on days, they worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the control room, and then during the week they had training. We formed up this brand new shift. They let it out by seniority, and there weren’t that many people who wanted to do it. Some people, strangely enough, really liked shiftwork. So I managed to get on the first crew. And on our very first day working together as a crew, we had what we call a WPPSS turbine trip—the Washington Public Power Supply System bought our steam, and they had two turbines, and one of their turbines tripped. That had happened before, and the reactor had never managed to ride through that without scramming. Well, we kept the reactor from scramming. And I was on this console here—this is the nuclear console. I was controlling the reactor power level. When their turbine dropped off, the main steam header pressure goes up. This is getting a little technical, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: No, that’s great.</p>
<p>Jensen: The main steam pressure goes up high. That sits on top of the steam generators. When the pressure’s high, water doesn’t boil as easily. And when water boils, you get heat exchange. So we are sending hotter water back through the reactor. That is not as good a moderator as the cooler water. So the reactor power went down very fast. So I had to start pulling control rods to make up for that. In low-enriched reactors, like any of the Hanford reactors, when you lose power rapidly, you start building up a fission product called xenon which is a neutron poison. It absorbs neutrons better than anything else. At equilibrium power, we’re making xenon at a certain rate, and it’s destroyed as soon as it’s made by absorbing neutrons. So the net amount of it in the reactor is zero. But if we lose power, we’re still producing it for several hours at the old rate. But we don’t have as many neutrons in there, so the reactor power will go down and it will just make it worse. So you have to pull rods very fast. So that’s what I had to do. My part was to keep the reactor from going down so far that the xenon would take it all the way down. The other operators were working to keep the main steam header pressure from going up too high, because we had a scram trip on that, because you didn’t want to rupture the steam header. The people controlling the primary coolant loop pressure had to do work on that. It was very exciting. But we survived it, and so they took this picture as a commemoration. One of the people involved was on the nuclear console when they took the picture and he didn’t want to be in the picture. So he’s not in there. But I like this, because if you know what you’re looking at, you can actually see that the reactor’s operating. There’s some indications there that the reactor’s at its 4,000 megawatt power level. And it’s one of the few pictures I’ve ever seen where you can tell the reactor was operating. Then, almost a year later, the exact same thing happened again, and I was in the same place. It was really easy the second time, because I knew exactly what to do. So they took a picture again, for all of us. This is the double-A console. Kept these all these years. As long as I’ve got these up here, this is an aerial photo of the N Reactor complex. Let me see. This is the reactor building right here. Make sure I’m not looking at things backwards. This building over here is the Washington Public Power Supply System. You can kind of see over here there’s some lines that go over, and those are the steam lines going over to them. They bought the steam from us and then sent the condensate back after they ran it through their turbines.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much did you have to communicate with them?</p>
<p>Jensen: Frequently. We called them up--any time we were going to do something that might affect the power level, we would call them up, tell them we’re going to do that. If they were going to do something that might affect the condensate coming back, they would let us know. They would give us some numbers. From there, power generation, which we would compile into a daily report, I think that was the basis for how much money they paid us for the steam. Things like that. So we were in constant contact with them. Usually it was the operator on the double-A console who would communicate with the—we called them Whoops in those days. They didn’t like being called Whoops. Now it’s Energy Northwest. But that’s a habit that’s hard to break. I still want to call them Whoops. And we didn’t mean it anything derogatory in those days, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When you said that the turbine tripped, would that seize it up? What does that involve?</p>
<p>Jensen: I’m not really sure why it tripped. They may have had some valves—steam admittance valves close or something. If they told us why it tripped at the time, I can’t remember. This was 1987 or so. So it was quite a while—almost 30 years ago. The second trip—not sure if it was the same cause or not. I know one time they had a turbine trip and we didn’t survive that one. [LAUGHTER] It was kind of funny. Somebody was sweeping in their control room, and the broom fell and hit a switch and caused the turbine to trip off. So on that reactor outage, they paid for everything we did to get the reactor back up. We had a special charge code. Because it was their fault, so they’re paying for it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That would, I guess, give the reactor xenon poisoning and they couldn’t start up for a certain amount of time?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. If we scrammed from full power, theoretically, you could pull control rods almost immediately and override the xenon building up. But we had a mandated one-hour hold if we scrammed from full power. And that’s so that you will make sure it wasn’t a spurious scram. If it’s something that’s actually not working correctly, so it would be unsafe to operate, you can figure that out. And by doing that—waiting that one hour, it gets impossible to start the reactor up. So our minimum downtime from full power was generally about 23 hours—23 to 24 hours. If we could figure out what the problem was and get it fixed, then we started up the next day. If I was something serious, it might take a few more days, or several days, to figure out what the problem is or correct the problem. And then when we started up, it was kind of interesting, because we had the control rods pulled almost completely out of the reactor before the reactor went critical. And then as the power goes up, you’re pushing control rods in, rather than pulling them out to raise power, until you get to a point—it’s called xenon turnaround—where you’ve burned up all of the xenon that was in the reactor, and now the reactor’s making more of the xenon and then they start coming back out. So those were actually really fun.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How often did the reactor scram?</p>
<p>Jensen: N Reactor was getting kind of old by the time I was there. Some of the equipment was really old, old technology, and getting a little hard to maintain. We usually had two or three scrams in a particular operating run. I’m not really sure how many, because, again, it’s been so long. We would typically operate for a month. And we were in plutonium weapons-grade production mode, and so we only operated for a month, and then we would shut down and about a third of the reactor. But it was unusual to go an entire cycle without at least one scram. And usually they were spurious ones. The ones that caused a lot of them were the flow monitor system, which was a pretty old system. If somebody slammed a door or something somewhere, the instruments would vibrate, and it would give a false indication of low flow, and the reactor would scram. It only took one of the 1,003 flow monitor devices to cause a reactor scram. So that was kind of touchy there.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: And that was automated?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, it was automated. You had this big panel with all these 1,003 dials. Normally, we never changed them. If we swapped steam generator cells out—like cell five was out for years until it got re-tubed, and then we put that one in and took another one out so they could re-tube that one. And we had to adjust all of those dials. Oh, that was a boring job—get them all set exactly right, and then somebody has to go through and check them all. If we ran in that mode with that same balance of steam generators, we didn’t have to do that every startup.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: In the pictures with the other operators, could you just tell us about one or two of the other folks you were working with?</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. This is Dennis Real. Hopefully he won’t mind that I mentioned his name. He still works at Hanford. He started a little bit before me. This gentleman is Bill Terhark. He was a very, very experienced operator. He was one of the ones that you really wanted to have in the control room when things went bad, because he knew what to do all the time. He had so much experience. He went back to the 1950s, operating—probably operated at every one of the reactors. This is Fred Butcher, Jr. His dad had also been a reactor operator, Fred Butcher, Sr. And that’s me, and this is our control room supervisor, Glen Buckley.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you know anything about their backgrounds? Were they also—I guess the one who had most experience probably trained in reactors, but were they all engineers mostly?</p>
<p>Jensen: No, no. Dennis had been a paramedic or EMT before he started working at the reactor. I’m not sure about Fred, what he did. Bill had graduated from high school, joined the Air Force, came out of the Air Force, got a job at Hanford. Typically, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they did not hire engineers to be—and I don’t know what Glen’s job was—or what his background was, before. Most of us, except the older operators had college of some sort or another. When I hired on, they were hiring people usually with a couple years or more of college.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So you were there through the end of N Reactor, is that right?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. In 1987—well, 1986—I think it was in April, was the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl, although really was not similar at all to N Reactor, everybody thought it was, because both reactors are moderated by graphite instead of light-water. So everybody looked at graphite—that must be the cause of why Chernobyl blew up. Well, it blew up because it was a really poor design, and it was poorly operated, and they had a really unusual transient situation and then they had a steam explosion that tore the reactor apart. Well, we decided we would make some safety upgrades. They decided we’re going to shut down on January 7<sup>th</sup>, 1987. Six months of safety upgrades, then we’d start back up. Well, we pretty much knew we were never going to start back up again. They did do all the safety upgrades, spent millions of dollars on them, but—anyway, so we came in on January 7<sup>th</sup> knowing that this is probably the last day of operation for the reactor, and it was our job to shut it down. I was on the double-A console that day. It would have been nice if I had been on the nuclear console, to be the guy actually putting the rods in, but that was Dennis. So we shut the reactor down. Took about an hour. We still had fuel in the reactor for a good almost two years before we defueled the reactor. Because we were going to start up again. And then finally they said, no, we’re going to defuel the reactor and we’ll go on wet layup. So we still had water pumping through the pipes, keep everything wet. Because if you let it drain of water and then it’s damp in there, then things will start to rust. But if you have water flowing through there, that wouldn’t happen. So we went for a few months where we kept all of the pumps running and stuff like that, but no fuel in the reactor. And then they said, well, now we’re going to go into dry layup. So we drained the primary coolant loop and all the other systems, and then we had big fans blowing hot air through there to keep moisture from condensing in there. The thought was, maybe we’ll get the order to start up again. And then they just said, nope. Pulling the plug. Reactor is abandoned, and it’ll go into decontamination and decommissioning. And it’s essentially been torn down now, and what’s left of it—the reactor block itself—is all cocooned. Just like most of the other old reactors.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What happened to your and the other reactor operators’ careers at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: [SIGH] Well, that was kind of a scary time. People thought we’re going to get laid off. Some people quit and went back to school. I remember one guy went to school and got a doctor’s degree in optometry and became an optometrist. There was some programs to help people with that, some money to help people go to college and get something else. Some people just found other jobs and left. And then I ended up staying. I was getting bored with being an operator at a reactor that wasn’t operating, and there wasn’t even any fuel in the reactor. But we still had all the stored fuel, and they needed somebody to be what they called the criticality safety representative, to work with operations and with the criticality safety analyst to make sure we’re still storing that fuel safely, so we don’t have any inadvertent criticality accident. Not very likely, but it could conceivably still happen. So I got that job, and in addition to that I was doing other stuff that you would call nuclear safety work. So I ended up becoming, to all intents and purposes, a nuclear safety engineer, even though I don’t have an engineering degree. And I’ve been doing that ever since.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Who is that, technically, that you were working for at that point? Was it Battelle?</p>
<p>Jensen: No. Initially I worked for UNC Nuclear Industries. That was UNC parts stands for United Nuclear Corporation. They had the contract to run the reactors. In those days, Rockwell ran the 200 Areas for the Tank Farms and stuff like that, and the processing plants. So they ran the PUREX Plant that was extracting plutonium from our fuel. Battelle operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and that does research and design. Right after we shut down, DoE announced that they were going to consolidate all of the contracts. Westinghouse got that contract, so I worked for Westinghouse at the time I got into nuclear safety. Westinghouse went through a contract period and then a renewal period, and DoE typically does not renew anybody’s contract—nowadays anyway—more than once. So Westinghouse left, and then they announced a bid for a new contract. The Fluor Corporation won that one, and so I worked for Fluor for several years. They went through—I think they went through two and a half. DoE gave them an extension on the second done until they could get everything in place. And then the contract was won by the CH2M Hill Company, and that’s who I work for now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Does it make much difference when one becomes—</p>
<p>Jensen: WE used to joke the only difference it makes is in the color of the paycheck. It makes a little bit of difference, because you get some upper management coming in, and they have different ideas on how things should be done. We all joke that we have to educate them on how things actually are done. That’s only half-joking because it’s different than anything else. Fluor had some subcontractors who had never done work for Department of Energy before. So they wanted to do things the way you do it in the commercial nuclear industry. And it’s like, you don’t get to do it that way—you do it the way DoE tells you to do it. So we kind of had to educate them. But it’s a little bit different. There’s a little bit of different philosophy every time.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was there ever any kind of either interest or communication with the commercial sector, in terms of learning or teaching any particular things?</p>
<p>Jensen: We did a little bit. I cannot remember the name of the organization, but it’s an organization that compiles knowledge from commercial nuclear reactors all over the country, and the disseminates that to help everybody. We had some people who would go to meetings there, so I guess we became a member of this group. I never was involved in that, but—So we would hear things that happened at other plants and then see if there were some lessons learned that we could apply. But N Reactor was so different than a commercial reactor that sometimes things that happened at N Reactor, they wouldn’t be able to use at a commercial reactor and vice versa.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How secretive was your work?</p>
<p>Jensen: Not much. There were a few things—security stuff was classified. But what we were doing was no longer secret, hadn’t been secret since 1945. I had to have a clearance—it was a secret level clearance. Mostly that was just to make sure I was trustworthy and wouldn’t sabotage the plant or something. Very rarely did I actually see any information that was classified secret.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I would assume, though, that the plutonium itself—I guess you didn’t see the plutonium until it got through the PUREX Plant?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, well I never saw it. I’ve never seen plutonium. All of that stuff—how it was handled, how it was stored—that’s all part of the security thing, and that was all classified. And would still be, to this day, except we don’t have any plutonium at Hanford—not in any discrete form that you can do anything with, anyway.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So what is it you’re doing again? Could you give us more detail on what you’re doing or what you did subsequent to being a reactor operator?</p>
<p>Jensen: I worked in nuclear and criticality safety for N Reactor until we shipped all of the fuel over to the fuel storage basins at the K East and K West Reactors and I moved over there. I worked in criticality safety for that. When they were storing the fuel, that was fairly easy, because they weren’t doing anything. Then they decided they needed to get the fuel out of the basins because they’re close to the river, and the K East Basin had leaked at least once and maybe twice in the past. So the contaminated water gets into the groundwater and eventually gets out to the river. So we needed to get the fuel off the river, so they built a storage facility in the 200 East Area. We had to build a whole system to take the fuel out of the basin and put it in shielded casks and ship it over thee. So there was a lot of work on that, and all of that had to be set up to prevent criticalities. And also nuclear safety, which is more concerned with releases of radiological stuff to the atmosphere. So you need to keep those releases down below certain guidelines that DoE provides to protect the public.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So was this at all part of this amelioration cleanup efforts at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, that’s the whole goal that we’re working towards: get all of the fuel out of the reactor basins. So we got it all out of the K East Basin first, and then that’s actually been destroyed—the basin has been completely dug up and destroyed, and the area backfilled. The reactor’s prepared for cocooning, but hasn’t been, because they ran out of funding. So it’s in a safe, stable condition right now. K West Basin is empty of fuel, but it has sludge. I still do some work for 100 K, although mostly I work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant now. They’re going to move all the sludge out, and then they’ll do the same thing to the K West Basin that they did at K East. And basically, all over Hanford, that’s what they’re doing is cleaning things out, and getting them ready for demolition. So I work at PFP now in nuclear criticality safety there, and they’ve got miles and miles of ductwork. Some big pipes and some little pipes that are all contaminated with plutonium, and they have to carefully take all that stuff out. Get enough of that out so they can actually start tearing the building down.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Are there any general ways, whether it’s the type of people working there, or morale, or whatever, that the work at the Hanford site has changed over the time you’ve been there?</p>
<p>Jensen: [SIGH] During the operating days, it was fun. Actually fun to go to work and do something that you thought was productive. I mean, you can argue whether you thought we should have been making plutonium for nuclear weapons or not, but the job was very interesting. When the reactor shut down, the morale went down quite a bit, because, for one, people thought they were going to lose their jobs, and two, it’s like, well, even if we stay here for decommissioning, that’s not going to be anywhere near as interesting. And it isn’t. It has its own interesting aspects to it. But mostly, people are pretty professional and here’s a job, we’re going to get all of the fuel out of K East. So people went and worked on that, and we’re going to get all the fuel out of K West, so you work on that. While you’re doing that, it’s satisfying, because you’ve got a goal to work for. PFP—it’s a very difficult job. I think the morale kind of goes up and down. We have successes and then there’s problems you run into. But in a way that’s what makes a job interesting, if there’s problems that you can resolve and get through it, and then you succeed on this task and go onto the next one. But it was a lot more fun to operate than to do what we’re doing now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much longer would you guess we’re going to be doing this--?</p>
<p>Jensen: I, personally, or Hanford?</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Both, why not?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, PFP is supposed to be torn down. It was supposed to be torn down by the end of September this year, but it’s probably going to be about a year off from that. The K Basin—K West Basin has sludge in it. They’re probably going to start removing the sludge in about two years. That’ll probably take about a year to do that and then they’ll start tearing that basin down. There’s still a huge project called Groundwater, where they’re pumping contaminated water, and it’s not just radioactive contamination, there’s a lot of heavy metal contamination in Groundwater. They pump that out, and they run it through processes to take the, like, chromium out of the water and replace it with a type of chromium that’s not as environmentally damaging. That’ll go on for years and years. And then there’s still—all of the old processing canyons are still there in place, and all of those are going to have to be torn down at some point. So, it’s probably decades more work here. And then there’s all the tanks. They’re going to take all the waste out of the tanks and run it through the Vit Plant which isn’t done yet. So years of work left at Hanford.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Interesting. Were you ever interested in the sort of politics of Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: Not too much. The politics were different. In the ‘80s, it was whether we should be making weapons-grade plutonium or not. Nowadays the politics is more like, which project do we rob from to give to somebody else? And political battles in Congress as to how much funding Hanford gets, and things like that. So I try and stay out of all of that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure. So how about life outside of the work plant? Where were you living—still in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes, I’ve been living in Kennewick since I moved there as a kid in 1965.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Where in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s over near Highway 395 as it kind of cuts through the middle of Kennewick.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How has life in the Tri-Cities changed in the time you’ve—</p>
<p>Jensen: The Tri-Cities is a lot bigger. It was pretty small when I first moved here. For several years, it was just slowly growing, and it’s been growing like crazy since. It’s like, they’re always building new schools, and there’s always housing developments under construction. There used to be a lot of orchards in Kennewick, all around. There’s hardly anything now, because they’ve all been cut down and there’s houses there now. Traffic’s a lot worse.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What do you do in your spare time? Any hobbies or--?</p>
<p>Jensen: I like photography, I like to take pictures with film, which is old-fashioned nowadays. And I like to develop the film myself. So far that’s all been black and white film; I haven’t tried developing color film yet. And I like to collect old film cameras that I can still find film for and use those. Up until recently, I was playing hockey—adult hockey, which I started when I was 49, started playing hockey. I’m 60 now, so I’ve been doing that for about 11 years. However, I had quit, hopefully only temporarily because I’ve got some medical issues. My doctor said no hockey until this is resolved. And then I hurt my knee the other day, so I don’t know. That might—even if the other one gets resolved, that might be the end of hockey. I like to go to Tri-City Americans hockey games during the season. I got to Tri-City Dust Devil games during the baseball season. Like to go to plays and movies. I decided this year I was going to audition for a play, see if I could get in. I did not make it, but I’m going to try again, coming up later. Probably this summer. So we’ll see. Never done that before, either. But it always sounded like fun.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any sort of major events or incidents, whether at work or just sort of around the Tri-Cities that comes to mind that are sort of worth commemorating, or worth just sort of mentioning?</p>
<p>Jensen: Kind of the interesting thing—back in 1986, reactor was still operating, and do you remember Connie Chung, the news—she came to the Tri-Cities to do a show on Hanford. Everybody at work was wondering who she’s going to interview. And we’re thinking they’re going to interview, like company president, company vice president, or something. And I remember joking that she should interview a reactor operator like me. And everybody laughed. And about an hour later, the phone rang, and it was the producer wanting to talk to me, and they wanted to interview me that night. And I got permission from the company. Turned out, my dad, who, like I said, had worked at the Tank Farms—he had gone to a public hearing on what to do with tank wastes. The Connie Chung crew had gone to the same meeting, because they were getting background information. My dad spoke at the meeting, and they said, oh, we have to interview that guy. When they talked to him, he mentioned that his son worked as a reactor operator. Oh, god, that’d be great, interview them both. So that’s how I got called up. The company gave me permission, and they did it in my house. I told them, it was my son’s third birthday, and I said we’re going to have a birthday party, but you can do the interview after the birthday party. So they said okay. After I got home, my wife sent me out to buy ice cream, I think. And I’m coming back. When she came back, she was all excited. Connie Chung called personally and asked if they could film the birthday party. So they filmed my son’s third birthday party, and then they interviewed my dad and I in my living room, and then—I don’t know, two, three hours of interview stuff, and they boil it all down to about five minutes. But that’s the way that goes. So that was kind of exciting. I was a minor celebrity for a while.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any other stories leap to mind?</p>
<p>Jensen: We had some interesting scrams in the control room. I talked about the two turbine trip ones that were very interesting. The first one, like I said, I had to pull control rods rapidly to compensate for the xenon building up faster than it’s being burned out. I got that all settled out, and the power level wasn’t dropping, and I had forgotten that--when the main steam header pressure goes up, the power level goes down—well, eventually, they’re going to control the main steam header, and it’s going to go back where it’s supposed to be. And the power all of the sudden starts shooting up. So now I’m shoving control rods in like crazy to keep the power level from going up too fast, because we could scram on a high rate of rise. So I got that all settled out. The second time it happened—since I was the most experienced person on the plant on this upset, I got it settled out from the xenon, and I just got my ear open over here, and as soon as I hear somebody say, main steam header pressure’s coming down, I look over and the power level starts to go up, and I tap some rods in, and it was just like routine. Nothing to it. But another time, we had another accident—well, accident’s probably not the right word. We had another upset. We had a new control system—computerized system for controlling valve positioning. The old system we had was very ancient. It was obsolete when they put it in at the reactor, but they got a good price on it, so that’s why they did that. So we had this new computerized system, and there were two cards in the computer that controlled the valve positioning. The primary card, and a backup card. If the primary card failed, you would transfer to the backup card, and it was supposedly a bump-less transfer. The system wouldn’t even know. The primary card had failed, and so it transferred to the backup card, and everything went perfect. Well, the instrument technicians took the primary card out to repair it, and they came to put it back in. Now, this card controlled the steam valves going over to WPPSS. I was on the console controlling all of that, and I remember, jokingly, I said to the guy—the instrument tech and the engineer, when they came in, they were going to go to the rom below the control room where all of that stuff was. They were going to replace it, and I said, you aren’t going to scram us, are you? And the engineer said, trust me. And they went down—and I was just joking, because I figured, no big deal—and they went down and they put the primary card in and they told it to take over. It took over and sent its signal to the valves, but the secondary card did not relinquish control. So all of the steam valves opened up twice as far as they were supposed to. So our steam pressure goes down, and when that goes down, the reactor power goes up. And the primary coolant pressure also goes down, because you’re boiling water really well in the secondary system, that cools the water really well in the primary system, and cold water contracts. So that pressure goes down, and if the pressure goes down to far, the reactor scrams. So I’m fighting like mad with—somebody else came over to help me—to keep from scramming on low pressure. Other people are working over here, trying to keep from scramming on something over here. And other people over here, and the guy on the nuclear console is trying to keep the power level from going up too fast. We’re running around—it was very exciting. Seemed like it took hours. Probably just took a few minutes. We got it all stabilized out, and I’m looking at the primary loop pressure, and it’s kind of fluctuating and bouncing. And right when it’s going—trying to think if it was going up or down. See, if we cool—it had to have been going up. The secondary card cut out, all the valves slammed shut, and we had the exact opposite thing happen. Now, the primary loop gets hot, everything expands, and we scrammed on high pressure. And then about five minutes later, the instrument tech and the engineer come upstairs. They could tell something bad was happening, and they just looked like—it wasn’t their fault, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When it actually does scram, is it actually just rods, or—I’ve heard some designs where there’s actually just balls that are—</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. The main system was control rods. And you were going like this, like dropping down from the top. The old reactors had safety rods that dropped in from the top. N Reactor’s rods all came from both sides, and they overlapped. All the rods would slam in with hydraulic pressure. We had some hydraulic pumps that would turn on and pump very high pressure hydraulic fluid into the system, and the rods would shoot in. It would take about a second-and-a-half to go in. And you’d get all these enunciators in the control room, and if you were—mmm, it’s pretty boring here at two in the morning, and then all of the sudden the reactor scrams, you were wide awake. Got adrenaline pumping through and then you’ve got all these things you have to do to make sure everything works correctly on a scram, because it causes all kinds of things. The balls were the backup to the control rods. They had to be 75% in in one-and-a-half seconds. If they went in too slow, there was a problem. If they went in too fast, there was a problem, just because they could be damaged. But if they went in too slow, that’s what the ball system was for. There were hoppers on top of the reactor—I think there were a hundred-and-some reactors. And they were full of boron carbide balls. Boron absorbs neutrons. That’s what’s in the control rods to absorb neutrons. If you had one slow rod, it’s no big deal. If you had two slow rods in one column, you would drop balls on both sides of that rod column. If you had three slow rods anywhere in the reactor, you would drop balls on both sides of each of those three rod columns. Then there was also a thing where you could have a complete ball drop—drop all of the balls. If the reactor power level did not decay below five megawatts in three minutes, I think it was, then you would have a complete ball drop. That happened twice. Once, for real, because we had a scram and the rods didn’t go in at all—this is before I started working there. So there’s a scram trip, the rods did not go in, the balls dropped. And the other one was we were starting the reactor up—getting ready to start the reactor up and going through all of these checks on various instrumentation. The instrumentation that would monitor if the reactor power was below five megawatts in three minutes, they were doing the work on that, and they had a procedure that they would run. There were three channels and they would run it on each channel. That included having a switch to put in a couple of different calibrate positions. Basically, it put a false signal into the system so you could see if it’s responding correctly. So an operator and an instrument tech were doing that. They did channel one and it didn’t look right when they put it in the calibrate position. So they went on to channel two to see if it would do the same thing, and they did that. Well, they put two trips into the system. The reactor—what we called the safety circuit—was not made up, and so the system started timing for five minutes. These two instruments said the power level was greater than five megawatts with the safety circuit broken. When the give minutes went up, all the balls dropped. It was kind of innocuous. There was an enunciator that said, any ball hopper open. So the enunciator goes off, and the operator looks up at that. Any ball hopper open. And then he realized what happened. He told the control room supervisor, and the control room supervisor told me that. He says, I looked up at it. And I looked down. And I looked up again to make sure it was actually on. And then he said a few bad words and then he went and told the shift manager that we had dropped all of the balls.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I heard on the old reactor designs, that had to be actually sort of vacuumed out.</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. They used vacuum—they were steel balls, too. And they used vacuums to suck them up. At N Reactor, we had a valve at the bottom of the channel that you would open up, and the balls would drain into a hoist, and then you would lift them all the way up to the top, and put them in a hopper at the top—a big hopper—and then you would load the individual hoppers. That was a horrible, horrible job, being up there loading those hoppers. It was always hot, you had to wear plastic raingear and an assault mask, which—rubber hugging your face, and it’s hard, physical labor, and wearing the raingear and it’s already 100 degrees up there anyway. It was just miserable work. So nobody liked to do that. When we had that big ball drop, my job was to go down underneath the reactor. You could open up those drain valves remotely. So we had Bill here who smoked a lot and was not allowed to wear respirators, he was operating the control panel. But a lot of times, the valves wouldn’t work remotely. So, me, wearing all of this fresh air stuff, would stand by, but would say, 43 didn’t work. So I would have to go back there, trailing this hose with my fresh air, and go back to 43, and open it manually. It was extremely hot, radioactively, down there. I picked up my entire one week’s worth of radiation. We were allowed 300 millirem of radiation, either in a single exposure or in a seven-day period, and I picked up that entire 300 in less than an hour, going back and forth. And most of the time, I was just standing there, waiting. And I’d go back in there, and I’d pick up quite a bit, and I’d open up a valve and come back, and then I was done and left. Couldn’t work in a radiation zone for seven days after that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How often did you have the radiation testing? Or was it the hand-and-foot test—</p>
<p>Jensen: Oh, any time we came out of a contaminated zone, contaminated area, when we were wearing those SWPs, you have to undress in a proper sequence. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this. We had step-off pads. A red pad and a green pad. And when you get to the red pad, before you get to that, you have to remove all of your outer clothing before you step on the red pad. And then when you get to the green pad, you have to remove all of your SWP clothing before you step on the green pads. So you end up coming out there—well, in the old days when there were very few women working in the Area, you’d be coming out in your underwear. Later on they made us wear a t-shirt and shorts. But I kind of lost track of what we were saying there. Oh, the hand-and-foot counters. And then when you came out, we would step into a hand-and-foot counter or a whole-body portal monitor that would monitor our sides and front and back, to make sure we weren’t contaminated. Then usually we would also be surveyed by a health physics technician who’s got a Geiger counter, and he just slowly goes over, checks your hands, checks the bottom of your shoes, makes sure you’re not—don’t have any skin or clothing contamination. If you do, then you’ve got to get decontaminated. And that happens once in a while.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that ever a concern of yours?</p>
<p>Jensen: No. I did get a few skin contaminations. I had to hold over once. I got some primary coolant water in my hair, and there was a lot of radon in the water. Radon is electrostatically attracted to polyester and hair. So it latches on, and it’s hard to get off. I just had to wait until it decayed off. After about--</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did you shave?</p>
<p>Jensen: No, no. I washed my hair several times, and then they just said—come back every hour and we’ll check, and after about three hours they let me go home. Usually, skin contaminations wash off pretty easy. If it’s your clothing, you have to wash the clothing. You don’t get to take that home until it’s passed as clean. Sometimes, rarely, stuff would have to get thrown away. But I never had any serious contamination issues. If you’re careful, if you dress correctly, and then when you come out, you undress correctly, then it’s very rare to be contaminated.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any other sort of stories leap to mind from your--?</p>
<p>Jensen: There’s a few things that happened before I was there that were interesting. I don’t know. We had an accident. It was about three—and this one is an accident—it was about three years before I started work. They flushed a tube of hot, radioactive fuel onto the charge elevator, which is not where it’s supposed to go. It’s supposed to go out the back, and fall into the discharge shoots and then go into the basin. There were workers on the elevator when it happened. They got very high radiation exposures. Fortunately, not high enough to kill anybody. But that was just lucky, I think. So, I don’t know. That was the most serious thing I know that happened there. We did have one—before I was certified, we had one really bad accident where we lost all the instrument air to the plant. Almost every valve functions with air—they’re air-operated: air to open, air to close. A lot of pumps are—the pump speeds are maintained by air pressure, things like that. So we had a scram, and it was a very abnormal scram. But we survived it.</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
<p>Camera man: Okay, hold it out so we see.</p>
<p>Jensen: --piece of fuel out of the reactor, and they pushed all the hot, irradiated fuel out, but we’d done a normal refueling after that shutdown. And, well, now, we’ve got to—we pushed out all the hot fuel, and now we’re going to push out all the un-irradiated fuel and keep it, just in case we start up again. I happened to be walking by when they got the last one out, and they were taking a picture and they said, get over here!</p>
<p>Camera man: Oh, so where are you? Are you down in front there?</p>
<p>Jensen: I am right there.</p>
<p>Camera man: Yep, that’s right.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: You’ve got the [INAUDIBLE] gear guy in back.</p>
<p>Jensen: So these guys are all dressed up in the gear and they’ve got the fuel with them. I think they’ve got the fuel with them in there. There’s another picture that I don’t have that actually shows them holding the last piece. [VIDEO CUTS] There were two certified operators when I was hired on. I think there had been some more who had left. There was another lady who was in the certification program and then she certified shortly after that. In my class, there was one woman and she did not go all the way through, and then in the class after, there was at least one woman in there. So we had a handful of women certified operators. The very first one hired, I’m pretty sure that would have been Martha Coop. I’m wondering who the guy you talked to was who hired her. Because I’m sure I would know him. I just can’t think of who that might have been. The other one was Leslie Jensen, no relation to me, and I think she was the one who babysat me when I was probably a kindergartener or a first grader. She was one of my mom’s students.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: All right. Anything else I should be asking here, any other memories that are worth preserving?</p>
<p>Jensen: I’ll probably think things when I get home.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure.</p>
<p>Jensen: But right now I think I’m—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Great. All right, well that’s been great. Thank you so much for being here.</p>
<p>Jensen: You’re welcome.</p>
<p><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/vzYLT2Ds3-Q">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:16:35
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
N Reactor
200 Area
Tank Farms
WPPSS (Washington Public Power Supply Systems)
UNC (United Nuclear Corporations)
Rockwell
PUREX
PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
K East Reactor
K West Reactor
K East/West Basins
100-K
PFP (Plutonium Finishing Plant)
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1961-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Mark Jensen
Description
An account of the resource
Mark Jensen moved to Richland, Washington in 1961 as a child and grew up in Kennewick, Washington. Mark began working on the Hanford Site in 1981.
An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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03-25-2016
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-04-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Kennewick (Wash.)
Nuclear reactors
Nuclear reactor accidents
Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986
Nuclear energy
Nuclear power plants
Nuclear fuel rods
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/26">Mark Jensen, Oral History Metadata</a>
2-East Area
200 Area
200 East
200 East Area
Battelle
Department of Energy
Energy Northwest
Hanford
K Basin
K West Reactor
K-Basin
K-West Reactor
Kennewick
Manhattan Project
N Reactor
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
PUREX
School
Sun
Tank Farm
Tank Farms
United Nuclear Corporation
VIT Plant
War
Washington Public Power Supply System
Westinghouse
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F2046a01b468d5806f2eeb9ac74c631f3.jpg
570a52b3830287cda5b3b79dc4b071fd
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6044cabd932f17cf7e979c559097da63.mp4
707021a797b556cd2c395a8fc8f9fd0b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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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
Arata, Laura
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Emil, Leitz
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p><strong>Northwest Public Television | Leitz_Emil</strong></p>
<p>Man one: Whenever you're ready.</p>
<p>Laura Arata: We’re ready to go?</p>
<p>Man one: Yeah, yup.</p>
<p>Arata: Okay. So if we just start off, if I could have you say your name, and then spell your last name for us.</p>
<p>Emil Leitz: Emil E. Leitz, the last name spelled, L-E-I-T-Z.</p>
<p>Arata: Thank you. My name's Laura Arata. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. The date is November 7th, 2013, already, somehow. So I wonder if we could start just by having you tell us a little bit about how you come to Hanford, when you arrived here, so what your initial experience was like?</p>
<p>Leitz: Okay, I came to Hanford after I served my tour of duty during the Korean War. And I had worked for GE prior to going in the service, and they asked me where I would like to go back to work for them. And so I told them I would like to go the Northwest, and they said, well, Hanford is a place where we have some jobs. We'd be glad to place you there. So I came to Hanford. My wife and I were married at the time. We had one child. Hanford, to me, going first on the job, it was kind of old time I'd say. The ride to the area was by bus, but the buses were not air conditioned. They were, in the winter, very cold because the heaters were not very adequate. The assignment to the C Reactor was my choice after I had been here for a while. There were some other engineers who came in when I did. We each went our own ways. The trip, I mentioned, was by bus, but as also, we had to take our own lunches. We didn't have eating—preparation for food out in the areas. I was in the research and development organization as an engineer trying to, at that time, improve both safety and production. Something that was really, really emphasized, the importance for safety here at Hanford. And at that time, they were also wanting to increase production because we were in the big race with Russia to whoever could make the most bombs supposedly was going to be the winner of this Cold War. Well, after I worked for—well, the first assignment I had really at C Reactor was they were trying out a new fuel element, and that would cool the fuel both internal and external to the fuel. And it took a special spacer on the end to mix them. Now a spacer is something that positions the fuel in the reactor. And it would take a special one of these spacers to mix the fuel between the inner and outer cooling channels on the fuel. And it so happened that at C Reactor, once they got their reactor up and charged it, they couldn't get the reactor to run. We had every process tube, 2,003 of them--were monitored by a flow monitor. And that flow monitor, if the pressure exceeded certain limits, it would automatically shut the reactor down. And it just kept shutting the reactor down. And the plant manager, he wanted to abort the whole program. He says, it's common to all of the tubes, we just can't operate the reactors, so the fuel is a failure. And they asked me my opinion, and I said, it could very well be that we only have a very few tubes mischarged without that mixer spacer. Because I had them run some tests that showed that if that mixer spacer's in there, the pressure would be oscillating between the tube. And we couldn't identify at that time which particular tube was causing the problem. So that's what I told my management, and then two days later, the plant manager came into me, he was just livid. He said, you told the people that I was making a mistake in charging the reactor, that I was not controlling it adequately. And he said, I'm going to get your ass. That's just what he said. And I'm going to check every process tube in that reactor, and prove that you’re wrong. Well, they checked them, and they had seven process tubes mischarged. They corrected the charge, the reactor went up—operated perfectly. Never had another scram, so I didn't hear anything more from that manager. So it was kind of interesting point of view about my first assignment, and I got that kind of pressure from some of the managers.</p>
<p>Arata: How long did that take, to test that many process tubes?</p>
<p>Leitz: Oh, to load the reactor probably took six months or so. Because they would do, as the field became ripe, the old field became ripe--or ready for discharge--they would discharge, it was a couple hundred tubes, and then put new ones in. So that took probably two, three charges ‘til they—when they got--And I don't know when the problem first occurred to having these inadvertent scrams, but when I got there, they were ready to abort the load. And would have really reduced—they had to increase the flow into the reactor, and they could not really get full utilization. Those reactors originally were built for 200 megawatts—I think that's what it was--and they were all operating up around 2,000 then after they got these new fuel elements in and the new flow up. So ten times the power that they originally designed for. So there were really some big improvements. Along with this going on, it was in 1957 in Richland, they were going to sell the homes. They made a big—they were going to get out of the business of having houses, and a lot of the people were pretty leery. Hey, they're going to be shutting this down because most of them knew, oh yeah, we've got plenty of weapons. We really don't need all this plutonium for weapons. And so some people were very hesitant. They offered the homes at 75% of the appraised value of the house if you didn't want the buy-back clause. And if you paid full price, the government would promise to buy it back if something would happen that there was a real economic downturn in Richland. And I found this one guy who says, he was in no way ever going to invest in his buying a house in Richland. And I said, okay. A ranch house is appraised at $10,000, if you buy one, I'll pay you $8,500 for it. So it's appraised at $10,000, and I said, I'd pay you at $8,500. And you buy them in the no buy-back clause, and so that's how I bought my first house. I had been grinning. I couldn't get into one of the government houses, and they were about half the rent I had to pay in a commercial housing organization, which that time was warehousing. So that's kind of an interesting thing as far as living here in Richland goes. People are always a little bit leery about how long could they really want to continue to run those reactors.</p>
<p>Arata: All right.</p>
<p>Leitz: So the success there at C Reactor--and I was then reassigned to process standards and other jobs. And one night I wanted to start up when they had the approval to build the N Reactor, it was about 1962. I had been here, oh, seven years. They selected me to be what they called the startup engineer for the N Reactor. They had three tests. They had the N1s, which was for physics testing. You had the N2 and N3. The N2 just brought the reactor up in enough power that it could supply its own power for its turbines, and they could back off the boiler. They have a big boiler plant that would generate the steam that normally could drive the turbines. And then they would bootstrap it up. You'd get enough steam, and you'd start these big turbines up, and then you go on up in power. N Reactor was designed for 4,000 megawatts, so I had the job of designing—Now it was unique to any other reactor in the world, and a lot of people say, that reactor just isn't going to run. It's too complicated. It had only 1,000 process tubes, but it also was on recirculation, and no contamination left that plant. It was all--the water just recirculated, and then we didn't release the coolant to the river like all the other reactors that the water would go through the reactor and into the river and still have some radioactivity still left in it, so the N Reactor was a solution for that particular problem. So as they're prior getting ready for writing all those tests and starting of the reactor as assigned training mission aboard the Nuclear Ship Savannah. The Nuclear Ship Savannah was built as part of the Atoms for Peace under Eisenhower. And then that was kind of jointly N Reactor was kind of the same sort of thing, where we would have an Atoms for Peace. We had, instead of just producing plutonium, we also could eventually, if it was approved, add the power generation station. So the original testing of N Reactor went very well, on schedule, and they gave me this little award here, which is the general manager’s award. They didn't give many of these out. And actually, along with that I got a check that was about the size of another month’s pay, so when I was young and needed the money, that was very welcome.</p>
<p>Arata: We'll get a picture of that at the end for sure.</p>
<p>Leitz: So with that success then, we went ahead and I, during the lifetime of the N Reactor, I worked there a long time. The dual purpose construction was approved in May of 1965, and as a part of that dedication, President Kennedy came out and made a big dedication. And let me see, I think—yeah, 37,000 people came to hear the President speak here the first time Hanford was open up to the public. They had parked thousands of cars out there out in the middle of the desert. Kennedy came in a helicopter. Even though we had watered the ground down, it was just a cloud of dust because it was a construction site, and man, boy, you couldn't even see the helicopter when it was landing. And I had the big job of helping park cars and stuff like that at that time. That’s what it took an engineer to do. [LAUGHTER] It was kind of a fun day for everybody, I think.</p>
<p>Arata: Did you get to actually see President Kennedy going over his speech then?</p>
<p>Leitz: Yeah, oh, yeah. We got to really see him. Nobody got to shake hands with him, except a very few. I mean, they still have the podium somewhere that he talked from. That's still on display in the museum somewhere. So the first real problem that occurred at N Reactor that they couldn't solve. For some reason, we were having a lot of fuel failures. And some of it was due to equipment problems. Some of it was due to the way they were loading the tubes and that sort of thing. And they appointed me to hit up a task force to try and reduce the fuel failure rate. The fuel failure rate was something like one a month! And when the task force got done and made all these recommendations and they implemented them, we got it down to something like one a month. Now in doing that job, I decided I'm going to do it as a thesis for my master's degree in business. And so it was an operational analysis sort of thing. It was very successful, and I got my thesis paper written and that sort of thing, and that's in the libraries here somewhere. So that was very successful at Battelle. Then I got to be manager of the N Reactor Operations, and I always had to test everybody before they--I was part of a team that tested everybody before they would be certified. N Reactor was the first reactor at Hanford, at least, that certified ladies to be reactor operators. We had two or three ladies while I was manager of operations at the plant that became certified, which I was pretty proud that we didn't have this bias, women against men and that sort of thing. But after I got done, when I was manager I followed every startup personally to make sure they didn't mess up, that they were doing it right. And then I went into managing the safety for all the reactors that were left and fuels and so on and so forth. And the people in the plant operations were always trying to get me to do faster reactor startups. Because if you get the plant started up faster, you get to generate your electricity faster, and they say you could gain as much as a third of a day production by starting up the reactor fast. Well, when they asked me go back in and again--well the fuel failure rate went way up. Going up to better than one a month. And asked me to go again and examine what's going wrong with--how come the fuels are failing? And I said, because you're not really sticking with the original recommendation of controlling slowly and raising reactor power level. And no, no, no, we don't believe that. And so I said, okay, let's arbitrate it with Battelle. Battelle will analyze it. So they came in with their people who really understand stress and strains and all that kind of stuff. And they analyzed it and said that they were reactor startup rates that they were going at put ten times the stress on as a reaction scram would. So once they've, again, got control of their power rates going up again, the fuel failures went way back down again. So that was another one of the ways that I put a success on my career. In fact, we were there for a while. We were so erratic in the way the reactor would shut down and start up--is that the dams—if we would trip off, they would have to pick up the electrical load. And that one of the dams when I went to visit with the Corps of Engineers, back when I was taking some of my reserve training through the Corps of Engineers, I saw a sign, Old Faithful where the N Reactor power was showing. It was kind of interesting. It's interesting that when the first electrical energy was produced, three of the reactors had already been shut down. Now we always felt that N Reactor that N Reactor could just about replace the production of those three reactors. And so we weren't too worried about us getting shut down. But as we operated on through the years, we had all the reactors shut down by 1969, actually--yeah, by 1971, all reactors, including N Reactor, was shut down. And we started the big campaign to get to the Washington Public Power Supply system and/or now the Northwest Electrical Energy to give us better payment for our steams, and with the better rate on steam, we got people to then restart N Reactor under a better contract. So in 1971, after being shut down as a part of all the reactors, we were restarted and allowed to operate. We operated through—okay, and in 1971, when all the plants were down, we had another president visit. The only second president that I know that came to Richland, and that Nixon that came. And he'd give us the old pep talk about how he wasn't going to leave us all in the lurch here in Hanford. That we're going to have people like Pacific Northwest labs and so on and bringing the business, and there'd be plenty for us to do. Well, we did get N Reactor restarted and we operated then through—well, Mt. St. Helens erupted in '80 and in 1980, we had to do some upgrades to make sure that that sort of thing would not interfere with our operation. We got up to where we generated 65 billion kilowatt hours of electrical power, and then in 1987, after that achievement, we were shut down to make some safety improvements to improve our operation, make it more safe. And we never did restart from that. We were kept out. So at that time I was reassigned to the decommissioning work, cleaning up Hanford and being mainly involved in safety with the reactors. I became more involved then with making sure that the effort to decontaminate everything, and it was done within environmental requirements and within safety requirements. You had these big tanks of waste, and there's a potential that just by sticking a probe into a tank of waste, you can moderate the waste such that it could possibly even go critical like a reactor. So we had to examine everything they wanted to do--if they wanted to put a new pump in a tank or if they wanted to move the liquid around, if they wanted to stir the liquid, or if they wanted to use certain chemicals. And what would be your environmental impact? Where do you look for waste from the tanks? A lot of waste is just buried out there. Just if you wanted to get rid of radioactive waste, you go out and dig a hole and you put some waste--and you put it in there. And so recovering all of that and recovering that safely for personnel and for the environment is the job that I ended up doing for the rest of my career. So basically I had what I considered a pretty good career at Hanford. I really thought there were some good challenges, and I thought I made some pretty good contributions to operations at Hanford Project.</p>
<p>Arata: Is it okay if I ask a few more follow up questions?</p>
<p>Leitz: Pardon?</p>
<p>Arata: Can I ask you a few more follow up questions?</p>
<p>Leitz: Oh, you bet ya.</p>
<p>Arata: That was some good coverage of your time—</p>
<p>Woman one: There’s also some water there if you need it.</p>
<p>Leitz: No, I don’t need it. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Arata: --And your working period. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit more about on board the Savannah, and how that experience came about? I mean, what your experience on the ship was like and what its mission was?</p>
<p>Leitz: Okay. I could talk all day on that, really. But the first thing, we got on in Portland, Oregon. And we went out to the—the first thing I knew it is there a man came aboard the ship, the side, and he took over the control of the ship. He was a harbor pilot. And I didn't realize that. Why is that? And he said, well, because that particular bay going out into the ocean is noted as the graveyard for many ships because that's one of the worst entries into the ocean there as far as being rough and tricky, and it moved around. So you have to have a particular man who knows what's going on in that bay to help to get the ship out. So that was kind of interesting to find out that there are those kind of risks with running a ship.</p>
<p>Arata: And how would this come about? How had you gotten the invitation to be on the Savannah?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, based on my experience. They stuck me to be a startup engineer, and they thought and felt I needed special training in high pressure, high temperature reactors. And there was an opportunity to get it, on a ship that used the same kind of a reactor that we had on the N Reactor except it was much, much smaller. It was toy one compared with the N Reactor. Let's see, is there really anything more about that? Oh, what they did is they selected the people on the basis of having one with the reactor at all times during the startup testing. So the four shift managers were selected. My boss's bosses were selected, and I was selected to get that particular training because they felt I would be writing the tests. I need to know about all of it. And they needed to have that experience on every shift. The top man in every shift was also on that ship. So it was kind of interesting, just as a sideline, five of them are Navy men, and I was an Army man, and I was kind of the butt of their jokes. You're going to get seasick, and we're going to all laugh at you. And we get into--after we went through the Panama Canal--and we all took some time off in the Panama Canal in terms of working extra before and after—but after we got to the Panama, we went into the Caribbean, and we did get into quite a storm. That ship was actually taking water over the bow. It would go down and go up and go down and go up. And I was out there watching that bow and then I went in to go and eat that night. And I couldn't find any of those other guys. Couldn't find a one of them anywhere. That was kind of a funny part of it is I was probably the only one, I don't think, that didn't get seasick. But it was a fun trip, and we flew back home from Galveston, then.</p>
<p>Arata: What route did the ship take while you were on it?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, it went down the coast of South America in through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean and into Galveston, Texas, yeah.</p>
<p>Arata: How long were you aboard?</p>
<p>Leitz: 30 days. It was a nice cruise. Really it's one of the best vacations I ever had. [LAUGHTER] Except they had us do a study, but I didn't mind the study at all.</p>
<p>Arata: I wonder if I could have you talk just a little bit--you did a lot of work on safety and security. Could you talk a little bit about if you had to where any special protective clothing in what you did or maybe what sorts of standards you set for other people to follow?</p>
<p>Leitz: At one time I was a manager, in fact, of first-hand safety, but only safety in the context of security and that sort of thing. At one time, they had a big upgrade at Hanford for security, and I was in charge the upgrading. But as far as personally, I went into the reactor sites many times and had do the special clothing. If there's any chance of air contamination, you had to have respirators on. And to get out of a radiation area, you have to go to two step-off pads. The first one you just get your clothes off on it. And the second one then, they check you in, and you can come on out. But you had radiation monitors check you any time you come out of a radiation suit and instruments, you put your hands and feet on them and a special clothing.</p>
<p>Arata: Were there ever any incidents that you recall? Anything either humorous or a little bit scary or anything like that?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, some that aren't too finicky. One of the K Reactors, when they started it, they had a new physicist, and he held a high period. I don't know if you realize, a 30-second period when you're at watts, you aren't really increasing power real fast, but if you keep that 30-second period when you’re up in megawatts, then it's very, very rapid, increasing power. And then it was the startup of one of the Ks, this new physicist had him hold that 30-second period until the reactors scrammed out from these [INAUDIBLE] trips. Now one thing I could mention is that the change in technology has really changed. Back at C Reactor, we didn't know which tube was causing the scram. With the N Reactor, we knew everything going on, every tube. And we used to have to take our data downtown, in an automobile, we'd punch it out on key cards, and we'd take it down and punch those into a computer. And we'd get the limits back, we'd go back to the reactor and say, okay, you can raise power. And then we would go in and get some more limits and back and forth between town and back. And that took a long time ready to start up because that N Reactor, you had instantaneous information. You knew right along just exactly how every tube related to its limit, pressure and temperature. So we went from analog kinds of systems to digital kinds of systems, just the same thing you see in your TVs or your telephones, the same kind of thing happened at the reactors as far as computerization and technology. So that was really an enhancement.</p>
<p>Arata: Were there any aspects of your work that you found sort of the most challenging or the most rewarding? You had several different jobs.</p>
<p>Leitz: [LAUGHTER] Well, I think the most rewarding was where I faced up a couple managers [LAUGHTER] and won the battle.</p>
<p>Arata: During C Reactor?</p>
<p>Leitz: But there's some worry to our time in that too, you know, what if I'm wrong? But it turned out all right. And I think that's part of the reason that I was really considered the one man who knew the most about the reactor. I didn't know everything, but I probably knew more than most people about there. Because I started it up, I lived with it to its life, and I got the picture kind of as a reward for when I retired.</p>
<p>Arata: Is anything that was the most challenging, maybe to work through in your time at Hanford?</p>
<p>Leitz: I think when I think of the operation N Reactor, I think it was the most challenging job I had. Because that one required, like I said, I went with all the startups. And that's when I was a process engineer with the reactor. When they had problems, they'd call us at night and that sort of thing. But with N Reactor, it was kind of more volunteer, but to know—and some of the shift managers were pretty hesitant on their own to make decisions. And I think that was probably the most challenging job was the operation of one of those big reactors—or that single big reactor and knowing when or when not to say, hey, you've got to shut down, or you don't have to shut down. And the controls even at N Reactor on the environmental controls, you can let down water into a crib—into a spill cooler if you wanted to, and even that was very, very--it had to be done without radiation released into the environment. And there's a real, real difference in attitudes over the years of environmental control and making sure you did not release isotopes into the environment. Really had differences in attitudes.</p>
<p>Arata: Yeah, I understand that the Chernobyl incident had a big impact on the decision to finally close N Reactor, to not restart N Reactor. Do you have any thoughts?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, N Reactor is a graphite moderator reactor. And Chernobyl when they raised power level fast, their graphite coefficient was different than N Reactor. N Reactor, if you raised the power fast, it would shut it down, it would tend to shut it down. So as you were starting up fast, in R Reactor, you had to pull the rods faster and faster if you heat it up faster in order to keep the activity going up. In Chernobyl, the same thing happened, but their rods weren't strong enough to stop it. And so it kept going up in power until it melted the core. Now at N Reactor, we ran a lot of experiments to try and prove that even if that did happen, we don't think our graphite would have burnt. But to tell somebody you've got a graphite stack over here that burnt, and then we've got a graphite stack over here that's a little different composition and made up a little different way, it won't burn—just one cell. We still believe that we never could've burnt the N Reactor stack, but basically, that's what kept it down. It's shut it down for keeps—it’s the fact that why won't our stack burn? We just couldn't prove our stack wouldn't burn. We put torches on it, heat it up to a tremendous temperature, it wouldn't burn, but is that enough proof that it won't burn? You know, just wouldn't quite buy. So you know about a little bit about Chernobyl, huh? [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Arata: A tiny bit. What was Hanford like overall as a place to work?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, the real inconvenience is location. Riding the bus back and forth initially, and later, we drove our own car. I actually wore out a little Metropolitan driving back and forth. I kind of enjoyed that little car, but we got to use our own cars. We carpooled and these sorts of things. One thing you'd see in the desert, and I don't know if many, many people are aware of it, but sometimes you see a lot of rabbits killed on the highway. And pretty soon you'd see no more rabbits on the highway, but you start seeing wolves and coyotes killed on the highway. And that's the cycle of what would happen is when there are lots of rabbits, there's a lot for the coyote to eat. And you could just see that cycle at Hanford, over a number of years, the population of each of those would vary. And if the rabbit population goes out, then the other population goes out. When it goes down, it goes down. So it was kind of interesting to see that.</p>
<p>Arata: Yeah. I wonder if we could back up just briefly to when you first arrived, if you had any impressions of what Richland was like as a community when you first arrived here?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, the main reaction we had was, man, it’s costing us a lot more to live than those people that have been here for a while because they had a lot of stuff provided to them, coal or whatever. But you know, the rents were half what we had to pay and that sort of thing, but that didn't last forever. And buying the houses was it really turned out to be a very promising thing. We had weather storms, pretty bad. We had termination winds. We had a pastor, one of our pastors at church--the wife was just by herself when the storm had come in the sand would come through her doors. She wanted her husband to stop that from happening. [LAUGHTER] We had a lot of activities for couples and younger people and so on that we don't have now. Sororities, the Army Reserve meetings, and all these sort of things, you know. Nowadays, people don't want the same kind of entertainment as they had back in those days with Richland. So it’s a different style, more thrifty, maybe that's the whole United States.</p>
<p>Arata: Did you have sorts of dances or community events, things like that?</p>
<p>Leitz: Yeah, had quite a few community events and dances and things like that.</p>
<p>Arata: I know at one point you mentioned White Bluffs. Did you go out to the town site at any point during your first few years here?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, we had to drive past it almost every day. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Arata: Were there still buildings standing by that point? Or--</p>
<p>Leitz: The foundations in some of the walls and stuff were there, but none of the buildings were really intact. One of the old gas stations--but some of the people, and I didn't get it going, but some of the people did some exploration, which was not allowed. But they did on the old sites.</p>
<p>Arata: I just have a couple other things that I wanted to ask you about from reading through your notes. A lot of what I've read about N Reactor talks about zirconium, and I understand this is sort of an innovation at the time. Could you talk a little bit about what it was, and why it was so new?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, zirconium, they needed a process tube. In the old reactors, there was just aluminum, because there was only cold water going through. They’d maybe get, oh, maybe it would get almost to boiling on the outside of some of the aluminum tubes. In the N Reactor you need a process tube that withstood the high temperature, high pressure. And so they developed this new metal, zirconium, that would withstand the temperatures and pressure and so on involved within the reactor, and the fuel was also clad in that. So if we ran on aluminum tube or aluminum fuel outline at the temperature we had to run at, it would have, what do you call it? A fuel failure. And fuel failures, well, I didn't talk too much about them, but there you're opening up the cladding to the uranium and then the uranium fission product took it in. And you’re likely for that to stay in the primary loop and cause high radiation to our workers. In the other old reactors, it would just go on through the reactor. And hopefully most of it would get picked up and they'd have a cooling pond for the water goes too and then the water goes the river. But small amounts of that could get to the river, and I think that's some of things they found with the aluminum tubes. But our zirconium tubes, they were much more resistant to temperature and pressure and so on.</p>
<p>Arata: Is there anything that you'd sort of like to pass on, wisdom to future generations? Of course, most of my students didn't live through the Cold War. They were born afterwards and don't really have an understanding of that time. Is there anything that you'd like future generations to know about what that experience was like of living through and working through the Cold War?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, there's a lot of fear of radiation that's not merited, and it's something you have to learn to live with. Just like in our agricultural world, there are a lot of chemicals and stuff that we're using now we didn't use to use. But we have to learn to use them safely. I think radiation, contamination with radiation, there's a big difference between contamination and irradiation. If you go in for an X-ray, you get irradiated, but you don't get contaminated. If you get contaminated, you've actually got the radioactive material on you, and then you, yourself, become a carrier of that. Contamination is a thing that is more to be feared than just the radiation itself, but you have to control the radiation. Just understanding how to best preserve it. Now we haven't learned all our lessons yet on how to control all the fuel and the reactors, for instance. We haven't got a disposal method that--we're still arguing about how we're going to take care of those spent fuel elements and that sort of thing in our commercial reactors. And we have to learn to do that, but I think now—I just read an article the other day in the paper about the dangers we have from just fossil fuels or even the wind machines and so forth. They are not free of environmental problems. And so you've got to learn to live with radiation and, hopefully, that can be reactors, new generation reactors can be a source of power that will eliminate all these problems. Even the possibility of burning the fuel up to where it’s used up rather than create contamination. There are some real lessons to be learned yet.</p>
<p>Arata: Is there anything I haven't asked you about yet that you'd like to tell me about?</p>
<p>Leitz: Well, I told you about Nixon and the time when all the reactors were shut down. 65 billion kilowatt hours were generated by N Reactor before it was finally shut down. That's a lot of electrical power. At one time we were really the leading reactor insofar as the power generated, but that didn't last long as the new, larger reactors came online. But for a while, we were running the race. We overtook some of the smaller ones.</p>
<p>Arata: I understand you were at the closure last year.</p>
<p>Leitz: Yeah, last year I went out to closure. [LAUGHTER] That's almost funny because I found out they're going to have a shutdown, so I was trying to go. And this lady called to explain to my wife that--I wasn't home--that I wasn't invited. And she says, well, he thinks he's Mr. N Reactor. He thinks you ought to invite him, and after she talked to him, they invited me to go. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, that’s kind of--</p>
<p>Arata: Well, I want to thank you very much for coming in and sharing your stories with us. We really appreciate it. We'll get some images of your award and you picture now.</p>
<p>Leitz: Yeah.</p>
Location
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Washington State University - Tri Cities
Duration
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00:39:47
Bit Rate/Frequency
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197 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
C Reactor
N Reactor
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
ca.1955-1987
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Kennedy, John F.
Nixon, Richard
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Emil Leitz
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Emil Leitz conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Subject
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Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Nuclear waste disposal
Date
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2013-11-07
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Date Modified
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2016-06-21: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
C Reactor
General Electric
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963
N Reactor
Richland (Wash.)
Washington Public Power Supply System
White Bluffs (Wash.)
-
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dfebe25b106ba7d9824501dc3958b7b3
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F559b622c13aa4a2e4a5248c2deebf511.mp4
34fa37d1ec79608d8bb044f01a3035c6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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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
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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
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Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Arata, Laura
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Johanson, Richard
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p><strong>Northwest Public Television | Johanson_Richard</strong></p>
<p>Camera man: Okay.</p>
<p>Laura Arata: Are you ready to go?</p>
<p>Camera man: Yeah.</p>
<p>Arata: Excellent. So if I could have you start by just saying your name and then spelling your last name.</p>
<p>Richard Johanson: My name is Richard E. Johanson. And the last name is spelled J-O-H-A-N-S-O-N.</p>
<p>Arata: Thank you. My name is Laura Arata. It is March 5, 2014. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So Richard, I would like to start, if you could just tell us a little bit about how you came to Hanford and where you came from.</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, my folks moved to Benton County--actually it was Prosser--in about 1930, when I was about three years old. And a year later, we moved to Benton City where they resided ever since that time. And I went to school over in Benton City. And so I'm a real native around here.</p>
<p>Arata: Since you did have these kind of early experiences growing up here, from a fairly early time, I wonder if you could talk to me a little bit about what it was like going to school here at that time.</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh, it was fun. It's what you make it, you know. And I went to school in Benton City at Kiona-Benton. And I remember back in about 1943, when they were starting to build the Hanford project, a friend of mine, a schoolmate, who had been displaced from Hanford, and he was going to school in Benton City, also. And he says, you know, I've got a—what’s that--apple press, cider press. And he says, it is over where we used to live over at Hanford. So he said, get your car. And he said, let's go get that cider press. So we did. And they let you in over there to do that then, because we knew. It wasn't because we knew anybody. It was just the fact that, at that point, they didn't have it locked up. And you didn't have to have a badge to get in.</p>
<p>Arata: Do you have any memories, then, of Richland or White Bluffs or any of those communities?</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh yeah. In fact, I played basketball in the school building in White Bluffs. It's just a shell of a building now, I think. But we played basketball there and rode the bus from Benton City to White Bluffs. And we played at Hanford, because they had a separate high school. And it was all exciting for us. I remember stopping in at one of the stores getting stuff. We rode the bus out. And then earlier, it had to be in the late '30s, they used to have boat races over at Hanford, just down on the river. And they were outboard boats. The boats were the pumpkin seed-type race boats. And I remember going with my folks over to the races. And that had to have been probably in the early '30s. Because we went to the Horn Rapids and then the road continued on out as it does now. But I think then it was a gravel road out to Hanford.</p>
<p>Arata: Do you have any particular memories of the boat races? We hear references to them a lot. And I very rarely meet someone who actually witnessed them.</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, there were quite a few boats and probably 15 or 20 boats at least. And they had the old outboard Evinrude type engines on them. And they would go 60, 70 miles an hour. But it was exciting, especially for a nine-year-old.</p>
<p>Arata: I bet. And would they have concessions and things down there?</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh, yeah, they had the usual stuff, hamburgers and so on.</p>
<p>Arata: So that was a full day for you, obviously, the boat races.</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh yeah, it was a big day's trip.</p>
<p>Arata: I'm curious. We've heard a couple references to a circus actually coming to that area. Did you see that?</p>
<p>Johanson: I never saw a circus out there. But I remember going to a circus when I was small. And I think we went to Walla Walla to the circus. And that makes a big impression on young mind.</p>
<p>Arata: Hm. So many questions, where to go next? Could you talk a little bit about where you lived, your parents' property, for example, your housing situation while you were growing up?</p>
<p>Johanson: We didn't have any housing problem, because we lived on a farm. My dad had 70 acres. He was on the Benton County PUD board. And he was on the board of the WPPSS, which is now called Energy Northwest, and was instrumental in getting some of that stuff going.</p>
<p>Arata: So you had electricity then and that sort of thing in your house?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, the first house we lived in, in Benton City, we didn't have electricity. We had a telephone but no electricity. We had a well. I remember, one time, my brother, older brother, Bob, was playing. He had some soap. And he put it in the old cook stove in the little holes were you lift the lid off. And it was boiling in there. And he thought that was a great funny deal. But it caught fire. And the fire spread, and it was going up the curtains. My dad came running in, and he grabbed a bucket of water that we kept there for drinking. And he threw it all over the fire and put it out. That was a little bit scary.</p>
<p>Arata: Lucky save for dad.</p>
<p>Johanson: Yeah.</p>
<p>Arata: Before I forget, do you have any particular memories of the store at White Bluffs, like what sorts of things you'd stop there and purchase?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, I think it was a store and a service station, kind of like the convenience stores they have now. But it was just a normal, small grocery store. And that's about all I remember about that. But the bus would stop there. And the kids would go in and get pop and whatever.</p>
<p>Arata: So I understand you started working at Hanford. Could you talk a little bit about when you started working at Hanford?</p>
<p>Johanson: I went to work out there, actually, in '48. I was in the Navy. And I got out of the Navy in '46, 1946. And I worked a year helping my dad out on the ranch. And then I decided I would strike out and work at the big Hanford project, which was exciting for young guys. And I worked there several years. And I worked there as a radiation time keeper, in the tank farms, through '48, '49 and '50 and end of '51 and '52. And my job was to keep track of how much time the workers spent in a hot zone. I'd get the readings from the health instrument man and calculate how long they could spend at that job. Sometimes it was only 10 or 12 minutes before they got a full dose of the maximum radiation they were allowed. And at that time, we were opening up the tops of the tanks. And they were going to install pump pits. And then they were also putting in pipe trenches and stainless pipe, large 8, 10 inch diameter piping. And the idea, at that time, as I understood it, was for reprocessing, which they eventually decided not to do, under one of our presidents, decided not to do reprocessing. But that was in 1950, '51. And we had to use jackhammers to open up to the top of the tank. And the workers, with the jackhammers, had to have jackhammer bits that were about 18 feet long. Because that would let the operator of the jackhammer stay back away from the open pit. And he can work longer that way. And the same way when they'd jackhammer the concrete. And it fell down into the tanks, obviously. And then they had--of course, there was rebar in those, too. So they had put a cutting torch on the end of long pole, probably between 15 and 18 feet long, so they could cut the rebar to open the tanks up. And in cutting the rebar, it would fall down in there, too. So a lot of those chunks of concrete are probably still there. And that was 60 some years ago.</p>
<p>Arata: Did you have any other jobs at Hanford after that time?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, I worked for a while in the cannery, where they canned the uranium. And I was in the 300 area, just north, not too far here, probably a half mile from here. And that entailed--they would bring their uranium in, in long rods, about an inch and half in diameter in boxcars. And then they would come into--lathe operators, operating a lathe. And they would turn down the outer part of the rod. And then they would come in certain lengths to be canned in aluminum cladding. And so we were working there at that job for a while. And it was interesting, the uranium shavings from the lathe would fall down, and they'd catch on fire, kind of like magnesium does. So they had to keep putting out the fires of the burning uranium shavings.</p>
<p>Arata: And how long did you work there at 300?</p>
<p>Johanson: Not very long. It was just a few weeks I think. We had to wear all kinds of protective clothing. And it was so hot in there, they had an air conditioning tube coming down to each worker. So I didn't care for that.</p>
<p>Arata: And what did you do after that?</p>
<p>Johanson: Pardon?</p>
<p>Arata: What did you do after that?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, I got into ironworking for a while. And I worked out there as an ironworker and worked there about a year as an ironworker in the tank farm areas. And then I went down to McNary Dam and went to work down there for the final push on getting McNary Dam finished. And then in '53, I also worked on the missile bases out in the area and over in Wahluke Slope, across the river from Hanford. And it was the Nike missiles that we were installing at that time. And that was before I went to McNary. And then after that, then I bunched it all and went into the insurance business. [LAUGHTER] So I was in the insurance business for the next 20 years or more, with various--a couple of companies. I was a division manager in Wenatchee for a number of years. And then I was with the superintendent of agencies for a company out of Salem, Oregon. And after that, I went into the construction business in the '70s and had a construction company, built maybe 100-and-some houses around here.</p>
<p>Arata: So of your time working at Hanford, could you describe kind of a typical day or anything that stands out?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, it depends whether it was a cold day or a warm day. Some days, we had a shack that we stayed in when we weren't out actually on the job. And our downtime, we would have to spend in the shack, because they didn't want you wandering around the project. So we would do that. And then we'd go out do the work we were doing. When I was working as an ironworker, I worked in construction of the pipe trenches and so and the tanks. And if it was cold weather, we really hung around the stove. And then we'd eat lunch in there also. And when we went in there and left, we had, what they called, I think, a fivefold counter. You'd put your hands in and your feet. And it would count to see if you had any radiation or contamination of any kind. And once in a while, you'd have some. And they had a shower there where they'd have to shower people down if they had quite a bit of contamination. And I know there were several instances where they got quite a bit on them, and they had to work with them for a long time to get all the radiation, the contamination off.</p>
<p>Arata: Were there any ways that sort of the security or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, we were always told to keep our mouths shut, which we didn't know what they were building out there in the '40s anyway. But some people, they didn't have any idea. They said, well, there's so much sand out there, they're making sandpaper. [LAUGHTER] And then another little kid said, well, he said, I think they're making toilet paper, because my dad brings a couple rolls home every night. [LAUGHTER] So nobody knew what they were making, so they had to imagine what it might be.</p>
<p>Arata: How, overall, was Hanford as a place to work? Was there anything particularly rewarding or particularly--</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, it was rewarding in the fact that it was extremely interesting. And it was a huge job, with 50,000 workers back in the middle '40s. And while that was going on, I was in the Navy over in the Pacific somewhere, there in the Philippines and Okinawa and Shanghai, China, and so on.</p>
<p>Arata: Sounds like maybe you could talk, just briefly, about having had that experience of being part of the war and the war effort against Japan. How did you feel when you found out it was our plutonium, from this area, that built that bomb?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, everybody was extremely elated to find out that our project out there had helped end the war. And because it was in the first atomic explosion, in, well, New Mexico, I guess it was, wasn't it? Yeah, and it was also the Nagasaki atomic bomb. But you couldn't help but feel some real distress over the fact of how many people it killed. And it was a very sobering thought. On the other hand, if we hadn't of used them, they would have probably cost a million lives of the Japanese and the Americans, because they weren't going to give up. And that would've been the battle to the bitter end. So I was down in the South Pacific somewhere when they dropped the bombs. And so we were kind of thankful, because we were going to be heading up there to try and finish it off. The ship, you may remember hearing about it, who was the USS Indianapolis, a cruiser, and they had taken one of the atomic bombs to--was it Tinian, I think. And it was secret journey, naturally. And they got torpedoed and sunk. It wasn't probably about 500 miles from where we were in the South Pacific. And there was about, I think, 800 of them didn't survive. And they couldn't even get rescued, because they were on a secret journey, and nobody knew where they were, not many people. And it was pretty grim. And from there, we went up to Okinawa. We were up there for a while. And it was a pretty bad spot there. Most of the fighting was over. It was over then when I went up there. And I had a friend who was up to the mountains. I don't know what they were doing up there. But he was a corpsman in the Navy. But he was up there with some Marines. And they were living in tents up in the mountains, in the hills. And it sounds pretty gross, but they would go out, every day. And the war was over. It was actually over. They'd go out everyday and hunt Japs. And this guy, he told me, he says, it's just like hunting jackrabbits at home. [LAUGHTER] So it was pretty sobering also. Because they were--you know, the Japanese, a lot of them thought the war was still on. And they didn't know that it was over. And you couldn't blame them. They were trying to do their job. Oh, that was really a sad situation. And we were anchored out of a bay there. There was typhoon showed up. We put up out to sea, and we were three days. That typhoon kept going just for three days. In the daytime, it was almost like nighttime. And there were a couple hundred small craft that didn't make it, little mine sweepers and things. People talk about waves that are 100 feet high? There really are. But to get back to working out at Hanford, there were a lot of people. We had people that we let them put their trailers in our backyard, because they didn't have any place to stay. And they just had little camp trailers. Rather than stay in the big trailer court at out Hanford, they preferred to stay like where we had shade trees and so on. And their kids went to school there. And then the two fellows that stayed in our backyard, their names were Bill and George Gale. And they'd come out from Kansas. And they came out to work at the Hanford project. And they worked out there was as machinists and welders. And then they saved their money and not long after that initial construction, they opened up a car dealership. And then they eventually moved to Yakima and had a car dealership. And they had the White Bus dealership. White Trucks, that was a brand name. And they sold dozens and dozens of those buses to the Hanford project. And so if anybody, your folks or anybody, can remember working out there and riding the green buses, those all came from their shop, Bill and George Gale.</p>
<p>Arata: How many people would you say camped out there at any one time?</p>
<p>Johanson: In our backyard?</p>
<p>Arata: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Johanson: Them and they had families, the two of them, their wives and children. And then one of them's father and his wife and a younger sister of them lived out there also. And we enjoyed having them. I was in high school at that time before I left to go to the Navy. And they were good mechanics, so they helped me keep my car running. I had a Ford Roadster—</p>
<p>Arata: Nice.</p>
<p>Johanson: --back then. In fact, I still have a Ford Roadster. I belong to the Old Car Club of the Tri-Cities. And I have four, old cars.</p>
<p>Arata: Wonderful.</p>
<p>Johanson: A '32 Ford Roadster and a 1931 Model A Coupe, they both have rumble seats, and then a '63 Thunderbird Landau and 1954 Kaiser Manhattan.</p>
<p>Arata: Wow. We've heard a couple stories of people going out and actually finding cars on the Hanford site.</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh, yeah, back then, they'd find cars out there that people had left. And of course, now they'd be a treasure trove. But there were a lot of cars out there that people just abandoned when they got kicked off their property, evicted. That was a tough deal for a lot of people. Some of them spent their whole lives out there. And they had farms and orchards and families and, of course, the schools. And they were just plain evicted. And they didn't have much time. So a lot of them moved to Richland and Benton City and Kennewick and Pasco. And it was an exciting time, and it was a sad time at the same time. But it was pretty exciting for a guy that was 15, 16 years old.</p>
<p>Arata: I wonder if you can maybe just talk a little bit about some of the changes when people started pouring in to this area to start building this site.</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh, it was pretty grim at times, because you had so many people coming in, and they were out in the men's barracks and so on. And they'd have murders. And I remember my mother was on the federal jury in Yakima, had a couple of murder cases. You know, you get that many men in one spot, some of them aren't going to get along. We had a lot of gambling and throwing the dice and card games. It was like a den of iniquity. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Arata: Now, did you ever come to Richland, as maybe a teenager, and witness any of these changes?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, yeah, over two or three, four years, you can remember the construction and the building of the houses, all the alphabet houses and the prefabs. Of course, all the prefabs were built without foundations. And there was a lot of work in the later years of contractors putting in foundations on the prefabs that hadn't had any. And the prefabs were heated with a portable 220 volt heater, about 2,000 or 2,500 watts. In fact, I have one in my shop from way back in the '40s. And it still works, the 220 volt heater. And you could buy them, but I doubt if you could find them nowadays. We had the movie theater, out here, at Hanford, here, not far from where we’re at right now. In fact, it was just up the road here, south of here. And they had gigantic mess halls. And I worked out there as a teamster for a while, too, as a truck driver and swamper. So you worked in a warehouse. And we had plenty of off time. We'd throw dice. It was always fun to gamble a little bit. We couldn't go out to Toppenish, to the Legends Casino then. [LAUGHTER] Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Arata: Is there anything else that stands out to you about the community life in Richland during that time?</p>
<p>Johanson: What? Pardon?</p>
<p>Arata: Is there anything else that stands out about community events or community life in Richland?</p>
<p>Johanson: Yeah, they used to have a Richland celebration. I forget what it was called, Frontier Days or something, I believe.</p>
<p>Arata: Atomic Frontier Days.</p>
<p>Johanson: Yeah. And we come down and watch the parade. And it was interesting, very interesting and a lot of fun. And we'd also, up where the Lutheran church is, on the corner of Van Giesen and-- what is that other street that runs north and south? Anyhow, where the Lutheran church is now, there used to be a grange building. It was an old wooden building. And they held grange meetings there. And we used to go there. And they'd have dances in the old building. I don't believe it was a church at that time. Van Giesen was how you came from Benton City to get into Richland. And you'd turn right there and go down that street. And it was all alfalfa fields around here then. So that building was out in the middle of nowhere then, on the corner of Van Giesen. And they had fairs. And people would bring their canned goods and have it judged. My dad's two older brothers were bachelors, John and Charlie Johanson. And they lived in Benton City. And those two old bachelors, they canned stuff and beautiful products that they'd put out. And they'd go down and win prizes and ribbons at the fair, little fair they'd have there at the old dance hall. That was probably before Hanford. And as it spread out and started building houses for the project, then all those alfalfa fields became developments. I've had a lot of friends that lived in the alphabet houses. They were there well-built buildings. They're still standing. And a lot of them are overhauled and remodeled, but there's still a lot of fine houses that are still here from the old days.</p>
<p>Arata: Yeah. So was there a fairly substantial influx of students to your school then?</p>
<p>Johanson: Back before Hanford, Benton City School used to play Richland, because they were in the same league then. Because Richland was only about 300 people. And they had the families--I remember some of their names, the Van Dynes, they had a big family. And they played. We used to play them in basketball, against the Van Dyne brothers. And there were several others. I can't remember their names now. A lot of good athletes came out of Richland even during that time. And as they got bigger and bigger, larger, Richland High became a real force in the sports competition.</p>
<p>Arata: So J.F.K. visited Hanford in 1963. Were you around for that?</p>
<p>Johanson: In '63? No, that's when I lived in Wenatchee. I was division manager for Prudential Insurance Company up there.</p>
<p>Arata: Okay. So you worked at Hanford until about 1954? Do I have that correct?</p>
<p>Johanson: I worked until 1953.</p>
<p>Arata: ’53.</p>
<p>Johanson: A lot of places now, that were places I remember then, were like the corner by where the post office is now. And across the street, there's some offices on the west side of Jadwin. And that used to be a huge, big drugstore. And a lot of people would just hang out there, because they had a soda fountain. And it was an interesting place to be, meet all the young folks around there.</p>
<p>Arata: I imagine it must've been exciting meeting people from all different places.</p>
<p>Johanson: It was, because you'd meet people from all over the United States. People would come up from the South, the Midwest, as far as Florida. It would really broaden your scope, a lot more than being just raised in a little, dinky town, and then meeting all the people from the big cities and the eastern part of the United States. And they were different, the same but different. And when Bill and George Gale, they'd got to our place and parked their trailers under the trees, their dad was going to come out. And of course, they had accents. From Kansas to us, they had an accent. And George, he called, talked to his dad. We had an old telephone that was on the wall. You know, you had to crank it. He talked to dad back in Kansas. And he said, "wull," he says, dad, he says, if you have "tar" trouble, "wor" us. If you have tire trouble, wire us. [LAUGHTER] That was the way they talked. To us, it was humorous, but that's, you know, that's the way they were.</p>
<p>Arata: You sounded a little funny to them, too.</p>
<p>Johanson: They were wonderful people, too. Wonderful people.</p>
<p>Arata: Now how did that come about that they came to camp on your property?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, they didn't want to stay out on the huge trailer camp out in Hanford. And they'd rather drive back and forth and have their kids go to the school, local school. And then it was kind of a paradise compared to some places, with great big shade trees. And the trailers were in the shade. It was good, a lot better place than being out in the desert.</p>
<p>Arata: So they just happened to run into your dad somewhere?</p>
<p>Johanson: I don't know. I think what they did was they were traveling around, scouting around, and they saw our place. And there weren't many places to stay at all. So they were extremely happy to find a place in order to park. And they were there about two years, I think.</p>
<p>Arata: So they would pay your dad some sort of rent?</p>
<p>Johanson: He charged them some rent. But it was really low, like $15 a month or something like that. Of course, wages weren't high then, either, because they were about--they were under $2 an hour at that time. I did a stint of--when I was ironworking, we went up to Coulee Dam. And I worked up there for a while and started out at $1.85 an hour and doing hard work. Now, the minimum wage is going over $10 an hour. We'd have thought we'd died and gone to heaven if we could get $6 an hour.</p>
<p>Arata: Right. So were wages at Hanford comparatively better to what you?</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh, they were better then. Because there, on the farm, we'd hire people to pick potatoes in sacks. And they'd get maybe like $0.02 or $0.03 a sack for picking them. If they were good, they'd make $2 or $3 a day. And the wages were like $0.25 an hour back in the '30s and into the time the project started. And then all the wages started going up to where you could make $75 a week. Even as an ironworker, I'd make about $75 a week. And then that work on down at McNary Dam, I was a foreman down there. And I got $2.25 an hour, so really cashing in. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Arata: So I wonder--most of my students do not remember the Cold War. It's like a foreign time period for them.</p>
<p>Johanson: Right.</p>
<p>Arata: Do you have any thoughts that you think it's important for the next generation to know about what America's role was during that time?</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, the main role of keeping the peace and balancing the competition with Russia. It wasn't just Russia then. It was their whole group of countries that are separate countries now. And we know about, with the Ukraine and so on, what's going on right now. But it was a pretty scary at times. I remember where there was a time when everybody was putting in bomb shelters. And they were teaching kids to duck and cover in the schools. Get next to a concrete wall and cover your head as if that would have done any good. But we didn't have much else, much other choice. And a lot of people did put in bomb shelters. But I think in the end, it was not backing down. I think all of our Presidents have been outstanding, not just one or two, but from Roosevelt on up, through the start of World War II, and people like Harry Truman. It took a lot of guts to order them to drop the bombs on those poor people over there in Japan. And then continuing on, they were all good Presidents, I think. And they all played a role, whether they were Republicans or Democrats. You got to be good to get to be President. You have to have something on the ball. I won't get in to any politics.</p>
<p>Arata: You can if you want to. [LAUGHTER] I’m curious, if you could talk for just a moment. It's kind of a side note to working at Hanford. But do you recall where you were when Pearl Harbor was bombed?</p>
<p>Johanson: Yeah. It was in school time. School wasn't out. And the next day, we had an assembly. They had an assembly in the large auditorium at the school there in Benton City. They had the radio on. And we were listening to President Roosevelt with his famous speech. And that was quite a--really, the kids were scared. Everybody was scared that they were going to be coming here, bombing us, too. And they probably could have. And they probably would have except for the Japanese admiral that warned them not to. He said because, if you get over there and try to invade the United States, he said, there will be a gun behind every blade of grass. So he says, don't do it. That was probably a slight exaggeration, but he got his point across. [LAUGHTER] There was probably a gun behind every two blades of grass. Every blade of asparagus. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Arata: That's the end of my questions. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about, any other stories that stand out to you?</p>
<p>Johanson: Mm. I remember a story about when they completed the N Reactor. It was a dual-purpose reactor. It produced uranium, for the war effort, for the military and also electricity. And I have a program from when President Kennedy came out and gave a speech and turned on the reactor. If I can find it here. And I would like to--if you guys would like to have it—</p>
<p>Arata: We’d love to—</p>
<p>Johanson:--for your work, I'd like to donate it.</p>
<p>Arata: Oh, really?</p>
<p>Johanson: It shows President Kennedy on the front. Let's see. All the official program and the story behind it, the atomic wand that he used. The atomic wand, it shows him using the wand to start the reactor and pictures of notables here. There are pictures up here. My dad, he was on the board of Washington Public Power Supply System at that time. And they were instrumental in getting the N Reactor going. And he was out there. His name is in there, Robert. His name was Robert Johanson.</p>
<p>Arata: So your father was there. Did you get to witness this?</p>
<p>Johanson: No.</p>
<p>Arata: But your father did?</p>
<p>Johanson: Yeah, he was out there, allegedly, one of the dignitaries.</p>
<p>Arata: So did your father get to meet President Kennedy?</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh yeah, they all got to meet him.</p>
<p>Arata: Are there any stories about that day that he ever told you?</p>
<p>Johanson: Like everybody else, they were all agog at getting to meet the president, President Kennewick—Kennedy. And so that was an exciting time for them. And literally thousands of people went out to the event.</p>
<p>Arata: I've never seen an actual program.</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh, that's one of the original ones that they got. And I think it would be maybe useful in your teaching.</p>
<p>Arata: Yes, we would love to digitize this and make it available on our project website.</p>
<p>Johanson: I was instrumental in starting an insurance company here, too. And there's a picture.</p>
<p>Arata: So this is your--is this you or your father? This is you.</p>
<p>Johanson: That's me. Yeah. Then also there's a big deal. Here's an old newspaper. This is Friday, February 18, 1966. That was the Tri-City Herald. And there's yours truly, right there.</p>
<p>Arata: These are great.</p>
<p>Johanson: And we employed people. And we sold stock all over the State of Washington.</p>
<p>Arata: Wow, we would love to take some images of this. And we're happy to get it back to you.</p>
<p>Johanson: Okay, sure.</p>
<p>Arata: We have a big scanner. We can get a full scan of the whole thing.</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh, great, yeah. It's kind of a yellowed newspaper after--how long has that been now?--50 years.</p>
<p>Arata: A while. Wow. Yes, we would love to make this available.</p>
<p>Johanson: And we had people, we had people on our board of directors that were like Sam Volpentest. He was a big name here, you know. He was a mover and a shaker. This was a brochure we had. It shows all of the board of directors and so on.</p>
<p>Woman off screen: Sam Volpentest was really instrumental in keeping the money come out here for further development out in the area. So the economy kept going on here. Along with what's his name? Who was the representative? Skip? It was Skip something. Is that the right guy? There was a legislator who did a lot of good work for us too. But Sam Volpentest, there's lots of stuff named after him now. He was a big guy.</p>
<p>Arata: There you go. I just learned something.</p>
<p>Johanson: Pardon?</p>
<p>Arata: I just learned something important.</p>
<p>Johanson: Oh. Yeah, if I could have those back when you're finished.</p>
<p>Woman: Of course. In fact, I can take them.</p>
<p>Arata: We can, actually.</p>
<p>Woman: If we're finished up, I can take them right down and bring them back. Is there anything else?</p>
<p>Arata: Can you do that? Yeah, is there any other stories you'd like to share with us, anything else?</p>
<p>Johanson: I'll probably think of a lot when I get home.</p>
<p>Woman: That's usually how it works.</p>
<p>Johanson: Well, the one about going out and getting the cider press. I think we were going to make some hooch or something.</p>
<p>Arata: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Johanson: Hard cider.</p>
<p>Arata: And did you?</p>
<p>Johanson: I think so. Yeah. But we used to--you know, Hanford and White Bluffs were our opposing teams, because they were in the same league. And Richland was in the same league then. I think Prosser and Grand View, I think they were playing football. We had football. Benton City had never had football until I was a senior in high school there. And then we had football. We lost almost every game, because none of us had played football before. But by then, Hanford and White Bluffs, they didn't have football either. Kennewick and Pasco did and Prosser and Grand View. And our quarterback broke his arm, so he played the rest of the season with his arm, left arm in a cast.</p>
<p>Arata: With a cast on and kept playing? [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Johanson: Yeah, he kept playing, believe it or not. [LAUGHTER] Trying to think of some other things associated with Hanford. It was a big part of our lives, because that was the big deal. And the towns and Richland jumped from 300 people to several thousand almost overnight. And even out at the Richland Y, there were a lot of businesses out there at that time. Originally, there was only one business there. When you went from like Kiona to Kennewick, you would go through the Richland Y. And there was a service station there, and that's all there was there at that time. And eventually, there got to be several stores and restaurants and so on there, too. But there were a lot of people, they'd go to work, and there'd be a termination wind, a good old Tri-City windstorm with the dust blowing. And there would just be a line of them heading back home to where they came from, whether it be Kansas or Oklahoma or whatever. But they came out here, and a lot of them stayed, because it was still better than where they'd come from. Because a lot of them came right out of the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. If you've ever seen the movie Tobacco Road, that's an old movie, it's good to get it and watch it. It gives you an idea of what things were like back then. Those were the people. And they'd come into town with old cars, old Model A Fords and so on. And they'd have suitcases and trunks up on top, tied down with ropes, and old trucks and everything. It looked like an evacuation of a war zone. And a lot them would just camp along the road, between the Y and Kennewick. Of course, the road went down where the park is now. And there were farms along there. A lot of the people coming into town to work would stop and camp along there, along the way, because they probably camped along the way, all the way up from wherever they came from, the Midwest. And then you had a lot of more sophisticated people, like the scientists, too, that came out. But they were the ones who got the plumb housing.</p>
<p>Arata: Hey.</p>
<p>Johanson: And you had the top-notch people, like Fermi and people like that that were the fathers of the atomic era. They lived here, too, some of them. Some of them just came out from Chicago and places like that to work. So like I said, I'll probably think of a lot more things when I get home.</p>
<p>Arata: Always. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming in and spending this time with us and sharing your memories.</p>
<p>Johanson: That's okay. At my age, you have a lot of time on your hands.</p>
<p>Arata: It was wonderful.</p>
<p>Johanson: Time on your hands! [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Arata: Lots of stuff we hadn't heard before, so it was really great.</p>
<p>Johanson: Pardon?</p>
<p>Arata: You had lots of stuff.</p>
Bit Rate/Frequency
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200 kbps
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:56:28
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
300 Area
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1948-1953
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
George, Bill & Gale
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Truman, Harry
Johansen, Robert
Volpentest, Sam
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 Richard Johanson
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Richard Johanson conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.)
300 Area
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-03-05
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
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2016-06-13: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
Richland (Wash.)
Volpentest, Sam, 1904-2005
Washington Public Power Supply System
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F157eb8cc8ada403d8f472d5c48788511.jpg
9d72ff516906fcb85e78925a8663e892
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0472090f713e05ebf58314e205876e9a.mp4
218d716c6219eb2bb404d57fdee92c83
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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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
Bob Bush
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX194300000">
<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><strong><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Northwest Public Television | </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Bush_Bob</span></span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></strong></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Robert Bauman</span>: I’m going to have you start just by saying your name, first.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Robert Bush</span>: Okay, my name is Bob Bush.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: My name is Robert Bauman,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> and we're conducting this interview with Robert, or Bob, Bush on July 17 of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">2013. And we're having this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And we'll be talking</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">with Bob about his experiences working at the Hanford site.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so I'd like to start just by having you talk about how and when you arrived at Hanford. What brought you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">here?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">O</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">kay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. During World War II, I was overseas. My parents were in the area, both of them working. My brother was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">also </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">here in Pasco High School. When I came home from the service to Southern Idaho, Korean War</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">broke out. Wages were frozen, and so I was looking to better myself. And I applied by mail. I was interviewed by</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">telephone. And I came up here in 1951</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to the accounting department, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">General Electric Company.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They were the sole contractor.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And for 15 years, in construction and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> engineering accounting, which wa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s separate from plant operations at that time.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And from there, my accounting career followed it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s path through several successive</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> contractors. From GE to ITT,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Atlantic Richfield, to Rockwell, and finally with Westinghouse. When I retired, I was with Westinghouse for one</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">month.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">You said your parents were here duri</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ng the war. When did they come out?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It was '43. 1943 and '44, my mother worked for the orig</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">inal</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> postmaster of Richland, Ed </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Pedd</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">icord</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">dad was a carpenter. Built some of the first government houses called the Letter Homes. They were here about</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">two years, I think. And then they went back to Idaho, I believe.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Okay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And what part of Idaho?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Twin Falls, Idaho. Where I graduated from high school.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Okay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. What were your first impressions upon arriving in the Tri-Cities?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">That's kind of interesting, Bob. Because I came up ahead of my wife and two</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">year-and-a-half old</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> three-and-a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">half-year-old sons. About two weeks ahead of them. And so I fou</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd a Liberty trailers to rent—t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he housing was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nonexistent. And I found a Liberty trailer, which means it had no running water, no bathroom. It was like a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">camping trailer, basically.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I sent for them. A brother-in-law who had graduated from high school went directly into the Korean War. He drove</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them up as far as Huntington. I went on a bus to Huntington and met them, came back. And as we came onto the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Umatilla side, and I said, that's Washington. Well, there was no green and everybody was disappointed.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat's the first impression. I mean, there wasn't a bridge over the river in Umatilla. It was a ferry. So you drove</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around the horn at </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Wallula</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Things were just really different.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> said you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> had a trailer. Where was--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">In Pasco on a front yard of an old pioneer home, where Lewis Street crosses 10th. That was the end on Lewis</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Street at 10th. And from there west was called Indiana. And there was about t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hree homes on there. And it just quit</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And roughly across from the present day Pasco School Administration Building, which was a Sears building.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Across the street there was where this home was. I mean, things have just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—in the whole area—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">have changed so</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">much.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And how long did you live there then?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Until I was called for housing in Richland, which was six months. That was in June, no air conditioning. And finally</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">got into an apartment building, a one-bedroom before with two little boys that slept in the same crib. It was still,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">basically, wartime conditions. Weren't any appliances for sale and you had to stand in line to get a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">refrigerator.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> It</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was a different world. But we were young, so we could take it.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> was this in Richland then, the apartment?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">No, that was in Pasco. After that trailer, that was only about two weeks. And then we want into </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">his apartment, the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">one-bedroom. Then we moved next do</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">or to a two-bedroom in a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> five-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">plex</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And then in December, six months</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">later, I got the first</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I got a housing call from the housing office in Richland, which sat where the present day</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">police station </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">sits. And the lady offered me—s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he said, you could have it Saturd</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ay. It was a prefab. It had already been worn</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and pulled out. And I kind of hesitated. I said, I've already got something in Pasco. Well, she said, I could let you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">have a brand new apartment.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> That apartment was brand new. It was s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o clean. My wife, who was very fastidious, she</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">didn't even have to clean cupboards.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the apartments hav</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e now been torn down by Kadlec</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> for that newest building. A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd in fact, this morning I just </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">went by and took a picture of Goethals</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Street, which is vacated. And it was quite a pleasant</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> move to come out </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of a trailer into—a non-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">air-conditioned cinder block building apartment into a nic</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e, brand new apartment with air </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">conditioning, full basement, and close to work.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And at that time, my office was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> downtown in the so-called 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, which is basicall</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y where the F</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ederal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding is</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">where the Bank of America is was th</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e police station. And that's Knight</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Street, I believe. From there </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">north to Swift, and from Jadwin west to Stevens where the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Tastee</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Fr</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">eeze was, that was the 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">confines. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Probably about 22 buildings in there.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The original thing prior to computers, everything was manual bookkeeping or ac</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">counting with ledgers. And they </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">came out with a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">McBee</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Keysort</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> cards, and it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> was called electronic data processing. It was sp</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">aghetti wire with </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">holes in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">boards, that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> type of thing. That building had to be a special airlock b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding. And that's the Spencer </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Kenne</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y Building beside the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Gesa</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Building. That building is built especially to house equipment.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And they just went from there. And I moved around my office. And after 15 years, I went into what they call</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">operations. I was onsite services, which—did</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that for 17 years. And that was probably the better part</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">second better job that I had, I guess. The transp</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ortation and everything, on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">site support services. The whole</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">point</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> there.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">That job took me all over the plant. I established inventories. I took some of the fi</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rst inventories of construction </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">workers' supplies and tools and shop equipment, rolling stock. My name was </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">M</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ud. They thought so much of me </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they gave me a desk in the corner of a big lunchroom.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So you did work at various places then?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yes. Well, yes. My very first location was in North Richland, then called North R</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ichland Camp, where the bus lot </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the maintenance shops. I'm trying to establish a point</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> up there—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat's over there today?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There's a big sand dune on your left going by the automotive shops, past the bus lot, where the bus lot was.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Opposite that sand dune on the other side of Stevens was a bunch of one-story </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">temporar</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y buildings. That was </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">North Richland Camp. And that's where my first accounting job was there for two or three years.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I had been there—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I came there in June. And in January of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">'52, had 22 people along </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in my department </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">worked in. I was a junior clerk at that time. Took me four years to get onto the m</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">anagement roles, but I did. But </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">anyhow, in that room they came in there six months later. After I'd only been he</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">re six months, AEC, predecessor </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to the OA.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> The AEC has taken over more </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">management, more responsibility. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> we're going to be laying off a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">lot of people. I had only been here six months.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so others grabbed straws and went different places. I always said either I was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> too ignorant or lucky, I don't </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">know what. But I just sat still and it panned out for the better. I didn't get laid off.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I moved from there. But I went </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">downtown to the 703 B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding, which stood where the Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding is now.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There's a building to the rear that the city owns called 703. That was the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> fourth wing. 703 was the frame </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">construction, the three floors. And the later years, they added a fourth wing out </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of block building. Made it more </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">permanent. That's why it's still standing today.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Now, that was my second location. And then I got on the management role </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in '55, which meant I went </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">exempt and no more pay for overtime. And we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nt out to White Bluffs site—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tow</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">n</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> site, and that's where the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">minor construction was located. Minor construction, it's the construction people that are spe</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">cially trained in SWP, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">radiological construction work</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> as opposed to run-of-the-mill construction.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And they're the ones that had never had any accounting at all for any equipment, supplies, materials or otherwise.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And that's where I had the lunchroom office experience.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It so happened that they established</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I brought an inventory procedure and establis</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hed that first inventory during </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a strike. We had to cut government-owned tool boxes. But still, the workers though</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t they were private. And we had </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to cut locks in order to take inventory.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And then</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> we feared for our lives when they came back. Pretty rough day sometimes.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">What timeframe would that have been you were out?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">That was 1955 to '56. A couple of years there, and then another person took over from there and I w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ent into </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">budgeting at that point, from accounting to budgeting. And I did that for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">until 19</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">63. And then I moved out to the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">so-called bus lot, which it was. 105 buses and all that. And I was out there for 17 ple</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">asant years, budgeting, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">billing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rate—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Because we were the supplier of all plant services. So we had billing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> rates to the reactors, and the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">separations, and the fuel prep, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whoever. The AEC, everything. We billed t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hem, just as </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">if we were like plumbing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> jobs.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And that I enjoyed. That was probably my most productive period. And from similar</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> work to that, I moved over—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Let’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> see, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was around when the Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding was built, but I didn't get into it. That was built </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in '69. I didn't get down there </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">until 1980. Went down there a couple of years. And then they moved us out t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o Hanford Square where Battelle </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Boulevard intersection is.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And I was there</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I retired from that location in 1977. My wife and I retired the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">same week. I've been retired 26 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">years now at the end of this month.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Was your wife working at the Hanford Site as well?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">She worked after the kids were grown, like most stay-at-home moms do. She s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tayed until the daughter was of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">age, and then she went to work for a credit union, which was the government</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> credit union, which was merged </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">later on with </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Gesa</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> But that was an interesting job. They worked two hours a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">day, three days a week. Because </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">it was all hand done, no mechanization.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then she got a job offer from the department in the central stores and pu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rchasing department. She worked </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there eight years. In 1986, the income tax law changed a lot of things for all of us, e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ffective in 1987. It meant that </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">partial vesting was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">IRS has to rule on all things like that. And that meant t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat if you had 10 years to vest </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pensions, once you pass the 50% point, whatever the vesting period is, then you we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">re partially vested. And so she </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">had 8 years out of 10. So she got 80%. But she had only worked eight y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ears, so it wasn't a very large </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">accumulation.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Because I got my full. Of course, I'd been here 37 years I think it was, however that works out. 36.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I want to go back and ask you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—when </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">you were talking earlier about that period in '55, '</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">56 when you were working out at </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">White Bluffs</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> town site</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. You ment</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ioned radiological construction?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, that—t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hose construction workers worked under what they called SWP, Special Work Permit, which meant radiological.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They ha</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">d to wear</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the clothing was ca</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">lled SWP clothing then. Today, they call it </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">something else. But they worked </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">under those conditions, so therefore they were subject to different rules.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Whereas, construction wo</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rkers on brand new construction weren’t then—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they didn't have any of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that to contend with. But once </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a plant went operational, it became radiologically SWP. This is not an anti-union thin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">g. It's just a demonstration of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">how things were in those days.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They had some old buses that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the original buses in town were called Green Hor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nets. And they were small. They </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">had chrome bars that went right across the middle of your back. And for 35 miles, that was not very comfortable.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When they got the newer buses that you see today, like Greyhound has for instance, they relegated those to the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">construction workers at White Bluff</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. Well, since GE guys worked</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> up</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> at White Bluff</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, we had to ride those, too.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So all the office workers in the warehouse</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">GE employees rode one bus. The elec</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tricians rode another bus. Pipe </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">fitters rode another bus, even though there were only two or three of them. It was really a segmented-type thing.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">As close to anything radiological that I came to when I conducting one of those physical inventor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ies—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e would be </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">out</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">all of the construction materials were stored outdoors on the ground. I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">mean, like stainless steel. 308 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">stainless steel was pretty high-priced stuff. But the sheets were stored outside</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> on pallets. Well, o</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ne sheet is worth </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">thousands and thousands of dollars.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So we had to lay down on the ground and count the sheets to do the inventory. T</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">his one day—t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">h</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e only time I came close to any </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">contamination, we went back and boarded the buses that evening from White Blu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ffs. And we saw the guys on the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">dock there chipping with a chisel and hammer. That meant they were chipping out</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> flakes of contamination. So we </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">asked what was going </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">on. They said, well, we're next </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">door to F and H A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And F A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea had coughed out something they said. And so I said, well, my crew was outside today on the ground.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And if the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> coughed out because all the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">some construction workers could drive their cars. That's the only people.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Plant operations people all had to ride buses. No parking lots.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So anyhow, those cars were all impounded. Had tape around them. They co</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uldn't go home. And some of the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">guys, they had to take off their shoes, leave them, and be issued safety shoes in lieu of it.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And I said, well, we were on the ground, too. So they proceeded to take us all off the bus and surveyed us with</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wand. And they only found a few flakes on our back. And so we were allowed to go</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> home. But that's as close as I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ever came to getting contaminated. It's still scary.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah. Obviously, Hanford, a site where security was prominent--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Very tight security, yeah. I was telling the young lady here that across the road</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">way on Stevens, as you near the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, there was a real wide barricade, probably eight lane</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that you had t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o go through. And everybody had </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to stop, including buses. And the guard would get on the bus, walk down the aisle, and check every badge.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And at that time, AEC had their own security airplanes. That was the purpose of t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he Richland Airport was for AEC </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">security in th</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e begi</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nning. They had a couple Piper C</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ub-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">type airplanes.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And one day we're on a bus going out to work in the morning. And all of a sudden, a plane just zoomed on by.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Somebody had run the barricade. The plane goes out, lands in front of them, stop</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s them, and that's how they got </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">apprehended.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Another i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ncident of security, yeah, that's the subject? </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Many y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ears later now, after 1963, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I'm in the transportation assignment. Airspace was off limits to all airplanes ove</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">r Hanford because they had army </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">artillery guarding it in the Cold War and all that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And a private plane had violated the space. And the AEC planes had forced it do</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wn. And once they're down, they </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">can't ever take off. So after a week or so, they sent a lowboy trailer out there, l</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">oaded the small airplane on it, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">proceeded to come down what's the highway and now Stevens. And down where S</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">teven</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s today, 240 and all that </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">intersection is, there wa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s only two lanes on the road then, not six. But at that junct</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ure there, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there was a blinking </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">light. And they had to turn right to go to the Richland Airport.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And this guy, the truck driver pulling this low-boy, he had never pulled an airplane </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">before. And he didn't allow for </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that pull. Well, that blinking light clipped off a wing. And then he got time off. It was not </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">really his fault, that pilot in </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the beginning. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But there's a lot of—I guess full of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> interesting stories like that on security.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Great. Did you have special security clearance to work at Hanford at the time?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Which?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Any special security clearance?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, yeah. I had Q clearance, which there's one higher than that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that's top secret. But</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Q clearance meant you </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">could go into any and all areas. And because the nature of my job, I had that my whole time I was out there.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Once you have it, they would tend not to take it away from you because it's quite ex</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pensive investigation to get it </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in the first place. I might mention something interesting in that regard.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When I first came to work in 1951,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> why,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the PSQ is Personnel Security Questionnaire. And it's about 25 pages long.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And you had to memorize it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> because every five years, you had to update it. Well any</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">how, I filled that out, and you </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">give references.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And I have, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in the Twin Falls area, a farmer that had been a neighbor farmer in Nebraska, where I was born</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">parents. I gave him as a reference because he had known me all my life. And that would be higher points.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">About a year or two later</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I guess probably a year later I had gone back down to Twin Falls to visit the in-laws</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I went and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> saw this farmer, family friend. The first thing he said to me, Bobby, what in the world did you do?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> The FBI had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">come out to his farm and piled on the questions. And I hadn't told him ahead of time I'd given a reference. So they</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">really did very, very tight security. It's probably tighter than it was when I was in the Air Corps.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">You mentioned riding a bus out to work.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah, everybody rode it, except those few construction workers in that minor construction area. They were</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">permitted their cars. I don't know why, but no one else drove cars on the plant. Everybody rode on the bus.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The bus fa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">re</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of course, it was subsidized. It was a plant operation, like anything else is. To make the liability</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">insurance legal, they charged a nickel each way on the bus, which later on got changed to a dollar or something.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But many of the years, we'd ride the bus 30, 35, or 40 miles to work for a nickel. The nickel was just to make it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">legal.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">From those old green buses, they came up with some</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I forget what they're called. More like Greyhound buses.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then in 1963, the year I went out to the transportation, they bought a fleet of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Flxibles</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And that's F-L-X.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There's no E in it. That's the same kind of flat-nosed bus that the bus lines used today. And they were coaches,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">not buses. They had storage underneath. And so we had quite a suggestion system on the plant. And you would</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">get monetary award or mention. And somebody said, well, instead of running mail carrier cars delivering mail to all</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the stops on the whole plant, load the mail onto the now available storage bins on these buses. And that was a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pretty good suggestion award, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">monetarily</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to somebody.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And they did that. Took it out to a central mail station out there, and then dispatched it.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">You mentioned different contractor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s you worked for over the years--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>:</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Uh-huh.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The story behind that for the record is that General Elec</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">well, DuPont built the plant. That's who my dad worked</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">for. And GE came in '46, I believe. And they were here until the group I was in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> phased out in groups. I was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the last group to go out. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[COUGH] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Excuse me, in 196</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">'66.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">GE phased out, they had a dollar a year contract. Like Henry Kaiser and rest of them did during the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">war, for the good of the country. But they trained an awful lot of people in the infancy field of nuclear engineering.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">General Electric trained all those people here and then they opened up the turnkey operations in San Jose and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Japan. But anyhow, AEC was still AEC at that point. And then, their wise decision</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">instead of one contractor, they</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">would have nine. And so there were</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the reactors was one. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Separation plant was another. Fuel </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">preparation</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">at 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea was another. The laboratories, which is today basically Battelle. Site services. The company doctors</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">formed a foundation called Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, which is the MDs that gave the annual</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">exams.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the computer end</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, it was now getting into the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> infancy of t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> computer sciences corp</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, we had the first</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">contracts on that. So all together, there were nine contractors. And the portion that I was with went to ITT. They</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">bid, came in and bid</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. I helped conduct tours of the facility for the bidders. Because I knew all about it and knew the ins</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and outs on some of the monetary parts that their accounting people would have questions on. We'd walk through</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">shops and all that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, anyhow, ITT got the site support</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">site services. And we had that for five years. And austerity set in in the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">'70s. Well, '70. They said, we got to get site services' budget down to less than $10 million. And it probably was 13</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">or 14, I don't remember now.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So my boss and another analyst, like myself, sequestered</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">talk about sequester. We sequestered ourselves in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the then new Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding for about a week. Almost 20 hours a day, whittling and whittling and working on a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">budget. And there was only one conclusion. We had to cut everything in half.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Went through all that sweat. Went up with our pres</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ident, Tom Leddy, went upstairs to an</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> AEC finance</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">office, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">presented</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> our whole case. And the man turns around and says, well, it doesn't make any difference, Tom.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Your contract's not renewed anyhow.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so now, Atlantic Richfield, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">an existing contractor for 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas, somehow the separations plant contractor that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">is an oil company owned,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> can all of a sudden manage a site service. And so they did absorb us. But politics</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">were still around in those days. And there were three of us analysts. One had got transferred by ITT up to the new</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">line</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">newly est</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ablished Distant Early Warning L</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ine from Russia up to Alaska. So that left two of us. And we waited</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around. We waited around and never got an offer. And they said, no, we can do it all without you. We don't need</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">you. How come it took so many people anyhow?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">On a Friday afternoon, the man that I did budgets for saw me in a restroom. He said, you got an offer yet? </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I said, no, n</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o. I'm</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">working under the table with somebody else. Well, he says, if they don't hire you, I'm going to hire you. And so he</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">went downtown, and a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">bout 4 o'clock, I got a call from the man that told me they didn't need us. Said they'd been kind of thinking. So I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">went over Atlantic Richfield</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> under those.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">AUDIO CUTS OUT] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so I'm</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> not mad, not knocking—knocking them</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, that's just the way things were.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then Rockwell came to town. Wh</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">en they laid off everybody on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">-2,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I'm trying to think of other</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">community, something might be of interest for the history project. Back into the '50s.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> same green buses, they had, oh, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">four or five of them that ran in town like a modified transit system. I don't</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">think they had that many riders, but it did. And also, the plant buses ran what they called shuttle routes. And those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">buses went into Richland on probably six routes and drove around the neighborhoods and picked up workers on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the three shifts. And that's why up in the ranch house district, there was the bypass you'll see between homes.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The pathways that go clear through lots. Blocks were so long that they had to provide a quicker route to the bus</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">stops.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Now, those rides were free because they were shuttle buses. When you got out to the bus lot, you paid your</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nickel, or a pass, whatever it was.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wanted to ask you about accounting in </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">terms of equipment practices. W</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ere there a lot of changes during the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">time you worked at the Hanford</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> site? Computer technology come in and change things?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, yeah. For sure. In the beginning, as I mentioned earlier, all accounting was open ledgers and hand posted.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Adding machine tapes at the end of the day trying to balance them all out. And we had that until</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">let's see. 1970s—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">think it was 1977, we got our very first taste of it. Every other desk in a group of about 20 people in cost</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">accounting that I was in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There was cost accounting, gener</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">al accounting, and so on, p</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">roperty management. But anyhow, we had about 20</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">people. Every other desk had a monitor. Well, they referred to them as a computer. But they were just the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">monitor. And down at the end of our building was one printer. And everything was on floppy disk. Every program</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was on a floppy disk. Nothing was built-in because it was just the infancy. The big computers were down in the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding. And a sub-basement below the basement was specially built for that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But back to our office. Across the hall from us, we had two small computers that are</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to me, they're about the size</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of portable sewing machines. And I can't even remember the names of them </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because they don't exist today b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ut</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they were the computer locally. So we wanted to run our work order system, we would phone down to the guy</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">down at the other end of the building, insert the floppy disk from work system and wait.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, I've got somebody'</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s inventory. You have to wait. Because t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">here's only one place to load up down there. So finally,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">you would put the floppy disk in. And then, you'd run it, which meant it'd run through it and print. But then you'd</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">have to say, now print it. And they got one printer for the whole building. And so it's pretty interesting.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Whereas</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> today, I've got a laptop that I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> can virtually do everything with. But we graduated from hand posted</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ledgers right into computers. We didn't have anything in between. All of the reports that came out, came out on--referred to as IBM runs because everything was IBM. It was on paper that's about 18 inches wide with all these</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">little perf marks on it to feed it. And you'd get one report and it would be about that thick. It was not that much</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">information, but it's just so much printing.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It's even hard to remember after 26 years how antiquated that is compared to today. But prior to that, it wasn't</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">even the PCs. They called everything a PC. Or, was PC compatible. Because prior to that, the only electronic data</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">processing nickname was spaghetti wire. I'm not very conversant in it, but it was some kind of a board that had a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">bunch of holes in it. They put wires in it and that went to certain things. But all it did was sort things. It didn't</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">actually calculate them.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the community of Richland. What was that like in the 1950s? I know it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was a government--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">In the town? I g</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uess I didn't cover that area. Everything—a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ll houses were owned by government. We rented them.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">My wife and I and family, we came after the days of free everything. When the coal was free</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">all the furnaces</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">were coal fed. Some people would convert them later on to oil. But anyhow, they were coal burning. However you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">got the coal,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> whether it was government days</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> or you bought the coal from the courtyard, which is down at the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">end of what's </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">now Wellsian</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Way. There was a coal yard where that lumber yard is. And that's why those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">railroad tracks that are abandoned and rundown, that's where the coal cars came in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I can add something a little bit later about coal cars and the plant. But anyhow, we rented from the government.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">For example, that brand new apartment that I mentioned moving onto first was a two-bedroom, full basement.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Steam heated because</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I'll digress a little bit.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">All the downtown 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, including the Catholic church, central</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> church, the hospital, all 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, including</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">those new apartments, and all downtown shopping area were steam heated by a steam plant, which was located</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">where the back door of the post office is today in that small parking lot. And that one plant furnished steam for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">everything.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, back to this new apartment. The steam pipe</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> ran through this full basement. And our kids played</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wasn't any yards. There was just apartments. And they would play in the basement because they were quite</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">small. But they can remember today the pop, pop, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pop in those steam pipes.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the rent for that two-bedroom apartment was higher than any other house in town. It was $77 a month. And</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the reason it was $77 instead of $70 was because it included $7 for electricity. Nobody had electricity meters yet.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Even in that new place. So when they did put in electricity meters in all homes later, which had to be</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—during that time, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the year we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">were there, which is December '51 to December of '52, sometime in that period of time they put the meters in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They took off $7 off the rent because now we're going to pay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—and </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">their theory is it was $5 for a one-bedroom place,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whatever it was. $7 for a two-bedroom and $10 for a three-bedroom for electricity in those days. And nobody had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">electric heat, of course.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then, later on they put in water meters. And again, they had to come into your home, invade your home, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">put in something. So it was strictly government prior to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—well, another—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and when I lived in the rental, if something went wrong</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">with the plumbing, they would send out a plumber, but you paid for it, though.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But later on when I went to the tall two-story, three-bedroom duplex houses, or called </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> houses, that was our first</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">house after that apartment. And as I remember, I think the rent was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they had rent districts with low, medium, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">high in the more desirable parts of town.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And we were on Haupt Street across from uptown district where Hunt Street is and Jefferson Park. And I think our</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rent for that was like $47 because it was not a brand new apartment.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And later on, we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—I was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> on the housing list. And you applied and months or years later, you'd rotate up to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">move into a nicer place or a different location. But in the meantime, up came an F house, which is a two-story</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">single family, kind of a Cape Cod-looking type of house. And that came up on the housing list. However, the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">caveat was that you had to cash out the present owner who had made some improvements. He had converted</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the coal to oil, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hey put in a clotheslin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e, which nobody had clotheslines, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd something else.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So cashed him out for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I believe it was $750. And if I do that, I could have it, so I did. We lived in that place for 19</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">years. Our daughter grew up there and got married out of that home. And that's the only home she ever knew.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And we were there until 1977 when the real estate market in Richland was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">this is community wide. The housing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">prices were mo</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ving 18% a year, about 1.5</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">% a month.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And I thought well, I don't need to be setting</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> still. I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> mean, if I cash out here, and went on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. So we </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">sold that home. I listed it. Earl,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">father, was very ill. We were going to Spokane. I listed it. A man came by, looked it out. What were you asking? I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">said, oh, about 17. He shook his head. And I said, too high? He says, no, 27,000. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Just to show you how bad</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">things were. And so it sold right away. What are you going </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to do now? And I said, well. Would</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> you want to try a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">mobile home? I know a jewel.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And in those days, real estate men did not sell mobile homes. But this couple had bought their first house from</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">him, or something. And i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t was somebody retiring out of postal</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, wanted to go back to Montana. Never</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">smoked in it, never had any pets in it, n</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o kids. It was the Cadillac of mobile h</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">omes. We were there two years, b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ut</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that was l</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ong enough. Then we moved into the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> house that I'm still in. I'm widowed now for five years. The house</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">we're in now, we've lived in that longer than</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> any other place. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But the community</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> has changed so drastically.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">South Richland. People say today they live in South Richland. We lived in South Richland, which was south of the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">downtown shopping district to the Yakima Bridge. That was South Richland.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">What is now South Ri</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">chland out there was Kennewick</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Highlands.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> So it depends on who you're talking to today.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Do you remember any special community events, parades, any of those sorts of things during the '50s and '60s?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Community event</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yep. Back in GE days, they had Atomic Frontier D</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ays. And they were a big thing. Had beauty queens in it, rode in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the float, and all that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Down at the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—[COUGH] excuse me. For Atomic F</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rontie</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">r D</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ays down at the lower end of Lee Boulevard, which is still the same</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">shape today. They set up booths all on there. And it was a really big event. Before we had the hydro races even.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">People look back fondly on that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Talking about community, again, my mother, I said, worked for the post office, wh</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ich—i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t stood on the corner of Knight</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Street, where it touches George Washington Way. There's some kind of a lawyer office building there</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">today. And the old post office is the Knights of Columbus building on the bypass highway.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But she</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> would have to take the mail and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> go</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> over to where the Red</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Lion Motel is today, at</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the Desert Inn, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">frame building, winged out basically</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the same</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And that was referred to as the transient quarters. And that was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">for upper management that were going through and it wasn't </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">really </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a public motel, per se. But she would have mail for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">these big wigs over there. So she would have to go over there and have a badge to even go in the front door of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Desert Inn.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Talking about badges, something humorous on that. We didn't wear things around our neck in the beginning</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because it was like a little pocket-sized bill fold. It was a little black bill that had your pass, your badge in it. And at</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">every building you went into, you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> pulled it out, flashed it to the guard. It usually was a lady security employee.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There were guards in the building, but the person on the desk was a security clerk. But you'd just automatically</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—you’d open it </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">like that and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> flag and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> put it back in your pocket.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Every buildin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">g you went into. Downtown, 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, that first building I've referred to. One day I went into a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">restaurant and I just did that automatically</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> because it's just so automatic. Then they graduated to having the thing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around your neck. And then also, if you worked in the outer areas, you had to wear a radiation badge in addition</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to your secu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rity badge. There was two types and o</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ne of them was a flat. And I don't know the difference. One's for beta and one's for alpha. I don't know. And one</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of them was a pencil </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">shaped. And that's what they called it. And the other one was a flat badge, which was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">carried in something around your neck.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And in all the areas I worked, and the places I described laying on the ground t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat happened and all that, my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">RAMs,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> they call it, never accumulated in my w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">orking life to be a danger</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. I had some, of course. Everybody</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">does in the background. But I never accumulated to a danger point.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There were people, some smart aleck people that would take their badge and hold it over a source at work so</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they could get some time off. Because if you got</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">what was the phrase?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Anyhow, if they got contaminated, they put them on a beefsteak diet. And they stayed home. And they come every</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">day and took a urine sample and all that s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tuff. But they had a life of riley. So that was nice</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. But the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">guys got canned that did that. But they would purposely expose their pencil so they could stay home.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So did all employees ha</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ve those, either the pencil or--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Only those that worked in reactor and separations areas, yeah. I mentioned these departments.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Actually, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he first department is Fuel Preparations Department, FPD. The</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> present—the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">most of the buildings have now been</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">torn down that you don't even see them there. But the north half roughly was fuels preparation department</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">headed for the reactors. They took uranium and encapsulated it in cans, like can of peas in just so many words.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the south half of that 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea was a laboratory area, the predecessor of Battelle. So the fuel was prepared</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there. And it was machined and canned and sent as nickname slugs to the reactors. Then, the reactors loaded</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">into all those little tubes. And then from the reactors, they come </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">out the backside into those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> cooling pods and all that. And t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ransported in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">casks to the 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas, which are</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> separated area, separations. And the rea</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ctor area on the face</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> side was not</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that dangerous.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas only work on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> what they </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">called the canyons, PUREX and RE</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">DOX, and those kind of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">buildings. But t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hose cells were very, very hot. But you had to be </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">measured no matter where you were.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">One of our site services was a decontamination laundry</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> called the laundry. And all clothing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I mentioned to you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">before SWP.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, SWP, radiologic exposure employees wore whites. Carpenters and truck drivers and all that that didn't work</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around reactors wore blues. And so they were sorted. And we had different billing rates for that laundry because</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the blues only had to </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">be laundered and dried. Whereas</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the others had to be laundered, dried, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">decontaminated, checked in separate washing machines. And then workers wore</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">n the beginning, wore World</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">War II-style gas masks for our air supply before they invented a moon-type suit.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> But they wore gas masks.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the mask would come back to this mask station, which was part of the laundry. And they took the mask</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s, and t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hey'd take away the cartridge. They'd put th</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e mask in dishwasher machines, i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">n racks. That's how they would</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wash them. And then they would get them a new filter and package them up. Sanitize them and package them up</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">l</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ike medical supplies would be in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I can't think of any other unusual operation out there like that.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I want to c</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hange gears just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a little bit. President Kennedy visited the site in 1963.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yep, 1963.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I was wondering--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When they did that, they let all the schools out. And for the first time, non-workers were allowed to go in cars out</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there. It was a grand traffic jam, but it was quite a deal. And he landed his Air</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Force plane up at Moses Lake—at Larsen airbase at Ephrata, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whichever you want to call it. And then helicoptered. And of course, like it is</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">today, there were three or four helicopters. And you don't know which one he's on and all that bit.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And here, e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">veryone is gathered out the N Reactor a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, which is a dual-purpose reactor. They captured the heat from the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reactor, put it through a pipe throu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">gh a fence to the predecessor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to Energy Northwest, which was </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">called Whoops.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> This was a big deal, a dual-purpose react</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">or. And N stood for new reactor, really. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Anyhow, he comes in and they got a low-boy trailer. They fixed up down in the shops where I worked</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">my office</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was. And then built a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> podium just precisely for the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">resident with him emblem and the whole bit. So I was privy to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">get to see some things like that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> But anyhow, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat was the stage. And it was a long low-boy, so it accommodated all the senato</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rs and all the local—Sam Volpentest, the guy credited with HAMMER</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">those type of people. Glenn Lee</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> from the Tri-City Herald, you name it.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So the helicopter comes in, blows dust over everybody. But anyhow, my wife and kids and all schools were</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">brought out there. And I don't know how many thousand people were out there in the desert. And you could see</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">President Kennedy. He got up on the stage. You get close enough, you could get pictures.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Then, that same year in </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">November, he got assassinated. So t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat was a busy year.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Do you remember any other special events with dignitaries like that? Or other--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, I could go way back to World War II. I wasn't here, but I have a family connection</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> on it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. All over United States,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> war bond drives for various reasons to help. Build a ship, b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uild an airplane. The one that happened here is not</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the only one. But they took so much money out of all the paycheck of Hanford workers, which included my dad as</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a carpenter. And the money they collected bought the B-17 Bomber, which was named Day's Pay.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And that bomber</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they had a bomber out here, a B-17, so that people could see it, but it wasn't the same one. On</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the Richland High School wall there's a mural. And that's a rendition by a famous artist of Day's Pay in formation.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so I can say that my parents contributed to that. And that's the story behind that one bomber. Every worker</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">out there,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> construction or operations, they donated a day's pay.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wonder</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> what was the most challenging part of your job working at the Hanford site?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">As an accounting person, my most challengin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">g part was learning government-e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">se.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> How to deal. And in that vein,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that took a long time. But once you learn it, there is a way in the US government, period. As I'm sure there is in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">certain corporations.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Later on, when I mentioned that I went down to the federal building for my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">finally got located in that building,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> there was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">another fellow and I were old timers in accounting. And that year, they had five college grads, accounting grads</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">come in. They hired five at one time. And they ran them by Marv and </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> for exposure.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">This is how things are done. This is how the contacts are. And our basic job was to squire these young fellows</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around and introduce them to certain counterparts and now DOE. Now, this is how you make appointments with</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them. This is what you do. This is what you never do. And likewise, with senior management. And it paid off</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because of those five, all four of them b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ecame managers or supervisors, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd one of them became my manager</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">within two years.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Today, that same man is the comptroller at Savannah River Plant.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And so I like to feel that I contributed to them</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">being</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">partially to them being successful. And so that's a reward. But probably the most difficult thing coming from</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a private</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I worked for Colorado Mill and Elevator, which means I worked at a flour mill district office as a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">bookkeeper. And that's a small town deal in Twin Falls.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">To come to work for the government where some of your family despises you because you work for the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">government, but you had to fight that as well as learn how the government operates.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ou mentioned earlier, y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ou were talking about coal being used for heat in Richland. You also said you wanted to talk about coal fires</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">going up</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> at the site.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Coal fires?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>:</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, yeah. Interestingly, the midway power station, substation at midway, is one of the reasons they built Hanford</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">where they did because the Grand Coulee Dam had just been completed and an electricity producer</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a major</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">producer. And they put the midway substation down there. That basically was built to furnish huge amounts of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">power to Hanford, for the reactors, everything.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Which in total</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because I processed vouchers, I know it was 32 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">megs</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. Which today doesn't sound like much, but</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the whole plant bill was 32 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">megs</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> when everything was operating. But if the power were interrupted, they had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to have</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">backup. So e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">very area had a huge diesel-powered</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">like water pumps, where t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hey could pump the water from the river</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">instead of by electrically. They had to be able to pump it because it was critical. Because all the water for the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whole plant was taken in at intake water plants near the rea</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ctors along the river. The 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea water is piped to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them in a huge line as raw water until it gets to their place.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The backup is these coal-fired steam plants</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> is what I was trying to say. It got about 30-some cars of coal a day</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rolled through Richland past the cemetery. In the beginning, the railroad </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">came down from the north, from V</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">antage</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">area down along the Columbia River. There's a railroad bridge across the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> river, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Beverly I think it is. And it came</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">down to below the 100</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> R</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">eactor area. That's where the line ended. And t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hen a plant had its own railway</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">incidentally. It had a 285 mile-long rail line, high line and low line.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Then, they built</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in 1950, the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">year before I came</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, they built the line that we see today that comes from</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rebuilding outfit is now, there is a roundhouse that it's rectangular in shape. But some 30 cars of coal a day came</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in here to supply </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because those plants were—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they actually operated the steam plants. They didn't start</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them up from cold. They just ran constantly.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wonder if you could provide sort of an overall assessment of how Hanford was as a place to work. What was it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">like as a place to work?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It was a great place for me. I came out of an area that was the agriculturally-oriented. And the Korean War</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">started. Wages were frozen, y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ou weren't going to go anywhere. I came up here and I got a new start, like</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pioneers did. I visualized that's what fa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rming pioneers did the same thing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And it opened up a whole field for me, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">big corporate field. And it's just been a great place to work. And it was not dangerous to me. I'm not afraid to drink</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the water here.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I'm a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">sked by a nephew in Hermiston </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">constantly, how do you drink the water? And I said, well, it comes out of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the river. How can it co</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">me out of the river and that </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">plume</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> out there?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There's so many false stories around here. But working at Hanford, I think, by and large, almost all employees</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">would tell you the same thing. It was a great place to work.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The pay was decent. Maybe you didn't get rich, but it was decent. It's in a nice area to live in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When we came back in the '50s, or in the '40s, and before that even of course, shopping was pretty much</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nonexistent. They went to Yakima, or Spokane, o</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">r Walla Walla. That I didn’t—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e didn't experience that too much by 1951</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because by that time, the U</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ptown shopping district was built. And there was a men's store. And there was four</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">women's stores. Because GE was the prime contractor, there was an appliance dealer that handled GE-Hotpoint</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">appliances. We got employee discounts when we worked for GE.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">We also got 10% gasoline discount when we worked for Atlantic Richfield Hanford. But we just grew with the times.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And it's just such an entirely different area now than it was. Just the world is different, too.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Is there anything that I haven't asked you about? Is there anything you would like to talk about that we haven't</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">talked about yet?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Now really, w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ork-wise at Hanford, I think I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">’ve</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> pretty well-covered it. I'll repeat myself. My first 15 years was construction</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">engineering accounting, which is an entirely different field than operations accounting. Operations accounting</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">concerns itself with the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reactor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s and separations and the site services that support them. But I learned a lot by</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">working at Hanford.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">My family, three adult children live here, are retired here. My oldest son went on Medicare this year.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And that kind</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of puts you in your place quickly. But it's been</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> good enough place that they stayed in the area. And of the six</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">granddaughters, grandchildren, four of them are in the area. And that's kind of characteristic with a lot of the Tri-City families. They stay or come back.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, Bob, I'd like to thank you very much for coming and talking to us today. I really appreciate it.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It's been my pleasure.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri-Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:02:19
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
3068 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1951-2013
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1951-1977
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Volpentest, Sam
Kaiser, Henry
Leddy, Tom
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
General Electric
Atlantic Richfield
Rockwell
Westinghouse
703 Building
F Area
H Area
300 Area
200 Area
700 Area
WPPSS
HAMMER
N Reactor
100-B Reactor
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 Bob Bush
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Bush moved to Pasco, Washington in 1951 and later moved to Richland, Washington. Bob worked on the Hanford Site from 1951-1987.
An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Pasco (Wash.)
Grand Coulee Dam (Wash.)
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2016-05-17: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
7/7/2013
100-B Reactor
200 Area
300 Area
700 Area
703 Building
DuPont
F Area
General Electric
H Area
Henry Kaiser
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963
N Reactor
Richland (Wash.)
Washington Public Power Supply System