Interview with Andrew Reisenauer
Dublin Core
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Richland (Wash.)
Nuclear waste
Nuclear waste disposal
Description
An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by Mission Support Alliance on behalf of the United States Department of Energy.
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Transcription
Robert Bauman: Let's start, if we could, by just having you say your name, and then spell it for us.
Andrew Reisenauer: My name is Andrew Reisenauer. Last name is R-E-I-S-E-N-A-U-E-R.
Bauman: Thank you. And my name is Bob Bauman. Today's date is November 6, 2013. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So I wonder if we could start by you just telling us about how you came here? How you came to work at Hanford? What brought you here, and when?
Reisenauer: During 1950, I was a student at Washington State University, on campus at Pullman. And I was invited down here as a summer employee for the summer of 1950. I went back to school and graduated in '51, and came right back to Richland. During that year, 1950, I worked at the health department for the City of Richland. At that time, an employee of General Electric, of course. And it involved sanitation inspections around Richland, milk supplies up in the valley-- Yakima Valley and Moses Lake area. Just general safety and sanitation involved in all the transition of the workers from the old town sites of Hanford, Richland North-- North Richland trailer park area-- and also the development of Richland. Because at that time, the uptown shopping district was all under construction. Restaurants were being opened. Generally just everything that involved sanitation and health. Mosquito control was just being started. That was under our control. There's a huge influx of people, you've got problems with sanitation and food supplies. Food supplies particularly, when you're dealing with 50,000 people. You've got to supply them with tons and tons of food coming in daily. For instance, the milk supply-- that's something that you can't ship for great distances, like you can other products. The Hanford Engineering Works shipped in dairy farms, supported dairy farms. They built milk supply plants in Sunnyside and Moses Lake. They subsidized the farmers to bring in large numbers of cattle.
I mean, you don't just dump people in and don't have-- in a place like this, where there's small towns and very, very scattered population. The sanitarians from the Richland area were inspecting all the dairy farms all the way up through Sunnyside and up into the Moses Lake area, just to give us a decent supply of fresh produce. There's any number of those kind of things that went on during the areas when all the people are transitioning from town site of Hanford and into the North Richland trailer park, which had 2,500 trailers or more out there. With bathhouses and laundry facilities for those people were built in to separate housing or block areas, so that you got all the sanitation facilities have to be supplied, have to be inspected. You've got a brand new school out there, John Ball School, which was just nothing but a quonset hut put together. And along with all the schools that were being built in the City of Richland, we were training food handlers, for instance. Food handler classes, and making sure that the inspections got into the schools. And there's just a wide, wide variety of environmental problems.
Bauman: Sounds like a pretty challenging job.
Reisenauer: Well, even water supply. Because all the water supply in Richland and North Richland was furnished by wells. The treatment plant at Richland wasn't built until '55 or so. So you had well after well. And a lot of these wells were recharged by recharge basins with Yakima River Valley water, and Columbia River water. Places like just west of here. That little valley over toward just west of George Washington Way. There's still a couple wells in there that are being part of the Richland water supply. A lot of that water was being pumped out of the Columbia River into the basin above the wells. The wells are probably 75 feet deep. And they were using that as the method of cleaning the water, keeping the fish and everything else out of the wells. There's the area along Wellsian Way was all recharge ponds. Because there's a number of wells among the buildings down there. They're still being used. But the recharge basin has been closed, when they discontinued the irrigation water through the City of Richland. Few people know that there's a tunnel underneath Carmichael High School, for instance, that supplied irrigation water, and water to those recharge basins.
Bauman: Yeah, I didn't know that.
[LAUGHTER]
Bauman: So when you were here, then, in 1950 as a student, right? You were--
Reisenauer: I was just a summer employee.
Bauman: Right. What sorts of things were you going out and inspecting?
Reisenauer: Oh yes. I inspected a lot of the restaurants. I was a bacteriology and sanitary engineering student up at Washington State.
Bauman: Sounds like a great experience, then?
Reisenauer: Oh, yeah. Learned a lot. Very applicable to my studies up there.
Bauman: So you did that in the summer of 1950, you went back to school?
Reisenauer: I went back to school. And then, when you came back here to work-- Came back right away after graduation.
Bauman: And working for the health department again, or--?
Reisenauer: The health department, yes. I stayed with the health department until 1956 or so, shortly before the transition the town into a normal town.
Bauman: And during those years working for the health department, what were the biggest challenges you had? It sounds like there were a lot of challenges. What were the most challenging parts for the health department?
Reisenauer: Probably keeping up with the necessary state requirements for inspecting dairy farms and restaurants. At that time, we were also building the new swimming pool up on the hill. There was an original swimming pool in the old town site of Richland, down in Howard Amon Park. It was built very close to the river. And it was small, and it was not a safe pool, because it transitioned water between the river and the swimming pool. When the river was high, it leaked like I sieve. So it had to be replaced. There's things like that, just innumerable--
Bauman: How large was the health department? How many employees are we talking about?
Reisenauer: There were probably-- well, there's also with the health department, they had the school nurses that were—there was probably seven, eight school nurses. And there were like three sanitarians, and the health officer.
Bauman: And what was your job title after you graduated college and came back?
Reisenauer: Sanitarian. That was the job title.
Bauman: And so when that transitioned to being an independent city, right?
Reisenauer: Yes.
Bauman: What did you do at that point?
Reisenauer: The health department was turned over to Ben Franklin County Health District. I left the health department, because they had the personnel. They had hired personnel into their department to take over. I moved out into the area as a chemist, and worked with the geochemistry outfit out there. Wells, drilling new wells out there. Tracking contamination through the wells, of radioactive contamination and stuff like that.
Bauman: And so where would these wells drill, then?
Reisenauer: Excuse me?
Bauman: Where were the wells drilled? Different places on the site, or--?
Reisenauer: Oh no. I'm talking about the wells out on the Hanford project, for the facilities out there. And we did a lot of soil chemistry work, along with that. Soil chemistry, soil physics.
Bauman: And you said you would sort of measure a contamination also, as part of your work? In the soil and water, or--? What? You measured contamination? Is that one of the things you did, also?
Reisenauer: Well, the contamination out there was radioactive. But a great deal different than tracking contamination for the wells in the city.
Bauman: So how long did you do that, then? How long did you work as a geochemist?
Reisenauer: The job transitioned from geochemistry into actually the groundwater modeling area, where we were doing—we built computer models for the movement of groundwater contamination throughout the [INAUDIBLE]. Where's the water moving from, and where's it move to? And how much contamination is being carried along with it? We developed these groundwater models, such that we were starting to apply them through-- when Battelle took over, we started moving this type of thing into-- looking at county and problems and things all over the United States. I modelled groundwater movement in Brookhaven, New York, upstate New York, Nebraska, Florida, all over the United States. But it all started here.
Bauman: And did you find significant contamination of groundwater?
Reisenauer: Oh, yes, as far as-- it'd go through the soil down here. Nothing significant that I know of ever moved to the Columbia River. It stayed pretty close to the production plants out there. There's still a lot of that going on out there now.
Bauman: So did you work in different areas of the site, then?
Reisenauer: Yes, yes.
Bauman: Just measuring different places on site?
Reisenauer: Yeah, I started out there in 200 West area. But then when I moved out of there into the 300 area, my office moved downtown, up in the federal building, and then back out here to Battelle when Battelle buildings were built.
Bauman: I want to go back to when you came here in 1950 as a student. What was the town of Richland like at the time? How would you describe the place?
Reisenauer: Well, it's kind of still like a frontier town, somewhat. Everybody that was here had come from somewhere else. People were very, very friendly, because they didn't-- came here and not-- everybody was sort of new. The town site, of course, was being run by General Electric. Everything-- you've probably heard that story before. You can never tell from one day to the next what you're going to be doing the next day. You could plan, but you couldn't continue your plan most of the time because something else would crop up.
Bauman: And when you first came here, what sort of housing did you have?
Reisenauer: Well, when I came in '50, I lived in a low-level wooden barracks with the construction workers near the Camp Hanford army camp. And when I moved into town, I was in one of the two-story barracks buildings. Because I was single at that time. And shortly after, well, about September the next year, I acquired one end of a ‘B’ house. Which, I got married that year, so I acquired in-town housing.
Bauman: Was there much to do here in Richland in the early 1950s?
Reisenauer: What we did in the 1950s-- I had a very large backyard behind the house. And when I started having children that was the main playground in the neighborhood. But the different organizations around town, like the medical division and production, some of the other places like that, had ball teams, softball teams. We had softball teams, we had volleyball teams. There was not a whole lot to do, unless you made it up yourselves. Of course, I did a lot of fishing and stuff like that, hunting.
Bauman: So Hanford was a place where-- a lot of security was a part of working at Hanford. Did that impact you at all, in terms of your work?
Reisenauer: Oh, yes. I had a clearance for moving around out in the area, what they call the forward area. And I had my badge and my pencils and all that sort of thing, if I get into radiation zones or something like that, I had all the--
Bauman: Did you ever have to wear any protective clothing for safety, in terms of certain aspects of your job at all?
Reisenauer: Very seldom. One or two times I would get into that type of thing.
Bauman: And so how long did you work at Hanford then? When did you--
Reisenauer: 39 and 1/2 years.
Bauman: So '89, '90, somewhere in there?
Reisenauer: What?
Bauman: So 1989, 1990, somewhere in there you retired?
Reisenauer: Yeah, I'm 89.
Bauman: No, I mean, what year you retired?
Reisenauer: What year did I retire? I retired in '88. But I stayed on with one of the subcontractors for another year and a half, two years.
Bauman: And you started working for GE. What other contractors did you work for? Did you work for Battelle?
Reisenauer: Just Battelle. [INAUDIBLE]. Battelle took over the Hanford laboratories. I went with Battelle.
Bauman: So for a good part of the time you were working there, the focus was on production. And at some point, that started to shift to less production, and then cleanup, I guess. Did the shift in mission impact your work at all?
Reisenauer: Not really. I was far enough away from the production that we continued doing just exactly the same. Just right on.
Bauman: President Kennedy came in 1963 to dedicate the N reactor. I wonder, were you there that day? Do you remember that at all?
Reisenauer: Oh yes. Yeah.
Bauman: And what do you remember about his visit, or that day?
Reisenauer: Well, I could take part of the family out into the area. It was a huge crowd out there.
Bauman: I wonder, what was the most challenging aspect of the work that you did at Hanford? And maybe what was the most rewarding part of what you did?
Reisenauer: When I was working with the health department, just keeping the day-to-day things that had to be done this day for that day, because you couldn't really plan tremendous-- very far in advance as to what you're going to be doing. And when I was working with the geophysical part of the-- the geochemistry part of there was developing the mathematics and the computer programs to be able to track water movement, and the contamination. That was a brand new area just being developed nationwide. And we built the first groundwater models ever heard of in the United States, to be able to do that work.
Bauman: Did the technology change over the years, in terms of--
Reisenauer: Oh, yes.
Bauman: --measuring that sort of thing? How did that change? Could you describe that at all?
Reisenauer: Well, being able to incorporate the large amount of data that's necessary, and to develop the technique to get the right kind of data that's necessary for that. For instance, one of the last jobs I did was to develop a groundwater model for an area in the middle of Nebraska. A naval ammunition depot had been built there. Covered an area of about 75 square miles. And the soils and area were quite similar to the Hanford project here. So my models were very applicable to that area. But when I went and looked at the area to find out whether-- they knew they had explosives like RDX and TNT and degreasing agents that they'd contaminated into the groundwater. And the idea was, where's it moving, how fast is it moving, which way is it going? Trying to just to gather that data. And one of the hardest parts was trying to develop a computer system back there to be able to run it.
[LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Were there any events or incidents, things that happened during your time working at Hanford that really stand out to you?
Reisenauer: I guess I'm not quite clear as to what you--
Bauman: Like if there was anything that happened-- it could be something humorous, or something that happened during your time working there that just has always stuck in your mind as a really unique thing that happened while you were there.
Reisenauer: While I was working in the chemistry lab, doing some testing on some of the waste, the old PBP process, we were looking at every batch of waste that came out of there. I was working, trying to get an analysis about a strontium that was being put out to the groundwater, or put out with all the old cribs. I'm using the fuming nitric acid in this process. A bunch of samples that were radioactive in the hood. And while I was by pipetting some of this from fuming nitric acid into these test tubes, one drop of that fell off and hit a cellulose test tube that was in the hood. I had instant fire. Radioactive samples in this hand, fuming nitric acid in this hand, and a fire in the middle. What do you do first?
[LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Put the fuming nitric acid back there. You put the sample down here. Then you take care of the fire.
[LAUGHTER]
Reisenauer: One very few humorous incident-- in that same laboratory, one of the other chemists was trying to analyze a particle-- particle analysis on some well samples, dirt samples. And one of these required putting a spot-- well, they say, 10 or 20 grams of soil-- putting it into a solution of essentially vinegar. And then he was going to shake them overnight on this shaking table. This shaking table was built like a rotary. And the border would force it one way, and the clutch would give out. And the spring would bring that back, so it would rock back and forth. You got to shake this all night. He set it all up. We were just ready to move out of the laboratory, and catch the bus into town. We were just checking ourselves out. This thing was shaking away just fine. And all of a sudden a spring came loose. This thing is started around like a centrifuge. And it started throwing those bottles, this small bubbles, all over the lab. He had 24 bottles on that thing. And we were down behind the benches, ducking bottles. When the final, last one finally came off, I says, now what do we do? He says, we go home and clean this up tomorrow.
[LAUGHTER]
Bauman: And no one got hit by any flying bottles?
Reisenauer: No, nobody got hit by flying-- there was only three of us in the lab at that time.
Bauman: As you look back over your, what'd you say, 39 and 1/2 years working at Hanford-- how would you overall assess your time there? How was it as a place to work?
Reisenauer: Well, it was a very pleasant place to work. Early on, we had a lot of freedom in how we approached things. And you can point out where things needed to be done, and follow up and try to get funding for those particular projects. And usually you didn't have any trouble doing it, because there was so much that we needed to be known that wasn't known.
Bauman: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about yet, in terms of your work [INAUDIBLE] for the health department, or working as a geochemist, or any of the things you did there that we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to share, or think would be important to share?
Reisenauer: I can't think of anything. We've pretty much covered most of it along the way.
Bauman: Well, I want to thank you very much for coming in today and talking with us. I appreciate it.
Reisenauer: Yeah, well, I hope I contributed a little bit to your--
Bauman: Thanks for that.
Reisenauer: --your project.
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Years in Tri-Cities Area
Years on Hanford Site
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