Interview with Larry Gabaldon
Dublin Core
Title
Subject
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.
Creator
Publisher
Date
Rights
Format
Provenance
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Interviewer
Interviewee
Location
Transcription
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Larry Gabaldon on July 11, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Larry about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Larry Gabaldon: Larry Gabaldon. G-A-B-A-L-D-O-N.
Franklin: And L-A-R-R-Y?
Gabaldon: Larry? Yes.
Franklin: Okay. So, Larry, tell me how and why you came to the area to work for the Hanford Site. Or, are you from the area?
Gabaldon: No, I’m from, originally from New Mexico.
Franklin: Okay.
Gabaldon: And I went in the service for four years, and I had a brother-in-law that worked up here in farming and chicken, or egg producing field. And he says, when you get out of the service, if you need a job, come on up. So I came up to work for him, and within six months or so, people told me, you should go out and work in the Area and make big money. And I—what area? I had no clue. So I looked into it and I joined the electrical union and within 11 months or so I was out there working.
Franklin: What year was it that you—
Gabaldon: 1977.
Franklin: Okay. So did you have electrician training in the service then, or how did you get into that field?
Gabaldon: No, other than—this sounds crazy, but wiring chicken houses. But these are huge, you know, they’re 80,000 chickens per house. So they’re huge commercial operation. And the processing plants and stuff. So I was an electrician there and I learned a lot in a hurry and was running crews and stuff like that. And I’m bilingual so that helped a lot. So anyway, I didn’t know anybody in the electrical field, you know, out here where a lot of people, you either need to have a relative or a friend or somebody that could help you get in. Like I said, I was only here for about 11 months. Anyway, they hired me.
Franklin: And what was the first job you had out on the Site?
Gabaldon: The 300 Area, as an electrician—electrician apprentice. I tried to drive right onto the 300 Area, it’d be the north gate. And got stopped. [LAUGHTER] And a superintendent was coming out at the same time. He says, oh, you must be the new electrician apprentice. So he kind of escorted me over to the electrical trailer.
Franklin: So were there still the buses in those days, or--?
Gabaldon: Yes, yeah there was.
Franklin: Oh, okay. But you didn’t know about the buses, or—did you not—
Gabaldon: No, they said report out to the 300 Area and I drove right out there. Yeah, I didn’t—it was all new to me.
Franklin: Yeah, I bet. Did you know right away what was being made at Hanford, or did you just know it was a good-paying job?
Gabaldon: As I started, you know, getting closer and closer, I was learning more and more about it. I was asking a lot of questions. Of course, as soon as I went out there, they’re telling me to put these coveralls on and all this plastic stuff. And, why? [LAUGHTER] There’s a lot of people that just didn’t want to do it. They’d just quit. As soon as they’d tell them they had to put all this PPE, they’d just, nope, I’ll go somewhere else and work. But it was interesting. And you understand it. It made sense then, anyway.
Franklin: What do you mean?
Gabaldon: As far as, you know, protecting yourself from contamination.
Franklin: Oh, yeah. Did you find it challenging to run electrical lines and do electrician work in the PPE?
Gabaldon: Sure, sure. It was hotter. It was probably the worst thing about it. You know, it was a lot of time consuming. Things go at a slow pace out there. By the time you get dressed and get in and get out, there’s a lot to it.
Franklin: Did you work with guys who were around your age, or were there some senior guys in the—
Gabaldon: I would say most of them were senior. They’d been around there for a while. And then there was a few newcomers like me. But, yeah, most of them were senior.
Franklin: What types of buildings did you work out and support out at the 300 Area?
Gabaldon: Well, just pretty much all of them. I mean, 300 Area had a pretty diverse type of buildings. There was—I’m trying to remember the buildings, but 305, 308, some of the things that stuck out were the labs—not labs, the cells down there. I’m not sure what they call them now. The lead cells with these big windows, lead windows. I mean, it was a big operation to penetrate those for a conduit or for electrical wires. You know, they had manipulators that went in and out, and we actually used the manipulators to help if we could.
Franklin: Oh, really?
Gabaldon: Oh, yeah. To pull wire. I mean, you feed it in from the outside. And I’ve been in the cells. I had to dress up. And those cells are only probably eight by eight, if that. And then they’re full of junk, full of piping. Once they put it in there, they don’t take it out. So it just keeps getting cluttered. And then now you’re dressed up with a full two pair of coveralls and plastics and usually fresh air. And gloves, you’ve got three pairs of gloves on.
Franklin: I imagine that gets really—I mean not only does that decrease your manual dexterity, but I imagine that gets unbearably hot.
Gabaldon: Sure, that’s what I mean.
Franklin: How would you guys deal with that? Especially in the summertime.
Gabaldon: Well, there was—not so much—time was a big thing. Just limit your time in there. And then radiation limited your time quite a bit, too. But out in 100-N, we’d go out there for outages, and they actually had icepacks. A vest that they’d keep in the freezers, and they’d put these icepacks on you. They’d last, you know, an hour. Of course, now, they’re heavy. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I was going to say, that seems—
Gabaldon: So they’d melt and now you’re carrying this water around.
Franklin: Wow, that sounds—I mean, I guess you’d appreciate that inside, but that sounds really uncomfortable at first.
Gabaldon: Mm-hmm. And then fresh air—there’s a purge system on those things that blows air, and you could keep somewhat fresh air blowing on your face at least.
Franklin: And was that a tank that—or was it a hose—would you carry the fresh air in with you, or was it a hose that—
Gabaldon: Both. It’s both. We carried tanks on our backs, if it was too far in, too remote. But if it was within, I think, I can’t remember, 300 feet or better—about 300 feet, I think, was the max, you could run the hoses.
Franklin: Wow.
Gabaldon: Hoses, of course, were unlimited. You could stay a little bit longer and, like I say, use lots of air. Where the tanks, they would run out.
Franklin: Right, yeah, and you don’t want to run out.
Gabaldon: No. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: In one of those cells. So you started as an apprentice. And how long did it take for you to become a full electrician?
Gabaldon: Four years. Four years, at least.
Franklin: Is that pretty standard?
Gabaldon: It’s five years now. Yeah. But I got in just right before that.
Franklin: Oh, okay. Kind of got grandfathered in.
Gabaldon: Yeah.
Franklin: What were some of the unique challenges, in your mind, to working at a place like Hanford, versus a more commercial building?
Gabaldon: Well, I guess that, the radiation was probably one of the biggest. Having to dress up and having to do things in a way that you can pull wire in, you can’t pull it out. Everything goes into a cell or into a contaminated area, but very little comes out.
Franklin: Yeah, what would you do if you had to change wiring or run—you know, you had old wiring in the way. What would you do in that case?
Gabaldon: Well, like I said, you would pull it, but you can’t—it might be easy to pull it out, but you can’t. You’ve got to pull it in. Contamination, you don’t want to be spreading it. So it would all go in. Once it was in, it was trash. It was contaminated trash. So it had to be disposed of a particular way. So once it was trash, we didn’t deal with it. Laborers would come in and dispose of it some way.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So it wouldn’t—all of it wouldn’t accumulate but maybe certain types of things would.
Gabaldon: Sure. Depending on how contaminated it was. So, you know, the HPTs or the techs there would determine that.
Franklin: What was the most I guess frustrating space that you ever had to work in as an electrician, or job that presented the most challenges to you, onsite?
Gabaldon: Well, those cells come to mind. It’s in the 300 Area there, but there’s a place where railroad cars back in there and they fill them with waste of who-knows-what. But we were just working on the building and the heaters and the lights and stuff like that. We’re in a man lift, a JLG, I don’t know what they call them, but anyway, a basket. We were trying to keep the machine from getting contaminated, so they’re trying to protect the tires and stuff. And then it extends out above this train and the closer you got to this train car, the more the radiation, the dose rate was higher. So you were always worried about that dose rate. But they had all kinds of gizmos and gadgets for timers and all these pencils. So they were keeping pretty good track of you.
Franklin: The pencil dosimeters?
Gabaldon: That’s a dosimeter you carry all the time. But when it was a higher dose, they gave you, I want to say a patty. But it was a timer and it measured radiation, and you were allowed so many, you know, I think it was 300 millirem a week? I forget what the doses were. But anyway they would set it 20-30% lower than that, so as soon as that went off, you had to come out. And that was frustrating, as to—you’re just about done, and it goes, beep, beep, beep, you’ve got to get out!
Franklin: Wow.
Gabaldon: And so you come out. And then you may not be able to go back in, so somebody else has to go in. So you’ve got to explain everything to them and what you did and how to finish it.
Franklin: Did that happen—
Gabaldon: Oh, constantly.
Franklin: Constantly?
Gabaldon: Yeah. And out in the outer areas, 100-N especially, they called them burn outs, where they would take us in on a Friday afternoon and we would work for maybe two hours and we would get burned out for that week. Which, like I say, if it was 300, we would get up there about 280 or so in the dose rate. So we’re done for the week. Well, the new week started at 4:30, whenever we got off work. So they’d pay us overtime, and now we’re on the next week, so they would send us in for another two hours, and they’d burn us out for the next week. So now we’re no good for two weeks—or at least for another week. So they’d send us back here to the 300 Area.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Gabaldon: So they’d rotate all the people out there. But you’d only get it to go in there for maybe an hour or two hours. Not a whole lot you can do. And then like I said, you’re done; somebody else is going to take over.
Franklin: That sounds like that would be really complicated to do a large project in that kind of—
Gabaldon: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: --situation.
Gabaldon: The pipefitters, I’ve seen where they were running in, making three or four turns on a wrench or a pipe wrench and right back out. And then here comes another guy right behind him, doing the same thing until they would tighten a fitting or a bolt or whatever they’re doing. But it may take four or five people to do one bolt or one fitting. Just because they can only be in there two or three minutes.
Franklin: Right.
Gabaldon: So I never had to get real close to that, thank God.
Franklin: Yeah, that sounds like that’s pretty—you would be working in a pretty hot area.
Gabaldon: Yeah, real hot areas.
Franklin: Wow. What was the most challenge—I already asked you that one. What was the most rewarding job that you—or project you supported in your time onsite?
Gabaldon: Wow, there’s quite a few. I’m trying to remember some of them, but a lot of them—there’s the 331 Building, where they had a lot of animals. They were doing all kinds of studies on them. We would watch the progression of them, you know, the animals, some animals had been there for years, and others were just coming in. We would set up whatever they needed as far as electrical support. So we would be able to watch something from the start and right through the end, we could see the whole thing. Even if we were finished with that, we’d be on another project right next to it or close by. So we could see the finished product, I guess.
Where a lot of places, you know, you go in and they tell you pull wire from A to B, and you do that, and that’s your job and that’s all you know. But what did the wire do, what’s it for? And the same thing, another crew went in and said, run conduit from A to B and had no idea what. The 300 Area, we got to do everything. We ran the conduit, ran the wire, hooked it up, and turned it on and tested it. So you know, we’d walk away when it’s complete.
Franklin: Right. But certainly—if I get what you’re saying, there was a greater level of detailed completeness at Hanford because you were—
Gabaldon: Well, the 300 Area.
Franklin: 300 Area.
Gabaldon: Yes. Speaking of which, where I—I started in the 300 Area. Eventually I ended up at some of the bigger plants: Hanford 1 and 4, Hanford 2. Anyway, they were big jobs. And I got into a little bit of that where you have a print that only shows this part of the building, and it says run from here to here. You have no idea why. And you’ll never see the end of it; you’ll never see the finished product. It was not as—you went home whether you did something or not, it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t have any meaning to it. Where, here, you know, you looked forward to, we’re almost done, we’re going to finish this, we’re going to make it work.
Franklin: So you liked the kind of—sounds like it was more of like a collegiate or community at 300.
Gabaldon: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: Because of—maybe you’re saying because of the smaller buildings or the—kind of how things were, there were a lot of different small projects in 300 Area, versus really large ones.
Gabaldon: Yes. And they were all smaller projects. There was a few larger projects where—not very many buildings went up, but—where you might work on the same project for a couple, three months. But usually it was smaller stuff. Just building a greenhouse around a building so that they can open up hatches into a hot area. Of course we’d have to put in ventilation and lighting and maybe heating. Just creature—
Franklin: Why would they need to do that?
Gabaldon: Where are they? There’s pits, they’re, I want to say, valve pits. So the fitters need to go in there and change valves, replace valves or fix valves, whatever. But these pits are—you know, they’re fenced off, and then you go in closer and they’re concrete pits and they’ve got big, concrete lids. Those are all sealed up. I don’t know what—they’re obviously pumping something contaminated or hot. So they go in and build a greenhouse, encase, enclose it. And of course now they need lights. But then they need ventilation to change the air out. Then they come in with a crane and pull these big concrete lids and expose it. So everything’s got to be contained. And there may be some electrical work in there, too.
Franklin: So it sounds like it’s a pretty big greenhouse, then, if it can accommodate a crane.
Gabaldon: Well, no, the crane—they would open up a small opening, just for the cable.
Franklin: Oh, okay, gotcha.
Gabaldon: Yeah, big crane sitting outside somewhere. And then as soon as it’s done, they kind of—and there you go again with the contamination. That cable, they’re doing everything they can to keep the part of the cable that comes in the greenhouse covered. They cover it with plastic or something, and they’re checking it as it comes out. I hear about locomotives and bulldozers and everything else being buried out there because they’re contaminated. Rather than trying to clean them up, they just bury them.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s—a lot of what’s in that tunnel that collapsed recently is material of that nature.
Gabaldon: They don’t know what—
Franklin: A guy described it to me as contaminated solids—solid equipment. It’s not waste as we think about waste, but, yeah, containing liquid and it was too costly or impractical to decontaminate.
Gabaldon: Right, right.
Franklin: So how long did you work in the 300 Area for?
Gabaldon: Off and on for 23 or 24 years, 25 years, I suppose.
Franklin: Oh, wow, okay.
Gabaldon: I worked a total of 27 years, but the last, oh, I’d say, in that total time, maybe three or four years, I worked, oh, in town here locally. And then some of the bigger projects. But, like I said, I didn’t care for the kind of work. As soon as I had a chance to go back to the 300 Area, I was ecstatic when I got to go back there.
Franklin: Yeah? What other projects did you—you said you did shutdown out at N Reactor.
Gabaldon: 100-N, yes.
Franklin: Right? And how long did you do that for?
Gabaldon: I did quite a few of the burnouts I was telling you about. We’d go out there for maybe a week or two at a time. And it was still kind of a loan basis, where, maybe low on work where we were, and they needed help out there, so we’d go out there and work for them.
Franklin: And also maybe low on exposure, too.
Gabaldon: Well, that was where the burnouts were, yeah.
Franklin: Yeah, right, right. So they could take you and kind of send you back to the 300 Area.
Gabaldon: We would get small doses in the 300 Area, and sporadically here and there. But out there, you definitely got a big dose.
Franklin: In these burnouts, what kind of work exactly—to get that amount of dose in a couple hours, you must’ve been working kind of near the core, or--?
Gabaldon: Well, we were supporting pipefitters, most of the time. And I just remember big tanks and having to crawl under these tanks to get on the other side of them—that’s the only way you could access—and set up lighting for whatever their project was. So we had to drag cords and these quartz lights.
Franklin: How much space did you have to go under these tanks?
Gabaldon: Oh. I would say less than two feet. Probably 18 or—very little.
Franklin: And you were in PPE?
Gabaldon: Two pair of coveralls and plastic and then, I believe, fresh air. Fresh air with a hose.
Franklin: Wow, and dragging equipment.
Gabaldon: Oh yeah.
Franklin: There was no other way to get to the other side of these—
Gabaldon: No. I got contaminated in that instance there. I got contaminated. There was—like I say, they told me to go in, and there was a ladder. Go down the ladder, under these tanks and set up lighting. So with these masks, you have these big canisters and your field of vision is pretty limited. So when you—to look at something, you can’t just look at it; you’ve got to turn your head. So, anyway, I had to back down this ladder and I’m trying to get all these hoses to give enough slack. And the ladder stuck up—but it wasn’t a ladder, it was just a, I want to say homemade, but it was made with steel, and it must’ve been longer but the cut it off with a torch. So it had really rough, sharp edges on top.
I’m looking at the ladder, and I turned around to go down the ladder backwards, and when I did, when I backed up, it poked me in the back of my leg. And I’m like, oh, there it is, okay, so I moved over, and okay now I’ve got ahold of both ladders and I slowly went down the ladder. And then I crawled under these tanks. Well, it’s wet down there, very wet. That’s why we were wearing plastic. And I had a hole in the plastic that I didn’t know about. So anyway I got some moisture in there.
When we came out, they—you walk in with your arms spread and laborers that are cutting tape and cutting plastic and taking it off away from you to keep you clean. And then you go to the next step-off pad and they take your first layer of coveralls off. And they kind of check you real quick. Anyway, I was screaming on the back of my leg. So anyway, they kind of set me off aside. They did go back and find my coveralls and find my plastics and they found where it was torn and they found the wet spot on the coveralls. Whatever liquid it was, it was contaminated. So I had to take probably four showers, scrubbing with Tide detergent laundry soap, scrubbing my leg, trying to—
Franklin: Your bare leg.
Gabaldon: Yes.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Gabaldon: Just about my butt, really. But the upper leg. But I was just about raw by the time—and it was still—it was 200 counts or less, but they could still read something there. But they said if they could get it down to 200 or less they’d let me go.
Franklin: Okay. And they finally did?
Gabaldon: They finally did. They kept my underwear.
Franklin: What’s that?
Gabaldon: They kept my underwear.
Franklin: Kept your underwear? [LAUGHTER] Never got that back?
Gabaldon: Nope.
Franklin: Probably for the best. Was there any follow-up examination?
Gabaldon: No, no.
Franklin: And has that spot ever given you any trouble?
Gabaldon: No. Not as far as I know.
Franklin: Well, that’s good. Good to have caught it so quickly. I guess maybe it being wet down there may have—
Gabaldon: Well, that’s what spread it, I’m sure.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah. But I guess that’s also—you’d know real quick if you had a hole in your PPE if there was moisture.
Gabaldon: Well, I didn’t feel it. But they sure caught it real quick.
Franklin: Wow. Well, that’s good. I mean, that’s good for the safety aspect.
Gabaldon: Yeah, I guess so.
Franklin: That sounds like a very challenging job, you know, to crawl under tanks with all that equipment.
Gabaldon: Yeah, it is, and you—yeah, I was young then, and it wasn’t a big deal. But I think about some of the older guys that are having to do that. It’s claustrophobic and it’s hard to breathe in those masks. And then you start exerting yourself, you can get overheated pretty quick.
Franklin: I bet. And there’s no way to take that stuff off and get some fresh air.
Gabaldon: No. Well, the thing to do is to come out. You’ve just got to come out.
Franklin: Wow. And so you said you worked out at 100-N. Did you work out at any other—
Gabaldon: The Tank Farms, sure. I worked at the Tank Farms for I think a year or so.
Franklin: Oh, and what did you do at the Tank Farms?
Gabaldon: The Tank Farms, you know, they call them farms, they’re just fenced-in areas above tanks. And all the piping that goes in and out of the tanks is there. They’re either—whatever they’re—who knows what they’re doing. But mostly, when I was there, it was mostly trying to figure out how to clean these tanks up or how to pump them out or how to examine them. So just a lot of sensors, a lot of—oh, gosh, I don’t know. Valves, electric valves, stuff like that.
But same thing, you’re dressed in quite a bit of clothing, coveralls. If there was going to be any moisture at all, you’d be in plastic. There was a lot of scares, a lot of vapors and stuff that people were either getting sick or getting—smelling something. So it got to the point where it was required to have fresh air when you’d go into these areas. Of course, it kind of funny that a little chain, or a ribbon—on one side you had to have a mask and fresh air, and right on the other side of it, you’re okay. [LAUGHTER] Wide open.
Franklin: Seems kind of arbitrary.
Gabaldon: Yeah, so. I don’t know. It’s hard to—you know, you did what they told you to do. And I guess you had to trust and go on their, on all these machines that, the sensors that are trying to detect all this stuff.
Franklin: Yeah, I guess that would need a lot of electrical support. Make sure those sensors are constantly running.
Gabaldon: And all that. Yeah, it was important.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah. You also worked in the 400 Area, too, right?
Gabaldon: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Franklin: At FFTF?
Gabaldon: Yes.
Franklin: FFTF, was that still operational when you worked—
Gabaldon: It was just—it was operational at first, but then they went through the whole phase where they shut it down, and they tried to keep it up and they tried to maintain it. I remember changing batteries out for—not sure—some kind of a backup system in there. And then there’s some kind of heaters on the sodium loop that we worked on quite a bit.
Franklin: Oh, to keep the sodium—
Gabaldon: Keep the sodium liquid. And that was a big deal when they finally shut the power down to that, where that sodium solidified and there was no going back after that, I guess.
Franklin: Yeah.
Gabaldon: But the building right next to it, MASF. I started on that from the ground up.
Franklin: And what is MASF?
Gabaldon: Maintenance and Storage Facility for FFTF.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Gabaldon: It’s a square building right next to the dome.
Franklin: Yeah, okay. Yes. Yeah, our project I work on, our collection of historic objects and archives used to be right in the 400 Area, right across the street from that building. We were in a warehouse out there.
Gabaldon: Okay.
Franklin: So that’s the only site I’ve really been to with any real frequency.
Gabaldon: Oh, yeah?
Franklin: And I guess it’s one of the few that’s still mostly intact, too. Everything is original—
Gabaldon: Yeah, I’m not sure what—I haven’t followed it, but FFTF is just sitting there—
Franklin: Yeah, it’s kind of eerie that you drive up and the old guard shack is still there, you know, and the parking lots are starting to get overgrown with weeds. There’s still a few people that are staged out there. But it’s mostly, they just use most of the warehouses for storage now, and no one’s really in the facility, except to monitor.
Gabaldon: Yeah. In that building, there’s a huge crane—
Franklin: In MASF?
Gabaldon: Yes.
Franklin: And what was that for?
Gabaldon: Well, just moving stuff around in there. It had a huge garage door on one end where they could bring in—just huge tanks. I want to say railroad tracks went in there.
Franklin: Mm. And what kind of work was involved constructing a facility from the waist—heh, from the waist up—from the ground up, at Hanford?
Gabaldon: Well, obviously, a lot of big power to go into that building. So all the main power coming in, huge conduit, six-inch conduits, in the ground and ditches. Like I say, it was just a big hole in the ground when I started. So we ran all the power in there and stubbed it up where it needed to come up. And then we watched it slowly coming up. Then they started pouring concrete, and then they started building the steel structure. I remember—this is how far back it was—running conduit on the steel structure, I could walk on an eight-inch beam, 40 feet on the air, and sit on it and hang underneath it and put a piece of conduit on, and stand up and walk another ten feet and do it again. Anymore, you’ve got to be tied off.
Franklin: Oh, so you were just up there.
Gabaldon: Well, the ironworkers were doing it, and I thought, well, I’ve got to get out there, too. I wasn’t afraid of it; it didn’t bother me or anything. But it makes me laugh kind of. The things that we would’ve gone through if we tried to do it now, with all the safety and stuff involved.
Franklin: Yeah, wow. What other types of equipment went into MASF that you helped install?
Gabaldon: Like I say, when we did it, it was brand-new. I mean, it was big, wide, open space. There was very little in there. We went back, from the 300 Area, we would support that whenever they needed something. But there wasn’t a whole lot except for a little maintenance here and there. But just, it seemed like a big, open area. It’s so big that one little project was over here in the corner, and some other little project over here. But as far as what they were, I have no idea. Like I say, we just supported the building.
Franklin: And you also worked in the emergency response center at what’s known as WPPSS?
Gabaldon: Yes, okay.
Franklin: Yeah, and what did you do there?
Gabaldon: That was just pretty much a big office building, a few, I don’t want to say labs. But nothing out of the ordinary, just brand-new, and hundreds and hundreds of lights, hundreds and hundreds of plugs and receptacles and, you know what I mean? So just real basic mundane electrical work.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so you weren’t called out to do electrical stuff from there, you were supporting that—
Gabaldon: We built the building.
Franklin: You built the building with all the lights and switches and everything had to go.
Gabaldon: Yeah, the actual construction of the building.
Franklin: I imagine an office takes probably a bit more—it’s probably a bit more repetitive, mundane and—
Gabaldon: Yeah, a lot of—that’s what I say, a lot of repetitive, office after, one after another, everything the same over and over again. It got to be a race. How many offices can we do in one day? Or how many, whatever. You put up 100 lights today instead of, you know. Yesterday we only got 80, today we got 100.
Franklin: Right, kind of challenging yourself.
Gabaldon: That was the only challenge we—you know?
Franklin: Yeah, the challenge wasn’t like, how do we run this wire through here in this one-of-a-kind installation?
Gabaldon: No. No, it wasn’t. Now maybe at the big sites. The cooling towers, 1 and 4, I believe—or maybe it was Hanford 2. But I remember, the huge wire. Are you familiar with wire, 500mcm?
Franklin: I’m not.
Gabaldon: 500 millimeters—million centimeters—mcm, I’m not sure what that standards for. Anyway, it’s huge wire. It’s almost an inch in diameter. And then they’d run, there’s three legs for three-phase power. So they’d run three for A face, three for B face, three for—so there’d be nine wires plus grounds and stuff. So there’s a bundle of wire that’s huge. Pulling that wire, I mean, normally, you use some kind of a machine to pull it. It’s just, physically, it’s too much to handle. And the requirements were no mechanically—cannot be pulled mechanically. It’s got to be pulled by hand. So that was, you know, there’d be 30 or 40 of us. It’s like a team of horses—a team of people. You’d just line up, and when it was time to do that, you would bring the whole crew and they’d literally pull it by hand because they weren’t allowed to pull it with a machine.
Franklin: How come they weren’t allowed to pull it with a machine?
Gabaldon: Some silly spec that said that. You know, I guess not to hurt the wire. With a machine you can nick the wires or damage them in some way. Either way, it takes x amount of force to pull this wire. Whether it’s manmade force, horses, or a machine, you still have to pull that hard. But they made us do it by hand, so. I kind of—I just—you know—questioned it, but I mean, what do you? You just do what you want them to do.
Franklin: Right, if that’s the spec, that’s the spec.
Gabaldon: Yeah. The control room in Hanford 2, they were just getting ready to start it up. So it was just in the finishing phases, just the last things getting done. I was working in the control room, and I went out there. They hired me, and I went right directly to the control room, I remember. And they said—they gave us all kinds of brushes and dusters, like them plumes, like peacock feathers, I think they are? Some kind of a feather, brushes, you name it. There was cabinets, they kind of went around in circles somewhat, and there was just rows and rows and rows of them. And there was just millions of terminations in there, wire terminations. Our job was to dust these terminations. And I was surprised because they’re live electrical terminations; I don’t know how much voltage was in there. But we had to go in there and with a little brush dust them. And—okay. So you’d open up a cabinet and you’d start at the top and work your way down and dust all the way down. There was two of us, I believe. And it took us three days, I believe, to get through that whole control room.
And, okay, we’re done. We came back and said, okay, what do you want us to do now? And he says, you got that done? Yeah, we got it. And he says, well, do it again. [LAUGHTER] I thought, again? Didn’t take long to figure out they’re basically killing time. They just wanted us to be busy there, waiting for, I guess something else to come up. They wanted to keep us entertained or busy. So we dusted them again! [LAUGHTER]
But one job I’d like to have seen—once they started, everybody had to come out of there, so. But we were close to when it started, when Hanford 2 started production. Anyway.
Franklin: Yeah. And so later, the 300 Area began to close down, right? So you were moved out of there. And where did you go to?
Gabaldon: Oh, wow. I believe the Tank Farms.
Franklin: Okay.
Gabaldon: I think the Tank Farms is where I went. I spent a couple years—a year or two, maybe a year-and-a-half there. And then I went out to, it’s called East and West. There’s that two—
Franklin: 200.
Gabaldon: They’re two identical reactors?
Franklin: Separations facilities, processing.
Gabaldon: Okay. So I was there for you know four or five months. Then I went out to somewhere out there. Oh, gosh, it’s one of the most, the highest security jobs.
Franklin: PFP? 234-5?
Gabaldon: Dash-5, Dash-5. And like I said, I wasn’t even there long enough to, oh, get to know the place. I just remember lots of high security. We’d have to drive our service trucks in there, and they’d have to be searched everyday. We actually built an exercise room for the security officers.
Franklin: Oh, so the—
Gabaldon: Inside there. So that they wouldn’t have to come out to exercise; they could just go to work and stay in there, and just exercise and work out.
Franklin: Boy, that sounds kind of nice.
Gabaldon: Yeah, it was.
Franklin: An exercise room when you’re—
Gabaldon: It was a nice room.
Franklin: You mentioned they searched your truck.
Gabaldon: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: Did you get searched personally as well, or--?
Gabaldon: We had to go through a metal detector. And of course show our badges and stuff. So you’d park the truck, and walk back through and go through metal detectors and then walk back around, get in the truck and drive in.
Franklin: How else did security impact your work while you were there? Did they monitor—were they monitoring you, or--?
Gabaldon: Well there were places there that there was security all the time. They were, I don’t want to say watching you every second, but they were real close by.
Franklin: Mm-hmm. Was that level of security different to you than the other places you had worked out on Site?
Gabaldon: It seemed higher, a little bit higher, but not a whole lot.
Franklin: You were pretty used to that routine?
Gabaldon: Yes. Yeah, just whatever they want, you know? You can’t—you’re not going to bunk the system, you know. Why are you doing that? Don’t ask questions. Or you know, they might tell us, you can’t go in there today. Okay. Find something else to do, because you just weren’t going to go in there until whatever was wrong was cleared. So there was a lot of that.
Franklin: How far up—did you end up leading your own crew at one point at Hanford? Or where’d you work your way up your organizational structure?
Gabaldon: Well, I don’t know if I worked my way up too far, I mean, as an electrician, a journeyman, and then a foreman. But that’s about as far as I went.
Franklin: Did you go to foreman?
Gabaldon: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
Gabaldon: And that changed—when we had lots of people working, when we had a big project, they’d say, okay, Larry, you’re, you know, going to be a foreman over this. Then we would get down to, I believe, four to six men, so there was only one foreman, so the rest of us were workers. So they would kind of cut us back. Then as soon as we’d get more work where they needed more, we would bring in travelers or temporary-type help, okay, to do bigger jobs. So that’s when—
We had a few outages while we were changing out the services in some of the buildings out there in 300 Area. I’m trying to remember the names of the buildings. As you drove in the—what is this south, the G-Way, if you go straight in, is that the south gate?
Franklin: Yeah, I think so.
Gabaldon: As you go right into the gate, there was a library on the left side?
Franklin: Yeah, the technical library.
Gabaldon: Okay. And then right across the street, right across the road on the right-hand side, what’s the first big building?
Franklin: Oh, I don’t remember.
Gabaldon: 324? Or 328, maybe? I can’t remember. But it was a, you know, three or four story building, and a huge electrical service to it. It had been there for years. So we had to literally take all that out and put all new stuff in, and then hook up all the old wiring back to it, and do that in two days.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Gabaldon: So there was a lot of pre-preparing. You had to find every conduit coming into it, identify it, identify what’s in it, where it goes, what it feeds, and label it. And then the new equipment, you know, that’s going to sit on that, you have to have it set up to feed all these things. And then everything got upgraded. Pumps and motors and stuff had to be protected a certain way. So it’d take me a couple months to lead up to that, to prepare for it. And then we’d start on a Friday night, start tearing out the old stuff—and they would shut it down, of course—and Saturday and Sunday. We had to have it running by Monday, so.
Franklin: Did you end up working a lot of weekends or varied hours?
Gabaldon: More than I wanted, but yeah. A lot of the guys that, oh, they were kind of off-and-on work, they loved the overtime. You know, they were in it to make money. I was there pretty steady, so I would rather have a steady paycheck than a big chunk here and there. So I wasn’t crazy about overtime. But when you’re the foreman, you gotta be there.
Franklin: Sure. Did things change for you when the different contractors would come and go?
Gabaldon: Yeah, slowly. Nothing real major. I can’t even remember all the contractors, but it started out with, I think, JA Jones. And it went to—oh, gosh, I can’t even think of the names of them. But they must’ve changed names, three or four, five times?
Franklin: Yeah
Gabaldon: But everything pretty much stayed the same. You know, there’d be a big scare. They’re going to lay you all off and then they’re going to hire you back, or they’re going to lay you off and hire somebody else back. It all worked out. I don’t know. A lot of political stuff, but everything, just basically the names changed.
Franklin: But the scope of your work didn’t change.
Gabaldon: Yeah, the scope of the work stayed pretty much the same.
Franklin: I mean, it doesn’t really make sense to fire everybody and not hire them back when they’re the ones that knew how to do the job in the first place.
Gabaldon: Right, right. But on the other hand, through the electrical unions, the hiring procedures were what they were kind of was opposing them. You know, the union says, if you don’t have work, you lay them off. And when you have work, you hire from the top of the list. You can’t—the people that were working and got laid off go to the bottom of the list. So you know, you want to rotate the other people.
Franklin: And you’re not allowed to bring in—you can’t hire outside.
Gabaldon: Well, they’ve got stipulations where you could hire a foreman, call him out by name, basically. So there was loopholes where they could do that.
Franklin: And you were a member of the union?
Gabaldon: Yes.
Franklin: What was your take on the union? Did you find it served you well, protected you?
Gabaldon: It served me very well and they protect me very well. When there was concerns about contamination, working around the radiation. If we had an issue, we would take it back and the union would fight for us and make sure that we were protected adequately. So, yeah. Tickled to death with them.
Franklin: What’s that?
Gabaldon: Oh, I’m really glad that I got into the union.
Franklin: Oh, good, good. That’s good to hear. Do you have any—is there any interesting or funny/amusing or compelling stories or anecdotes that got to you when you were—
Gabaldon: There’s actually quite a few, but I’ll tell you afterward. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Okay, all right, all right. Understandable. Not camera-worthy, huh?
Gabaldon: I’m kidding.
Franklin: So you mentioned earlier that you were bilingual.
Gabaldon: Yes.
Franklin: And you said that kind of served you well when you were doing chicken houses, because I guess you would’ve been working with a lot of people of—who probably spoke Spanish—
Gabaldon: Yes. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: --as a primary language. So did you grow up in a bilingual household then?
Gabaldon: Yes, yes, I did.
Franklin: Okay.
Gabaldon: Actually grew up speaking Spanish until I went to school, I started learning English.
Franklin: So you’re Hispanic by—
Gabaldon: Hispanic.
Franklin: Did you get a chance to use that much out at Hanford? Were there a lot of other—
Gabaldon: Very little. Very little out there. No. Like I say, working with the chicken ranch, I used it quite a bit. But out at Hanford, very little.
Franklin: Did you find there was any prejudice against you as a Spanish speaker?
Gabaldon: No. No, not at all. No. There was—I don’t want to call it prejudice, but more segregation, as far as—not unions, but crafts, I guess. Between the different crafts, and then between construction and maintenance, and supervision, I guess. So there’s—oh, everybody was—hey, that’s my job, no, that’s maintenance, and no, that’s construction. And then you’ve got supervision trying to just get it done, whoever’s—[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Whoever needs to do it.
Gabaldon: But other, as far as any other, no, there was not an issue at all.
Franklin: Oh, well, that’s good. So you eventually retired from Hanford.
Gabaldon: Yes, I did.
Franklin: And when did you retire?
Gabaldon: Well, officially, about two years ago. But I quit work, let’s see, 11 years ago. When was that?
Franklin: 2006?
Gabaldon: Yup, right about there. 2006. So I just—it got frustrating out there, you know, the kind of work, like I said, in the 300 Area, I was content and I had plenty to do, we could work as much as we wanted. You know, there was nobody telling you slow down, or stop, or don’t do this. We could get something done. There wasn’t the red tape involved. They would say, get this building done and whatever it took within reason. But when I went out there in the further areas, I mean, they were, oh, watching every little move you made. And just seemed like they were just trying to stop you from working. There was more people stopping you from working than people trying to get you to do anything. And it’s just not the way I like to work.
So I just basically played their little game. But I was trying to do stuff on the side. I got rental houses that I started putting together, and then I finally got to the point where I thought, okay, I can do this, I can wean myself off of this working. I was skeptical, but I knew I wasn’t going to get rich working out there. I was making a good living and comfortable but I was always answering to somebody. So I basically went to work for myself and had a lot more free time, and didn’t have to answer to anybody.
Franklin: Sure, you could work at your own pace. Sounds like the 300 Area was really kind of the place where you found the most—
Gabaldon: Oh, satisfaction.
Franklin: Satisfaction, in your career.
Gabaldon: Now, the 3000 Area, I worked there for probably two years.
Franklin: And that’s in—
Gabaldon: Where are we? We’re almost in it.
Franklin: Yeah, we’re right next to PNNL.
Gabaldon: So, it was the old JA Jones fabrication shop.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Gabaldon: They had pipefitters, boilermakers, electricians, fitters, just about a little of everything, carpenters, painters. So they had pretty much everything right there. We were like a two-man crew, maybe three-man crew there. There was a foreman and one other guy and I was an apprentice. Oh, I learned to weld; I learned all kinds of stuff there.
But we were making jumpers. They call them jumpers, but they’re a mechanical thing that hooks up to a valve fitting here and it’s got to go up and around all this other junk, and plug into a valve over here. Well, in our case it was electrical fittings. So these big heads had contacts in them. And you’d have to wire them up, run wire through this conduit, and you had to support this conduit so it would stay rigid and stay in that configuration. And it had to be a balanced point, so they’d pick it up with a crane, so it balanced perfectly level. And they could drop it into this thing and it was done remotely. They were made for some kind of radiation-type pits or—
Franklin: Yup, yup. We have some of those in our collection. Maybe you made them, I don’t know.
Gabaldon: I don’t know; could be.
Franklin: Yeah, they would use them in the separations facilities where it was too hot.
Gabaldon: Right.
Franklin: Where they would operate everything remotely. One of the guys out there told me that every—all the electrical, any of the plumbing, like it all had to go through jumpers, because it would all have to go through this solid wall. Because they really couldn’t service it on the other side or ever go—So, yeah, I did know that they—
Gabaldon: So anyway those--
Franklin: --used first—
Gabaldon: They’re very interesting. And real complicated. So it was a real challenge to—because the foreman would take a piece of—oh, like a coat hanger—a welding rod and a piece of wire. He would scale it to the scale of the drawings, but he would bend it at a certain angle, and then he’d bend it the other way a certain angle. So here’s this piece of wire that’s got 12 or 14 different angles in it. And the finished product is the wire sticking out here and here, and that’s where these heads went.
The heads had a big nut on the back of them and when you’d run that nut in and out, these fingers would come around and grab and then suck it in which would make contact. So if you loosened it, you know. And they had a big, I want to say pneumatic, kind of like an impact wrench that would run that. And that was run remotely, too, with a crane. But they would run that on there and grab onto that nut, and spin it, and this thing would let go and open up and then it would come off. So we would put the female end, or the opposite end, and weld it to a table. And then over here, 20 feet away, we would weld another one so they’re permanently mounted. Now we’ve got to connect those two with all these angles in it and make it work. So when the finished product was, we could pick it up with a crane and hook it up to those.
Franklin: And it would be level. It wouldn’t—
Gabaldon: Oh, yeah, it had to be level this way, but also the way—we’d have to put counterweights or you know, things to balance it, just to make it hang perfectly level.
Franklin: That sounds really complicated.
Gabaldon: It was. It was a real challenge. It was fun! It was really fun.
Franklin: I bet. I mean, that’s really, yeah, tat’s something that gives you a great sense of accomplishment, getting those in.
Gabaldon: Well, we never got to—we got to make them work there in the shop, and we were confident that they were going to work, but we never saw them work in the field. We’d make them, once they were finished and done, they’d ship them out. I don’t know where they’d go.
Franklin: Into some places you don’t want to go.
Gabaldon: Right, right.
Franklin: Well, great, Larry. I just have a couple other—so you moved to Richland in the late ‘70s, pretty—it had not been a government town for a while, but was Richland different from what you were used to? Was there anything unique about Richland when you moved here?
Gabaldon: I moved to Pasco.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Gabaldon: But, no. It was actually kind of like a little farming town, and where I was was out in the farming community there, Glade North Road in Pasco. So it’s actually halfway to—what’s it called, Eltopia?
Franklin: Oh, okay, on the—
Gabaldon: About ten miles out of Pasco.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so you lived there for most of your time?
Gabaldon: Well, I lived in town. You know, I lived in Pasco and Kennewick. But working out there for the first year, I was driving out there.
Franklin: Oh, yeah, out with chicken coops and stuff.
Gabaldon: Yeah. So that, yeah—
Franklin: And then you eventually moved to West Richland where you live now?
Gabaldon: Yes, yes.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So I already asked you about secrecy and security. Well, I guess my last question is what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War?
Gabaldon: Wow. [LAUGHTER] What would I want them to know?
Franklin: Yeah.
Gabaldon: Well, that’s a good question. But now everything seems to be going to cleanup, to how are they going to clean this mess up? [SIGH] Protect yourself, I guess. [LAUGHTER] There’s a lot of stuff out there, unknown stuff. Whatever they did back in the day when there was no restrictions or no—everything was new, and now we’re paying for it. I feel like my lungs aren’t quite like they used to be, and I don’t know if it was—between asbestos and beryllium and radiation, I don’t know. I’m sure it didn’t help any. So.
Franklin: Were there ever any larger worries about working at a defense, you know, a plant, an area that produced nuclear weapons material during the Cold War? Were there ever any worries for you about that?
Gabaldon: No, not at all. I mean, it’s funny to—I saw a lot of people come and go. People from all over the country would come here to work on a temporary basis. You know, the things—you know how Hanford is. Anyway, so they’d come from all over the place. I saw a lot of worry, a lot of people really concerned about radiation, and then about attacks. About, if whoever, some of the big powers, wanted to retaliate against the United States, that this would be a target. Well, I don’t know, I never did worry about that.
But they were always talking about, Hanford 2, the way it was built would withstand an airplane hitting it. You know, I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I was wondering, who would ever fly an airplane into that? And then sure enough, they did it to the towers. So I guess it’s possible.
But other than that, no, no worries. The river, I guess. The one in Grand Coulee, I heard people talking about the possibility of that breaking. If that broke, it would wash away Hanford. I don’t know how true that would be, but I’m sure there’d be a lot of water there.
Franklin: Yeah, there sure would. It probably would do a bunch of damage all over the place, everywhere downstream.
Gabaldon: Well, it would just compound down the river as it—I think if one dam broke, it would break the rest of them.
Franklin: Yeah, sounds like it would be pretty—I don’t know what you would—
Gabaldon: But, no, that’s never been a big concern of mine. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s good. Well, Larry, thank you so much for coming—
Gabaldon: Oh, you’re welcome.
Franklin: --and taking the time to talk with us today about your work. I really appreciate it.
Gabaldon: No, no problem. I hope I helped some. I don’t know. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah, no, you did. It was really good. It was good to hear about your perspective on being out in 300 and especially some of that outage work, what it took to get the job done in terms of the PPE and kind of the—
Gabaldon: Yeah, it’s—I’m sure they still do it even more. They’re more, what do I want to say? Well, let’s just put it this way. In the 100 areas, when you came out, you were in your skivvies, your underwear. And there’s 20 guys lined up, standing in their underwear, and there’s gals surveying them, every little nook and cranny of their body. Nowadays, they have, I guess modesty clothing or whatever you call it. So it’s come a long way from there.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Gabaldon: You know, back, it was a big deal. But then as soon as you went into a radiation zone, you know, forget all that modesty stuff.
Franklin: Right, yeah, you’ve got to take care of yourself.
Gabaldon: Yup.
Franklin: Modesty be darned. Great, well, Larry, thank you so much.
Gabaldon: You’re welcome.
Franklin: Watch your head there when you stand up.
Duration
Bit Rate/Frequency
Hanford Sites
100-N (N Reactor)
FFTF
305 Building
308 Building
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Years on Hanford Site
Files
