86 50 4772 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F5136cf08ef09f86db6f42bdeacdd8b4a.mpg 33adeb9164aa60d4ae0ae18034db47ea 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Matthias Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound FRANK MATHIAS INTERVIEW- Recorded on 9/26/92 Tom Putnam: All right, first, could I ask you to state your name and what your relationship to the B Reactor was? Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Matthias: Oh. Yes, my name is—at that time I was Lieutenant Colonel Matthias when the B Reactor was started in the Corps of Engineers. I was a reserve officer on duty. Putnam: How did you first become involved with the Manhattan Project? Matthias: Well, it really started by getting involved with General Groves. When he became the boss of the Manhattan Project, he got me involved in a number of things, and finally to find a site for the Hanford Project and to start building it, contract with DuPont and many other things. Putnam: And you started with General Groves on the Pentagon? Matthias: Yes, I started with him on the Pentagon. He was—I never reported to Groves, but, he was head of the end of the operations branch of the Construction Division of the Corps of Engineers. And I was in the Engineering Branch. And we brought all kinds of construction projects for the Army, at that time, to the point where there was money for them and authorization for them. And then they were turned over to the operations, and that was General Groves. So, my group, the group that I was in and the group that Groves was in charge of, did a lot of work together, but I didn’t work for General Groves. And then he kept borrowing me for the Pentagon Building and that started in the middle of June when the Pentagon building got started. I worked on Pentagon problems quite a lot of the time from then on until oh, the middle of ‘42 when we started, well, almost finishing the Pentagon Building. Putnam: How did you begin to hear about the Manhattan Project? Matthias: Well alright, I heard about that because General Groves—one time I heard about it, because he gave me some scientific reports on uranium-235 and asked me to describe the construction—evidence of construction of a project that would take that scientific approach into construction. And I didn’t know ‘til later—I did that, and I spent several days trying to figure out and I finally had it—did figure that it was going to be a tremendously big operation. So I just described a big construction operation, camp and everything, and railroad tracks and sidings and all sorts of things. And I found out later that Groves wanted that to give to the Air Force to look for a place like that in Germany. Because we were--at that time, we were behind the Germans in this nuclear effort. We soon left them behind in the next, first six months after that. But we were behind at that time. And we weren’t in the Germans’ problem, because they never did get going. Putnam: Yeah. Matthias: On a concerted effort. A lot of people just—a few independent ones were trying to make a reactor. Putnam: And you were primarily involved in the— Camera man: Go ahead. Putnam: You were primarily involved in the search for the site, too, weren’t you? Matthias: Yes, I was, I was asked by General Groves first. I didn’t know what it was all about, until General Groves got me to go to Wilmington to meet with the DuPont Company. He had already made a deal with DuPont that they would take over the design and construction. This was a meeting with mostly the scientists from the lab in Chicago—the Metallurgical Lab that we were operating, our district group. And the purpose of the meeting was to establish the requirements for a site. And it included water supply, power, kind of a--not too many people living in it—we could build reactors and be 20 miles away from a town of maybe 2,000. And we had to be 15 miles away from a main railroad or a highway. And they wanted us to be more than 200 miles away from the ocean. But we never did quite meet that require—that was just kind of a little phony. Anyway, all of those requirements were developed by the scientists in their calculations and in their votes and by everything else. And everything they told us, they said, they kept assuring us, were—what is the, the meaning when it’s—this is what we think it is but it might be 10% minus or 10% higher. Putnam: Oh— Matthias: T there’s a definite name for that kind of—and that’s what scientists all said, that we don’t know, sure, this is our guess and it ought to be somewhere in between. 100% or 10, 1% if it’s 10. Putnam: Oh, order of magnitude. Matthias: Order of magnitude, that’s the expression. Putnam: Yeah, yeah. So you set off then to search for a site? Matthias: Well, then I went back to—yeah, Washington, and General Groves met me when I came back from that meeting, and he told me what it was all about. That’s when I really first knew what this Manhattan Program was all about. And then the next day, he said, now the two DuPont guys are going to come: their chief civil engineer and the guy they pegged for construction manager of Hanford. And you’re going to go out, you’re going to find a site for this project. So we spent a day with the Corps of Engineers and talked about our power possibilities and where we might get the biggest amount of labor easily and a number of things like that, that would influence us some. And then that night we started out—the next night we started out—no, that same night; that was the second day after the meeting. We started out to Spokane, because we knew it had to be in the Northwest; that’s the only place there was power, the only place there was water of any consequence. And so we got a hold of these big flight maps that the Air Force used. The whole country was covered by these, and we made a template with six reactors three miles apart, three separation plants six miles apart. And the separation plants, at least three or four miles away from the reactors, and a lot of things like that. That we made on a template that fit those flight maps. And then we got out first into Washington State and we borrowed Captain Hopkins from the District Engineers Office who knew that country cold, grew up in it and everything. So we could ask him, now, this map doesn’t show it, but what’s the agricultural program in here? What it is it? How big is this town? All that business. He was a big help to us. We spent a whole day in Spokane, just working over those maps. And we covered the whole west and down into southern Oregon that one day, and the next day we started out looking at all we could get within reach. We drove all over, or clear over to the east side of Washington and all that country in between. And then we drove down to the south and we borrowed a plane, an Army plane, to get—I was the only one that could go, because the others were not in the Army. But I borrowed a plane— Putnam: Excuse me just a second. We’ve got an awful lot of— [VIDEO CUTS] Putnam: You had—you were taking a plane. You had borrowed a plane. Matthias: Oh yes, I got a plane and went down over Oregon and the set planes, it was obvious that the sites we’d identified were not attractive. Then we—I went back to Pasco and met my partners who’d driven over through the Hanford area from Yakima. And I met them at the airport for the Navy flight system in Pasco. And they were just as excited as I was, I just said, this is it. There has to be—there’s nothing like it in the country. And they confirmed it, and they’d done some poking around at the soil and everything else. They say this whole basin is full of gravel: that’s wonderful building support. Everything was good about it. Putnam: When was this again? Matthias: This was just before Christmas, 1942. And we went down to San Francisco and we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant--Christmas dinner. And then that night we went to Sacramento and we had a meeting with their district engineer in Sacramento and dinner at his house, a second Christmas dinner. And then we got the plane there and went down to Los Angeles. And we borrowed a car from the Corps of Engineers and drove out all through the eastern part of the Los Angeles area, in the desert and we didn’t find anything. And we knew that if we did, we were going to have to take water away from either the Colorado River or the canals to the Los Angeles area. And then if we wanted to keep this project secret, that was not the way to do it. Because there’d be a tremendous citizen uproar if we started a project that wanted to drain one of those canals. So then we went back to Washington that night and wrote our report to Groves on the plane, and we landed the New Year’s Eve. And I called Groves right away and he said, well, let’s get together tomorrow morning. And so we did. Putnam: So you were flying around the country in what, DC-3s? Matthias: DC-3s, yeah. That’s the only thing there was then, that was long distance. And that was like, 200 miles was a long flight before you landed and refueled. But we spent all night New Year’s Eve getting to Washington. Putnam: Mm-hmm, boy. Matthias: And then-- Putnam: What was the--at that point there was a real feeling of urgency about the project-- Matthias: There was a real feeling of urgency, yes, and that was expressed. When I got back from my meeting, when they had established the site requirements, Groves told me all about it, and the urgency and everything else, he stressed. And that’s why we—we would have liked to have spent a month looking for a site. But we knew that we’d had the best one in the country in just that time. So we went ahead with that. And Groves was out on the 9th of January to see it, because he thought he had to before he went in to testify that it had to be that place. That week, the next week, they got authorization to acquire 600 square miles, which is what we needed for the Hanford Project. Putnam: And so what was the next step then? Matthias: Well, the next step was to go ahead with DuPont and get the design going and the construction going. Now in about mid-February, Groves asked me to come in, and we had nobody in charge of it. He said, I’ve got a promise from the Chief of Engineers that I can have anybody that you want in the Corps of Engineers who’s not on combat duty. And he said, I wish you’d review the possibilities and recommend somebody to me. And as I left the office with my hand on the door I said—he said, by the way, if you don’t find somebody I like, you’re going to have to take over that project. And I shut the door and I said, General, there isn’t anybody I can recommend. He said, all right, you’re it. That was how I got into it, the middle of February. Then I went—worked hard on working out with DuPont the contract terms, the systems—business control systems that we would use and how much they could do themselves and how much they had to check with me. And in early March we moved out on the Project and started construction. Putnam: What was the terms of their contract? Matthias: The terms of their contract was one dollar fixed fee for managing the project and designing it and everything and operating. And finishing the project in four year. A one dollar fee, and the guarantee that they would not lose money. Putnam: All costs would be paid. Matthias: All costs would be paid. And the DuPont Company, when they got to collect their one dollar fee, the government paid them back 72 cents because they finished the job and was operating in three years instead of four. So they managed that only three years in four and weren’t entitled to a whole dollar. And the DuPont president framed that and put it in the office in Wilmington and I think it’s still there, probably. Then the Pasco Chamber of Commerce heard about that and thirty two members each—28 members each contributed one cent to fill out the full fee to the DuPont Company. And they sent that to the president of DuPont, and he had a great time getting that and making a demonstration or something that he could hang on the wall, this 28 pennies. Putnam: That’s a great story, I haven’t heard that one before. Matthias: He thought that was great. And I have a sound tape now of him talking about that, the president of DuPont. Putnam: Well then, the next step was to go to the site and begin to recruit workers? Matthias: Yes. We started in—DuPont’s field construction superintendent arrived early in March. And we occupied some of the empty houses in Hanford, up in the Hanford area, near the river, and used them to house his first construction workers and they started building barracks for the labor men--group. And mess halls and all that stuff. And that started, and then we also, in March, started excavation for the reactors—for the B Reactor first. And we didn’t have any design except a conceptual drawing. We didn’t have design for it, and we get design dimensions from the Wilmington Engineer Office. And it took them--it took—we got way ahead in our excavation and stuff on dimensions we’d guessed were right. And they caught up—the designers caught up to us about June and we hadn’t wasted much of anything. But we also did a lot of exploration about foundations and we found that there was anything from 50 to 300 feet of gravel under maybe a foot-and-a-half of top soil in that whole valley. So that was great support, you know, just about the best foundation support you can find. And earthquake depressant, too. And so we just got going building. And we kept increasing as fast as we could get housing for camp, for men and got our mess halls operating, we kept getting all the people we could get. And DuPont had a system of—an engineer on every phase of the work was working out things so he could tell the fore, the labor people—carpenters and pipefitters and everything—what they had to do the next day. Everything was laid out like that. DuPont did a tremendous job of managing that. So they always knew what they were supposed to do, and they just kept doing it. Putnam: So the DuPont Company—how would you describe the job that they did? Matthias: DuPont Company gave us their very best people in management, in engineering. I just can’t ever say too much about how DuPont operated. They were great, absolutely great. Putnam: Now in recruiting—how many people did you need to do it, and how did you recruit them? Matthias: Well, in the whole project, in the three years of real activity, construction, we hired—we had 130,000 people on the rolls during that time. We never had more than 45,000 at any one time. And that was about, oh, the seventh—August or so, July or August of ‘44, when we had our peak. Putnam: And how did you—that’s a tremendous number of people. Where did they come from? Matthias: Oh, they came from all over. Gil Church, who was the DuPont Project Field Manager—Construction Manager and I made a trip to the War Manpower Commission Officers, east of the Mississippi—we didn’t get into the Far East. But we went to all the ones in and got them to help us get men and labor. And we worked it through the unions and we did everything to get enough. It was tough. We ran a shortage of plumbers and pipefitters at one time. And we even got some Army people, pipefitters, off of duty and put on reserve and got them into our forces as a morale builder and a pressure thing, coming out of the Army, and they got paid civilian wages for that time. And that caught up a big shortage of those kind of people. But we did everything to get people. Putnam: What was a typical day like for you during that time? What was your role? Matthias: Well, my role was really to work with DuPont Company and get the job going, keep it going. And sometimes I had some differences with DuPont; I’d have to go and argue about something they were going do that I didn’t think they should. We’d settle it and go ahead with the next thing. But I spent a lot of time working with the DuPont Project Manager and his staff. And I spent a lot of time talking to General Groves. But General Groves never did give me many instructions—hardly any. He was not a—he really didn’t tell me, hardly ever, to do some specific thing. But I had to keep on doing things to keep everything going. Putnam: How did you like General Groves? Matthias: Well, I didn’t like him, but I admired him. I have a tremendous admiration for him. But no, I wouldn’t say I liked him. But I appreciated the fact that he seemed to have a lot of confidence in me. Putnam: Was it difficult to motivate the workers? What was the mentality like then? Matthias: Well, I don’t know. We did give some speeches. Groves would come out a time a give a speech to the laborers on a safety—a day or an hour or so, at one place where he had a lot of people--a safety meeting, we’d charge it to. And I did quite a bit of promoting the patriotism. We did a lot to maintain morale. For instance, the ‘44 year-end we had a nationally known band come to the Hanford Camp and play for the laborers. We had about a 1,000-capacity rec hall in the camp. And we had a lot of setup—some of the materials, war materials, for them to look at that—something on museum style, but telling them, this is the kind of stuff we’re making now. We had one—in the middle of ‘44, we had a contest—not a contest—well, it was a contest, to find something that the laborers could do for the war effort. And it turned out that they wanted to buy an airplane, a bombing plane for the Air Force. We held a big contest that excited a lot of people, and it was about what it should be called, so it got the name of A Day’s Pay. And that was done. That was bought and paid for by the one day pay of the laborers—all of the crafts. I remember that well, because I checked what the average was and it was just about exactly what I was getting as a Lieutenant Colonel. [LAUGHTER] Putnam: Now, at this—you want to come up a little? Camera man: Yeah, he’s set a little bit. We have three minutes. Putnam: Our focus is primarily on B Reactor. That was the first reactor built, wasn’t it? Matthias: Right. Putnam: How did that progress? Matthias: Oh, well, it all progressed pretty fast. In fact, we had it—it went into operation in October of ’44. Putnam: Wow. Matthias: It started building up flux level of neutrons ‘til it got to about 120-some kilowatts. And then it started to die down. The activity started down and we kept opening up the control system, and it still went down. And we thought we were done. We thought we were absolutely done, in the whole business of the Hanford Project. We got Fermi and John Wheeler, who were both top-grade scientists, and they spent about two days analyzing what was happening and how fast it went down and all kinds of things that they could think of. And they came up with the idea that because—after two days it started come backing up again, on its own. And that indicated to them that there was something absorbing stray neutrons inside the reactor. And that that could only be cured by adding more plutonium. Our first loading of the B Reactor loaded like 2,000 tubes through the reactor, and there were holes for 500 more that the DuPont designers insisted on putting on. The scientists didn’t like it because they had said they’re guessing, super-guessing us, and we don’t need that; we need 2,000. Anyhow, that 500 extra tubes saved the day. And it took us about six weeks to add them. And by that time, we had the next reactor almost ready to go. And we of course put in the 2,500 rods or holes for them, right away. And as soon as we got the thing into operation with the added uranium, it went right up to full level--300,000—controllable by the control rods perfectly. And Fermi and John Wheeler had exercised a very smart guess. Really, really sharp. [VIDEO CUTS] Matthias: All right, when they had analyzed this thing and came to the conclusion because of how fast the excess degraded—how much the flux inside the pile--reduced and then came back. That meant it was some product, efficient product, that had a very short half-life, two or three days, just quick. And it was xenon and iodine, they thought. And they still think that and I don’t know if anybody knows it for sure. But that cured the problem. Putnam: Were you there at the startup? Matthias: I was there. I was there when they put—talk about precision. Here we have a forty-foot cube of solid—not solid, but solid materials—mostly carbide—mostly carbon and 2,500 holes in it and they couldn’t, weren’t to be drilled after you erected that forty-foot cube. It was built in bricks, in blocks, with the holes worked into those blocks. I was out there when we put the first tube in the B Reactor. We were all out there. We had to unwrap the tube; it was a forty-foot long aluminum tube and we unwrapped the paper off of it. It was made in Canada; the Aluminum Company of America didn’t know how to do it. And we unwrapped the pipe and started pushing it into one of the holes. And we couldn’t get it in. We got it in a ways, and then it sort of hung up. So we pulled it out and we cleaned the pipe carefully with cloth rags and things, and when we came again to that hole, you could push that whole forty feet in and out like this with your hand. And that’s the precision they had. Imagine, 25 holes, forty feet long each through that mass of carbide. Putnam: All carefully machined. Matthias: That was really an accomplishment to do all that—putting it all together and having it fit within thousandths of an inch. Putnam: And the day that when it actually all the tubes were filled and the first time the reactor actually went critical, was that quite an event? Matthias: Oh yes, that kept, that worked right away and it went right up to the rated capacity. Putnam: Were you there? Matthias: --and it was controlled. Putnam: Were you at the— Matthias: Oh no, we did this slowly. We only moved up about a little bit an hour, until we got up to 300,000 kilowatts of heat. And then that was where it sat and kept working. Putnam: Did you have any contact with the scientists at that time then? What was their reaction? Matthias: Yeah, I always had contact with the scientists. The scientists always did approve all of the working drawing of the mechanical and the theoretical physics parts. And so they had to approve all of the designs. So I always had contact with those people. Putnam: Were they living there at Hanford? Matthias: Not very many. Most of them were at the University of Chicago in the Metallurgical Lab. And I had the problem assigned to me by General Groves to be sure that the Metallurgical Lab was doing the kind of scientific work that the engineer designers at Wilmington needed. That was another little duty, besides your others. [LAUGHTER] Putnam: What was their reaction? Was everybody aware of the momentous nature of this? What was their reaction? Matthias: Oh gosh, yeah, we thought we were done. We thought the whole thing was a failure. Then we had another interesting one that—this must have—yeah, it must have been the B Reactor. About the time we got it going again, we had the next one just about ready, but we had a—the Japanese had sent over fire balloons. And one of those fire balloons is supposed to burn the forests of the Northwest and give us a lot of distress, as a nation. One of the balloons came down on the transmission line between Grand Coulee and Bonneville. And it cut out our power and we had put some fast breaking things, fast correcting things in the switch yards, at both ends of our transmission line that came right past us. We lost about ten cycles of power before it corrected itself and that was six seconds of—it meant a tenth of a second—yeah, a tenth of a minute. Those fazes shut down the thing completely, our safety thing shut it down. And we were delighted because we probably didn’t—wouldn’t have had courage enough to try them ourselves. We never did anyhow, but the Japanese tried it for us. [LAUGHTER] Putnam: Great. Yeah, I think there’s a wire coming loose there on the back of the chair, on the side. Camera man: Oh, I missed it. Excuse me. Matthias: --Sixth of a second, you didn’t know it happened. It just cut off our reactor. Camera man: Excuse me. Matthias: So, there wasn’t any excitement about it, it just died for that long. And it was such a short time, we didn’t even know it except by the measurements that we had in our control room. We knew that it had been out, short-circuited, for a tenth of a second. Putnam: Was there any time for example, the starting of the reactor when it first went critical and you knew that you had—that it was a success, what were those kinds of milestones, the times that were really important to you during that-- Matthias: Well, we spent about—we had the real scientist people there at the start. And they would start it with a control rod, they’d pull it out a little bit and leave it there until it went up maybe ten degrees and then they’d pull it a little more out and it would go up and they’d spend a whole day building up the load. Because they didn’t ever know what might happen, you know, until we got experience in that business. But after we found the failure in B Reactor and added the uranium to it, then that went on all right and the next was coming along right with it. They’d build up, they’d take a whole day, to get up to full speed. And there was nothing moving it, except these neutrons bouncing around. Putnam: Mm-hmm, just looking at the dials and it seemed to be working. And so how long was it before fuel was—how long did it take to irradiate fuel and what was done with it after that? Matthias: Well we did a little short—I don’t know just how long. But I think it would have been fairly somewhere near the efficiency level to have it exposed in the reactor for maybe two months or three. Now, we shortened that period because Los Alamos was desperate for some plutonium. And to get the plutonium out we had to age these for a while. And we would like to age them for a couple months as they progressed from an intervening element that was formed to plutonium. We kept it in deep water, just let it cook there and it would react by itself: a fast movement, or decay, of the intermediate element which was called neptunium. That was a very short life. But anyhow that had to develop, to cook on its own. And we sent—we dissolved and extracted the uranium out of the first batches earlier than we should have for an efficient operation. But we were trying to get the thing going fast to Los Alamos. Putnam: Now how did that first batch of plutonium get to Los Alamos? Matthias: Well, I took it in a packing box in a locked compartment in the railroad car down to Los Angeles, and turned it over to an officer who was sent from Los Alamos to pick it up. Putnam: Pretty expensive suitcase, huh? Matthias: Pretty expensive yes. At the railroad station, this officer came up and I said, well, have you got a locked room to go back to New Mexico? No, he said; I had trouble getting it so I have a berth—an upper berth. So I said, well, you know what you’re going to be carrying? And he didn’t know. And I said, well, it cost $350,000,000. That was the cost of our project up to that point. So he kind of got a little bit shaky and went back to the station and came back with a locked room that he could use to get back. And then I sent the next kind back with my administrative officer, Harry Riley, the same way. And after that, we had our regular system. We operated with the ambulances, Army ambulances, one every—or two a week, that would take a charge of plutonium to Camp Douglas in Salt Lake City. They changed to another car and go back to Los Alamos. And then those two sections, groups of drivers never saw each other and we always had them accompanied by an officer of—oh, one that we knew real well. So that’s how we delivered it, just in an Army ambulance. Putnam: We’re talking about preserving the B Reactor. Do you think that is a good thing to do? What’s the significance of the B Reactor? Matthias: Well, I don’t know. Its significance is that it’s the first full-size, full-scale reactor that was ever been built for the kind of the reaction. It doesn’t exist anywhere. The first one. Now, there’s nothing to maintain it—almost nothing. You could keep it, and it’s just a very interesting historic monument. And I’d be all for it. I’d like to see that preserved. Putnam: And moving through then, during the war, was it fairly routine, then it just sounds like a construction—it sounds fairly routine at that point. Any other big challenges or big surprises? Matthias: Well, there was always very much concern that we could achieve the kind of dimensional control of everything. Big buildings and equipment and the cells, the chemical cells, that we had deep in the pit, 22 of them in one building. I don’t know of anything that would decay in the B Plant. Just let it sit there. Keep it clean on the outside, keep the aluminum tubes in it. You just don’t have to keep any uranium in it. Putnam: In the times of processing, this was a totally new technology. Nobody really knew the scientific and day-by-day you were validating scientific hypotheses, and providing actual material for the scientists to study. What was that like? I mean, what did people—safety for example. How did you handle that? How did you know what you were handling? Matthias: Well, we had a doctor in the Manhattan District, Stafford, Colonel Stafford Warren, who was supposed to be the most knowledgeable guy on nucleus—atomic nucleus kind of a system. And we had him—he was in the Manhattan District and we had him in charge of all of the safety devices. And then the scientists knew something about it, but we didn’t really know how much hazards there’d be, you know, when we built that. Because it had never been done before. What are you going to have? You guess. And the scientists guessed for us and they did pretty good guessing. Putnam: And everything with the processing plants and all, you had to come up with new ways of handling this material. Just phenomenal. Matthias: Yes, that’s right. They kept working at that on a laboratory basis, to improve the thing and do it better. You know, a bomb, only about two—only about two or three ounces of plutonium actually exploded out of a 25-pound bomb. About two or three pounds, out of a 25. That was the amount of plutonium in a bomb. And its efficiency was 2.3%. Imagine, three pounds, or six pounds maybe, five pounds of uranium—of plutonium would give you an explosion as big as 20,000 tons of TNT. Putnam: Where were you when you heard--well, you knew about the Trinity test at Alamogordo. Matthias: I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but I did know that it was happening. I helped Colonel Parsons, who was their security officer, helped him write a cover story report of a big explosion that they could give to the newspapers if the test worked. So we’d done that a couple days earlier, so I knew that we were about to do it. And then General Groves and Conant and Vannevar Bush came through Richland on their way to that test. And they stopped there Saturday and I took them to the Navy for lunch. And then they went on and I asked—I told Groves, I said to Groves, I’d sure like to go down to see the test. And he said, what test? I said, well, isn’t that where you’re going? Well, yes. [LAUGHTER] And he said, well, I’m not letting you and Nichols go to the test. You’re the ones in the production of this thing now that are important; we aren’t important. He had his deputy with him. And he said, I just want to be able to keep on with it if we get blown apart. [LAUGHTER] Putnam: A practical man. Matthias: It was. And I told Nichols that he had told me that, and Nichols said he couldn’t believe it. So he’d braced him once about it and the guy said, yeah, that’s why. Groves told him that was why. Putnam: And then, so just three weeks later the bomb was dropped on Japan? Matthias: Right, it was the 19th of July, I think, the test. Putnam: The test. Then the 6th of August the bomb was dropped. Matthias: Well, that was an Oak Ridge bomb. Putnam: Oh, that’s right. Matthias: That was the uranium-235. And then the next one was our bomb in Japan. Putnam: Did you know that one was coming up? Matthias: Oh, sure, sure I did. And when the first bomb was dropped, a guy in Groves’ office, his security colonel, called me about 7:00 in the morning and he said, be sure—no, earlier than that—he said, listen to the news at 7:00 on radio. And that’s when they announced that the bomb had been dropped in Japan and all the doubt—everything successful. Now that was a relief cause that knocked off the real security pressure. Putnam: What was the reaction of the camp and people there and yourself? How did you feel at that point? Matthias: Well, we were smothered by news and people like you taking pictures and stuff that we didn’t have time to think for about three days. [LAUGHTER] Richland was swamped with people and I had made arrangements anticipating this. With—oh, what outfit of the Army? The Signal Corps. To arrange for some extra telephone coverage into our place. So I had telephones every place, before that happened, and this was all right there when it happened and it only took an hour or so for people to come pouring in. That was quite an excitement. Putnam: And with the finish of the project, what was, did you have a feeling of personal satisfaction then that it was a job that was finally accomplished? Matthias: I certainly did. Exactly. I felt very good and I felt it complete. And I was not—as I stayed on and all we were doing was operation, no more exciting construction work, I got tired of the place. I spent the last six months—the last four months at Hanford mostly giving speeches all over the states. About Hanford, about the program. And I still had—it was still under wraps to some degree. But I didn’t have any interest in operation. Hell, it wasn’t fun. Interviewer: In terms of the overall and the history—the historical context—the big picture so to speak, in your own words, what is the significance—it was really the entrance into the nuclear age. What’s the significance of that, what do we learn? Matthias: Well, I thought that there would be some improvement in this whole system. As the years went on I didn’t expect anything much to be done importantly for ten years or so. That’s why I went to Brazil for an engineering job. But I did think that there would be some more work done and some more discoveries. And they didn’t happen. Everything went to the business of a reaction from the other end of the scale. Of atoms. That would be not—of what do they call them—one is fusion—a fusion thing. And I still think that that’s going to be the important solution; sometime, they’re going to find something that they can operate that way. Because a fusion process would not develop a lot of spare radiation, like the fission product does. And I had hoped that that would be important. Well, they’ve used it for power at the South Pole, nuclear power, they’ve got a lot of power plants going. They’ve never done anything with the fusion system, because it takes more power to get a reaction than is produced in the reaction. So, you’d get no gain. And until that is cured, it isn’t going to do anything more. I think the fusion is the process, sometime, but they haven’t learned how yet. Westinghouse has been trying hard for how many years? To find a way to do that. Fast neutrons. Putnam: Well it’s an interesting time now, 50 years coming up—50th anniversary and almost coincidentally, it’s kind of—suddenly, the Cold War is over and the events that, at Hanford, really started the Cold War--or led to eventually the evolution of—led to the winning of the war. And that—I think that people lose sight of that in the depressing quality of the Cold War and the kind of nuclear fear, nuclear attack, and we lived under that for many years. And I think that the magnificence of the achievement in the Second World War was kind of lost in that, that people forget about what was at stake during the Second World War, and what is the scale of the accomplishment. Matthias: Well, I think that guys like me that had all this to do with the thing, felt that this was a tremendously successful operation, and that it should keep on being studied and worked on until it could do more for civilian population—civilian operation. Now, they used to say, Seaborg for instance, used to like to say, we ought to have about 20 years, we ought to be able to get a lot of things done by the nuclear systems that we will have discovered. Well, they haven’t done it; it just hasn’t come. And they still don’t know anything better. And I feel disappointed, and I would be tremendously happy if they could turn up a good fusion process. But it’s not been the picture yet. And I don’t know how to answer your question, really. Putnam: Yeah. It’s a hard one to answer. Jay, do you have anything to comment on? Jay: One aspect of B Reactor that had an influence on the people of the river—influenced the Wanapums, the people that fished on the river, and that kind of thing—and you had to address that issue, same as you addressed that establishment of the studies of the fish and so on, you also dealt with the Native Americans here. Matthias: Yes, I had—I used to talk to Johnny Buck quite often. Putnam: Can you speak to me, into the camera here? Matthias: Yes. Johnny Buck was the chief of the Indian tribe. And the first time he came to see me, he had an interpreter, an Indian agent, and he didn’t say one word in English. And he showed me the treaty he had for fishing in the Columbia River and the islands just opposite White Bluffs. And he told me about their process: they come up to the island to fish and they dry it, and take it back to their huts and store it for winter. And he said, we usually move up to one of these islands for a couple weeks and catch enough fish. And it’s out of season for those salmon, but the Indians had the rights. So I arranged for it; I told him, well, we can’t let you come up here anymore at this place unattended, or to live here, because it isn’t going be safe for you in a year or so. And I worked out with them a system where we went down and picked up a gang of the people that fished at their village way down in the west side of the Project and took them up to those islands in a pickup, and then we’d take them back at night and they’d do their fishing and storing and drying fish. And while I was there, that worked. Now, I don’t know what happened after that. But I had a deal with Johnny Buck and his Indians that satisfied them. But I’d also gotten Johnny’s Indians to do a job, to work for us, when we work fixing up the Milwaukee Railroad Branch. He had—I’d offered to put his guys to work and get good pay, but he didn’t want to have to bother with social security and all the reports, if his people worked or if he acted as a foreman, an owner. So, I fixed it up so that he wouldn’t be subject to any of that. [TAPE CUTS] Matthias: Nice. They had a lot of good stuff, interesting stuff. They had a guy who—their medicine man was a respected doctor from, I think, Yakima. A well-educated Indian, he was their priest. And they were nice. I liked them, that group. And I had a little trouble with Johnny Buck getting them controls to get into the Project. They had to come in the west gate to get to their camp. And I told—I went down and had a talk with him and told him that, you know, you’re going to have to be in some trouble, because our people are going to have to arrest everybody that doesn’t have a pass. And I’d like to send somebody down and get passes for all of your people in your tribe, because we want you to come through. And he didn’t like it a bit. And I said, well, Johnny, if you don’t do this, somebody’s going to break in here and steal something, and you’re going to be blamed. And I made that a terrible thing for him, and he agreed and he gave up. I sent a couple WACs down to photograph them and make badges for them all and they had a great time and so did the Indians. Putnam: That’s something we haven’t talked about, security. Was security difficult? What were some of the aspects of security there? Matthias: Well, security was—I don’t know how you could say it was difficult; it was extensive. And we had a military police detachment assigned to me that did the outside business of controls and not much access. DuPont had a police system of their own, security, that secured each of the working areas and the Hanford Camp. But the west gate on the main road and down towards Richland was controlled by the military police group most of the time. But I didn’t have them the whole three years. I had them, I guess, about the last two. I don’t remember exactly. Putnam: What was the biggest problem you had during the Hanford Project? Matthias: I haven’t any idea what was the biggest problem. I had so many, really, so many problems came up. And sometimes I’d think I’m never going to get this one solved and somehow we’d work it out. Putnam: What’s an example? Matthias: Well, I really don’t—I really haven’t thought of that much. Interviewer: Just to—but there were construction—was it getting material? Matthias: Oh, material, not so much. I worked close with DuPont on construction methods and construction programs. For instance, our separation plants were, what, about 60 feet wide and about 800 feet long and a four-foot thick concrete. I talked DuPont into them. They decided they wanted to pump the concrete up to that arch—the top. And then I talked them out of the idea of building scaffolding. And I got them to build the two outside walls completely, then they could put in the big power crane and they could build forms for the bottom of the roof on that crane and just, with jacks, poke it up into place, fill it full of concrete, and the next day move it on for another 20 feet. And they thought that was great. But they hadn’t thought of—that’s a tunnel process that I’ve had a lot of experience in. Well, that was a big help in the construction method. I don’t know. DuPont—a cute thing that DuPont did—they had a travel transportation guy, on their staff, in charge of all the buses. We had 900 buses at one time taking men down to work and back. And the last batch of buses, we couldn’t get good ones with seats, they were standup type. And the construction stiffs just hated those buses and kicked about them all the time. So DuPont’s transportation man cured the whole problem. He would have these standup ones the last ones that left Hanford Camp to work, and on the way back he’d have them the first ones to pick up at the job site and take back to the camp. So that earmarked the guys that were trying to loaf. And there was no more kicking about it, stopped it completely. I say, ingenious, people thinking, you know, of something. That’s the kind of people we had around there. They’d get a problem of some kind and figure out how to cure it. And I didn’t have to cure it for them. [LAUGHTER] Putnam: Well, thank you for spending so much time with us, and one thing I thought was that perhaps—I know you had a lot of anecdotes in your notes today, it might be interesting to—if you had any of those that you wanted to tell. Do you have any of those stories, or would you like to look at those, and tell us of those stories? Camera man: I’m losing a wire. [VIDEO CUTS] [Woman off-screen]: Frank? One of the stories that you told me that I thought was interesting was— [TAPE CUTS] Camera man: We’re rolling. Matthias: Yeah, we had—yeah—this was one of the tough things that happened. It must have been about, in early ’44, and I had some friends from Portland who had invited me down to Astoria for a weekend fishing there at the mouth of the Columbia. And I finally arranged that my assistant, Harry Riley and I would go down there and get there Sunday morning, early. We left Saturday night and drove all night almost. And we went out fishing about 5:00 in the morning on Sunday. And we were out in the boat, out in Astoria, off west area and a shore patrol boat came up looking for me. They had a message for me from Hanford, that I needed to call back real importantly. So, they took me back to a telephone. And here the problem was, that the pipefitters were going on strike the next morning, and they had agreed—not agreed—they demanded that they would all be in the recreation building the next morning and they would get a couple of international officers there, and they were going on strike. So we went right back to Richland, got there first thing in the morning. I went out to their camp to meet the strikers. And they had 500 or 600 of them in the theatre, and about five or six guys up on the stage that were talking and they had a loudspeaker and trying to work up feeling about it. And there was one young guy that I knew in that group. And I knew he was a union man and I’d had some dealings with him. So I got him to help me get control of the microphone. So I finally got it, and I was very short to them, I said: you know, you guys, somebody in you guys is violating your promises. We have a contract with you that you do not strike. That we have other ways to solve your problems. And I said, some of you also have been told that this project is very important and we need you and the country needs you. And I said, you know, I think you knew all that; there must be some people that are leading you into this, and they’re wrong and they’re against us. And I’d like to have them all be picked up and sent back to Germany where they belong. And I think, if anybody’d had guns they would have shot me, it was such a violent complaint. And I got them all quieted down and I said, look, I didn’t call you guys unfaithful and unpatriotic, but there must be some of them, some of you, that are promoting this. And how about living up to your contract? I’ll meet you all this evening about your problems; how about going back to work? I’ll have the buses at the door in ten minutes. And they all cheered. And they went back and got in the buses and left. And as they were rushing out of that door, the two international officers came in and they wanted to get them back in so they could talk to them. They just paid no attention to them. So we solved the problem; it wasn’t a bad problem. That afternoon and the strike was over. Well, those are the kind of things that you hit sometimes. And I was kind of tired after I got through with that. I’d been up the night driving there and the night driving back. So, that was quite an interesting case and the DuPont people just felt that was great, that I had jumped in on that one. Putnam: Yeah, it sounds like it. Well, you had a crisis a day, it sounds like it. You needed some action there. Matthias: Oh, we had, we didn’t have that many. But we had quite a lot. I had a close call with the electricians, at one point, but I happened to know real well the electrician president in the east and he corrected it for me awful quick. Putnam: So labor management was a good deal. Matthias: But I didn’t have a lot of labor management. Really, DuPont handled most of that. They were employees of DuPont and I was really sort of butting in when I got into it, but I could do things as an officer that they couldn’t. Putnam: Mm-hmm. Well, any other thoughts? Matthias: Oh gosh, I have so many things that I could talk to you about but I don’t know what. Putnam: Well, if you think of anything else then we would like to hear about it. I know that all this— [VIDEO CUTS] Matthias: One day I kept getting telephone calls from the security officer under General Groves in Washington. He said, there’s a report that a girl was killed on the railroad track, on your project. And I said, where’d the report come from? Well, I don’t know, he said; it’s come to us as a valid report. I said, well, it didn’t happen, because I’m sure I would know about it within five minutes after they were found, and you couldn’t have gotten the news that fast. All right. So then a little while later he called me again. And he said, they’re very positive this happened. And I told him not. And the third time he called he said, look, Jack, I’ve just gone out and put a marker on the railroad track where that gal was not found. Now that’s all I’m going to do about it. [LAUGHTER] And I never heard about it again. [LAUGHTER] Putnam: That’s great. Matthias: There were quite a few funny things. But I don’t remember many of them anymore. Putnam: Well, from the people we’ve talked to it sounds like a real take charge—just people wanted to get the job done. And it seems like those were the days when you could actually do that and there was no red tape. Matthias: Yeah, that’s right, we didn’t have anybody that held us back. It was great. And all of that was simply because Groves had been put in full charge of this project and he could sneer at almost any other government agency, because he had the President’s backing. Putnam: Sounds like he was pretty good at sneering, too. Matthias: Well, he was pretty good, but he knew when not to. He was a very intelligent man, really a very, competent. God, if he’d been just one yard better, he would have been a divinity, I think. But he was really a genius. Putnam: That’s what I’ve heard. Matthias: He didn’t spend much time trying to make people like him. Jay: One thing I remember in our conversations here, at Hanford, you made the comment that you had so many people under your command. In fact, you had more people under your supervision than any other colonel in World War II, if I remember. Matthias: Well, General Groves—one time I was out with General Groves and sort of in late—in the fall of ‘44 and he said, you know, I’m trying to get you promoted. And he said, it’s awful hard to convince the Army authorities that anybody that’s just in charge of a construction project should be promoted to full colonel. And he said, I can’t tell them what you’re colonel of, or what you’re commanding. And that bothers me. But then he also told me about that same time that no reserve officer should ever be more than a major. [LAUGHTER] That was like him. But it was only a few weeks later that he called me one day and he said, there’s some news about you, and you’ve just been promoted to full colonel. And that was Election Day 1944. So he was trying to get it fixed for me all the time, but he had to get in a few, you know, things about it. Putnam: So how long did you stay on then? Matthias: Well, I left in March, but my replacement came in and spent two months learning the job before I left. But he was responsible then. So I was through with direct responsibility about January—early/mid-January of ‘46. Then I left entirely in March of ‘46. I spent about six weeks teaching my successor. Putnam: Did you have any regrets when you left? Matthias: No, not really. And I liked the guy that they sent to take my place, he was a West Pointer, regular officer, ended up Chief of Engineers, did some high class duty in Europe and in Washington, DC, he was Mayor of Washington about four years. When the military appointed one. So, that’s the way it was. And I didn’t have any fun really after the construction was done; it was operations. And we had all that so well organized that I didn’t have any problems, hardly. I ran around giving speeches for a long, couple months. Putnam: Sounds like you saw a challenge and you took it and met it very well. Matthias: Well, I guess that’s right, yeah. But I didn’t seem to see any challenge anymore when everything was smooth and working. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:19:11 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 224kbps 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 Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Matthias Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Lt. Col. Franklin Matthias for the B Reactor Museum Association. Matthias was the Corps of Engineers Chief at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 9/26/1992 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fbde09a936108ef1867dd6f73878208ee.mpg 9cf5678db4af79b5c8ecae4a4aceba4c 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dee McCullough Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [VIDEO CUTS] Interviewer One: --did you hear about this place, and what’s the reason and circumstances that you came here, but-- McCullough: Oh, okay. Interviewer One: That’s usually the start. Interviewer Two: Yeah, what we’ll do first, we’ll just kind of go through chronologically where you were when you were recruited, perhaps, and then the story of you coming here, what you found when you got here. And we’re interested in what it looked like, how many people were here, and the visual image is, kind of how you remember. And then what your job was when you were here. And then we’ll just bring it along like that. Up through the end of the war, probably. And then maybe some more general questions about—or more specific questions about operations or things that we got some interesting information on loading sequences and things like that. Part of it is an attempt to get some of the technical information that we may not have another chance to get. We’re trying to gather—talk to as many people as possible and just kind of get whatever information we can about operations or problems that people had during startup. Just some descriptive stuff of how things— [VIDEO CUTS] Interviewer Two: Start by telling us your name and what your job was when you were here working in that period, and then go back and start telling us about recruitment and coming here the first time. McCullough: Okay. My name is Dee McCullough. During that time, I was an instrument shift supervisor. I came from the Utah Ordnance Plant in Salt Lake. Came on the payroll January 1st of 1944. Arrived here in Pasco on the 3rd of January, met by people with armbands on saying DuPont. Herded us into what we called cattle cars, [LAUGHTER] and took us to Hanford, where we were registered. The signup was quite interesting there. Most people there at that time were construction workers, and there was construction workers galore here at that time. We were introduced to— Interviewer Two: Actually, hold on. [VIDEO CUTS] Interviewer Two: Okay, thanks. Go ahead. McCullough: I’m Dee McCullough. I was instrument shift supervisor at the time B Area was started up. I previously worked at Utah Ordnance Plant as an instrument technician at that time. At the time the plant closed, I was also doing work in the telephone office as troubleshooting in the exchange. Also did the patrol radio maintenance work there. At the time I was interviewed to come up here, I had a friend working with me and he said, oh, he wouldn’t go to the state of Washington. I’ve been there before, and I don’t want all the mud and rains that the area—he’d worked out on the coast. So he said he was going to go to Oak Ridge. Well, later on, when I saw him, he got the mud and water, and I got the dryland here. [LAUGHTER] But I arrived here the 3rd of January, 1944, and was taken out to the Hanford site, where we were registered, signed up. But at that time, there was construction workers galore coming and going. Some being interviewed for jobs, and some leaving. Big long lines. But I was assigned to electrical supervisor—engineering supervisor. Took us—our papers that we’d filled out, and he’d take us to the front of the line and put the paper on the top of the basket and our names were called up far in advance of the construction workers that were coming in. The early days, it was quite, oh, might say primitive here. I can remember some of the early people, which—one was George Petty, which I don’t believe we have. But he was one of the power supervisors. They had a steam engine—railroad engine there, which was powered up, and we were getting all of the steam to heat the buildings from a railroad engine that they had parked at the site by the Administration Building there. I spent about two or three weeks there at Hanford, in the barracks, which was very interesting. I roomed with an Oklahoma carpenter. He’d come in and say, boy, if the wind blows again tomorrow like this, I’m going to terminate. [LAUGHTER] Interviewer Two: What did you see when you came here? What did it look like? Was there a lot of construction going on? Was it kind of a big mess, or was it pretty well finished at that point? I think you’re the person—so far, the earliest—the other two guys we talked to yesterday came in May of ’45, I think. McCullough: Oh, I see. Interviewer Two: What was it like in January of ’45? McCullough: In January, as we came by, as the bus went through Richland, they pointed out the fact that here’s the city of Richland. And it was, oh, up around Hunt, that area, the east side of the highway, was pretty well with housing under construction. You could see some on the other side. The present Hanford House was called the transient quarters—I think by that name. It was just all torn up area—a lot of ground being plowed up and there was a few orchards you could see here or there. I don’t remember the exact locations where they were. By then another long, dry, sandy spell driving out to Hanford. And there—I don’t have too much recollection there, except the big barracks that they had. One was the Administration Building. We were taken in there and then there was quite a bit of conversation as to when the dormitories would be completed—the first dormitory in Richland—for us to be moved into. Whether we would be able to go into Richland and stay at the transient quarters for a few days and then go into the dormitory, or whether they should put us out into the big barracks. I came from Salt Lake with an old fella that worked with me in Salt Lake, James V. Thompson, who is an electrician. The two of us was sort of—well, we came up on the same train. I knew him church-wise before. We wondered—we were glad afterwards that they had decided it had been too many delays in the dormitory being completed that they were afraid that they would be overcrowded at the transient quarters, so they had us roomed out. One of the main things there that I can remember is that we ate in a big barracks, which was opened up, it would seat 2,000 people. As we would go into the barracks, we’d buy a ticket for—it was either $0.69 or $0.79. They’d just line us in, line by line, we’d go and fill tables up. By the time we filled the last table, then, people were leaving at the other end of the building, and they started to go the other way. We ate family style. All we had to do was if a plate of potatoes got empty, we’d take the plate and hold it up above our head, and somebody’d come and pick it up and bring in a new one. It went that way even with dessert—pies—we had great pleasure in eating as much dessert as we could cram down us for our $0.69 or $0.79 that we paid. That lasted for about two-and-a-half weeks, and then we were given a room in the dormitory—first dormitory that was built. It was, oh, about the area where Swift and Jadwin, I think, was located. There, we had been told to order two books from one of the publishers back east. One was the laboratory book on measurement and identifying radiation types—alpha particles—and it showed cloud chambers—how to identify alpha particles. So that was the only indication we had of what we might be going to do at that time. The other book was a chemical engineering book, which had basic instrumentation in which we were interested in. But not having a safe place to keep these, we were just told to keep them locked up in our suitcases in the dormitory, so that they wouldn’t be available to other people. We were taken out to the 300 Area, and at that time, there was Will McCue, David Merrill and myself were all in instrumentation at that time—assigned to instrumentation. They took us into the engineering office in 300 Area and introduced us and told them to make whatever drawings were available to us for the 1713 Building there, which was the instrument maintenance building at that time. Looking at the drawings that we had on that building, all we could identify was one long table that was called a thermocouple table. So there we surmised we were going to be working with thermocouples. But Dave Merrill was the tool and die man at Utah Ordnance Plant. So he was more or less given authority to direct the installation of machinery and such in the 1713 Building machine shop that they had. I was assigned first to contact the construction people and receive the first amount of instrument spare parts, which was just capacitors, condensers and transformers and such, which didn’t tie into anything in particular. I can remember one of the fellows there was Martin Bier, which I think just passed away recently. But he was the construction man who turned over the components to me. As I was starting to say, Dave Merrill and Will McCue and I were introduced to the engineering office, and we met a friend of ours that had worked in Utah Ordnance Plant and had come up here on construction—or had come up earlier anyway. And he was one of the foremen in the 305 Building—that’s the test reactor. We were able to go over there and see him, but got into just the outer area there. It must not have been in the building, because he said, well, I don’t know why you can’t go into the building. All there is is a big U-shaped piece of concrete. Which turned out later to be the three sides of the test reactor that was being built there. But all there was at that time was just the three walls. And the front wall was open. So we were able to spend time there. I was assigned to work with the nuclear the flux monitors which was at that time Beckman instruments. It was a micro-microammeter, which had been developed from a Beckman pH meter. They sent me to the Beckman factory in Los Angeles, and I spent three-and-a-half weeks there sitting beside the test engineer to watch what he was doing and learn as much as I could about these instruments and see him troubleshoot the new ones as they came off the production line. Later, we had to—of course it was my job to see that they were installed after we got back here at the plant. [VIDEO CUTS] Interviewer Two: Tell the story of that anecdote, you know. Okay, go ahead. Interviewer One: It would be interesting for us to hear what you were told when they hired you in, and even here when you arrived here. Because we realize, because of security, they couldn’t tell you very much. And also it’d be interesting to know any rumors or other ways you might have been given clues on what was really happening. McCullough: Okay. At Utah Ordnance Plant, of course in those days, with fuel rationing and all that we were on, and drivers’ pools, I drove to and from the plant and there was two secretaries that rode with me. One was the daughter of one of the chief managers. They would talk about the City of Richland. What her dad had told her about the city of Richland, how it was being built up, it was a model city, being built from scratch here. But as far as telling us what was going on here, it was very highly secretive. When were hired, it was—they didn’t say Manhattan Project, it was just the three initials—I can’t remember. HEW, or something of that sort. I don’t remember the—and that’s who we were to report to here. At that time, I worked out at the telephone office at the Utah Ordnance Plant, and my supervisor heard the plant was closing. He decided to take another job elsewhere and so the maintenance of the telephone office fell on my lap at the time. I was hoping to be able to stay there after the plant closed to be on standby or maintenance there. But we were told if we didn’t accept these other jobs, we would be sent to the Army. So I decided that I’d go to Hanford. We’d heard a lot of stories about the rough times that the construction crowds that were at Hanford and the things that went on there, that wasn’t too appealing to us going. After we came out here, again, about the only clues I had as to what I was doing was this thermocouple bench and the book I read, which talked about gamma rays and alpha particles, neutrons, and that sort. So we did know that we were going to be working with those types of items. While I was up here, my wife wrote me and said that she had talked to a man on a streetcar or a bus there in Salt Lake, and when she said that her husband was working at Hanford, he told her that if she knew what was going on there—or if he knew what was going on there, he wouldn’t stay within a thousand miles of the place. So that was about the only thing that we had. As I mentioned before, the test reactor in 300 Area, the U-shaped cement, well after our clearances came through, we were of course allowed to go in there. We watched the graphite being placed in the reactor. I had the work to see that the ion chambers were placed underneath the reactor on tunnels that went underneath the reactor for the sensors for the nuclear flux monitors. We also used similar ion chambers around the building for area monitoring for health purposes. So when we started to load fuel, there again, we were just told to produce some radiation. We watched the loading by the instruments that we had in the control room. The control room was up on more about halfway on the floor, a second floor of the building, where we could look down at pretty well the side of the reactor. The control desk was at the backside of the control room, where we were pretty well shielded from the sight of the reactor by the side of the reactor. But as the front end of the control room had a bench with a lot of what we called pigs at that time—Geiger chambers inside of big lead cylinders. Two inches of lead around the thing to keep out any outside radiation. We had to put in the counters—these Geiger counters drove. But as we started to run tests, they began to fill the—put the fuel in the reactor, then we would watch the progress by the activity that we noted. As they would pull the rods out, after they got pretty well full of fuel, then these Geiger counters would take off. We could just see the counters just beginning to click and go up, and we knew that something was passing forth from the reactor to these Geiger counters. Of course, we were back, standing—kept us back out of the road. So we knew something was generating alpha particles or gamma rays at that time, that it would come through. But after we finally got to the point where the physicists said that we had sufficient in there, I think he said the power was one-and-a-half horsepower on there or something—or about 1,000 Watts, I think was the way he put it. So it was a very low level power that we were getting out of that reactor. The purpose of it was to test the fuel and the graphite that was going out to the B Reactor. We had channels that would go through the reactor that we’d load a channel up with graphite, and as we pushed that one channel of graphite in the reactor, it expelled a channel out the other side. So then we could tell a difference between the part expelled and the new stuff that came in. So we had these graphite standards that we used to test the purity of the graphite that was eventually going out to the B Reactor. And likewise we would load a channel of fuel and watch the difference as the fuel replaced the standard fuel that was moved out the other side. So that was the main thing that we did at that time. After they decided they had sufficient fuel in the reactor, then they closed it down and allowed the construction workers to come back in and put the cement wall on the fourth wall of the reactor up. It was put up in just big cement blocks. They had the construction workers wear gasmasks and such, I think just more or less to give them the wrong idea of probably what was going on in the place. One other thing of interest at that time, these what we call pencils, these radiation monitoring—which we’d carry around in our pockets, the first batch of those we received—and we were just told to wear them, that was before there was any radiation or anything at the plant. But we wanted to determined just what the decay rate would be on those pencils just around normal operation. So I can remember wearing a pencil and not knowing too much about them other than knowing that the principle, which we could read in this laboratory book that we had received. There, again, that was the only indication that we had of just exactly what was going on. Of course after we got to the B Reactor—oh, I might say as we first took a tour, they drove us out to the B Reactor, we could see where the present F—I think it was the F—and the D Reactors were there, just stacks of piles of valves and all sorts of construction materials there that was going into the future reactors. Taken up there, we were given a tour of the plant. I can’t remember too much of the particulars of how far advanced they were, but I did see Beckman pH meters in the water treatment plant area. Of course, I was familiar with the Beckman instruments. I had to do some work on them. And was made one of the shift supervisors. That came out of a sudden—they said that the man who was supposed to be the shift supervisor was still tied up with teaching a training school on instruments. So I had a three-day excursion of the plant and told that I had highly qualified technicians in the water house and in the water plant area, that my chief responsibility would be in the reactor building. The technician that they gave me—oh, I guess one of the first technicians I had in the 105 Building was Dick Thiel. He may still be around. We were very short on electronics people, because the services had grabbed all of the electronics people that was available at that time. So we were very shorthanded. The fact that I had my previous experience had been theater sound before the war. So I had some electronic experience that way. I was called up one day from the employment people. Said that they had a man there that they were going to send out to me, thought he might be a big help to me. His qualifications was the fact that he lived next door to a ham radio operator. [LAUGHTER] That was about the type of electronics people that we were getting at the plant. But even then, we were able to get the plant going on schedule and in good time. Interviewer Two: Go ahead. Interviewer One: Were there any—you mentioned the pencils. Were there badges worn, too, with the film in them at that time? McCullough: No, the badges came later. I don’t remember just when the badges came, but at first we just had the pencils. Interviewer One: A related question, then. Were you ever told, or was there anyone measuring radiation? I guess it was you, probably. Were you told of any concern for how much you should be in these zones per week or day or any talk about time limits at that time? McCullough: I believe there was. I don’t remember too much about when we were first told that 50 MR or 100 MR was a time. Our first indication—when I mentioned that we put the ion chambers—the neutron sensors underneath the reactor that had—the 305 Reactor in the 300 Area had quite large tunnels underneath there where we’d put these chambers underneath. And we were standing there by the instruments superintendent one day. And he says, don’t stand in front of that hole. That’s where the neutrons might come out. He said, they’re the mean little devils. [LAUGHTER] So we knew that there was neutrons and gamma rays. And of course, we knew that alpha particles were stopped by a sheet of paper or something. So there was not much worry about them unless they got into our bodies. So we did know the possible hazards there might be. But still, how much of a hazard, we weren’t too sure. Interviewer Two: Couple of questions. One, what did—visually, what did it look like? Was it still pretty dusty and hot? Were there dirt roads? How did you get around? Things like that. Just what did it look like? McCullough: Yeah, the city of Richland at that time, especially—I mentioned earlier I went to Los Angeles—they sent me to Los Angeles to school there. And then on my way back, I was able to go by Salt Lake and pick my wife up, and we came on back on train. All of our goods were shipped up here by car. We were taken into the transient quarters and told that, oh, we’d have to stay there overnight. That our furniture had arrived in our house that had been assigned to me, but it had not ever been arranged and it was all covered with dust. They told me at the time I asked to bring my wife up, I said, I want to bring her up with me when I came back from Los Angeles. They said that’d be a lot better to bring her back than if she had to come up when I was in Los Angeles. They said, if she got here during the dust storms, they said that she’d just turn around and go back. So we were somewhat prepared for that. One of the things that we remembered was, oh, these dust storms, there was so much construction—homes being built—that one of our youngsters, which was about three years old or two years old—by then, I guess it was the neighbors, too, if they were out in the yard sometimes we could hear them call out but we couldn’t see them because the dust was so thick. So— Interviewer Two: Just one thing I’m interested in, not having lived through those times, what was the sense of—I mean, I think there must have been a sense of being involved in something very important and in winning the war. But overall, how would you describe the feeling of the times? Was it rather—I mean, obviously, there’s a lot of tension. You heard about friends being killed. Just if you could recreate that wartime atmosphere, and what was at stake? If you could tell me a little bit about that. McCullough: Okay. As far as the security was concerned, my wife speaks—oh, at women’s clubs and associations, they very seldom ever talked about what their husbands were doing. And she said she had no idea what we were doing until we informed her that the bomb had been dropped. But we did know that whatever we were doing was of extreme importance for the war effort. Myself, knowing whether it would be a strong ray that would cause problems or just what—I wasn’t too sure. I did know that there was a great deal of heat generated. Our big problem was that we didn’t want to lose the cooling water to the reactor, for fear of a meltdown or something of that sort. We used to talk about, well, the backup we had for the cooling system. We had four big tanks—storage tanks in the 190 Building that would last us for so many hours. Then there was two high tanks of water that would last us for a little bit longer. My supervisor and I, one day we were talking, we were sitting in the valve pit and we were talking about how far away we could be [LAUGHTER] before the water ran out. But the problem was that B Reactor—we loaded the reactor up to what they called dry critical. It was just starting from the center and putting fuel in more or less a circular fashion, until it got out to what was considered dry critical. Then at that point, they stopped and connected the water supplies and started water flowing through the reactor, and tested. Then we continued the testing with the water through the reactor, and continually added fuel until— [VIDEO CUTS] McCullough: They loaded D to dry critical and then determined their characteristics that they had at that time. Of course, we were—a lot of the physicists were all betting on how much fuel it would take to reach dry critical. But instead of putting water in, then, they continued to load the reactor. And test and make sure that we had plenty of rods to take care of us. So we were able to load D Reactor completely full of fuel without any water. So then we knew that if we lost water at B Reactor, that we would be safe. But up until that time, it was still—talking about what might happen, the dangers involved and that sort of—we came out at the D Reactor on a Sunday to test for the response of the reactor at that time. And then we picked the time when there was very few workers there. It was on a Sunday. I think there was about three or four carloads of us went on out there and deactivated the safety rods so we could pull them out. Took some critical tests. I can’t remember what the speed was, but it was power of a double in a matter of a second or two—I don’t remember just what. By that time, we had a good idea, then, what the capabilities of this could be. Then, of course, we went back and very carefully deactivated all of the possibilities of pulling the rods up and went on home. Getting back to the B Reactor, during the startup there, after we loaded the fuel to wet critical, and then fully loaded the reactor, then tried to start up. I guess everything seemed to go along all right, but as far as increasing power until they got up to certain levels, then the power started to drop off. Nobody seemed to know at that time just what was happening. There was a lot of fear that if it dropped down to, say, zero power, we’d never be able to get it started again. At that time, they brought in all of the top physicists and such. Enrico Fermi was out here at that time. We were introduced to him as Dr. Farmer. Some of the fellows that I worked with that had come from Oak Ridge, they were quite concerned—they made quite light out of that, because they said here, we sat in lectures at Oak Ridge where Enrico Fermi lectured to us and we called him by name. But out here, he was Dr. Farmer. We all—other than just amongst ourselves, we indicated that, but I did know who I was talking to at the time. He would ask me in the control room, oh, where does this Beckman get its supply from? What was the location of this particular one? I think there was three of the Beckmans we had in the safety circuit. Of course, we were running with the rods all open and very concerned that if there should be a sudden turnaround, that we would be able—the safety circuits would shut us down all right. But here they were getting to the point where they were going off scale, downward, [INAUDIBLE]. So the next thing was to go and reposition the chambers to more advantageous spot to—I think previously, we had to leave them about half withdrawn from the risers that came up into the reactor in order to keep the instruments on scale during the early testing. But here we were losing power, getting to the point where it would get down so low that we had bare reading. And they were concerned about bypassing them while we changed the chambers. We had to do that. But the cables that we were using at that time were very sensitive to static charges. And of course these micro-microammeters were very sensitive to static charges that they would swing full scale with anybody rubbing a cable or moving a cable on the sensors. So we had to be very careful when we were in the vicinity of these signal cables. They would say, well, here, we’re going to have to bypass this chamber, or this Beckman. Do you know exactly which chamber that is to? And will you go down there and reposition that? So it was very interesting to go through that. We did reposition to the most sensitive range, but none—it turned out that I was on a weekend off—I think I was off—my shift was off for two days. During that time, the reactor turned around and started coming back. My neighbor who was an instrument supervisor, he came over to my house and said, well, the baby—a babe was born. It turned around. So I wasn’t actually out there at the time that the thing turned around. But I do remember, and I appreciate the opportunity I had of working with that Dr. Farmer. One of the other things that I remember is the physicist that he with him was a woman, Dr. Marshall. She had a two-foot slide rule that she was manipulating very fast and all. Of course in those days that was about the best calculators that we had, was these long slide rules. Interviewer One: I think when I talked to you by phone, you mentioned a story of you being in the control room and they were waiting for the startup. The people had retreated—the managers had retreated in the office where you could see them, but not hear what they had to say. And then you had asked your manager when he came out, what was going on? Do you remember that? McCullough: I don’t remember that. Interviewer One: Oh. I thought that was you, positioning monitors. Maybe-- McCullough: No, that was right in the control room. Usually there was quite a number standing around, watching the response of the instruments. Interviewer One: It might have been another instrument person that—well, the story in essence was they could see Fermi and all the other people behind the glass doors. McCullough: Yeah, but, she would be—Dr. Marshall—was mainly in the back room. Interviewer One: Right, and it looked like a pretty hot time in there. And then when his boss came out he asked him, well, what went on in there? And he said, oh, we were just making up a pool on the next startup. McCullough: Oh. Interviewer One: That was the story, but I guess it wasn’t yours. McCullough: No, that wasn’t me. The pool on that—I didn’t know anything about it. Interviewer One: I thought it was a neat story, because it kind of showed the confidence everybody had that— McCullough: Yeah, there was one other physicist out here that they called Dr. Stone, and I don’t remember what his true name was, it’s just what he was. Interviewer Two: Oh, I guess the next thing, the story of—you said earlier that you didn’t really know that it was a bomb until you heard that it was a bomb. Can you—how did you hear about it, and what connections did you make at that time? McCullough: We were sitting around the lunch table in the instruments shop. I think it was in D Area at the time, when I received a phone call. I was told that they had dropped the bomb on Japan as a result of our work here, that I could make that announcement to the instrument technicians that were sitting around the table. That was quite a surprise. We had—oh, I can’t remember what I visualized could happen at that time, how it was. I don’t know whether—I can’t remember just what the responses were of the people, but I can remember I didn’t waste too much time to call my wife and tell her. Interviewer One: What were the responses after—well, the second one, and then the fact that the war was over? If you have anything to say about that, that might be of interest. How was the feeling out there? McCullough: Oh, we were all of course very proud of the fact of what hand we had in that. Even though how disastrous it was to over there, it did save a lot of our soldiers’ lives. The fact that the prospects of the nuclear age and being in at the beginning of it and what we could make of it in the future was quite interesting. I don’t know whether I have anything more. Interviewer Two: Anything that you’d like to say about the whole experience? I mean, just in a few sentences, what was it like to be involved, and was that a significant time in your life? McCullough: That was very significant for me, because, actually I feel like I had a great opportunity here. I’d had a great opportunity, because I came up here as an instrument technician. I’d had—oh, some years in college, but I hadn’t finished college. The fact that they were short on electronics people, they gave me great opportunities for me to advance and actually become—go into engineering work. Interviewer Two: Were you an employee of the DuPont company? McCullough: Yes. Interviewer Two: Was that a good company to work for? McCullough: Yes, at Utah Ordinance Plant, I was working for Remington Arms, which was a subsidiary of DuPont. And then I got referred to going up to Washington to work for DuPont. And we worked there ‘til—oh, ’46 or ’47 I guess, when GE took over from DuPont. Interviewer One: One thing, I wondered if you’d had anything to say. You’ve already given the impression that in most cases, the wives knew very little. Was this any kind of a problem explaining to your spouse that you really couldn’t tell her—how did they accept that idea? McCullough: I don’t think so. We didn’t seem to—from what I remember—have much problem with it. Because they realized that it was the war effort, and it was their part to go along with this on that. Interviewer One: Okay. Is that why she wanted to be here, perhaps to hear it all? [LAUGHTER] McCullough: No, when she mentioned about the—I guess the streetcars at that time, in Salt Lake—and when she was on the streetcar and this comment that one fellow made to her. Then I thought that might be good to bring out here. Some words had got around about, something great was going on here that would have a big effort on the war effort. And just how it would come about, but they figured it was a lot of danger here, if it was going to be— Interviewer One: Did you hear that concern expressed by any employee, that it might be a dangerous place, and have any apprehension about it? McCullough: Oh, not that I know of. I think that we all became quite aware of the fact, too, that we were concerned about enemy bombing and the fact that we had air corps—air bases all around here that we were being protected, so we knew that whatever we were doing probably had a big effort in how the outcome of the war would come. So we knew it would be some sort of a means of demolishing the enemy. And just how that would be wasn’t too—I wasn’t too sure in that; I don’t think a lot of us were. Those that came from Oak Ridge probably had a lot more insight on it than what we did. Interviewer One: Was there any information released on the first test bomb in this country? As far as the plant was concerned? McCullough: Not that I know of. There probably was, but I wasn’t made aware of it. Interviewer One: Mm-hmm. Okay. That’s pretty good. Interviewer Two: Yeah. [VIDEO CUTS] Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:28:59 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 224kbps 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 Dee McCullough Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Dee McCullough for the B Reactor Museum Association. McCullough was a Instrumentation Supervisor at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/15/1991 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F858b254533c40aebcbc0ef0ded0cf703.mpg 710bba527acfa31acb9e194b1a626213 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Blake Miller Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound BLAKE MILLER INTERVIEW- Recorded on 6/8/93 Tom Putnam: All right. If you could first tell us your name, and most of the time you have to look at Greger. Talk to Greger. Tell us your name, and what you were doing before you heard about Hanford and how you ended up here. Blake Miller: Well, my name is Blake Miller and I hail from the state of Iowa, town of Fort Dodge, Iowa. And to come out here was because I was a washout of Officers’ Candidate School for the military; they gave me that famous classification of being F. From there, I went home when they released me from the induction camp which was at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. And by the time the next morning rolled around I had all kinds of offers for government jobs—postal long distance, Teletrans, you name it, people I’d never heard of were offering me the opportunity to go to work for Uncle Sam. So, I was bound and determined I was going back to school, but my mind began to change rapidly. And so there’s where I got into it. I finally wound up going to the Federal Security Agency. And the Federal Security Agency, I believe I would be correct in saying that there were all kinds of other agencies already in existence, or new ones that were coming forth by Uncle Sam, like one, the National Youth Administration, the Federal Manpower Commission. Next thing you know I was being maneuvered around to—I didn’t know from one week to another which one I was going to be working for, except if I get my calls, and that’s the way it happened. Greg Greger: They were all short of bodies. Miller: All short of bodies, that’s correct. So anyway, I even got close enough to—well, I went to Duluth, Minnesota. With that, it was with the Federal Manpower Commission. The Federal Manpower Commission, they had the National Youth Administration. So then I was assigned to that. In my own schooling I had—my father had always said, be prepared for more than one occupation. So that’s always gone through my mind, so one of the things I was certified in arc and acetylene welding, and I had my certification in that. I also took a job printing education, and I served my apprenticeship working in a print shop. This was all while I was going to school. So these various things where these government jobs came up, they were putting me into slots where they needed a warm body and sometimes they hit the right one. So I wound up substituting as the instructor in various courses of the National Youth Administration. These were kids out of high school or through school. Maybe they were from the rural areas, and they wanted to get in and make some of this good money. But they had to learn how—whether it was electronics, they had to learn that, and we offered that service. They had to learn how to read blueprints and maps, and we offered that service. Maybe some of them wanted to be welders, and they had to learn that. Sheet metal work, you name it, Uncle Sam was offering it, and we had instructors doing this. And so I wound up at one stage being a timekeeper of all these kids. Because they were coming from miles away, and we’re providing housing for them as well as board and room—and they would take these classes and we ran around the clock, by the way. And this was in Duluth, Minnesota. Now, you’re in the Iron Range up in that area, and the iron ore cars would come down and dump raw material in these big ships and then go on to the smelters from there. I got involved in so many things. And then recreation for the centers, they were like small overnight campuses that would develop—girls in one and fellows in the other. And we had to have recreation programs and rec leaders. It just seemed I was moving around all the time. And then one time they needed some help in recruitment; this was in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. I was sent there for a while, and I worked out of the United States Employment service. And they had special facilities because at that time, during the war, all the construction jobs and the demand for people’s skills, every—well, DuPont was recruiting personnel, Boeing was recruiting personnel, Uncle Sam was recruiting personnel, Douglas Aircraft—all these, as well as the United States Employment Service was doing theirs. But all these other people were in there helping them; that’s where they were headquartered. So when people went to the United States Employment Service, here were all these various avenues. And I got acquainted with the people in DuPont. And being the youngest one in the whole layout, I think, I didn’t know anybody, but I soon got acquainted. And it soon came out that I was working for Uncle Sam, and these guys were making much more money than I was, but I was fulfilling my obligation by working for Uncle Sam in a war-needed service. So, somehow, I found out through my acquaintances with these other groups that DuPont and I got along just fine, and I could start at DuPont at double the salary I was getting from Uncle Sam and having to pay my own room and board outside of that, and having to wear a suit all the time. That’s how I got here. Finally, I got signed up with them and it was okayed by Washington, DC, I presume, wherever--whoever hired me back there-- Greger: So this was your first DuPont job. Miller: That’s correct. Greger: What did they tell you about it, if anything? Miller: Not much more than what I was told in the recruiting, from other people. It’s a military installation, out in the state of Washington. Whereabouts in Washington would be the question. Well, it’s at Pasco, Washington. I couldn’t find Pasco on the map and I don’t think anybody else could. But at any rate, that was the general answer. Well, what are they doing out there? I can’t tell you. We have requests for this type of—if you’re a cement worker or an iron worker, a carpenter, welder, whatever, or any background degree that you have, we need to know about it so if we can use you, we’ll take you. Provided everything is—after it’s all appraised and looked at. So that’s what we did. So anyway I would up coming out here, because it sounded interesting to me. Had no idea what I was coming to. I got off the train like everybody else, in Pasco, after midnight, I know that. And a car met me; everybody else got on buses, I say everybody else, I was looking out for myself, and my mother traveled with me. My mother traveled with me because of my allergies. I was in bad shape when I left back there, back in Minnesota. And to show you what kind of shape I was in, when we hit Fargo, North Dakota on the train, I stopped and a doctor came on and gave me a shot in the arm. And it came that way all through someplace—the last time was in Montana, and we crossed that Continental Divide, and I was sound asleep, but I never had a problem after we crossed that Continental Divide. None of the other doctors had to get on the train at all. I think all in all, the train ride stopped three times just for a doctor to get on and treat me. When I got out here, my mother went with the women, but here was a car waiting for me. I went to what’s called the New Pasco Hotel, and my mother did, too, only trouble is I went in a vehicle and she went in a bus. [LAUGHTER] And I had a room all to myself. My mother had to share one with another lady that she’d never laid eyes on in her life. Next morning I was picked up and went to the gray building. In the gray building, here was the head of DuPont recruitment and the head of personnel over there, in the gray building in Pasco and I’ll be darned if it wasn’t Curly Schafer and he was the guy that got me into all this trouble to begin with. [LAUGHTER] Greger: Well, that was interesting. A friendly face, or maybe not that friendly. Miller: He was. But here he was, and I wondered why I was being treated differently—they had something all lined up for me. Greger: It had been prearranged. Miller: Prearranged. So I remember coming through Kennewick—well, I remember going down the street in Pasco at night when I got in. I said to the driver—this was in September—I said, golly, what’s all this white stuff, you get snow here already or what is it? Well, they’d just had a horrible dust storm, and you could see the tire tracks on the street. And he said, oh, it’s just a little dust on the street. We had a windstorm last night. Oh! Well, it didn’t bother me, but anyway, here we were. Putnam: When was this, what month did you arrive of what year? And what did it look like when you got here? Miller: September 1943. As I said, I was due about three times earlier than that by way of rail, but health-wise I wasn’t in a condition to travel. I would have, had I known now, I could have met my original date which was a couple of months earlier, had I known that the medication would have been available to me and all that. Putnam: So that was pretty early. Miller: Yes, it was. Putnam: So what was state of things here when you got here? Miller: In Hanford? Putnam: Hanford and Richland. Miller: Okay. I remember coming across the old bridge between Pasco and Kennewick, and that one town was Pasco, one was Kennewick. And I was eyeing everything, and I remember most of all, when we were headed toward Richland, all this gravel road, which was still George Washington Way—I say still George Washington Way—I don’t know what its name was then, maybe it was George Washington Way. Greger: Columbia Avenue. Miller: Is that what it was? Yeah, you’re right, it was. Because we went through Columbia Park and that was the main highway then. Then came right on through Richland and I remember the old house which was on the corner of the driveway that goes into the Hanford House now and where the new dental building is on George Washington Way. Almost across street, down a little further north of Richland Bell Furniture. But the original buildings, like the—one of them had a gas pump out in front of it, and there was a bank on my right side coming in as I was going north was a bank building on the corner, a concrete block building, which now has some offices in it, and that’s where the Village Theater was built, attached to that still coming north and so forth. Then primarily, very little—there was what you’d call a wide spot in the road as far as Hanford was concerned. Because there was—you could count the number of buildings probably on both hands, and one was a little building about the size of a hen house, but it was brick, and I don’t recall what was in there, unless it was controls for the irrigation or something. It was on the left side of Columbia Drive. Greger: Where did you end up in your assignment? Miller: In my assignment, I ended up in Hanford. And who I reported to up there I don’t recall at the particular moment, except I went through the general personnel office. And they had all my papers and said I was in barracks so-and-so and room such-and-such and that was it. Next morning I was to report to a man by the name Radice, and his nickname was—they called him Buzz Radice. Right now, I couldn’t tell you what his first name was. He was my supervisor in public relations. So I did a number of things, then, in public relations. Putnam: What would a public relations job—what did you do? Miller: Well, at that point in time, we had several things going on in public relations. One was the orientation of all employees coming on the site. Didn’t care what the contractor was that they were coming for, they all had to go through orientation. I had a taste of that, and there was a crew of us that that’s all they did. And we had some people who were not acquainted with working in masses doing the same type of work. So one of my main stints was job relationship training—job—you might say relationship communications was a big thing. Because you had Carpenter Foreman, Carpenter Foreman, and Carpenter Foreman. They had to get along and they had to know how to communicate with each other. So I did a lot of that job management training. Same thing, you’d have various supervisors for their companies, and they had to get along with the other supervisors of the other companies who were doing the same thing but another segment of it, you see. So public relations did a little bit of everything. Like in March, we would file income tax. I remember that one vividly, because there were people out there who had no help of any kind to help them fill out their tax returns. So the IRS sent, if I recall correctly, approximately 50 people to help at Hanford, who had no idea any more than we did who were working there, where they were going or what their assignment was going to be other than income tax filing. So we were all trained by these people. And again, we used the public relations building, and we’d have rows of desks, and we’d have IRS, DuPont, IRS, DuPont. And I forget, there must have been close to 100 people, near 50/50, I think, there was 50 IRS people and 50 DuPont people 19:27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:28:21 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 224kbps 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 Blake Miller Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Blake Miller for the B Reactor Museum Association. Miller was a Draftsman at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 6/8/1993 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F96073730f56be130f3328aca307353df.MP3 466fe150c3a60f5d0b8a7382a0973fdf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffcd5fc2a84d8671b511fda204e7d00a2.MP3 65a76b09f55860805c190166b369d541 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Gene Weisskopf Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed William V. Baumgartner Location The location of the interview Home of William Baumgartner Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Interview of William V. Baumgartner on audio tape (not video) at his home in Richland, WA April 11, 2001 Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA Keywords: “200 Area”, “T Plant”, chemistry TAPE 1 SIDE A WEISSKOPF: Can you give me your name and… BAUMGARTNER: My name is William Vincent Baumgartner. WEISSKOPF: And today’s date. BAUMGARTNER: Today is what, April 11th, the year 2001. WEISSKOPF: I don’t care what direction we go, I am interested in maybe, just, how about briefly what were you were doing before you came here? BAUMGARTNER: Oh, I came straight out of school. Got my degree on June 11th and I signed on on the 15th. WEISSKOPF: Did you come here specifically from your degree? BAUMGARTNER: Yes. I had two job opportunities. One was DuPont back east. The other one was Hanford here, with GE here. I didn’t have enough money to get back east so I took this one. WEISSKOPF: What was your degree in? BAUMGARTNER: Chemistry. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Which you would expect. WEISSKOPF: ____(unclear) been a lot of work here? BAUMGARTNER: Right. When we came in, we were tech rads. There were 500 of us. WEISSKOPF: Every year there were 500? BAUMGARTNER: No, because they were stocking chemists for REDOX. WEISSKOPF: And what year was that? BAUMGARTNER: 1951. WEISSKOPF: Was that the fall or? BAUMGARTNER: We came in June and REDOX went online, I think, in ’52 or ’53, and so they were getting us prepared. Think about it, all of these were Q-cleared people so it took several months in my case. It took from June until the end of August. At which time we then went to, I went to T Plant and I was in T Plant from August of ’51 until November of ’52. And at that time we had a lot of changes, a lot of new supervision. The supervisors were changing because B Plant was shutting down or shut down, and so we were picking up those supervisors plus all the new chemists that were wandering through. In the original, from 1945 until at that time, there was only one shift chemist and we had four shifts, you know A, B, C, D shifts, which means we were working 7 days a week from the clock. The plant never shut down, it didn’t even shut down for holidays. WEISSKOPF: But you were working normal 8-hour days. BAUMGARTNER: Normal 8-hour days 5 days a week, and see you’d work swing, days, and graveyard. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, and they rotated them rather quickly right? BAUMGARTNER: Well, it would be like 7 graveyards… WEISSKOPF: 7 weeks or 7 days. BAUMGARTNER: No 7 days. Every 28-day was a cycle. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. I think they have changed that since then. BAUMGARTNER: Well, it depends. They might be working 10-hour shifts. We don’t have anything now “operating” that needs to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At that time no one wanted to shut the plants down. We were going into, at that time, the cold war and things were getting really sticky because we knew that the Russians had weapons and they were making lots of them. So we were just in the process of making more and better than anybody else. WEISSKOPF: So when you arrived, things were gearing up? BAUMGARTNER: We were gearing up for REDOX. B Plant shut down. T Plant was going to shut down as soon as REDOX got going because REDOX was built to handle not only all of the material that our reactors could produce but what Savannah River could produce; it was that big a plant. WEISSKOPF: Were they going to ship stuff out here? BAUMGARTNER: They did. They actually did. Our material that we made here had what was called the lowest MWd material, megawatt days per ton, that was a unit of measurement. Our plutonium was what we call 500 megawatt days per ton. Savannah River reactors were quite large and they couldn’t give us any material that had less than 1,000 megawatt days per ton, and so we had to end up blending to ours in order to get a weapon that… What do you know about plutonium? WEISSKOPF: More than the general layperson. BAUMGARTNER: Okay, plutonium as it comes from the reactor, what you really want is plutonium 239 and you don’t want 240 and 241. The higher the MWd the more 240 and 241 is in the plutonium, which is not a weapon. WEISSKOPF: And it ends up in your finished product… BAUMGARTNER: Right, and you can separate that out easily. You just can’t, not with what we’ve got. That’s plutonium and we use a chemical reaction to get the plutonium separated from everything. WEISSKOPF: Would a 1,000 megawatt day have more… BAUMGARTNER: 240 and 241, and that’s not a good weapon material so we blended it with our 500 and basically ____ (unclear) 750 megawatt days per ton which was our weapons. And the material that we got from the reactors would sit out in the reactor, in the basins, or in 200 R Area basin for at least 60 days for cooling off. So the law of the short half-life materials were gone and then we would bring it into T Plant cask. 1,500 pounds of metal, dissolve that up, separate the plutonium out of that at T Plant using a bismuth phosphate ____ (s/l coprecipitator) in the front end of the canyon and then we would transfer it over to 224, and then they would use allantoin. Allantoin brings now more plutonium for less. In other words, the precipitation is such that there is more plutonium per pound on the ____ (s/l precipity) than there is with bismuth, but bismuth doesn’t bring down fission products in uranium, where as lanthanum would have a tendency to bring out some of these other things. To give you a little insight, at the time when we were running this we were literally using up all the bismuth that was being mined in America. Does that tell ya? So, in other words, we were using a lot of bismuth. WEISSKOPF: And throwing it out each batch? BAUMGARTNER: That was all going into the waste tanks. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Every bit of it, that’s in the waste tanks. One of these days, we’ll mine that. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: You know cause it’s… Anyway, T Plant, then the canyon building had the bismuth extract from the dissolver, and the volume. The final volume of the plutonium was, I think, something on…. if you can get a hold of a C-Manual. WEISSKOPF: I’ve got it. BAUMGARTNER: Have you? It is a very large book WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: That will tell you chemically everything you need to know. That was classified TS in 1950. Only a few people got a chance to read that, I was one of them. WEISSKOPF: When you came here did they sit you down with something like that, or? BAUMGARTNER: Well, I was in a very interesting position. When I went to T Plant, the laboratory 222-T, my first assignment…Now we had three chemists instead of one, so my first assignment was to go to 271-T laboratory, which was a “cold” laboratory. In other words, we weren’t handling any of the reactor materials. This was cold solutions that we were using to make these strikes, you know, as we were going up the process. There were like six solutions that we had to make up for this process. Recognize the C-Manual was written from test tube chemistry to this 1,800 foot long canyon building, and so in the early days when they got to operating they didn’t hesitate to make two or three bismuth strikes to get all of the plutonium out, because they wanted the plutonium. But as time went on, making multi-strikes when a single strike should work is what they were going for and when I got there they were averaging three strikes to get all of the plutonium out of a batch. WEISSKOPF: Another word for strike is… BAUMGARTNER: Is where you precipitate down with bismuth and you ended up having to use three times before you could get all of the plutonium out. Okay, then I went into 271-T Laboratory where we did the cold chemistry. Read the C-Manual, and it turns out that in the C-Manual, if you look at it very carefully the variance on the chemicals that you could use, when it said 6 normal it didn’t mean 4-1/2 or 5, it meant say like 5.8 to 6.2. Well, what was happening is that we weren’t quite as careful, our laboratory had gotten dirty over the years and so we were walking outside the limits. Even though we were saying it was 6.0, it really wasn’t for a lot of reasons. One is dirty tools, dirty laboratory, and the other is our standards weren’t good, weren’t as good as they could have been. I got in there and I got the dubious job of trying to figure out how we can get it so we can get down to one. And we did that, it took me about a month and we cleaned up all the chemical, all the glassware, went down and got a brand new set of calibrations that was really very fine, that had to meet the specifications. And then when that happened, we went down to a single strike and we were able to get the plutonium out. When that happened, operations then glommed onto me and says “ We can’t take any more chances, this guy is going to do that all the time.” So I ended up making solutions for about three or four months. WEISSKOPF: Your talking about major gallons of solutions ____ (unclear)? BAUMGARTNER: Yes, yeah yeah approximately. WEISSKOPF: The cold chemicals that they were using. BAUMGARTNER: Right, the cold chemicals that were used right. And they have to be made up to specification. Yeah, we made like 500 gallons at a crack, type of thing. Ferrous sulfate, we only made like 50 gallons and we used 50 gallons. That was not something that you could leave hanging around, which they did and then therefore the ferrous sulfate solution wasn’t as strong as it should have been, even though yesterday or the day before we measured it and it was like say, so much normality, and it turns out the next day if you leave it sit in the same ____(unclear) it is gonna be a lot less. That was part of the problem and we got that cleaned up, and when we did, then they decided oh golly, we’re now one strike per run, well let’s see if we can’t make a run, a real just see how much this plant could really have produced. And they never had in the earlier days, you know when they only had F, H, and D, in the very early days, the reactors. See and then the R came on and B Plant, you know and F, B, and C Plant, and then the two. When they came, you know as they got more and more, then these B and T Plant they didn’t have to be efficient because they had enough capability to process it all. However, when they were going to go to REDOX they just wanted to see what the plant could really do, and it turned out they could do a lot more than they had thought. WEISSKOPF: What was the turn around time when you got there, generally, for when they dumped the fuel into the dissolver until it was ____(unclear) BAUMGARTNER: I don’t know is that declassified yet? In other words, each run was equivalent to a half a piece. WEISSKOPF: When you say run your assuming 1,500… BAUMGARTNER: Grams, 1,500 grams of plutonium. WEISSKOPF: From 1,500 tons. BAUMGARTNER: From 1,500 pounds. WEISSKOPF: A ton and a half. BAUMGARTNER: A ton and a half… WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: …well about a ton. I don’t know about the halves, about a ton of metal. Depended on the… WEISSKOPF: Metric tons or English tons? Yeah…yeah, I’ll have to look this up. BAUMGARTNER: You have to look in the, C-Manual will tell you. WEISSKOPF: They go back and forth even in there. BAUMGARTNER: I thought the C-Manual will say 1,500 pounds. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: In a batch. WEISSKOPF: That sounds right to me. BAUMGARTNER: And so it wasn’t quite a ton, it was about ¾ of a ton. Anyway, that’s, look at the C-Manual and it will tell you. You know, for the specific amount. WEISSKOPF: From the time that you put it in until the time it was heading out of the 200 Area, or lets say out of… BAUMGARTNER: No, out of the back end of T Plant before it went down to 231, 234-5 building it would, when I first got there it would take about a day, three shifts. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: When we did our master run, it didn’t take a shift. WEISSKOPF: When you fine-tuned it and got it down to one ____ (s/l precipity). BAUMGARTNER: Right. WEISSKOPF: So that’s like, we’ll call it eight hours, that you could… BAUMGARTNER: About 10 hours is what it was actually. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Boy that was a lot of stuff. So the old plants could have produced a lot, we wouldn’t have needed REDOX, but REDOX just had so much capability. Then REDOX had its problems and it wasn’t very long when we found out what its problem was because the hexone got nitrated. WEISSKOPF: No chemist had predicted that? BAUMGARTNER: No they hadn’t, they didn’t think that trinitro hexone was going to do what TNT does, but it did. And so we had some pops in some of the vessels. And so when that happened, well then we went to PUREX. WEISSKOPF: When you were at T Plant, basically, they had fine-tuned the process over those years. BAUMGARTNER: No, no. WEISSKOPF: Not to what you really could have done. BAUMGARTNER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. BAUMGARTNER: Right. They were willing to take basically one run per day. WEISSKOPF: And that was taken care of… BAUMGARTNER: That was taking care of everything needed, which they knew that wouldn’t be the future, but it was enough to satisfy the military needs. You know, when you had B and T, so that basically gave you a weapon a day. WEISSKOPF: So you were spending most of your time in a lab, and not a hot lab. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah well, I lasted there two months up in the cold lab. Then they says well Bill you gotta come on down to the hot lab, we can’t let you stay up there forever. So what we did then is we moved the cold lab over to 222 T so I could do that hot work and the cold work. WEISSKOPF: Oh, they put them both together. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, well, we cleaned off one side and we put all the cold chemicals in there so they went and brought all the samples over to the T, you know 222 T, and then I at the same time got the chance then to do the hot stuff. And it turned out that the two things that I ended up doing, I hadn’t educated from, because everything is pipetting. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: Okay, and the final solution was based on 5 lambda, so you weren’t allowed to go very much over the mark and just exactly to the mark, and then you had to make double dilutions. So you were making some very interesting high-dilutions in order for the counter to count and you had to be within a fairly narrow… And we were having a hard time without reruns running the final solution, you know that went down to 231, just to get the right count for the accountability, because that was the first accountability. WEISSKOPF: How many samples would you do in one batch as it went through? That’s what you’re talking about now? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, one sample. Well, you had many samples from the batch because you would have the dissolver solution, and then you would have the first strike, and then you would have the first strike waste because you… WEISSKOPF: What would you test in the dissolver? I mean, wasn’t that just ____ (s/l dissolvent and dissolve) it and move it on and that’s it? BAUMGARTNER: No, the dissolver solution was where we tried to get the first guess at how much plutonium was in the metal. Because see… WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. BAUMGARTNER: And so that when you got it at the back end of the process it had better match. WEISSKOPF: Back up one step farther, the people at the reactors had estimates of what should be in based on the number of hours in the reactor. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, but it depended on where in the reactor it was. WEISSKOPF: Right, how close was that? And when you guys did the first test in the dissolver, that was your first chemical analysis ____ (unclear) BAUMGARTNER: That’s the first. WEISSKOPF: Were they usually close to estimates? Did you argue with the reactor guys about what was in there? BAUMGARTNER: All the time… WEISSKOPF: Oh. BAUMGARTNER: …all the time. WEISSKOPF: In what way? BAUMGARTNER: Well, when you’d get 1,100 grams instead of 1,500 grams. WEISSKOPF: At the end… BAUMGARTNER: Or when you’d get it in the dissolver, what happened to the other 400 grams? You know. Did we lose it? You see, then when the discrepancy was too large then you had to rerun everything. Gotta go back and get another sample of the dissolver solution and then see what the hell…and then if it matched what you took the…Because remember now sampling is a real art. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: These guys had some, you know your only taking two drops and you know that has got to be representative of what’s in there, and… WEISSKOPF: Against how many gallons? . BAUMGARTNER: Like 500 gallons. So, right off of the bat you’ve got an interesting problem. At that time, not too much was statistics and known. We had arbitrary limits and they were as arbitrary as they thought we could meet ‘em based on the laboratory, you know, having a test tube type technology versus 500 gallons is a whole different world. And so we were having our sweats, so that when you fell out of the limits, and that should be in the C-Manual, those numbers… I know what they are but I am not sure if it’s always… If it’s in the C-Manual you can publish it real easy. I hate to give you information that I am not absolutely sure… WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: …has been released. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, and to tell you the truth the specifics are less important then the generality. BAUMGARTNER: Oh, I got you okay. WEISSKOPF: Always more better than…just to get a general idea what it was. Here is a couple of things from the Tech Manual. The, well here’s the dissolver flow sheet, sort of a check list, the log, the recipe. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eight buckets of 105 each at 3,800 gallons of sodium nitrate dissolver 3-5 hours at 4-1/2 ____(unclear), okay. Heat dissolver to boiling and add 1,100 pounds of sodium hydroxide, digest for two hours. Okay they have released everything, alright good. Good, good, good, good. So, large quantities, these always are big big deals. So the original solution comes in, its you know like 5,100, you know ____ (unclear) 5,100 pounds, okay. That’s 5,300 gallons, 500 gallons basically. Okay, when it comes off the back end with plutonium it’s about 15 gallons. When it comes off the back end at 224 it’s about 5 gallons. When it comes off the back end at 231 it was a liter and a half, and when it comes off the back end at 234-5 it’s a piece of metal, okay, so that’s, okay. 5,000 pounds is the general guess and the solutions are large. You know, you… WEISSKOPF: And how much was in a sample that came into the hot lab? BAUMGARTNER: Two drops. WEISSKOPF: Two which? BAUMGARTNER: Two drops. WEISSKOPF: And that was so radioactive they had to put it in a shield? BAUMGARTNER: Yes, 3, 3 inches. WEISSKOPF: How could two drops be so radioactive you have put it in a shield? To a layperson that doesn’t sound like much. BAUMGARTNER: It was called a doorstop and in it was a bayonet point and in there was just two drops. WEISSKOPF: And you didn’t just pull out the test tubes? BAUMGARTNER: Hell no. We had a tool that went into the doorstop, grabbed our 25 lambda sample. WEISSKOPF: What’s a lambda? BAUMGARTNER: A lambda is a thousandth of a cc. WEISSKOPF: It was how many of those? BAUMGARTNER: 25, that’s 0.025 cc’s. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: At two drops, I don’t even remember what two drops is anymore, but I can tell you right now it ain’t a hell of a lot because if you reran a doorstop three times you were out of solution. So, it’s about 100 lambda. WEISSKOPF: You could run it three times? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: You could run it three times, then you had to take a new solution. We never went past two, but you could run up to three. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: If you couldn’t get them to match, if you couldn’t the, you know, the two of them to match because one operator would be one and another operator would then run the other run. So you had two guys running the doorstop and they had to match within a given value and if they did then you went on. That became God’s law about what the plutonium concentration was. WEISSKOPF: You were looking for plutonium in two drops out of 500 gallons? BAUMGARTNER: Yes. WEISSKOPF: And, what you were looking for is the percentage of plutonium… BAUMGARTNER: You wanted to come up with a number like say 1,500 grams of what’s in that tank. If it was outside of specifications then you didn’t grab that out of the cement, but there was a limit, 1,500 grams plus or minus a 100 grams for instance; just as a case in point. So that if you got 1,350 and your two guys got 1,350, then they had to go back and resample because it’s supposed to be between 1,400 and 1,600 grams okay? So now they resample. If the second sample now agreed with the first one, then that’s what became…then they says ah-ha, there is not 1,500 grams in there, and there’s whatever the number was. WEISSKOPF: How close would it have to be before you called an agreement? BAUMGARTNER: What? WEISSKOPF: If the first guy came up with 1,500, how close could the second one be… BAUMGARTNER: It had to be within 50. We were allowed to have, you know the two had to be within 50 of 1,500 grams. WEISSKOPF: Back it up one more step. You would then take your number…Let’s say you get an accurate number and you say ‘ but the reactor guys are saying, you know, 1,800.’ BAUMGARTNER: Alright, if it was supposed to be 1,800 and we say got 1,500 then we had to back and resample. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: …because it could be the two drops we got wasn’t quite representative of the solution, so we got another one. If those two agreed within say 100, then we said that’s what the number is. However, if two of them did not agree within 100, you know within say 100 grams then we got a third sample and two out of three. WEISSKOPF: Now if yours are agreeing, but they are different from what the reactor guys estimated… BAUMGARTNER: Then this is what we took. WEISSKOPF: You took your numbers and said we’ll talk about it later. BAUMGARTNER: That’s the way we go. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And so that when got out to the back end of 271 T, the last solution out of there, then that had to check. In other words we couldn’t… WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: And if it did check fine, and if it didn’t check then we had to go back do the resampling. Because see there you weren’t using a doorstop. WEISSKOPF: Hadn’t you already lost all the, after you do the percentage… BAUMGARTNER: Oh…you leave them in the tanks. WEISSKOPF: You leave them in the tank until your all done and then you would send it to the waste. BAUMGARTNER: Right. See that’s what I’m…you leave solutions, they sit there. These solutions, they just sat there until the run got accepted. When the run got accepted then you could just pump the stuff to the tank farms. Does that make any sense to you? WEISSKOPF: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Okay, you’ve got everything here that you need. WEISSKOPF: It’s enough to get a good idea of how things ran. BAUMGARTNER: Right, right. WEISSKOPF: What we’re looking for and the kind of… BAUMGARTNER: And these percentages had to be right because they were now recalculated in terms of what the solution had to be that we are going to be adding. You know like 6% or whatever the percentage was and it wasn’t allowed to deviate very far. WEISSKOPF: Your saying based on the amount of plutonium that was in the solution? BAUMGARTNER: No, based on this, it is the amount of metal that you dissolve. WEISSKOPF: It’s what? BAUMGARTNER: It was the amount of metal you dissolve. We always dissolved the same amount of metal. WEISSKOPF: It was the batch size, not however much plutonium… BAUMGARTNER: Right, that’s what regulated the amount of chemicals you put in. WEISSKOPF: Would you need, You wouldn’t be using, You could’ve used less bismuth if there was less plutonium in the batch, theoretically. BAUMGARTNER: Not really. WEISSKOPF: No? BAUMGARTNER: Bismuth, well when we had it fine-tuned yeah. But, see we were expecting them to put slugs in there that gave us the 1,500 grams. We were expecting 1,800 or down to 11. We were expected 1,500 grams. And we expected them to blend those slugs. They knew where they were at and they knew where they had come from, so… WEISSKOPF: The batch should add up. BAUMGARTNER: It should have added up and that kind of thing was, you know, we didn’t fuss much. That didn’t bother us a lot. Maybe one run out of 10 deviated from what we expected. The rest of the time these guys were pretty good. They knew that reactor pretty well and they pretty well knew that in this pile there was…especially after we got the computer working pretty well. That took some doing, but once they got the computer program that told them what they needed, when to push, and then…See they would push not the whole reactor, so they would just push it for the section. WEISSKOPF: The tubes of their choice. BAUMGARTNER: Right, right. And that was based on what the computer said was there, based on what they saw in the profile of the number of neutrons per centimeter squared. When all that happened and that computer program was working, I was very fortunate I happened to know the guy that wrote the dang thing. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? BAUMGARTNER: And we were taking the class together because at the time, well programming was pretty much at the beginning stages, and the language you were using was your own, and the arithmetic was really…that’s where we were having all of problems. The arithmetic was such that getting five or six digits of precision was pretty hard. And so we were looking for better ways of getting the six or seven, eight digits of precision without taking a large amount of time on the computer. Because you remember now the computer in those days was at like 37 milliseconds per cycle. So you weren’t getting very many cycles per second, like you are now where we got 700 megahertz. WEISSKOPF: 37 milliseconds is 30 cycles per second, give or take. BAUMGARTNER: No it’s 300 I think. WEISSKOPF: 300. BAUMGARTNER: 300 yeah. And now there are 900 million. In my home, what I got is 333. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And that’s about three or four years old. So you get what I am trying to say. The computers were small. They were only like 6 kil, and…So we were looking for methods and the reactor kind of thing was really burning computer time. WEISSKOPF: Just calculating when the slugs were ready to push out… BAUMGARTNER: Right, when they are ready to push out, so we were taking an inordinate large amount of time. So the guy worked on that problem and we took them out. WEISSKOPF: Do you remember what department he would have been in to be doing that… BAUMGARTNER: He would have been in the 100 Area, but in operations. WEISSKOPF: With their own people. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah it was his own, and there weren’t too many computer people at that time. You know there was, I think there was like 10 guys that I knew. WEISSKOPF: Any reactor operators or… BAUMGARTNER: Well the reactor operators are just pushers of buttons and switches you know, but nuclear engineers…we were teaching the guys nuclear engineering here. I took classes on that. WEISSKOPF: And realizing too that this idea of estimating when the slugs are ready and then finding out that you were correct… BAUMGARTNER: Right. WEISSKOPF: And they had to do it… BAUMGARTNER: Well they had to make a whole bunch of experiments and all that kind stuff and it took awhile, it took awhile. Anyway, that’s the precursor to this. At the time, when like I say it was all trying to push metal through and so we had limits and if we deviated from the limits then we did a resampling, and then if the samples were close then we went ahead and continued, got the final one. They checked the front end within a certain limit. In other words, we figured at least 90%, 90%-95% recovery. WEISSKOPF: Recovery, and you were happy… BAUMGARTNER: Well when it first got there we were happy with that one. When got done we were not happy until we got 99. So, cause then that leaves only a little bit of plutonium in the waste solutions. WEISSKOPF: Were there any problems you remember overcoming that made a noticeable difference that hey hadn’t seen before or hadn’t been able to correct, or hadn’t realized it was there? BAUMGARTNER: I don’t know, there was an awful lot of chemical engineers in T Plant, I think each shift had like four. WEISSKOPF: They had been working on it for years. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, right from the beginning. And they were as dumbfounded as everybody else was because, not realizing some of these problems. It happened that my forte was analytical chemistry and I had thee years of that stuff. When I went to Seattle University, here let me give you my college. Freshman year was Yakima Valley College, so I took beginning chemistry. Sophomore year I went up to Seattle University. I then took analytical chemistry. In my Junior year I came back to Yakima Valley and I got a ____ (unclear), and Junior year I was back at Yakima Valley College because it cost me my whole year’s of college money and I took organic. My Senior year, ah ha now then, I ended up having to take P-chem organics since I had taken it in Yakima Valley. I had to take organic qual and since then I liked what I had done. I had to take advanced analytical chemistry and advanced organic for my senior year. I was taking like 10 hours every quarter chemistry classes. So I got 30 hours my senior year alone. So I had an extra year basically of chemistry just to get my degree. And so I ended up having the kind of thing that they wanted here. Somewhat, because one of solutions was semi-organic. WEISSKOPF: What kind of automated instruments, electronic instruments were you using back in college? Was it all test tubes and… BAUMGARTNER: Well, most of the stuff that I did in college was in terms of gravimetric. Here it was volumetric. Volumetric was what we called elementary, it was more prone to error. And so that’s what I was getting at. Volumetric analysis is more prone to error, 50 lambda in 10 milliliters, and 25 lambda out of that, so you would have to make sure that everything is stirred, etc, etc, etc. So volumetric lends itself to some real interesting errors. Whereas gravimetric errors, we would have precipitated it, put it onto you know, pull it out on the filtered paper, weighed the filter paper before and after, would have been much tighter tolerance. WEISSKOPF: With two drops. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, because filter paper… WEISSKOPF: Well, that’s what…I’m sorry, but back at Berkley when they discovered plutonium those are the amounts they were working with, tiny, tiny, tiny amounts. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, they were with a fraction of a gram. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. BAUMGARTNER: See and that was the total amount and now your going sample that to see how much there was really there. WEISSKOPF: So the beauty of chemistry is you can do it on big levels or small levels, the equations are the same, it’s just that instrumentation and the beakers are different sizes. BAUMGARTNER: Well, also too in gravimetric if you way say a 5 gram sample and you have down to the closest 10th of a milligram on possible with a beam balance. You can do that. So that gives me like three orders of magnitude, so a little bit of wait goes a long ways. Secondly, your adding some weight to the precipitate, by you know, putting some more, you know, atoms to the molecule and it was your precipitating so therefore your putting more weight to so its not less, it’s more. And so there, and you correct for it. But the point I’m getting at is you make sure that your gravimetric analysis will allow you at least 99%, so that if you say you can go to the closet 10th of a milligram. You would expect to have at least 10 grams difference in weight. And so in our case we would process something on the order of 50 milligrams, see and that would be 500. So that we should have been able to hit 1% easy with the gravimetric analysis. Whereas with volumetric analysis now your going to titrate and you have to know…. When I first got there they gave me the calibrated solutions to two digits. WEISSKOPF: As opposed to… what would you have expected? BAUMGARTNER: I would have expected four. With four I can do something with it. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: I can’t do much precision analysis because now all of a sudden the third digit is half, you know, so now I got I suppose a 6 normal and I’ve got 5 that’s almost a percent. And so I got nasty when I went down there at the standards. I says I’ve got to have a minimum of three digits, I’d prefer four. That was very hard for them to give me so they gave me basically about 3-1/2 on the volumetric, but that made the difference. That’s why we ended up getting precisely what we were… It was the little things like this that people weren’t watching. Yeah, if it was really and truly you know 6 normal, you know, plus or minus 0.1 normal everything was fine, but what happens when it isn’t? You know, then yeah, yeah we ended up striking twice, three times, that kind of thing. Anyway, with me getting the advantage of working with these guys in the cold part, I also was allowed to drive the elevator, in other words the crane. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? BAUMGARTNER: I got to do that, moving the cell blocks. WEISSKOPF: Based on what? BAUMGARTNER: Well they began to know me. WEISSKOPF: Oh…yeah okay. BAUMGARTNER: So I says well why don’t I sit in with you to see what you’re doing. I says ‘how can I help if I don’t know what anybody is doing?’ You know, a chemist can do more than just chemistry if he can watch what people are doing, see what kind of system. In other words, are the cells really as the C-Manual says they are? You know, big hurky stainless steel tanks. In other words, how much volume is sitting between this tank and that thank you know. Pipes two inches in diameter is eight feet long, well there’s some body in there. It’s the little things like this that they had overlooked that when I saw the equipment that I said ah that makes sense to me. And then we were dropping solutions down through sort of a rig, you know a valve, you know, so this could go into this one and this, oh we’ll let it go into that one. So it was all of those kinds of things. So there were solutions sitting there. Get what I’m trying to say? From the tank where we knew what it was until it ran out the spout down into wherever it was going. Well there was a volume in there. Okay, if that thing sits there for any length of time, well it’s not going to be the same. It’s just little things like this that, when I saw, you know, even though I read it in the manual, but it doesn’t give you these volumes. So, you couldn’t strike a tank with 10 gallons then you had 10 gallons in the pipe. WEISSKOPF: You wouldn’t be using the fresh solution… BAUMGARTNER: Right. In other words, you ended up having problems and this was all part of the problem. So then I went to these volumes, you know, and how much was being added and we then played around a little bit and we strengthened a couple of them, went to 6.3 instead of 6.0 to make up for what was decaying in the pipery. And when we did that, see that’s how we ended up really fine-tuning one strike, we really could shove it through there. It was little things like that that hadn’t been considered from the chemistry in the laboratory to the big plant. Those are the kinds of things that we discovered on the job. The chemical engineers were looking at this thing in the massive. I was looking at it in terms of chemistry and how much the volumes were involved and what my normalities had to be and all you know. WEISSKOPF: Who would have been the person at T Plant who knew what the current settings were, like it wasn’t a railroad, it was a chemistry system with pipes, who would have the map that shows how everything is connected? BAUMGARTNER: The maps were what we called on the piperoll. In other words, here sits the tanks and then we’ve got a big wall, a 12-foot concrete wall, and then on the other side you have these boards like the 6-3 board which was the 6-3 Tank and he had… In other words, he could push valves I could validate which would then allow solution A to drop in B, C, D, E and they knew, you know, well I’m going to add this solution to valve C. So he’d open up valve C and the amount of volume that was up there was the specified volume, you know that was dropped down in there and they would let it five minutes and yell ‘run’ down in there and then they’d close the valve and that thing. These are boards and each section like 6 had a board, 7 had a board, 8 had a board, up to 13; each one had a board. And each had groups of valves for whatever they were going to do whether they were exit, import, you know the openings, exit, import, adding solutions and all that kind. And then you know, so there would be maybe 8-10 switches you know for them to open and close that they would do, and there would be an operator in front of each one of those every shift. And then there would be two what I call chemical engineers following and they had a log book when they did what and for how long, opened at such and such a time, closed at such and such a time. That was all part of the record. WEISSKOPF: …in there that are like that, the log pages where you would actually put in what had happened. BAUMGARTNER: Right. WEISSKOPF: ____ (unclear) supposed to do, here’s the time we start…. BAUMGARTNER: Right, right and that all got put in there and the chemical engineer picked those up. He then scanned them. He went over them to find, you know, to make sure everything was copacetic against whatever rules. So they had a set of rules, we’ll say like 5 minutes, so they didn’t expect anything between 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 minutes so he expected a time to be like that. Sometimes then an operator would be out maybe smoking a cigarette, God only knows you know, because not everybody was conscious totally with time, you know we’re human beings. So that was the operations part. I knew all that because I had been down to see what they were all doing. This is how I recognized that there was heels. The same way with exporting. The pipe that went into the tank didn’t drain every drop. That sounds elementary, but now you have find out, you know, in other words, because when they built the tank it turns out that each tank, you know there might be three tanks identical, they would have different heels. WEISSKOPF: Describe what a heel is. BAUMGARTNER: Heel is leftover solution. Now on the surface that doesn’t sound like much, but it turns out that suppose you dissolve up something, but not everything stays in the solution. Suppose you’ve got particulates leftover, it’s you know, it’s all… Especially when your making the precipitate you know and it’s falling down. Now when you, you know, pull that precipitate out and go to the next tank…did you get it all? See how much would have stayed in the heel? So those are the…Now the chemical engineers worried about that. Now how do you quantify that? WEISSKOPF: You can’t go in and look. BAUMGARTNER: No, heck no. So we developed some sample analysis over in the lab with them. We worked together, hand in glove, and then we sat there. I got involved in a lot of that kind of thing just because of the analytical chemistry that I’d had. Not everybody that came out with a BS in chemistry had all the chemistry that I had. And that was, anyway that was fine with me. I enjoyed my time there and I knew the operating people. I was on C, A, and D shifts, so I got to meet different people. Like if you were on C-shift you only met those operators on C shift, but… WEISSKOPF: Oh you didn’t change with the same shift all the time? BAUMGARTNER: You always stayed with the same shift generally. WEISSKOPF: So you were with the same operators? BAUMGARTNER: Same operators all the time when you were on C shift. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: But I was very fortunate where I got bumped from C shift, to A shift, to D shift, so I got to meet not only C people, but I got to meet D and A people. And it makes a difference because you can pretty soon, like a technician , you can tell which ones are the good ones, that type of thing. And that made a difference for me. Anyway, I think I’ve answered all…. WEISSKOPF: How about, you mentioned you got to ride in the crane. Could you describe…how tedious was it. Describe what it must have been like for the crane operator. BAUMGARTNER: Oh…it’s a single lens, no depth perception. So what they did is they would shine light so there would be shadows, you know because to pick up a block. For instance, it was a metal frame you know that came like that and he had to put a hook into there so he could lift the rod. Well with no depth perception, where in the hell is the hook? You know it might be over here…might be… WEISSKOPF: He could only look down, he couldn’t look from the side? BAUMGARTNER: No, and only one eye. Only one single eye through a whole bunch of going down, because you know he couldn’t look straight down because we were on the side. WEISSKOPF: Your right, right. BAUMGARTNER: You know we were on the side. So you were going over a barrier looking down and you couldn’t and then the blocks were all numbered and that kind of stuff. Like he’d have 6-3 A, B, C, you know that, A comes first and then you know, and so that you put the three blocks back onto the cell the same way each time, because they were not identical pieces. WEISSKOPF: Right. When you took the lens off and looked down, there might be a mass of equipment and pipes. What would the crane operator, how would he know which one to take off first? What was that called? His instructions, you know, did he have a sheet of things he was supposed to…. BAUMGARTNER: The chemical engineer told him that maybe I want it, now each pipe had a little thing for him to put the hook on and we had the big hook for the blocks and then we had a little hook for when we wanted to do repair work. For instance, you want to take off a small piece of pipe. Okay he had to go, first of all he had an impact trench which he had to set down on that baby and get onto that nut, and then you undo it. There might be four on one end and four on the other end, pull that pipe out, put another one in its place. He had to do that all with one eye and no depth perception. So, it was all in how the guy wanted the light set so that there would be shadows so that he would know when the hook was….you know how do you know when the hook gets in there and fix it? WEISSKOPF: Did he have the lights on the crane that he would adjust? BAUMGARTNER: No they were up to high. WEISSKOPF: So what lights were there? BAUMGARTNER: When they opened a cell, they had like on a rack you know and they have lights shining down. You know it didn’t matter that that got irradiated. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: You know, so, for instance if there was a cell we would move all the blocks from 6-3 over to 7. You know, okay, so on this end on each end you could have lights or you ‘d have two one side so you, whatever the guy specified, the crane operator. And they learned that from scratch. They had four of the best crane operators your ever gonna find, because doing that job with one eye is…. When I, it takes a lot more finesse than you’d think. WEISSKOPF: And patience. BAUMGARTNER: And these guys are very quick. TAPE 1 SIDE B BAUMGARTNER: …And then you’d have to pull the tank out. So, it was to me, the most skilled individual was a crane operator and they were very good. I can remember him taking all of the three blocks off a cell in less than 10 minutes. I can remember him taking off two pipes, you know bringing your impact wrench down, putting it onto the nuts four on each end, that’s eight bolts, and it was highly magnetized so that bolt stuck, you know to impact wrench, and he had them pulled over and somebody had to, you know you had to undo it. I don’t know how that impact wrench was built, but it allowed him to put the bolts in place. I think they put them into a little thing to where he could go back down and grab a hole. You know, it set down into a block you know with a hole where the bolt then fit down into the hole with a head on top and then he would drop it off and then he’d go and grab the next one. And when had all eight, he could see all eight now, ‘I got them all off’. It’s the little things you know that you don’t….he says well I gotta take off eight bolts, so he wanted to make sure he had them all off. And I can remember we took out a 6-3 tank one time, the dissolver solution tank and it took one day. There was like four pipes to take off, pull the tank out, put it onto the railroad car…you know six railroad cars away, because this is all over, the tank had sludge in the bottom, hotter than hell…and then that went to the burial ground and the new tank had been sitting there and he went and picked it up and put it down in there. And that had to be oriented so that it just sat only one way, so that all of these hangers just fit perfectly. Because your talking about hangers, you know pipes that go to the wall you know where the guy is opening and closing and all that type of thing and he did that in one day. WEISSKOPF: And there could be no workers anywhere near that… BAUMGARTNER: Not in the canyon. Once you pulled off the cellblocks, now and up to 11, no one on the high end up to cell 11, from 6 to cell 11, I guess there was a cell 5. But anyway, when those blocks were off no one was in the canyon, but I think if he had 12 and 13 you could have someone in the canyon because there wasn’t enough stuff up there anymore to make any difference. I don’t know…have you got pictures of that? Oh here we go. Okay, oh I never saw, yeah. There’s 20 cells I see, but I don’t ever… WEISSKOPF: Sections… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, but I never saw us ever go past 13, so I am assuming that that…Now the waste from 224 building and that was recycled. You know, take my word for that. WEISSKOPF: When you say recycled… BAUMGARTNER: Ran through another run, was added to a solution and up here at about 10 and 11 tank they would add it back into there. It wouldn’t be very much. WEISSKOPF: Oh you mean the waste from… BAUMGARTNER: The waste from 224. WEISSKOPF: From their finished process, whatever was left would have a tiny amount of plutonium. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, whatever it had in there they recycled it and ran it in even though we didn’t think, but we sure there was no plutonium or yeah… Okay, any other questions? WEISSKOPF: The width… BAUMGARTNER: Oh here we go, that is a nice picture of it. Here you can see where the crane operator was. WEISSKOPF: Yep. BAUMGARTNER: Yep, yep, yep. Pipe gallery and operator gallery, see this is where these guys were. And then the pipe gallery is where solutions were running. Oh God, it was a mess. Cause you know you make, the solutions were in 271 where the crane operator got into the cab. He would get into the cab in the front end here, he got into the cab in the front end and then you know, and that’s where we made up the solutions. Where we made up the solutions, at that, right where the crane was, where he got in. This is how I got to know the guy, cause the guy had to walk by the laboratory. And then the tank solutions that we were making up were right there and there was just a hallway to his crane. So, you know, and he couldn’t, I don’t remember… The longest I ever saw a guy in there was four hours. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: But most of the time, a guy couldn’t handle much more then about two hours and then he had to have about a 30-minute break, because that was just to…unless he could use both eyes. But, I don’t’ remember anybody ever using two eyes. WEISSKOPF: No. When there is a batch ready to go, anybody who was holding it up would be under a lot of pressure, whether it was the chemist or the crane operator who had a chore to do, how did that make your daily routine? Was it pretty pressured? BAUMGARTNER: For me, no, we didn’t, for us in the laboratory that was not the case. The only time we ever held anybody up was if we ran out of a solution. WEISSKOPF: For the cold solution. BAUMGARTNER: For the cold solution, and then they got pissed. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Your right, and that only happened, not very often. You know that would be an error on the part of the chemical engineer. WEISSKOPF: He just didn’t order enough or… BAUMGARTNER: He didn’t make the tank. In other words they ran too much solution through, you know. When we got into the final run that happened to us a couple of times where a guy made up 500 gallons and we used 500 gallons before I made up…because there were two tanks and each one, you know…you’ve got this one running and your making this one up and your trying to make it up as close to the using…of finishing off the using so that you didn’t make too many, because some of these are ____ (s/l oxcit) and reduction solutions and they age poorly, they lose their strength. WEISSKOPF: How many hours a day or… BAUMGARTNER: Oh ferrous sulfate solution, probably in three or four days would lose 50%. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. BAUMGARTNER: That kind of problem. So you didn’t want to make up a ferrous sulfate solution except maybe just a few hours before you start using it was the best, then it was the closest. I worked out a table for them to, because they would change the amount of volume as it got older. I would give them the moment when it got…when we knew what it was and then as it aged, and then we’d say well okay it’s 6.3, and then two hours later it was 6.2 and that kind of thing. So that they would know how much more, maybe you would add an extra gallon or two or three of that solution just to make sure that it would work, you know. WEISSKOPF: What about the hot lab though, if they were under pressure to get their numbers done… BAUMGARTNER: That was, the sooner the better because you couldn’t go from 6.3 to 7 or to 8 until you had the answer verified. So, when these operators came in and took those samples and they had to bring them over and then we got right on ‘em. In other words, if we screwed around more than and hour and half by the time they got the answer they were ticked. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Because see that means that tank was sitting there, it couldn’t move. WEISSKOPF: So you always did test at the dissolver to get a first number? BAUMGARTNER: Always. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: And we did a test on every dang…7, 8, 9, 10, hey… WEISSKOPF: And each of those took about an hour? BAUMGARTNER: An hour and a half. WEISSKOPF: Oh, so that’s a good hunk of the batch time right there. BAUMGARTNER: Well… WEISSKOPF: Because they were processing… BAUMGARTNER: They were processing. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: See as soon as they got the 6.3 out then they could put another dissolver in there. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: So that they could have, in other words there might be three runs going through the canyon. WEISSKOPF: And if your numbers didn’t match then you say we have to do another test or take another sample, then your starting to hold thing up. BAUMGARTNER: Then is when, yeah right, right, right. WEISSKOPF: If you literally had to go get another sample, how long would it take? BAUMGARTNER: Operators had to go back into the canyon, had to go back into these little doors, go into where the sample, there was a little sample room area where they would have the doorstop and they would do their little thing of agitating solution, etc, etc, etc, etc, and dropping in the two drops. You know, sucking it out about three times into that little drop…sucking it all and doing it about three times to get the right sample size. I watched that operation too. That was a, they weren’t stirring it enough to start with… WEISSKOPF: Now you said getting a sample. Didn’t some of the cells have a little inset box where they would get the samples at the cell? BAUMGARTNER: No, no, they were all gotten over here. WEISSKOPF: In the operating gallery or where would…. BAUMGARTNER: No, no , not in the operating, on the other side. On the other side of the canyon Building, on these little doors that you see right here, that allowed them to go into a little room and they could sample three cells. Each one allowed them to sample three cells. So they could, in other words, this one could sample these three cells, and then they overlapped except for the middle one, but they overlapped on one so that if you didn’t like the answer from that one you could go maybe in the next bay and sample it from the other sampler. You know, you had, the only one you couldn’t was the middle one. WEISSKOPF: And would they enter then from that side… BAUMGARTNER: They would enter from this side and it was just a small room, just a small room. And see these pipes went into the tank, you know they dropped into the tank and it would be a little pipe you know and they’d stir around fresh solution and then… There was a whole… You didn’t take that out of the C-Manual, it tells you, they told them how to do that. And, well here, You’ve got a perfect picture. It’s complicated. See here, all you had to do to take off this one is go down and hit that thing with the impacter and straight down. Yep, here it is. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: You can get a pretty good feel as to what it was doing. WEISSKOPF: And did they have a map or a chart that would say what’s connected to what? BAUMGARTNER: Absolutely. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Absolutely. The engineer says you go in and you go to the 4th valve. So the guy had to go down and he had read 1,2,3, go and pull that one off. WEISSKOPF: Would they ever hook it up to the wrong one… BAUMGARTNER: Not easy. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Because they were all made with different lengths… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And different lengths. You couldn’t put this particular hanger on any place but here. So you might get it on here and it wouldn’t fit. It wouldn’t fit. It wouldn’t fit properly. WEISSKOPF: And if they were replacing a jumper or needed a new one… BAUMGARTNER: Well you had to have, remember you had to pull off two. You had to pull off two to get the jumper off. If you had the wrong jumper it wouldn’t fit… WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: …on there. No that was nicely designed. Take my word. WEISSKOPF: Speaking of design, did you run into, You know DuPont designed the building before they even knew, understood completely how it going to be used. Did it work out well by the time you were there? Was the building… BAUMGARTNER: Oh yeah… WEISSKOPF: …performing as… BAUMGARTNER: Oh yeah, it was performing like the C-Manual says it should. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And as a matter of fact when we did the trail laying on the speed runs, I think top management was absolutely flabbergasted that that thing was capable of doing that kind of production. Never, they didn’t think it was possible. And that happened in ’52 just before they went down. I think they shut down in August of ’52. I am not sure when it down. You look it up some place, it’s around somewhere. Well, you’ve got everything here. You’ve got tank farms? WEISSKOPF: Yeah… BAUMGARTNER: You’ve got the whole 2-West Area. WEISSKOPF: The Tech-Manual has tons of great, it is almost written for a layman in the sense that it is not full of acronyms and utterly technical terminology. BAUMGARTNER: It was written by DuPont people who were chemists and chemical engineers and this is how they would write a manual for their own things. WEISSKOPF: It’s very readable. BAUMGARTNER: Oh, it’s real readable. I mean if I could read it, it was readable. So, but you… WEISSKOPF: What was the last six months before they shut the plant down. They were just processing up to the last day or what kind of things were you doing? BAUMGARTNER: We processed up to the last week, two weeks, and then we cleaned for two weeks. WEISSKOPF: What type, you know, how exactly… BAUMGARTNER: Run solutions, dummies, didn’t… WEISSKOPF: Just to flush things out? BAUMGARTNER: Yep, just flushed everything out. This was when we found out that a couple of the tanks had some heels. Because see these tanks should have gotten fairly clean, but they didn’t. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. BAUMGARTNER: They turned out to be pretty hot. WEISSKOPF: And was the problem that it was hot, or that you were… BAUMGARTNER: It was high gamma. Higher gamma levels. See we thought that after we flushed, we could down to the 6-3 tank basically and literally go into the canyon building… WEISSKOPF: Oh… BAUMGARTNER: …and you know, get what I’m trying to say? WEISSKOPF: And walk around. BAUMGARTNER: Walk around, because what the hell you cleaned it all up. So, but that didn’t really happen that way. WEISSKOPF: Did they end up just yanking it and burying it or? BAUMGARTNER: I thought they left it in for a zillion years and then was pulled out when they decommissioned it. WEISSKOPF: Because they had to immediate use for the building right? BAUMGARTNER: Well, but you didn’t, just because we didn’t operate with it didn’t mean we couldn’t. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: And there is nothing that says that if PUREX or REDOX doesn’t blow up, well hey we didn’t know. WEISSKOPF: Right. But you wanted to keep the building operational. BAUMGARTNER: It was in mothballs. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And B Plant went off of mothballs. Once we got T Plant running high speed then we didn’t need B Plant anymore. Because now it was doing more than the two plants were doing together. Because before the two plants were doing 30-56, so you know you say well we don’t need B Plant. So B Plant then went and we were starting to process the waste solution and taking out the strontium, and we were. See there are only two really bad actors in the waste solution which would mean that the waste tanks if you took those out after about 15-20 years would be nothing in them, and that is cobalt and strontium. If you pull those two babies out, then your tanks would decay to zero basically in 15 years and that was the goal behind some of this. Some of those tanks, they wanted them to be cold and they were. Though after they had gone though B Plant some of those old tanks really, truthfully, I mean you know you had to literally stuff the CP into it before you could even get a reading. So, it worked, it worked. And they were shipping solutions between West Area and B Plant, and from B Plant and back to West Area. There was a pipeline that runs from the tank farms from B Plant, to all the tank farms. WEISSKOPF: So they could move stuff… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah they moved stuff, and one of the pipes had hot solution coming in and the other one was the cold solution going out. Let me see, there were three plants built originally to do the same thing; T, B, and U. U Plant never went online and the only thing we did with U Plant was we took and they separated out the uranium from the, you know from the waste solution. And that ran through U Plant and then our product there was yellow cake, in other words yellow powder, it was uranium oxide, and that was shipped wherever, back east probably or I think to Oak Ridge. WEISSKOPF: Did that lower the tank levels much? BAUMGARTNER: I don’t think so. The only thing that would lower the tank levels basically would be to, would be for the evaporation. Getting rid of the liquid, because once you got rid of the uranium now you’ve got rid of 1,500, you know, you’ve got 500 gallons and you pull out almost most of the weight, what’s left it either bismuth or lanthanum, plus the fission product, plus the aluminum. The you know, the slug can. That was there. WEISSKOPF: Is that still there? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, its still there. WEISSKOPF: They never did retrieve those? BAUMGARTNER: Never retrieved a dime of that. There were a lot of proposals put together in the late 50’s for mining the bismuth. WEISSKOPF: Really? Was it worth that much? BAUMGARTNER: Well, it wasn’t worth enough at that time, but I don’t think it’s ever been re-visited. You know there has been so much anti-nuclear things that trying to recover anything people would be so damn scared that if there was a 10 counts per minute of fission products in the bismuth, why they would be upset. WEISSKOPF: So how about just giving a brief idea of what you did after left T Plant. BAUMGARTNER: Oh, I went to 231 and 234-5. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, more chemistry? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, for a year I did chemistry and then after I went into radiation protection. And since I had spent so much time in T, 231, 234-5, I was brought back for the Health Physics people to 231, 234-5 and all of the material that left that building I signed off on from 1954 to… WEISSKOPF: Signed off in what way? BAUMGARTNER: Signed off I knew it went out, what the numbers were, that it wasn’t contaminated, etc, etc, etc. What containers it was put into when it left the building. Who took it. And as far as I know those were a terrible ____(unclear). That was GE ____(unclear). So you wouldn’t know, from those you could make some real quick assumptions as to what went on, but from 1954-1958 I was in 234-5. That’s when we went from what we call the rubber glove line which was a hood operation with glove to a mechanical line where everything was fairly mechanicalized with little trains, you know. Where you didn’t touch the material as much because when I first got there in ’54, the operators in 234-5 building were burning out, in other words they weren’t able to work a year. So we had to have operators, you know not necessarily working 234-5 Building but they had to be trained and then they were rotated so they could…some of the guys were burning out…in other words they were getting limit of radiation that they were allowed by say August. So there was five, six months when you had to bring in other guys and so it was economically feasible for use to figure out ways in which we could stop doing that. And it wasn’t until like ’58 before we really solved all the problems and were allowing the operators to run the whole year. So, we were able to cut down the, basically cut the exposure more than half so that they could operate the whole year. Also do remember 234-5 Building was top secret and everybody got fussy about having so many people having top secret. WEISSKOPF: Oh you mean just to work there. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, just work there… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Because that was fine to finish plant see, and so the people who were working there saw what the hell it was our products, you know. And you just, you know, operators they weren’t just a dime a dozen. Well it’s a lot training besides. I spent a lot of training time, both Health Physics people as well as operators, because you know a guy can’t just come in there and….it’s a foundry and foundry operations are notoriously famous for, you know, doing all kinds of dumb things you know. And plutonium was no exception. I mean if you could do it with lead, you could do it with plutonium you know and we did it. And so there was a foundry operation, it’s the best description I can give you. I wont’ say anymore than that because I don’t know if it’s been declassified… WEISSKOPF: It would take a while for you find out. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, I’d have to go and take a look at the pictures and see what’s been declassified. WEISSKOPF: So… BAUMGARTNER: I think the only thing that is not declassified is the actual production numbers. WEISSKOPF: They don’t like to talk about that. BAUMGARTNER: And they don’t’ want you talking about that and they didn’t want you talking about too many details about how the line worked. There were lots of problems you know since you’ve got a foundry. There was crucibles in which you were ____ (unclear) and melting plutonium and it was running down into the shape, crucibles break. How do you stop that? For awhile there we were getting, see we never made our crucibles here, we got them and crucible-breaking problems were really severe. So, that had to be solved. That was not my problem. My problem was making sure the guys weren’t getting too much radiation. It was the only operational building, which wasn’t monitored by operation monitors. WEISSKOPF: Really? BAUMGARTNER: We used Radiological Science people. At least, in my 10-year there, for the four years. Then after I left that, one of my major problems was that we knew that the radiation that the people were being exposed to wasn’t being properly monitored with the batch, neutrons are very difficult to monitor and we were not doing too good. WEISSKOPF: A film badge doesn’t pick up neutrons. That’s not meant for neutrons. BAUMGARTNER: It wasn’t meant for neutrons. So you would have had to have something separate and it wasn’t until, let’ see, we went to the new badge. A new film badge, oh I think in ’65 and I left. I went to US Testing. Who then had the contract for processing the film badges. The ____ (unclear) and the environmental samples and we made further improvements. We did a lot of improving and the last function that I did before I retired, in 1989-1995, was put the new dosimeter in place which measures everything. WEISSKOPF: How do you measure neutrons? BAUMGARTNER: Lithium-6. WEISSKOPF: Oh, just film impregnated with it? BAUMGARTNER: No, no, these are little squares, little crystals. Lithium-6 will ____ (s/l store) the neutron effect and when you heat it up, it gives it off as light and we measure that with a photomultiplier tube. Same way with the lithium-7, it only measures gamma. Lithium-6 measures gamma and neutrons. And what your doing is your, its only thermal neutrons that your measuring, but your measuring the fast neutrons that hit the body, get moderated, and come back. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Because there ain’t no well in hell your going to measure fast neutrons, not with anything that I know. Counters you can do, but even then they use moderators, you know like BF-3 tubes inside of paraffin casks; very difficult to measure fast neutrons. And secondly, responses for the BF-3 tubes changed by a factor of 1,000 between fast and thermal so you have all of these funny little things going on. On film, to go from the old badge, you know the one that had the silver to the one with four filters, I collected 8,008 at once to get the equations for that thing to work. And then when I did the new badge, I collected I think 12,000 data points to make sure that my responses and the equations that I’ve got in the system are correct. So, it wasn’t done just haphazardly, it was done with a lot of finesse. We had a lot of statistics. We tried to make the equations be within 95% accuracy. We felt, we wanted to move away from 50%. WEISSKOPF: You said you’d retired what year? BAUMGARTNER: ’95. WEISSKOPF: And Hanford had stopped production in ’80… BAUMGARTNER: By…. WEISSKOPF: 89 or? BAUMGARTNER: Well, they started back up. There was a whole bunch of material at N Reactor produced and so it had been sitting there for years and years and years and so then they started PUREX back up and got rid of all that. WEISSKOPF: So what kind of things were you doing the last five years when there was no longer production? BAUMGARTNER: 234-5 Building didn’t go away. WEISSKOPF: So, I think, you still had material to work with. BAUMGARTNER: Do you know anything about a weapon? WEISSKOPF: Well, laypersons. BAUMGARTNER: Alright what does a layperson thing about a nuclear bomb? An atomic bomb? When we make one does it stay an atomic bomb forever, it doesn’t decay, it doesn’t get you know…. It turns out if you make an atomic bomb today that in about seven years if you don’t do anything with it, it ain’t gonna work. WEISSKOPF: So are we talking the plutonium aspect of it? Or the high explosives and all the… BAUMGARTNER: No, the high explosives. What happens, what is in plutonium that could possibly screw up an atom bomb? WEISSKOPF: Isotopes and oxidation. BAUMGARTNER: Ahhh, not oxidation. WEISSKOPF: Unless they took care of that. BAUMGARTNER: That’s not it, it’s the isotopes and 240 and 241 decay at a pretty quick rate and it goes to americium, which is a neutron absorbent, it’s a real suck-up device. And pretty soon you’ve got enough americium sitting there that the thing won’t go off. It’s absorbing the neutrons to where the neutron no longer, you don’t have a certain level of neutrons to start the reaction. Alright? WEISSKOPF: Rebuilding… BAUMGARTNER: So you gotta take the darn thing apart, get rid of the americium. WEISSKOPF: It’s a chemical process. BAUMGARTNER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: You’ve gotta get rid of the americium and then you make it back into…Okay so there has to be a cycle so when Americans are going on to this non-nuclear and they are not reworking anything, pretty soon you don’t have a nuclear capability. So, nuclear rework has to be done. WEISSKOPF: Why wouldn’t it have been worthwhile to take the plutonium from Hanford and run it though what they were doing at Oak Ridge with uranium to strip out the isotopes they didn’t want? And leave pure… BAUMGARTNER: Ahh, uranium 235 and 238 is 3 atoms difference. What’s plutonium in 239,240… 1. You’d have to have a diffusion plant that is about a thousand times bigger than what you’ve got. WEISSKOPF: And run it 10 times longer, yeah. Okay. BAUMGARTNER: You know your not going to get the separation you think you are. However, there is something that’s much better. I think it’s classified. WEISSKOPF: But, those are problems that people thought about. BAUMGARTNER: Oh hey, we thought about that right from the beginning. WEISSKOPF: Does 240 and 241 fission like 239, is it okay to be in there as far as… BAUMGARTNER: Oh, it’s marvelous. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: It’s marvelous. WEISSKOPF: It’s the decay that’s the problem. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, it goes in and it decays over the americium and that’s the weird thing. It’s just cause 240, I think and 241 are beta emitters and so they go higher and ____ (s/l up the) americium, and americium is a real absorber. It just loves neutrons and so the next thing you know all the neutrons are being absorbed by the impurity. Let me see if I can tell you, Exxon did a research and the guy that did it was Charlie ____ (s/l Lindmeyer). He was my physics teacher and he worked with lasers. And I worked, when I took the class we solved the problem for ‘em. What kind of stability do you have to have when your trying to separate with a laser, 239 from 240? I won’t go any further than that. WEISSKOPF: Using a laser to do it… BAUMGARTNER: Yes…laser right now can separate uranium 238 from 235… WEISSKOPF: By doing what? What effect would a laser have on an isotope, it’s just light. Do they absorb heat differently or something? BAUMGARTNER: They vibrate differently. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? Okay. Alright. BAUMGARTNER: They vibrate with a different frequency and when they vibrate with a different frequency, if you can make one vibrate in one direction and the other one not, then you can pull them babies out, it’s a gas laser. WEISSKOPF: Oh. BAUMGARTNER: I’ll let you read up on that. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, interesting. BAUMGARTNER: Because I knew what it took and like I said, you know early years of the computer were not very good because they only had like 6-8 digits of accuracy. Not the kind of thing that a laser needed, a laser needed much more accuracy. And there is that out there, and also too the stability of a system, you know? People talk about 0.01 %, I mean what the hell that’s only 99.9 when you need 10 digits of accuracy what the hell is 0.01%? See, its peanuts. So you had to work out some other details. Charlie did all that and we got him started when we were doing a class, Introduction to Mathematical Physics, I can tell you that much. WEISSKOPF: So it was here on site. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, that was class. I went to school at nights from 1959-1967. See, I was very short on physics and math. I’d only had up to differential equations, which is still a lot more because most of the guys who graduated with a BS in mathematics only had up to differential equations. But, that wasn’t nearly enough for the kind of things that they needed. The kind of accuracy and the early computers just didn’t have the capability either. WEISSKOPF: And since the process was evolving all the time, I’d guess that taking classes and learning was sort of almost… BAUMGARTNER: It was a must. It was absolutely a must. Yeah, since I didn’t know any physics I had to learn physics. I had to learn Nuclear Engineering. I had to take Atomic Physics, Nuclear Physics, that takes… Yeah, but most of it was math. I was taking statistics, variables, introduction on ____ (unclear) physics. My physics class in college was freshmen physics, you know wedges and time planes…that didn’t do any good out here. Even a second year level of physics, you know, wouldn’t have been enough for the kind of things that we were doing. Atomic Physics in particular was… WEISSKOPF: But you started again in 50- BAUMGARTNER: 1. WEISSKOPF: ’51. This place had only been running for all of 6-7 years. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah and it was… WEISSKOPF: A brand new industry. BAUMGARTNER: Oh yeah. We were just beginning. In the area of Health Physics in particular we were just beginning. How do you monitor what can go wrong? Hell, we were learning as we were working, you know there wasn’t… I mean now you have people scream when we have things happen today, but then after all we’ve got 40-50 years worth of experience. We don’t have to have that happen anymore. We wouldn’t expect it to happen, but then, that was not the case then. Then was…you know, we hadn’t done very much in the first place so we didn’t know exactly what was going to happen you know like pipes breaking, you name it, glassware where there shouldn’t have been glassware, you know in the system, buckets when there shouldn’t have been buckets. We didn’t know anything about criticality. What’s the criticality of volume or mass for different solutions, different volumetrics, different… WEISSKOPF: Which might not be a straight line…. BAUMGARTNER: That’s right…see like maybe anything that 4 inches in diameter no matter how full you fill it, it never is going to go critical, but you make a 6 inches and boy you only got get about 2-3 inches and it goes critical. Little things like that, that was not known. Those experiments were being run, out here we call ‘em mass criticality laboratory. I was responsible for all of the early work that that was going on, especially the solutions. WEISSKOPF: Really? BAUMGARTNER: ____ (s/l Eduwine) Clayton was the guy that was leading that was leading that, but we were doing the monitoring on him. And we were trying to figure out how to monitor his neutrons and his radiation ____ (s/l soil). WEISSKOPF: For health reasons… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, for saving him. I mean we didn’t want that guy getting hurt. And these guys didn’t know where they were going to have an explosion or not explosion, you know. They were working, yeah they blew up a lab. WEISSKOPF: That was the famous criticality. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. BAUMGARTNER: The old farmhouse, over in that area. Well you heard about a criticality down in Los Alamos? WEISSKOPF: Oh, no I hadn’t. BAUMGARTNER: Where the guy was nudging two pieces together. WEISSKOPF: That was the earliest one… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: That was two metal pieces. We have had two criticality situations. One at 234-5 Building where we had an operation failure and the solution dripped into a bucket, in a 3-gallon bucket. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And not critically safe. WEISSKOPF: And the bucket was there just catch drips? BAUMGARTNER: No, it shouldn’t have been there. WEISSKOPF: What were the drips going to go into otherwise? BAUMGARTNER: It should have been a criticality safety container. WEISSKOPF: Oh, oh, oh, but they put a bucket there to catch it… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, and it shouldn’t have been, shouldn’t have been. Should have been a 4-inch diameter container instead of…just one of those oversights. WEISSKOPF: In a perfectly vivid illustration of what the deal is. BAUMGARTNER: Your right, of what happens because we knew it could happen, and it did happen. Yeah, and it went critical several times over a period of many months and I spent swing shift out there, for weeks we never came home. WEISSKOPF: Really? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, it happened in our building, it didn’t happen with my operation, you know, but we supply the monitoring people making sure that everything thing was still safe. You’ve got 234-5 Building and my God, you’ve got to think about what the hell was out there and we couldn’t go in there and clean it up you know. I mean the line was left with all that stuff and no one knew whether, if you had something go critical over here would it set up ringing effects all over there and all that kind of stuff. WEISSKOPF: Oh… BAUMGARTNER: Because after all you’ve got material laying around, it might be in a critical safe configuration, but now all of a sudden what happens when a… WEISSKOPF: Neutrons come in… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, now you’ve got a big level of neutrons. There is one thing to have say 10 of the 6th neutrons, it’s a whole other thing to have 10 of the 18th…you know. I want that answer right now quick from some nuclear physicist, and that wasn’t that fast in coming. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, it’s a very complicated situation. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah the guy had to, they had to sit down and work. It was, and they didn’t have an answer right away that’s why we didn’t do anything for quite awhile. We were scared to have anybody close to the building because of the…am I making any sense to you? WEISSKOPF: Oh yeah, yeah. BAUMGARTNER: See that’s what I say, nowadays now that we know all of that, you know, you wouldn’t do that, so the probability… WEISSKOPF: In any industry you have to collect a certain amount of work experience to get to a certain level of expertise and your doing it in the beginning, but 20 years later when you look back you say my God how did get anything done back then? BAUMGARTNER: Well, you wouldn’t of, but you didn’t have the safety rules and you know, so you just went in there and you went at it. All I can say is, we were very strong in monitoring. When we saw something that wasn’t quite what we thought was copacetic, we shut it down and discussed it with management and operations people. And if it didn’t suit us, kept it shut down until the top management made the decision. That happened several times. WEISSKOPF: Like you should of any time you “shut something down”…You were… BAUMGARTNER: You got a lot of static. You know you got a lot of Operating Managers you know. I go straight up to the top management real quick like. Health Physics was one guy and here’s Operations over here and when your shutting those guys down, you know, the only guy that can really settle the argument has gotta put of with both them and so it went there really quick because time is money. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, or national defense. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: I mean that was the overriding premise… BAUMGARTNER: That was the major premise at that time, I don’t think… WEISSKOPF: You pick up your headlines in the morning. BAUMGARTNER: Right, well, in the days when we were operating we didn’t make a big ‘to do’ about the kinds of levels that they are making a big ‘to do’ now. A 1,000 count per minute level now is a big deal. We didn’t think it was a big deal until they got 10,000, but then when you’re mucking around in zillions, what’s 10,000? WEISSKOPF: Right… BAUMGARTNER: See, but nothing going on is a whole different thing. Everything has been cleaned up. I can see where a 1,000 is meaningful because that is something you can see. Also too, on some of the areas you couldn’t see 1,000 counts. WEISSKOPF: They weren’t measuring that low? BAUMGARTNER: Well you had too much background. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: I mean you go into that canyon building. There isn’t hardly any place that you could get that wasn’t reading 500 counts per minute period. Especially when you opened the cell blocks, 6-3 cell blocks. That whole area you had to set the ____ (s/l five-folds) for 500 basically. So it was, in other words you always wanted to make sure you got the cell blocks back on during shift change. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Because when people are going out and in. WEISSKOPF: Out and in of the canyon. BAUMGARTNER: Canyon, well where their shift change. So that when you go out of the canyon you have to go through the ____ (s/l five-fold) and when you come in you go through the ____ (s/l five-fold). I make sure you’re clean to come in and I make sure you’re clean going out. So, 99.9% of the time the cell blocks were on top of the cells at shift change, because it wasn’t true because you know…I hate to say it but there was megarads coming out of a cell you know, and that is coming off of hitting that ceiling. WEISSKOPF: As a layperson, that’s what I still don’t have a feeling for. If somebody could show me what the canyon looked like when you took a lid off using light instead of big numbers and…. BAUMGARTNER: Alright…shoot a beam up 20 feet and what’s it going to do when it hits that tall? WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: It’s going to scatter. WEISSKOPF: But if I think of a flashlight it’s like so what, but your talking about a big streak like a light they’d use in front of a used-car lot at night…. BAUMGARTNER: Oh…go that by about a hundred thousand. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, and that’s what I can’t visualize. BAUMGARTNER: Okay a lifetime dose per year was 3 rem. Suppose I’ve got 1,000 megarads, how long would it take me to get 3 rads? Not very damn long. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Because everything was measured in rads per hour. WEISSKOPF: And the dissolver full of… BAUMGARTNER: Dissolver solution… WEISSKOPF: ____ (unclear) uranium. BAUMGARTNER: Read in megarads. To give you an example, a doorstop, two drops with a CP off scale, that’s 5 rads. TP 20 rads. WEISSKOPF: Okay how long could you be near that to pick up your 3 rads then? BAUMGARTNER: Ahh, but I was only allowed to pick up 0.05. WEISSKOPF: Per day or? BAUMGARTNER: Per week. WEISSKOPF: Per week. So how long does that take? BAUMGARTNER: Well divide, take 0.05 you know rads total and then say your going to now you’ve got. I need a piece of paper and pencil. Suppose you’ve got 1 rad… WEISSKOPF: You want these papers now? BAUMGARTNER: Okay. 1 rad per hour… WEISSKOPF: Okay it’s per hour? BAUMGARTNER: Right, it’s always per hour. It’s a rate, it’s always a rate. And now your going to receive, your going to have, your going to receive, your going to measure that by time, T x 1 RO per hour is equal 0.05, because see these cancel. So what does, say take 1 underneath 0.05, so 1 one time is equal to 0.05 over 1R, which is what 20? 1/20. 1/20 of an hour. WEISSKOPF: Three minutes. BAUMGARTNER: Yes. WEISSKOPF: From two drops. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Wow. So if you screwed around in the lab you might have to leave work for the rest of the week if you were… BAUMGARTNER: That’s right, that’s right. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And it might only take you 3 minutes to get it. They were really pissed off at you if you worked three minutes a week. WEISSKOPF: Right, right. BAUMGARTNER: Am I making any sense to you? WEISSKOPF: So if you were in the canyon, when they ____ (unclear) opened far into the canyon, down ____ (unclear) and they took the lid off of the dissolver cell, you would be getting a big dose. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, about 5 rem per hour, probably you could be down in there maybe about 30 seconds and then you’d have enough for the week. We allowed people to get a maximum of 50 millirem per day, 250 millirem per week. But if you got 250 millirem per week, your only allowed 3 rem so that would be 12 weeks worth of work. So we didn’t let anybody, we didn’t try to let anybody get 250 millirem a week. So we were trying to keep them down at 50, because 50 x 52 is 2.5, that’s 2.6, that’s as far as we wanted them to go. So we were kind of, if he got 50 then you know, if he got 30 minutes, he had 39.5 hours a week that he couldn’t do anything. That was not very efficient. WEISSKOPF: No. Two things I always like to ask. If the whole process in the canyons wasn’t radioactive, it was just chemical. How big of a plant would it have been? You want to process the same amount of material…. BAUMGARTNER: Not bigger than my house. WEISSKOPF: Okay. And workers could go around and tune it up and look at gauges, take samples, all the chemistry would have been the same, but forget…it would have been a very straight forward chemical. BAUMGARTNER: Oh God, all that pipery that you see, that would have all disappeared because you’d have gone in there and poured ____ (s/l EL) solutions with the bucket and…it would looked more like a laboratory. You know, what’s 500 gallons…at that end it’s 500 gallons and at that is 50, you know… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. The whole, the massive size of that building, all it said was this stuff is radioactive… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah right… WEISSKOPF: And ____ (unclear). BAUMGARTNER: Now, had they built the building a little thinner, you could have had nothing but super problems. WEISSKOPF: Nothing but what? BAUMGARTNER: Super problems. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Suppose they had…do you know anything about a half-value layer? WEISSKOPF: A half… BAUMGARTNER: A half-value layer… WEISSKOPF: No. BAUMGARTNER: A half-value layer is a thickness of material which will, and you put a source on this side will…If I say I’m at 3 feet and I get a reading of 1, now I put a certain amount of material in between the source, you know, such that it now reduces it to 0.5…okay that’s a half-value layer. WEISSKOPF: Okay, right. BAUMGARTNER: Okay, if I put two half-value layers on there I get .25. WEISSKOPF: You don’t get zero. BAUMGARTNER: No, no, no, I get a .25. So 3 half-value layers, okay so I got megarads and I gotta have it down to less than a millirad. So your talking about 10 to the 9th. Well how many half-value layers do you have to have to have 10 to the 9th? Okay, if you miss it by very many half-value layer, and you don’t have to miss it by much. Like for instance if it was 1 millirad now per hour and it couldn’t be that high because you could only work 40 hours a week, you’d have 40, we’d have burned out. So they were guesstimating what it would take and they put 15 feet. Had they put say 12 feet, we would have had 3, we would have had to put up lead walls, etc, etc, etc, on the inside. WEISSKOPF: And nobody ever had to do that… BAUMGARTNER: Nobody, no one, they hadn’t done that before. They hadn’t done that before and so was 15 feet okay? So, what little we knew about absorption, those guys did a good job. WEISSKOPF: How could they estimate what a full-blown 1-1/2 1,500 pounds of uranium, they guessed at what the radiation would be, you know educated guesses. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah and then put a factor of 10 safety and that’s about what they did. And thank God they did because even at that we were getting radiation at the pipe gallery and at the operating levels. WEISSKOPF: If you went to the wall… BAUMGARTNER: No, where they were operating, where they were moving the dials. WEISSKOPF: They were getting… BAUMGARTNER: They were getting radiation doses. WEISSKOPF: Coming through. BAUMGARTNER: Yes, yes. WEISSKOPF: They were above it too. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah well… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: See and that’s…you know and that’s going through the shielding…just… WEISSKOPF: Amazing. BAUMGARTNER: To me, it’s those little things that really lead you believe it was, God it was magnificent. In other words, DuPont did a great job. I can, I’ve got a story for you. Greenewalt at that time was their top… TAPE 2 SIDE A BAUMGARTNER: …was given the instructions about the reactor and Fermi and those guys says well a 30-foot cube, you know 30 feet wide, deep, and high will be big enough. So they gave that to Greenewalt. He went back and they built the reactors. No one ever, they had some ____ (s/l as bills) that nobody ever looked at. So then when B Reactor went up for the first time they got it loaded and it went up. It went up. Got up a little ways and all of a sudden it started going down. So, Fermi was there and they says ‘Well what’s the scoop here, the reactors doing down. No matter what we do pulling out the rods it don’t make a damn bit of difference. It’s still coming down. What’s in there? What going…you know. Hey, yo-yo.’ And we don’t know how long, you know, it took like days for it to get there and going and they back up again. So they had these little spike short…So Fermi does his calculation and ‘Ahh, I know what it is, xenon’. Xenon is getting generated in these factors, absorbing neutrons. So he does a slide rule calculation, two digits of accuracy. He says “Oh damn.” He says “You know if we’d have that reactor at 32 feet x 32 feet x 32 feet, we could, it would work.” So Greenewalt says “But it is 32 feet x 32 feet.” They just loaded it 30 x 30, you know they put dummies in so that the original load was just 30 x 30 x 30. So what they did then is they took the tubes out, put two more feet, you know, of slugs, put it at 32 feet, it went up and stayed up. All because Greenewalt says, if 30 feet is okay, 32 feet is better. WEISSKOPF: What engineers need to think about. BAUMGARTNER: Right and that’s what he did. He thought we’d get a little bit of extra capacity just…you know…and it worked. But that’s how close that got. Had they built it originally, they’d have had B and F, and D, would have never made it. Those reactors would have been too small, and as it was why they went to 1,500 megawatts and ____ (s/l bomb noise). WEISSKOPF: But what do you think in terms of leaving something for prosperity? Both T Plant and B Reactor are being looked at as being of historic significance. How can we show them, keep them, what are we gonna do? What would you like people, your shaking your head, but in what way are shaking your head? BAUMGARTNER: They are too radioactive yet. WEISSKOPF: What is? BAUMGARTNER: The building. The canyon. You still wouldn’t let anybody in there and to let someone in with a crane, you , the limited capacity of looking, it’s so limited that I don’t… WEISSKOPF: It’s, yeah, yeah. BAUMGARTNER: I mean, one half hour…that’s not my idea of…16 a day. You know that’s not my idea of… WEISSKOPF: Perhaps a small model of it that would tell as much as the building itself. BAUMGARTNER: And they have that… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: We have that. It’s not a ____ (unclear) it’s about that big. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. You know where that might be today? I haven’t seen it. BAUMGARTNER: Go to the science center… WEISSKOPF: Oh is… BAUMGARTNER: In the Federal Building. It’s in their warehouse someplace. WEISSKOPF: They were the ones who had possession of it… BAUMGARTNER: They had possession of it. WEISSKOPF: Okay. What about B Reactor as far as the story you’d want people…What kind of things would you want people to walk away with? When they come to Hanford to learn what things were… BAUMGARTNER: I think the idea of complexity that it was not a simple machine. I think people think this thing was very, very simple. It was not very simple. It took a hell of a lot of know-how. These reactor operators had to learn a hell of a lot of stuff so they could operate. There was a lot of on-hands work in the original days, because remember there was no computers in those days. And there was no, the inner ties to the monitoring system was all manual. The guys were looking at gauges. At that time we didn’t know if the neutron detectors were really correct or not. They weren’t either, most of the time. So these guys were, they were watching temperature gauges on each pipe, a whole slug of things, all manual. Every shift, twice a shift they would go all through the 25 innertubes and record the temperature on the gauges, all that kind of stuff. And that was collected by those reactor engineers trying to figure out what to do, such things like splines and all that kind of stuff. But that didn’t’ occur until after the computer came out and we integrated all the stuff so that, you know. Also too, since it was so slow and it was all manual, they ended up having to have what’s called a third safety system. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: You know, where it was going and we had the balls. I was there when we put the balls in. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. What were you doing there? BAUMGARTNER: I was radiation protection. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: And those went in in 1953. WEISSKOPF: Your talking about when they physically put the system in, replace the liquid tanks with the ball bearings. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, well what happened with the liquid…the pipes allot the liquid run, you know, and the graphite has got little holes you know so that liquid got in there and just shut the damn reactor down just about. You’d have a cold spot right in the middle of anyplace. So what they did is they then pulled all that out and they had these little balls about the size of marbles, these boron silicate balls, and they would have them in hoppers and they would just drop. And they didn’t have pipes inside the reactor, they just had a hole. Well, when dropped the first batch of, when you know testing it, we’d say we put 6,000 balls in and God we only got 5,600 out. There were 400 balls in there…”ahhhhh.” WEISSKOPF: Each one of which produces the output of… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, just like the liquid did. And oh God, so we had to develop a method for sucking them 400 balls out. WEISSKOPF: Well how did you get them out the first time? You sucked them out then too… BAUMGARTNER: We sucked them out with a hose, like a vacuum cleaner. WEISSKOPF: It didn’t get them all… BAUMGARTNER: No, no we, so we ended up…they didn’t want to put a pipe in there, but by that time the old reactors had such large holes that the marble could go into the crack, you know between the pieces. I mean when they were machined they were really flush, but by the time they had operated until 1953, which from 1944 to 1953, you know that’s 9 years, quite a bit of the graphite had…you know what do they call it…it had come out. WEISSKOPF: ____ (s/l Groum) is the word that…. BAUMGARTNER: Well… WEISSKOPF: …growth going on… BAUMGARTNER: Well no, that’s not what happened at first. What happened at first is that the graphite was hot and so therefore it like, it bled off. So we were getting holes. And then they finally figured out how to stop that. But when they did, all of a sudden the graphite grew, see, but the first problem was the graphite shrank. You know we were dissolving the graphite because remember the reactor is hot, I mean “thermally hot.” You know, after all we’re heating up water and almost all the moderation is being in the graphite not in the water or on the slug, we were cooling the slugs… WEISSKOPF: Moderation produces heat… BAUMGARTNER: Right and so that had to be fused out through the pipe, you know the aluminum pipe, and on into the water. So the graphite was, I don’t remember exactly what the temperature was, but I think they were talking about 600-700 degrees Fahrenheit, which enough to start vaporizing some of the you know if you had a particular atmosphere and it was…and that’s what had generated these holes. You know these splits, cracks, and so when they you know you 400 marbles. It’s not very many when you’ve got 6,000, but it’s a lot when you’re trying to get the reactor back up. WEISSKOPF: Plus knowing every time you dump it, you might end up with yet… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, getting more and more and more in there. WEISSKOPF: Question, you could only suck water up 30 some feet…because if air pressure only allows it to go that high… BAUMGARTNER: Well that’s when atmosphere, yeah… WEISSKOPF: How do you suck up ball bearings from the bottom of the reactor. Wasn’t it farther than that…it’s 30…feet BAUMGARTNER: Well, yeah, but see you’re using not water. You’re using a high-degree of air. See, you put the tube down and you squirt the air so you loosen you know, and then you suck the, you know they drop down the ball and ____ (sucking noise) you’ve seen them suck balls up. WEISSKOPF: But you can’t suck a ball up… BAUMGARTNER: With a vacuum you can. WEISSKOPF: …water… BAUMGARTNER: Huh? Well, a vacuum. WEISSKOPF: Oh, Yes. BAUMGARTNER: You’re not using a vacuum, we’re pushing air up. You’re pushing up with air. WEISSKOPF: With water that doesn’t work… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, well it would too because water has some force, but air is what we used. WEISSKOPF: Okay… BAUMGARTNER: You wouldn’t want to use water because you’d now get water going in there. WEISSKOPF: Right, I’m thinking of…if you have a flat column of water you can only raise it 32 feet. BAUMGARTNER: That’s no question, not arguing. WEISSKOPF: …air up through it your going to be sucking water… BAUMGARTNER: Right, you’re really…see your pushing air in the first place. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: And that was all sealed so you could put like 600 pounds of pressure… WEISSKOPF: Wow, okay. BAUMGARTNER: See… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: In other words it’s a whole different…what you were thinking. I know what you were thinking is all…you know. No that’s not…you’ve got to think about in terms of…no they put pressure on that baby and they just blew air… WEISSKOPF: ____ (unclear) BAUMGARTNER: Yes, right. And that well…that just sucked them right out. WEISSKOPF: And did you end up with 6,000 or? BAUMGARTNER: Well, no we ended up with about, all total I think that method left about 16 left. WEISSKOPF: 16 balls? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah and then we just burned them up. You know, they’ve only got so much capacity and so that was burned up in a hurry. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: So, no big, it was no big problem. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. So at any rate if there is a B Reactor Museum someday… BAUMGARTNER: I’d love to see that. I love what they’ve got because they’ve got enough parts there to show you the complication of the front end and the back end, you know you can see all of that. The pipery…ahhh….big tails… WEISSKOPF: Yeah… BAUMGARTNER: Gauges, control room. Recognizing it’s not a little itty-bitty computer, this is bank after bank after bank of non-computerized equipment, all analog. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: To me, that’s…I think people should see that because our kids are growing up without an analog in their mind. WEISSKOPF: Not even watches. BAUMGARTNER: No, digitally and all. So consequently I think this is a piece of history that isn’t that old. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: And they would think that it’s extremely old. You know, get what I’m trying to say. I couldn’t be more for it. WEISSKOPF: Good. BAUMGARTNER: I’m with it. It’s just I’ve been helped for the central reason…reactor wasn’t my big bag. I mean, I was in the 100 Areas for two years, but from 1953 and is you know, from February of 1953 to ’54. And we did the basin work. I was involved in the basin, water runs through the reactor and then runs through a basin and cools down thermally… WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: And also to short half-life of the radioactive materials so that by the time it gets to the back end in 30 minutes it’s not as hot and it isn’t going to hurt river as much. The fish…we were really…okay well these basins were made out of concrete and pretty soon the joints, you know from expanding and contracting you know and now it’s hot, water is coming out at 200 degrees, now all of a sudden the water is cold coming out at the ____( s/l cool). WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: These joints expanded, cracked, you know those basins are 12 feet deep and so pretty soon we had holes and we had as much water running out between the cracks to the river as we were getting through the main tube. So we ended up having to go in there and fill up the cracks and grout underneath the thing and stop any leaks. WEISSKOPF: Did you have to shut off the reactor while you did this? BAUMGARTNER: Oh yes, yeah. And when we were doing that was when we were doing Ball 3X. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: When we were putting Ball 3X we did the basin. So we did reactor after reactor after reactor. And I was in the 100-F Area, which did F, H, and DR, and D, and then went over to B when we did B and C. And monitoring at that time was monitoring and we…See basins got hot because if you had a rupture before you could shut the damn thing off… WEISSKOPF: Something got out. BAUMGARTNER: Something got out…well where did it go? To in the basin, and then it settled out in the basin and so we had a lot of washing to do and… WEISSKOPF: Before, when you emptied it out of water, was it not so hot that you could walk down there, walk around and take samples and things like that? BAUMGARTNER: Not at first… WEISSKOPF: Really? Okay. BAUMGARTNER: Not at first. What we did the first was we hosed all the concrete off and you know so when that went down the hole, you know you can’t stop that. Anyway we picked up all that hot water and that went back to the tank farms. And then we, cause see there could be part, pieces of metal… WEISSKOPF: Sure. BAUMGARTNER: See the slug didn’t necessarily have to fresh, it could be an old piece of slug. Now you’ve got it reading hotter than hell in little spots, reading 100,000 counts per minute. You know and you walk on that, 3,000 is a millirem, you’ve got 35 millirem. So you couldn’t walk on that. You know 35 millirem you could walk 30 minutes a day. So, and that’s about what they did. So they brought in 200 workers and they got to work 30 minutes each. You know going in and going… WEISSKOPF: You were the person who was sitting around with a clipboard and you know… BAUMGARTNER: No that was the monitors, that’s the guys working for me. WEISSKOPF: What were you doing? BAUMGARTNER: I was their boss. WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay. BAUMGARTNER: I was looking at the readings they were taking. When they went down to see whether we should change the time, changing of the time was my responsibility, making sure the people didn’t get over exposed. WEISSKOPF: So you were getting pressure at both ends. BAUMGARTNER: Absolutely. WEISSKOPF: Try to get the work done, but let’s not kill these guys either and… BAUMGARTNER: So I was the interface to the guys out doing operations. WEISSKOPF: And theoretically everything you did was by a book, there weren’t a lot of subjective decisions to make. BAUMGARTNER: Subjective decision was you don’t get over 250 millirem a week for sure. WEISSKOPF: But, yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And if you were in a hot job like we were you allowed ‘em up to 50 millirem a day... WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: …and the amount of time it took to make 30 millirem, I mean 50 millirem, that’s all they got to work. WEISSKOPF: So there wasn’t a lot of room for discussion then. BAUMGARTNER: No. And each guy that went in, you took his time in and you told him when the hell to get out. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And you had a loud speaker and he says ‘okay Joe Blow get your butt out.’ WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: And you expected them out. And if he didn’t’ get out soon enough then he didn’t go in again. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: Because I would go over to the old supervisor and I’d say ‘ that guy didn’t listen, I don’t want him in there.’ WEISSKOPF: And did you find ____ (unclear) would add up to kind of what you were estimating? BAUMGARTNER: Pretty much. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. BAUMGARTNER: Pretty much. Again there was a problem where the CP says one thing and the badge says another. So now you’ve got to figure out what the hell is going on. WEISSKOPF: Did they ever wear multiple badges? BAUMGARTNER: Oh yes. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Oh yes, some of them, we wore like two days, some of them one day. You know you’d wear them one shift… WEISSKOPF: Did ever put any on your ankles? BAUMGARTNER: Oh yes. WEISSKOPF: Oh you did? BAUMGARTNER: Shoes… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: …inside the shoes, on the forehead, you know in back of the head, the chest, belly, gonads, knees… WEISSKOPF: At any one time how many would you be wearing? BAUMGARTNER: …wrist. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: And you’d do that, on the basin work we did that for the first three weeks. WEISSKOPF: And each worker could work at maybe a half an hour a day. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. We said the CP said you can work 30 minutes. So you’d wear those and when he’d suit up…When he’d suit up underneath, you know on the first pair of coveralls he’d have these badges clipped to it or taped and then he’d have another pair over the top of it and another pair over the top of that, so there was three pair of coveralls on. Because you didn’t want him to get contaminated…cause ahhh…if he contaminated badges it’s bad news because that’s the radiation close, that just screws up the whole radiation reading. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: So we wanted to make damn sure. And then we were, when it was wet then we wore wet suits and a few things like that. It was a, getting ready took longer and going out took longer than it was to work. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: So, that much I can tell you. WEISSKOPF: And how quickly would you get the badge readings back? The next day or? BAUMGARTNER: We could get the reading the next day. WEISSKOPF: Were you pretty comfortable with the results… BAUMGARTNER: No we wear them you know, generally speaking for the test that we did with the 10 badges, we would wear them with the badge that he wore… WEISSKOPF: Oh right. BAUMGARTNER: So that we had a reference point to all these 10 measurements. And that’s, otherwise you can’t correlate it. Also too remember now this…this badge system isn’t necessarily “that accurate at low doses.” So you wanted to have enough dose on there to where you could have reasonable accuracy. And since the guy was taking 50 millirem per day in a week’s time he got 250. So 250 is a very good reading out of a film badge and you know you get good statistics. You could get a good feeling as to what his body was getting. WEISSKOPF: So you took the 10 badges and then looked at the single badge that was being worn by the same person and said ‘well it looks like when this badge reads this much, his feet were getting this much, his chest was getting this much…’ BAUMGARTNER: Okay, feet…arms and feet can get 10 times what the body can get. So now is this job going to be limiting to the hands, or is this job going to be limiting the body? WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: And the only way you know that is to put on the extremities. WEISSKOPF: And the feet especially, in that case. BAUMGARTNER: Well, also he’s playing with hands…you don’t if he’s kneeling, so therefore the knees…you know… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Because these guys do all kinds of dumb things. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: You know, I don’t want to stop them from working. You know, they might go down, they might be on their knees so you had to, we had to correlate. And you had to be sure that you weren’t going say ‘well hell he’s burning out his legs before he gets to 250,’ maybe he’s going to get to the legs 300…you know you can’t do that. So you say ‘hey, you gotta stop. We’re only gonna let you get 30 because you’re limiting to the feet.’ Get what I’m trying to say? So, even though the whole body said it was, you’re well within limits, extremity dose. And see an extremity dose went into the records also. You know, that’s also been recorded for these people. That’s in the guy’s file. WEISSKOPF: Because you had the badges on. BAUMGARTNER: Right. Whatever dosimeter reading we ever put on a guy, that’s been recorded in his file. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: So, there is a lot of things that were…and we were developing those kinds of thoughts because no one had ever done the basin work before. Also too, it’s little things like when we were on the concrete once we always kept everything wet, so when they working there we had a spray system. WEISSKOPF: Just for dust, keep the dust out? BAUMGARTNER: Keep the concrete wet…and I’ll tell you why. WEISSKOPF: Oh, oh, oh, physically just to keep it at wet… BAUMGARTNER: Wet, so that it can’t move. In C Basin, metal basin, they weren’t careful and on Saturday we had a whirly week and we ____ (unclear). WEISSKOPF: You mean it just blew the stuff out? BAUMGARTNER: Just sucked it right out there and spread it over the countryside. So we went out one Saturday, that’s when we found the particle problem from West Area. That problem started in the 100 Areas… WEISSKOPF: Really? BAUMGARTNER: …because we had a dry basin and the 100 Areas when the workers came in on the ____ (s/l five-fold), all of a sudden…wow we’ve got the patrolmen coming in, we were setting the ____ (s/l five-fold) off. They shouldn’t have, you coming to work. So they called us up and so we sent a crew out there and sure enough, there was particles all over. So, we started then trying to delineate this problem. So as we were moving away from B Area, it was getting lighter and lighter and lighter, less and less specks. And we were going down the railroad, and when we were going from B Area say to 2 West Area, suzie-q junction. We got to the suzie-q junction and it was kind of clean, so the guy said ‘well hell, lets go another half mile.’ So we went down another half mile, and lo and behold it started going up. Now if the source is C, what’s it doing hot over there? And as we got toward West, we got more and more and more, higher, and higher, and higher. So we says well alright, we’ll take a carload of guys and we’ll go over to 2 West Area. So we drove over there with six guys of us and I had one guy that hadn’t gotten out of the car yet and he turned his instrument on, put the probe on the ground, and 10,000 counts per minute. “Ahhhh.” So that’s how we discovered the C-stock, you know the REDOX plow, the REDOX, the ruthenium problem. And we delineated that that day and then we were totally confused because see a GM doesn’t tell you want the radiation coming from is, it just tells you activity and it wasn’t until we had, at that time, a 256 channel analyzer, it was a big thing. There were only two on the plant, one in 189-D and one down in 300 Area. So now we had to take samples and we took ‘em and it turns out the ruthenium was beta emitter so we were getting like ____ (s/l bremstroll) on a very low energy ____ (s/l siphon). But the 100 Area stuff gave us a spectra, fission product. Yeah, ‘ahhh what is’, you know so it took us…and we delineated the whole problem and then we had, oh 50-100 monitors, 3 feet apart and straight head and every time they found a speck the guy from ____ (s/l J.E. Jones) would go over with a shovel and pick it up, put it in the bucket. Until they… WEISSKOPF: So these specks were from REDOX or from… BAUMGARTNER: REDOX and from the…yeah, we picked ‘em both up. WEISSKOPF: Okay, but it was specks, it was not covering the ground. BAUMGARTNER: No no, it was little flecks, you know because uh…it’s like dirt. Little you know, the stuff kind of sticks to something else, or if it was a liquid it got absorbed in a solid material, you know, and was…that’s it. So that’s, so lots of things happened and whose fault was it? Well, too damn late to worry about that, just don’t let it happen again. You know you had your investigations and then you modified your procedures and this is how things got done. WEISSKOPF: So, it was new industry. BAUMGARTNER: Yes. We never had clean basins before. Hadn’t cleaned a metal basin before and that dried out faster than the concrete. WEISSKOPF: Wonder why… BAUMGARTNER: Well it’s metal… WEISSKOPF: Concrete’s absorbent… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, that’s why it stayed wet. WEISSKOPF: Oh damp, yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Damp, stayed wet and where the stuff would have stayed down then the air probably wouldn’t have sucked that light particle up, because it would have been tied with water. See after that, boy, it was underneath 2 inches of water, and water running down the sides and all that kind of stuff. It increased the cost of doing the job, but it should of because we can’t afford the risk of letting things get away from us, that takes us away from T Plant. WEISSKOPF: Well, it actually is closer to reactor which is very interesting because people, there wasn’t much radiation in the normal cooling water, but over years and years of operation stuff had settled out there. BAUMGARTNER: Well, it was from the particulate coming from the ruptures. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: It was the ruptures that were… WEISSKOPF: Pure water in itself will come out perfectly… BAUMGARTNER: Pure water and if there is no rupture it will stay why…it will be hot in the sense that you’ve activated the oxygen and nitrogen, but see that’s a short half-life material and so by the time it gets 30 minutes, it’s gone. You know, that’s like 10,15-20 half-lives. Anything that goes more than 10-20 half-lives is pretty much gone and it’s not that high to start with, you know your talking about a couple thousand count per minute so what went back to the river was really low, except when you had a rupture. There are no filters out there. At least there weren’t then. I don’t think there is any now. When a rupture, but see now we have such fast equipment that…. WEISSKOPF: You mean in a regular reactor? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Such as if the primary coolant ruptured into the secondary. BAUMGARTNER: Well no… WEISSKOPF: Or something like that… BAUMGARTNER: That one we could handle, but even then you had to stop, you know you had the water flow. It has to go through…but, see most of that flow, a rupture would have gone through the cooling water and goes right down to the basin and out she goes and as far as I know there’s no filter on that. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: And I don’t think it would have caught these small particles anyway. WEISSKOPF: Well it would have been… BAUMGARTNER: You can’t drive 55,000 gallons, let’s be honest. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: You just can’t drive that through a HEPA filter. WEISSKOPF: And change it every hour. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. So, that make any sense? WEISSKOPF: Oh yeah. It all makes sense, it’s all good, and I think before we burn you out completely. You have your burn in out in how long you can talk, you know but it’s all relevant. You know, right now we are looking at T Plant, some of the things that ____ (unclear)… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: So a lot of things you talked about were great for that, but the work at the reactor with the Ball 3X) and the basins is the first time I have talked to somebody who worked on cleaning out the basins. So that was interesting. BAUMGARTNER: Oh there were a lot of things. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? BAUMGARTNER: I was very lucky because I got to move. I got into places…. WEISSKOPF: Everybody did. I don’t know of anybody who had one job for like 20 years. BAUMGARTNER: No, no. WEISSKOPF: Certainly not in the early days. BAUMGARTNER: No, not during time of operation. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: The most you were allowed to stay in any one place is a year, except when I went to 234-5 I stayed from, you know 1954 to 1958. WEISSKOPF: Did they encourage you to move around? BAUMGARTNER: Oh absolutely, they wanted you to be able to go anyplace. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Since I had been in the 100 Areas they didn’t hesitate to call me if they had a problem out there to whip me out there. WEISSKOPF: So that must of been the security issues of not letting anybody learn too much about any particular process, that was less of an issue then. --- I wish we had more opportunity to do it in a more relaxed, you know sort of an ongoing thing, but other people too. Because otherwise you know you spend your whole life in this career and now we’re asking for this much of it. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. WEISSKOPF: And, your getting just a little tip of the iceberg sample of it. BAUMGARTNER: And there is no way, I don’t think there is anyway that we can give all to you in any way. WEISSKOPF: Some people like to write their autobiographies, some people go teach a class, but otherwise there is no direct ongoing way to ____ (unclear). BAUMGARTNER: See for instance like the first and third Wednesday of every month at the… WEISSKOPF: Right… BAUMGARTNER: …the monitors meet, guys that I used to work with. WEISSKOPF: Like Bob is there... BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. And these guys have that early knowledge because they’re all retirees and they all had come in and either like, most of the guys that come in about 1949. Prior to that, it was the guys that were management were then down monitoring. WEISSKOPF: Right. BAUMGARTNER: In my early years, I had an instrument in my hand a lot. If we were really deeply concerned about the radiation problems and that, I went in. I wouldn’t let my monitors go in. Up until ’58, at which time then the union had come in and only the monitors could monitor and then we had to step back, but I was allowed to go until ’58. And the reason for that is because I had been in 234-5 Building a long time and we had an interesting monitoring problem. Secondly, I was working on monitoring problems, the doses associated with taking this reading and then what’s the dose, coming up with rules of thumb. We worked, I worked on that. Also too, I was involved in investigations and no one had more incidents than we had in the 200 Areas, it was profound. Whether it happened at REDOX or T Plant or 234-5, or 231, or at B Plant, or you know…it was all…I mean and there was a lot going on, a lot we were learning and from investigating. And then you didn’t always get the truth from everybody when they told you oh I did this, I did that, you had to kind of figure out…that’s not the way it was…the way it really was and then after you tell them the way it was, then they try and say ‘yeah that’s the way was.’ But it, sometimes to go, it took quite a bit of effort to….because people are naturally defensive, you know it’s their job…yeah yeah there you got involved. And no one wants to admit to a mistake, I don’t care who it is…whether, today’s world is no different and it was hard to get some of these things out. We had lots of interesting incidents you know like a piece of plutonium in a guys arm…that’s in… Had a guy put his hand who put his hand in the bottom of a TTPA solution of plutonium and it went right through the glove and everything right into his hand you know, millions of ____ (s/l dperem). Days and days where he never went home obviously. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Millions of ____ (s/l dperem) and I was involved in all of them. I got involved in all of, I got pulled of my regular assignment. I also built analog models to see how well DDTA works, EDTA, DTPA, how well these things work in terms of removing things that were causing confusion. WEISSKOPF: There wasn’t anywhere to go for the books right? BAUMGARTNER: We were writing it, we were writing it. And no one knew how much to give, you know, I give how much, what can I expect? And from the very meager data that we had and the very meager number of cases we had, we developed models that have held up very well, held up for 40 years. So, the work we did wasn’t that bad. I think that we did, I think personally we did very good work. I think the guys that I worked with were sterling. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Oh God, they, it was, I guess it was the right people at the right time. Really and truly it was, I’m very proud of the record we’ve got when you think we didn’t know anything and we never killed anybody. And the guys that we could have hurt, you know the guys with the heavy incidents, not too many of those died say from like leukemia or anything like that. Most of them died of heart, and not at young ages…79, 80…oh all this kind of stuff. And those that did die from things that….they’ve been compensated as far as I know, they might have had to go to court and all that, but nevertheless I don’t think we’ve been very belligerent. So, it’s just, I don’t know… WEISSKOPF: It’s interesting because every industry has a fatality factor right…and you guys were starting out in an industry that no track record and look back is how you go and… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah… WEISSKOPF: …compare it to other industries, other chemical industries, heavy industries… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. We’re the only industry that I know that has…since people aren’t dying right from the amount of radiation they got based on the epidemiology, that we have healthy workers and they predicated that, because we got our physicals and we got monitored and so consequently we must have seen things early and so therefore they didn’t die. The alternative to that is that maybe fellas…they didn’t get as much radiation as you thought they got. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. BAUMGARTNER: You know that’s an alternative. Maybe we weren’t healthier than anybody else, I don’t think we were, and just because we were getting medical doesn’t necessarily mean we aren’t dying from heart, stroke, or everything else just like everybody else is. So, but how do you prove that we didn’t have as much radiation as they’re putting in the files? So, I worked with Ethel Gilbert for five years who was the epidemiologist for the plant, who said we should have so many deaths and Jack Fix is now the guy that has that. I worked for him and we proved, or I proved I thought, that the amount of fast neutron dose that was given to our employees was considerably less than what they’ve got on the file. WEISSKOPF: Really? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. Because they automatically added 15 millirem per week of neutrons to every worker, operator, pipe fitter… WEISSKOPF: Just as a safety factor? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah it’s just a booby factor. And that’s what makes our numbers look so big see…the amount of neutrons exceeds the gamma and that’s not possible. That’s where I came from. WEISSKOPF: What… BAUMGARTNER: That’s the safety factor to give you the best estimate of how many people should be dying by when and what. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: And see okay you say well we should be getting so many deaths, well then if they’re not dying, now what? Well, they said we have a safety factor, healthy employees, when in truth maybe your estimate of exposure is a little bit high. WEISSKOPF: The other alternative is that the radiation was good for them. BAUMGARTNER: That’s an alternative which many of us in Health Physics have indicated for the simple reason, background is 300 millirem per year from the sun, from the ground, and so you ask yourself if we are getting 300 millirem you know, we’ve been having that since birth, even before birth, is that injuring us? “Are we any dumber than the Ape man was?” 10,000 years, 100,000 years…everything was higher then than it is now, because now the things decayed you know. Every 94,000 years is a half-life or 10, or whatever uranium 238 I think is quite a bit, but 234-5. So you ask yourself these questions and you come up with, you know you wonder whether people aren’t better off. WEISSKOPF: Do things like bacteria have the same susceptibility to radiation as the human cell? BAUMGARTNER: Yes, that’s…fundamentally bacteria are one cell… WEISSKOPF: Okay… BAUMGARTNER: And so therefore… WEISSKOPF: it’s not as if you’re perhaps killing off bacteria before your hurting yourself. BAUMGARTNER: No, no your getting mutants so they are getting used to…. I can believe that. But, I think we’re generating more mutants via the chemical route then we are ever with radiation. Personally, that just…and the reason for that is 10 to the 10th photons per centimeter squared is a rad. Okay, that’s 10 to the 10th. Now lets go back, how many atoms or molecules are there in a molecular wave and it’s 6 x 7 to the 23rd …okay so I if can’t see a million, oh so I’ll be generous, a billion. One part in a billion is what? Take 9 from 23, you get 14.that’s still 4 orders of magnitude higher than 1 rad. So therefore chemically, bigger numbers. One part per million is 10 to the 17th, kinds of things…we’re talking about 10 to the 10th which is a rad and we’re talking about 0.3 a year. You get the idea of the…the chemical in my judgement is much more fearsome or fearing. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Due to the fact that’s 7 orders of magnitude or 10 orders of magnitude. Different, higher, and so therefore that’s a much more severe problem. WEISSKOPF: Interesting. BAUMGARTNER: Am I, give you a coruler, to me I find 10 to the 10th a good-sized number. This is what my…am I making sense? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. But there is also the fact though that we are exposed to the chemicals every day of our life in every situation. Where radiation… BAUMGARTNER: That we’re willing to accept, just like we are willing to accept 65,000 deaths on the highway. WEISSKOPF: That’s where, I know. BAUMGARTNER: And that’s per year. See, so there’s a funny, we have a funny sense of value. WEISSKOPF: What do you think it is that put nuclear, all things nuclear, in the light that their in today? BAUMGARTNER: Fear of the unknown. None of us people could get up in front of a hearing, a senate hearing and say, will 1 rad, how much ____ (s/l circ) will that give? I can’t tell you. You know, they can tell you what a mile of road will do, but they can tell you what a rad ____ (unclear) will do. WEISSKOPF: But, that mile of road is only based on statistics from what happened the year before… BAUMGARTNER: Right. WEISSKOPF: …it’s not like a physical thing. BAUMGARTNER: Right and we couldn’t, and see even though you haven’t had an incident you start with epidemiology and you play games. A case in point is the reactor incident in New York, you know, where the reactor blew up and they’re arguing, two PhD’s are arguing, whether it caused a half a death or a whole death. WEISSKOPF: Right, statistically, yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. I rest my case. And, and these arguments gets raised in the papers, scare the hell out of everybody. WEISSKOPF: I presume the same thing is going to be happening with genetically engineered things for better or worse, for right or wrong. BAUMGARTNER: I don’t think so. WEISSKOPF: You don’t think people are going be real worried about it? BAUMGARTNER: No. If they were, there would be upheaval…and there is no upheaval in the paper…not like there was against nuclear. Starting in ’56 my God anti-nuclear was…Ralph Nader was in the paper everyday. WEISSKOPF: But it wasn’t nuclear reactors back then was it? It was nuclear… BAUMGARTNER: He sure as hell did go after…well yeah…but see they equated everything to bomb. There was nothing but a bomb. You didn’t have a reactor, that didn’t mean anything. WEISSKOPF: It was just a controlled bomb. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, I mean it was a bomb, it was a bomb. Everything was bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. Nuclear power, didn’t even want to, they wouldn’t let us hardly build any reactors in the United States. I think we have what about 10,12. France has about 30. You know, they’re tweaking their nose at all of us saying go ahead let their price of gasoline get high, we don’t care we’ll go build another 6 reactors. They’ve operated now for 50 years and they’re doing really fine. Our reactors have done fine. I mean the worst criticality incident we had might have cause a half a death…maximum a one death. Now is that something to be outrageously feared? WEISSKOPF: No. BAUMGARTNER: How many reactor years have we got? We must have, by now we must have 300-400 years of reactor years with experience and we’re not even thinking about it. WEISSKOPF: But when you started, did you feel like you were getting into the industry that was going to replace the oil industry? I mean was it… BAUMGARTNER: No, no, no. No, no that didn’t’ happen until…we never went into those kinds of things until 1956. For instance when Eisenhower, he had the Atoms for Peace Program where we gave away 500 reactors you know swing the pool type reactors. Khadafy got 3 of them at 100 kilowatts which is two bombs a year for those people who…If you want to see something interesting, Dan Rather had a special one time in which he was reporting on how many airplanes had been left in the desert. We didn’t need them you know, B-24s and B-17s, and… WEISSKOPF: During what period? BAUMGARTNER: After World War II. WEISSKOPF: Just left them there? BAUMGARTNER: Just left them there, it didn’t pay to bring them back. The thing that was interesting is…all of the tails were missing. You know the part that rises? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Here you’ve got 300 airplanes on the deck and not one of them has got a tail. Now what’s with that? Well that’s strange and then I read the Washington State Law, which allows Boeing Airplane Company to put 1,500 pounds of uranium into the tail of a ’47, 500 pounds into a 707. Did you know that? WEISSKOPF: Just for balance? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, cause see uranium weighs ____ (s/l spegee) of 19, lead is only 11. So that for the same volume I almost get twice as much weight and you don’t have that much space. However, it’s only depleted uranium. WEISSKOPF: Oh. BAUMGARTNER: So, we’re getting rid of that big pile of depleted uranium that we…. However, what is depleted uranium? WEISSKOPF: It’s uranium that’s been through a reactor or a separations process. BAUMGARTNER: And what’s the primary nucleon? WEISSKOPF: 238. BAUMGARTNER: Beautiful. And what is 238? It’s the mother atom of plutonium. WEISSKOPF: If you put it, yeah… BAUMGARTNER: If I put a neutron into 238 it goes uranium 239, later it goes off and becomes plutonium 239, ahhh so… we let 300 airplanes with 500 pounds of uranium go to Khadafy. I’m sure that he can put them through a roller and make ¼ inch thick uranium sheets and line 17-foot pool reactors with that and let all the… WEISSKOPF: Make is similar, yeah… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, and let it sit, but who the hell cares? And you know then every once and awhile, maybe once a year or once every two years, you to take that out, put another sheet in there and then go over to a laboratory with a hood and dissolve that baby up and… The chemistry of plutonium is well-known by everybody. I mean if Russia’s got it, Khadafy’s got it. So, the guy, he doesn’t have to steal plutonium from the Israelis. Just like the Israelis didn’t steal it from anybody else, they made their own. So how can you keep, with 500 reactors out there, how can you keep plutonium not happening to people. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Anyway and that happened to us. Once we knew those reactors were going against our judgement, because Eisenhower says no we want to let everybody have the nuclear, because we want them to make the measurements on metal fatigue and so on, so on. It sounded good, but you buy this problem which we did. Which we have, and anyway I helped write state law. WEISSKOPF: You helped what? BAUMGARTNER: Write the state law for us being an agreement state. WEISSKOPF: Which state law. BAUMGARTNER: Washington state. WEISSKOPF: About what. BAUMGARTNER: Nuclear. WEISSKOPF: Oh. BAUMGARTNER: Go read it, it’s down at the library. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: I think it’s 208 or something like that. And then you go back in there and you look at what they can put into an airplane and there is a whole bunch of little things in there that scare the hell out of ya. You know for a guy who’s been in radiation protection. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: So, that’s… WEISSKOPF: Interesting. It’s a whole tangent I hadn’t imagined. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, well…your not, you’ve never been in the field. WEISSKOPF: No. BAUMGARTNER: And so you wouldn’t…would you ask a question? No. I’ve given you more information then the questions you’ve asked because there are interesting little aspects that go with this whole thing. They are not necessarily good for the T Plant. WEISSKOPF: Well and the other thing is, just asking questions might be not what’s interesting or ____ (unclear) other things you’ve done. You know I might be asking questions that don’t really relate to you too. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: So I think that I always do better if I shut-up a bit and let people talk about the things.. BAUMGARTNER: Lets us talk… WEISSKOPF: …they’re comfortable about or interested in, or find important. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, and all of us have had, like you say, had interesting careers. There isn’t hardly any guy that you’ll talk to that doesn’t felt that he did a good job. At least in radiation protection. WEISSKOPF: Now did you have any friends who quite because they didn’t think it was safe? BAUMGARTNER: Oh yes. WEISSKOPF: Or didn’t like the management? BAUMGARTNER: Oh yes, oh yes…lots. We brought in 500 chemists and we lost 75 the first year. WEISSKOPF: Just the green… BAUMGARTNER: From as soon as they found out what the hell was here, they didn’t want any part of that,… nuclear bomb. I had a good friend who no longer could do the job that I ended up getting after he left. Signing off on all those weapons. WEISSKOPF: Oh, not for… TAPE #2 SIDE B BAUMGARTNER: Like for instance an H-Bomb, that’s so hellaciously large and that’s not against just military. That has to be against civilian population. WEISSKOPF: What military installation is that big? BAUMGARTNER: Is that big? You know, you know… WEISSKOPF: New York City is that big…. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah right. And so you get rid of the back up for the military which is the people, and that’s what H-Bomb, and it’s so hellaciously large that you’ve ruined your political system if you drop it. I mean you know you drop 7 bombs on Russia and you haven’t got enough big cities left or enough politicians left to do anything. And if you let those people, if you warn them and then you destroyed the city after they’re out, what do you do with all these locusts? I mean they, just you have anarchy so, there isn’t anybody that I know of in the political system that is so paranoid that would use a weapon. The reason they won’t is because, like Khadafy, he’s only got three cities and then he hasn’t got anything left. I mean what’s he going to be ruler of? You know, so you drop 9 bombs on America and you’ve got like 75 million people, what are you going to do with 75 million people out in the countryside. WEISSKOPF: Now, would somebody have stayed here working at 234-5 if they were adamantly against nuclear weapons? And the policy of having nuclear weapons? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, but I didn’t meet too many of those. The only one I met was one the guy who was signing off when he realized how many weapons there were, the number was so large, it was so mind boggling that to build any more he thought was, you know, crazy. WEISSKOPF: And politically you were still comfortable with what was going on? ____ (unclear) BAUMGARTNER: Well we were…. WEISSKOPF: …reasonable approach. BAUMGARTNER: I felt much more comfortable once we had the H-Bomb, because see the A-Bomb is small enough to where it could be a tactical weapon and we built a lot of cannon shells, but there is no… The H-Bomb is a whole different thing and if you ever escalate, my God, I would assume soon the ____ (unclear) would take care of us. WEISSKOPF: So you thought that the sheer lunacy of even trying to use one… BAUMGARTNER: The sheer lunacy of going against America with 30,000 weapons is lunacy, even if you figure on getting 90%… WEISSKOPF: Right, it’s still not… BAUMGARTNER: No…it’s just crazy. And we can’t afford to go against Russia even with 6,000. I mean 60. What are we going to do against 60? Or 600? I mean its crazy. WEISSKOPF: You would have more deaths civilian and otherwise in the first half-hour of the war then…. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, you would no longer have any capability, in my judgement, of attacking further. In other words, there is no way you can invade us nor can we invade them because there is too much anarchy. There is just no law and order. I don’t care what anybody says. WEISSKOPF: So you thought it was a reasonable approach to international…. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, the bigger pile was, the better I liked it, because now I don’t care…even a little paranoia stops you from using it. You no longer have to worry about large paranoia, just even a little, even a little bit. Any sane man, even a sane man is scared much less a paranoid. That’s the way I thought. I’ve let my views be known and you didn’t agree or not agree, but that’s the way I felt. It just didn’t make sense. There aren’t 600 targets out there or 6,000 targets out in this world, there just aren’t. And then when people started talking about China… I went to China, 25 years ago admittedly, but I was worried, but there is no way in hell China can do anything. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: I mean what can they do with a sampan? You know, sure they got 7,000 or 10,000 sampans, but they aren’t going to be able to come across the ocean. I mean remember when they invaded Vietnam? Maybe that was before your time. After we left Vietnam, China went to invade Vietnam. And they got 7 miles into the country and couldn’t go any further, and you know why? The single transportation that they had was a single railroad line that were bringing supplies from 1,000 miles back out to the front. So when they sent a soldier to the front, he had a knapsack full of whatever the hell they put in there, but he can’t put a ton in there. I mean if he puts 90 pounds in there for a little guy like that he’s got a lot. Okay, how much food is that, how much ammunition is that, etc. How long will he last? A week? 10 days? 15 at the most, and then what does he do? Then you’ve got to retreat…and that’s exactly what happened. So they put…ah…Remember the Tiamen Square fiasco? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Well, I was in Peking a few years before that and to give you an example of a problem. When I was there, there were two filling stations in Peking for the military vehicles and for everything else. During the day the military vehicles were loaded with food stuffs which they brought into town and dropped off and the people then picked it up with ____ (unclear) and then the military, at night then could go out, pick up soldiers and bring them in. Well, how many, I think they had like 15-20 trucks 1-ton trucks, well how many guys can you pick up with 25 trucks, until you can get an army of 10,000 guys? It takes weeks and if you recall they were running around Tiamen Square for weeks before they finally quelled them and that’s because it took them that long to get the 10,000 GIs in there to do it. So you can…to me China is not a threat. They’re a threat in terms of nuclear, but their sure not a threat…now if they could blow us out of the world okay then you know that’s a threat. Now they might be the ones who might use a nuclear weapon with a rocket. WEISSKOPF: Theoretically, I mean the theory that anybody who understands them well enough and knows how to use them offensively, would never do it again somebody who has equal weapons. BAUMGARTNER: No and they’re even more conservative than we are, so…Anyway I… WEISSKOPF: You can’t be world power without it… BAUMGARTNER: Right, right. WEISSKOPF: You don’t feel like your part of the big boys unless you do have the capability. BAUMGARTNER: Right, right. WEISSKOPF: Germany, France, or England, or China. BAUMGARTNER: Right, right, right. So, anyway…I have gone to these countries just to see what’s, you know, what’s there. To give you an example, inside of Peking there are two roads, four lanes. One going east and west and one going north and south and as soon as you get to the edge of the city…now how do you know your at the edge of city? Because that’s the last house, which is a high-rise apartment, and then it’s a two-lane highway. And how do I know that was a two-lane highway? Because we went to the China Wall. So we went out north and went to the China Wall, and then when we came in we were going to go to the coastline and as soon as we got out of the south end it was a two-lane highway. And if you want to see how they made the road, down at Kweilin which is way down south, they were making it in 3-foot squares and they had a manual tamper like we have you know, and a three foot square that big was all that that half-ton truck could hold. So they made it in 3-foot squares. Can you imagine going down the highway, and I was looking at this, and there was this quilt of 3-foot squares and when I saw that I, you know, I couldn’t imagine it until I asked somebody. I said “what is this?” and he says well that’s….so each truck load gave a 3-foot square, and the next truck. When I saw all that I says why worry? We’ve got enough power no one is going to attack. We will not use it because there aren’t enough targets anyplace. And if you notice all of the stuff that, they’ve always stayed with explosives. WEISSKOPF: They’ve what? BAUMGARTNER: Everybody’s always stayed with explosives, TNT, plastic…they’ve stayed away from nuclear. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting in 50 year’s time. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: There has never been an occasion to use one. BAUMGARTNER: The only nuclear material we have every used against anybody was when we were at the Gulf War… WEISSKOPF: Oh the depleted uranium… BAUMGARTNER: The depleted uranium shells… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Oh I was upset when I heard that. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Wow. WEISSKOPF: Just because it’s not a good metal to be breathing in or? BAUMGARTNER: You’re spreading uranium all over hell. WEISSKOPF: Oh uranium that could be useful to somebody. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, my feeling is there is a, I’ve got these 5million shells, I mean we’ve given them a gift. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Does he have to steal anything? No. ____ (unclear), you know the guy is not an ignorant guy. WEISSKOPF: Can you buy uranium on the open market? BAUMGARTNER: No. WEISSKOPF: It’s regulated or? BAUMGARTNER: Well, read the state law and I’ll give you a hint. After the second, third resale value of an airplane it is no longer controlled. WEISSKOPF: The airplane is new and then it’s sold used…. BAUMGARTNER: And then sold used, and sold used again, and when that happens it’s no longer regulated, no longer put on the books. And if you go to some of these small airports you will see 707’s with tails missing. WEISSKOPF: Okay, I’m gonna watch for it. BAUMGARTNER: Watch for it when you’re in these foreign countries. WEISSKOPF: How many pounds do they put in? BAUMGARTNER: 500. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. BAUMGARTNER: It’s an appreciable amount. You don’t have to, I mean that will make quite a bit of ¼ inch thick sheeting. Thermal neutrons will not go through more than a ¼ inch. WEISSKOPF: And is it depleted uranium only because it’s more valuable for other uses when it’s not depleted? Or? BAUMGARTNER: Well, 235. WEISSKOPF: Or is it that they won’t sell real uranium in a metallic version? BAUMGARTNER: Oh they sell regular uranium all the time. That’s in the open market. There’s a uranium market in the world. WEISSKOPF: But, why do they use depleted in the back of… BAUMGARTNER: Oh because we have this big warehouse full of it you know that’s about 17 miles long and 18 miles wide that’s… WEISSKOPF: Really? Okay. BAUMGARTNER: You know where we suck out the 0.35% and made reactor material at 5%, so… WEISSKOPF: I never heard that before. BAUMGARTNER: Well, and then you, what do you do with the reactor material that you rerun? You know, we are such a rich nation that we have not yet at this point in time redissolved a single slug that has gone through a ____ (s/l pollo) reactor. WEISSKOPF: That’s right. Let alone, taking depleted uranium, mixing in plutonium and saying hey we got fuel again. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Well…and we have no plans to recycle fuel. BAUMGARTNER: Not that I, yeah we’re going to debury it. It’s crazy. WEISSKOPF: Have you at all read about what they do in France with their fuel? BAUMGARTNER: um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? BAUMGARTNER: They’re recycling. WEISSKOPF: How modern or different is it from what you were doing here? BAUMGARTNER: Not any more modern than we proposed, which we already know all about because we had done all the preliminary, we’ve done all the chemistry. WEISSKOPF: Oh, the one that was going to be back east, that was the one they were going to build. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, well France has, I think, three of them. WEISSKOPF: Okay, they ship hot fuel around to various plants. BAUMGARTNER: No, no , no they remake it. WEISSKOPF: No, but they ship it from the reactor to a separations plant. BAUMGARTNER: To a separations plant. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: Yes, then they remake it. Then see, what people don’t understand is that the plutonium that’s in there is really much better than the plutonium that we’ve got because our plutonium is weapons grade, but if you want a reactor grade plutonium…. WEISSKOPF: Oh… BAUMGARTNER: …you want something that has maybe like 50% of 240. WEISSKOPF: You like that… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, cause when it splits, when it hits the neutrons, see instead of giving you…ahh let me see, uranium is 1.4 neutrons, I think, per event. Yeah and plutonium is I think 1.9, 239; 240 I think is 2.6…so now you get 1.6 atoms of plutonium back for every atom used…ha ha….I mean breeder concept is here to stay, now every ton of uranium becomes a ton of plutonium and ….MEV’s is enormous, 9.3 MEV per event…oh God. WEISSKOPF: It’s a whole different kind of energy production then we have ever had before. BAUMGARTNER: Yeah well… WEISSKOPF: Especially if you burn it…. BAUMGARTNER: In the 50’s when we through the mathematics of it we said that we have enough uranium on hand at that time, just the uranium part, that we would have 400 years with a 2% growth per year. You know where we go to reactors, and if we went the breeder concept, we have no idea how much. I mean it’s like having 10,000 oil fields. Because now instead of 0.35% of the uranium going into plutonium atoms, you’ve got to stop talking about the whole works. And 0.35 is something like the factor of 300. So now 400 years x 300. You know you say to yourself…well…and that’s without the new found uranium, without…so…it’s such a large number that I guess people didn’t believe it. You know because at least the Americans did. So, it’s just a… I could study, but I stopped worrying about studies in ’67, by that time we had done all the ways there were. We had done all the recovery. We already had the classification. We had them on a list with making it into a great big monolith of concrete, with you know, which was do you want to go with what levels? There were two other methods for making little glass balls…so there was a whole bunch of methods that we had developed all here. WEISSKOPF: How much waste was there going to be, or is there in France from a modern efficient, recycling of hot fuel. BAUMGARTNER: Each reactor produces a tube of material 17 feet long and 1-foot in diameter per year. WEISSKOPF: A tube of unusable material? BAUMGARTNER: Of fission products, not plutonium and not uranium. WEISSKOPF: But, which you know you can take out and reuse. 17 feet long and how big around? BAUMGARTNER: 1 foot in diameter. WEISSKOPF: And that would be very hot stuff. BAUMGARTNER: No necessarily, because you’ve also taken out the strontium and you’ve also taken out the cobalt. WEISSKOPF: I wonder if they’re doing that in France… BAUMGARTNER: Yes, yes, yes. WEISSKOPF: Okay. BAUMGARTNER: They’re using the technology we developed in the ‘60s. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: I can tell you that right now. The separations plant is a PUREX plant. WEISSKOPF: And do they have a permanent waste storage for the stuff they… BAUMGARTNER: Yes they do…yes they do. But remember now, these old slugs, these old 17-foot long, some of them are innocuous almost. They’ve been around 25 years, so after 25 years as far as I’m concerned that’s no longer a problem. But, you leave it where it’s at and it’s not that big of deal. So there, I think they’ve got what 30 reactors, so they’ve got 30 of these tubes per year. I mean, you know, if you can put them in the ground and if they’re not generating enough heat anymore, especially the old ones, you don’t need to you know hardly do anything with them. You know…a little bit of water-cooling and that’s just undoable, you know to a pipe. WEISSKOPF: Was there any talk 25 years ago getting the tanks emptied out in the 200 Areas? BAUMGARTNER: Oh yes, oh yes, that’s when we talked about getting the bismuth and the aluminum and all that type of thing. WEISSKOPF: But they never took the time or the money to set up a system of doing it? BAUMGARTNER: We did all the preliminary work, like I call the test tube work, so we know what the reaction, we know what it takes to do it. Yes. So, deep geological storage was just the ____ (s/l intima), I mean that was crazy, crazy, crazy, all that uranium. And that’s all 5% and we haven’t burned 5%… WEISSKOPF: Oh…in a modern reactor. BAUMGARTNER: In a modern reactor is 5% uranium 235. WEISSKOPF: So, it’s still more enriched than natural uranium. BAUMGARTNER: Oh absolutely, but at least an order of magnitude. WEISSKOPF: So if you just pull out the uranium, isotopes and all, you end up with something that’s more enriched than… BAUMGARTNER: Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: And there’s how many thousands of tons waiting to be buried. BAUMGARTNER: Oh Jesus. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: I mean… WEISSKOPF: Its interesting. BAUMGARTNER: I’m sorry, it’s crazy. We’re such a rich country we don’t need to do that. WEISSKOPF: And oil is not so expensive yet. BAUMGARTNER: No it’s not very high yet, power’s not high yet. Did you know that some of the cheapest power shortly is going to be in that one spot? WEISSKOPF: Yeah? BAUMGARTNER: Well because we were not satisfied until we had put a penalty on the Hydroelectric power plants of 500 million dollars per year. That’s how much the fish are costing us right now. So right now, they can’t sell power from the dams which cost roughly I think 1.6 cents a kilowatt or maybe a tenth of that, but it now costs 5.4 cents and we can make power out here, I know but it’d 4.6. So nuclear power right now is cheaper than dam power. WEISSKOPF: That’s interesting. BAUMGARTNER: And gas power is now going to be about 12 cents, maybe 18 cents, I don’t know I haven’t seen the latest numbers on the BTUs. The same with oil, see oil doesn’t have to pay the tax. They are burning 24 dollars a barrel type of thing, they’re not paying like we are a few dollars a gallon you know. WEISSKOPF: Interesting. BAUMGARTNER: So, and these are…we, all of that is in that library out there, I can tell you that now. Because all of those became documents that we wrote and that we used to go to meetings. Because you know the Health Physics was kind of interested in going to nuclear power, because after all that was our future because we knew ultimately that these reactors would shut down. And so for the monitors and the workers to work they were going to have to go to reactors and so our future was in private power, you know by the nuclear power. So, we obviously as…since that’s the kind of thing that health physicists, you don’t need them except in you know nuclear plants and separations plants, you know and canyon. So, consequently, they wanted to have all of the reasons why power should be coming along. Anyway, that’s… WEISSKOPF: Well, its interesting how we can move off in other directions so easily, I like that. BAUMGARTNER: Remember that we worked on all of that really early. You know people always say…You haven’t heard Nader say anything in the last 10 years against nuclear power. It isn’t there because he’s got to read 70,000 documents and lawyers are notoriously famous for reading about 2 or 3 and that’s it. WEISSKOPF: Were you looking forward to retirement when the time came? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, I had spent 44 years. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. BAUMGARTNER: It was long enough, I think it was time for guys like me to go away and let the young guys… No I didn’t have any problem with that. WEISSKOPF: Still enjoy living in Richland? BAUMGARTNER: Oh absolutely. There’s no traffic. WEISSKOPF: That’s right. BAUMGARTNER: Short distance. WEISSKOPF: You don’t realize it until you go anywhere else. BAUMGARTNER: I just came from Phoenix, 1-1/2 million people, like I said 100 blocks took me 45 minutes. I mean I could drive to Pasco in 15. WEISSKOPF: But why do you need to go to Pasco? BAUMGARTNER: Yeah, but I’m saying…you know. WEISSKOPF: You’d have to find a reason to go… BAUMGARTNER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: No, I laugh literally, I’m self-employed so I work at home and I put 3,000 miles a year on my car. BAUMGARTNER: So, hardly pays to buy a new one. WEISSKOPF: No it doesn’t, not at all. BAUMGARTNER: Your rusting through just from sitting. WEISSKOPF: But no, it’s easy to live around here. How long have you been in this house? BAUMGARTNER: 1965. I had it built, first owner. We had lots of first owners here. There is only about three of us left and you’d expect that. WEISSKOPF: I’m going to turn this off now. BAUMGARTNER: Go ahead. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) Part 1: 01:38:00 Part 2: 01:12:12 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 128kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview T Plant REDOX 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 William Baumgartner Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation T Plant REDOX Description An account of the resource An audio oral history interview with William Baumgartner for the B Reactor Museum Association. Baumgartner was a 200 Area Chemist at the Hanford Site during the early Cold War. Interview is split into two parts. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 4/11/2001 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Gene Weisskopf Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Roger Hultgren Location The location of the interview Battelle's EMSL Auditorium Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Video Interview of Roger Hultgren November 26, 1999 at Battelle’s EMSL Auditorium Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA Videotaped by Nick Nanni, Battelle HULTGREN: ...company actually notified many of the colleges and universities throughout the United States that they needed chemists and physicists to support their war program at the time. And, actually, when I was a junior, I was interviewed by the head of the DuPont ‑‑‑ what department would you call that? He was looking for ‑‑‑ he was looking for chemists, it was that simple, for their high explosive division, chemists. Well, that was my junior year in college and we weren’t ‑‑‑ I wasn’t old enough to get into the war, and nothing precipitated it at the time. But all of a sudden, in the spring I guess, late, the first of 1942, the call came on that they wanted to interview us, so I was one of the people interviewed. And lo and behold, after the interview we had, I received a letter from this DuPont company, Dr. Styles is his name, S-t-y-l-e-s. He said “We’re offering you a job as a chemist in the high explosive division, and we’d like to have you report as soon as possible after you graduate at Kankakee Ordinance Works,” which is just out of Joliet, which is just out of Chicago, south of Chicago. So that was my beginning, getting into that field. That was the high explosive field. WEISSKOPF: DuPont, what was their slogan about chemistry? HULTGREN: They had three famous words: Better things through better ‑‑‑ well, that was one of it, but they had three words: Safety, quality and quantity were the three mottos for working. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. HULTGREN: But the other motto, which we’ve heard on the radio, was “Better things through...” what is that? I’ve kind of forgotten now. WEISSKOPF: They shortened it recently to “Better things through chemistry.” “Better living”? HULTGREN: Right, “Better living through...” well, you can ‑‑‑ I have forgotten it. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. HULTGREN: But that’s ‑‑‑ they had the two slogans, but thinking of the three words that actually governed all of the things you worked for in the laboratories. First of all, there was no question in the mind that safety was their number one thing. You didn’t work if you weren’t safe. There were a lot of fellows that I knew or heard about that just were careless, and they just lost their jobs. Safety, quality and quantity. Quality was everything they did. Of course, when you’re working with high explosives and things, if you weren’t safe, you’d go along with it. So it was ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: So this was in early summer of ‘42, after graduation? HULTGREN: I graduated in June of ‘42. In the same month I was in Joliet, Illinois at the Kankakee Ordinance Works in the high explosive division, and I stayed in that until approximately ‑‑‑ it was in June of ‑‑‑ early in ‘44, is the next thing. Did you want to know about the high explosives we worked with? WEISSKOPF: Sure, a little bit, yeah. Was it fun to be a chemist there? HULTGREN: Yes, it was a lot of fun, and it was a tremendous undertaking because safety was so paramount. You’re working with very concentrated acids, sulfuric acid, and you talk about oleum, which is 100% sulfuric acid, and nitric acid, all strengths of it, from dilute to concentrated nitric acid. You had ‑‑‑ these were very, very involved in all of the explosives. TNT, trinitrotoluene, was the TNT that was used primarily in your explosives, high explosives, different amounts of it. I worked in ‑‑‑ when you started to work on these chemicals, we were put through a training school, and I remember I think for six months, every single day, we went to a training school along with working. It’s like we’re in here today, if you and I were working with this gentleman that’s taking the taping here, he was watching us. And if we were doing something that wasn’t right, there was a ‑‑‑ you had a guardian, is what it amounted to, and if you didn’t ‑‑‑ for example, working around strong acids, you had to wear all wool clothing, because if you had a drop of sulfuric acid or something on you, it would just burn a hole right like that. And if you didn’t have heavy wool on, it would burn right through and get a terrible burn. But it was the heavy shirt, long-sleeved shirt, you wore gloves and things that pertained to that. WEISSKOPF: Were you doing quality assurance, or research, or what? HULTGREN: We were doing primarily quality, because we worked right with the production people. For example, typical on this TNT, there was operating people that started with the basic ingredient chemicals, and when they got down to a certain point, we would have to go out and take a sample of that product at that point, bring it back into the lab and analyze it. And it had certain specifications. Typically, on TNT, it had a ‑‑‑ actually, it had ‑‑‑ you started out with trinitrotoluene, you go along, and when you get to the final point, it’s hot, in a molten solution, and it goes over a drum that’s rotating that’s got cold water inside. And it’s just like soap chips, you had a scaler. As it turned over, the cold ‑‑‑ the hot molten would hit the cold drum and it would form just like thin soap chips, and they were scraped off and you would catch them. WEISSKOPF: Was it explosive at that point? HULTGREN: Could be, if it wasn’t the right percentage. And that’s the other thing, it would be caught into a box, similar to a cardboard box like you can see here. WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh. HULTGREN: We would take a sample of that back to the lab, put it in a heating device and put it back in solution. We’d stir it. All the time we’d have a temperature thermometer in it. And the freezing point was 80-point something, 80.1 to 80.6E centigrade. If it was outside of that, that whole batch of TNT would have to be recycled, and they would put it back into the processing in incremental amounts so that the next time it came through it could meet the specs. It was very precise. And that was a typical chemist. For example, I’ll give you one example that we had in this laboratory, there was just like two halves of it, about twice the size of this room we’re in now. One half was what they called the powder side, the other side was the acid side. And there were two chemists there. And we would ‑‑‑ I know we were working ‑‑‑ we’d work a week, and then we’d switch. All of the dry chemicals, one chemist would work on them, and the other one the wet side. That was ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: You were pretty experienced. In that first year, you got a lot of experience. HULTGREN: Oh, very much so. Tremendous experience. And we had constant meetings. The DuPont company, their big laboratory was called Eastern Laboratories, which was in Wilmington, Delaware, and they ‑‑‑ well, it was a pleasure working with the company, because they were so safety conscious, and we had ‑‑‑ they were brilliant people. WEISSKOPF: So you were a DuPont employee ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: Yes. WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ in the summer of ‘44. And how did they call you up ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: ‘42. WEISSKOPF: But when you jump ahead to ‑‑‑ you said summer of ‘44 is when they called you up for Hanford. HULTGREN: Yes, but it was all DuPont. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. So how did they talk to you about coming out to Hanford? HULTGREN: Well, just like we’re sitting here, and all of a sudden, I was working the lab, and the actual head of the ‑‑‑ well, he was a chemical engineer, Bob Smith, he came and said he wanted to ‑‑‑ he told my boss he’d like to have Roger Hultgren come up to the engineering building. There was a lab building out in this particular area. When I got there, there was a Roger Rohrbacher, who I went to college with, I think was at the meeting, but there was probably eight or ten of us there. And the bottom line was that seven of us actually were actually transferred to the Manhattan Project. It was that simple. WEISSKOPF: Did they tell you why they were sending you, or that was top secret? HULTGREN: It was top secret, but it was the Manhattan Project, and you would be going to the state of Washington. And we knew that much. But it was funny how the rumblings went on when we got out here, because you were ‑‑‑ in the group that I was in, we had I think almost ‑‑‑ DuPont was very Ivy League oriented. My first buddy out there was a fellow named ‑‑‑ had gone to Princeton, he was a chemical engineer, and we worked together in this acid laboratory. But they were just as common here, supervision didn’t flaunt anything. They were right there, they were so interested. Of course, I suppose the times dictated tremendous too, but safety was so important, and top secret. Absolutely top secret. WEISSKOPF: How much did they tell you at that meeting? HULTGREN: Out here? WEISSKOPF: No, back there, with Roger Rohrbacher? HULTGREN: When we came out to here? WEISSKOPF: Yeah, before that. HULTGREN: Really, nothing. WEISSKOPF: They didn’t tell you much. HULTGREN: As far as the Manhattan Project, no. WEISSKOPF: Did they mention the word Manhattan Project? HULTGREN: Yes. Yes, I think that was the Manhattan ‑‑‑ we surmised. It was ‑‑‑ I’ve kind of forgotten about that, but... WEISSKOPF: Did they give you an option of coming out here? How did they present it? HULTGREN: I don’t think ‑‑‑ nobody wanted to not be involved anyway. I don’t know of anybody that didn’t want to go. It was sort of nostalgia, it was sort of when you’re just into your twenties. Nobody was married. Everybody was all single. But, actually, I should say one thing, that when I was a junior in college, the government sponsored this civilian pilot training. And most of the universities and colleges were involved in it. Well, in the Twin City area there was about four schools there. There was the University of Minnesota, and there was Macalester, and there was St. Thomas. Several schools. And I think there were 12 of us that you had to have ‑‑‑ you were asked if you would ‑‑‑ you had to have ‑‑‑ for flying, most of the guys that were involved, we thought we were going in the service at that point in time, because that was the junior year, and it was sponsored by the army, air force. In fact, our instructor we had there, they were both back on some ‑‑‑ they had been in the ‑‑‑ whether they were actually on R&R, I don’t know, but they actually were our instructors, and we had ‑‑‑ we flew about three times a week for several months. WEISSKOPF: Did you end up getting, what, a pilot’s license? HULTGREN: Yes. I had everything. And I just knew, in fact we all knew that we were going to go in the air force. Well, that’s when DuPont ‑‑‑ see, that same, in the fall, that same fall we had interviewed as juniors with this DuPont ‑‑‑ because Dr. Styles had came through the area, the Twin Cities. In fact, I know everybody met, not together, but everybody went to these interviews at the Nicollet Hotel, which was the big one in Minneapolis. WEISSKOPF: So when you came out here, you had your pilot’s license. HULTGREN: I had my pilot’s license. Which I think, Gene, we’ve talked about, sort of predicated my first directional flow out here. WEISSKOPF: Which was within days of getting here? HULTGREN: No. But once I got here, first of all, your academic end of it, you had ‑‑‑ this was the chemistry and the physics background. But the other thing was, the head of the department that I went into, Bob Smith was the chem engineer that actually headed up our group from Kankakee, and we were turned over to this Dr. Gil Church, who had this meteorological group. He was a professor out of the University of Washington. But one of the things was, I had this chemistry and physics background, but I also had a private license, flying license. And I know that that had a lot to do with it, because when we ‑‑‑ there were seven of us who went into this meteorological group to start with. That was in the 200 East Area. And we had a building about, let’s say about maybe two and a half times the size of this room as a sort of a get-together talk about it. And that’s where we had, if you can think back at the ‑‑‑ every one of the 200 areas had these big stacks, 200-foot tall stacks. Well, at the time, in the summer, this is in April of ‘44, all there was was a hole in the ground where the plant was being built. WEISSKOPF: Was that T Plant? HULTGREN: That was T Plant. It was started up. They had the hole, and you could see a lot of the superstructure involved in those photos we looked at over there. But they also had ‑‑‑ there was a steam generator sitting out there when we first arrived up. And I think it was probably after our little indoctrination in this group. Bob Smith talked to us to start with. Then this Dr. Gil Church came along. And I should say something about this Church. He was about as common as an old shoe. Really. He was in oceanography. He had been ‑‑‑ he had about three Ph.D’s. Anyway, he was brilliant as could be. But he never flaunted anything. He was just so common, and he said “Boys,” he says, “what we’re doing is very serious, but we’re going to have fun doing it.” And I know one thing, too, that he introduced us to, this pilot that was working with us. I can’t think of his name now, but he had been with ‑‑‑ he was an R&R. He had been shot down. Who was it? Doolittle? Who had the big ‑‑‑ over the hump, they called it, in Asia. We had something going on over there. Americans. But he had been shot down or wounded, and he was ‑‑‑ some of those pilots were assisting the government, and this person was in the group. And he said “Well, I see, Roger, you’ve got a private license,” or a flying license. He said “Boy, that’s going to be great, because you can go with so-and-so.” He was a captain in the army. He didn’t even dress as a ‑‑‑ just regular civilian clothing. But what happened, this was all predicated for the dissolution of this metal that we’re talking about. WEISSKOPF: Why don’t you explain that real briefly, what was going to be happening later on that you needed tests for. HULTGREN: Well, for example, actually, it sort of ‑‑‑ it goes both ways, because they knew that the process was going to be a bismuth phosphate process. WEISSKOPF: For doing what? HULTGREN: This was for recovering plutonium. WEISSKOPF: From...? HULTGREN: From the uranium. But the point was that in order to do it safely, and they also knew that when you dissolved uranium with nitric acid, you liberated iodine. And they also knew in those days, it didn’t just happen then, that iodine was affecting the lungs. And I think we all know that it was a malignant type thing. So the key there was to actually, if you were to dissolve the metal, if you’ve ever been around when they were dissolving nitric acid, heavy acid, you’ve got these heavy fumes, it’s almost blood red. Well, if you didn’t dilute those to some degree, you have a very bad situation. So consequently the dissolution that went on had to meet certain criteria. It had to be ‑‑‑ the weather was so important. If there was a storm, turbulent, you couldn’t dissolve the metal because it was just almost ‑‑‑ if you’ve ever watched ‑‑‑ ever down ‑‑‑ yesterday, for example, we were at the Walla Walla, and you went down past the pulp plant down there at ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Wallula? HULTGREN: Wallula. You watch that smoke, it’s just up and down and around, and the wind will cause it. Well, picture the same thing, if this dissolved metal going out, the fumes. Okay, that’s a no-no. They knew that. They didn’t want it getting down on the ground. So what happened was that that’s where the airplane came in. And I know ‑‑‑ I didn’t know a thing about it, but the first day this ‑‑‑ who was it? ‑‑‑ I don’t even think it was Church. It was Church. He said “Well, you’re going to meet with so-and-so over in the building.” It was a shack, is what it was. And the pilot was there, and they had an airplane, they had a landing strip which was just between ‑‑‑ south of T Plant today. There was a flat strip in there, and they had this ‑‑‑ it was just a ‑‑‑ let’s see, what was it? If you’re familiar with this single wing plane, it was Aeronca, about a 75 horsepower, but it was all hooked up with suction cups, and you had the instruments in there to do it. Well, I went with him out. So the next thing I knew, he says “Well, get a chute on and let’s go.” WEISSKOPF: You had to get a chute on? HULTGREN: Well, we all had to wear chutes, you know. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. HULTGREN: But I didn’t know anything at the time what we’d be doing. So we just took a ride, and he says “Well, take over.” He said “What did you learn in college?” Well, we went through Hell, I’ll tell you that, when we were in college. WEISSKOPF: The flying? HULTGREN: The instructors we had, that was for real. And I’ll tell you what, they took you up, and they washed out, if your health wasn’t, and you couldn’t actually stand ‑‑‑ your blood pressure got up, if you had problems one way or the other, there was a lot of the guys that got knocked out. Anyway, that same thing existed here, so we ‑‑‑ actually, we had our joyride, and he found out, he said “Give me a stall.” I said “Okay.” What he would do, the plane we had was a two-seater tandem. He sat in front of you. And he was a big guy. I’m a pretty good size, too. But let’s take ‑‑‑ I’ve forgotten your name. NICK NANNI: Nick. HULTGREN: Nick. Let’s assume Nick and I. The guy was about as big as Nick, a little taller, and I’m sitting right behind him. WEISSKOPF: As the pilot? HULTGREN: No. I was the pilot, but he was sitting in front. Now, you look around, and you want to fly by dead reckoning, not instrumentation. You’re looking around, and he’s sitting up there. Well, he did it on purpose, of course, to see if ‑‑‑ and the controls. WEISSKOPF: Disorient you a little. HULTGREN: Going into slips and stalls, and coming in on dead stick, and I guess he found out that I could fly. But anyway, we had a lot of tremendous rides. Every time they’d send this smoke ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Describe how they got the smoke up for you guys to (inaudible). HULTGREN: Okay. They had distillate in these big 500-gallon tanks, and they were jetted into the bottom of the stack. And when it would go up, it would go out just like a plume, a big white plume, and it would take out. And the thing that ‑‑‑ we wanted to sample that plume. We sampled, got right in it, and we had a sucker on the plane. It was humidity, hygrometers, and all these things, I know the first things I did up there was wet-bulbing it, and this hygrometer, familiarization with it, and where do you go when you’ve got a plume coming out. Well, it turned out I never actually did it alone, but it gave him ‑‑‑ they were concerned about an emergency thing, too, with a pilot, because it was ‑‑‑ we flew from 200 West area, T Plant, we’d go up as far as Vantage, up along the Columbia River. A lot of thermals through there. WEISSKOPF: Following the plume? HULTGREN: Following the plume. But the main thing is to ‑‑‑ you had a big sucker out there, and you could suck it in onto some what looked like big filter paper, and you could analyze it. Well, it turned out that if it loosened, and that was translated back through the laboratories that you could have a certain dilution condition for dissolving the metal. WEISSKOPF: They were trying to come up with the type of weather in which you could sample? HULTGREN: Right. Absolutely. And if the weather was bad, there was also samples taken by the ground crew, which I was on, too. But a lot of times the plume would come out of the stack and go out maybe a block, and all of a sudden it would dip down right to the ground. Well, what happened was we had two of these big four-wheel Dodge Command trucks, and we had all sample equipment in there, and I got involved in that end of it, too. But it would go out and get right in the middle of it, and we’d suck in that concentration, and that was all translated back. And believe it or not, and I know this is the truth, that the dilution data which was obtained during that early ‘44 period, or the summer and fall, was actually legitimate enough for the REDOX plants and for PUREX, when they finally shut down. Now, I was involved in all of those plants. But PUREX started up the second time, as you probably know, in the ‘80s, and actually the dilution data, limitations for it, you did not dissolve unless you had a certain dilution factor. WEISSKOPF: And those factors were already mapped out (inaudible). HULTGREN: That’s right. We had ‑‑‑ mention this, too. I don’t want to delve on it, but we had two statisticians that worked with us, Herb Poss (phonetic) and a Johnny Gilotte (phonetic) were the two of them. They’re listed in Sanger, and I think they’re also listed in the Smythe ‑‑‑ not Smythe, but the Sanger Report. They were both with DuPont. Gilotte, he had a doctorate degree in statistics. And they actually did all of the factoring in for these dilutions. They calculated ‑‑‑ my god, there was unbelievable. And this Herb Poss was actually a statistician, but he was also a pharmacist. He went to Marquette. And he was ‑‑‑ he worked in the drugstores in Richland as a second job. We didn’t make any money. But, anyway, that was Herb. So that kind of was the ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Let’s switch gears a bit. While you were doing all this, did you understand what was going to be coming out of the smokestack? HULTGREN: Yes. WEISSKOPF: How much did you know about the process? HULTGREN: Well, the point is that we knew that plutonium was going to be the primary ingredient here. WEISSKOPF: You did. Okay. HULTGREN: That was known. In fact, you mentioned Fermi. Enrico Fermi. You probably heard his nickname. What was it? WEISSKOPF: You tell us. HULTGREN: You tell us. WEISSKOPF: You’re the one being interviewed. What do you mean by nickname? Tell us that whole (inaudible). HULTGREN: Well, Enrico Fermi was the inventor, I think, of plutonium. Wasn’t the inventor, reactor. And actually he put this together. But Mr. Farmer was the nickname that was used, code name, around the plant. Have any of you met Dr. ‑‑‑ in Richland, I’ll think of his name in a minute. Aghh. But he looks very much like him. Short, bald-headed fellow. WEISSKOPF: What was your interaction with Mr. Farmer? HULTGREN: Well, the point with Mr. Farmer was that he actually worked ‑‑‑ everybody in our group, I think there was nine of us altogether. Seven were in the area to start with, and then we had the two statisticians. But that whole group went from the dilution portion of it, and then the next job was sort of ‑‑‑ [Tape ran out] Well, that was in the 300 area, concurrent with all the dilution end of it, they were also taking the cold uranium, which is machined, cleaned up, and canned. They were using mechanical equipment. WEISSKOPF: Why did they have to can the uranium? HULTGREN: Because you cannot have uranium get water to it. WEISSKOPF: Okay. It reacts? HULTGREN: It reacts, and it won’t bond properly. And you had to get a bonding agent. That’s kind of a little different story leading up to it. WEISSKOPF: The can was to seal in ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: What you had was a uranium slug, cold uranium slug. WEISSKOPF: What size was it? HULTGREN: Eight inches long and an inch and a quarter in diameter. It had been machined. It almost looked like you had little rivulets all the way through it. And I watched this several times. They would bring it into this 324 building down in the 300 area, and it was wrapped in a ‑‑‑ just like you look at a paper towel. And it would get on a bench, and the first thing it would go through is an alcohol bath. It would be washed in there. It had a mechanical washer. And then it would progress down the line, and they kept it hermetically sealed after it was washed. WEISSKOPF: Because air would (inaudible). HULTGREN: Oxidize it. The next thing was that the people that were ‑‑‑ if you look out here just in your auditorium, there was automatic lines that were run by machines, and they were on clocks, where actually it would start this progress of canning the uranium, and it would go down through automatically. Well, the bad thing was that it was just like taking your pen right there and put it in the first ‑‑‑ they had a bronze type bath, almost like in a washtub, that had heating rods in it, and the temperature was I’ll say about 1000EF. And the next one was an aluminum bath. And then you had an actual unit that actually sealed them. Well, this ‑‑‑ you’d heat up the slug to a certain temperature of that bath. It was moved from there mechanically to the next one. And then it would go where a person ‑‑‑ they had this ‑‑‑ picture this holder, but which is large enough in diameter to accept a one-inch diameter slug with a little O.D., enough annulus around it. So that was filled with ‑‑‑ you took this canister, this aluminum canister that was put kind of in a cradle. It was dipped in this aluminum bath and set in what they called a whiz-bang. It was just a pedestal here with a plunger that would hold this aluminum canister, with a plunger, they would drive the uranium into it. Well, what happened, that whole thing was fine, but they were getting ‑‑‑ in that Smythe Report, I was just looking at it here the other day ‑‑‑ they were getting about 10% success. What happened was that the temperature was such that, the eutectic of it, that it just had to be perfect or it would just seize like that. And it was fun, I remember they would call us when we were getting in this experimental line we were to be working on, because everything ‑‑‑ it’s so ‑‑‑ it was absolutely, aside from the laboratory end of it, and I was telling you this here I think once before, General Groves came out here, Dr. Smythe was here, who wrote the Smythe Report, and they came into this 324. But Groves, I remember that distinctly, coming, they were watching. Well, that was the time when they were getting about 10 to 15% good ones. WEISSKOPF: This was in the summer of ‘44? HULTGREN: This was in about July of ‘44. WEISSKOPF: Okay. HULTGREN: And they were expecting to have the reactor ready for loading in September, and they just weren’t going to have enough metal to do it. Well, it was just terrible, and it’s just awful, really, because the war was ‑‑‑ well, it was just awful. WEISSKOPF: Without being able to cam them, the reactors wouldn’t have started? HULTGREN: No. They were building the ‑‑‑ B Reactor was ‑‑‑ T and B and D were the first three. WEISSKOPF: B, D and F. HULTGREN: No, T was the first one. WEISSKOPF: T Plant? HULTGREN: Yes, T Plant. WEISSKOPF: Oh, it was first of the separations plants. HULTGREN: I’m talking ‑‑‑ oh, excuse me, all right. Reactors. Yeah, B, D. I’m talking about separation plants. But the reactors, B was the first reactor. WEISSKOPF: Let’s get an idea for how much fuel they needed. Tell us how many process tubes there were in the reactor, about. There was 2,000 and something? HULTGREN: That figure slips me now, and I can’t really... WEISSKOPF: Tell us for the (inaudible), then. There were 2,000 of those. HULTGREN: Let’s say there were 2,000. And if you look ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Each of those had 35 fuel slugs, give or take? HULTGREN: Yes, probably. WEISSKOPF: In other words, how many slugs were needed to fill up the reactor? It’s 2,000 by 30. HULTGREN: Well, I guess I’ll have to bow to it. I don’t ‑‑‑ but I was thinking about the ‑‑‑ if you look at the wall we’re looking at right here, the front face of the pile, this is quite a story that goes into it, and I think people have wondered about how they could have really circumvented (inaudible). But it happened that, I guess everybody knows, that Roosevelt actually requested the DuPont Company that they were to do the designing of the reactors and the other plants. It was that simple. I guess he gave them a choice, but they had no choice. They had the engineering people, they had the design of it, they had everything. And I know from when I was still in school, I don’t think there was any engineer that wouldn’t have given ‑‑‑ to get to work with DuPont, as far as I was concerned, there was nobody besides DuPont. And if you can think about DuPont Company today, do you ever hear anything wrong with them? They’re always one jump ahead. And they’re just ‑‑‑ and they were such a great company, I just... But anyway ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Let’s go back to (inaudible), then. You said that General Groves came in? HULTGREN: Well, they’d come out and see how you were doing. WEISSKOPF: And you were getting 10 or ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: Ten percent. And they would extrapolate that into the number that they needed to load that pile, and they just weren’t going to get from here to there. Time was the essence. And the point was that the war was getting critical. Germany had surrendered, what is it, September 8th or something like that. WEISSKOPF: April or May of ‘40 ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: ‘4. WEISSKOPF: Oh, ‘44, excuse me. HULTGREN: Germany had surrendered, but you still had Japan at this time. WEISSKOPF: That was ‘45, wasn’t it? HULTGREN: Well... WEISSKOPF: Japan surrendered in 1945, in August ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: No, but it’s in this report. WEISSKOPF: Didn’t Germany surrender in April of ‘45? HULTGREN: Well, whatever it was ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: It was ‘45, it was later that they surrendered. HULTGREN: You can check that, but it’s in the... WEISSKOPF: I think the war was still raging when you were making ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: Germany was actually out of the picture, really, from ‑‑‑ they were in the war, but it was still ‑‑‑ the thing is that Japan, everybody was worried about Japan at that time. But, anyway ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Getting back to the necessity of having the fuel slugs, how long did it take to tune up that process? HULTGREN: Well, I think it was in June, early June, that I know I went down there. Our whole group didn’t go down, but there was two or three of us went down that were in this meteorological group. But the fellows that went down had quite a bit of physics and metallurgy involved, and that was something that I know metal ‑‑‑ do you know anything about metals? Well, yeah, we had some of it. But the point was, we learned enough to be good listeners, I guess. But we had a ‑‑‑ what was happening, they had about six or seven of these automatic lines they were running, and none of them were actually producing. They would get 10%, 15% that could go through an autoclave and prove that they were good. So what we did, there were six or seven of us in this group. There was the bronze bath, aluminum, and the canning. We did it all manually. There was this molten bronze bath, and I can remember you’d put the canister ‑‑‑ the slug, rather ‑‑‑ in a wicker basket such, and lower it into the molten bronze ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Like making Easter eggs. HULTGREN: Huh? WEISSKOPF: Like making Easter eggs. HULTGREN: Making Easter eggs, up and down, up and down, at controlled temperatures of the bath. Well, we started out using the temperatures that they were using on the line, and it became pretty apparent right away that you had a freezing problem. Because the minute ‑‑‑ just like I know we were doing it right now, working this bath for a certain amount of time, lifting it out of the liquid so it would drain, and drop it into this ‑‑‑ next, just put it in this aluminum, and then take it out of that and putting it in this plunger, and the damn thing would go down about halfways and freeze. Well, we would get all this raw data together, we’d get the operation people together, we’d talk about it. They’d go through it. What did you do? Well, we had ‑‑‑ the fellows were ‑‑‑ what the heck was the guy’s name. One of the fellows says, “Well, the eutectic” ‑‑‑ well, eutectic, yeah, that’s temperature ‑‑‑ he said “What’s happening here is it’s freezing.” Well, you know, when you get started on something like that, and you’re not really familiar except that you know from the academic world what he’s talking about, but when the people were running these things out on those mechanical lines, they were so rigid on temperatures they had, they couldn’t experiment, and that was what came out of this about the first week. Everything we did went to pot. We froze up. We’d have these slugs that would go down four inches into it. Some, if you were lucky, you might get one to go all the way through. Well, none of them could go in these autoclaves. Well, then they started checking around temperature. First of all, they were ‑‑‑ I think both the bronze and the aluminum were the same temperatures. Well, finally we figured we had to do them separately, couldn’t do them together, because you had to know exactly what would happen. So the temperature was increased about three or four hundred degrees in that bronze, I think that temperature is showing up in there, and it was all in that temperature eutectic, because it was almost like manna from heaven when this thing happened because ‑‑‑ and we had, my God, it was unbelievable. Tom Evans was our supervisor, and he was just so excited, he didn’t know what was going on, because the temperature was so critical, and all of a sudden we had these slugs that were ready to go in the autoclaves. And you’d punch them down, and they would seat, and then you had a cap that would fit on it, and cap that on, and then they could machine it and out. And we had ‑‑‑ the percent is still listed in there. I would say that we had around 90% good ones just like that. And that’s what I was going to tell you about. You asked me about Mr. Farmer. WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh. HULTGREN: I’m going to shift subjects a little bit. Everybody was so elated that they had a picnic up on Mount Ranier. Tipson Lake, if you’ve ever been up there during the summer, it’s over the hump. And the people that were in the lab, it was our metallurgical development group and some of the operational people. Mr. Farmer was there. By that time the horse was out of the barn, of course, everybody knew it. But we had this picnic, and it was up there. And that was in, oh, it was in late July I guess. But then it was turned over, and they were able to do it automatically by temperature adjustment. The thing they absolutely had to make sure, there was no water. Because water give them these hot spots. It was just like little pockets, you look at those things. WEISSKOPF: Tell us what the autoclave, how that worked to test everything. HULTGREN: Well, all that was was just a high temperature and pressure where these were put in. I nearly never saw the... WEISSKOPF: How would that tell you if it was good or not? HULTGREN: Well, the point was that each one had a control. It was controlled in buckets. I never really had a good clear vision on that, and I guess ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: The main point was to make sure they were perfectly sealed? HULTGREN: Oh, yes. Because sealed, the thing was if they couldn’t go through the autoclave without showing up with blistering ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: From the reaction? HULTGREN: Well, if you had temperature burn, if there was water that was behind and got between the slug and the aluminum, went through the bonding there, it had pinholes, and the autoclaves had this high temperature, and each one was hooked up to a point that ‑‑‑ I’m going to show ‑‑‑ I just can’t respond to that. It’s in there on that autoclave. WEISSKOPF: After you took them out, would you just visually inspect them, or how were they passed? HULTGREN: Well, automatically, the instrumentation actually. They could inspect it with ‑‑‑ I think they actually scanned it for any ‑‑‑ they could check for any weak spots in the aluminum jacket, and there would be evidence of impervious spots. But once they were eliminated, you didn’t have any of that, and it went through the bonding. In fact, that is an area, I remember it, but... WEISSKOPF: Tell you what ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: I’ll get back to you on that. WEISSKOPF: You keep mentioning the Smythe Report. HULTGREN: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Why don’t you hold it up to the camera. Tell us why this was an important (inaudible). HULTGREN: Okay. This goes back, and I ‑‑‑ well, it was history to us. But during the war, when the Allies were having such a horrible time, and finally the United States got involved in it, during that period the Manhattan Project ‑‑‑ well, let’s see, what was it? I guess it was actually formed. Germany at the time, apparently the Allies knew that they were making heavy water up in Norway for this nuclear deal. And we, as we talked about it, so many of the American scientists got their final degrees over in Germany, and it was unbelievable, you had more scientists that were American that did graduate work, it was in Belgium ‑‑‑ no, where was it? There’s one famous scientist that worked over there that’s in here, too. But the thing that ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: When did this book come out? HULTGREN: This was in 1945. What I’m thinking about is that ‑‑‑ and I know that President Roosevelt actually ‑‑‑ well, it’s in the preface right here, you can read about this ‑‑‑ actually, he went to Princeton, and Dr. Smythe was the head of the physics department there, and he actually I guess requested that he work with this Manhattan Project District and worked to put this book together. WEISSKOPF: It came out at the end of the war? HULTGREN: This book came out ‑‑‑ oh, goodness. 1945. WEISSKOPF: Is that when your copy is from? HULTGREN: Yes, this is the original copy. WEISSKOPF: You bought it right when it came out? HULTGREN: Yep. This was the original issue. I paid two dollars for it. WEISSKOPF: All right. And when you read it, did it all make sense at the time? HULTGREN: Well, yes. You know, it was just like unbelievable, because I’ve got enough red ‑‑‑ you see these little stubs in here? They’ve been there for years and years. I’m not a statistician. But the point is that you never saw so many happy people in the world. I was ‑‑‑ let’s see. The first group that it was in was in this meteorological group. Then the next group was the metallurgical development group. And once this canning project was defeated and they were getting enough canned uranium to facilitate loading the B Reactor, and that was ‑‑‑ I guess I’ve told you about the time my first opportunity to go out there, because it was all so top secret. WEISSKOPF: Tell us about it. HULTGREN: Well, when we actually ‑‑‑ “we,” this metallurgical development group -‑‑ was very helpful in getting this thing resolved, they had a big party and thought it was wonderful. But that didn’t last long because it was just a foot in the door. We actually ‑‑‑ that’s where I met Bill McCue. Bill McCue has been with the DuPont ‑‑‑ started out in DuPont in their Parlin (phonetic), I think it was, back east. And he was, I would imagine, one of the oldest supervisors they had at the time. And he was in the control room. WEISSKOPF: At where? HULTGREN: At B Reactor. And what happened, this Tom Evans ‑‑‑ I’ll get back to this ‑‑‑ once we I guess had crossed the bridge on this canning, and there was ‑‑‑ at that time we were sort of excess baggage, and we were a bunch of young kids is what it amounted to. I was 24, I think, at the time. And there were other assignments, and they were looking for health physicists, they were looking for metallurgists, engineering all over. Well, before we went, Tom Evans one day come in and says “Now, each one of you has been in this canning, and I asked the production people if we couldn’t have our guys that helped go out and observe it.” So I remember going out with a load of slugs that were canned. They were in these big containers. They weren’t hot then. But we went out, and they picked them up in the back side of the reactor, these buckets, lifted them up. And then I remember coming back in with some piece of paper, and I had to give it to Bill McCue. I remember that. Anyway, that was ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Was the reactor operating then? HULTGREN: Oh, no. Hell, no. The reactor didn’t start up till September 13th. WEISSKOPF: The 22nd. HULTGREN: Read these dates. I think your dates are ‑‑‑ you’re dreaming about them. WEISSKOPF: But in September. HULTGREN: Those dates are right in here, all of them. WEISSKOPF: So was this the first fuel that went into the reactor then? HULTGREN: Well, it was loaded. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. HULTGREN: There was ‑‑‑ the fuel that we had was loaded for several weeks to get it up enough to load that, it was a big square like this. Anyway... WEISSKOPF: Now, you knew it was a nuclear reactor? Did you know how it was going to be working and what (inaudible)? HULTGREN: Well, I guess we did. At that point in time we knew it was a reactor, and we knew that it was uranium. You know, it’s hard to tell, everything was a top secret, you couldn’t even talk about it. My wife, Idelle, is a medical technologist, and she worked, was hired from the University of Minnesota medical school, and she went to the University of Chicago. She was at Chicago at the ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: The Met Lab? HULTGREN: Met Lab, yes. There was another girl. Do you remember Phil Fuqua (phonetic)? Was he gone by the time you were here? WEISSKOPF: Yes. HULTGREN: All right. His wife was a medical technologist. But anyway, the next thing she knew, she was transferred out here in late ‘45. And there were three girls, three medical technologists. And at that time it had come out that everybody that worked in the plants had their specimens and blood samples taken constantly. Let’s see, what was it? I guess almost on a weekly basis. But these girls would do all the blood work. And the main thing they were checking was the white count. WEISSKOPF: Would they check you, too? HULTGREN: Oh, hell, yes. They did that, it was a routine thing, and they did that, took samples, specimen samples, but the main thing was the white count. WEISSKOPF: What would that have told them? HULTGREN: Well, white count is destroyed with high radiation, and that was the main indicator they had was your blood. But, there again ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Was she taking your blood? HULTGREN: Probably. I don’t know. Turned out that we got talking, and her home was only about 60 miles from my home in Minnesota. WEISSKOPF: Really. HULTGREN: But then the girls that did all that blood work, there were these samples taken of everybody, their specimens, throughout. But it was a known effect that when you dissolve the metal, that the off gases that came out, and there was concern in there about filtration of the off gases. It’s a highly technical end of it to get it worked out. But at that time ‑‑‑ then here is my next phase of it, from the meteorology to the metallurgy, and with the physics background, they needed health physicists out here. And I, you know, in those days, you didn’t really say what you wanted to do, you were ‑‑‑ it was it. And I think there were four of us that transferred out of this development group ‑‑‑ no, it was three of us ‑‑‑ went into health physics. And I was actually in the B Reactor when the first metal was discharged from the reactor, it was monitored after a cooling period, and it was stored in the north area. And I remember when they took it out, just put them in this ‑‑‑ you’ve seen those charging buckets, I guess. They were just ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Tell us about it. You were back in the fuel basins while they were (inaudible)? HULTGREN: Yeah, we were there up on top. You can go up on the back side and look down in there about, what, 20 feet of water, and there were just spotlights through the thing, and the buckets were there, had all of the holes in the sides so that when you lifted them out of the water, the water would run out, and then they could put it in another cask car that had water and lead for shielding. And that went down. The thing that was of concern at the time was how long should you let that metal cool before you actually dissolve it, because it was to be dissolved ‑‑‑ you had to get down to the radium. And, well, pressure was on. There was no question about it. And the first cooling time length was way shorter than it turned out to be, like 20 or 30 days, and we ended up with 80-90 day cooling periods, and even longer than that at PUREX, I know, because I was involved there. But that cooling period was so critical. (Tape ran out) WEISSKOPF: Did you learn of it when it was happening, or not till after? HULTGREN: Well, I guess I did. And it’s so vividly pointed out here. And it’s in that Sanger Report, I was reading that again just last night, and that poisoning that went on. WEISSKOPF: You’re talking about poisoning of the pile. HULTGREN: The pile, right. It just went up and shut down. Well, that gets ‑‑‑ there’s so many tales of woe in this whole thing. That is one of the reasons why DuPont, again, is so famous, because when they designed anything, they designed an additional safety factor into it. It goes on to a couple of stories in here. It says if they were asked to build a hotel, for example, or some big building that would be about eight stories, they designed it for another three or four stories so that you could go up. Those words are just as vivid as you and I are talking now. And if you look at the face of that pile, you look at over there, the thing was loaded in a circle, and they predicted the fact that it actually didn’t have enough guing (phonetic), you had this (inaudible) problem, what, 20 ‑‑‑ let’s see. But anyway, the answer to the whole thing was they could load up the corners, just like a circle. And I guess the story goes on, I’m sure I’m correct in that, that Fermi and some of his physicists had calculated they knew exactly what it was, and they were able to actually tell them to put X number involved in there again, and it cranked right up. WEISSKOPF: How long were you working in the health physics end? What kind of duties did you have? HULTGREN: Well, that’s funny. WEISSKOPF: Were you there when B Reactor started? HULTGREN: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay. Well, tell us about it, then. You left the canning when that problem was solved. You didn’t stick around ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: No. That’s where the health physics department, Dr. Parker ‑‑‑ there were three of them. Herb Parker was the head of it. He was with DuPont all these days. He was an Englishman that came over here, educated in England. But he had this health physics group, actually, for instrumentation and all radiation protections that went on. That was his people. Karl Gamertsfelder was another one, and Jack Healy. There were three of them. I worked with Parker about ‑‑‑ I’ll say this was in September, shortly after I remember having a chance to go out and follow taking the metal out to the reactor, we were called in. And he was there, and Jack Healy was with him. And what he was talking about was we need some health physicists around here. And he says you and you, we know your background, we know where you come from, but they wanted to have some ‑‑‑ physics was their main criteria involved in that health physics, because the instrumentation, it just seemed that it just built up. I wasn’t any mathematician whiz on it, but I knew enough when it was safe. And we went through a training program, and at one time, believe it or not, I was the only health physicist in the T or B Plant. T Plant started up on the 9th of September, but it actually charged about December something. WEISSKOPF: Right around Christmas time? HULTGREN: Right. I remember distinctly going in and sampling it in there, in the canyon. Did you ever see these instruments they have, it looked like a doorstop sampler? It was just about the size of that little grip behind you. And you picked it up, my God, it weighed about 25 pounds, and had a plastic front that you could put sort of a Lucite cover on it to shield it out from the beta, and you could open it up and you get all ‑‑‑ you could get the various ‑‑‑ you could have all beta, no beta, all gamma. WEISSKOPF: Was this one of the early, early ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: Yes, doorstop. It was just ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Doorstop? HULTGREN: ‑‑‑ a suitcase. It was just about like here. WEISSKOPF: Was that like one of the Beckmans? HULTGREN: No, no, a Beckman was about a four-inch chamber that had an electrode in it, and it was hooked up, and they’d put it down in a ‑‑‑ they were in the cells of the canyon, there were holes about six inches in diameter on either side of the cells, and they could lower this Beckman chamber in there, which is I’d say about three feet long, and it had electrode in it, and it was hooked up electrically so you could lower it down with a chain way down. Those cells are about 30 feet deep, you know. And there would be opposite, for example we’ll say that screen over there, this thing could be opposite, so you could actually monitor the activity, which would be a vessel in that tank, and it would be shining. In the cell you had an opening that had a steel plate over the front of it. It was just like if you had ‑‑‑ here’s a typical opening in a cell, this big. Did you want to film this? There’s a hole. Each cell ‑‑‑ let me give you the ‑‑‑ can I tell you the diameter of a cell? WEISSKOPF: You bet. HULTGREN: All right. Each cell was about 30 feet deep, 17 by 13 feet rectangular sized, and on each side there were roughly ‑‑‑ if you had a tank sitting on the floor like this in a cell, let’s say there’s one over by the other side of the room and one here, this Beckman chamber would be positioned so that if you lowered this instrument in this 6-inch piece of casing down here, there was ‑‑‑ okay, excuse me. Tell me, when you lowered ‑‑‑ the Beckmans were positioned in there stationary. They were lowered down in this 6- or 8-inch casing, and it dropped down such that it was centered in this steel plate that actually was keeping it from getting contaminated. WEISSKOPF: Liquids or whatever. HULTGREN: Right. In the cell, just like in this room, there’d be one there, looking at this vessel. As I recall it now, there were two on each side of the cell and one on the end. Well, those were hooked up, transmitted back into a recorder back into the operating gallery. So that’s how they checked the ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: As a health physicist, you had to have a portable instrument. HULTGREN: As a health physicist, yes, we had alpha detectors, called Little Plutos, or Sandy was another one. Then you had your doorstop, which was primarily a beta-gamma type. And they also had pencils. WEISSKOPF: You could wear it? HULTGREN: You could wear a pencil which had an electrostatic capability of picking up a charge which could be transmitted on to a kind of a zero to a hundred type gauge, and you could have various different resistances. And we had to calculate the exposures all the way through, oh, goodness. And then that was for beta-gamma type. Then there was also the alpha, the instruments for the alpha counting. And that was ‑‑‑ Sandy was one of them, but actually one of the things for checking for alpha contamination, if it was contamination ‑‑‑ see, the range of an alpha particle is just a matter of centimeters, so you can’t ‑‑‑ we had I think it was ‑‑‑ I was going to say Bakelite, but it’s sort of a film that would let the alpha particle penetrate through because there was no resistance, but it only had this slight range. But I remember, as a health physicist, prior to going out on a maintenance job that we would take ‑‑‑ it was funny. If you can imagine a piece of tablet paper, you could cut it down, and so you’d have about five or six different slots in it, and you’d staple the sides of it. And you could have a piece of 1 x 1 inch tissue paper in here, here, here, here. That would be capable of picking up and using it to smear for any contamination. You’d pick it back up with tweezers, put it back in, take those back into the building and count them for alpha. The alpha-beta-gamma. Now, that was the health physics. We learned a lot of things. WEISSKOPF: But two or three years before that, none of that existed, would you say? HULTGREN: There was some health physics in the 300 area, but we ‑‑‑ I was thinking back in college, in high explosives we didn’t have anything like this at all. Of course, physics covered radiation, and it had been, because there was ‑‑‑ I know we had seminars. I’m trying to think one time (inaudible) ‑‑‑ well, there was a DuPont physicist that came through, I remember that, and we were in the Tri-Cities. There was, oh, gosh, about six or seven schools that came in. There was Iowa, Iowa State, Minnesota. They had a big seminar there. WEISSKOPF: How long were you in the health physics, then? HULTGREN: I was in it about, oh, a couple years. But I really wanted to get into operations. In fact, this McCready, have you heard him? WEISSKOPF: Yes. HULTGREN: About his name? WEISSKOPF: Mac MacCready. HULTGREN: Mac MacCready. He was the first chief supervisor out there that came along. WEISSKOPF: Did you know him back then? HULTGREN: At Kankakee I knew him but didn’t really work for him. And then he was actually ‑‑‑ he was from Alabama, and I know, I was reading just the other day about his background. He was a physicist, but he was ‑‑‑ oh, he had enough sheepskin on him to ‑‑‑ but he was just the nicest guy in the world, and if you talked to him, the last thing he’d want to do, he’d say, “Well, Roger, do you know what I’m trying to tell you?” And if you kind of (inaudible), then he’d start over. But he really knew, and DuPont had ‑‑‑ he was in charge for the company. He did all of the inspections from a health, from a physics point of view. He was actually a theoretical physicist, one of his degrees. He had several of them. But he went into production, and he was the chief supervisor. There also was a person that came out with DuPont, his name was Elton Coal (phonetic), and he was a chemical engineer and also an electrical engineer from MIT. My God, it was ‑‑‑ but the guy was ‑‑‑ he was like an old bum. He’d come around in the lab, he dressed ‑‑‑ I mean, there was no show. No show. I’ll tell you what, if you ‑‑‑ that’s why the old-timers, and I may be one of them, it burns me up when I see this dog show that’s going on, because I know it’s all show, really. Because to this day I know some of my friends that still are with the company, DuPont, and they really haven’t changed, really. But anyway, they had ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Was Hanford a pretty informal place to work back then? HULTGREN: Well, it was a secret. It was informal, but everything was top secret. My wife had a top secret, I had a secret security badge. WEISSKOPF: Did you and your wife talk about your work then? HULTGREN: We just ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Weren’t supposed to? HULTGREN: We were not supposed to, and when you left, it’s don’t. It was that simple. Well, anyway, I stayed ‑‑‑ you asked about health physics, and I imagine I was in there about three years. But I wanted to get into operation, and I know that I interviewed with McCready, and there was another fellow by the name of Charlie Gross (phonetic), who had the whole ‑‑‑ he had all of the power reactors. Well, Charlie Wende was one that had the reactors, and then there was the power department. There were three departments: the separations, the power, and the reactors. WEISSKOPF: Power referring to the steam and electric? HULTGREN: Yes. Yes. That’s the one that Charlie Gross had. These were all DuPonters that had been ‑‑‑ they were older. WEISSKOPF: This was now under General Electric? HULTGREN: Oh, no. This was when DuPont was still here. And then GE left, or DuPont left in what, ‘46, and DuPont took over, but ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: GE took over. HULTGREN: Or GE took over. And McCready and Gross... WEISSKOPF: Wende? HULTGREN: Well, Charlie Wende was here, but those two people stayed. And Gross was the chief supervisor of the power department. McCready had the S division it was called. And then Hanford Labs, everybody worked with them. And there was ‑‑‑ I think ‑‑‑ I’m trying to think who was actually ‑‑‑ I’d say Herb Parker was probably one of the most influential down there at the time, because he had all the health physics people, and health physics, you know, is almighty out here. Boy, I’ll tell you, when you had the president, and you had people like Smythe and all of the top Seaborg out here. You’ve heard about the time when Seaborg, when he came out. WEISSKOPF: Early on, or when was it? HULTGREN: No, it wasn’t early on, it was later on. We’re talking now ‑‑‑ you want to keep this in the early days? WEISSKOPF: Go ahead. HULTGREN: Well, actually about ‑‑‑ T Plant operated until about 1947, I think, or ‘48. B Plant was operating at the time, but then they shut down, too. And there was a time when ‑‑‑ and REDOX came on in ‘53, or ‘2 or ‘3, and then continued to operate. And the big thing that came on at the time, after about B Plant ‑‑‑ no, U Plant, which you’ve heard about U Plant, it was a used ‑‑‑ they thought that they needed it. They did three of them. But the calculations indicated that U Plant ‑‑‑ it was about two-thirds built when they decided that they didn’t need it, but they elected to go ahead and use it for training purposes. And luckily it was, because U Plant turned out to be a godsend for this uranium recovery program, and I got involved in that. So that was ‑‑‑ and then the next thing was PUREX come along and ‑‑‑ I guess ‑‑‑ do you want to ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: I’m curious to know the different jobs you had while you were here, just briefly. After the health physics, you went into what? HULTGREN: Operations. WEISSKOPF: And for whom? HULTGREN: Again T Plant. There was a shift supervisor there in operations, and the first supervisor I think I had there was a fellow named Will Wireman (phonetic). And there was a Jim Barber. These were all DuPont people that stayed over, and most of them ‑‑‑ Jim Barber is a name that I had forgotten, but he actually was another one of these ‑‑‑ he was a Princeton man. Princeton was real tops back then. It must have been because of this Smythe, because he was actually commissioned, you know, on that report. But there were just ‑‑‑ I guess I can’t get off the subject. These people were just great people to work for, with. They were ‑‑‑ really appreciated what you were doing. Of course, the time and place actually I guess dictated that, too. And there were a lot of people that were just there for the war and then they left. WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you, what did you think when the war was over? Did you think about going elsewhere, or what was your decision? HULTGREN: I think I ‑‑‑ no, we had just gotten married, and Idelle enjoyed it out here. She had her discipline. And my brother was back home. My folks had a summer resort. But John had high blood pressure, and he wasn’t in the service, and he took over running the lodge, and it just looked like a good way. But we’ve been here ‑‑‑ but she had her discipline, and ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: She kept her job after the war too? HULTGREN: Well, for many years, and then she went into the art business. She had an art gallery in Richland for 20 years. Jade Gallery. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever think of going into the private end of things? HULTGREN: Oh, yes. WEISSKOPF: Did you get job offers? HULTGREN: Well, we talked about it several times. The thing ‑‑‑ this came up pretty clear. I was on the scope and design when PUREX was started up. That was in about ‘55, ‘56. That was when we’d completed this uranium recovery program at U Plant, and they were looking for a scope team for PUREX, and I was asked if I’d like to get in that, and I said yes, I would. So that was the PUREX plant. But that was ‑‑‑ see, PUREX started up in ‘57, I think, about ‘57, and I went through that till ‘66. Then it was the uranium recovery, or the ‑‑‑ yeah, uranium ‑‑‑ or the waste management program back to B Plant. So B Plant was old home to me. We went into B Plant after PUREX ‑‑‑ PUREX had the dual operation, self-extraction, and it had ‑‑‑ it was just the latest, it was the Cadillac of things at the time. Well, then, when that was finishing up, I had gone into this waste management program. That was the current B Plant was just shut down, and it had solvent extraction from going from your mixers or back from the original bismuth phosphate process, which was sanification and precipitation type operation. You use solvent extraction again back in this waste management program. We had solvent extraction all the way through that. B Plant had solvent extraction, went from bismuth phosphate to solvent extraction, which was kind of proven at PUREX. And REDOX had solvent extraction, but they had pack columns over there, where we had mixer settler PUREX in the B Plant. WEISSKOPF: Where were you when you retired? What was your job for five years before you retired? HULTGREN: Well, I was at B Plant. I was a consultant, I guess you would call it. Primarily, I reported to the directors. Then they had a big show and tell that I was going to end up leaving, and we had already made with a group that we were going to go to Mexico. There was a big crowd going down. And Dale Bartholomew (phonetic) was the director of B Plant at the time. Well, then he was leaving, and he was replaced by Dwayne Bogan (phonetic). You’ve heard the name. Anyway, he was the next director. Well, he and I were pretty close friends, and he asked “Well, can’t you come here and stick around for a while?” And I said “Well, we’re leaving.” And he said, “Well, when you come back from Mexico, give me a call.” He was frantic at the time when I got back. And I said “I don’t want to get deeply involved in this thing, but I know every foot of that B Plant and what’s going on there.” Well, he says “By God, we’ve got problems.” Then it was Westinghouse. And then I finally got down to a couple ‑‑‑ I occasionally get a call now, but I’m actually retired. WEISSKOPF: Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to talk about? HULTGREN: Well, one thing that I would like very much, is I think there is ‑‑‑ you can see if you look at (inaudible) that it’s been used. WEISSKOPF: The Smythe Report? HULTGREN: The Smythe Report history. This was the Princeton version. Then you had this Conant, who was the president of Harvard, he was a great organic chemist, and he was actually commissioned to write something, too. WEISSKOPF: Do you think that’s a good book for people to read to learn about ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: No, it’s ‑‑‑ the point is ‑‑‑ I don’t know if it’s fair to say that, but I think a person needs a pretty good background. But the time and the place to appreciate it, this actually talks about the war. And the point is that when Smythe was involved in this thing, I remember meeting him one time when he came out to the plant. I don’t know if it was with Groves or not. General Groves. But the old story, and Smythe has written it in here somewhere, that when Groves, when they would come out to Hanford, they wouldn’t go beyond 300 area. The hell with it, they wanted to make sure that all this canning and dipping, that ‑‑‑ I’ll tell you, that was the most important thing in the world. And I got involved in that for about three or four months, I guess. WEISSKOPF: This book, would it be good for somebody who wants to understand the Manhattan Project and all the work that went on? HULTGREN: Oh, yes. WEISSKOPF: Would you recommend it? HULTGREN: I’d recommend it to somebody who’s not real ‑‑‑ someone who would appreciate it. You know, there’s a lot of people that will read something, and all they can do is find fault in it. We’ve got those people. But I think somebody that has a good ‑‑‑ he’s got to have a pretty good background to get anything out of here, because it gets so deep, too, into some of the theoretical end of it. But ‑‑‑ well, this was published in ‘45. When we talked about this ‑‑‑ this is rather interesting ‑‑‑ Idelle says “Well, you haven’t been doing this type thing for a long time.” And I said “The more I’ve done it, the more involved I” ‑‑‑ she kind of ‑‑‑ I guess I went to sleep last night reading this thing. But the thing that was so interesting, though, at least I thought it was, that the president, it goes in here, why did they pick the DuPont Company, the design? Well, they went into this capability of a vision that........... (Tape ran out) ....and to sustain the reaction at the time, and all they needed was some more uranium in there. But they predicted it. WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you one question that I like to ask everybody. It was all top secret when you first got there ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ the world didn’t know what Hanford was doing until the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. What was your work experience and community experience like before and after that? How did it affect your job and now everybody knew what they were doing? HULTGREN: Well, I think everybody had a sigh of relief and they were kind of proud about it. In fact, the people that I associated with, the ones like Rohrbacher, Tom Clement, we ‑‑‑ obviously, going to school with Roger, I saw him every day for about four years. But the point was that there isn’t anybody else left, because ‑‑‑ I’ve got to think about this. Well, I know myself, just like Idelle and I, we fell in love with the area, she knew that I loved to play golf and hunt. We were married about six years before we had a family, and the first thing ‑‑‑ we were married, after about three months we ended up having a labrador pup. And I think we’re on our sixth or seventh labrador now. Sugar. The first female we’ve had. But it was ‑‑‑ we still have right now a bridge club of people, we’re the oldest group that have been here, but across, there’s a couple there, I know the Alcars (phonetic), both of them are Buckeyes, Ohio State people. But it’s funny how the people are all around. Battelle has got ‑‑‑ well, I know so many of the Battelle people, worked with them over the years. Lane Bray (phonetic) I’m sure you probably know. He was one of the chemists out here early, before Battelle time. But when we were starting up PUREX, we met with each other, the operations people, we were either coming down here or they were coming out to the PUREX plant and going through the design and process, testing. It was a very close coupled situation. At the time GE was here, you know they were 20 years, from, what, ‘48 till fifty ‑‑‑ when did GE leave here? WEISSKOPF: Sixty something? HULTGREN: Sixty-three, four, five? WEISSKOPF: Would you say that you didn’t just stay here because it was a job, but you actually ‑‑‑ HULTGREN: Oh, no, no, no, no. It was many friends, and I think ‑‑‑ I know Idelle worked in the laboratory, and she and another gal, she was very involved in this art gallery. In fact, today she’s very definitely involved in the arts. And I think she’s on a lot of the boards. WEISSKOPF: So has Richland felt like a small town to you? You know everybody in it? HULTGREN: It’s a small town, I guess. WEISSKOPF: Happy that you stayed? HULTGREN: Oh, sure. We have a couple girls that both enjoyed it. But coming from the Midwest, climate has had ‑‑‑ you know, Minnesota was kind of a ‑‑‑ but they’ve had probably warmer weather than we’ve had out here. WEISSKOPF: If there’s anything else you want to put on, we can do this again sometime. HULTGREN: What I’d like to do is this: obviously, when you get home or thinking about it, and I’ll do the same. How annoying is this to you? WEISSKOPF: What? HULTGREN: Just listening to this stuff? NICK: It’s okay with me. WEISSKOPF: Unfortunately, the cameraman has to put up with it. HULTGREN: Well, no. But I think there’s a mutual respect involved in these things. WEISSKOPF: Well, he’s enjoyed the other ones, so I have a feeling he’s probably getting a lot of it, too. What were you thinking, as far as what? HULTGREN: I’m just ‑‑‑ I guess I’ll ask the old cliché: how far is far? WEISSKOPF: We can go as far as we can suck you dry. HULTGREN: Well, that’s the point. WEISSKOPF: Not today, but another time. HULTGREN: No, no. The point is, where do you stop on this thing? What may be good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander, and how far do you go? WEISSKOPF: We can go a lot farther. We can do it again if you’d like. HULTGREN: Who’s your audience going to be? Are you doing this for the three of us, or are you doing it for the public, or who? WEISSKOPF: We’re doing it for people that want to understand how Hanford operated, what was it like there, what kind of jobs were going on. For people who are technically interested. They want to hear about the fuel canning, they want to hear how the separations process went, they want to hear about health physics. It was all a big part of the Hanford process. So we’re hopefully going to appeal to a wide range of people. HULTGREN: You see, the thing about ‑‑‑ are we holding you up? Are you going to be here anyway for a while? WEISSKOPF: Well, the tape’s going to be up in five minutes. HULTGREN: All right. All right. WEISSKOPF: How about if we shut the tape off, and we can talk about doing this again sometime. HULTGREN: I don’t want to... WEISSKOPF: You can start packing up, if you want, Nick. HULTGREN: Nick, this has been great. [end] 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 Roger Hultgren Oral History Subject The topic of the resource E. I. DuPont de Nemours and Company Manhattan Project (Organization) Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Roger Hultgren for the B Reactor Museum Association. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11/26/1999 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6712f59bee872ee5e549655b95ada6cb.MP3 943160e343640675695db9aa989a3cbe 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Gene Weisskopf Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Russ Knight Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Russ Knight Audio Interview by Telephone October 8, 1999 Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA WEISSKOPF: This is the October 8, 1999 interview with Russ Knight about his experiences in the separations process at Hanford back in the early days. WEISSKOPF: If there’s someplace you’d like to start. Otherwise, do you want to go all the way back to what you were doing in World War II and sort of segue into how you ended up at Hanford? KNIGHT: I could do that real quickly. You bet. WEISSKOPF: Basically, last time we talked you told me what you were doing, the top secret kind of work, you had a clearance during the war. KNIGHT: That’s right. WEISSKOPF: Well, how about that? KNIGHT: Okay. Let me say this. I originated out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and joined the Army Air Corps, because they were taking fellows in with a little bit of education. I say a little bit. High school, minimum. WEISSKOPF: Right. KNIGHT: And from there, why, I went through the training, and then was assigned to the Eighth Air Force. And very shortly thereafter there was a big push to get personnel into what was called the troop carrier command then. And I went into the first troop carrier command, and during my stay there, training pilots, and we were then ‑‑‑ well, after I had been in training for about 14 months training pilots, decided that I’d like to get a part of the war effort, too. So I volunteered to go into the war. And at that stage I was assigned to a troop carrier unit that was to go overseas, and again was requested to submit to special training. At that time I was trained as a pathfinder. Part of that training took place at MIT, the electronics training, and the field training then took place at Pope Field in North Carolina, Fayetteville. And from there, why, I went over to the European theater of operations. WEISSKOPF: And what year was that? KNIGHT: That was in 1943. Late ‘43. And from there I participated in the war, and of course the top secret clearance type thing took place at my training at MIT and also in the field training at Fayetteville, North Carolina. So then I came home in December 1945. And at that time I came by the Richland area, because I had met some real good people and had some friends here. And everybody, during my visit, said “Oh, you better sign up and go to work here at Hanford, because this is the future of mankind.” WEISSKOPF: You had actually felt that this was something new happening? KNIGHT: That’s right. And so I said, “Oh, I don’t think that they would want me, but I’ll go down and submit an application.” Because I came from the East Coast originally, as I stated, and I had been offered a job by one of the officers in the Army to work for Standard Oil of New Jersey. And I thought, well, that was close to home and be a good opportunity, so that had been my original plan. But after submitting my application at Hanford, why, with my background and with the military clearance and just out of the service within weeks, why, they gave me my exam, gave me my clearance the same day, and told me to report to 100 West area the following morning. WEISSKOPF: They were happy to have you. KNIGHT: It was really strange, because the people that knew me said “That’s impossible, Russ, they can’t do that. They’ll stop you before you get out there. But anyhow we’re happy that you did sign up.” So the net result was everything went the way that I was told that it would when I signed in. WEISSKOPF: This is probably early 1946 at this point? KNIGHT: That was in January ‘46. January 14th, to be exact. WEISSKOPF: Well, okay, great. That was the first day you showed up for work? KNIGHT: That’s correct. And so in doing so, I got on the bus, and at that time the bus rides were free, and the bus depot was fairly close to town. As a matter of fact, it was almost on the corner of Williams and Thayer, about a block to the west. So I went to the bus area and got on a bus like they said. It was labeled to the 200 area. Now, these were small military type buses. They were even painted the OD color. And I got on this thing and started out, and when we got to the 300 area, there was the major barricade across the road. Now, this was manned by military personnel. And when I looked over at the 300 area to my right, why, there was guard towers all around the area. And it was hard wire fencing and barbed wire at the top. And low profile barracks type military style construction. And I thought, Uh-oh, I don’t recall the looks of that. But, anyhow, on we went. And the reason that I make this comment was I had just, on my return to the United States ‑‑‑ I had been stationed just outside of Munich, Germany, and they had Dachau concentration camps just 17 miles out of town, and I had visited that prior to coming home. And it had a very similar position in my mind, that, hey, this is another concentration type of thing, and what in the world are we doing here? So I didn’t feel too comfortable, the 26 miles on out to the 200 areas. And as we came up the hill closest to the 200 East area and flattened out, I looked over to the right and here I could see this real long concrete building and a large smokestack, or at least a discharge stack of some sort, 200 feet in the air, and I thought, Uh-oh, no windows in this facility, and I was really getting very uncomfortable. And I thought, Well, I don’t know whether I like this or not, I don’t want to be a part of something that’s like the concentration camps where... WEISSKOPF: Yeah. KNIGHT: So on we went to the 200 West area. When I got off the bus, why, I had the real strong feeling that I wanted to go back to town. So I went in the batch house and I asked them what time the next bus went back to town. Because there were no private vehicles at that time. And they said oh, there wouldn’t be another bus, there’d be a shuttle bus later on, that I might be able to ‑‑‑ they said, “By the way, who do you want to see?” And at that time I was asked to get in touch with Randy Fenninger (phonetic) of DuPont. So they said, “Well, here, we’ll get him on the phone.” So they called Randy, and he answered very quickly, and he says “We’ll be right up to pick you up.” So in just a very few moments, here came a car, a company car, and again it was in the OD color. And I got in the car, and they started down, and I told them, I said, “I’m really uncomfortable about this.” And Randy says “Well, you needn’t be, we’ll explain a few things to you as we go.” So he started telling me a little story about ‑‑‑ and, of course, the news on what was going on at Hanford had already broken and had been published in the papers. That was one of the reasons that I came home very early. So the story continued to be, “All right, we’re going down to the laboratory, and this is the 222-T laboratory, and we’ll start here and give you a little bit of an insight.” But they said “Bear in mind that everything that is on the site is very much in the high security type activities. Anything related to processing is strictly on a need-to-know basis.” So that was the beginning and the start of my introduction to Hanford. And I got into the laboratory and immediately met some really fine people and started working. And then after I had established myself in about three or four weeks, why, they said “We need your type of help over in the 200 East area also, same building, same type of activity, for B Plant operation.” So I worked a half a day in T Plant and a half a day in the B Plant laboratories. WEISSKOPF: In the same day. KNIGHT: For several years. WEISSKOPF: Oh, between the two? KNIGHT: Yes. A half a day in each. And that was kind of interesting. But then we got into what was happening and the processing. And, of course, the process at that time was what they called bismuth phosphate processing. It was a batch type process. They had the cells in the canyon building, which was a long concrete structure, approximately 800 feet long, and was equipped with 40 in-ground cells from ground level and deep into the ground 28 feet. And the cells were equipped with the necessary processing equipment, and all the processing equipment in the cells were stainless steel. WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you this: You had a pretty good technical background just in general technical issues, but why did they take you to a laboratory for strictly chemical process, do you think? KNIGHT: As I look back on it now, Gene, my only thoughts were that the whole process then had to be hinging around chemical operations. And that would be an ideal spot to start out and really learn the processes from the ground up. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Yeah. KNIGHT: And I was very fortunate, because that was the case. The more I started learning about the process, the more intense my desire to learn. It grew and grew to where it was really exciting, because the more I learned about the process, then the more I understood about it. And the more I understood about these things, the greater the “awe” effect became, that My goodness, they’ve done all these things in such short periods of time, such as building a complete facility in 17 months, building a tank farm to support that facility in the same time frame, and at the same time doing a lot of research along the way to actually assure themselves that the process would actually work. Because most of the work initially was done on a very small scale to begin with, and then it was blown up to be a full-fledged process in a large volume plant. WEISSKOPF: So by the time you got there, at least it had already been proven that the process, the entire Hanford process, works. KNIGHT: That’s correct. WEISSKOPF: At least you got to step in saying Oh, whatever they were trying to do actually works. Now we can go on from that point. KNIGHT: That’s right. And they were constantly in the experimental stage to improve their capability and abilities as to what was going on. Now, I mentioned initially that the canyon had 40 cells in it in the initial startup and operation of the facilities, and we ran that way for a number of years with using only 20 of the cells. WEISSKOPF: Okay. KNIGHT: And then as we continued to forge ahead, and the needs and the operation continued to grow and became more and more interesting as to what happened in the process and how they could improve their abilities to produce at a higher rate. They put the second series of cells into play, and this was called parallel operation. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. KNIGHT: And we increased the output from the plant. Because, bear in mind that as this process went, it was very slow and very meticulous and very tedious in getting the maximum amount of plutonium out of the uranium that was being processed. And it was very strange, because the initial volume of material that was put into play, the uranium was in the tonnage levels, and the extracted material, the plutonium, was in the gram phase. WEISSKOPF: Right. KNIGHT: And that was tremendous, to run through large volumes of processing in a tank, two, three, four thousand up to as much as six thousand gallon vessels, and continue to control this, and make sure that you knew exactly what you had and where you had it in a given time in the process. Very unique. And, of course, that’s where the laboratory came in. It was actually called the process control lab. And in order to adjust and maintain the process, why, samples had to be taken at each step during the processing. As the material went from one phase of extraction in the separation to reduction, oxidation reduction type phase, why, you had to sample at all stages. And not only did you sample for the product, but you also sampled the waste streams to ensure that none of the product was going out in the waste streams. Or if there was any going out, it was an absolute minimum allowable. WEISSKOPF: Let me ask I think what is probably always going to be there, but because it was such a nationally critical material, the faster you guys got it processed, the better; and the faster you could do the sampling, the faster you could make the chemistry go, the better it would be all around? KNIGHT: That’s correct. WEISSKOPF: Okay. KNIGHT: Now, the process was all designed to accommodate those needs. And this was another thing that was just amazing, to know that here was a brand new introduction to a ‑‑‑ this type of energy that we had never even considered that would be available to us on a daily basis. And to have started all of this with instantaneous construction, building, and putting the buildings into what we call a turnkey operation to begin with, once it was built, you would turn the key and open the door and went in and started the processing. That was amazing. And since the construction of the process facilities was done in such a secretive manner that the construction workers that were assigned to do certain phases of putting in interconnecting piping and whatnot were moved from time to time, and that was usually on a day or every-other-day basis, so that they never really had a true configuration in their minds as to what was being done and how the system was being built and what it would be used for. So all of those things were highly, just mind-boggling. WEISSKOPF: How did that affect your job? You said they were introducing you to the entire process, the best way to learn was in the lab. How did security impinge on your knowledge of at least the separations process? Did they limit you in any way? KNIGHT: Oh, yes. They had a very large technical manual that was available at that time of the whole buildup and the history of what was taking place in this technical manual, but you didn’t have full authorization to take the technical manual and sit down and read it at that stage. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. KNIGHT: That came later, that they made the technical manuals available to almost anyone that worked there after a period of time. WEISSKOPF: Did you know where the fuel was coming from, or how it was processed before it got to you guys? KNIGHT: They started telling us this early on, that the uranium was put into a process mode and put into the reactors. And at that stage, why, it was being transmitted ‑‑‑ transmuted, I should say, to make the plutonium. WEISSKOPF: And what about within your process itself? Did you know when ‑‑‑ the material that you were processing ended up leaving the building and going to the concentration building. Did you understand that whole leg of the process, too? KNIGHT: Yes, we did. Because that was all in ‑‑‑ well, within a stone’s throw of the canyon building was the laboratory, and next to the laboratory was the first phase of the concentration. It was the first phase through the operation. And once we got the plutonium in the rough-cut stage, I’ll put it that way, then it was moved from 224-T Building down to the 231-Z Building, which was the final concentration and purification operation. And the ‑‑‑ all of this was controlled, as I said, through the laboratory, and samples had to be taken in the processing facilities. In the canyon facility they had to keep the canyon in prime clean condition, because in order to get samples the way the system was built then was to take people right in on the processing deck with all the cells closed, and they had sample systems that they would go in and turn on what we called the air circulation, which was a circulated process, solution out of the vessel up through a sample receiving cup and back into the processing vessel. Well, they would circulate this for a minimum of ten minutes to ensure that they have gotten a representative sample out of this large vessel. And then they had special equipment that they inserted down into the sample cup and pulled the sample into it, and the high activity samples in the early process we used what they called a shielded trombone sampler. It was an all-stainless unit, and it had a release on it that lowered the actual sampling tip down into the solution. Then they used a syringe to pull the solution into a pipette that was at the bottom of this sampler. And those pipettes that were used on the bottom of the sampler were calibrated to a ½ or 1 ml. And the real hot ones, of course, we only took a ½ ml. And then the unit was retracted up into a shielded portion of the sampler, and then we had a shielded container called a doorstop that was placed very close to the sample port that was immediately transferred then into the doorstop. And at that point the sample pipette was disengaged from the sampler assembly, and then the lid on the doorstop was closed with a handle that clamped down and held the top of it sealed so in the event that it was tipped over it didn’t spill. And then they carried that by hand to a wagon. In the early stages, we didn’t have the wagons to begin with, and they would carry these then from there to the building, and that was to the 222 T Building, where I was. Then when the samplers came in the door of the 222 laboratory, they had a special window right inside the door on the right-hand side as they entered, and they rang a bell, which was a push-button bell at the window, and then they set the sampling equipment up on the dutch door type platform on top of the ‑‑‑ at the bottom of the window. WEISSKOPF: So they wouldn’t actually have to come into the lab? KNIGHT: They did not. Then we’d open the door and pull the sampler equipment in and set it down on the stainless steel benches. WEISSKOPF: Would you pull just the doorstop, or all the trombone and everything else? KNIGHT: Any sampling equipment that they brought over at that time. Sometimes it would take two or three samples while they were in the building, or in the canyon, and would take the process samples that contained the product. And that’s what it was always referred to, we never talked about it being plutonium. You always spoke of the product. And then they would also take waste samples, because, as I said, as they processed from stage to stage in the canyon building, they would take the sample of the product to ensure that they still had it, and the volume and the condition of it as far as isolation. And then the waste that came off of that, they took samples of those waste streams and brought those over to the building. And naturally as you’re processing this way, wastes are very important to get out of the building. Otherwise they’d back up and fill your vessels, would shut you down. WEISSKOPF: Right. KNIGHT: So that’s kind of the way the process always emanated and controlled, and it was really very interesting. WEISSKOPF: What was your job actually, then, you know, a few months after you got there? What was your daily routine? You were in the lab? KNIGHT: In the lab. As soon as they found out that I could use the pipetting equipment, because, again, college chemistry, if you remember, taking samples, everybody used to draw the sample up into the pipettes in college labs by mouth. And this was an absolute no-no, and you didn’t do that sort of thing. So the way we done it out there was we had these small syringes, the same type that the medical profession uses to inoculate you. And different sizes. The smaller volumes that you were going to work with, the smaller the syringe that you needed, down to where ‑‑‑ but you couldn’t go too tiny because you were going to hold this in your hand. And attached to the end of the syringe was a small piece of intravenous tubing that we used, and then the pipette was placed into the intravenous tubing to actually get a sample, especially the waste samples, were by hand. WEISSKOPF: If they took just a 1 ml sample, would that be enough for you guys to work with, then? KNIGHT: It was enough to give us at least two complete analyses. If we ran an analysis and it didn’t meet the expectation that we anticipated at that phase of the process, then we were asked to verify the analysis, so we had enough sample to run it again. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Let me ask you this: If you took that sample early on in the process so it was hot, how close could you get to it and how long could you be near it? KNIGHT: All right. For the real hot samples in the laboratory, we had a breakdown facility ‑‑‑ I say breakdown; actually, a dilution-type facility ‑‑‑ and it was called the Rube Goldberg, where we actually set the doorstop in behind this leaded shield window, and then we had a remote pipetter that we put a fresh pipette in, and then we would open the doorstop, and just turn it. It was on a swivel, and we’d turn it, put the pipette down into the doorstop sampler that contained the real hot stuff, and then we had a 10 ml flask units that we used to set in adjacent to that prior to opening everything up. You got everything in position before you opened the doorstop. And then you would take a minute amount, like 100 ml, of this half ‑‑‑ we had ½ ml to begin with, and then we would take 100 lambda of that and dilute it in this 10 ml vial that was almost already full of solution. And then after we done that, then we would close the doorstops and take these small vials and then dilute them to a calibrated mark so that we could make back calculations as to what volumes we were working with. WEISSKOPF: Right. Okay. KNIGHT: So this was very, very important that all, when you pipette it out of the doorstop, you pipette it up to a given line on the ‑‑‑ TAPE RAN OUT KNIGHT: ‑‑‑ to get it right on the ‑‑‑ get the meniscus right on the mark, and then transfer that into the 10 ml flask. And that was the way we worked the hot ones. That was quite routine, and it became ‑‑‑ people became very and highly proficient in doing these operations, and without getting themselves into any kind of an exposure problem. WEISSKOPF: And when you took a sample, was the process basically stopped at that point before they would transfer the materials on to the next step? KNIGHT: No, no, they always waited for the results to come back before the material was moved to the next step. WEISSKOPF: It was. So the process would be held up while you guys were doing your work. KNIGHT: That’s correct. WEISSKOPF: And what was the pressure for you guys to get it right if for some reason you didn’t find the numbers the way you wanted? KNIGHT: Well, they had pretty good time frames as to how long it would take the laboratory to make an analysis for them. And the only time that they really got outstandingly pushy against the laboratory was when we would have a result that they didn’t felt met the criteria for the batch that they were moving. And if that be the case, then they’d call for a re-sample, and that meant the samplers had to come back, run over and take a sample out of the canyon, rush it over to us, and that was put on what we called the rush category, and that had to be done immediately. WEISSKOPF: How long would that take, do you think? If you got the word that you needed a new sample until you actually had the sample in hand, would it be minutes, or an hour, or...? KNIGHT: Well, they could have a sample to us in 30 minutes. And in most cases that would always be the situation. However, if they were going to be working in another cell in the process, like a leak or something like this, why, they would have, if they were going to have a cell block off, they normally did not let anybody in on deck when that was happening. So they would have to put a cover block back on before they could do that, and that would take ‑‑‑ by the time that they knew that they had to take a sample, they’d already told the crane operator that they had to close up because they had to take a sample. WEISSKOPF: Okay. And the crane operator was theoretically the only one in the canyon while things were going on? KNIGHT: That’s correct. And he was behind a shielded parapet wall. And from his position in the crane cab, which was behind that parapet wall, then he was in a solid steel cube. Actually, I say solid steel cube, it was a cube with an operational area in it that was heavy 8-inch steel all the way around him. And then we had modified Navy periscopes, the same type that they used on the submarines, that had been modified so that they could project on a horizontal plane out, and the magnifying heads could be rotated to give him views down the canyon or straight down. And it had a three-power configuration where he could change his magnification when he was up above looking and moving, and then go down closer. And then when the cell block was off, actually get right down to where he was seeing in the cell with very good visibility. WEISSKOPF: Where were the lights for looking down into a cell? KNIGHT: They had lights on the crane itself. WEISSKOPF: That would shine straight down? KNIGHT: That’s right. As well as ceiling lights in the canyon. But the crane operators always used, naturally, the lights on the crane because they were a high intensity spotlight type thing. And they had four or five on each side of the bridge, as I remember, and they’d shine straight down so that his work areas were highly lit and visible. WEISSKOPF: If the crane operator was doing his job right, everything went, if something went wrong, there wasn’t anybody on the canyon floor to correct what he was doing or to make it easier. An awful lot of it fell on his shoulders. KNIGHT: That’s correct. And if it was a really touchy job that he had to do, why, it was a very common practice that someone from the operations building would actually go up and ride with him when he was doing that particular job. WEISSKOPF: Okay. KNIGHT: And that’s what I was going to say, that having had experience, some experience over the years of going out and working at the 100 B Reactor, for example, on a special project, and having been transferred out of the laboratory into the operations side of the business, and having worked in the tank farm operations over the years, why, it makes it pretty easy for me to talk about these things, Gene. Because when you’ve worked in all the different places, then you really can focus and get a good idea of all of the outcroppings and the work that went on. WEISSKOPF: Okay. You’ve seen the whole picture. KNIGHT: It kind of gives you the big picture, yes. That doesn’t make me an expert, say, in the 100 areas nor in the processing facilities, because we had people that ‑‑‑ well, we had the working groups available in the various facilities, such as the chemists were working, and most of them would work in laboratories, chemical engineering personnel in the facilities, and then we always had the process chemistry group, which were all the high technical process engineering ‑‑‑ or chemical engineering type people that were always constantly looking at what was going on in the process and tell you what adjustments had to be made to get us to where we wanted to be. So it was well-controlled and well-orchestrated in the way that they done business, even from the very beginning. And that was one of the reasons that the DuPont Company was chosen, I’m sure, because of their background in chemistry and their dedicated records, or track record I should say, for doing good work and working with explosives and various types of energy that way. WEISSKOPF: Right. And DuPont was still at Hanford when you came, right? KNIGHT: Yes, indeed. WEISSKOPF: Until almost the end of ‘46? KNIGHT: That’s correct. They left in ‑‑‑ well, they made the transition to General Electric Company in September of ‘46. And then they stayed available on an advisory capacity in high echelon positions until General Electric had settled in and had full control. WEISSKOPF: How quickly after you got there did your job all of a sudden change, or did they shift you around? KNIGHT: It was pretty much on an individual’s abilities and capabilities versus the availability of new jobs, different places. And, of course, we have to bear in mind that a number of things were taking place. There was more demands for not only plutonium, but we started having people in the high forehead area, I’m going to say, that were already looking at possibilities for utilizing some of the other radioisotope materials that we were discovering. There was constant research going on in a number of the colleges around the country that were included in the program, Berkeley being one. And those people were getting actual samples of some of our materials, and they were also doing a lot of research, and development was just coming and going as fast as you could ever want it. So at that stage it was pretty tough to really get totally on board as to what was happening because so much and so many things were happening simultaneously. But it was all going, and it was really exciting because you knew, you could just sense the high intensity of things that were happening. And I’ve often said that I hated to go home from work in the afternoons, and I couldn’t wait till I got there the next morning. WEISSKOPF: Wow. KNIGHT: It was really great. And, of course, that continued to energize and grow into what I call the Fabulous Fifties, when they radioisotope business became high reality, and separations were actually starting to separate specific isotopes that they found would have a need in the public markets for various things, up to and including the treatment of cancers that we’re still using today. WEISSKOPF: And I guess the prospects for nuclear energy itself were pretty darn high at that point. KNIGHT: Extremely high. And, Gene, I have to say that we did not get off on the right foot with nuclear energy because it started out as a war born thing and initially was classified to have a 20-year life expectancy. And it was looked upon, every time you say anything about nuclear energy, the first thing they see is the big mushroom cloud, and the aspects of a war developed industry that was strictly to win a war. And that was so true at the time. But after we were into the thing for a while, then it became highly apparent that there was a lot of good things to come out of the system for the benefits of humanity. But it became a very difficult sell, because people had already been ‑‑‑ I won’t say poisoned in their minds, but had already been predestined to make decisions on the basis of it was a war type material and that’s all it was good for. And it’s a shame, because we know that we had ‑‑‑ well, I’ll cite the space program, NASA’s programs. In the early stages it was not too difficult for them to shoot a man up in the air and bring him back to earth in a short durational thing. But then they started extending their time in space, and they had to go to highly energized systems because everything was battery operated then, and they were using solar power to regenerate the batteries. And after we got up and starting orbiting, why, they got into some real close problems of not being able to bring personnel back, because when they got on the back side of the planet, the moon, this sort of thing, why, they were in the dark side, and they couldn’t solar energize batteries. And we were very close on a couple of occasions on return trips. And so during that phase, why, some generators were made, and Hanford played a major role in it, the Battelle Industries did, on building what we called snap generators. And they were used in space and still are, to my knowledge. So there were benefits in that light. And, again, from a medicinal standpoint, there were those benefits. And I guess the person that said it the very best in my book was Dixie Lee Ray, the administrator for the Atomic Energy Commission, and she stood before Congress and told them that the things that we were developing and using in the nuclear industry were no different than when things were developed such as electricity and people were injured and killed by misuses of electricity, but then we finally got it to where everybody now can walk into a room and flip a little switch and we have no problems with it. And I thought that that was an outstanding way to present something like that. And she said just think what it’s given the individual, the working class people in this world, when back in the days of the pharaohs with all of their money and magnificence, they did not have that type of control and services. And she felt that the nuclear industry was well on the road to getting us into that same category. And, to me, that just opened a whole new way of life for everybody, and I think that it still has that opportunity, and someday we’ll regret the fact that we’ve been so emphatic and vicious in shutting down our systems in this country. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. To me, it’s like the discovery was made and it will always be there now. KNIGHT: That’s correct. WEISSKOPF: How we utilize it and what ways we put it to use. KNIGHT: And we’ve already demonstrated that under proper control and constantly upgraded maintenance programs, why, the systems work well to supply high energy needs. And unless I need to say too much more, Gene, I’m going to say that in my book, from what I know about the wars in history and our current wars and positions, that nations that have had energy and utilized their energies in proper perspective, were always people that were respected and controlled, or had controls, I’ll say. And as we continue to reduce our ability to have energies and be in control positions puts us in jeopardy, and I feel that very strongly. WEISSKOPF: Interesting. That’s very good. To have a perspective on that whole career that you had really, to me, it makes me realize that you were excited about it. It was something brand new, it was totally undeveloped, and you got to see it start from almost nothing to a thousand different industries branching out of it. It’s really great. KNIGHT: And I think that that was one of the reasons that I enjoyed, even after retirement, of staying and helping whenever I could. And I still feel very strongly that the industry still has its place and someday will probably utilize it a little bit better than we have. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. You never worked in the private sector? KNIGHT: I never have worked in the private sector. WEISSKOPF: Was it always within the confines of Hanford? KNIGHT: Yes, indeed. WEISSKOPF: Okay. You didn’t travel around the country doing ‑‑‑ KNIGHT: Did not. WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ what other people did? KNIGHT: Oh, on a couple of occasions I did, Gene. But it was only because we had a specific interest in a given type function, such as ‑‑‑ and I’ll mention one. We were very interested in reducing waste volumes at Hanford, and the best way to do that would be to size the waste that you were going to put into boxes to be buried into the ground. And we were looking at setting up a sizing operation of our own in the plutonium finishing plant, and one of the other companies in the nation that was at that time at Rocky Flats in Colorado had let us know that they were already doing some sizing type work. And a couple of us were sent down to look at it. I say a couple. There was a number of trips made. And then from a health physics standpoint, because I was in health physics at the time, they sent people like myself and Bernie Sariffic (phonetic) down, and we made an observation as to what they were doing and whether it was compatible with the way we like to do business at Hanford. And it turned out that we had already put our oar in the water, so to speak, and the program that we had outlined for Hanford was going to be superior to the program that they had at Rocky Flats. So it was things like that that were also very interesting. WEISSKOPF: Have you ever seen any of the fuel processing facilities in Europe, or where they use them for part of their normal commercial stream? KNIGHT: Only from information and documentation that I had looked at here. Now, I did make a trip to Belgium in 1993, strictly a private type thing on the request of one of my sons-in-law to go with him, because he was looking at starting another little business of his own, importing pigeon feeds, because he’s a pigeon racer. WEISSKOPF: And while you were there... KNIGHT: So we got a chance to look around a little bit. And at that time Belgium had one reactor in service, and was just bringing on the second, and had already started the process of building their third, which would have put them at 100% nuclear utilization. And, of course, then interest in other countries. The French, for example, were getting up into the area of about 70%. WEISSKOPF: These people have to deal, then, with fuel reprocessing and all the associated chemistry. KNIGHT: Exactly. WEISSKOPF: And it would be interesting, I guess, to see how they’re doing that. KNIGHT: Well, it certainly would be, because I know that we’re getting ‑‑‑ and I refer to it as constipated, because we’re not reprocessing any fuels now, and all of our power reactor people are having problems with backup storage of their spent fuel, and that’s going to catch up to us. As a matter of fact, it’s become a very, very real problem at this time. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. But in your experience, it would have been a really straightforward step up from what you were doing with separations to dealing with the commercial power plants around the country to reprocess their fuel? KNIGHT: That’s correct. But we had already made the studies, Gene, and had that information available. As a matter of fact, we had already started making some equipment conversions in the PUREX plant to accommodate commercial fuel reprocessing. WEISSKOPF: Okay. KNIGHT: And that’s all on record. WEISSKOPF: And I guess some of the down sides of that are you have to transport it around the country. KNIGHT: That’s true. But we’re still transporting wastes around the country. WEISSKOPF: Right. KNIGHT: And I think that will continue. As a matter of fact, I sat in on a very interesting discussion in Yakima here probably eight or nine years ago now, where they had people convinced here in Yakima that we should just absolutely refuse to let them truck any wastes through Yakima or any that fly over in Yakima. And during the course of the discussion, from inputs from people like myself and others, why, it became highly apparent that, hey, if you do that, you have to remember that you’re going to shut your hospitals down, you’re not going to be able to have the x-ray equipment calibrated from time to time like we have to do to make sure that it’s within bounds. And all of a sudden they said uh-oh, okay, maybe we’re trying to get the cart before the horse. And I think all too frequently we do that. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. KNIGHT: And it’s an understandable thing, especially when we’ve had such a tremendous training program where everything nuclear was war oriented. WEISSKOPF: Right. KNIGHT: It’s going to take a long time to phase out of that, and I think we’re eventually getting there. People are a little bit more friendly towards nuclear industry, and they’re seeing that we’re still building new cancer clinics everywhere and using isotopes to treat those people in dire need. And I think that we’ve got to really look at everything with a good strong sense of realism, that hey, go back with what I originally said about Dixie Lee Ray saying that we injured people when we first introduced electricity, and she also made mention of the fact that we’ve done the same thing with gasoline, another form of energy that we all use today. WEISSKOPF: Right. KNIGHT: We use very carelessly at this stage in our lives, in many cases. WEISSKOPF: Oh, yeah. There was a time when we were running out of gasoline. Somehow or other we’re not running out of it anymore. KNIGHT: It’s very strange. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. KNIGHT: Well, we’re buying now a lot of our oils and products from other countries, too, and this is another one of those areas that gives me concern is that we’re putting ourselves on the table and being dependent on everybody else rather than depending on ourselves again. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. KNIGHT: Especially in the forms of energies. WEISSKOPF: Hey, it’s been about an hour, and I maybe want to let you go before we drain you completely for this period of time. KNIGHT: I really appreciated the opportunity, Gene, and it’s a real pleasure. WEISSKOPF: Me very much so also. It’s great that you feel comfortable about remembering it. That in itself is a feat, I think, for all the experiences that you had over many years. It’s just great to have you laying it out like cards on a table. Would it be okay if I come up with specific questions for you that we do it again? KNIGHT: Absolutely. Absolutely. Anytime, Gene. WEISSKOPF: All right. Well, thank you very much, Russ. [end] Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:58:47 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 128kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview T Plant 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 Russ Knight Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation E. I. DuPont de Nemours and Company Description An account of the resource An audio oral history interview with Russ Knight for the B Reactor Museum Association. Knight was a Power Supervisor at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/08/1999 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Don Lewis Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound DON LEWIS INTERVIEW- Recorded on 12/14/91 My name is Don Lewis. I was a uh shifts supervisor at the B reactor startup in September of 1944. How I got here was I was an employee of the Dupont Company uh joined them at Carneys Point, New Jersey in the uh smokeless powder, smokeless powder plant they have there. And was in training for their military explosives program and went to Charleston, Indiana where I was a uh control chemist in the laboratories there and eventually worked into uh being a line supervisor in the acid and organics uh, part of the plant. And the uh, during that time uh, I was, one day I was called into my superintendents office and he indicated to me that he had another assignment for me and he didn’t know exactly what it was but uh, he sent me to the service superintendents of the plants office and I uh, was told that I was going to the TNX Project. This was a uh, supposedly a super secret project that we’d heard about but didn’t know anything about. And even the superintendents didn’t know anything about it. But, all he told me was that they had train tickets and reservations for me to go to Knoxville, Tennessee from Charleston, Indiana where I was working. And I went within two days of getting the word. And, we went, we were to report to a certain address at uh, in Knoxville which we did. And it was just a nondescript storefront but inside were very many people like myself plus all kinds of secretaries and we started in filling out forms and uh, signed our life away and identifying ourselves and uh, after we got through that for about three hours why they loaded us into a uh, what was known as a stretchout in those days it was a, sort of a , large sedan made into a bus with a it was an elongated body. And took us out to what they called Clinton Laboratories, outside of Knoxville, out in the hills out there. And uh, said this was where we would be working and uh, we uh, stayed in the hotel in Knoxville for a couple days until they had accommodations for us out at the Clinton Laboratories site out, it was the Oak Ridge site as they called it. It was built around the town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. So we were moved into dormitories and began our training there and we were told that we were in training for a production plant out in the state of Washington and uh, we heard several names, we heard Pasco, we heard Kennnewick, we heard Hanford and uh, we didn’t know what they all meant at the time but we stayed there in Oak Ridge at the Clinton Laboratories in training to operate an atomic pile. Uh, after our clearances were, went through why they revealed to us what we were doing, the kind of work we were in. And uh, it was considered to be extra hazardous work because of the unknown nature of it. But, most of us were uh, not too concerned about the hazards involved because of our association with the Dupont Company. Dupont has an excellent uh, safety record and safety philosophy and having worked in dangerous chemical and smokeless powder manufacture why uh, we were all used to that type of thing. And uh, we stayed at Oak Ridge at Clinton Laboratories and operating, learning how to operate the X-10 reactor which was the second reactor made. The first one, of course, being the Chicago pile. And reactors were called piles in those days. And uh, about 3 months later uh, we went, we came out here. And I got here on May the llth of 1944 and uh, got set up in the dormitory room and was immediately assigned to the 300 area to uh, as part of the operating crew for the Hanford test reactor, or the Hanford pile. And this was a uh, pile that tested uranium fuel elements and mostly uh, graphite that was being machined to be used in the construction of the B,D and F reactors. And uh, from May the 11th to July the 5th I worked down there. And then I was transferred out to the B reactor site which was under construction at that time. And uh, while out there uh, we were schooled in the operation of the plant the reactor or the pile itself. We followed construction and tried to learn about this strange new uh, new industry that we were associated with. And uh, when we came out we were told that we could expect to be assigned out here for about two years and they felt that the war would be over within the next two years. If our venture was successful. AT THAT TIME YOU KNEW IT WAS NUCLEAR OR ATOMIC RELATED? Yes. Yes. We, during the time that we were at Oak Ridge we had quite a few uh, people come in and talk to us, especially the most uh, memorable man that I recall was uh, Dr. Paul Gast who was one of the pioneers in uh, pioneer nuclear physicist. He was also much more practical and could speak our language and we learned an awful lot from his lectures about it. HOW MUCH WAS KNOWN ABOUT ATOMIC ENERGY AT THAT POINT? Oh, quite a bit, uh, the uh, I was amazed at what they did know because when I went to school I was a major in chemistry and all we knew was that there was uranium and thorium and uh and radium and they disintegrated in a series of uh radioactive elements by radioactive decay. And uh, that’s all we ever spent with radioactive elements in school. (CHATTER) We had uh, all of us that were associated with the reactor, with the piles themselves, knew and the top management of the other uh, areas like the water plant the maintenance knew but, it was sort of a need to know basis. And uh, so the people that ran the power facilities the water plant facilities the maintenance facilities - they didn’t have to know, know to, know about what we were doing. And as they uh, as the plant got built and started to operate why then you had to bring the maintenance people in and they were schooled on what it was. Except, the only thing that a lot of people were told was they were dealing with radioactivity. It was what they called a hazard disclosure. That they gave everybody. But that didn’t come until later. But those of us who were trained at Oak Ridge uh, to be operators of the reactors and the separations plant and the fuel fabrication facilities and the radiation protection or health instruments uh, people were all in the in the know in what it was. But we had two operators on our shift when we started up B reactor. They didn’t know anything, we didn’t tell em anything but uh, they were able to work and later on they found out what it was about. QUESTIONS ABOUT DUPONT. Ah, in retrospect after I’d been at in the reactor business for a couple of years I was amazed at the foresight that the Dupont Company showed in their design of these plants. There wasn’t, there wasn’t a thing that they put in that we didn’t have a use for. They, they just thought of every contingency. For instance, in 1948 we started to get fuel elements that stuck in the process tubes of the reactors. And, lo and behold, in the warehouses Dupont had a whole set of tools for extracting stuck fuel elements from the reactor. I guess the most famous, uh, thing about Dupont is the fact that the reactor was supposed to operate with 1500 tubes. And the, one of the engineers with Dupont uh, said we better prepare for a contingency and they designed it with 2000 and 4 tubes and as it turned out because of the xenon poisoning problem during operation why the 2000 and 4 tubes were utilized, were required. Of course Dupont uh, they signed they signed their... TAPE SPED UP ... the ah, of course this is hearsay from me because I don’t know first hand but they uh, they told us at Oak Ridge when we were in training that uh, these were the latest prints they had but when we got out there to Hanford it was no telling what it would look like because the uh, the design was uh, was holdin everything up and getting the design complete and and really the construction people were really pushing the designers, it was that close. (CHATTER) What I was going to tell you was, that the uh, the summer of ‘44 during the completion of the B reactor construction we had seminars and training sessions a couple times a day in the office building over there and uh, we had the chief design engineers for each of the components of the reactor come out and talk to us. They gave us the detail and the background on their design criteria and that they had to work with and how they went about designing their equipment. For instance, the guy that designed the control rods and the safety rods was out here and uh, it was really a liberal education for me that summer to uh, to hear these guys talk because I learned more about mechanical equipment design from them. The uh fellow that designed the charging and discharging equipment was out there. As a matter of fact, when we first discharged fuel he was out there uh, to watch it work. As it turned out, his design it was a perfect engineering design based on what he uh, what he was told, what his criteria were. But, the things that they told him were so conservative that was almost, it wasn’t impractical but it was very slow and we eventually threw out most of that uh, uh, very conservative design and went to uh, we had our own people design our own uh, fuel handling equipment. WHAT WAS INVOLVED IN DESIGNING? Well uh, nothing in the form of great quantities of uranium had even been mined and then the refining of the of the uranium and then learning how to machine and work with the uranium to make the fuel elements. Uh, there was a lot of engineering development had to take place there. The uh, graphite also, the, what 250,000 tons of graphite or, I don’t know what the, I don’t know what the, the magnitude of the graphite problem was terrific and uh, the design of the graphite moderator in these blocks about 4 inches square and about 4 feet long and uh, the drilling of the holes in the graphite, the sizing of the graphite. Graphite was very soft, easily, pieces were easily chipped off of it and it had to be very carefully handled. The people that uh, worked with the graphite, their sweat had to be tech, uh, kept out of the graphite. The graphite itself had to be extremely pure. And it was purer graphite than had ever been made before. And uh, the development in this short period of time was astronomical. I know the graphite in the B reactor was not as high quality as the graphite in the D reactor which was not as high quality as the graphite that was eventually used in the F reactor. They came on line within 6 months of each other. But the techniques were evolving that rapidly. And the uh, the cleanliness and the precision in which the graphite was laid was absolutely outstanding in my book. They used surveyors instruments of very great precision. They put a layer of graphite in and it had to meet certain tolerances within several mils, I think, of perfection. And then they’d bring another layer of graphite in and do the same thing. And when they ended up with that stack almost 40 feet high, there was less than a quarter of an inch from perfection; from being absolutely perfect. HOW ABOUT ALUMINUM? The aluminum also had to be extremely high purity because of the uh, these different elements that are normally found in ah, in industrial products, even minute traces of them in a reactor would poison down the reactor and make it not, inoperable. And they learned how to purify the aluminum and also to (?) the tubes and uh, they had several different tube designs and they ended up with the 2S aluminum tube as the as the best uh... ENORMOUS VARIETY OF SKILLS AND TECHNOLOGY. Well, not only that but uh, radiation shielding too, of course they know, uh, they knew graph or they knew that concrete was a good radiation shield but I thought it was rather ingenious they uh, they made the outside biological shields of the first reactors with laminated slabs of iron and masonite, of all things. Masonite was a high hydrogen content and would help uh moderate er moderate neutrons and uh, so with enough iron and masonite why they could capture all of the neutrons and the gamma rays of high intensity that were generated within the reactor. MENTION HOW URANIUM GOT HERE, OUT TO PLANT & INTO REACTOR. As far as I know, the uranium came out in uh, billets from wherever it was made back east, I think around in Ohio someplace. And the billets were then extruded into uh, rods. And the rods were then machined into individual, machined to the tolerance for fuel pieces. Then the rods were cut up into individual fuel pieces and all these of course were very precisely dimensioned and checked and cleanliness was of paramount importance. And then they uh, had to can these fuel pieces which were a little over 8 inches long, a little over an inch in diameter inside an aluminum can. And because of the heat generation that would take place in the reactor. The aluminum can had to be metalurgically bonded to the surface of the uranium slug so you’d get good heat transfer through the, through the metal into the cooling water which ran outside. The reason for the can was that aluminum or that uh, uranium and water reacted at high temperatures and under radiation. And the uranium would high dry at very uh, very rapidly and the fuel piece would be destroyed. So the can was put on to protect to shield the aluminum or the uranium from the from the water. Also, you had uh, aluminum water aluminum and no uh, no electroetic uh, couples there that you might have with aluminum and uh, and bare uranium. And uh... HAD ANY OF THIS BEEN DONE BEFORE, ALL NEW TECHNOLOGY? No uh As a matter of fact, they ahoy, in Chicago where they made it I don’t know but uh, part of the summer we spent testing fuel elements that they’d made in Chicago that were unbonded, they were just, you know, a canned element and they were going to be used in case the ah, they couldn’t get the uh, bonded fuel element development in time cause they weren’t gonna hold up the startup of that reactor. So we uh, that was the hardest job we had that summer was spending numerous hours uh, autoclaving at a high pressure, in a high pressure autoclave, no temperature but with high pressure helium uh, to check the fuel elements for any pin holes they might have in them. And then we’d put em in a, one at a time we’d put the fuel elements after they’d been, for 48 hours under high helium pressure, in a vacuum mass spectrograph(?) and we would draw a vacuum on em and see if we could detect any helium which would mean that there was a leak in the uh, in the can. (T.P. - SO WHAT WERE ALL BASED ON...) So they were gonna use them in case the uh, the development of the bonded fuel element in the 300 area didn’t uh, didn’t pan out. But uh, the uh, bonded fuel element did get, I guess there was about a, the first good fuel piece they ever made down there didn’t occur until after the 4th of July in l944. Rumor has it that a slug, that a shift came in after their long change, all hung over, and in very surly shape and they were uh, they got in there and all of a sudden it was like the dam broke they started turnin out good fuel pieces. And uh, they caught on to it I guess. But there was a lot of a, trial and error in that summer down there with the fuel. But once they got it down why it uh, it was alright. WHAT WAS THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS THAT LED UP TO STARTUP? Well, we kicked the uh, construction people out of the reactor after we had, they’d essentially finished everything and we ran the rods, we uh, exercised everything and uh, the reactor was going to start up dry so we didn’t have our water system uh, pumping water in the reactor. What they were doin over in the water side I don’t I don’t know, but we checked all of the equipment out in the reactor that we could and uh, exercised everything. Found out where all of the glitches were and then we had the construction people come back in and finish up all of our punch list items. And then they went out for good. And then we, in the meantime, we were beginning to get the fuel out from the 300 area and in big truck loads. We’d get a truck, two trucks a day I think it was for a while and uh, there we did a lot of hard work too uh, handling those fuel elements there were uh, six elements in a box and they all came in a uh, a nice little, a little wooden box uh, to protect them from being scratched or damaged. And we got them, we laid them all out and we inspected every fuel element and eventually we laid them all out on the work area floor in front of the charging face and uh. The first thing that was done uh, was uh, Fermi and some of the other people inserted the first fuel elements in the reactor. And also there were some special irradiationists that went into the reactor too, first. Then they turned it loose to us and we started loading fuel. And uh, they had all of the rods out of the reactor, they had the safety circuits all made up and as we loaded fuel, they had proportional counter uh, sort of like a stethoscope, inside the reactor that was recording, or indicating the buildup of radioactivity in the reactor. And uh, there were a lot of bets on how many tubes it was going to take to bring the reactor critical. (CHATTER BACKGROUND) And also who was, what shift was going to be on when it became critical. And uh, it was very frustrating for us operators because we were really loading that fuel as fast as we could but then the physicist would stop us and they would run some tests to determine how close they were to critical. So we kind of boot strapped our way up and the closer we got to critical the slower the process of loading tubes was. And it got so we were loading one tube at a time. And I thought, I was on a 4 to 12 shift, that I thought that night we were gonad make it, but uh, we didn’t and uh, it was awful close and so we were invited to stay over after our shift was finished and I don’t know, 2:00 in the morning or something like that why uh it didn’t become critical so we were we were there for the for the dry criticality of it. WHAT WAS INDICATION AND HOW MANY TUBES LOADED AT THAT POINT? Well, there was 300 and some tubes, I think and the indication was on the proportional counter that uh, every time you’d load a tube the proportional counter level of radiation would go up, would increase in intensity and after a while it would level off. And when it didn’t level off anymore was when you’d have your chain reaction without loading any more fuel. And you usually had to wait about 10 or 15 minutes before the uh, the leveling off process would take place. Then you’d load another tube and you’d wait another 10 or 15 minutes. But finally when it did go why it was pretty obvious and we had everything set on the safety circuits and so when the uh, when the rising level of radioactivity showed that there was a chain reaction in place uh, when it got up to a certain level why then it automatically uh, tripped the safety circuits and the rods went in to shut to shut it down. And then they pulled em out again and checked it again and uh, did a lot of folderol like that. And then uh, the next thing was to put water on the reactor and uh that drove it so critical again because the water was a poison and uh, so uh, we had to get the water system all operable and going smoothly and then we started to load the fuel, same way again, only with water on the reactor. And uh, using our charging equipment as it was designed to to use. And uh, same thing took place and of course this was history. Because the, with water cool reactor never had existed before and so the closer we got to critical there why the more people showed up. And of course Dr. Fermie was there and uh, uh, Dr. Compton, Arthur Compton from Chicago at MET Labs and uh, all those people were there. Many of which I didn’t even know, who they were but I knew who Fermi was and I knew who Compton was. WAS THERE A SENSE THAT THIS WAS AN HISTORIC MOMENT? Yeah, that’s when Fermi made his remark “A child is born.” WAS THERE A FIGURE ON THAT INITIAL STARTUP? Oh of milliwatts. Milliwatts, yeah. And the same thing happened with the, with the (?) reactor. And, then there were a lot of physics tests and uh, then they’d load more fuel and finally they loaded it up to the 1500 tubes that they had agreed was where it should be. And a lot more testing and finally they pulled the rods to start their, what they called their, power ascension program. And uh, heretofore we’d only been up to the milliwatt range or watt range, perhaps. But, now we were on our way up to the megawatt range and uh, when they got to 8 megawatts uh, and they were going up in boots, uh, bootstrapping their way up, when they got up to 8, I thing it was around 8 megawatts. Why, they leveled off and the rod uh, the rods kept coming out and... VIDEO TAPE CHANGE YOU WERE IN THE CONTROL ROOM AT THAT POINT? No, I was in the office behind the control room. They were separated by a big glass window. You remember those glass... And uh, that was the supervisors office there and they had to limit the number of people in the control room and uh, but Compton was in the office where I was; along with about 40 other people I guess. And there was a like number in the control room too. But we had a, we had these plant teletalk system where you could push a button, you know, like a and talk from one office to another. And when it went critical why uh, Fermi got on the teletalk to the office there where his friend Dr. Compton was and said “A child is born.” And and then they invited us all in to hear the PC, uh, power level power level indication on the PC continue to go up. The PC made a little clicking noise, you know, and the faster, the higher the level was the faster the darn thing went and then uh, they let it go until it hit the trip point on the safety circuits and then shut down. HOW LONG A PERIOD WOULD YOU GUESS THAT RUNS? Oh, it was a fairly long period, I would imagine around uh, uh, 100,120 seconds or something like that. Normally we would we would try to optimum for handling the reactor was about a 60 second period. Anything faster than that was a little bit harder to handle so we got pretty comfortable with a 60 second period. You know what we’re talkin about a period. (CHATTER) Well the reactor power level increases by a factor of E and the time it takes to increase by a factor of E is called the period. In other words, a 60 second period means that every 60 seconds why the reactor power level increases by a factor of E. A little over 2 times the power, sort of an exponential increase, yeah. HOW LONG DID THIS SYSTEM TAKE TO GET TO THE PRODUCT? Why uh, I can’t give you the exact length of time that it did take us to uh, but we didn’t operate very long. Well let’s see. After we got critical, or after we ran into the xenon, we did an awful lot of testing with the reactor. We was very interesting to me. And then we started increasing the number of tubes with uranium in them. And we, in other words we expanded the reactor, a certain amount, and then we would operate for a week or two and then we would shut down and we’d put so more in, we’d do some more testing. We just kept increasing the size of the reactor and also the power level of the reactor. THE CONFIGURATION WAS ALWAYS A CIRCLE SORT OF? It was sort of a like a cylinder. A circular cross section, you know, and a, it was a cylindrical shape is what it was. And uh, then we finally got the reactor completely full and the power level kept going up and before we, I think by the time we got it filled up, these are probably maybe why I don’t remember em cause they’re probably all classified and you have a tendency not to even think about those things. But the uh, they started to discharge fuel fairly soon after we got up, even before we got to fuel rated power of the reactor. And uh, that’s when we discovered that the uh, fuel handling equipment wasn’t going to be adequate. And uh, our friend Roland Nightigger(?) who was the original design engineer was right out there with us and uh, we were uh, cutting and fitting and experimenting with fuel handling. WHAT WERE THE INITIAL TOOLS FOR HANDLING? The fuel handling machine was designed to clamp onto the front of the tube and maintain the water level and water flow through the through the tube because of the a, the fuel had to be cooled all the time even though the reactor was down. And it would, it would uh you would put a fuel element in this chamber, you’d rotate the chamber and that would drop the fuel element down in line with the tube and then you’d crank a piston and uh, uh, and push the fuel element into the into the reactor and you’d do it one at a time which was time consuming and very slow. Same time at the rear, what you would do would be load new fuel in as the old fuel was discharged. And the old fuel went out through a an amur mechanism at the back of the tube and would be pushed into a vertical position and dropped down through an amur into a funnel, which was rubber lined, and the funnel would kinda slow up the, take the kinetic energy out of the fuel and it would drop down into the hole in the neck of the funnel run down through a hose and come out into a storage bucket under 18, 19 feet of water in the back. The funnels and the hoses all plugged up and you had to uh, in order to get rid of the fuel in the tube we then had to displace the funnel, which we were able to do remotely, and then push the rest of the charge out and let it fall through the air into the basin and we’d, then we fabricated some tongs to pick it up and put it in the bucket. And uh, we got so frustrated with using those funnels and that equipment that uh, one day one of the, one evening one of the supervisors who was in charge of the shift, they were all plugged up there wasn’t anything else he could do and he said “Let’s go ahead and finish the discharge” and they shoved em all out and had a big pile in the in the basin and the management came in that day and said “Well it looks like that’s the way to do it.” So we simplified that process. And uh, on the front end it was a lot easier to uh, to make mechanically operated machines, I’m sure you’re aware of them and uh, uh, we had one like a guy on a row boat and he could push the fuel pieces in while another guy fed them in about as fast as he could row and uh, our production went up dramatically there. But we were shutting down every Tuesday and discharging some fuel. And that fuel was going through and uh, I guess they were extracting the plutonium and sending it on just as quickly as they as they could. WHAT ABOUT TOOLS HANDLING THIS EQUIPMENT? Well, we had to, we had to make tongs. They were just long mechanically operated fingers, you know, that uh. They got to be pretty heavy. They had to be pretty stout because of the weight of the fuel that they were handling so we uh, we put floats on them and that helped. And uh, counterbalanced em and uh, we even had a lever so that we could rock the tongs back and forth between the bucket that we were putting the fuel pieces in and the and the, where the fuel was on the floor. WAS GLOW UNDER WATER ANTICIPATED? Oh yeah, yeah. Brimstrone(?) it’s a ionization of the water right at the surface of the fuel because of the high intensity of the radiation from the fuel. And the uh, the fresher the fuel was why the higher the glow was. And as the fuel aged why then it uh, it faded away. And uh, I guess after many months it was fairly dim and after a year or so you couldn’t see any anything. IN TERMS OF HANDLING WAS IT PREDICTABLE? Well, we knew from uh, what they told us and also from our own experience at Oak Ridge that uh, the uh, the level of radiation in these fuel pieces was astronomical as far as we were concerned. And uh, no way could you uh, get anywhere near them. And it was pretty obvious from the design of the plant how this how this was done and uh, the big shielding walls around the back, around the rear face and everything. And uh, radiation measuring instruments that would tell you what the what the levels were inside before you could go back in say the rear face to cap up the uh, the tubes after refueling took place. And uh, we didn’t have any concern at the start for any uh, any contamination. But it wasn’t long before the rear face started to uh, show up with some contamination from the splashing water and everything. So it wasn’t long before we were uh, having to wear protective clothing back there. And uh, it just evolved from there and we figured out what we needed for protective clothing and uh, went from there. We used what was available, rubbers and British leggings and rubber gloves and uh, coveralls and then they developed the uh, shoe covers and the hoods and uh, then it wasn’t long before you had airborne contamination to contend with and there was the respiratory equipment and the salt masks and the things of that nature that uh, all evolved. We, all this stuff started out here and uh, as we knew, as we know it today it all had its origins out there around those reactors and the separations plants. HEALTH OR LETHAL ASPECT OF IRRADIATED FUEL AND HANDLING? Well we knew, without a doubt, that we couldn’t get anywhere near any fuel and we had to keep it down under water right down on the bottom there and uh, as a matter of fact, we used to go through our first aid every month for uh blood sample, blood tests and urinalysis samples and things like that. Everybody that worked in and around there had to..so they started out very carefully monitoring all of us and uh, and gradually why when they got uh, as they got more knowledge why they didn’t have to do that so much but uh, it’s still done today to a certain extent. ANY BAD ACCIDENTS? We didn’t, we didn’t really have any bad accidents out there then. Uh, we uh, we usually had a fall back position. We never wanted to take a make a move that we couldn’t back off from safely and because we didn’t want to get into a position where we could a, we just couldn’t uh, uh, couldn’t back off from and uh. Our philosophy has always has always been that way. Of course, there’s always a time when you have to make that final move but uh, the preparation to do that is pretty thorough and you don’t make it until you’re sure it’s going to work. DID YOU FEEL PART OF A TEAM? Oh yeah, we knew we were doing something important and uh, it was really enthusiastic, a lot of enthusiasm. Our, each shift had its own, they all were buddies, they all worked together. There was a little rivalry between shifts and it was reluctance, with reluctance that you transferred a guy from one shift to another. And uh, but uh, of course we couldn’t talk about our work outside at all. But the social life of, there were, there were, I would say. Let’s see we had 7 shifts at the at the time so there were about 5 or 6 different social groupings in town because every shift had their, they went with the same people all the time, they had they worked the same schedule. WHAT WERE NEXT MILESTONES LEADING UP TO BOMB BEING DROPPED? Well of course the uh, after we got the pile loaded the next thing to do was to get up to our design power level of 250 megawatts. And uh, a month or two behind B reactor was D reactor and D reactor, they started out they loaded the thing up completely to begin with. And so there was a race between D & B as to who was gonna get to the design power level first and B, I think they contrived it, because B reactor got there about two days before D did. And that to me was a great feeling of accomplishment uh, I happened to be supervisor in the control room of the shift the night that we got to 250 megawatts; we’d gotten to 245 megawatts the night before and uh, and I got the word from the boss in town to take it up to 250 and uh, the uh I told the operator and he was just pleased as punch that he was the guy that brought it up to 250. And uh, so those were memorable occasions. IN ITS LATER LIFE WHAT WAS MAX LEVEL IT WAS ABLE TO ACHIEVE? 2,000 megawatts. Before, before (?) shutdown, it got 1,900 to 2,000. But, that wasn’t the same reactor. The fuel elements were different. The uh, the amount of water, cooling water available, was much greater and uh, a lot of research and development had gone into increasing the power levels. (CHATTER) TELL US ABOUT THE COOLING STORY. Well uh the reactors uh, run well with cold water and they can get the higher power levels in the wintertime then they can in the summertime and we’ve had some pretty hot summers around here and the river warms up pretty good, gets up around 19 or 20 degrees centigrade and uh, in August. And somebody came up with the idea several years ago that instead of spilling the, running the water over the spillway if they could bottom discharge the water through the dams uh, they could reduce the river temperature. And by doing that, they were reduce, they were able to reduce the river temperature by one or so degrees Fahrenheit. And that made a significant increase in the amount of production that the reactors could put out during that time. The complication was that the corps of engineers or whoever runs the dams uh, had a big display of lights in the summertime for tourists, Grand Coulee Dam over the spillway, you know. And they didn’t like the idea of robbing the uh, water from the spillway supplied to cooler reactors. But uh, we did it for a while and of course now there isn’t any water goes over any of the dams uh, it all goes through uh, through (?) (CHATTER) REACTION TO DETONATION OF THE BOMB? Well, the first thing I heard was, in the middle of July of ‘45, uh, uh, I don’t know whether it was (?) boss or who it was came in and said “I thing they’ve exploded one.” And uh, he referred to a newspaper article from the Seattle PI about a big explosion in Almagordo, New Mexico uh, and there was some concern about release of poison gas and they might have to evacuate some of the residents in that area, which they never did have to do. But uh, everybody in our place put it together as a, that was their, that was the first bomb. And that was, that, later it came out that was the first bomb. So we knew it worked and all the time we didn’t know whether it was going to work or not. So then uh, it was amazing though, I think, that so soon afterwards why the, the Nagasaki, the uh, Hiroshima bomb was dropped. See that was in the middle of July and that was the first part of August when the, when the Hiroshima bomb was dropped. And then we wondered - well do you think they have any more? And then the Nagasaki bomb came down. We still wondered well, I wonder how many more they have or if that’s it, but that’s all they needed. (I BET THE JAPANESE WERE WONDERING TOO) Yeah, and we felt real good that we had really brought the war to a real abrupt conclusion. CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT IT WAS LIKE - DROP BOMB, END WAR? It was euphoria. I mean all over the country it was just great that the war the war stopped. Of course, the war in Europe had been over and uh, and this brought the final hostilities to a close. IT WAS TENSE DURING WARTIME, EVERYBODY AT HOME FELT THAT? Well, let’s see. We’d been, we’d been living with it for 3 or 4 years and uh, it was a way of life and uh, but you’re always hearing stories about casualties and uh, and about battles and fortunately, we were always winning and we were gradually making our mark felt but uh, island by island to get to Japan was a was a pretty rough deal. TOLD IT WAS SHORT TERM ASSIGNMENT? Right, and uh, well let’s see that was ‘45 and then ‘46, September of ‘46 Dupont left. And uh, quite a few people did leave and then General Electric came in and uh. It was rather a tumultuous time, I think, uh, the uh,uh, people deciding what they were going to do. A lot of us uh, who had not been with the uh with the Dupont Company prior to the military explosives program really didn’t have any jobs to go to with Dupont. And they made a pretty good pitch to stay on out here and indicated that uh, there was a lot of a work to be done here yet and uh, GE uh, when they indicated they were coming in why uh, they worked pretty diligently to keep all the expertise they could here. A lot of people did leave though and some of em left and for a while and came back because the uh, opportunities weren’t as, weren’t as great back east. ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SAY ABOUT WHOLE EXPERIENCE? As far as I was concerned, I thought it was one of the greatest miracles that I ever was, knew about and uh, to be a part of it I think was great and uh, the fact that we did do what we were asked to do and were successful and uh, it really was a liberal education for me just that short time out there as I told you about. Being able to uh, uh, learn from all these design engineers and these physicists and I got a better appreciation for uh, uh how to do things and how things are developed. In retrospect I don’t see how anything like that could take place today. We uh, have so much bureaucracy. We had people out here who were able to make decisions and uh, they were made responsible decisions and uh, they, there was an awful lot of head scratching and uh, forethought before moves were made. Because we knew what we were dealing with and uh I just I just feel that it made me much more of a successful person in my in my field than I would have been in a, you might say a normal, normal industry. END 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 Don Lewis Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Don Lewis for the B Reactor Museum Association. Lewis was a Process Supervisor at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/14/1991 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RD2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F633de6223b3253497229c100cefc2629.mpg f6a982e89ef5cfa5751c781832ff7909 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Mina Miller Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h1>MINA MILLER INTERVIEW- Recorded 10/29/94</h1> Mina Miller, that wasn’t my name then, I was Mina Peoples, and I came on the train, and happened to be...if I go from the beginning, I had taught school for one year and I had decided that was not for me, I had to have a job. And I was sent to the United States Employment, and they were shipping everybody out here. They said we can’t put you on the train tomorrow because that’s Memorial Day, can you go Tuesday, and I said sure. I got on the train in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and it was a troop train but I didn’t know that, and I didn’t know what a troop train was anyway, I came out just open and naive. I carried a lunch with me and shared it with the troop, and there were several other young women but I don’t remember any of them. This group was going back to Pasco because they had just become young ensigns and they were flying the Hellcats. So the whole thing was a big adventure for me. I had been through a small college and didn’t really want to teach anyway, but I did that one year, so I was open to anything. I got off the train in Pasco and was met by DuPont and brought me to the Hotel, I guess it’s still the same one. This was in 1943, and I was put in a suite with six other women, and I got there late and had to share a bed with another women, well that wasn’t too upsetting to a 23-year old that had never been out of town; the other was really fussing, her husband was down the hall someplace. And in the morning they said as we went through Pasco to the hotel, in the morning you go to the gray building and I, it was two in the morning, I just knew I couldn’t find that place in Pasco, I had no idea how small Pasco really was at that time. So in the morning, I said who can I hang onto now, who won’t be so dumb as I was and couldn’t find the place we were supposed to go. And I met this lovely lady, who looked like she could be my mother, and asked could I have breakfast with her and go to the gray building, and she kind of put me off, and then later she said yeah, I’ll meet you downstairs and have breakfast, and we’ll talk. And that turned out to be Gwenna Maris, first person I met. I think I had it, so easy going that I just grasped at everything I could to hang onto. And when we got downstairs to eat breakfast she said I didn’t get off the train with you, and then told me she had been hired to take care of women’s matters at Hanford, and would I keep notes when I go through the second orientation, and see if there’s anything that upset me. Apparently, early on, the women were getting off the trains and turning around and going home. When they got in there, in Hanford finally, and found that their spouses wouldn’t be in the same place with them, and that was one of the things, she didn’t tell me that, but I found that out that it was men and women, and the families were really upset, of course. So I went through that, the orientation in Pasco... Before she left, and I was sent up to Hanford on a bus, she said, she knew then that I was hired as a... gosh, I did it for three years... she knew I wouldn’t get the job I was hired for... TALK... I went to US Employment and they were shipping people out to Hanford, I’d never heard of Hanford and when we found out, my parents and I looked it up in the atlas to see where it was, Pasco I think had 1100 people. I had no idea what I was walking into, but I was open to it, it was an adventure. My friends, we graduated that year from college, and some went into the service, some married their sweethearts and sent their husbands off to war, it was anything goes. And I think a person my age was just about the right age for it. A recreation leader was what I was hired for... a recreation leader in a construction camp... nothing seemed to bother me. I had a roommate when I first got there, she was from the Deep South, and I was from Minnesota, the cold winters, and we really sometimes had trouble understanding each other... MET LADY... She said that she didn’t think that what they had hired me for would be forthcoming and said if you get out there and they put you to work in a filebox, women’s work, and she said if that happens you give them this telephone number, and sure enough it happened, and the poor man had a hard time even understanding that I had any clutch at all, or any, I didn’t know either, who she was, and sure enough, he called her, and he sent her right over to me, and she hired me for her, for a time that she could use me, and from then on I went right on into the building where we had the recreation hall for women. I worked for her for about six weeks, and then the opening came, the building was ready, the other people who were going to be running it were ready, and there I was. And it was a really nice job. I did some things for women like exercise classes, and really didn’t have a lot of, I just did it, there was no real push to get a program going. It was really good for me. I worked a swing shift. I didn’t really realize how important it was to the people that came there. It was supposedly a place for women and their friends or their husbands to be with them, well, of course what they really need was a home of their own, so it didn’t work that much, but we did produce a lot of niceties for them. I’ll back up a little. There really wasn’t anything for people to do in the way of recreation, except what men do in a construction camp, they played cards, they drank, they wrote letters home, so it was something that we need, and from that they went to the big things, putting in the coliseum like that. But we were a small group. I’d never chaperoned a dance, and when they built the mess halls, before they opened them, they opened them up to dancing. So there would be about a week or two of dancing, and men and women coming around. It was needed. HOW MANY PEOPLE HERE WHEN YOU ARRIVED? I have no idea... there was nothing to do but go to the mess hall and eat, but it got better and better, they were really concerned about this... At one time there was a popcorn stand...on the main street... and they were wide, these streets, maybe eight people or more walking the streets at the same time. Later on, after I met Blake, we would go to the mess hall at eleven o’clock when I got off and have breakfast. BIG ADVENTURE; I’d never really been in a big city very much... HOW SPENT DAYS? Just taking care of people coming in, talking to them, people were lonely. One of the things that got me was that I think it was on Saturday that peop[le got paid and they’d go to the commissary, and long lines of people calling home, sending money home, that was pathos, I felt really sorry for them, they’d be crying, not all of them, but it was a touch with home, and we were certainly, all of us a good long ways from home. There really I don’t think at the beginning, any buses going out, though later we saw that, there were buses going to Yakima. And if you got out to go to Yakima, you couldn’t find a place to sleep when you got there, so that wasn’t a very good idea. But you could go, later on, you could go overnight and if you had someone that had gotten a room for you, but of course there was the military coming in from the Yakima Firing Range, so that was overrun by the military and hangers on. I did go a couple of time alone on the bus and got back all right. The bus always stopped in Moxie so they could pick up liquor, because they weren’t furnishing liquor, beer or anything in Hanford at that time until they built the Beer Hall. WHAT DID HANFORD LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU WERE FIRST THERE? I didn’t see much. I kind of went from my work to the mess hall, and of course you make friends and have buddies and that’s what I did. We had in that recreation hall a good jukebox and a good hardwood floor for dancing. It was actually the other half of a barracks, so it wasn’t very big. But when it first opened they said the men can’t come in unless they’re escorted by a woman. But we had a terrible time because I think they had 26 openings, doors that people could come in and out, and trying to keep the men out was just impossible, and cruel, too. So we learned a lot of things along the line. The woman I worked for had been in USO, and she was running it like a USO, and we were just trained along the way in what went and what things didn’t. The floors were just really good for dancing and having people in. (TAPE ENDS) ...Store in Portland, they were sort of like Frederick and Nelson but even better. They found, that company found that the war was going bad and they sent their people over there to gather all the music that was coming out, and we got it.. HOW? We made a request to the people who were working with...oh, well they were working with us but there was another way about it... I have one or two of them still... OVER A COUPLE OF YEARS THE ENTERTAINMENT EFFORT EXPLODED? Yeah, they had the auditorium, then they began to bring in the big bands, over the summer, the thing was going down and people knew it... they brought in the big bands, I can’t tell you who they were.. I didn’t see a lot of it because I worked till 11 o’clock at night... WHAT WAS SUMMER OF 45 LIKE? I just stayed laid back and let it happen, yeah, people were leaving, that was true, and we just sort of said good-bye and we’ll see you again sometime...I was married then, and I couldn’t live there if I didn’t have a job, and I couldn’t live in Richland because I was married to somebody who was still on the payroll out there, so I went to them and said I have to have a place to sleep, they put me in a place where we were shoveling paper into big wastebaskets. Then they found me a job in Richland, and I had a nothing job, but I still had to go back and forth on the bus... DID YOU KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON AT ALL? No. In fact we were visiting my sister and her husband in Nacell, and when we heard the news on the radio, and then we had to come back here by train, and people around us knew nothing; we were all excited about it, we didn’t know what it was, but we were excited about it and that we’d had the good sense to stay there, because it was all good for us. And we walked right into Richland and made friends and neighbors and there was no... by that time I was working in DuPont’s closed files, right down here where the post office was, and then I went to GE until I had my baby (post-war) EXCITEMENT WHEN BOMB WAS DROPPED? No, that’s what upset us, then. I mean, we knew what it was, we knew what we had been doing and what had come to pass. But the people in the streets, well in the first place we were in Nacell, Washington, you know how big that is? Not very big. Then we went to Portland to get a train home, and there was not a lot of understanding of it, maybe they knew something terrible had happened but people were really pretty cool. HOW ABOUT WHEN YOU GOT BACK HERE? I really don’t remember.. DID BLAKE TELL YOU WHAT WAS GOIN ON? No. WERE YOU CURIOUS? We were told not to ask. So it was a very successful put-down. And still I think sometimes, well am I supposed to know this, you know when I hear about things that are going on at the plant now, I think am I supposed to know this... Had a house in Richland and we were settling down to housekeeping, and he never told me anything what he was doing, and he was one of the first, first...what do they call them? He went out and monitored the sagebrush way out as far as Ritzville, but I didn’t know... But we just didn’t talk to people or to each other about it, it was just very carefully kept. I stay to my sisters in Minnesota, but this is my home, and they can’t fathom that. We just had our fiftieth anniversary, and of course they couldn’t be here because they’re older than I am; Blake’s brother came, same situation. It’s hard to let go of the old thing, I still love Minnesota and the people there, but I love the people here. SENSE OF LOSS WHEN PEOPLE LEFT? Yeah, but a lot of them come back...to retire TAPE ENDS END Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:43:03 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 224kbps 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 Mina Miller Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Mina Miller (Peoples) for the B Reactor Museum Association. Miller was a Recreation Director at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/29/1994 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc7812c7211616b7849bb905583465089.3gp 8f63841ef3d89093feffefd4c696ac5b 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Gene Weisskopf Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bill Painter Location The location of the interview Battelle EMSL Auditorium Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Video Interview of Bill Painter October 8, 1999 at Battelle’s EMSL Auditorium Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA Videotaped by Nick Nanni, Battelle PAINTER: ...my Army experience on Okinawa, and it was nice and warm there. I got discharged at Fort Douglas, Utah, and the temperature was 20 below zero, and I was about to freeze to death, so I decided that I would go up and visit my brother who lived in Seattle. I got to the bus station and I met a fellow that I’d known before I ever went into the service, and he said he was going to Richland, Washington. I had no idea where Richland, Washington was, what happened there, anything about it, but I was well acquainted with his older brother and his sister-in-law. So on the trip up here we decided that we would stop here at Richland and visit his brother, and then he would go with me up to Seattle and visit my brother. Well, I got here, and it was between quarters in college, and I didn’t have very much money just coming out of the Army, and they were tearing down the old construction town of Hanford, and so I said What the heck, jobs were easy to get out there, and I said I could make a little bit of money and go back to school next quarter. So it was six years before I got to Seattle to see my brother. And I went, worked for Mohawk Wrecking Company, tearing down the old construction town of Hanford. And then I decided, well, I found out what was going on at Hanford, and I decided that I would see if I could get a job at Hanford since it paid more than being a laborer out at Hanford. And so I started hitting the employment office, and this was when DuPont was here, and they kept stalling me off and saying, well, they didn’t know what things was going to happen. And I just kept working at Hanford, and finally they made the decision that General Electric would come in here, and then I was told at DuPont employment that when General Electric come in, I would have a job. So the 9th day of September, 1946, General Electric came in the first of September 1946, the next day I went to work for General Electric Company. And my grandfather had been a farmer and had two big steam thrashing outfits, and I’d helped on the steam engine a little bit. And I had no idea what kind of jobs there was out here at Hanford, so I decided that I was qualified to be a power operator, work in the power plant. And they said “Well, we don’t have any openings in the power operations right now, but if you’ll take a patrolman job, it’s easy to transfer.” Well, I found out that was not quite true. It took me six years to get off patrol. And in the meantime I’d taken an ICS course on instrumentation and basic electricity and so on, so I applied for a transfer to the instrument department. And, like I say, six years after I came out here I transferred to the instrument department. WEISSKOPF: In what area was that? PAINTER: I was working in 200 East at the time, and I went to work in the instrument department at the hot semiworks. And part of the program was that I went as the bottom rate instrument trainee. And we would go to school one day a week; originally they said for 56 months, it ended up that we only went 48 months. So I worked for four days a week at East area and West area, and the tank farms, hot semiworks, B Plant, and went to school on Fridays. And I worked there till they started constructing PUREX building. And about the time it was getting ready to start up, there was a lot of instrument people that wanted to go to PUREX, and they was going from other facilities on the plant. So I was transferred from East area to the UO-3 Plant in West area. WEISSKOPF: To the old U Plant? PAINTER: It was the old U Plant. Uranium extraction. So I worked in the uranium extraction building, and uranium oxide, UO-3 Plant. And by this time I had enough seniority that I was eligible to take the instrument specialist examination. And I took the test and passed it and became an instrument specialist. And I worked there about another two months, and then it was put under the plant down ‑‑‑ I’ve forgotten now, the old 234-5* building, anyhow. I forget what we called it at that time. But, anyhow, I was transferred to the 234-5 building. PFP I think it was called at that time. WEISSKOPF: Plutonium Finishing. PAINTER: Plutonium Finishing Plant. So I worked the line at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. We made weapons pieces at that time. We had separations facility for the recovery of plutonium, and we had the analytical lab, and get moved from one job to the other. But most of the time, after you’d been there a while and became very well acquainted with the plant, they tried to keep you. If you was working in the analytical lab, they kind of liked to keep you in the analytical lab. But I was never put in one position. I moved from one place to the other. And then, finally, when they built the 236 Building, the new extraction building after they’d had the incident in the old recouplex *(phonetic) building, I was sent there to follow the construction of the facility. And so I followed construction on the plant there. And after the construction was over, I stayed basically in the 236 Building, or the recovery building. And all through the time that I was in 234-5, well, even when I was at the U Plant, I always considered that I was quite lucky, I got to work with a lot of engineers and a lot of people that I had a lot of respect for and I think that the company thought very highly of. Milt Zalinski* (phonetic), the originator of the ‑‑‑ at that time we called it Zalinski powder, but it was the continuous calcination at U Plant for uranium oxide, one of the finest gentlemen I ever met. Another name that came to mind was Bob Lyon* (phonetic), who was an engineer in the chemical separations there. But there was a number of them that I got to work with that I thought I was lucky to have a personal relationship with. And then after I got down to Z Plant, although I didn’t agree with all of the management directives, there was certain people, Bob Olsen* (phonetic) was the facility manager when I was there, Les Brecky* (phonetic) that taught me the philosophy of unit price, which I agreed with 100% ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Could you just explain briefly what that was? PAINTER: Well, unit price was ‑‑‑ Mr. Brecky’s theory was that if we could produce a weapons piece cheaper, higher quality than anyplace in the United States, we would get the contract. And since the money all came from the Department of Energy, or AEC or DOE, whichever one was in, it was important to have something that you could hold up and say “Hey, we can do it cheaper than Savannah River,” or “We can do it cheaper than someplace else, so we think we should have the contract to continue doing it.” Of course, there’s a lot of politics involved, so you needed every little thing you could get to help push your side. While I was there at Z Plant, of course, like I say, we was making weapon pieces and recovering plutonium, I had the opportunity to work on a stepping* motor lathe control system to cut weapons pieces. And with another instrument specialist, Matt Napora* (phonetic), we worked with an engineer from Schenectady, New York who was the stepping motor specialist for General Electric Company, two mathematicians from downtown someplace, I have no idea where their office was, they spoke a language that we didn’t understand, but it was a very interesting, to say the least, job on the stepping motor to cut a weapons piece at that time. There was 27,000 steps on the tape to cut the piece. And we determined one day, Matt and I, that when we got back to zero after cutting the piece, we was not where we started originally. And we was able to determine that we were missing two pulses someplace on this tape. So the mathematicians came out, and we talked it over, we showed them that we was not returning to zero. And, like I say, they was speaking a language that I didn’t understand. And finally one of them says “I know where we’re missing those two pulses.” I was really impressed. They went back to town and made a new tape, it was the big tape decks, what we had, came back out, and the two pulses were in there. We never did use the system to cut weapons pieces, but they did take the system and they made the measurement device to measure the final inspection measurements of the pieces using the same principles and everything, and they did the final measurements using it. And for this, Matt and I got the general manager’s award and a nice little sum of money that bought me a new set of golf clubs and a few other small items that was highly appreciated. And then later on I was working in the 236 Building, and we had long glove boxes, extremely long glove boxes. And to put equipment into the glove boxes for failures, we’d go in the end of the glove box, and we had to move it down to the location where it went. And so we had a crane ‑‑‑ not a crane, but a hoist, that was on a long shaft that had a worm thread cut into it that you could move equipment up and down the glove box. The glove box was approximately 2½ feet thick, deep, and, oh, maybe 70 feet long, something like that. Well, one day I went downstairs to do a job, and the engineers were in there talking, and one of the maintenance engineers was there, and they were going to cut a hole through the front of the glove box and run a pipe in for a new chemical addition. And so I said “Hey, you can’t do that. We got to have access to the length of that glove box to move equipment back and forth.” And he said “Well, we’re going to do it anyhow.” So I went over to see the head manager of the maintenance department, and they were in a staff meeting. And I knocked on the door. I talked to the secretary and I said “Is it all right if I knock on the door?” and she said “Sure.” So, anyhow, I went into the staff meeting and I explained to them why they could not put this pipe through the glove box. Wes Shick* (phonetic) was the manager at that time, and he said “I agree with you 100%.” So I always thought that this had a lot to do with later on Wes come and said “Hey, I have a unit manager’s job open, and I’d like for you to take it. You’d be over the instrument department.” And so I said “Let me think about it a day or two,” and I ended up taking the job. And then later the fellow that was right below the manager, I forget what his title was at that time, he retired, and I was offered this job. So it was second level maintenance manager in Z Plant. And as time went on, the manager changed, and there were two or three changes, and then finally the manager that I was working for went to T Plant for the strontium cesium encapsulation, and I was asked if I would like to have the job as manager of the maintenance of all the labs, the safeguards equipment, the reclamation, and so I took the job. I stayed on that job until I retired. WEISSKOPF: How many years was that? PAINTER: Oh, gosh, don’t ask me time. I never was able to keep track of events or times. But I had a gentleman that worked out there, his name was George Puckett* (phonetic), that had a photographic memory for dates. If I needed to know a date when something happened, or how long a period of time, I just had to call George, and he’d say “Well, that was on October 17th, 1973,” or 1980, or whatever. WEISSKOPF: How about what year you retired? PAINTER: Well, I’ve been retired now for ‑‑‑ ‘89, I think I retired in ‘88. WEISSKOPF: (inaudible)* PAINTER: I’ve been retired more than that. WEISSKOPF: What’s his name, George? PAINTER: George Puckett. WEISSKOPF: Go ask him. PAINTER: Yeah. No, you can’t ask him. He’s dead now. Let me think about it just for a second. I retired ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Was it before (inaudible)*? PAINTER: Almost 15 years ago. It will be 15 years in April that I retired. WEISSKOPF: Okay. PAINTER: And I kept my clearance for one year by request of my boss, but I told him that I would never go back out unless it was a dire emergency, I would not go back out as an escort. At this time the paperwork shuffling was coming in, and I knew that that was not my ball of wax. I’d always worked under, like I say, the principle of unit price, and I did not want to become a paper shuffler. Budget was bad enough. WEISSKOPF: Okay. That’s good. A good recap of everything you did there in some sort of chronological order. Could we go way back to the beginning? PAINTER: Sure. WEISSKOPF: Sort of a generic question I’m always interested in. But where were you when Hanford became known to the world, and what did you know about the dropping of the bombs? PAINTER: I was just landing on the island of Okinawa when the bomb was dropped. And I always called him the Mad Colonel that we had. His one desire in life was to lead the invasion into Japan. And needless to say, I didn’t agree with what he wanted to do at all. So when the bombs were dropped, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. WEISSKOPF: Did you understand what it was? PAINTER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. We got all the news, the services had the radio station there on Okinawa, and on the ship, what we was unloading from. We got all the news, the same as anybody else in the country. You know, we didn’t get detailed, the size of the bombs and everything. To say the least, I was very happy at the events. And I knew in my own mind that if I went in with this colonel that the chances of coming home was kind of slim. I think that it would have been a high death zone if we’d invaded Japan. I think the Japanese people would have taken up arms, and it would have been horrible. There would have been a lot more people killed on both sides than the ‑‑‑ the bombs would have just been a small amount compared to what would have died going into Japan. WEISSKOPF: When did you find out the connection between Hanford and the bomb? PAINTER: I heard the word Hanford, but it had no meaning. You know, it was like saying someplace over in Pakistan, or something like that. Hanford, Washington. Never heard of it. WEISSKOPF: Were you already here before you realized that the Hanford was the one where they made the bomb material? PAINTER: Yes. I was on my way to Seattle, like I said. Well, I had heard that Hanford was where they made the Big Boy bomb, or the material for the Big Boy, but it had no meaning whatsoever. When I was talking to the gentleman I came up with about Richland ‑‑‑ I’d heard of Walla Walla, and ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: (inaudible)* PAINTER: Well, when I was a kid, or a young man, I had a Model T Ford, and Walla Walla used to have Model T Ford races, like the racetracks are today, and I always thought, you know, it would be nice to go to Walla Walla, Washington and race Model T Fords. I never did. And, again, you know, Hanford, this fellow I came with said he was going to Richland, Washington. Well, I’d never heard of Richland, and I had heard of Pasco, and I don’t think he knew anything about Hanford, either. He was just coming to visit his brother, like I was going to do. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever think that your job was short-term, that you’d be moving away? PAINTER: Yes. When I first came up here, like I said, I was only going to come for a short time and then go back to school. And I happened to meet a little girl down at the old drugstore downtown Richland, and things kind of matched. And 1947 I got married to this girl, and she didn’t especially like the idea of moving to Logan, Utah, where it was cold and icy and everything. And by that time I thought well, this is a pretty good location. I like the climate, I like the people I knew, so we just stayed here. But there was many times in the early days when ‑‑‑ of course, when you started off you was on the bottom of the list as far as layoffs, and often thought there was a possibility might get ROF’d. And then when I transferred to the instrument department, of course, I started all over on the seniority list, and once in a while they was having layoffs, and so I’d just kind of sweat them out. And I seemed to have just enough seniority that I would be 10 or 12 people above the cutoff mark. So I ended up staying here 39½ years working out at Hanford. WEISSKOPF: It was a brand new industry. Did it feel like it was an exciting industry to be in? PAINTER: I thought it was. I enjoyed ‑‑‑ for many, many years I looked forward to going to work every day. I can’t say that, you know, the people I talk to today, but I actually did, I looked forward to it. And it was very interesting to me, and I took an interest in the chemical end of it, and I took an interest in other parts, the instrumentation. I thought to be a good instrument man you had to know as much or more than the operators about the chemical process so you could make sure that the instrumentation was working properly. Or in the analytical lab, or safeguards equipment, or anything else, you had to know more than the people that was using it on how they were going to use it and what they should expect out of it. Like I say, I enjoyed my work out here, and I looked forward every day till, oh, about the last two years. Well, I was going to retire when I was 60 years old. I just had a goal to retire. And they decided to redo the oxide line at Z Plant, and I did a lot of the design work on the ‑‑‑ we had two oxide lines on the ‑‑‑ one oxide line. So my boss asked me if I would stay until we redid the second oxide line and got it in service. So I agreed that I would stay till it went hot. So instead of retiring at 60 like I planned, I worked till I was 62. But in that two years I said when the plant goes hot, that’s when I retire. So when they set the date when the plant was going to go hot, I told my boss that the last day of that month would be my last day at Hanford, and I wanted no retirement parties, I wanted nobody to know about anything except my boss and his secretary. WEISSKOPF: And how did that work out? PAINTER: It worked out fine for me. But my secretary is still bitter about it to this day. She didn’t know until 3:00 in the afternoon on Thursday that I would not be back to the project, and she was very upset about it. WEISSKOPF: She had to find somebody else to work with? PAINTER: No. They had a man coming in to take my place, and that was the problem, she didn’t mix well with him at all. But I see her every once in a while. She still lives in Richland, and she at least smiles at me, talks to me now, and she’s forgiven me. WEISSKOPF: In terms of instrumentation, could you give us the most typical instrument you ever worked with, or the most interesting, or the one that comes to mind? PAINTER: Well, what always comes to mind mostly for me is the Foxboro* Company (phonetic). I guess you could almost call me a sponsor for Foxboro Company. I thought the Foxboro Company made the best chemical measuring equipment that was made in the United States at that time. And so I was always fighting, whenever we’d change any process, was to have Foxboro equipment brought in. In fact, Minneapolis Honeywell made threats that they was going to go to court and have me as a witness as to why they could not get a bid in on equipment at Hanford at the Z Plant. And it was kind of hairy for a while there, but it faded away. I guess they got contracts for other ‑‑‑ Minneapolis Honeywell made very good equipment, but I didn’t think their process equipment ‑‑‑ they made great recorders and that type of equipment, but I didn’t think their process equipment compared to Foxboro. WEISSKOPF: Like give an example of a piece of process equipment. PAINTER: Well, we measured flow, we measured specific gravity, we measured weight factors in vessels, we measured temperatures, and controlled minute flows. In the process in the plutonium extraction, we measured flows that ‑‑‑ can I say what I want to on this tape? WEISSKOPF: Yes. PAINTER: Well, I used to say that some of our flows per hour, my boy that was in junior high school could pee more than was going through the control valves. We were measuring down into the like 15 liters per hour, full scale, and we would be measuring part of that. We’d be measuring and controlling maybe 3 liters per hour, which is, you know, that’s not very much. It was so small that I used to have difficulty ‑‑‑ they’d have a problem at night, and they would have a pipefitter open the line, and he would say, “Hey, it’s about plugged.” You know, 15 liters per hour. He wanted to see a flow that he could really see. So we had to do a lot of explaining on how small of a flow that was. To measure that flow, we measured it with orifice meters and we measured it with magnetic flow meters. WEISSKOPF: Could you explain what a magnetic flow meter was? PAINTER: Well, a magnetic flow meter has two electrodes, and it’s like a generator. As the fluid goes past the two electrodes, the fluid was the conductor, and it was like generating electricity, and it actually generated micro amperage, and we measured it and controlled with that. Of course, on the orifice meters, you’d measure the differential ‑‑‑ (Tape ran out) PAINTER: ...difficult, and we had problems. We took cans of plutonium waste and dissolved them in dissolvers. And there was ceramics, there was all kind of material in this waste. And to dissolve it and to get it into process, we had to use acids and so on that was extremely hard to control. And the acid part we used would try to eat up the vessel that we was using, so we had to have what they called kinar*, a plastic, lined dissolvers, and we used such things as hydrofluoric acid, and nitric acid, and different acids. But on our flowmeters, since there was electrodes, when they manufactured these meters they put O-rings on where the electrodes came into the flow stream. It was platinum electrodes. But the O-rings would fail, and it would only take a drop or two of liquid to get inside the magnetic flowmeter, and it would eat the wire connection off of the platinum electrodes. Well, if it ate the wire off of one side, the meter would only ‑‑‑ it would still record, and it would still generate electricity, but it would only generate half as much. So then I came up with the idea of measuring the signal that was going to the control valve. So if the control valve all at once opened up and doubled the opening, you knew that there was definitely something wrong. And that would give us a chance to shut the process down and go down and double-check the flowmeter. And the other concern that we had about these flowmeters was that they had copper coils and so on on the inside, and the containment part of the flowmeter was big enough that if the insides dissolved, you could have a critical mass. So if it failed, we wanted to get it out of there, and open it up and clean it up, dump it out and get it out of there ASAP. WEISSKOPF: Maybe that’s interesting. Where was that and what process was it where you were dealing with this? PAINTER: This was in 236-Z. We was recovering plutonium. WEISSKOPF: When you say plutonium waste, what is plutonium waste? PAINTER: Plutonium waste could be anything from plutonium buttons that we was reprocessing, it could be lathe turnings, it could be ceramic containers where the melded plutonium for pieces, it could be what they scraped out of hoods, dirt, electrical wiring. Anything. WEISSKOPF: How did you know how much plutonium was in there, in a vessel that you were dissolving, as far as criticality goes? PAINTER: We, by our system, knew in our columns what we were tapping off, we knew the concentration of plutonium. WEISSKOPF: Based on what? PAINTER: Neutrons. We had the neutron counters in various places on the columns, and when the neutron count would get up to a certain place, then we’d start tapping off the... WEISSKOPF: I thought plutonium was an (inaudible)*. PAINTER: It is, but there’s also neutrons. And so the vessels and anything in the hood was always concerned about criticality, see. Even though we operated on a unit price system, our number one goal was always safety. Production was very, very important, but safety was most important. And we had had one incident, and we sure didn’t want another incident. WEISSKOPF: In the 234? PAINTER: In the 234 Building. We had the incident in the recouplex, which was the old separations facility, and when they had the incident, then we shut down that facility. It needed to be shut down. It was obsolete and almost impossible to maintain. WEISSKOPF: Let’s talk about that. As far as hazards in an industrial setting, there were dangers on the job, there were chemical dangers, radiation dangers, equipment dangers. Did you ever run into any hazards, where you got hit by a car, or... PAINTER: No. Probably the worst thing for health, for me, was when I was working tank farms, when we was removing the uranium from the old tanks for the uranium recovery, we had periscopes in the tanks, the problem tanks, what they’re talking about today still. And there was sludge and everything in these tanks, just like there is still today. And we had sluice nozzles like they use in mining to cut the sludge, to dissolve it, get it into a liquid condition where we could take it out. But we had periscopes that went down into the tank, and periodically someone would turn one of the sluice nozzles on the light of the periscope, and of course it exploded, just the heat from the light, so we’d have to pull the periscope. And there was no buildings in the tank farms. You pulled it up into a plastic sock with a crane, and they hosed it down with the hose as they pulled it out of the ground, and the idea was to take a crew of 14 people and replace the light bulb. WEISSKOPF: Replace the light bulb? PAINTER: Replace a light bulb. And, of course, these light bulbs were in a bracket to hold them in place so they could be turned and moved to look at different parts of the tank, and then there was electrical connections to the light bulbs. And you would go in and maybe have, from the time you’d all dressed up in plastic and masks and the whole nine yards, and you would go in and maybe have 30 seconds to do your part of the job. And you’d have a burnout. A lot of times we’d take a double burnout, and then we couldn’t work in the radiation zone for a period of time. But I never had any ill effects, but I always was concerned about it healthwise. WEISSKOPF: How did that affect schedules when you ran into those kinds of problems? PAINTER: The problem at that time was, like I said, sometimes we’d take 14 men to change a light bulb. And we had a small shop up at the hot semiworks at the time, and you’d go back there, and this was the prototype for the REDOX building. But there wouldn’t be enough work, clean work, for 14 people to do. So there would be days that you’d sit there and act like you was busy, which was very difficult for me. That was the most difficult thing that I knew of, was trying to act like you was busy. Especially when visitors were coming in, and since it was the prototype for REDOX, there was always visitors coming to see what the process was doing, and so on. WEISSKOPF: When you say the hot semiworks, which building is it? PAINTER: Hot semiworks was at C tank farm area in East area, and it was the prototype for REDOX, which was in West area. REDOX was the separations plant before PUREX was built. From the old B and T Plants, which was the batch process, REDOX was the first continuous separations plant that was built. I never worked at REDOX. I don’t know anything about REDOX, other than, you know, I knew they had columns and ‑‑‑ but I never worked in the facility. WEISSKOPF: One thing I’m always curious about is everything was kind of top secret. You had a clearance, right? And how does that affect one’s work in Hanford in the early days versus later on? Were you free to know everything? PAINTER: You was basically free to know what you worked with, or the part where you was working. You wasn’t free to know everything. I had a top secret clearance, so I could look at documents on what we were doing. I could look at ‑‑‑ everything was secret. You know, things that you would not even today think was secret. Temperatures, and configuration, how we coated weapons pieces, how we measured weapons pieces, how we count weapons pieces, what did they look like, how did you measure them, how did you take the components and know that they were fit together, and so on. This was all of course top secret. You had the clearance to know enough about it to do your job, but other parts, no. WEISSKOPF: Even though you had a clearance, you weren’t free to go and hang out at the reactors and ask questions, or anything like that. PAINTER: Oh, no. No. And at that time, in the Z Plant, they had sections in there where you would go through doors. To go in through that door, you’d have to be checked, make sure you had a top secret clearance. Sometimes you had to sign a book to go in, that you went in at a certain time and you came out at a certain time. WEISSKOPF: Did everybody in your position have a top secret clearance? PAINTER: Everybody that worked in Z Plant. They didn’t all have top secret clearances when they came in. They had to have a minimum of a Q* clearance. But we had power and ventilation equipment in the facility, and we had equipment that you could work on with a Q clearance that was not in the top secret zones. And so we had ‑‑‑ our department at that time, in the instrument department, I think was like 12 people, or 14 people, and there was probably two or three people waiting to get a top secret clearance. But they couldn’t go into the areas where we was checked, double-checked to go into. WEISSKOPF: Have you ever been followed up since you retired, with all that vast knowledge? PAINTER: No. But I’ll tell you, it scared the daylights out of my mother when the FBI, who was doing the investigating at that time, was talking to the neighbors, and schoolteachers, and so on. WEISSKOPF: You were applying for your top secret? PAINTER: Yeah. And my mother had no idea what I was doing, and she didn’t know whether I was headed for Walla Walla State Penitentiary or what. It made her awfully nervous. And of course the neighbors, they wanted to know what was going on, too, when the knock would come at their door and “Hey, do you know William Painter?” “Yeah.” “What do you know about him?” And of course they would never say what the reason was, that it’s job-related. WEISSKOPF: And I guess when you went home at night you couldn’t talk about work too much. PAINTER: I didn’t talk about it, and I was never asked about it. It was just, I think, during the war that this set up a custom here in Tri Cities that you didn’t talk about your job when you got home. I know the story went on right after I came up here that one of the teachers, right after they dropped the bombs, asked the students ‑‑‑ this was a grade school class ‑‑‑ asked the students, she said “Do you know what they’re doing out at Hanford?” And this little girl said “Yes, I know what they do out there.” And the teacher said “Oh, you do? What is it?” She said “Well, they make toilet paper.” She said “What,” and she says “Why do you think they make toilet paper?” And she says, “Well, you know, it’s hard to get toilet paper, and my daddy brings a roll home,” and he did about once or twice a week. WEISSKOPF: And on the bus going out and coming back you wouldn’t talk about work? PAINTER: Not normally, no, you didn’t. What I did on the bus, I worked shift work for a few years, and we either played poker, or we played bridge, or we played hearts. Some of the people read. Some of the people slept. I happened to think I was a poker player at that time, and I found out I wasn’t. WEISSKOPF: Give us your morning routine. PAINTER: Well, I decided early that ‑‑‑ I joined a car pool for a while, and we had a couple people that we had to get out of bed, and I said that’s not going to work, so I started riding the buses. I would get up about quarter to six in the morning, and my wife would get up the same time. She would fix my breakfast while I bathed and got ready to go to work. And at ten after six I’d go in and eat breakfast, at six-thirty she’d have my lunch made, and I’d grab my dinner bucket and go to catch the bus. And it cost all of a nickel to ride out to work. WEISSKOPF: Did you walk to the bus? PAINTER: Walked to the bus. It was only two short blocks. Very short, easy to do. And they told us at that time that the nickel was so you was paid carrier for liability insurance reasons. And when I was at Z Plant it was 33 miles. The bus at my place ran right around 6:31. You could almost set your watch on it. We was the second stop on the bus, so they always left the first stop at a certain time, and by our stop it was a couple minutes later. And we started work at 7:48 out on the projects. At that time we had to go to the old bus terminal, which was on Wilson Street in Richland. And we’d get off the bus, there would be people who were going to the 100 area, people that was going all different areas that would ride the bus to the bus lot. Then you would transfer onto the bus that was going to the area where you worked. And you would go out, for instance when I worked at East area, you’d ride out to East area, you’d get off the bus, you’d walk through the badge house and you’d show your pass and you’d pick up a dosimeter and pencils. Then you’d walk inside, then you’d get on the bus that went to the building where you worked. So you went from an area driving from a total pickup, to an area transfer, to a building transfer. And you got to the facility where you was working and start work at 7:48. And we had a 30 minute lunch period, and we quit at 4:18. Let’s go back on that. The buses left the area at 4:18. We would get on the bus about 4:00 and ride up to the area badge house, go back through the badge house, turn in our pencils, turn in our dosimeters, get on the bus that was going back to the bus lot. At the bus lot we’d get on the bus that was going to the street where we lived. And I’d get home about 5:15 or 5:20 in the evening. WEISSKOPF: That’s a long day. PAINTER: Yeah, it was a long day. It was almost 11 hours. But like I say, in the early days I played poker, I played hearts, I played all different kind of card games on the bus. Read a lot of times. But later on, when I got into the management end of it, then I used the bus time to do work that I would have had to do at home, so I didn’t mind riding the bus. I never considered going back into a car pool all the time I was out there. WEISSKOPF: (inaudible)* smoking. PAINTER: Well, the smoking would get so bad in the back of those buses that you couldn’t see the cards you were holding in your hand. There would be pipe smokers, there would be cigar smokers, there would be chain smokers. And I can’t say anything against them, because I was a smoker too at that time. WEISSKOPF: What was the situation at work? Where were you allowed to smoke at work? PAINTER: At work, most of the shops you could smoke in the shops. In the radiation zones you could not smoke. Like Z Plant, there was a 10-minute break in the morning and a 10-minute break in the afternoon that you could go over and have a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette. Or in Z Plant there were offices on the back side that were clean, and you could go in the offices at that time, or either go into the control room and have a cigarette if you wanted it. WEISSKOPF: In the control room? PAINTER: Yeah. But I quit smoking by that time, so I had no problem. I figured 20 years of smoking was long enough. WEISSKOPF: Going back to the uranium UO process, that was in U Plant. PAINTER: That was in U Plant. WEISSKOPF: West area. PAINTER: In West area. Originally, when I first went there, we were processing old material that had been in the tank farms from day one. WEISSKOPF: Were they piping that in? PAINTER: Yeah. Yeah. We piped everything into there from all the tanks in both East and West area. But it was old material, and so it had had a chance to decay a lot of it. And so we had two parallel lines that we were using to recover uranium, and the zirconium and all the other byproducts we just sent back to the tank farms. But then when we started getting on the newer stuff, we couldn’t clean it up enough with one line, so we took our parallel lines and put them in series. So basically we’d run it through twice to get all of the byproducts. WEISSKOPF: You were using equipment in the cells like the building was designed for originally? PAINTER: Yeah. Well, it had been modified. WEISSKOPF: How many cells did it take for one line, do you think? You had 40 cells in the whole building, right? PAINTER: I don’t remember whether we had 40 or ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Twenty sections, 40 cells? PAINTER: Yeah, I think it is, yeah. WEISSKOPF: And you had two lines running. PAINTER: Right. WEISSKOPF: So that each was using no more than 20 cells. PAINTER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Why couldn’t you get it as clean as they did in T Plant and U Plant originally? PAINTER: Well, because a lot of this half-life stuff, it was too hot for specs. WEISSKOPF: It wasn’t any hotter than when they first did a fresh batch 10 years earlier? PAINTER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. A lot of the half-life material. You know, there’s half-life material that is nanoseconds, and there’s half-life material that’s thousands of years. But I think the cesium and strontium was the two bad ones, what we were trying to make sure we got all of it out. WEISSKOPF: Were you bothering to get out any more plutonium, or was that done initially? PAINTER: Plutonium was not a ‑‑‑ basically, we wanted to recover uranium. WEISSKOPF: And lots of it, right? PAINTER: All of it. WEISSKOPF: Because there were many tons of uranium. PAINTER: Oh, yeah, there’s tons and tons of uranium. Only a very small part of the uranium that was in the original reactors ever made it to plutonium, and so we was recovering the unused uranium. And like you say, it was tons and tons of it. WEISSKOPF: You lowered the tanks by taking out uranium, but your process created waste too? PAINTER: Oh, I’m sure it did. Although we used a lot of nitric acid, and we had a nitric acid recovery system in the facility. I don’t know where ‑‑‑ we sold the nitric acid. Now, when I say selling it, it may have went to Savannah River job or it may have went someplace else. I don’t know just where it was, but we measured the nitric acid that we recovered out of the system. WEISSKOPF: Wait a minute. Recovered out of the waste banks or out of your own process? PAINTER: Out of both. WEISSKOPF: Really? PAINTER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Was it hot? PAINTER: I’m sure it was contaminated, but it was reasonably clean. I don’t know just how clean it was. Like I say, I don’t know exactly where ‑‑‑ we just measured it, and we sold it. And whether we were selling it to the Atomic Energy Commission to go to some other plant or where it went, I don’t know. WEISSKOPF: Where were you in U Plant for that kind of work? Where was your day spent? PAINTER: Usually, for the most part, I was in the separations building. I worked in the separations building until ‑‑‑ we had pot calsigners* at that time to make powder out of uranium, which was like a big mixing pot with a big agitator in it, and it had electric elements cooking it. And you’d cook it down until it was a powder, and then you would take pipes that had a vacuum hooked to them and you would manually go down in these tanks manually, we called them idiot sticks, and you would manually move the pipes up and down in the powder to suck the powder out of these pots. WEISSKOPF: Was that in the canyon? PAINTER: No. No. WEISSKOPF: Outside of it? PAINTER: It was outside. The radiation was so low that uranium was not ‑‑‑ you didn’t worry about uranium like you did plutonium. Uranium was a natural element. Uranium was a kidney seeker. If you got it, most of it went out of your system in your urine. So it was not like plutonium. Plutonium being a bone seeker, it went to your bones and it stayed there. When you were working with the powder, you wore respirators or masks. But when we started the first continuous calsigners, then I went over to the 224-U, the adjoining building, not the canyon building. And I went over there on that process to put that in and help follow with construction, and went on through, and that’s where I met Milt Zalinski. Like I say, he was the father of the process, one of the best, greatest guys I ever come across in my life. Not only process-wise, he would answer any question that you thought you could ask. And what I liked about Milt Zalinski was that he would try to give you an answer, and he was not a bit backward and say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” And in a couple days you’d get a page that Milt Zalinski was looking for you, contact him at his office, his phone number or whatever, and Milt would tell you what the answer was. Or if he had told you something that wasn’t quite true, he’d say “Hey, what I told you the other day was not true at all.” And, you know, I admired him for doing that. We had some people that would never admit that they ever said anything wrong or made a mistake. Milt was in national magazines on chemical separations and so on. Another man I met out there was Jim Lowe. Jim got the Kaufman* Award from General Electric Company, which I think they only gave out one or two a year, or something like that, in all of General Electric Company, a very smart guy and a very nice guy. And I was able to work with him, and it was just a great experience. I loved it at that time. Like I say, I looked forward to going to work. (Tape ran out) WEISSKOPF: ...people weren’t so easy to get along with. PAINTER: Well, that always happened. Not very often, thank heavens. There was times when there was problems with people. WEISSKOPF: Never got ahead of you? Never got to be too much. PAINTER: Never got too much with me. I think I was pretty well able to work with about anybody out there. And I had friends in all departments. And like I say, I worked in different buildings all over the 200 area, and I knew power people, I knew operations people, I knew RM people, I knew ‑‑‑ and that was another thing, when General Electric Company was the only company here, you were more of all one family. After they split them up, then you went different ways and you lost track of a lot of people and a lot of people you didn’t know. WEISSKOPF: Did you feel like everybody was going to be doing this kind of work in 20, 30, 40 years? Did you have visions that this was just the beginning of the nuclear industry and where it might go from there? PAINTER: I had the feeling that ‑‑‑ I got a set of books, DOE put out a set of books on all different kind of things about atomic energy and about peaceful use of the atom. And by this time, my wife was a schoolteacher, and I found out about this set of books, so I asked them if it was possible ‑‑‑ these were books that was open to anybody, just general information. And so I was able to obtain a complete set of these books for my wife to use in school. And they were just little pamphlets, they were just giveaway type pamphlets. But I thought yes, you know, that this was the coming thing, and I didn’t think the people would ever have the fear of it that has been created. And I still think that we had ‑‑‑ I know that we had one of the best safety records of any industry anyplace. I read about building the dams and bridges and so on, where they expected one death for every million dollars spent. You know, if we’d have had anything like that, the whole world would have panicked. It’s all right for other industries, but it’s not all right for the atomic energy industry. And I’m not for being careless, you know. I don’t think ‑‑‑ I always said that atomic material was like ultra high pressure steam, or ultra high voltage electricity. You work with it, but you respect it, and you don’t take chances with it. I think that you learned to work with it and do it properly, that it’s a safe thing to do. WEISSKOPF: Do you remember when the Nautilus was built and sailed under the polar ice cap? PAINTER: I remember it, yeah. WEISSKOPF: Did it strike you as Yeah, now we see where all this is going? PAINTER: Well, yes. But there was other ‑‑‑ you know, they tried to develop an atomic airplane engine. And we got reports and talked to people. We got visitors from all different facilities and so on, get to talk to them, that was working on different projects. And it was mind-boggling, some of the ideas and so on of what they had for atomic. But I was always curious. I used to ask the fellows, I was telling you about the mag flowmeters what we had, that the electrodes would leak, and we had quite a few atomic submarine people come out to the plant, and I’d ask them, I’d say “How the hell do you test O-rings on a submarine?” They used O-rings on periscopes and everything. They said “It’s easy. You go out and dive them. If they leak, you come in and replace them and repair them.” I was then trying to replace little O-rings on a magnetic flowmeter, and I guess we did the same thing, when they leaked we replaced them. WEISSKOPF: What kind of pressure was that particular one under? PAINTER: Our pumps were 220 volt pumps and probably put out ‑‑‑ well, our columns were six stories high and they had to overcome the back pressure of a column, so I’d say they was, I don’t know, 40 pounds, 50 pounds pressure, just a random number. WEISSKOPF: Not like a submarine. PAINTER: Not like a submarine. WEISSKOPF: A little bit more about the T Plant. Did you know the crane operators, did you know guys who were hanging out in the canyon? PAINTER: Oh, yeah. Well, one of our responsibilities, we had measuring equipment in the canyon, in the cells, that we would have to replace, so you got to know the crane operators, you got to know the operations people. And our crane operator did all his work through periscope, and that was another responsibility we had. WEISSKOPF: With instruments, you mean? PAINTER: Yeah. Was to maintain the periscopes. So we had had times when we’d have to go in and put up scaffolding. Well, the ironworkers would put up the scaffolding for us, but we’d have to go up and grease the tubes on the periscopes and change out the optics and redo them. WEISSKOPF: Was any of that equipment affected by the radiation that it dealt with? Fogging of glass, or anything like that? PAINTER: I don’t think so. I think it was more fumes and dust and things like that. Our problems of high radiation was not like it was in the reactors. One of the materials that we used a lot of was Teflon. And we made gaskets out of Teflon, we made all kinds of things out of Teflon. There was a study made that Teflon would break down under radiation, and so somebody said “Well, we’re going to outlaw Teflon.” Well, Teflon is almost inert to chemical process. It was a great material for us. And we said “What are we going to do if they cut it off?” And they said “Well, it can’t stand the radiation.” Well, they never took into consideration the difference in the level of the radiation in the reactors compared to the level of radiation at our place. So eventually somebody wised up and said there may be better material, and we found some better material than Teflon, but we never stopped using Teflon, thank God. I don’t know what we’d have done if we had had to stop using Teflon. Because we had gaskets like you can’t believe in the process. All the jumpers were sealed with Teflon. Most all the pipe fittings, what we used, had Teflon inserts in them. WEISSKOPF: And when you were working in U Plant, was it still all remotely operated as it had been during the initial bismuth phosphate separations? PAINTER: The canyon? WEISSKOPF: Yes. PAINTER: Yeah. Yeah, the crane operator ‑‑‑ that was another thing I used to admire, is how they could look down in those cells with that periscope and disconnect jumpers and so on, and raise them up, big cell blocks, what they’d have to take out first, set them over to the side, disconnect the jumper, and they may ‑‑‑ the jumper, the piece of equipment that failed may be three or four levels down, they might have to remove three or four other jumpers to get to it. And then they’d bring it up and set aside, or take it down to the canyon away from the open cell, and then go in and clean it up to where we could go in and work on it. Of course, you was in double coveralls and masks and all the breathing apparatus and so on, but at least you could go in and work on it. WEISSKOPF: When the tanks were empty, it was safe to be in there? PAINTER: Oh, yeah. Yeah. In fact, the canyon being so long, you could have the jumpers off in a cell that was a long ways away from you. It didn’t matter how much was in the tank, this wouldn’t affect you. The old rule was that by the square of the distance you get away from the source, the level goes down by the square of the distance. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever get to ride in the crane? PAINTER: I’ve ridden in the crane, because we had the periscope or the eyepieces and all were in the crane, and we also had radiation monitoring equipment in the crane itself. And so we’d go in and be working on them while he was doing his work, if we was working on the recording outfit or something like that that didn’t have anything to do with his periscope. WEISSKOPF: How big was the cab, that two guys could be in there at the same time? PAINTER: I’d say the cab on the outside was probably 10 foot square. And it was hanging over on the back side of a wall from the canyon, and it had like a vault door going into it. WEISSKOPF: Did it have its own air supply at that point, do you remember? PAINTER: It had its own filtration and so on. It always amazed me, like I say, how those crane operators could, you know, looking down through a periscope with one eye. WEISSKOPF: Do you think somebody gave them a plan for what they had to take off? PAINTER: Oh, yeah. All the jumpers and everything was numbered, they had letters and numbers on them, so they knew what they had to remove and in what order they had to remove them. And then they had, you know, they had to make up the jumper. It had a ‑‑‑ I don’t remember now what they called it, but it had a three-prong piece that went around to pull the jumper in and tighten it up so it didn’t leak and so on, yeah. They had to put the jumper in, then they had to bolt it down, so to speak, for leaks and so on. WEISSKOPF: Switching subjects and filling up the tape towards the end, what would you have been doing if you hadn’t ended up at Hanford? Go back to where you were a teenager and before the war. PAINTER: Well, when I went to school before I went in the Army, I was going out in civil engineering. And probably if I hadn’t gone into the Army, I’m sure I wouldn’t have got out of school in four years, because I didn’t have that much money. I’d had to have some open periods there to earn money. But I’d have probably finished out in civil engineering. And I don’t know, I don’t really think civil engineering would have really been my field, but that was what I started in. WEISSKOPF: When was the first time you heard the words atomic energy? PAINTER: When they dropped the bomb. WEISSKOPF: Not before then? PAINTER: No. Had no idea about anything as far as atomic energy. I had chemistry in high school, and I had chemistry in the lab in the first semester of college, and it was never mentioned at that time that I ever knew of. Maybe I was asleep that day that they mentioned it, I don’t know, if they did. WEISSKOPF: Is there anything you feel like, some subjects you can either mention now, or talk about now, or save until next time? Is there anything you want to fill in that we didn’t touch on? PAINTER: Well, I was asked, you know, how much did you ever work in the 100 areas. The only time I ever worked in the 100 areas was downtime for the reactors. And I only worked at B Reactor one time. WEISSKOPF: Working on the instruments? PAINTER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Like what aspect? Why did they have to bring you in? PAINTER: Well, burnout. They had all of the back side was covered with thermomes* for temperature measurements, pressure gauges for all the I don’t remember how many thousand pressure gauges they had there. But the back side of the reactor would be a burnout situation, and they would burn out their people ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Better explain what burnout is. PAINTER: Well, they’d get them out of radiation that they was allowed per week, or per day, or per whatever period. And they would be wanting to get the reactor back up in the shortest time possible, and in the 200 areas we had thermomes, the same thermomes as they was using for measuring temperature in the B area, so we’d work our shift in our home plant and go over work in B area on swing shift, or graveyard, or maybe Saturday or Sunday, just to get the reactor back up and operating again. WEISSKOPF: You were working on the rear face of the reactor? PAINTER: Rear face and sometimes in the control room. WEISSKOPF: How did you have to dress up in the rear face? PAINTER: Coveralls. WEISSKOPF: Was it wet back there? PAINTER: It was wet, yes. I was trying to think how much, what we had to wear as far as liquid. It wasn’t very much. It was down at the time, of course, and water was ‑‑‑ you know, the rods were in, and... WEISSKOPF: Water was still flowing, though, through the tubes? When you took a thermocouple out, did water come out too? PAINTER: No. The thermomes were in wells. They were in their own wells. If you dropped anything, the pool was right below you and you didn’t recover it. It just went splash, and especially it was embarrassing if you dropped the last ‑‑‑ we had a lot of special tools made up to get into places and turn objects and whatever was needed, and if they were down to the last tool and you dropped it in the pool, it was kind of embarrassing to tell them on the front side whoops! And they would just say “Well, come out, we’ve got other ones being made.” WEISSKOPF: Was there ever any job on Hanford that you never did but you always thought would have been a good one? Anything else look more exciting? PAINTER: Well, I kind of wanted to work in PUREX when it first opened up. I thought my best field was the chemical processing, the instrumentation for chemical processing. Analytical labs, I could do most of the jobs, but I didn’t think that I was the best person in that lab to do the job. I knew there was other people that knew the equipment and everything a lot better than I did. But I thought in the chemical processing line that, knock on wood, that there wasn’t any better than I was for the instrumentation, and knowing the process, and knowing what to do to take care of the problems. WEISSKOPF: Did any phases of your career ever get boring? You mentioned the one where there wasn’t anything going on, but when there was stuff going on, were there some jobs that you were glad to get out of? PAINTER: Oh, there must have been. WEISSKOPF: You changed a lot, right? PAINTER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: It was a growing industry. PAINTER: Yeah. And like I said, I wanted to go to work every day. It was an interesting ‑‑‑ if they had asked me if I wanted to work on Saturday or Sunday, I probably, back in the early days, I’d have said yeah, you know, with no extra pay or anything. The salary was never a major item to me. I wanted to be the highest paid man in that department, but I wasn’t out saying “Hey, we should have our wages doubled,” or anything like that, “We’re more important than somebody else.” So that was not the incentive for me, salary. I just enjoyed what I was doing. I liked working with the people, and most of the people, like I say, the engineering department and so on, they showed an appreciation for what I was doing, and it was just good, interesting work. And, you know, when people are saying “Hey, you did a good job. Thank you,” and “Please help us out on this,” “Help us out on that,” and there was a lot of it ‑‑‑ my wife and a lot of people always said that I should have been a design engineer and not come up through the instrument field. But I did a lot of design work, but not as a design engineer. The old process, what we had out there, to change the design on something, you could write what they called an FCN or a Facility Change Notice. And if you came up with an idea that you thought would help, you could talk it over with everybody and make a Facility Change Notice, and it would go through engineering, and they’d have to sign off on it, but you could change the whole design of process, which made it very interesting to me. WEISSKOPF: A man who liked his job. PAINTER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: That’s nice. PAINTER: And when I followed construction, when they built 236-Z, I followed the whole mechanical end of it: The electrical, and the piping, instrumentation, safeguards, the whole nine yards. So it was very interesting. I worked with a lot of different construction people. You talk about frustrations. I did have some frustrations on that job. We had two DOE people, and DOE had just went through a big lawsuit. And the people what we had, I don’t want to say anything bad about DOE, but we had two people out there that they just could not tell the construction people no. Construction worked them over for every bit of money they could possibly work them over for, and they wouldn’t change anything out. You’d tell them it was wrong, that we didn’t want to do it that way, that the drawing they used was just a typical and it was not the drawing that showed exactly how things had to be installed. For example, the high pressure side of an instrument might be on the right instead of on the left that was on the typical. And even though you told them that it had to be changed, the piping had to be in to the other side, and you’d get the drawings and everything, they would go by that ‑‑‑ they’d install it wrong on purpose so that they could get a change order to change it back for dollars. And that just burned me. That wasn’t my philosophy at all, and that was quite frustrating. Then DOE would not back me when I tried to fight them on it. They said “Hey, let them install it backwards, and then we’ll give them a change notice to change it.” So there was frustrations at times. But all in all, you know, it was still, it was a great job. WEISSKOPF: Well, good. PAINTER: One thing I did, like I say, when I first went over to the instrumentation, I was on the bottom of the trainee list. And I got to U Plant, and I got assigned with a man named Bob Rhodes* (phonetic) who was a technician. And Bob Rhodes was a very critical man, and if he didn’t have any faith in what you did, he was very difficult to work with. If you had to be separated, he’d check both ends to make sure that you did your job right. And I’d heard a lot of words about Bob Rhodes, and I got assigned to work with him. And Bob and I hit it off great. He’d tell me what we needed to do, and I’d do my end, and he’d do his end, and I never had a speck of trouble with that man. And as a result, I progressed much faster in the instrument end at U Plant than the normal rate for a trainee. So while I was still a trainee, I was asked all the time to do journeyman work, and this caused a little bit of friction union-wise, but it gave me the opportunity to learn the process and to learn the instruments at a much faster rate than I would have ever had otherwise. And Bob never questioned. If I’d say I found so-and-so and it was in such-and-such a condition, he never questioned me, he never went back to double-check, and I made damn sure I never gave him a reason to question me or go back and double-check. WEISSKOPF: Why do you think the instruments were used throughout the site but each area had its own group of instrument people? PAINTER: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Why didn’t they just have one team of instrument people? PAINTER: Well, they had a manager over the whole deal, but the teams were separated. And it was because you’d learn to do the job, you’d learn where the equipment was, you’d learn the requirements of the job, you’d learn what you had to do for radiation, you could do the job in much shorter time and much more efficient time. But if a new job came up and somebody applied for it, and they had whiskers, seniority, you might get moved out of your job to another area to fill in where somebody had left. That’s the way before I went to U Plant, that’s the reason I went to Z Plant in the first place was to take the place of a man that had gone to PUREX. Harry Shaw* was another manager out there that I really thought a lot of. He came to work out at Hanford, I think from the Denver Ordinance, and he had a degree, but he went up through, he started right at the bottom of the plant, in the instrument department, and ended up as the vice president of Arco*. And I worked for Harry later on, and he was a smart enough man that you didn’t give him alibis. Alibis to Harry was always you had failed some way or you wouldn’t need an alibi. And it hurt a lot of people to work around Harry, because Harry would not accept alibis. Or, you know, he may have to accept it, but he didn’t like it and he always questioned it. But I thought he was a great person to work for, because you didn’t BS him, you didn’t beat around the bush, and you might as well tell him right out front what went wrong and say what we did to correct it. WEISSKOPF: A different tack. Were there any women working on the line with you, operators? PAINTER: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had ‑‑‑ the analytical lab was full of women, of course. To start with, all the operators were men, but later on they had female operators. But most of the women that I got acquainted with, the female operators mostly came in after I was already in management. But in the analytical lab I met a lot of women. WEISSKOPF: You weren’t exactly trained for your job when you came out of high school. PAINTER: No. WEISSKOPF: Where were they pulling people later on? What kind of people would hire out at Hanford? PAINTER: Well, later on, then, they started Valpariso* Tech in Indiana, we had got quite a few people from their school. WEISSKOPF: Specific training? PAINTER: Yeah. And we had people that quit college, you know, second or third year, that either couldn’t cut it, money or whatever reason, that had a lot of training in dynamics chemistry, electronics. We got a lot of people out of electronic type schools. The program that I went through out here, and they finally dropped it, and instead of sending one day a week, like I went through, going to school on the project, they started going to Columbia Basin [College]. And they paid all their fees at Columbia Basin. WEISSKOPF: Always in some kind of training because you were always changing jobs, you could always learn from it? PAINTER: Oh, there was always learning to do. And, you know, the computer came in, everything was ‑‑‑ first of all, you know, you didn’t have any continuous process ‑‑‑ (Tape ran out) PAINTER: ...so all the instrumentation changed. The old went out. A lot of the instrumentation that came in was experimental and died a natural death. It didn’t sell, and you couldn’t get parts for it. The communications parts came in, the safeguard equipment came in. It was kind of exciting, really. I never did get to learn everything about all of it, but I knew just enough to speak to my people about it. And, you know, if I went out in the field to look at what they were doing, I knew what it was supposed to do. And I may not know all the technical ways that it was doing it, but it was a very interesting job. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever see how they do chemical separations fuel processing in France or countries that have a lot of commercial power? PAINTER: No. At one time there was a program that came up, we was going to do laser separation, chemical separation, and the plant was supposed to be in Z Plant to do this. And a lot of the design work came in, and I got to go to a lot of the meetings, and look at a lot of the designs, and how they were going to do it and everything, but it never did come about. WEISSKOPF: How would you use a laser to separate out materials (inaudible)* PAINTER: Well, I don’t know whether I can tell you that or not. But, anyhow, they shoot a laser through it. WEISSKOPF: Is it something that DuPont might use in a nylon factory? Was it just a normal process they were going to adapt? PAINTER: No. I don’t think so. I think this was all originated in the labs down in California. WEISSKOPF: And when you said you probably couldn’t tell me, is that because you don’t know or it’s probably something you shouldn’t talk about? PAINTER: Both. Both. Both, yeah. Because I don’t know what the classification is on any of that stuff. WEISSKOPF: If you had a guy come in from a nylon factory, DuPont or Dow engineer worked on a factory, almost like a chemical engineer, would he understand what’s going on in the uranium plant or (inaudible)*? PAINTER: I think so. You know, he may not know everything about it, but he would pick it up real fast. Basically, you know, most of the chemical processes are pretty standard. WEISSKOPF: Whether you’re pulling out gold or copper or anything (inaudible)* PAINTER: Well, a lot of these know the schools in the chemistry department, and in their studies and what have you, they’re doing analysis and separating and so on. I know the ones that we got into the chemical processing, the engineering people that come out, not all of them was through the atomic field, there was a lot of them that had chemistry degrees, or physics degrees, or something like that. They knew what you was talking about. They’d heard about it some way. And they may not know all the details, and the weights, and the percentages, and what have you, but basically they knew what it was. WEISSKOPF: Because the people who first designed the process were chemists. PAINTER: Yeah. Right. WEISSKOPF: Nuclear (inaudible)* PAINTER: Right. [end] Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:39:18 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Bill Painter Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Bill Painter for the B Reactor Museum Association. Painter worked in the 200 Area at the Hanford Site during the Cold War. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/8/1999 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F7b74c7fc77da34961ccb4866fe59d1e8.mpg ab3aef8722536afa50b16a7355f24d3e 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed John Rector Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [partial transcript received 9/7/99) JOHN RECTOR INTERVIEW, Okay, well I am John Rector, R-e-c-t-o-r. I was working for DuPont in the Kansas City Small Arms Plant, which was run by Remington Arms as a division of DuPont. I was called into the office and they says we want you to go out to Hanford Washington for a three months’ job. (Coughs) And well, that was during the war, you just didn’t ask, you didn’t question, they wanted you to go, you go. So I arrived out here on February 29, 1944. I was brought out here to actually machine or work for the tooling for machining the graphite for the reactor core. At that time I didn’t know anything about what it was doing or anything else, it was just a job that had to be done. I didn’t know what the product was, and really didn’t want to know, because security was very very tight. And I was here and lived in the barracks for six months before they had a house ready in Richland so I could bring my wife and family out. My three months was up when we had the graphite all machined, and they were looking for people to go into operations, and I signed on in the maintenance department of operations. SO YOU WERE HIRED SPECIFICALLY TO DO MACHINING OF THE GRAPHITE. WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE? I was in the tool room of the Remington Arms Plant, with an extensive machining background. That was a plant that had a little over twenty thousand working there, and we were in the tool room building, there was over twelve hundred working in there to make the tooling just to make the thirty and fifty caliber ammunition. TELL US ABOUT THE GRAPHITE ITSELF< REQUIREMENTS< CHALLENGES. Well, the graphite came in to us in the 101 Building in Hanford in square blocks a little over four foot long, and a little over four inches, maybe four and a half inches square. Now these were not smooth, not uniform, they were just rough castings. Castings is probably not the right word, but rough blanks. Now these blanks had been inspected prior to getting to us in the 101 Building, for purity. They had to make sure that each block we machined was a block that would meet their reactor standards. They did not want any foreign material contaminating the blocks, or machines... had to be very careful that when they were using any oils to lubricate the machines that they machined only, lubricated only the machines and not any blocks. Or left any around that could potentially contaminate...Coughs again) Don’t know if this is going to work or not... Now the graphite purity was certified before we ever received the blocks. I don’t know whether records were kept of them or not, as to how, but I was sure there were records of some kind. But things moved so fast you just had to make every day count, you had to make some progress. First the holes were drilled and then they were machined on the outside square with the hole concentric to all four surfaces. So that way when they were put together they would all align. Some of them had keyways in them and some of them were just like blocks. The samples that we have been able to get on this do not have a chamfer on the outside of them, the units originally each had about a 45-degree camfer on those. And this was for the internal cooling by air, Helium, maybe CO2, they used several things. But there was additional atmosphere flows around the reactor. The tolerances on the squareness of the graphite was less than the thickness of a sheet of paper. They had to be square, and they had to be exact size, and the hole concentric. And the lengths all had to be, we had micrometers that was four inches long, they were special micrometers that were made just for doing that. Because a normal four-foot, try to go around a four-foot round part, takes a great big U, well these were tubular micrometers. frames that would only go a little over four inches. They had a real little depth of capability. But probably the thing that impressed me more than anything else was the procurement that they had. Purchasing, the procurement people...working in the tool room, every once in a while we would come to a situation that, here come a new size block, a new description of a block, that we didn’t have any cutters for, and invariably, if I needed a cutter one day, the next morning when I come to work, we had it. It might not be a new one, but it was one that would get the job done. I might have to sharpen it, or even make it down a little thinner, for a specific dimension. But very seldom did they ever delay acquiring anything that you needed. WHO WAS DOING THE PROCUREMENT/ DUPONT? DuPont. I know in one instance we needed a milling machine that we didn’t have. And within a week, we had it, but it had been on a train headed for a plant in Los Angeles. They detoured it en route, it came to here instead of Los Angeles, because the case around it had the markings, Expedite, Hanford, Manhattan. Manhattan took priority over everything. I’m still amazed at the short period of time that they could get whatever you needed if you didn’t have it. Course there were some times that we made tools that you could have got if you waited long enough. AND YOU WERE REALLY WORKING WITH MATERIAL THAT YOU WERE UNFAMILIAR WITH AND DEVELOPING NEW PROCESSES EVERY DAY... Yeah, my experience with graphite prior to this was as a lubricant, graphite dust, like we used in the locks. I knew that graphite was used in the chemical industry, in high temperature vacuum furnaces, but it was a new experience for me. And I was amazed that when we started making tooling that we used out on the line, that it just didn’t last, that the graphite was extremely abrasive to cutting tools. Course we were running cutting tools at woodworking speeds; maybe if we could have slowed it down... We would take that four foot piece and we were drilling the hole through that four foot in less than a minute, with vacuums pulling all the chips out and everything else. Then when we started using the planers to go over that, it was woodworking speeds. And obviously, it worked as long as the cutters were sharp. And our job was to keep those cutters available so they could do what they needed to. And most of the equipment we used was not metal-working equipment, it was woodworking equipment. So we might have been trying to do something a little beyond what was intended. But basically we machined an awful lot of blocks. TELL ME ABOUT THE SIZE OF THE REACTOR, ETC. Well the reactor was essentially a forty foot cube, with holes going through it on a horizontal, and looking at it from the front face there were over a thousand and four tubes in there, but the corners were cut off which were full of solid graphite, in other words they were trying to simulate a circle. So essentially it took literally hundreds of thousands of these four and three-sixteenths by four and three-sixteenths by four foot blocks, whether they had a hole in them or they were solid. The design was such that the horizontal had the fuel elements; from the left side were opening for the control rods that would move in or out. From the right side were special experimental tubes that were put in there, strictly for research, that was their only function. And then coming from the top of the reactor there were holes for the vertical control safety rods. So even though it was a solid block, it was pretty porous, with many holes, many ventilations. HECK OF A CHALLENGE TO MACHINE AND LAY IT OUT... Well I had nothing to do with the layout, that was all done back in Wilmington, Delaware, the design was all done back there. But if they run into problems there were a lot of parts made from sketches. We would run into a problem, we would machine several of the individual units, and they would lay it out on a flat surface. And this surface was exactly the same as the surface at the base of the reactor. Supposedly we would get enough blocks made for one level, one layer, a four and three sixteenths inch layer. They would lay this up in the 101 Building, in the mock-up, every one of them, in there, to make sure that everything fit, everything was in line. And they would make sure that there were no mismatches of all the pieces going together. And after we got the first layer done they would start the second layer, same thing. Every piece by piece was laid as they would be in the reactor, exactly. And we did this up, I believe it was six layers high. There were a few instances it was less that because after we machined them they started assembling them and the reactor before we were through machining. But we would lay out up to six layers of it, six or seven, I’m not sure just what it was, and they would be totally inspected that those six meet all the criteria of the drawings. Then they would start disassembling those one layer at a time. They would take one block, they would wrap it, they would identify it as to its number, its location, and where it was. And they set the first layer aside. Then the next layer down, say that first layer was six. Then they would take layer number five. And it was disassembled, and individually wrapped, every block every component of it, and identified. And it was sent out, it actually left our building and went to a warehouse in the various areas. And they’d keep working all the way down till they got all six layers, every block identified as to where it went in the final assembly. So then we would take this top layer that we had of the last stack, and put it back down on this pad, and then we’d lay the next group of blocks to make the seventh or eight layers and just keep on going up with it. And we’d get a few of them, usually we were trying to get six or seven layers. And sometimes the assembly, the fabricators out in the area, were moving faster than we were, by the time we got all the blocks machined, maybe we only went through four, and they would take those out... It was just a fantastic scheduling job to be able to get all those components, with all of the variations, and sizes... tape ends. NEW TAPE... ...people that were used to building chemical plants. They also knew that there was maintenance to be done. So everything they did, there was maintenance to be considered. WOULD YOU START THAT OVER AGAIN? Actually the things were moving so fast and they were so well coordinated, that I don’t believe any company could have put this whole complex together in the time frame that they did other than DuPont. DuPont had their own construction crew which was familiar with working with chemicals, ammunition, they had many different... craftsmen that they used, expertise of different qualities. And they had people that really knew what they were doing. They worked quite well... The one thing they did do that was quite unusual for an operation of this type, everybody was hired in as a mechanic. But they would try to put you in, whether you was a millwright, a machinist, pipefitter, electrician, or instrument... but your classification, you were a mechanic. That gave them the option that when they need a body they could pick up anybody, we want you over here. They could move people around and it just expedited, there were no delays. In other words, if somebody was working as a janitor he was still a millwright, or a craftsman. In other words if they needed a body, he could do it. Of course they never tried to put somebody on a job that they didn’t know what they were doing if they required a certain skill. But I know an instance that we had, in the 101 Building, basically we had all the millwrights were actually running the woodworking machinery. And I as a machinist, we were working in tooling for this production run. But the fact that DuPont was able to put together and coordinate all of this I think was a fantastic achievement. Because things got done. TELL US WHAT YOU SAW WHEN YOU CAME AND THEN THREE MONTHS LATER I arrived at Hanford on the last day of February 1944. And to show us what we were doing or the overall purpose, my supervisor and the particular building supervisor went out to B, this is B Area. And they were looking and checking things around, and at that time B Reactor was just a big hole in the ground, a deep hole in the ground. And they were just beginning to pour concrete. That was probably the second week of March. My graphite machining job was supposed to last three months, which it did, and we did have all the graphite machined within a three-month period. But after the three months was up I transferred from the construction crew to the operations crew, I was in the maintenance crew. I was working the first day shift out at B Area, then they got a few more people so I was assigned a graveyard shift on the maintenance crew, working in the machine shop. We came in one night, midnight, and they said don’t open up your tool boxes, we want everybody over in the 105 building. What we want, what the engineers want, is four plumb bobs on the corner of this reactor, inside of tubes, so that we can run a plumb bob down on all four...I didn’t know this was a reactor, and we want it done by eight o’clock in the morning. At one graveyard shift between the people that worked in the machine shop, the people that worked in the welding group, or wherever they could come from, we fabricated and put in those four plumb bobs, in an eight-hour shift. There were elevators both the front and the rear, but they worked very slow. We recognized that there was no way we could be done by 8 o’clock. There was just too much ups and downs. In certain instances we were going up and down the pigtails, the reactor face, anyway we could do to get there, there were stairs you could go around, and put down a plank to get to where you needed to get the anchor for that housing for the thing. But anyhow that job finished up, we finished it a t 8 o’clock, we was done. And they had their zero marks where it was... What the plumb bobs were for, I didn’t know it at the time. But the next night when we came in, again, they said don’t open your tool boxes, they want you over at 105 building. So we went back to the same building. So this time they had table after table after table out there in what’s known as the loading area, the front face. And a bunch of chairs, and the set you down, you had a counter, you had a timer, and a clipboard with instructions on it. And they said, you look at your clipboard, and it said set your timer for so many minutes. So you set your timer, reset your counter, and when it come all set, then record what the treading was in that minute interval. Then you set the next one. And we did this for eight hours. And all the way down, somebody would come along and pick up your clipboard, and give you a new sheet, to go. What was happening was they were actually starting up the reactor for the first time, and these were additional sensors that they had places in various locations. Of course they had all the regular operating sensors inside the control room, but they were all working inside the control room. But the way the whole thing was put together, the way the whole thing was planned, was fantastic as far as I was concerned. Everybody was given a specific job that they could understand what that job entailed. So they didn’t have to have a particularly qualified person, an instrument man to be there. So we did this. The counts, I know now what happened but I didn’t at the time, the counts were gradually increasing. I knew the numbers were getting bigger. And they put a new sheet down, and for the first time the counts were getting smaller. So what it was, it was the xenon poisoning we were seeing. Now let me backtrack. A week or two before we were in the reactor starting it up, now this was in early September of 1944, they called us individually into the superintendent’s office, and he talked to us himself, there was nobody else. And he says well, we want you to be aware that this operation is a little bit unusual. But I can, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s about the same as x-rays. Well at that time, x-rays were common, every shoe store in the country had an x-ray machine. So that was the comparison that they made to the lay person that didn’t know anything. Pooey, you walked in a shoe store and got your shoes and put ‘em, walked over and wiggled your toes, and well, this is not explosive anyhow. But that’s the only indication I had as to what they were doing. I didn’t know. Even after they had the reactor running and we were working in maintenance, of course, I didn’t know, the security was fantastic. I did not know what the end product was until the bomb was dropped in Japan, and I was working here all the time. How they was able to maintain the secret with so many thousands of people working, is an astronomical responsibility. MUST HAVE HAD A BILLION RUMORS GOING AROUND... Oh, there was rumors. Most of the rumors were coming out of the 200 West Area, where they were building buildings with concrete walls that was over four foot thick, and they said boy, I’m gonna get out of here before they start using those, if that’s what it takes to contain it. But rumors were flying... but basically you didn’t talk. You just didn’t talk. The rec hall that we had at Hanford was about the only place you had to go to relax a little bit; if somebody in there got a few too many beers and started talking, first thing you know he was gone! You never seen that fellow again. They had security... you just didn’t talk. If you had a question you needed to know, they would answer, but you just wouldn’t ask what the next guy was doing. So my hat is off to the overall Manhattan Project for being able to complete this project, get it onstream get all the facets put together, and come up with an end product that most people that worked on it didn’t know what it was up until it was actually consumed, actually used in the first one over Hiroshima. HOW DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THE BOMB? It came out in the paper, it was on the radio. It hit the news media all at once. There was no press leaks, so to speak. It came out, I was out there, I was working, I didn’t know what we were making. WHAT WERE YOU TOLD? The only thing we were told was do the job you’re told to do. You don’t ask questions what it’s gonna do. You just didn’t ask. Far different from the ammunitions plant, that was a technology which was known. All I knew is it was important enough to have top priority as far as priorities go. And if it had that much military application it had to be something important. And of course I had three brothers that were in the service, I wasn’t. I had one in the Europe theater, and one in the Pacific theater, and I lost my brother just older than me before he ever left the states. That was a sad story but it has nothing to do with this. ONE THING YOU MENTIONED WAS THE COMPRESSION OF TIME BETWEEN OCTOBER AND SEPTEMBER. Yeah, when I arrived out here in February or in early March, I saw the 105 hole in the ground, just really getting started under construction. Pouring concrete and some steel work. So that was in early March. In September of 1944, I was in the front face of the reactor when it first went critical. And one had never been built before, it was a first big industrial... They had a little laboratory data and that was all. And how they were able to scale up from a little bit of data they got in the reactor in Chicago to that, is amazing. To run all the calculations, theories, to make sure they get the instrumentation, as far as that converting the Uranium 238 to Plutonium 239, in that frame time, just get that reactor going... HUGE THING? Well we had over fifty thousand people working on the job. And nobody knew what we were doing. There was just a handful of people that knew what the product was. But looking back, I think that one of the problems... (tape ends) NEW TAPE... as to the results of real tight security by the military to begin with and then it was the Atomic energy commission. Because all of the Plutonium sites or anything had to do with it was top secret. But they had let enough of it out they were starting to build it commercially, commercial reactors. But it didn’t get to the public, that there is a big difference between a bomb and a reactor, a fuel reactor. YOU WORKED IN MAINTENANCE...? SAFETY ASPECTS, HAZARDS? Yeah, but really, see we first started the reactor in September of 1944. It was only a year later, we’d only been in operation a year, there was very little maintenance to be done. Most of it was modification of facilities. We didn’t get into, or at least I didn’t get into any positions where I needed to know. I was in the machine shop, making who knows what. Anything they needed, we made a lot of the tools or special fixtures, I know now what they were doing, they were doing it for, was making tests using these special research test holes in the reactor, but I did not have any exposure to radiation until after the bomb was dropped. And then we knew what we were up against. But to my knowledge, there was no, the reactors were so new that there was no real problems, other than shutdown crew, and I didn’t have anything to do with that. SO FEW PEOPLE WERE EXPOSED EARLY... They had enough of the radiation monitoring group working there that I don’t believe there was any possibility of anyone in those early months getting...at least in the reactor portion of it, the separations end of it is a whole different ball game. The chemical end of it, cause at that point you’re taking spent reactor slugs, I say spent, that’s probably not right, and dissolving them down, chemical reactions. But later on I got out of the maintenance group in about 1948 or 49, late ‘40’s, early ‘50’s, I had switched over to engineering of the ?Technology Group. And in this group I was developing all types of different types of tools for doing routine maintenance on the reactor. Probably the closest I ever came to it was they were removing one of the tests from the research opening, and they didn’t have enough people so they shifted me over there. But we had radiation monitoring, he says, do not get your hands in front of that hole. TELL ABOUT HANFORD CAMP... Well the Hanford Camp was a military camp with roughly 50,000 people there. Barracks, strictly military barracks. In fact when I first arrived here I was put into a brand new barracks that had just been completed a few hours before. I checked in, they gave me a bed roll, they says go over to, I don’t remember the number now, but you will eat in Mess Hall 8. And I spent my first night in there, brand new, two to a room, but it was strictly military, no locks, no nothing. Essentially wooden floors, standard bunks, but it was clean, it was comfortable. WAS THAT RUN BY DUPONT TOO? DuPont ran everything. They had patrolling, security, well the military was really in charge. But I’d catch a bus going out, well I could walk to the 101 building, but when I went out to B Reactor I had to catch a bus. But... I missed one phase.... I did spend the first two weeks in 2 West Area, in the maintenance Department. And that was because they didn’t have 101 completed enough to have me a place to work. And when I was riding a bus out to the 2 West Area, this would be in March of 1944, I came in, I checked in to the barracks and I caught a bus the next morning to go out to the 2 West Area, the 2 West temporary machine shop. And we’d take the bus out there, come back... I checked in on the last row of barracks. I left that barracks in the morning, went out and worked an eight hour shift; when I came back there was two more rows of barracks there! And guys with bedrolls coming in! How they scheduled all this is amazing. My hat’s off to DuPont. WHERE ARE THEY NOW THAT WE NEED THEM? Well, there were no environmental regulations, there was nothing. If you needed to do something, you did it. If you needed to dig a ditch, you dug it. You needed a road to go across over there, you put it in. There was actually hundreds of miles of railroads, highways and railroads all put in in a very short period of time. Well maybe this is a good point to mention this. We talked about the dust storms that we have around Richland. They haven’t seen a dust storm, the newcomers. With everything torn up in construction, if we’d get a thirty-mile an hour wind, you couldn’t see across the street. I mean really couldn’t see. And you come back to your barracks, maybe there’s a sand drift in front of your door, to get into the barracks. And the next day after one of those dust storms the average was about eight thousand terminations. They called that the Termination Wind. It was horrible, I’ll tell you. Guys had to work out in that stuff with ditch-digging stuff, roadmaking, wind blowing, dry, it was miserable, working out there. But next day, I’ve had enough, there’d be about eight thousand of ‘em check out after one of those windstorms. Of course they had to have another 8000 coming in. MATTHIAS SAID TOTAL 145,000 TOTAL ON THE HANFORD ROLLS... After one of those bad dust storms they said about 8000 left the next day, said I’ve had enough. WAS HANFORD CAMP PRETTY WILD? The Hanford Camp was what you made it. There were all kinds of people there. There were roughnecks, and skilled craftsmen. About the only recreation was the rec hall. There was a movie theater after a time, I’m not sure when it came. But you could go to the rec hall, I don’t know how many people fit, I expect several thousands would be in that total rec hall drinkin beer. Well if somebody wanted a fight he didn’t have to go very far to get it. So you could be sitting at one table and the first thing you know a couple of tables over a couple of them would hard at it, patrolmen would come in and grab everybody involved and off they’d go. But on the other hand if you were just sitting in there, talking to somebody, just to relax, there was no problem. The problems were made. It was a rough camp, there’s no question about that. But the mess halls as far as I’m concerned, a fantastic job done. I was in Mess Hall 8, and I don’t know how many thousands of people they served in breakfasts and dinner, lunch was available in certain places but most of us took box lunches. How would you like the job to make fifty thousand box lunches. Or feed 50,000 people? Are you aware how the mess hall worked? TELL ME ABOUT IT. It was a large mess hall with tables roughly twenty foot long and benches. Most of them had, these tables were in line, and I would say may twenty tables. Then there’d be another row of twenty tables and another row of twenty tables. If I remember right there were five or six rows. And you would go in and you would go down to the front table on the left. You filled that table completely. And as soon as it was full they would start filling the next one. No empty seats, you set down wherever, you couldn’t go in a group and pick out a spot. And the minute the table was full, here come the waitress, would put the platters of food on there. The table would be set with your plate and your silver ware. But, family style. Soon as that was full, the next one would fill up, and this proceeded. You didn’t go over to the next aisle until this one was full. Then you went to the second one, and fill up that one. But the first table up here, if somebody would empty a plate they’d hold up the platter and the waitress would be right there to give you a new one, full. Immediately. They would keep filling up till everybody there got full, then they’d get up and go out. By that time maybe they’re on their third or fourth one over here. But they would clean those off as soon as the guys left, reset it, and soon as this last one over here got full, these were ready, so there was a constant stream going in. And they were all fed just about as fast as you could go in. You would hear guys complain, but it was good palatable food, considering it was high volume. But, pie, they always had pie for desert, or nearly always. But you’d be sitting there at a table, you might see, aw, this pie’s awful. But maybe you’d already had two pieces. Give me another piece. This is awful. But you might be sitting next to an iron worker, or maybe an office worker. But most of the office workers were down at Mess Hall 3. But just feeding that many people. MANY WOMEN AROUND? Oh yeah, there several women around. In fact, we had the military camp portion of it, and then there was a great big trailer park. We had the military portion of it, and then we had a great big trailer park, where people that actually lived there with their wife and family. I don’t know what they did for schooling for kids that were there... BUT FAMILIES COULD BE TOGETHER... Yeah, in a trailer. And that trailer, I don’t know, thousands and thousands of them. You either lived in a barracks or you lived in a trailer. Or you, from there you went out to the area. Now if you lived in Richland there were buses going out to the various areas. But just the magnitude of ordering all the bedding, getting it all washed, getting all the food, the right variety of food, in the quantities that they needed, I know at the time I was impressed. HOW FAR WAS HANFORD CAMP FROM B AREA? About fifteen miles. You had B, D, and F, and they were five to eight miles apart. That was done because they didn’t know what was going to happen... WERE THEY WORKING ON ALL THREE AT THE SAME TIME/ Well they started B but the other two were started almost simultaneously. It was just a short period of time after B was running till D was running. And F was the last one. PEOPLE BUSSED OUT TO EACH OF THOSE? Yeah, from Hanford. Cause there’s no place... they were building houses as fast as they could build them, but not fast enough. There’s one thing I missed. The transportation from the Hanford Area to the various work areas was basically in buses, but many of us were hauled in what they called cattle cars. And they were literally cattle cars....(TAPE ENDS) (NEW TAPE) TELL US ABOUT CATTLE CARS. Okay. If you lived in Hanford and were working out at 2 West Area or B Area or any of the other outlying areas, they would bus you from Hanford there. Well they didn’t have enough buses to go around so they found a bunch of cattle cars. Cattle Trailers. They were actually a trailer. and they had cleaned them up and put benches along the side. There would be twenty to forty of us in there along these benches along the side. No heat. You just rode the cattle car out to work. They were enclosed, and you’d go in through the back, but that’s all, it got you out of the weather, and out of the wind. But they were actually cattle cars. WHAT WAS ATMOSPHERE OF COUNTRY LIKE DURING THE WAR...THREAT, STRESS? Well the general attitude of the people, we’re in this thing, let’s get it over with. We’ll do what we have to do to get it done. Now while I was working at Remington Arms, we were making the 30- and 50-caliber rounds, we were making eight million rounds a shift in that one plant. It was a important job. Early in the game after the Europeans... the supply of rubber had disappeared. So gasoline rationing and food ration was in, they put it in real early in the game. And I don’t know that I ever heard anybody complain about it, because it was all part of the effort. The average person with a car, you got a stamp for three gallons a week. That’s all the gasoline you could buy, unless you worked, and needed more, or rode to a defense plant, which all plants were defense plants at that time. The auto production all that stuff stopped and they started doing everything. But I would say the attitude of the people then was supportive of the overall action. PEARL HARBOR... Course we were already in Europe before that. Gasoline rationing, it was not because of the gasoline, we had enough oil here to do it, it was because of rubber. Speed limits were thirty-five miles and hour. I made two round trips to Kansas City at thirty-five miles an hour. CHATTER Well that’s what it amounted to, you just couldn’t buy new tires. You had to get a special permit to authorize you, your tires are gone and you need your car for defense applications. WHY DO YOU THINK DUPONT WAS SO EFFECTIVE? Organization, and their people. Their people were topnotch. Well let me give you an example. Those two weeks that I spent out at 2 West in the construction machine shop. In the corner of that shop was the mechanical superintendent’s office. And then there was an assistant mechanical superindent. And I hadn’t been in the shop two or three days and hey, there’s something not normal here. And it turned out that the assistant superintendent was the boss. The superintendent was there to attend all the meetings, and these kind of things, gripes and what-have-you. That left the assistant superintendent free, and he roamed every job. He’d come in with something, with some sketches, and something happened. And I don’t know if it was done in all instances, but I suspicion that it was. Because the guy that was there had the authority but he wasn’t saddled with all the administrative things. It makes sense, and it made sense to me. TELL ABOUT DESIGN INSTRUCTIONS ETC. Well we were getting instructions to get the job done, out in the machine shop, out at 2 West Area, I would say 90% of our stuff was nothing but hand sketches. Hand Sketches. But these were the details not handled at DuPont headquarters in Wilmington Delaware. Thing of it is, there is no way they could have put everything documented on prints beforehand. In other words, DuPont put a lot of authority in their superintendents. They were well experienced, they had to know how to do it. they knew how to get the job done. (CHANGE TRANSCRIPTION TAPE) [end] Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:43:19 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 224kbps 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 John Rector Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with John Rector for the B Reactor Museum Association. Rector was a Graphite Machinist at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 9/7/1999 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc8d5b0cdc8cdd08b8f030dac2815d165.mp4 abddd96a22d1827b4da3d7a1a26a413a 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ralph Sansom Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound RALPH SANSOM INTERVIEW- Recorded on 8/8/92 I heard about the project because I was working for Dupont in Salt Lake City. And uh, they interviewed quite a number of us and I signed up to come up as an operator and I got to this area on December the 3rd, 1943, and the uh, bus from the project met the train at Hinkle, Oregon and there were two other fellas that I worked with for a while and knew quite well. One name was Rod Thackeray; and Rod had kind of an interesting thing that became of him. He saw all this desert up here and he was very, very disgusted and he moaned and groaned for 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 days and a couple of weeks I guess. And finally he got in touch with uh, the reactor down in Tennessee. They had interviewed him in Salt Lake and he had a chance to go down there but he decided to come up here. He asked em if he could still go and they said yes so he went back to Salt Lake and worked the uh, through the war in Tennessee. And uh, this other Remington? man who’s name I can’t recall right now, he worked here I guess as long as I did. Cause he was about the same age. FIRST TIME SEEING B REACTOR SIGHT? Well uh, dates I can’t but uh, we were taken around the various parts that were being constructed but we headquartered at 300 area. And uh, they cordoned off three lathes, the ones that was that were up here. They filtered in, you know, this day and that day and by Christmas time there was quite a number of em. But we used those three lathe to practice uh, the uh, cutting the slugs that were to go into the reactor. And I worked there for I can’t remember how long. But when they got ready to recruit for B area I went out there and I helped them to load the reactor and uh, uh, was there when they started it up and got the first reaction. PROCESS OF BUILDING REACTOR? No, I don’t I don’t think that’s right. There was there was a building that was being constructed and I can’t tell you for sure but I think that the reactor itself the core and everything was built and then the building built around it. Don’t you think that’s right? I WOULD THINK SO. Yeah, yeah it was going up simultaneously is more correct because there’s an awful lot of concrete that has to go around that for protection, you know. Concrete is pretty dense and they need that for protection from the reac from the reactivity. HOW MUCH DID YOU KNOW? Well uh, very little. As a matter of fact, we working down there in the 300 area would get some of these chips in our shoes. And uh, occasionally you’d walk down the street and hit a hit a rock or something and a spark would fly from your shoes! Because this uh uranium was, that was in the shoes. Oh, we got to thinking it was a bomb and we got to thinking it was a explosion. I don’t think any of the people in my category knew about it until, uh, till we went out to the area to the B area and started working on the reactor. And even then uh, uh, we didn’t know too much. You know they just fed us a little bit at a time but once we, once we got the reactor up and started to uh, uh, operate it all the time why of course they expected us to learn as much as we could and they, they’d didn’t uh, we knew what they were gonna do with the with the material then. WHAT KIND OF REACTOR AND HOW BUILT? Well it was a water cooled reactor. And the pile was built, it’s a, a....a lot of tubes that hold these 8 inch slugs uranium slugs and uh... PAUSE, START AGAIN. Well it’s a, they call it a pile and that’s what it is. It’s a pile of uh, of uh, tubes that hold these uranium slugs and at that time the first of em were 8 inches long eventually they started using 4 inch slugs. But uh, these are inserted in the reactor and uh, oh as the reactor goes up they put rods that have uh, boron that are inserted both from the top and from the side to control the reactivity and uh... It’s made of uh tubes and it has uh, what they called control rods and safety rods. The safety rods were vertical and they were made so that uh if anything out of the ordinary anything that went out of normal happened that they would just automatically drop in and kill the reactivity. And then the control rods, were they went in from the front and the operator would sit at the board and when the pile was ... (FLY BUZZING AROUND HIS HEAD) When the uh, operator would sit at the front and control these uh, uh, rods by insetting em and if the reactivity got a little too high in one place they would insert this rod a little bit into that area. As I recall there was 18 or 19 control rods, I may be wrong on that because it’s been so long. But that’s uh, that’s how the reactivity was controlled was by these boron uh, rods, rods. Of course the water cooled the uh, tubes so that they wouldn’t melt the metal, as you might have heard, got real real hot, I’ll tell you Dantes Inferno probably was.... MIGHT MENTION FUNCTION OF GRAPHITE. Well the graphite is what what uh, makes the uh, uh, the reac the neutrons yeah, bounce off of the graphite and uh, that’s what makes the activity the reactivity goes is because it uh bounces these neutrons on in back into the pile and uh and keeps the reactivity going. I know that uh, Ted Lewis and some of those guys that I worked for would probably have a fit if they heard me explaining some of this so clumsily.... CHATTER As we mentioned earlier, in the very beginning very few people knew what they were about, you know; and uh, as a matter of fact, here’s a little sidelight that might be interesting. Uh, got here on the 3rd of December as I said; and it was a dreary cloudy day like we’ve had, are you from this around here? Like we’ve had from time to time in the winter. And, we didn’t see the sun until Christmas day. It came out for, oh, couple of hours and then back again. And the scuttlebutt amongst uh, the peons and everybody was that that was a camouflage to the, that they had put up so, you know, to hide this - but it was just good old Washington weather and like I say from the 3rd of December to the 24th of well until Christmas day, I didn’t see a peak of the sun. (CHATTER) Nearly everybody had that as a theory. REACTOR BUILT, SOMETHING IN PROCESS. Well yes, but they knew pretty well what they were gonna do. I, they built a reactor in Chicago I think it was. Wasn’t it in Chicago? yeah and I believe that this reactor was uh, uh, the B reactor was just like that model that they built only to scale, you know bigger. So they knew it would work uh, or they figured it would work but they didn’t know if one of that magnitude would work. And uh, when they first pulled the control rods out to start it up, why uh, there was several little things that happened that they thought things weren’t going right but they solved all those problems. I tell ya there was some smart people that uh, that worked on that reactor. And one uh, woman - do you remember her name? She, she was a scientist and I’ll tell you she could tell you just what was gonna happen - when, where and uh, what it would be if you did this and it was just it was just about like a prophecy so to speak. But she knew what she was doing; as did most of the, well I would say all of em. DID YOU EVER MEET Fermi? No I didn’t. I missed him by just a little bit a couple of times. But I wasn’t fortunate enough to be at work when he was there. WHERE WERE YOU AT STARTUP? No, I was, I was doing some outside work connected. Because you see they had to really train us and most of the when they when they were getting the thing to start up most of operation was done by scientists, you know they, so it was some time after they had they had gotten it up before I was uh, privileged to sit down at the reactor; at the control board. CHATTER, YOU HAD REGULAR SHIFT AS REACTOR OPERATOR? Yeah. Well, I can’t remember how long it was before I went on the shift work but most most of my time out there was spent on shift work. Days, graveyard and swing. And uh, uh, I worked mostly in B area but then I worked I worked in all the areas. And uh, I did a lot of holdover work and as such I worked in most all of the other areas. F, C, (?), and uh my last I can’t remember exactly when it was but when they shut B area down I went to uh, K area and that was where I spent the last uh, before uh retirement, K area. WHAT WAS REACTORS JOB AT B REACTOR? Well, you have all of these uh, when you’re sitting at the control board you have all of these instruments that tell you where the reactivity is the highest. What they like to do is uh, is to make the reactivity flat. So it’s even all around the pile. And uh, they try to what seems to be the natural uh, course of things is that it gets hot in the center and they want to show that they will uh, get all of the slugs reactivated uh equally. They put control rods in where it’s hot and uh, to drive the heat up to the corners. And as a re, sitting at the control board you had to check, they would run a map - and they would tell you the map would be, have a , look just like the front of the reactor and it would tell you where the heat was and uh, then you were to put uh, insert these control rods in the area where the heat was and drive it where it was cool and... TRYING TO COOK EQUALLY? Cook it all equally, yeah. And then of course uh, there was what they call a 115 building, that was uh, the uh, gas they had, gas went through the air through the reactor too to cool it. Uh, uh, yeah, one oh, one week you would work over to 115 and then you would come back over to the control room and then uh, there was a lot of good old hard common labor of uh, cleaning up the uh, the messes after they had an outage, you know. And of course before, whenever they’d have an outage we would run these uh, uh, discharging machines or charging machines if you will. And the way that worked uh, the machine was hooked up to a to a tube and uh, these slugs were placed on a tray and this machine would come and shove the raw slug into the reactor and out of the rear would come uh, uh, slug that was already done, you know, and ready to be sent over to the 200 area and be separated. And that was just a, well it was quite an interesting job, but it was just a job of labor and ya, (CHATTER) and then, yeah, and then when they, when they uh, were discharged they were discharged into a basin about 20 feet of water and you could just go in and uh, and just see them glowing down there! But they were picked up with uh, oh about 20 foot tongs that were activated, just like an ordinary tong that you close it and a thing would open up and grab a hold of a slug and then they would put it into a bucket. And eventually it was loaded onto a train and taken over to 200 area and separated. ELEMENTS CHANGED SAME TIME? No, no the uh the discharge would be uh determined by the amount of activity that the various uh, tubes received. And uh, most of the time, I mean most of the of the discharge you know of course would come from the center because that’s where most of the heat was. But like I said before, they wanted to get it even so that they could discharge all of em, you know eventually the just keep em going in and out all the time. REACTOR UP AND GOING, FAIRLY UNEVENTFUL? Well yes, sometimes you’d, if you got to much reactivity it would cause the reactor to scram and the control rods and the uh, uh safety rods would just go in and shut the reactor down. BEGIN SANSOM TAPE #2 CON’T. SAME QUESTION. Well uh, you can lose electricity which would happen sometime and of course the safety rods were just by gravity, they didn’t need uh, electricity to insert them that was the way they were inserted. But uh, sometimes they would have leaks in some of the uh, uh, system, get a leak in a pipe or something and and uh, the water pressure go below a certain figure and just things like that. Most of the time once you got the op the uh, the reactor operating it was quite uneventful. For long periods of time, you know, you’d just sit there and just watch the gauges; but mostly it was the things that they were afraid of was the water pressure going down or anything that lost control of the of made you loose control of the rods or the water was the things that you had to watch all the time and you’d check those gauges and they would run these maps to see how the heat was and uh, quite a bit of the time was just watching those gauges and very infrequently did something happen. That was that was surprising to me, you know they that the first reactor of that size that was in existence and that it did operate so well. Didn’t it surprise you too? WAS THERE GREAT SENSE OF URGENCY IN THE AIR? Yeah, yeah that’s. Everybody felt like uh, like it was, you know, very important and I think most of the people that worked there had that feeling of uh, of urgency and felt like that they were making a contribution to the war effort. Uh, I don’t uh, I think the uh, plutonium for the Nagasaki and uh, what’s the other Japanese place? I think it came from uh, B reactor, I’m pretty sure it did. (CHATTER) WAS THE REACTOR RUN 24 HOURS A DAY? Yes, yeah it was run 24 hours a day until shutdown, you know what I mean. Shutdowns would, oh I can’t remember for sure, sometimes they’d last 3 or 4 days uh, sometimes just if they’d scrammed then you get back up before uh, when it scrams it causes xenon to uh to that poisons the reactor and unless you get up uh, real fast - why then you have to stay down for I think it was 24 hours I’m not sure, but a longer period of time. But it was possible to uh, recover from a scram, an inadvertent scram, uh, like one time uh, the first time that I went into the control room and one of the supervisors, I think it was Ted Lewis I’m not sure, he’s dead now, but there was an instrument there and he said now uh, you do this and this and this and was showing me how this instrument worked. He says uh, “If you run it all the way up it’ll scram” and he turned inadvertently turned it up and scrammed the reactor. If you run it all the way up you might scram the reactor! I laughed I’ll tell ya. I used to kid old Ted Lewis about that. But uh, it was they kept a the supervisors and the scientists kept a pretty good eye on it and uh, uh, I think most of the reactor operators were efficient. WHAT WAS IT LIKE GENERALLY IN HISTORY IN AMERICA? I don’t think that people actually at the time the bomb was dropped, I don’t think people of the United States, this is just my opinion, I don’t think they really realized just how much damage the bomb could do, how forceful it was. And uh, as a matter of fact I saw a television show just recently some of the people from Nagasaki telling about what happened and you know you just can’t believe some of the things that how how things would just - it was here and then it wasn’t - you know, and they were still alive, you know a lot of em and uh, yet they didn’t you know, it was just mystifying to me; I and I don’t think that many people realized how powerful the bomb was. But I think that most everybody on the project felt that it was necessary to keep it going and uh, I don’t think they felt that it was an unworthwhile project, uh. WHERE DID YOU LIVE AT THE TIME? Well uh, when I first came up here I lived in the barracks, uh, there in Richland. And my wife and family came up uh, oh in February or March I think. And we lived uh, first at uh, 94 Van Guessen in a B house and then we moved in l948 up on 408 Sanford in what they call a precut. And I’ve Iived I’ve lived there ever since. DESCRIBE TYPICAL WORK DAY. Well, you’d go in if you were gonna be uh, uh, a reactor operator you’d go in and you would talk to the person that was uh, operating the reactor at that time and you’d look over his charts and so on and uh, then you would just sit at the board like I say if that was your job as a reactor operator, uh, and you’d sit there for 2 hours and then another operator would relieve ya and when he’d relieve ya you’d go and you’d read all these gauges the that were around in the control room - Did you go in the control room? You saw this myriad of gauges. The they had to be read uh, at least once an hour, and sometimes if they had a special project goin on why uh, oftener than that. But basically that was uh, the control room operators job (CLOCK CHIMES) to read these uh, gauges and then operate the reactor. Uh, and there’s one job in reading the uh, water pressure on this board and that would take two people and one person would uh read the gauge and the other would record it and of course you they had to be within certain limitations and if one was out of order they’d call the instrument man and if the instrument was okay and if it was something that was way out and it was not a malfunction of the instrument sometimes they’d even cause a shutdown. Not very often, but uh, that was what they read it for to see if, if any And then the next time that you would be on outside and that would if it was you was goin to work after a shutdown then probably you’d go in and start uh, go uh, back to the where the slugs had been discharged into the basin and pick up metal and put it in these buckets they called em and they would be loaded into the car; but that was uh, that was the three basic jobs of a control room, of a of a reactor operator was in the control room or reading the in the control room sitting at the board or reading the gauges or out on the outside picking up the slugs uh, and shipping the metal to 200 areas and then in the when you was in the 115, the week you was in the 115 building you’d have to check the gauges over there and uh, see that the gas was coming as it should over to the reactor and uh. But mostly uh, it was either hard work or just uh, or just reading gauges and something very very simple. FIRST YEAR - PROBLEMS OF RUPTURES, SLUGS, TUBE LEAKS? Well uh, it was probably quite a bit later because the ruptures were the result of of uh, operating at a higher level. By comparison, I can’t remember the numbers but, the level that we were operating when in the first uh, months and year of the reactor, they got up eventually 2 or 3 times as high as that. And when we got up to those higher levels that was when the ruptures came. Uh and, they weren’t too frequent for the... I guess we had quite a few but I didn’t think they were too frequent for the level of operation that we were.... EXPLAIN RUPTURE. Well uh, the uh the rupture was when the a slug the covering of the uranium slug was aluminum would the slug itself would disin start to disintegra - swell - burst this aluminum covering and then of course that puts this uranium all through the water system and everything and what had to be done then was to discharge that column of slugs and they would get the find out the rupture in the scientists would check it over, I don’t really know what they did there. But, sometimes it would swell and stick the so that you couldn’t discharge the metal with the normal charging machine. Then the maintenance people would come and they had tools and things that would put extra pressure on the on the slugs so that they could discharge it. Sometimes they would have to replace the whole tube and other times just replace the slug that was ruptured. But I, I don’t uh, as I recall, It wasn’t too frequent that that happened, but as you said it was later on when they started in more frequent was when they raised the power levels up. QUICKIE METHOD? Well as I recall that, that was just to try to go up and hook the charging machine to that particular tube and charge it with the, they would up the pressure the normal pressure but the quickie part of it was to see if it was not stuck so that they could just get the ruptured slug out and then get it back up because that way they wouldn’t have to be down so long, you see. But if it goes into one of these where it’s necessary to replace the tube when it’s stuck and everything then I think the minimum down time then even in everything else went fine was uh, a couple of days. QUICKIE TIME 20 MINUTES? Yeah um uh. Just get up, get the crew up on the on the front face and hook up the charging machine and try to get it out of there as quick as they could, like he said within 20 minutes or so. 3RD JOB, SLUGS IN POOL? Yeah, they’re in a basin they call it. A 20 foot basin. The, it’s just a matter of pickin up the, you can you can see in the wa the waters clear you see and they have a underwater lights to show you down there; to shine on the metal. Uh, and it was just like a big long tong and you open it up and get it get the jaw on that uh, slug and raise it up and put it in the bucket. It’s just a matter of using, operating those tongs which are very simple. It was a crude crude way actually, but that was about the only way that they figured that they could do it. WHOLE OPERATION UNDER WATER? Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, the buckets were under water. They would, the storage area back there was a, these buckets would hang on a rod and go there was a aisleway that the rods, that these rods that were connected to the bucket could go through and then up on top was a rail with wheels and you could just slide that bucket and uh put it in these rows and put it down on the bottom and disconnect it from the bucket and that was where they stored the stuff in this 20 feet of water. DESCRIBE NOT SPECIAL LIGHTS. Oh yeah, as he said this water was so pure it just looked like there wasn’t any water there if you didn’t see the movement of the wa, caused by any activity that was going on in the water, it just looked like it was just clear, and uh, yeah those light uh, it was kind of amazing to me that they that they didn’t un, you know, that it didn’t drown em out but, short em out! But it was, cause the wa, there was no uh, mineral in the water at all you see. CHATTER There’s gotta be, that’s where the conduction of electricity through water is, the minerals in the water. Yeah, you can just put a light bulb down in there and it would just burn. CHATTER, TAPE 3 Oh, the counterbalance they had uh, a counterweight because those slugs weighed eight pounds , the 8 inch ones and uh they had a counterweight and as you picked up a slug it would be, you know, the weight would drag down and help you pull the tong up out of the water so that you could put it in; they were quite maneuverable for a great big clumsy thing that they were. But uh, without that counterweight uh you’d soon get so tired you couldn’t do anything. I know because once in a while you’d get a hold of a pair of tongs that were that wasn’t working. Actually, what it was just a uh, one of the ways they had was just a container that was around this a rod that the tong was made out of that had air in it and it would float, you see, its tendency was to come up and float and of course that helped ya.. HOW MUCH KNOWN OF EFFECTS OF RADIOACTIVITY? PROTECTIVE CLOTHING? Well, I thought I, it was my thought that we were really careful and I’ve heard a lot of these people uh, whistle blowers and so on. Maybe there was some things that they did that they shouldn’t have done but I I’m positive that there was nothing done in the interest of speed. All the people that I worked for were safety conscious. And uh and it was not, to my knowledge, there was there was no one out in our area that was injured. I think there was a couple people in the 200 area that got an overdose. But to my knowledge I don’t know anybody that got an overdose of radioactivity. THAT KNOWLEDGE WAS EVOLVING. Oh yeah, that’s right. It uh, there’s a lot of it, well there just was no uh, uh, no precedent, you see. The history was made as you went along and they uh kept track of all these things to, whenever they would find out an effect, or what seemed like was gonna be an effect then they would uh, uh, they always cut the uh limits, if the limit they came up with was say, 5 rem uh, a day they would cut it at least in two. And to my knowledge they’re still doing that. I’m not, of course I know that now they uh, it’s been l5 years since I retired and there’s been a lot of new things found out. And uh, so maybe they found out that some of the things they did weren’t just exactly what would have been best. But I don’t think that there was anything intentional in any of that. ANY THOUGHTS ON YOUR PART IN NUCLEAR AGE? Well uh, I always felt, now you mentioned the uh urgency of continuing on after Nagasaki and these other tests that they made. I always looked at this as a peace time situation. I I’ve looked at nuclear energy as being the salvation of a lot of countries because a... well I don’t think there’s any better way of making electricity that uh with the nuclear reactor. And I’m surprised, personally, that there has been somewhat of a lessening of the of that idea. A lot of people feel that there’s other means of electricity. Of course, water we know uh is the ultimate one. If you’ve got plenty of water and you’ve got it all the time why sure that’s an easy way to make electricity. But uh nuclear energy, I felt, is a greater peace time uh thing that war time, that’s what I’ve always felt. CHATTER Right, right. I think that uh, uh that the United States, generally, I say generally because I don’t know how some of these other areas evolved with the uh nuclear age, but uh I think they uh have come up with good answers to the problems of using nuclear energy for peace time. Then of course medical medically there’s a lot of uses for reactivity in medicine. IN ‘43 WERE THERE A LOT OF PEOPLE HERE? Oh yes, yes, it was, that was quite an interesting time as a matter of fact, when we lived in the in the barracks uh and uh ate in mess hall up there. I tell ya you could you could hear most any accent any time of the day. You know, a Southerner, a Easterner uh it was quite interesting. There was a lot of different people and they were noticeable. Uh, we as Westerners have our peculiarities uh and Southerners have their peculiarities and Boston folks uh, it was very interesting to see that uh hodgepodge of people here at that time. ANY THOUGHTS ABOUT MAGNITUDE OF THIS? Well yes, well I think one of the main things was the, number one in my estimation is the area that was necessary to build it and the availability of a securing that, you know, for the government. They had its, there’s a lot of land that’s been taken out of normal service and put in to the uh, to the nuclear age so to speak. And uh, another thing is the uh, uh dedication to the people that were recruited. There was a lot of a lot of know-how that was that was looked for from the Dupont people in Salt Lake and other areas uh, Denver, the Denver people - a lot of them came up here. The, I think it was just a matter of all those things coming together in the right area and with the right people at the head of it that made it possible. MAYBE GREATER THAN PUTTING MAN ON MOON. Well uh, certainly it has had more impact on the people in this uh world than the man going on the moon so far now eventually, I don’t know maybe another 50, 80 years the uh that something from that feat will evolve. But, to date in my book it’s much it’s much bigger than that. END Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:51:30 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Ralph Sansom Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Ralph Sansom for the B Reactor Museum Association. Sansom was a Process Operator at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 8/8/1992 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc06be6f8df5a0d48afba411c20386596.MP3 54c7855ab5c96e0861e4cb60c0b500a9 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Gene Weisskopf Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Warren H. Sevier Location The location of the interview Home of Warren H. Sevier Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Interview of Warren H. Sevier on audio tape (not video) at his Home in Richland, WA July 13, 2000 Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA Keywords: “200 Area”, instruments, 1950 [SIDE ONE] WEISSKOPF: Today is July 13th and we are with Warren Sevier in Richland, that is S-E-V-I-E-R, right? SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Okay and I guess where I’d like to start is maybe a little background about like what you were starting with what brought you to Hanford. SEVIER: Okay, I worked for an instrument company back east and started looking around for a job and this was advertised in the Cleveland papers, so I submitted an application and here I am. WEISSKOPF: Was the job highly tuned to what you were doing or…? SEVIER: I was working for an instrument company and the job was instrument technicians. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Why were they advertising in Cleveland do you think? SEVIER: I don’t know. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: At that time, the previous fall, they’d had a lay off here. They laid off a lot of people and then with the new plants coming on like the reactors and REDOX and uranium plant they needed more people, so they went across country looking for people. WEISSKOPF: So what time of year do you think it was that you saw the ad? SEVIER: It had to be during the summer. WEISSKOPF: Of 1950? SEVIER: 1950, right. WEISSKOPF: Somewhere in ’50. SEVIER: And I came here in October of 1950. WEISSKOPF: Were you married then or have kids or anything? SEVIER: No, I was single then. WEISSKOPF: So it was pretty easy to pick up and move. SEVIER: It was yes, um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Was the pay better than what you were getting or what was the reason? SEVIER: Oh yeah, it was a factory job where I was working. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: And I wanted to work in a field as a field engineer. At that time, they had a Cadet Engineering course and I was scheduled to take it. Every once in awhile somebody from the shop would be qualified enough to take it but management decision came down that no one else would be taking the course in the future without a degree and I didn’t have that. WEISSKOPF: Okay, right. SEVIER: And so that’s when I started looking for another job. WEISSKOPF: And did they pay your way to come out for an interview or how did that work? SEVIER: No, I submitted an application and I guess they gave me the job. There was some correspondence back and forth of course. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. Any negotiation about salary or did they just tell you what it was going to pay? SEVIER: No, they told me what it was. WEISSKOPF: Was it a step up? SEVIER: Oh yeah, from factory work? WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Great. SEVIER: What I was doing in the factory was assembling instruments and calibrating ‘em. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. What kind of instruments were they? SEVIER: They were for powerhouse type, temperature, pressure… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: …flow. WEISSKOPF: All of which they had out here right? SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: Somewhere or another, okay. So you picked up and moved out. Did you know where Pasco and Richland were? Were you familiar with the territory? SEVIER: I had been on the West Coast when I was sailing in the merchant marine but I had never been. I worked for an Alaska steam ship one time but never in Seattle and I didn’t realize that there was deserts and dunes like everybody else. WEISSKOPF: Did you drive out here? SEVIER: Yes, um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So it must have been a little bit of a surprise when you found that you had arrived when you still didn’t look like you were in Washington. SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Where did you stay when you got here? SEVIER: They had dormitories. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: In Richland and I stayed in the men’s dorm. WEISSKOPF: About how long did that last? SEVIER: Let’s see…. WEISSKOPF: You got here in October. SEVIER: Yeah, I think it lasted till, well I stayed till ’52 till I got married. WEISSKOPF: Okay, so you stayed in the dorms for two years? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: And that was a normal thing to do? It wasn’t just for transient temporaries? SEVIER: Yeah there was 13, I think 13, and men’s dorms and I don’t know how many women’s dorms. WEISSKOPF: Okay. And did you start work immediately upon getting here? SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So, where was your first assignment? SEVIER: Well, in 700 Area Powerhouse. It still had some clearance, I think, to go through but anyway they had equipment from the company that I worked for and… WEISSKOPF: So you…yeah. SEVIER: …they wanted somebody to calibrate it. WEISSKOPF: I wonder if that’s why they were advertising in Cleveland. SEVIER: No, I don’t think so… WEISSKOPF: No? Okay. SEVIER: …I think their ad probably appeared all around the country, I think. WEISSKOPF: Right, right. Refresh my memory in the 700 Area Powerhouse, where was that? SEVIER: It was back of the 703 building, part of it is still there. It was in that open space where the bus terminal is now. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Where did that power go to, do you think? Steam or? SEVIER: It was steam and it took care of the office buildings, also I lived in those little apartments on George Washington Way and they were steam heated at the time. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So that was a pretty standard non-nuclear job then? SEVIER: Right, that was just until the clearance came though. WEISSKOPF: And for that job required no clearance…. SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: …and so how long were you there, do you think? A matter of weeks or months? SEVIER: Oh, just a few weeks. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Any problems getting clearance? SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. So where did you go after that? SEVIER: Went to the 200 Areas. WEISSKOPF: Okay, in power or? SEVIER: In instruments. See they had a separate instrument division. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: They were set up with different kinds of divisions, there was separation division and so forth. Reactor had one division and separation, 200 Area separation and metal prep was 300. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum, all had their own separate instrument people? SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: Um-hum, but as a group we, most of us, belonged to the Instrument Society. WEISSKOPF: Right. Did you ever have meetings on campus amongst all of you or did you go to classes that would have mixed people from all areas? SEVIER: Yeah I went to classes, right. They had classes for the people that came in here were either electronic or pneumatic technicians. I was classified as pneumatic so we had a school in White Bluff’s, in a warehouse in White Bluff’s, and we had both pneumatic and electronic people in there and they were from all the areas. So I think the school lasted probably about…oh six months if I remember correctly. WEISSKOPF: Cause an awful lot of your instruments would have overlapped with everybody elses. SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: And I presume that…were there standards that were used throughout the site? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Was there competition among you guys and the 100 Area instrument people or…. SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: …didn’t really know what they were doing? SEVIER: No, no problem there. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. But you did share information? SEVIER: Oh yes, um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. So when you were in instruments in the 200 Areas were you more narrow than the entire both 200 Areas or for some aspect of them? SEVIER: Oh yeah both. I worked in T plant… WEISSKOPF: Were you assigned to T plant, or that was just one of the buildings you took care of? SEVIER: No, I was assigned to T Plant and also the tank farms one period. Then I was in a group that had the powerhouse and the remote weather instruments. WEISSKOPF: Right, did you ever have to climb the weather tower? SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Was there an elevator or walk up? SEVIER: They put an elevator in there later I think. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Yeah I did. There was no elevator at first. WEISSKOPF: You had to climb up? SEVIER: Yeah, one time we changed all the thermocouples or _____(sounds like thermones) I’m sorry…on the various stages where they measured temperature and uh…. WEISSKOPF: You had to work on the outside of the tower or how secure was it? SEVIER: Oh you could reach from the tower. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Huh. So SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: And over, so what was your span of time dealing in the 200 Areas do you think? For the various jobs you had there. SEVIER: Oh, for my whole career, just about. WEISSKOPF: Was it? Okay. SEVIER: I think so. WEISSKOPF: Which went until when? SEVIER: ’88. WEISSKOPF: Okay. 38 years. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: I even got a 35-year watch. WEISSKOPF: A watch? SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Rockwell. It is kind of funny, you know, you work for all these various contractors at the same job essentially, essentially like I was a Project Engineer for General Electric Arco. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: Rockwell, and then of course I retired from Westinghouse. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. Did retirement work out okay after all those transitions? SEVIER: Oh yeah, fine. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. Cause I know that was always something that it depended on who you were working for. SEVIER: I worked a little longer. I was going to retire when I was 65 and I worked into the next year because I was upgrading the railroad as a Project Engineer. That was one of the projects they had and they wanted to finish that before I retired, so I did. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: I worked maybe in to January or February or something like that. WEISSKOPF: I guess the part I am interested in the most right now is T Plant specific work…. SEVIER: Okay. WEISSKOPF: …and I guess what kind of clearance did you need for that versus other places? SEVIER: I think, you didn’t, you just needed just secret clearance, I’m not sure. WEISSKOPF: Was it? SEVIER: I’m not sure. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. SEVIER: I had TS clearance because I worked sometimes once and awhile in the 2, 3, 4, 5. WEISSKOPF: TS, was that higher… SEVIER: Top secret. WEISSKOPF: What was Q level? SEVIER: Q was normal I think. WEISSKOPF: That was just the basic. SEVIER: Yeah, Q. WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay but you had a higher one. SEVIER: Well later I did for working in the metal prep building. WEISSKOPF: Right, right. So when do you think you went to T Plant? Was that early on? SEVIER: Yeah I think so. That would be…. WEISSKOPF: In ’51 or? SEVIER: It had to be in ’51. WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay. Was that your first assignment in the separations area, actually working on the separations process? SEVIER: Working in one of the process buildings? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Yeah, um-hum WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay. SEVIER: Because before that we had the powerhouse and the tank farms, well the tank farms I worked in and powerhouse, tank farms, and the weather instruments. Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Followed that, or… SEVIER: Well that was before I went into T Plant I think. WEISSKOPF: that quickly? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: You went into T Plant within the year of getting here… SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: …but you worked in all those other places too? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: One group had it all, had the three assignments. One group took care of the powerhouses, the tank farms, and the remote instrument groups, operative. WEISSKOPF: And so you weren’t stuck in one building all day obviously…. SEVIER: No, no. WEISSKOPF: …the assignments came up and they would move you around. SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: So what were you doing at T Plant when you first got there? SEVIER: I worked as an instrument technician. WEISSKOPF: Which meant you could go anywhere in the building to work on instruments? SEVIER: Oh yeah, um-hum. WEISSKOPF: How many of you were there? SEVIER: Gee I don’t know, maybe counting the shift people, probably 10 in a group. WEISSKOPF: 10 instrument people? SEVIER: Instrument people yeah. WEISSKOPF: On any one shift or through the entire, all shifts. SEVIER: For the entire thing. WEISSKOPF: So there might be two or three. SEVIER: One man on a shift. See we were working six days a week. So short change was a matter of a few hours. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: But I didn’t work shift there I worked days but I worked shift later at REDOX. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: When they started up REDOX. WEISSKOPF: Everything they did at T Plant was remote controlled, so I presume that instruments were as critical as instruments can ever get. SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: Were you sort of on emergency call and when things came up you had to get to ‘em right away. SEVIER: Yeah, of course as I say they had shift coverage so they had to have a man there all the time. WEISSKOPF: But, was it frequently, would the process stop until you guys fixed it? SEVIER: No, because it was batch. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: They get in to the process, I mean start and stop. I’m not to sure… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: But it was a batch process. WEISSKOPF: People weren’t yelling at you continually about holding up the process. SEVIER: Oh no. WEISSKOPF: Did you know much about the process while you were working there? SEVIER: Not too much because it was a no no to read run books and things like that. WEISSKOPF: The logs. SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. SEVIER: You get caught reading those and you get a little lecture but nobody read ‘em because really…if you were a chemist or something it might be fine but… WEISSKOPF: Right, right otherwise it would be boring reading. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever have to dress up and go in the canyon to do instruments? SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: How often was that? Weekly or every now and then? SEVIER: No it wasn’t very often. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: We had one project I remember, when they sent the slugs over from the 100 Areas they were in water and it was always a problem sending the cask cars back empty because they wouldn’t have the heat anymore and they would freeze up. WEISSKOPF: Oh in the winter time? SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Really? SEVIER: So what they were trying to do was establish a point where they did not need the water to cool the slugs. WEISSKOPF: Oh. SEVIER: So what they did is there was a swimming pool, what they call a swimming pool, a big pool in T Plant and they would bring a basket of slugs in and put it down in there and then we would put thermocouples in amongst the slugs and then we get out of there and they would pull it out and put it up on deck and watch the temperature. If it got to hot they would put it back in. They wanted to see how long it would take for the green slugs to cool down enough so that they wouldn’t need the water coming over. WEISSKOPF: They wanted to find out if they needed it coming over from the reactors. SEVIER: From the reactor with the slugs. See the slugs… WEISSKOPF: Okay… SEVIER: …provided heat. WEISSKOPF: They weren’t set up at the reactor to do these kinds of measurements. SEVIER: Apparently not WEISSKOPF: It was easier to do it at your place. SEVIER: It was easier to do with the swimming pool there… WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Or the pool rather WEISSKOPF: Okay, so they’d measure the temperature in the water and out of the water and… SEVIER: Mostly out of the water, pull it out and let it heat up and then established a point where it safe to ship it without water so they wouldn’t freeze up in the winter. I mean that’s just one… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: …one little thing. WEISSKOPF: Why didn’t they just empty the water out after taking the fuel out of the cask car? SEVIER: I’m not sure. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: I was thinking about that. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. So what they wanted to do was ship it over without water in the cask car. SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: And that was one of the times you had to suit up… SEVIER: Yep. WEISSKOPF: …then be out there. Where the heck were you when they were lifting fresh fuel out of the swimming pool. SEVIER: Oh no you don’t get it. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: You get out of it. You don’t stay in the canyon. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. And were they, so you put the thermocouple down in the water while it was safe to do so? SEVIER: In the basket, Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: Slugs were in a basket and you put the thermocouple down in there with tongs. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: And then… WEISSKOPF: You’d leave at that point. SEVIER: …leave right. WEISSKOPF: And the crane operator… SEVIER: Of course the wire is hooked up and so forth. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: The crane operator would then pull it out and put it up on deck and then they would watch the temperature if it got too hot to go back in the pool. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So you were looking down in the cell then. You were working down in, or you know looking over the edge. SEVIER: _____ (unclear) the pool. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Was it big? SEVIER: Oh yeah, it was a big pool WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. How many buckets were down there when you were doing this? SEVIER: Oh, this was just the one bucket. WEISSKOPF: Just for the test? SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. SEVIER: I think it would have been too hot with others. WEISSKOPF: And they tended to have redundancy in instruments so if something did go out they could continue the process? SEVIER: I think so in a way. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: But with the batch process of course you could always stop. WEISSKOPF: At any given point. SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Where did you tend to, did you spend, where did you spend most of your time dealing with instruments, what part of the building? SEVIER: In the gallery, the operating gallery… WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: …that’s where your readout instruments are. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: And it would be a matter of routine calibration. SEVIER: Preventative… WEISSKOPF: According to a schedule? SEVIER: …yeah maintenance… WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Preventative maintenance. WEISSKOPF: Did that include like the big scales they had. SEVIER: Yeah we had a scale man. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: I worked with him sometimes, everybody, he took care of the scales there and also the railroad scales. Riverland, which is where the rails used to come in. They had scales there. I remember going over there one day with him. Then, let’s see…. WEISSKOPF: So, there was always, everyday if there were no problems you still had work to do everyday… SEVIER: Yeah, routine, oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: …calibrating routine work. How often were there problems where you had to stop what you were doing and go fix something? Was it frequent or infrequent? SEVIER: I would say infrequent. WEISSKOPF: Just every now and then? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever go up in the crane operator’s cabin? SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? While it was running or? SEVIER: The periscopes belonged to the instrument groups. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. SEVIER: But we had, there was a specialist in the 300 Area that took care of the periscopes but we might go with him you know and help out. WEISSKOPF: While they were working? Or just during off hours would you be up there? SEVIER: Oh off hours, WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh. SEVIER: Cause you couldn’t have any cells open or anything. Even though you were behind a concrete wall. WEISSKOPF: Right. Cause, oh you were working on the outside on the periscopes themselves. SEVIER: Periscopes, right. WEISSKOPF: Right, okay. Was there TV installed at that point? SEVIER: No, that was too early. They put TV on at PUREX, the first ones, and that didn’t work too well at first, the first TV’s. But the PUREX were the first application. WEISSKOPF: Okay. You don’t remember any TV screens inside the crane at the T Plant. SEVIER: No, not at T, not then no. WEISSKOPF: So suiting up was sort of a normal thing to do? Not frequent maybe. SEVIER: No, it wasn’t frequent, no. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Usually it was pretty well organized. WEISSKOPF: But weren’t the instruments, the other ends of the instruments were all in the cells right? SEVIER: The sensing elements? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: And what would you do if something went out in one of the dissolvers? Or you know… SEVIER: Oh they probably, they were on jumpers so the crane operator would take them out. WEISSKOPF: You would take the whole thing out? SEVIER: And conceivably it would be hot so they would bury it and you’d have a replacement one in which _____ (unclear). WEISSKOPF: And were you the one who would install you know a thermocouple or something in a jumper? SEVIER: In a jumper, yeah, you wouldn’t build a jumper but you would put the thermocouple in. WEISSKOPF: Where would you go to do that? SEVIER: Up at the maintenance shop where they…. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: ...built the jumpers. WEISSKOPF: So they would simply have an order for that and you’d go in and they’d tell you put it in there. SEVIER: No, sometimes they had spares depending on the instrument. WEISSKOPF: Was it all pretty well set up and easy to do or was there still lots of jury-rigging or making fit or something like that? SEVIER: No, I thought it was pretty well thought out, planned before. WEISSKOPF: You guys weren’t changing things, improving, upgrading all time, where you had to constantly fine tune it? SEVIER: No I don’t think so, not in that sense. WEISSKOPF: And the instruments in the gallery was like hundreds of yards of instruments… SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: .Did you understand, I guess most of them were repeated instruments though right? There was a finite number of types of instruments. SEVIER: Yeah, they could have weight factors, BG, and temperatures… WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: …pressures. WEISSKOPF: Microphones. SEVIER: They had microphones yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: I thought that was a pretty real black and white way of finding out if something was working. SEVIER: Yeah, you could hear it. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah, real basic. So if you had training or experience on any one of those you could go down the isle and find them all up…. SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: …and down the operating gallery. SEVIER: And then the radiation instrumentation. They were at usually Beckman’s. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: They’re pretty standard. The weight factor and that was usually a ring balance and temperature was usually oh, Honeywell or somebody like that, Brown. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. All standard equipment kind. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh. Did radiation ever interfere with some of the instruments? I know when they first were building Hanford that was an issue with any materials, is how would heavy radiation effect the materials. Did it have any effect on instruments, where you guys had to take that into account? SEVIER: No, I don’t think so. It did on, I remember, on periscopes in the tank farm. WEISSKOPF: For looking into tanks? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: So it effected the glass or? SEVIER: No the light, we’d have to change out the light bulb, and that was _____ (unclear) WEISSKOPF: Oh yeah. Do you know a guy named Bill Painter? SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: He told me a long story once about being involved in a crew where they had to pull the light thing out. SEVIER: Yep, everybody gets a few seconds. WEISSKOPF: And they all got dosed and they…yeah, yeah. SEVIER: Quick turn on the _____ (sounds like light) thing and then get out of there. WEISSKOPF: So were you involved in that from an instrumentation perspective? SEVIER: Yeah, that’s when I was in the tank farm group, he was probably in the same group at the same time. WEISSKOPF: Okay, and that was just one sort of, not odd, but you know something that came up that you had to deal with. SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: And that was just the light bulbs? SEVIER: Um-hum in that case, yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Sometimes when they were sluicing and they’d hit the periscope with the sluice uh, you know… WEISSKOPF: Right. SEVIER: …and then the bulb would just burn out I guess. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. Wow. So, but back at T plant the radiation, you never found yourself having to add a shield or something…. SEVIER: No, hum-uh. WEISSKOPF: …in order to deal with that, there were all already had been proven…I guess…in the previous few years. Did you work, who took care of the instruments in the lab? SEVIER: We did. WEISSKOPF: Oh you did? SEVIER: Same groups. We had one man assigned to the lab at T plant and then when he needed help, you know, he would get others from the group. But he worked all the time, especially in the counting room. You know where they were counting samples all the time… WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: …that took a lot of time as far as one man, keeping one man busy, so… WEISSKOPF: Were there any unique instruments in the lab that you wouldn’t have found elsewhere in the building? SEVIER: I’m not sure. WEISSKOPF: Was there like chemistry instruments, like _____ (sounds like gastromatographs) or? SEVIER: No, mostly, for the most part they were counting samples, you know. Lets see, I was trying to think of what, no I can’t think of any… WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: …that would be special. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. What was the deal with the padlocks on the panels? SEVIER: You know the jet, so you couldn’t jet from one tank to another without, yeah they had padlocks on the jet controls. They were a wheel-type of thing that… WEISSKOPF: Simply before you could move from to one tank to another. SEVIER: Yeah we didn’t do that, of course the operators did that. WEISSKOPF: Right. And was that for every tank, was there like dozens of locks all the way down? SEVIER: Um-hum. Every panel board had three or four. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Depending on, you know that’s how they moved the material was they jetted it from one to another. WEISSKOPF: Jet being a substitute for a pump right? SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: And that is what you would see in the log book I guess? Is they’d get to a certain point and then they would check something and then say it’s okay to… SEVIER: I suppose, again I say we didn’t have, I didn’t have, I wasn’t privy to it… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: …looking at the log book so… WEISSKOPF: But it seems like if the only way they knew that things were working right and it was okay to jet it to the next tank was that the instruments were working right. SEVIER: That’s right. WEISSKOPF: Didn’t that kind of put a lot of pressure on the instrument people or was it just so well running that it wasn’t an issue. SEVIER: No, I think because of their experience they would know if something was a little off standard you know. For instance, if you started to jet from one to another and the weight factor didn’t increase in the tank you were jetting into…. WEISSKOPF: Right. SEVIER: ...or say it didn’t decrease in one, they would know right away. WEISSKOPF: Cause as soon as they had done a few runs they would have a… SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: …routine that they would know what it should be. SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Okay. What about in the electrical or the pipe gallery, did you ever go down there for instruments too? SEVIER: Oh yeah, Um-hum. There were thermocouples there. WEISSKOPF: Thermocouples down where? SEVIER: The wires came through the galleries. WEISSKOPF: Oh-oh-oh, right. SEVIER: For the cell temperatures and stuff. WEISSKOPF: So you might have to tap into those. SEVIER: Um-hum. Later on, I was Electrical Inspector and Instrument Inspector for 200 Areas for about 10 years so…of course that’s where I would get a little fuzzy as to what I did when, far as you know… WEISSKOPF: Right. SEVIER: ...cause I would have projects where we’d put in electric things but that was at a later period. WEISSKOPF: How about adding new instruments? Was there much of that going on? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: I said earlier improvements, but did they just find new ways to measure things or new instruments to use? SEVIER: Well no, because the new plants were coming up. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Okay. Here comes REDOX, see, which has automatic control. WEISSKOPF: So they never had to worry about making huge improvements at T plant because it did what it was supposed to do? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So you weren’t working with people to design new instruments to make it work better. SEVIER: Not then, later on. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Of course in the, most of the instrument projects later on I had. Where they’d upgraded. But uh…hey did you want, excuse me did you want some coffee? WEISSKOPF: I don’t think I want any coffee thank you, once sec, I’m going to turn the tape over. SIDE TWO WEISSKOPF: Okay it’s working again. How about just generalized things like what was the most interesting part of the job when your dealing with instruments? SEVIER: Well I don’t know, probably getting your calibration to come out, I don’t know. WEISSKOPF: That was the most satisfying part of the job? SEVIER: I think so, right. WEISSKOPF: Cause you were calibrating all the time? SEVIER: Um, part, yeah part of the time you were doing that right. I don’t think all of the time. WEISSKOPF: And if it didn’t calibrate, that’s where your skill came in? SEVIER: Start over and fix it. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, was that the most difficult part of the job too? SEVIER: Um let’s see, the most difficult part of the job was working shift I guess. WEISSKOPF: Oh, you mean like graveyard? SEVIER: Well, on a six day week I think you had, what 12 hours off between one of the shifts. When they had what they call a short change and a long change. Everybody in the plant was working these hours six days a week. WEISSKOPF: So what was the routine, what was the schedule? Give or take. SEVIER: Well, let’s see, as I say between…I’ve forgotten now which one…but between one of the changes maybe when you went from days to the short change or long change, anyway you had only eight hours I think it is on one. Maybe it was more than that. WEISSKOPF: And you would move up a shift? SEVIER: No, no. You rotated. Yeah right, you did rotate. You change shifts which was difficult cause of sleeping problems. WEISSKOPF: Yep. I think since then they’ve learned to keep people on a shift longer right? SEVIER: Right. You can imagine going to sleep say at 8 o’clock in the morning one time, the next time maybe 4 o’clock and 5 o’clock or worse, normally in the evening and this gets to be a little confusing after awhile. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, right right. How many tools did you carry around with you? Would you do your calibration at the site of the instrument? SEVIER: Yes. WEISSKOPF: You wouldn’t take it out? Okay. SEVIER: Well you might, in some cases you might take it back to the shop and work on it. WEISSKOPF: Well how do you calibrate like a pH meter if its sensor is out in the canyon somewhere? SEVIER: Well you do some substitute voltage, or whatever it was. WEISSKOPF: With a separate wire going to the instrument? SEVIER: Um-hum. In the case of weight factors and things like that you’d have manometers and in the case of temperature you’d have resistance boxes or voltage, things to measure voltage for the thermocouples. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Or substitute. You might want to substitute the voltages to calibrate. WEISSKOPF: And on any given day would you go down the line and do only one type of instrument? What was the schedule for the calibrating? SEVIER: I’m not sure on routine. You had a routine, preventative maintenance. WEISSKOPF: But was it based on type of instrument where you’d go down and do all the thermometers this week… SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: …or by panel board? SEVIER: _____ (unclear) panel boards probably. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Course it had to correlate with the operation of the process. WEISSKOPF: Oh, so it wouldn’t interfere. SEVIER: You couldn’t very well take an instrument out of service to calibrate it when your operating… WEISSKOPF: Right. SEVIER: …so it had to be coordinated. WEISSKOPF: And you then had a finite amount of time to get it done. SEVIER: Yeah, Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: But it sounded like time pressure wasn’t a big part of the job. SEVIER: I don’t think so. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, you weren’t under the gun… SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: …to keep the instruments going. SEVIER: No, you didn’t have time study per se, which I never did like with, when I worked in the factory that’s what you had was time study. You’d have, you know, so much time to do a certain operation. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Of course, you get energetic and work hard and get a little ahead then you could coast a little. WEISSKOPF: Right. How about at the tank farm, when you shifted to that aspect did the job change drastically or just the environment in which you worked? SEVIER: Well, when I was in the tank farm we had three things we could powerhouse, tank farms, and weather instruments. So we might depending on the need, we might work on any one of those three phases. WEISSKOPF: And where were you based? What was your home office? SEVIER: Oh we had an office in a, like oh in the change, end of the change…trying to remember…I don’t know, corner of the machine shop we had an office in the 200 Areas, 200 West Area. WEISSKOPF: And were you doing tank farms for both areas? SEVIER: Lets see, did we do both? I don’t think so. I think we just did the west areas. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Later on we did both though, seems to me. WEISSKOPF: And were the tanks filling up at that point? How were they dealing with the amount of room they had left? Was that part of your job? SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: Was that part of somebody’s job as far as… SEVIER: That would be process operation. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, so how they were using or anything else didn’t really effect what you did. SEVIER: No, not, hum-um. WEISSKOPF: Was there looking for leaks? Was that part of the instrumentation? SEVIER: As far as… WEISSKOPF: What you guys were maintaining. SEVIER: …tanks and that? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Yeah, well we had projects where we drilled wells around the tank farm. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: Monitoring wells. WEISSKOPF: And put instruments down them? SEVIER: Oh yeah. WEISSKOPF: Or would they take samples out? SEVIER: Well, if you went to the water table they would take samples out but I think the monitoring wells were later on. WEISSKOPF: And did they have array of instruments down inside the tanks then? SEVIER: Let’s see what was in the tanks? I guess there were dip tubes for level and BG and I’d imagine temperature… WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: …and let’s see, how did they measure radiation? Probably at a chamber. WEISSKOPF: Inside? SEVIER: Not in a tank itself but maybe in the well down alongside the tank. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. And how often would you have to suit up and be on top of the thanks? SEVIER: Not too often. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: They had a control house where the read out instrumentation was and a lot of your work was in the control house or instrument house. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever have tasks where there was a real short amount of time they allowed you to work on it. SEVIER: Well changing light bulbs was the shortest. WEISSKOPF: And that was because the lights and the camera had been put down inside the tank and were contaminated, not wet with it probably they weren’t in the liquid they were just above it. SEVIER: They were above it, but they might be, sometimes they got hit by sluicing cause at that time they were sluicing the tanks for uranium recovery so… WEISSKOPF: So the sluicing they were doing wasn’t anything unknown, it was just the normal routine for getting the liquids out. SEVIER: Right. WEISSKOPF: Changing a light bulb, not real romantic if you ask me, not too exotic. So what was your job while they were doing that? How were you involved with changing light bulbs or how were you involved with the camera and everything? SEVIER: Well not… WEISSKOPF: You went there anyway, did they call you in for it? SEVIER: Yeah, it took a number of people to do this. You know, someone to start it and then the next one would maybe do it, take three or four people to change the bulb. WEISSKOPF: And was it just a normal bulb or a spot, or? SEVIER: It was probably a spot _____ (sounds like involved). WEISSKOPF: But it screwed in light a regular light bulb? SEVIER: Right, um-hum. WEISSKOPF: And one person couldn’t take 15-20 seconds to unscrew it? SEVIER: No, it would take too long. WEISSKOPF: Wow. SEVIER: So it was really short. WEISSKOPF: And they called you in simply to help change the light bulbs. SEVIER: Well I was part of that group. WEISSKOPF: Okay. And did you use up that week’s allotment of dose? SEVIER: Probably. WEISSKOPF: Cause Bill was mentioning something about sitting around not being able to do anything for awhile after some job like that. SEVIER: Well we always could work out on a cold side though. WEISSKOPF: Well evidently he didn’t that time. SEVIER: Oh. WEISSKOPF: That was one aspect, one time in his job where they had to sit around for a day waiting for something else to come along but changing light bulbs does not sound real exciting. SEVIER: He came along a little bit later then, I think, if I remember right. So maybe they changed their method of operating or something. WEISSKOPF: Well what he was talking about was exactly the same thing you were… SEVIER: Or maybe they gave him more exposure then they gave… WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. SEVIER: …in that case they would probably want to keep him from… WEISSKOPF: Do you remember what your retirement dosage was? Your lifetime dosage? SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: Not to high. SEVIER: I don’t think it was too high. WEISSKOPF: Being exposed was not a normal part of your job. SEVIER: No, because later, see later on I did a lot of…oh what would you call it…office type work. WEISSKOPF: Right. SEVIER: Cause I wrote instruction manuals and I remember I taught a class to the operators, instrument class at PUREX and a fella named Bill _____ (sounds like Schillnik) and I set up a preventative maintenance file for PUREX and then I worked as Project Engineering, so you see…and then being, I was an electrical and instrument inspector, you know, as I say for 10 years and most of that was not hot stuff that was new. You know, new buildings, new _____ (unclear) so.. WEISSKOPF: Was the instrumentation at REDOX much more exciting than it was at T plant? SEVIER: Oh yeah, it was, had automatic control there instead of batch. WEISSKOPF: So the continuous process was not just monitored by instruments but controlled by it. SEVIER: Controlled by it, um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Where at T plant it was all padlocks basically. SEVIER: Um-hum, yeah batch. WEISSKOPF: And switch on a centrifuge, switch it off, entirely manually controlled. SEVIER: That centrifuge reminds me you know, my daughter was about yeh high, they had an open house and they had set a cell up at U plant with a centrifuge and we went in there. You know we could go in and look down in there and the next day no more kids. So that was, I think we must have went in on a Saturday and then Sunday morning there was no more children, because it was kinda unusual. She had been in plants where, seen inside of a canyon building where a lot of people couldn’t go. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, you can’t now. SEVIER: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, they don’t like hardly anybody in there. That’s funny. What about, the job wasn’t all that hazardous because you weren’t normally going into the canyon or places like that. SEVIER: Not for me because a lot of portion of my career out there was kind of office work type thing, clean…clean work, new work. WEISSKOPF: Were you at T plant when they stopped using it? SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: You had left already. SEVIER: I went down to REDOX before the building was finished because we were in a Quonset hut between REDOX and U plant or a temporary building anyway and working on the instrument instruction manuals till we went into the building. WEISSKOPF: Manuals for people to use them or to use ‘em. SEVIER: Use them to maintain the instrumentation. WEISSKOPF: Okay. To maintain them, not for the operators? SEVIER: No… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: …in that case it was for maintenance. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, Okay. SEVIER: Later on I worked on operating manuals for the operators but that was for PUREX. WEISSKOPF: And were you doing it from your instrumentation background or just because you understood the process? How did you get involved in writing operator’s manuals? SEVIER: Not operator’s manuals, these were instrument manuals to educate the operators. WEISSKOPF: Oh-oh-oh right. SEVIER: Say that you were a new operator and you’d say “well what’s weight factor?” see…. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Well you get to _____ (sounds like write up) in a manual with diagrams showing what weight factor is, what it does and so forth or what’s, you know, anything? What’s BG? What’s, anyhow, that’s what the manual is. WEISSKOPF: And it might be a paragraph or it might be five pages, but it was just to explain the instrument and how it worked. SEVIER: You know, like a _____ (sounds like lucidive) about that thick. But anyway, just educate the operators to how the instrumentation did work. WEISSKOPF: Because again instrumentation was the whole thing. It’s like flying an airplane blind. I mean they had to rely on instruments for virtually everything. SEVIER: Yeah, because there was no other way. Yeah, right. WEISSKOPF: Because the only visible part of it was when the crane operator lifted out a bucket, put it in the dissolver… SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: … after that everything else was via instruments. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: And in the operating gallery with all those gage ports down there, how many people would be standing operating them? How many operators would be in there? SEVIER: I don’t know, maybe one or two a panel, I don’t know. WEISSKOPF: Oh, at a panel? SEVIER: Or a section. WEISSKOPF: So there would be quite a few people all the way down at least? SEVIER: Yeah, there may be, depending on the process of course. We’re talking about T plant? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Okay. We might have one or two panels, sections, then again depending on where they were in the process too I guess. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Did you ever do any instrumentation for the stack gases going out? Any of the monitoring? SEVIER: Yeah. I was, was it 291 building? WEISSKOPF: Right, I think so. SEVIER: Yeah. Yeah we had instruments in that building, stack. WEISSKOPF: And that was, was that a room where you had to suit up and spend a little time? SEVIER: No, oh yes you did, to get in there? I think you did, yeah. Right. Going way back. WEISSKOPF: And they had filters in at that point right? By the time you got there… SEVIER: Yeah, prior to my coming here was when they had a problem with the…and then they put in sand filters. But I guess they started, I’m not sure but I think they operated before without sand filters. WEISSKOPF: Right. I think when they started it up it had no filters at all. SEVIER: Right. And then just before I got here they put in the sand filters. WEISSKOPF: And then later on they went to the silver, I forget what it was called. SEVIER: Silver nitrate? WEISSKOPF: Yeah, was a step up. SEVIER: Yeah, that was in the building wasn’t it? Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Did they have instruments in the filter? SEVIER: In the filter? WEISSKOPF: Yeah, down in the sand? SEVIER: I don’t think so. I think what they do is measure differential across the various parts. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: Yeah. Get the drop across the filters. WEISSKOPF: Coming in and going out? SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Okay. I haven’t read yet but what did they do after a period time of using that sand? Would they start a new one or? SEVIER: I don’t think so. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: They were big. I don’t think they did anything about it. WEISSKOPF: And a lot of the stuff that went through it was fairly short-lived right? The iodine. SEVIER: Iodine…yeah… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: …short half-life. WEISSKOPF: Did you do instrumentation…what am I think of? The rough instrumentation that would just be checking motors and heat on bearings and things like that? Was that part of the instrumentation? SEVIER: Sometimes. We…usually…most that went to the electricians. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: But we might measure bearings and fan bearings and stuff like that. We had thermocouples on the fans…I remember on the bearings. WEISSKOPF: Oh, to see if they were getting hot or not. SEVIER: Um-hum. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: Maybe I had, I don’t know if they had an inner lock to shut ‘em down, I don’t remember now, _____ (sounds like uloises). WEISSKOPF: Did you ever get called up in the middle of the night to come out? SEVIER: No. WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. SEVIER: And that, again, was because they had shift coverage. I worked shift, but that was during the startup of REDOX. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SEVIER: I didn’t like it. WEISSKOPF: What did you mean working shift, versus what? What do you call it otherwise? SEVIER: Working days. WEISSKOPF: Oh, shift meaning off or normal hours. SEVIER: Yeah right. And again, because it was six to eight weeks…and then let’s see how did…I forget exactly how they work but anyway you work more than a week before you had time off. They had what they call long change and people liked that. I think you had about five days off and people take off on trips. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: And like everybody here they came from some other place at that time. We’re not born here. WEISSKOPF: Nobody was born here, yeah. SEVIER: So they often liked it so they could go home or whatever they were going to do. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. What was the most troublesome instrument to work on do you think? The one that was either the hardest to work on or needed your attention the most. SEVIER: I don’t know. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? Nothing jumps out? SEVIER: Might be Ladoux Bells and powerhouse, steam flow meters and that, cause they had mercury in ‘em. WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. SEVIER: And you had piping on them where you had to hook your instruments to them. WEISSKOPF: The mercury is in the pump or in the meter? SEVIER: Mercury was a seal in the meter between the two pressures and the Ladoux Bell had a _____ (sounds like pravulet) inside of it which gave you a linear flow instead of a square root output. WEISSKOPF: Hmm. SEVIER: Because you know flow is related to square root, so in a way it extracts square root for you… WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SEVIER: …gives you linear. WEISSKOPF: Interesting. SEVIER: But they were sitting in…because of the big difference in pressure they were in mercury for a seal. WEISSKOPF: Why would, hmmm. SEVIER: The ring balances were…it was actually a ring that had mercury in it, but it moved, rotated on pivots. WEISSKOPF: Huh. And you said you liked to dabble with trinkets, were you a clock maker or a radio builder at home? SEVIER: No. Well I built radios yeah. WEISSKOPF: Yeah? Yeah, like from scratch? Or from Heathkit or ? SEVIER: Yeah, Heathkit and junk like that. WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh. Are they still around by the way? SEVIER: I don’t know. The last thing I bought from them was an electric filter for the furnace…. WEISSKOPF: Hmmm… SEVIER: …but that was quite awhile ago. WEISSKOPF: One thing I bought from them was in 1974 probably, was a windshield wiper variable speed edition. SEVIER: Yeah? WEISSKOPF: I was way ahead of my time. That was the only thing I ever built from them. I think one problem today is they probably cost more, so much more than just buying it off the shelf. SEVIER: Yeah, because of foreign inputs these things are real cheap. WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. I can just see…. SEVIER: I have that little digital camera there real cheap… WEISSKOPF: Um-hum, yeah…yeah. SEVIER: …and all kinds of things like that. WEISSKOPF: Let me turn this off for a minute. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:51:04 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 128kbps 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 Warren H. Sevier Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Warren Sevier for the B Reactor Museum Association. Sevier worked with specialized instrumentation in the 200 Area at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/12/2000 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa027ccd154b7f9885fe28294d8386005.MP3 34e4d4f3c18d3c8fbdcae90936b8fd55 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Alex Smith Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Gene Weisskopf Location The location of the interview At the home of Alex Smith's daughter in Richland, WA Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Interview of Alex Smith on audio tape (not video) at his Daughter’s Home in Richland, WA October 26, 1999 <h1>Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA</h1> WEISSKOPF: Today is October 27, 1999. And why don’t you give us your name and spell the last name. SMITH: Alex Smith, S-m-i-t-h. WEISSKOPF: Did anybody know you by a nickname when you worked here? SMITH: Smitty. WEISSKOPF: Smitty? Okay. SMITH: In the early days. Later on, they didn’t. WEISSKOPF: And why don’t you start out, let’s talk about what you were doing before you were assigned here and how you came to Richland. SMITH: I was working at Remington Arms in Salt Lake City making 30 and 50 caliber cartridges. And the first year in operation we made enough cartridges to shoot 200 rounds at every Axis shoulder and civilian. And we made so much, and there were three other plants besides the Salt Lake plant. And we drained all the coppers ‑‑‑ all the countries’ copper stockpile, eventually had to start drawing them from steel. Naturally, they were obsolete ammunition used in World War I, so a lot of them were never used after the first year, so they closed the Salt Lake plant down. WEISSKOPF: Where were the other two plants? SMITH: There was one in Kansas City and one in Oklahoma. And, of course, back in Remington Arms main plant. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So they were going to close the plant you were working in. SMITH: Yes. And since Remington Arms was a subsidiary of DuPont Company, and DuPont Company was doing construction of the plant at Hanford, those who wanted to go were given opportunities of being transferred up there on a job if they had qualifications of what they needed up there. So in a very short time after March or April sometime, 1943, by the time I got there in December the 9th they had assembled some 60,000 workers from every state in the union. At that time there were only 48 states. And they sent recruiters out all over. WEISSKOPF: How did they present the job to you before you went out? How did they tell you what it was? SMITH: They told us nothing. They told us ‑‑‑ the interviewer says ‑‑‑ he found out I had some machine shop experience, he said if we were to be called upon to design a shop ‑‑‑ of course, later on I could tell, after I saw the shop, I saw he was trying to get people who would know how to make a layout for mass production, to machine a product, is the way he put it, to set up the machinery. And he referred to most of it as carpenter machinery. Around the room, how you’d have it designed and have your assembly lines and machining lines to get the best results. That was about the only thing that he told me. I mean, anything that had any relation to the job I was to do. WEISSKOPF: And did that sound better than ‑‑‑ what was your other option, if you hadn’t taken him up on that? SMITH: He didn’t have one. He was specifically looking for somebody to work in the 101 Building, I suppose. WEISSKOPF: Okay. When did you have the interview versus actually arriving in Pasco? What was the time lag, do you think? SMITH: I was on my way in about three days. WEISSKOPF: Did you drive out? SMITH: No, they put us on a train. They paid our transportation. There was quite a ‑‑‑ I would say there were probably about 50 people came up with me. Some of them didn’t stay very long. Some of them left in a hurry. There was a ‑‑‑ the whole desert was torn up, had the first windstorm ‑‑‑ of course, this was the 9th of December, and it was cold. I remember we had what we called the cattle cars with a big semi trailer, and it had benches on either side, and the windows were all frosted up, you couldn’t see out. When we came through Richland, they had started constructing the houses, but you couldn’t see anything. You could try to scrape a thing. And at the time I came here, construction people, the engineers and people, they were DuPont employees, would get a house in probably three or four months. They had top priority, before us. The thing went along, and they started building, they of course built three reactors first. But I guess as they knew more of what they were doing, they decided that they didn’t need that many, so they concentrated on B and finished it first. WEISSKOPF: And you got here in December of ‘43. SMITH: Yeah, December the 9th. I remember the date. WEISSKOPF: How many days later was it before you showed up on the job and they were ‑‑‑ SMITH: I showed up the next morning. And I was taken out to 101 Building. I already apparently had enough clearance, because there was no delay in getting in. WEISSKOPF: You mean the basic clearance. SMITH: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Not a secrecy ‑‑‑ you didn’t have a real clearance? SMITH: No. WEISSKOPF: But you were good enough for the job. They didn’t have to investigate further. SMITH: Yeah. Well, I think they ‑‑‑ anybody that worked in the arms department had to have some kind of clearance. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SMITH: Had to pass a security test. Because they had gone out to people in high school, college, university. WEISSKOPF: Was the 101 Building up and running when you got there? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: It was producing already? SMITH: No, they had a ‑‑‑ yeah, they had one assembly line up. WEISSKOPF: And it was milling graphite? SMITH: Yes. It was very crude, and of course it wasn’t anything like the one we finished up with. I think there was ‑‑‑ it was two or three lines, I can’t remember for sure. WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you again: The 101 Building, at least then, was only used for milling graphite? SMITH: That’s all. WEISSKOPF: That was the primary purpose. Okay. SMITH: Storage. Had a big storage area for raw graphite that come in unmachined. WEISSKOPF: And when you went in there, what did you do the first or second day? How did they orient you to ‑‑‑ SMITH: Well, that was in the engineering department. It was a separate ‑‑‑ they worked ‑‑‑ they reported directly to DuPont. As I remember this organization, DuPont was the construction engineer, and they furnished all the design, and the equipment, and the engineering reports, write-ups and everything, how things were to be done. But this Washington, being a strong union state, why, each craft worked for their own particular craft and they were hired out of the union hall. And there was, for example, Newberry, Chandler and Lord (phonetic)* was the electrical contractor. I can’t remember the pipefitters. But the millwrights of course was another contractor. They all reported to their separate supervision. It was a very cumbersome organization and hard to work, but the very fact that it was a war, it would never work in peacetime, but the very fact that people loyalty was at stake, and everybody cooperated and bent backwards to try to get along and work the best they could. And DuPont Company itself, they were a pretty smart outfit. They’d been through a lot of wars, ever since the Civil ‑‑‑ well, Revolution, I guess. WEISSKOPF: So what were you doing the second day that they showed you the room, the building? SMITH: I spent two or three days with engineers, going over the whole plan, showing us from the very beginning out to the raw storage shed place, and followed everything through. And I was going to be ‑‑‑ see, at that time they only had one shift. And I spent a week in orientation. And then I was put in charge of the swing shift. And, of course, I had a lot of people that knew what they were doing that worked on days. WEISSKOPF: Back then, if it wasn’t top secret, if you were to come home and describe to somebody what your job was, or what the purpose of the building was, how would you have described it? Secrecy didn’t matter, what was it that the building was doing that you were there to do? SMITH: We were there to machine graphite to a lot of different shapes and sizes to very precise dimensions. And we at that time knew nothing about what it was for, what we were doing. WEISSKOPF: Were you familiar with graphite at all before then? SMITH: Well, yes, in a way. My background was mining geology, and of course we had a lot to do with the raw materials and stuff like that. WEISSKOPF: And did you know you were on a war effort? That must have been pretty obvious. SMITH: Oh, yes. That was made very obvious. Everybody knew. WEISSKOPF: Have any clue what they were going to be using graphite for? SMITH: No. Not a clue. WEISSKOPF: Did you know how much was going to be run through there, the quantities? SMITH: No idea. At that point I had never seen a reactor, never seen the place it was going. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So they started you as the guy running the swing shift, you said? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: And what was that like the first few days that you did it? What was the routine? SMITH: Learning for several weeks. I had a lot of ‑‑‑ here again, everybody had the spirit of cooperation. There was no jealousy, no anything as far as the fact that the others had been here ‑‑‑ the only thing I could figure out was the others have been here long enough to make several mistakes, and I hadn’t, and that was the reason I got the job. Of course, the fact that I was a shift supervisor in the arms plant, I don’t know when that was. But I do know that I had a lot of good, intelligent individuals working for me, the engineers. A lot of them who weren’t engineers but were, you know, within the limits of their background and knowledge, they were doing engineering work. There was just nothing but good cooperation on their part to help me learn my job. WEISSKOPF: What were some of the things that you were told that were really, really important about the graphite? SMITH: Each piece of graphite has a particular place to go, so they have to ‑‑‑ each of them has to be accounted for, and we have to have a method, and they had already worked out this method. Apparently it was very much a success, because you can imagine what would happen if one of those pieces of graphite that was in the center of the pile was one that was supposed to have the receiver rod*, the pipe, tube, was in there, and you shoved that in the blank, in order to keep that place cool, they had no idea whether they were going to be able to do the job or not, but certainly they would never have started up if they discovered that that would happen. So everything had to be in place. WEISSKOPF: Did they give you a list of sizes and pieces? SMITH: Yes. They had drawings of everything. I can’t remember, but it was between two and three hundred different sizes and shapes of blocks. WEISSKOPF: And other than the sizes and shapes, what were the other things that they emphasized was critical about the job? SMITH: Well, like I say, those that required holes drilled the length of the block, which was ‑‑‑ was it three and a half or four feet long? WEISSKOPF: Four feet, I think. SMITH: Four? Yeah, four feet. WEISSKOPF: And you tempered the edges? SMITH: Yes, all had to be tempered. WEISSKOPF: And you didn’t know why you were doing that, it was just part of the specification? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Were there small pieces, too? SMITH: Yes, there were small, just two or three inches long, some block. It was different sizes. Mostly they were ‑‑‑ they weren’t much shorter than a foot, as I remember, make everything come out even, I guess. And then there was, over those blocks, there was blocks that had instrumentation that went into the center of the controls, and they were very special, too. WEISSKOPF: And you were milling them down to the finished size? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Till they were ready to be used? SMITH: Right. They were (inaudible)*. We had to stack them in very precise piles, all labeled, and they were to leave, to be loaded in a certain order, taken out. And one of the things that came up early on was the fact that we were ‑‑‑ we had practice runs with running the ones for 305, for the little reactor in 300 area. So we had a lot of practice in getting things done. Went out and laid that pile up. WEISSKOPF: You were doing that as well? SMITH: Yes. It was ‑‑‑ yeah. They had already ‑‑‑ if I remember right, they had already started shipping it out for the 300 area. It wasn’t very long till they had. WEISSKOPF: Before they laid the graphite in the B Reactor, I know they talked about they laid up like 10 or 15 rows to make sure it all was exact, and then they’d take it out and put it into the pile. Were they doing that at the 101 Building? SMITH: No. They didn’t do that on purpose out there, at 100-B. This is what I was going to tell you, that one of the sharp engineers that was there developed this method of measuring, so they didn’t have to ‑‑‑ they were going through before that calibrating everything, see? So in order ‑‑‑ this wouldn’t do in a mass production situation. So he had set up a machine and worked with that before it got up to speed and high production. He had this developed so he had sensors in three locations along the edge the length of the block. Three or four, depending on how long it was. And he could take this block and put it on a machine table, shoving it under those little lights on a screen ‑‑‑ I mean the sensors on a screen, it would position that when he shoved it under there. And that would tell us, if all the lights were green, it passed. If all the lights, or any one of them, was red, you had to pull it out and measure it by hand. WEISSKOPF: So instead of having to make a dozen different hand checks, you just shoved it in the box and it had ‑‑‑ SMITH: Shoved it under there. It was done on a machine table, and you just shoved it in. And of course then you had to pull it out and turn one over, because you had to have two dimensions, plus the length. So there were sensors on the length, too. So it measured the length and the two sides with one push, and then you pulled it out and shoved it back in again, turned it over 90, and shoved it back in again. If it passed all dimensions, you would send it out. Well, what we weren’t sharp enough to foresee was the fact that if every ‑‑‑ if one went through just a thousandth on the high side, you multiply that by 14... And, so, (inaudible)*. Anyway, the majority of it was on the high side, but it was all well within specification. WEISSKOPF: Let me rephrase that. Did specifications say plus or minus so many thousandths ‑‑‑ SMITH: Three-thousandths. WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ three thousandths of an inch, you expect them to average out. SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Some less, some more. But you’re saying they were all heading towards the plus side. SMITH: That’s right. So when we started to take them out, they rolled them out, take about 12 to lay them down in a pile ‑‑‑ that’s probably not the terminology that they used ‑‑‑ but anyway, that’s what we used. So by the time they worked up ‑‑‑ see, all the shielding block with the cooling water holes were already up to receive the aluminum ‑‑‑ what was that? The lining. Stainless steel. WEISSKOPF: The tubes? The fuel tubes were aluminum, you had 2,000 of them. SMITH: Yeah. I wasn’t sure about that aluminum. I thought surely they’d be stainless, but they were aluminum. WEISSKOPF: Had to be aluminum. Otherwise the stainless would have shut down the reaction too much, I think. SMITH: Is that a fact? Okay. All right, that’s why it was aluminum. All right. So when they shoved the aluminum tubes in, the 14th layer was the first one that had holes to receive the aluminum tubes, and they wouldn’t go in. WEISSKOPF: This was in the reactor itself? SMITH: Yeah. It wouldn’t go past the shielding form. So the first thing somebody thought of, of course, or everybody realized that there was no control over ‑‑‑ so ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you again: The first 14 rows up, the first row of holes for the process tubes, none of the tubes would go in? SMITH: No. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SMITH: It was just that close. It was very close. It couldn’t have been ‑‑‑ if you had ‑‑‑ say if it was just a thousandth, it would be 14 thousandths off. They had to fit. They had to fit precisely. There couldn’t be air space or anything between the graphite and the aluminum tube. WEISSKOPF: And that’s when they discovered that the error had been plus, plus, plus? SMITH: Yes. So we didn’t have to take it all out, but we had to take enough out ‑‑‑ and this is another thing, just keeping track of how ‑‑‑ they did a masterful job out there, and I don’t know how they did it, because I haven’t (inaudible)* ‑‑‑ of keeping the ‑‑‑ of taking it out, keeping it in order, and sending certain layers ‑‑‑ I don’t remember how many they sent back, but it couldn’t have been over two or three ‑‑‑ and machined enough out to bring them down off of those, to distribute the error as much as possible, but it was down in a zone where there was no action at all, and so apparently a few thousandths off didn’t matter. WEISSKOPF: And if the pile was ‑‑‑ what was it? ‑‑‑ 36 feet tall, and those blocks were about 4 inches, so that’s 3 blocks per foot, it was over 100 blocks tall. And they had to come out at the top, so that last process tube would go all the way through without binding or anything else. SMITH: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: That’s amazing. SMITH: And they worked out a system after that, after that for the other reactors ‑‑‑ of course, they had to account for it for the rest of these, because there was tubing that had to go up every so often. WEISSKOPF: Do you remember how you identified the blocks? When you were all finished with one, it met tolerance and you were done with it, and they stamped it, we saw them in the movie stamping it with an identifier, do you remember what those IDs were, letters or numbers were? SMITH: No. When you saw this, was this done ‑‑‑ you couldn’t stop them once they were all in this ‑‑‑ they had to be stamped before they were put in. WEISSKOPF: Oh. It looked like they were doing it at the very end. But they did put an identifying mark on them, didn’t they, at the pile, when they were laying it up, they’d know which block went where? SMITH: Normally it depends on position on the roof, or how they took it out. There was four ‑‑‑ well, I don’t remember (inaudible)*. WEISSKOPF: You wrapped them in paper when you were done? SMITH: No. WEISSKOPF: Just left them bare and stacked them? SMITH: We stacked them, but we covered them. We covered them all. They were always kept covered, and nobody was allowed in there. And, of course, there was no smoking in there, no chewing tobacco, or anything like that. WEISSKOPF: Right. What kind of clothing were you wearing while you were inside the building working? SMITH: Well, they all ‑‑‑ I wore my regular street clothes, but if I was out, went out into the graphite area, I put on a pair of coveralls. WEISSKOPF: It was separated from the rest of the building? SMITH: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Just sort of a clean room for its day? SMITH: Somebody’s sending a fax. WEISSKOPF: So you normally just wore a suit and tie, or how dressed up were you? SMITH: No, just casual clothes. See, it was too hot to do that. The only one I knew that wore a shirt was always the staff, he was the department manager, and he was the son of one of the DuPont engineers. One of the big shots. But he was sharp. He wasn’t there because of his ‑‑‑ it was because he did a good job. WEISSKOPF: How long do you think you were there milling, you know, working with the graphite? You started in December ‘43. SMITH: Fourteen months. WEISSKOPF: Really? So you did all three reactors, then? SMITH: Yes. I finished ‑‑‑ I was one of the last construction workers to leave. Because I wasn’t going to leave, and they kept me here as long as they could. And I was identifying equipment. All this equipment was needed elsewhere. Navy had first priority on it, and the Army had second, and DuPont had third. So we would get up ‑‑‑ and then there was other organizations lower than that. So you’d go out ‑‑‑ each morning I’d go into the office, receive a teletype from either Kansas City or some other plant, either someplace in ‑‑‑ mostly in Minnesota. I can’t remember where all the DuPont plants ‑‑‑ and they would tell me what they needed, describe it. And I’d go out searching the whole field for these. And I had tickets to put on there. Well, if it was somebody from the Navy or Army, they’d come along, they wanted to rip that ticket off. By the time I got a construction crew ready to go to load it on the freight car, why, it would be gone a lot of times. So I worked out ‑‑‑ of course, I being one of the ones that was there, the Navy and the Army personnel was a little arrogant about the things, and so they were very happy to accommodate me and let me know that they had ripped that off, so we’d load it on and take it. Told me that was legal. And I don’t know whether the Navy needed it worse than we did or not, but ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: So 14 months from December would be like February or March of ‘45? SMITH: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: All the reactors were up and running. SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: The whole plant was running at that point. Okay. And ‑‑‑ SMITH: Well, I don’t think ‑‑‑ well, they’d have to be. WEISSKOPF: Well, B Reactor started in September ‘44, about nine months or ten months after you started, and ‑‑‑ SMITH: It wasn’t very far behind. WEISSKOPF: No, a couple, few months. I think by March they were all up and running. SMITH: I can’t verify that one way or the other. WEISSKOPF: I’d have to look it up. So that was ‑‑‑ the last part of your job at the 101 Building was decommissioning it, getting rid of the milling equipment and everything got distributed to other people at other places. SMITH: Uh-huh. WEISSKOPF: And then where were you left after that was done? SMITH: Well, on my rounds around the plant I became associated, not friends but associated with the maintenance superintendent of 100-F. And we were on a first-name basis and everything. I told him I was wound up here, and they were looking for a place to either get rid of me, send me into the Army, or I wanted a job in operations. And obviously they had planned on three more reactors and two more separations plants, and they had one of the two built. They had four planned, and they only ever finished and operated two of them. One is still a hole in the ground. As far as I know, it’s still out there. WEISSKOPF: C Plant, I think, in the East area. SMITH: Yeah. Let’s see, the two were built in 200 West, but one was never started up. WEISSKOPF: That was U. SMITH: U. It was finally converted to a waste processing plant. So they did the same for operations, they hired, shipped in a lot more people than they ever needed, so jobs weren’t that easy to get in operations. So he says ‑‑‑ I can’t remember who this manager, apparently he had some kind of ‑‑‑ they thought ‑‑‑ the other superintendents thought he was getting all the breaks. So when I ‑‑‑ they hired me, he sat me down, he was going to make some kind of a junior engineer or something, so I was glad to get anything. So I went down there, was interviewed, sent out to 200 West. I thought I was going out there, some kind of engineering job, and they said “No, you’re going to be an area mechanic.” So I was an area mechanic for about six months before I finally got a promotion. But that proved invaluable to me when I got back in the engineering department, having had that experience. WEISSKOPF: Dealing with the day-to-day ‑‑‑ SMITH: I got a chance on hands-on with all the equipment, at least in the 200 areas. WEISSKOPF: As opposed to just working with blueprints and specifications and things like that. SMITH: Yes. So I had served as a machinist apprentice until the (inaudible)* come along, and me and everybody else, I went back to college. So it was really a good thing later on, because I was picked for certain jobs. Of course, when the engineering department and the maintenance department divided up into two different (inaudible)*, why, the superintendent, who was then the superintendent of both, was going to be superintendent of maintenance, and he came and ‑‑‑ I was working in town then, in the Federal Building. It wasn’t the Federal Building then. He said he was going to send me out to 200 East, and so I went out. He didn’t tell me. He said “You’ll know why I did this later on.” Of course, three weeks later they announced the separation, and I was out in maintenance. So that was another good break, because I’d had enough practical experience. Here again, it was the spirit of cooperation, being put in charge of a maintenance crew, not having been a craftsman myself, but I’d had a good background. Well, I was, really, I had that experience, it worked out fine. [Tape changed] SMITH: Through conjecture, they didn’t know either. I don’t think there were over 50 people on the plant, both AEC and ‑‑‑ or was it still ‑‑‑ no, it was AEC then. WEISSKOPF: 1947 I think AEC started. SMITH: Well, then, it was still under the Army, wasn’t it. Well, of course, a lot of the Army knew about it, high brass, I’m sure. But I would venture to say, then, there wasn’t over 100 that knew it until the bomb was dropped. WEISSKOPF: Did you know anything more after you’d been there for six months? Any feeling for what you were doing? Before the bomb was dropped, did you have any inkling of what was going on at the plant? SMITH: No. No. We had a lot of ‑‑‑ as I say, I talked to enough engineers in the field, this field and that, and mostly, of course, they’d mostly be scientists, like physicists and that, but I had friends, but they didn’t know. WEISSKOPF: Did you know of radiation? SMITH: Oh, yes. WEISSKOPF: You knew about that. SMITH: We had to take all the precautions. WEISSKOPF: And they called it radiation? SMITH: Yes. Every craftsman knew that. They had a whole ‑‑‑ of course, they still got them, the radiologists, what do they call them now? I can’t remember. WEISSKOPF: You’ve got your health physicists. SMITH: Health physicists, yeah, it was the health physicists. Of course, they were very good craftsmen. Like I told you about that incident that the pipefitter, that worked in my organization, an operation supervisor and an operator went in to prepare this cask for another load of waste, of cesium, of strontium I suppose, one or the other, I don’t know what it was. But, anyway, they went in and opened the valves, and the cask was supposed to be clean, at least drained and flushed. And he opened this drain, and some of this greenish stuff rolled out. And immediately the supervisor hollered “Get out!” And he left, and the operator knew enough to get out. But the pipefitter, he decided to be a hero and put a stop to it. WEISSKOPF: Turn it off? SMITH: Turn it off. Not turn it, put the plug back in. And, of course, that didn’t fit the way it did (inaudible)*, and they yelled at him again and he finally left. Well, of course, he had gloves, rubber gloves and everything else, whatnot, and they washed him off as soon as they could. And everything ‑‑‑ of course, he was down, made all kinds of tests. The darned thing didn’t manifest itself until the scalp started coming up on the outside, and this probably was ‑‑‑ so the radiation, the damage was deep, but it came to the surface. So then I had to drive him to the University of Washington, medical. And then after that, why, we had to send him over once a month, until it healed up. WEISSKOPF: Was it strictly localized on his head? SMITH: Yes. He must have taken internally quite a jolt, too, but apparently he didn’t, because actually I guess the radiation limits we were told were, I don’t know, a fraction of what there was any danger of damage. WEISSKOPF: What year do you think that was, give or take? SMITH: Yes. It was in B Plant, and it was after B Plant had ‑‑‑ no, it was in T Plant, because it was when they were ‑‑‑ no, won’t say that. I guess it was B Plant. Because I had the pipefitters in both areas. I think it was the B Plant. And it would have to be 19... let’s see, when did B Plant start? It would have to be about 1970. Give or take five years. WEISSKOPF: Okay. So let’s go back to 1945. You knew of radiation before the bomb was dropped, you knew that the plant had something to do with that, but no indication as to what was going on. So tell me what you thought when you did find out, when the bomb was dropped and the news came out. Did that make you look at Hanford in awe or in a new light? SMITH: It wasn’t till later we found out that bomb was actually made at Oak Ridge. It was the uranium bomb. WEISSKOPF: Right. SMITH: And the one a few days later was plutonium, I guess. So we found that out. Of course, we were claiming credit right away for a day or two till it got straightened out. WEISSKOPF: And did that kind of make your job seem much more interesting? SMITH: Oh, yes. But the other thing is, is the atmosphere was here, this is a wartime project and the war is over now, are we all going to be out of a job. And there were all these homes here, and people with ‑‑‑ was paying $37.50 a (inaudible)*. Should have saved a lot of money, but I don’t know if they did or not. And they were making good wages, and what we were going to do. This is going to be a time of readjustment, and all the industries geared up for war, and we’re ‑‑‑ and there was a ‑‑‑ so that was why I told you about this big red permanent building going up in the center of town, DuPont looked at it as a great morale builder, and I believe it was. People here are donating a lot of money. This is the first time the church ever built a building on leased land. WEISSKOPF: Which one was that? Where is that? SMITH: That’s the one in the center of town, over on (inaudible)* Hill, overlooking ‑‑‑ when they started building that church, that was ‑‑‑ the uptown district was a swamp. WEISSKOPF: Are you talking about the one on Jadwin? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Jadwin and Symons, up in that area? SMITH: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Yeah, I live right near there. SMITH: Oh, do you? WEISSKOPF: Yeah. SMITH: See, that was just a swamp area down in there. WEISSKOPF: Oh, by the creek that runs through, maybe. SMITH: Yeah. It was four feet of water there. It was just a swamp. They had to have four feet of landfill in there to build that up (inaudible)*. I was coming through there one day, back ally on a cold winter night, and one of the owners of six of those buildings was in ‑‑‑ he came in here before the war and started a plumbing business in Pasco, Braden Plumbing *(phonetic). And here he was in that Japanese ‑‑‑ or Chinese restaurant there, fixing the plumbing. I said “What in the world are you doing this for?” He’s probably a millionaire. He said “I like to keep my hand in the work. I don’t want to ever lose this ability to be a plumber.” And he was fixing that up. He just come in there, I guess, and they needed help. And I thought that was the oddest thing. He owned six of those buildings. WEISSKOPF: So, you heard about the bomb being dropped ‑‑‑ SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ the 6th of August. Another one was dropped on the 9th of August. The war was over the 14th, or something like that. SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: So literally a week after you learned what you were doing there, your job might have been done, theoretically. SMITH: Yes. We were just wondering what we were going to do. We had a certain amount of debts, we had started to ‑‑‑ one very interesting thing, the car I had was a ‘39 (inaudible)* coupe that I had before the war. Of course, you couldn’t buy one. So I drove that all the way until I could buy a new car. In 1949, ten years later, I sold it for $15 more than I paid for it in 1940. WEISSKOPF: Really. Sharp businessman. SMITH: Yeah, sharp businessman. I kept it in good shape. WEISSKOPF: Were your kids already born before the war was over? Do you have children? SMITH: No. Yeah, oh, yeah. There was only two. This is another interesting little thing. I had a secretary out at work, and she was a good Catholic, and she (inaudible)*, and I only had ‑‑‑ we had these two children, and the youngest one was five years old. And she said “How many children have you got?” I said “Two.” “Two!” So she didn’t say anything about it. I says, “Well, my wife had such hard labor the last time, she said if we had any more I was going to have to have them.” So years later she came to kind of a bazaar of some kind that we had at our church, and she came in, and she was married then. And I was towing two little kids around, one in each arm. And she looked at them and she looked at me and says “Did you have a hard labor?” Get back on the subject, but I guess that’s one of the things that happened, though. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. I was just curious, that transition between wartime effort, you learn what the job is about, and then a week later the war is over. How much time was there before you felt like you were back in the loop of having a real job with DuPont? SMITH: Well, DuPont didn’t want to stay here themselves, and they never did push this. But once GE came in here and said this is the industry of the future, they started talking about power reactors and peacetime use of this product was far greater. It’s unfortunate that it had its bad example with the production of the bomb. But the idea of peacetime reactors is to get as much mileage out of a few elements and create as little waste as possible. And, of course, the weapons program generated all the waste, all the high level stuff and whatnot. So it’s unfortunate that this is how atomic energy had its introduction. It was an invaluable method of generating electricity. It could be cheap, too. WEISSKOPF: What were you thinking way back, like, say, 1948, ‘49 and ‘50, about where we would be 50 years later with atomic energy? SMITH: I guess I didn’t have that much... WEISSKOPF: I mean, did it seem to you also that it must be the power of the future? SMITH: Yes. Oh, yes. I felt, well, we’ve got a career right here. I’d always thought I’d get back in the mining business. Even after I’d gone to work for DuPont, I’d gone to Denver to train how to make ammunition. And the superintendent of the tunnel that I worked on came there to buy equipment, and he looked me up, and he wanted me to go to South America. They had a mine there, in Chuckacumada (phonetic)* and they were going to drill a tunnel way down low and bring the ore out without hoisting (inaudible)* and up the mountain. Be a lot cheaper. Of course, they can still get it out. I guess they drilled, put the tunnel in the mountain. So I said “Well, the minute I leave this job, I’ll be in the Army,” they’re not going to let me leave the country. I was married after Pearl Harbor. So I went and helped him buy some equipment, whatnot like that. And he knew a lot about mining and tunnel equipment, and he was sent over there to buy it by Anaconda. But, of course, we’re off the subject again. WEISSKOPF: That’s all right. Well, let’s change subjects, then, too. Working on this history of T Plant, you were in the separations area on and off. Do you have any remembrances, stories about the crane equipment in either the 221-T or E Plant? SMITH: Yes. I told you about the rotating hook. WEISSKOPF: Yeah. What I didn’t know is when was that and where were you at the time. SMITH: I was at REDOX. WEISSKOPF: That was REDOX? Okay. SMITH: And that was the only, really, only separations plant. It was before PUREX was on line. And PUREX initially didn’t have the capability of dissolvers to take in the E metal. WEISSKOPF: To take what? SMITH: E metal. Enriched. WEISSKOPF: Oh, right, which came along in the later years. SMITH: So for awhile, during the early part of the Cold War, the only weapons plant, separations plant that was running full blast was REDOX. And it was designed originally, initially, it was secret before, but it was originally designed for four tons. In order to keep up with the production, we were going to have to do 14 tons a day. So we had a bunch of good, sharp (inaudible)*, and with the help of ‑‑‑ I had a small engineering crew. With the help of them, we designed ‑‑‑ each panel was run separated by an operator. So instead of the big control rooms, like they have now and like they had in PUREX, it was just individual boards, just like the old bismuth phosphate plant. So these guys were sharp enough to redesign that and locate three control locations. And they made a lot of other improvements, a lot of the times with (inaudible)* equipment. The coarse material was eating out the graphite bearings. So we went over ‑‑‑ I went back to Lawrence Pump *(phonetic) and I saw one of these big sludge pumps, and there was an opening in the tank. Ordinarily we had the deep well* turbines with the graphite. We tried glass bearings, which lasted longer. But we were changing out these $125,000 units every ‑‑‑ shutting down to do that, about every two weeks or less. Sometimes they’d last a week. We tried different bearing material. So I went back and got Lawrence Pump to build one along the designs that just a regular New York sludge pump that they used for their sewer, and made it small enough so it would go down through the big opening. We installed that, one pump, and made an extra one. We never ‑‑‑ they closed the plant down 18 months later, and we still had the original pump in there. It had some drawbacks, because we had to have so much liquid in the tank before it would start. Had a siphon tube down to the bottom of the tank, because it wasn’t long enough, and it wasn’t practical to redesign or build one, so we put this suction. And, of course, as long as it kept it running and everything going, kept the tank a certain level, there was no problem. But if it did happen to go below, they just had to add water and fill it up so it would prime itself. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Now, the first six months you spent in maintenance, early on? You said they sent you out to the 200 areas? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: What kind of work were you doing in there? SMITH: In those days, there was no union, and there was no differentiation between pipefitter, and millwright and machinist. I worked in the machine shop for a while, and then they put me on the shift and I’d go out to the various buildings and worked on mechanical equipment mostly. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever go into the canyons? SMITH: Oh, yes. WEISSKOPF: What was the typical job where you might be sent into one of the canyons? SMITH: Well, when they first started the T Plant, they just got hot, a couple of them. I had a problem with a jumper, and they couldn’t get it to fit in up there, so they put a couple of us down in the cell. We had a very short time limit. It hadn’t gotten real hot yet. We went up and tried that jumper so we got it to fit in place. WEISSKOPF: What would they have done if it had been hot? What could they have done? SMITH: They probably had to take the thing out and ‑‑‑ well, we couldn’t have gone down there. They’d probably take this out. In those days, we had ‑‑‑ later on, of course, we had a decontaminator, we had the capability of doing that, but we didn’t then. Wouldn’t even suggest it. They’d have sent it to the shop. We had (inaudible)* superintendent later on, this is now. They’d have gone back to the shop, pipe shop, and got another one built. WEISSKOPF: Okay. And just replace the whole jumper? SMITH: It was very interesting. (Inaudible)* might be interesting now. There was two different theories here. At Hanford, we built the jumpers very rigid. They had ‑‑‑ they didn’t bend very much. They had to be right, and they had a lot of stiff framework on them. And one of the big improvements over the bismuth phosphate plant was that they were a flat surface to surface, or the seal was, but the ones later on were oval, concave, so they could be tilted a little bit, and you could get away with that, see. Well, going back to Savannah River, of course I must have known in the back of my mind before this, but I got back there and found out they make them [jumpers] as flimsy as they can. They put one end down and then can bend the other one into place. Take the spare hook* or something like that if it didn’t fit. They just didn’t depend on a good fit. They made it out of schedule 10 pipe instead of 40, and when they put them on there, why, they could draw themselves ‑‑‑ they didn’t have that oval head like we had, but they didn’t have to sit straight, or anything else, they got away with this. WEISSKOPF: The original design was a flat connection? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: And where was the oval used at Hanford? SMITH: At REDOX. WEISSKOPF: REDOX, Okay. They improved the connection. SMITH: Yes. They improved that here. WEISSKOPF: But at T Plant, the connections all had to fit precisely? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: When you laid it in there, it had to line up and then just ‑‑‑ SMITH: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ fit perfectly. SMITH: Yeah. WEISSKOPF: How did you get down in the cell for that job when you ‑‑‑ SMITH: Well, we had ladders then, put them off the top of the tank. But something went wrong and something got out, you see, and I don’t know how they even ‑‑‑ I wasn’t there when they corrected whatever was wrong, because we were told to scram out of there. WEISSKOPF: Were you dressed in whites, coveralls? SMITH: Oh, yes. Coveralls. In fact, we had the plastic suit. WEISSKOPF: Were you impressed at the size of the place? SMITH: Oh, I saw that ‑‑‑ I think the T Building had an extra length, they had an extra operation. WEISSKOPF: The laboratory. The semiworks that they had. SMITH: Oh, yeah. I think it was 900 feet long. WEISSKOPF: Just about. Almost. It’s 965, something like that. SMITH: Is it? WEISSKOPF: Yeah ‑‑‑ 865. SMITH: And I couldn’t believe that. Plus the fact that the walls in places were 8-foot thick. Big concrete blocks on top of them. One interesting thing, on the crane, the REDOX crane developed this problem of going around, down the track skeewampus. There was no way ‑‑‑ it was so hot in those days, you only had 30 seconds to go up there and look. Something like that. Now, this was when I was maintenance manager with REDOX. And it was wearing the rail out and everything else. All kinds of problems. So Andy Eckert *(phonetic) and I went up, and we got allowance to take I don’t know how many, a year’s supply of radiation, something like that. Went up there, and it so happened on those old-fashioned cranes, they had one big motor in the center, and they had a flange on either side that drove the wheels, both sides, the motor too, worked from both sides. That was right in the center. And Andy noticed down there a big nut laying on the ‑‑‑ got looking there, and that crane was being powered from one side, and the other ‑‑‑ all gores* were either sheared off or laying around there. Those bolts. Nobody had thought of that for two or three weeks. WEISSKOPF: So it was always skewed as it went down the track? SMITH: Yeah. Every once in a while we’d have to go down to the end and bang it against the end to straighten it out again. And they did that so much, once they broke the rail on one. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever work on the cranes at T Plant or B Plant? SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: What types of things would you be doing with those? SMITH: Oh, actually, most of the things was electrical. But we had to go up and lubricate the thing. And then... well, let’s see... WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you this: There were two periscopes that the operator used. SMITH: Yes. WEISSKOPF: Do you remember there being television, a little closed circuit television in the cab? SMITH: No. There wasn’t anything like that, that I know. The first television we got put in, and we put one on before we shut down at REDOX, but it never was satisfactory enough to see what you were doing. WEISSKOPF: At REDOX. So at T Plant and B Plant, you don’t remember TV being there at all? SMITH: No. No, there wasn’t any. (Inaudible)* WEISSKOPF: Yeah. Is it possible they installed it and never used it? SMITH: No. Well, yes, later on in T Plant it became the main decontamination of the ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: No, no, I mean in the beginning. SMITH: No. WEISSKOPF: In the beginning, there wasn’t a little TV screen in the cab that they never used? SMITH: No. It wouldn’t be in the cab anyway, it would have to be out in the ‑‑‑ WEISSKOPF: No, the screen itself. SMITH: The screen. Excuse me, I’m sorry. Okay. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Well, I’ve heard it from plenty of people; it must be true. Did you ever talk to any of the crane operators? SMITH: All the time. WEISSKOPF: Were they swaggering, like a fighter pilot? Were they cocky and proud of their job because they ‑‑‑ SMITH: They were proud of their job, but they were very humble, too, because they had so much at stake. The whole plant depended on them. The whole ‑‑‑ they were the one key ‑‑‑ but it’s amazing, though, how we would often schedule shutdowns for the top crane operator to be on shift, at least when we installed the equipment. Dismantling it was no problem. But when we started installing it, why, we... WEISSKOPF: So you’d schedule it around his schedule, to make sure that the top guy was there. SMITH: There were very few that weren’t good operators. But there were a few that we just didn’t have any confidence in. WEISSKOPF: How many hours would they spend on a shift inside the cab, working it? Would they be there the whole time? SMITH: No, no. They came out for something to eat, to take lunch. But they put in four hours, probably. WEISSKOPF: Okay. Pretty tiring job? SMITH: Oh, it is, when they’re putting jumpers on. But most of the time, of course, they can only do so much, they have to get instructions on the process. Each operating department had an engineer working for the production. He was the production engineer, and he knew the facility very well, and he had all the blueprints, and he worked with the crane operator, told him this is the next jumper to use. They got to the point where they were pretty good at it themselves, but they had a certain order that they had to go on, because some were overlapping the others. You had to avoid putting one that was on top, and then it would have to be removed to put the other one in. WEISSKOPF: Would they give them charts or something, or lists on how they were to go about? SMITH: I think mostly they worked by the telephone. WEISSKOPF: Okay. SMITH: I don’t know. I can’t answer that. WEISSKOPF: Did you ever hang out in the cab with them? SMITH: Oh, yes. WEISSKOPF: What kind of stuff were you doing? What was your job? SMITH: Well, they would show me ‑‑‑ when you look down on that, I don’t see how in the world they ever operated. WEISSKOPF: Looking through the periscope? SMITH: Yeah. It took a certain ‑‑‑ see, the order of promotion was that they put heavy equipment operators ‑‑‑ I mean, crane operators that operated outside cranes. But I don’t know what the percentage of them was, but there was a certain percentage that just, by mutual agreement, they weren’t going to cut it. But they did have a lot of pride in the job, but as I say, most of them were very thankful there was a being that was helping them, the chances of everything fitting in place. The jumpers had to be all fit. A lot of times we would make new ones completely in getting them all. And, of course, if one didn’t get on, why, we had to go back to the shop and get another one built. We had to call up people at night, get a crew up there and put a jumper together sometimes. WEISSKOPF: There must have been some pretty extreme pressures to keep the thing running. SMITH: Oh, in REDOX, I’m telling you. WEISSKOPF: Especially at REDOX? SMITH: Especially REDOX, because PUREX wasn’t up. You know, it was quite a while, we had had all the cold* runs to do and a lot of other things. I don’t remember the timing. For a while, for whatever reason, none of the dissolvers had the (inaudible)* where you could put a concrete cylinder down the center, through the colony*. And they didn’t have the capability of doing this as E metal in Richland, and I don’t know, I guess it’s the enriched uranium. WEISSKOPF: Which you didn’t have to worry about in the old days because they weren’t using any, right? SMITH: That’s right. All the old dissolvers would just dump ‑‑‑ they dumped the whole (inaudible)*. WEISSKOPF: And the only time they worried about criticality was probably after it got out of the T Plant into the other buildings, maybe at the end of the cycles? SMITH: Yeah. There was a place in 233 in REDOX where we were worried about criticality, and we didn’t trust valves or anything. Whenever we had to use that line, we went in and we took a flange, it had two flanges, and took a line right out and molded blanks. WEISSKOPF: Disconnected the pipe? SMITH: Disconnected the pipe and put blanks on. And then during this operation, we went in, and during that time, at one time it about got away. And we had to ‑‑‑ I had an engineer by the name of John ‑‑‑ I don’t know whether I should say the name or not. Dugan (phonetic)* was his last name. He went in to try and save the day, and he took a big overdose of radiation, and he was never allowed to work in radiation after that. WEISSKOPF: Took a lifetime dose? SMITH: Yeah. So he went to grape* farming out in Benton City after. He went there for a long time. He’s got a grape farm up there, so he took his full time. But he didn’t come to work for me till after ‑‑‑ he was working for the engineering department then, because after that he came to work in maintenance, in our organization. And then he quit. (End of Interview) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:02:27 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 128kbps 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 Alex Smith Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Radiation Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Alex Smith for the B Reactor Museum Association. Smith was a 200 Area "Area Mechanic" at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project and early Cold War. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/26/1999 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4A https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fff01879a2dbd166a538d2026d54f68a3.mp4 8bccedf166c251abcf94a58843bb74e4 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Glen P. Stein Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound GLENN STEIN INTERVIEW- Recorded on 8/1/92 Well my name is Glenn B. Stein. Stein is S T E I N. I came from Denver up here I was working at Remington Arms in Denver which was owned by Dupont, of course. And a fellow by the name of Dunkleburger was one of the head men down there in the department I was in which was inspection in, uh, Denver; and ,uh, he was the one that recruited me because he was up here then and he was out recruiting. And uh, well I had heard rumors about the plant. It was a terrible place to be. There was people killed every day, and uh, there was drinking and gambling and such well the works that we were getting was Hanford see rather than Richland and so I was doubtful about coming up. TRAFFIC, STOP Well, I was doubtful about coming up here because of the rumors I’d heard. So I was called over to Dunkleburgers office , and uh, so he told me about it, wanted to know if I was interested. Well, the job down there was about out. We probably at that time felt we had maybe six months to go. So I thought well, I’m young I’ll take a chance on it! So I talked to the wife and I said well, I said, they’re gonna pay my way up there I certainly could pay it back if I, if it is as bad as I hear it is see. So I come up here, they sent me up on the train there were six of us from Denver. Earl Kirkwood another instrument man who has passed away was in the same group I was. And uh, uh, we came up here it was the first part of July. I’d say probably around about the 5th or 6th of July. And we came in here of course and checked into the hotel and they give us three days in the hotel. And uh, the next day they took us through orientation which kinda scared the pants off from us, I mean, the security end of it. And uh, I can remember when I got here on the train in Kennewick I asked the bus driver who was makin the trip about 4 or 5 times a day how far it was to Richland and he said “well I don’t know”. That’s how tight the soc, the , security was in those days, see. THIS WAS 1943? 1944, July ‘44. Well uh, we went through orientation, of course, and the next day we started school. And I went to school approximately 3 months before I went to D area because instruments was new to me as it was to practically everyone else and we had boys from back east that was teaching us that uh, had worked in instrumentation or they had some instrumentation back there, see. And taught us a little about control. But now I look back we were pretty green out there! I had no idea what we were making, no idea whatever. In fact, I never knew what we were making until they dropped the bomb. It was the first I knew of it. Of course... YOU SAID YOU HEARD STORIES AND RUMORS BEFORE... Well, it was all on, you see the work that was comin back to us, the work that we was gettin there in Denver was construction which we all assumed it was the plant here, see. Never stopped to think there was a construction camp all together different down at Hanford. And oh, it was just, there was gangsters and everything else. And they threw a bunch of people in jail and it was just rough supposedly according to what we heard see. And of course I assumed that that’s what it was like here. The other thing was that it got to be in the summertime 135 degrees, and uh, you could fry an egg on the sand out here and there was a dust storm everyday and part of that true was the 135 but the dust was true, you know, no grass, no lawn so when the sun did shine it reflected right back on you it was hot. But not unbearable like we kinda thought it was down there. AND WHAT WAS THE DEPARTMENT... Instrument, yeah. Which is controls and uh, recorders and things like that see. TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT INSTRUMENTATION... The instructors but I don’t think any of us did. I mean I’d had little exposure to it I was in inspection and actually our inspection was measurements. And we had gauges and stuff like that see, which you do have on instruments here but no controls whatever, see. So they had real good instructors uh, those fellows knew what they were doing and of course they had their manuals and stuff and we had manuals to read too and uh, so we were taught to calibrate and we used to actually they give us the instrumentation and we went ahead and we’d calibrate it, work it over so that we knew what we were doing when we got out there see that was the main thing because there was nobody to help ya. WHAT DID YOU HAVE AVAILABLE AS A TEST SOURCE... Oh no uh, we weren’t calibratin radiation instruments, it was, there were controls see. Now we would read radiation, yes, but we had a bug, we called it a bug that we used to test radiation. The amount of radiation that was coming, see. WHAT TYPE OF OTHER INSTRUMENTS WERE YOU WORKING ON? Well we had recorders that recorded everything out there. We had temperature instruments, we had flow instruments. We had controls that are instrumentation controlled the uh pressure of your pumps. There was controls on every pump out there to control the pressure because that had to be maintained. Uh, it was just within a couple a three pounds see. And uh, powerhouse controlled the boilers the temperature, the pressure. And uh, then pressure readings on everything. All your uh, water pressures off of every pipe practically uh. We had controls, I mean uh, gauges. CAN YOU RECALL YOUR FIRST TRIP TO B REACTOR... Well, I really can’t say that I can. It wasn’t what I expected. I got out there and it was petty barren; there wasn’t any growth or whatever. And uh, everything was fairly new, scraped up you know and as far as the earth was concerned we weren’t operating then yet. So uh, about the first thing we did was to get acquainted with the instrumentation what we had to see if we knew what we were doin and actually study some of the manuals they had there. And uh, as I remember the uh, supervisor was a Dupont man from back east too. That guy just was a real good man, he got us along pretty good. CHATTER It was Hanford that was the tough part, this wasn’t see. CHATTER Yeah, it’s down at Hanford itself. The old Hanford camp was a construction camp see. I was just tellin about goin through the beer hall I guess is what it was, a fella took us through. He worked here too but he’d been there, he’d worked construction first and so he told us he’d take us through there. When we got ready to go in the door he said well go in this door and out the back. He said keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. And I could remember one fella as we was goin through, one fella slid under another fella as he raised up off the chair and a fight started. You had to sit down to drink beer in those days see. And uh, we went right on through and came out the other side. And uh, I went to some dances down there uh, which you had to watch yourself but it wasn’t too rough really. HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE OUT THERE? At Hanford? Or B area? AT HANFORD. Oh, goodness I don’t know. An awful lot. There was trailers all over the place. And they had these big dorms you know, women’s dorms and men’s dorms. But I didn’t have any experience with that. All I did was just go down and they showed us around and come back see. I did go down to a few dances at night and they but they weren’t real rough down there the dances weren’t. DID YOUR WIFE JOIN YA? She didn’t, my wife couldn’t get here until, I think it was October before we got a house. So I was here about 3 or 4 months before she came here. YOU BEGAN WORK AT B REACTOR ABOUT WHAT TIME? I think it was about October, I’m not positive of that but I think it seems to me I was here about 3 months goin to school and uh, then I went out to be and I was there probably 3 or 4 months and then I went to D areas. WERE YOU THERE AROUND THE TIME OF START UP? Oh yes, I was there when it started yeah. TELL US ABOUT THAT. Well, of course I can’t tell you much about 105 because I was on the water side see. And uh, everybody was on their toes, I mean we had control of the water pressure for em see, which had to be maintained close. And uh, so we were naturally nervous; I mean, you know, it was our first experience too. I had no idea what they were makin, what they was doin over there. It was so darn secret you couldn’t find out nothing see. But uh, yes, it was a little nerve racking because you knew you had to keep that pressure there and you’d worry about whether you could keep it there or not see. Because our instruments was doing the controlling. AND I UNDERSTAND THEY DID... Of course that I didn’t know see. Like I say I was on the water side. And uh, I never knew, they didn’t tell us nothing. But I know we was checking our instruments and keepin our eye on them at all time in the beginning there to be sure that we had what they was asking for and we could maintain it see. WERE YOU OUT IN THE BIG PUMP BUILDING THEN? 190 building, I was 83. I was in all the power buildings. The powerhouse. I worked all the power buildings what we had to change charts. I went on shifts I think it was C shift, I can’t remember exactly. And on the shifts the first thing we did was to go down and change all the charts. Well at the time you change your chart you checked your instrumentation to see if that for the last 24 hours has run true or if it’s been off balance or the pressures been up or down or what’s happened see. So it gives you a pretty good idea once you’ve got your charts changed as to how your instrumentation was working. I think there was 8 of us on shifts to start with and we wound up with one man on a shift about 8 years later. But at that time there was 8 men on a shift. IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF THIS WAS DONE... Well it’s nerve racking really. You worried all the time see. If something was gonna happen that you wouldn’t be able to take care of it that’s what you worried about mostly. And you worried, of course, that they was getting what they wanted. I mean they told us what pressure we wanted to keep it at. Uh, whatever the instrumentation had to do because they depended on the instruments to tell them what was goin on see. But I wasn’t on the 105 so I can’t tell you much about, I understand they was pretty nervous over there. I went over there later but at that time I was always at the water side. They took us through, I can remember makin a tour through 105 but uh, I can’t say exactly how long they’d been in operation before I started workin in the 105 side. But uh, right at the very beginning I was on the power side. YOU WERE HERE WHEN THE BOMBS DROPPED. Oh yes. uh huh. ‘46. HOW DID YOU FIRST HEAR ABOUT THAT? Over the radio. There was everybody was, it was all over the papers and everything see but first we heard it on the radio when they dropped it. We got the message out there uh, but not from the radio but that’s the way they got it see. But uh, about the bomb. Well, by that time we knew we’s having something that was very explosive but you see we only made part of that bomb. So they put the rest of it together down in New Mexico. So about uh. We knew we was dealing with radiation but just what we was makin, I’m talkin about my own experience now I had no idea we was makin a bomb! I didn’t know what we were makin. At times I thought we was makin fuel for an airplane. Or a submarine or something like that see. WE HEARD STORIES, RUMORS... Oh yeah, I can’t remember. There was a lot of rumors I can’t remember all the rumors that have been around but I can remember one of em was that well that this uh fuel we were makin for airplanes see. That was just all rumors and you didn’t spread none of it because security was so tight well one of the fellas was fired that was workin with me and uh, in those days you had two badges. You had the badge you wore when you come out of the area. But you had another badge that you called your name and number when you went through the guard house out there see. There was guards, there was an entrance to the area. Besides you still had known that you (?) at 105. You still had another guard house there see. Once you’s inside there you still can get to 105 unless you was (?) for that see. But uh, well I can remember they got so they remembered my 809 and they’d say 809 Stein when I’d come in the door. They got so they knew ya but to start with you called your number they picked up that badge looked at you and what’s your number and if it matched okay they’d give it to you and then you went see. Well this fella went home and told his wife. He was tellin her about what we went through to get in out there see. At 9:00 the next day he and I was on a job a calibration job where uh, they had used everything but one piece of this thing that they had left. And they was afraid somebody else would break it and they didn’t have another one but he and I had done one before and worked it alright see and they broke all the rest of em so they kept, he and I and so they told us that mornin that we’re gonna put you two on this because you’ve done it and you was able to put it together without breaking it and that’s the last one we got. So we go over and it wasn’t half hour before another fella comes over and he said “Stein, I’m supposed to help you.” He said Kelly’s supposed to go to the uhm, administration building down over here. Well it was the last I saw of Kelly. I mean they took him right to town that day, of course that night I went over to see him because uh, of course he didn’t tell me what was happenin either, he just said he had a good job on construction but we found out about a week later that he got fired. That’s how tight the construc, the uh, well what happened his wife was on the bus. She was tellin somebody else about how uh, we got in the badge house. After we got to the badge house out there how we went through what they did see, the procedure. And there was a (?) (?) intelligence man sittin in the seat right behind her. That’s how come the man got fired that picked it up see. GENERAL CLIMATE OF COUNTRY. WERE YOU AWARE OF THAT? The importance we were yes, very much so. We, we never talked about it once we got out of the area see. Now my folks lived down in Vancouver and I’d go down there when I was workin shifts on long change, you know. Well of course they’d start askin me. Well I’d just say well I can’t tell you nothin about it it’s secret. Anything I know I don’t dare tell you about. It to me, I was afraid to talk about it because I didn’t what was secret and what wasn’t see. I knew what was secret but I thought some of the other stuff that might be secret I wasn’t aware of it see. Because nobody’d ever say anything to us about not to tell anybody how you got through the area. And when a man got fired over that then they’d uh, pretty careful see. Yeah. TAKE 2, ROLL 2 - SURPRISED WHAT’S BEING MADE HERE? Uh, yes I was. I was yes, uh, very surprised. I knew we had radiation stuff like that to deal with but, you see, we had the one part. All we did was charge that uranium, I knew we had the uranium there, we knew that. But uh, what they was gonna do with it was what we didn’t know see, or at least I didn’t. I would imagine there was some people that did but I didn’t. END OF WAR, GENERAL FEELING SATISFACTION? Yes, my feeling was yes. I felt myself I know there was a lot of people killed when that bomb was dropped, true. But at the same time it saved an awful lot of our people from being killed and probably saved them the lives of other people because if that war had continued they’d have been all of them killed as well as ours see. Yeah, it was a shock to me, I mean, uh, I never dreamed we had anything that potent or would blow up a whole town you know. But uh, I uh, yes I felt that I’d contributed quite a bit once I heard that, you know. Before I didn’t really realize, I knew it was important but I didn’t really realize exactly what it was. WERE YOU AWARE OF ANY PERSONAL DANGER? Uh, just the radiation, we knew that was dangerous, see. But, we wasn’t too worried, I wasn’t myself because see we were in the instrumentation; we knew that we were protected as long as those instruments worked and which we were sure that they were working see. And I thought they were very good about taking care of us in there, I mean, there was as far as we knew none of us were getting overexposed and they were real careful about hauling us out. We had alarms on em, you know, so that when we had a certain amount of exposure they went off and uh, of course you’d protect yourself on that you came out, see; out of the zone. We was always dressed in what we called PWP clothes, you took your own personal clothing off and put the PWP’S on which was coveralls, head covers, gloves, shoe covers, everything - you was covered completely, you know. Even had a face mask if that was necessary. And so, no I felt that uh, oh I guess there was probably times I might have worried a little bit but uh, most of the time I felt that they were pretty much taking care of us. ENTRY NUCLEAR AGE Well, I uh, I’m happy that I had something to do with it. That I had my little small part in it. Yes, I’ve been proud of that all the time, but uh, I was never disappointed that I came up here. I remember my wife was worried, and uh, so I told her when I got up here, I said “No, you can live here pretty good,” I said. “It’s not as hot as they said” and I said “the people aren’t bad people in this town” and I said “they’re the nicest people you’ll ever run into”. And so but we had the awful rumors down there in Denver, see. DID YOU LIVE HERE IN RICHLAND? Um huh, when I came up I did. I got a B, uh, I got a two bedroom pre-fab (?). See, I had to take, my, my wife had sold the house see we put the house up for sale and sold it down there so she was living in an apartment in a basement apartment, see. So I wanted to get her up here as soon as I could and uh, so I had to take a two bedroom pre-fab to get her up here. I stayed in that for about 4 years. But it was a little crowded, we had one child then and uh, I think we paid if I can remember right we paid $25 a month and that included lights and heat and everything. We planted our own lawns and so on of course. And uh, the telephone, I think we paid for a telephone. When we got it was pretty hard to get a telephone and when we finally got one well I think we paid that but everything else for that $25 as I remember was $25 a month; I may be wrong maybe it was $35 but, anyway it was plenty cheap and everything was furnished and there was no light meters in town see. Everybody was uh, you paid your rent and that included everything. Water and the whole works. No water meters, nothing. But I think that people coming from all over the country were real friendly. You got acquainted fast back in those days. Nowadays you probably don’t know your next door neighbor for a month or so but in a couple days you knew em in those days. Cuz everybody was new, see. YOU COULDN’T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU WERE DOING. No, but they knew it too see. They knew you couldn’t so, there was no pressure put on you really. Most of the pressure I would have would be from outsiders like I’d go see my folks. Then I’d get pressure, but, they understand after I explained it to them but. The work was something we couldn’t talk about here, it was secret so I. Well we never told anybody how far it was up here even. Just like that bus driver told me, he said he didn’t know how far it was, he drove it 6 or 8 times a day! WAS THERE ANY SENSE OF THREAT, WARNINGS? Not to my knowledge. I can’t really recall anything in that order. I can remember something about they picked up some things on the beaches someplace. I don’t know if they were balloons or what they were, but, there was some stuff picked up I heard; I’d just heard rumors of it, you know. But here not much we didn’t, at least I didn’t get much of it. ORGANIZATIONS, SOCIAL THINGS FOR PEOPLE? There was dancing was about all I knew. Well of course, see, I was married and my wife wasn’t here so when I got my dorms which was the third day then I was in a dorm room, to be honest with ya, I wanna be honest I played poker with those construction guys. And uh, I’d send my wife my whole check. I’d make enough playin poker to live on see. Course you didn’t need much in those days, I mean everything, your room was, uh, well that was paid for out of my check see but otherwise I’d send her the whole check. It seems like those construction guys was always tryin to buy stuff and you just played (?) your belly button why you could win. I’d never played poker in my life before, but, I had to do something at night so that’s what I did. That was after I got out in the area when I was here there just seemed to be, I don’t know, there wasn’t much as far as entertainment was concerned. You’d just sit around and talk. I wasn’t a drinkin man so, I never got in much on the booze, (?). I don’t know if there was much in here. I don’t think there was ... I’m trying to remember. There were very few taverns, if there were any here in town. I know for (?), in those days it was uh, uh, I guess hard to get because they had they wanted to know, I know one fella asked me if I would get uh, a liquor permit see. Which would allow me to buy a quart or two a month or something like that, and then, I’d go down and get it and then he’d pay me for it so he’d have his liquor see. Cause I didn’t drink it so I’d get it for him. In fact he was one of the bosses. YOU’D COMMUTE TO B REACTOR? On the bus. We all road the bus or I did at least all the time out there until later years, when I’d come in. It left from down here, yes uh huh, you see in those days, course I was livin in a dorm the bus would just stop, you know where the stop was and pick you up. For the people living in town they had free bus service, you know, that went around to the stores and went around town. It just, I don’t know if they charged em a nickel or something like that I can’t remember, but uh, after work I think it was a dime it cost us, I don’t know I can’t really remember that for sure either. MOST REMARKABLE THING YOU REMEMBER. You know it’s so long, I can’t, I get so mixed up whether it was B or D area cause I was, it’s like I say, I was in B for about, oh, 3 or 4 months and then I went to D and they was gettin ready to start that up, you see. I was down there then. But uh, no I admit all I did like I say was to play poker and I don’t (?) either one not the one I was in but another one a couple down from me and a lot of these construction fellas would come by you know and play. We were pretty well satisfied with our pay although it was very little in those days, I think. Well I started $1.65 an hour and you couldn’t even live on that now. But a lot of em started $1.10, trainee. I come in as a technician because I had some experience but uh, then we thought we was makin big money. And for what it cost you, I think I, as I remember we used to go over here and eat at that uh, the only restaurant they had in town, that big one. And uh, as I remember something like 50, 60 cents for a meal, it wasn’t very much I remember that. SECURITY QUESTIONS Well, I, in a way no. I did, I knew the government was behind it but you see I was under security down there too in Denver, see. You always had to pass, a lot of fellas wouldn’t be hired because they couldn’t pass the uh, uh, I say pass I should use something else, but they uh, when they checked them out they just uh, couldn’t take em see. So I had been under security there but not as tough as here, yeah, it scared me. I was scared to say anything to anybody and that was I think one of the reasons why they scared all of us that way, I don’t know, it was the best way for you to keep quiet. SCARING - LOSE JOB OR BIGGER THREAT? It was, because you know anything that was gonna throw you in jail you’d be aware of something like that. But uh, I was always afraid after this fella got fired, see. Cause he’d said something, he didn’t realize he was doin see and I didn’t say nothin. EXAMPLE OF SOMEBODY EVERY SO OFTEN. That might be, I don’t know. But the military intelligence men were around in those days and there was one sittin in the seat right behind his wife, see and she was tellin this other lady “well, I know how they get in out there”. PROBLEM BETWEEN WORKER & SPOUSE? Well, not that I know of. I uh, my wife just didn’t ever try to find out so we had no problems that way see, and I just didn’t tell her anything about it how we got in or stuff like that you know. And uh, no it never was a problem with us. Some of em may have had a problem that way but we didn’t have any. END Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:32:40 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Glen P. Stein Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Glen Stein for the B Reactor Museum Association. Stein was a Instrumentation Specialist at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 8/8/1992 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F80a7c31399e348a494e368d84f074882.mp4 182ce625cd40bdb7db430c5e66f23ca7 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Monty Stratton Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound <h1>MONTY STRATTON INTERVIEW- Recorded 6/8/93</h1> [WAS IN INSTRUMENTATION; WIFE ALSO WORKED AS EARLY MONITOR AND SHOULD BE INTERVIEWED.] I’m Monty Stratton, and I came here to the Hanford Project in 1944, February of 1944, from the Kings Mills Ordinance Plant in Ohio. Walt Simon, who eventually became the first plant manager here, was on a recruiting tour of the country and he came to Kings Mills, and interviewed me for a possible job here at Hanford, and I came here in Feb. of 44 and was placed in the instrument department. I was first assigned to the group in the 3717 building of the 300 area, and spent several months there, and probably some time in the early part of the summer of 1944 I came to the 700 area and worked in the 717 Building, which was an instrument repair shop. HOW WERE YOU TRAINED, HOW MUCH KNOWN, ANY BACKGROUND? I was an electrical engineer by profession, and my hobby background was amateur radio, I think that’s one thing that probably interested Walt Simon when he interviewed me because I had that electronic experience, which apparently he was looking for, people who had that background for instrument work and I think that’s one of the reasons I was placed in the instrument department when I arrived. I got involved in the maintenance of specialized instruments that were shipped for the operating area into the 700 area, where I had a crew of several instrument mechanics and technicians, both male and female, I think we probably had eight or ten technicians working on these instruments at the time, and though I didn’t have any direct connection with the B reactor startup, I was in the process of maintaining instruments that were involved in the monitoring of the situation in the B Reactor Area. SUCH AS BECKMANS? Beckmans, Victorenes. one of the principal instruments that we maintained was what we called a victorene integron. There were something like a hundred fifty to a hundred seventy-five of those instruments scattered all over the plant, of course some of them were in monitoring buildings there in the area, but those instruments were shipped into the 700 area for maintenance. The instrument consisted of an ionization that was subject to breakdown because of the dust and dirt and sand that blew around, got into the instrument so the chamber shad to be torn down and cleaned and set up for use in the remote areas. IN THE PLANT WHAT FUNCTION WERE THESE INSTRUMENTS SERVING? They were use to monitor any airborne radiation that was of gamma nature NOT A PORTABLE INSTRUMENT.. Not a portable instrument, they were fixed, they were mounted, the electronic portion of the instrument was in a cabinet about a foot square, a box about a foot square, the chamber was a separate instrument with a large cable that was a cylindrical chamber with a motorized piece of gear in it. As I said, they were not portable, they were mounted in various locations around the project, around the reactor buildings. For instance, like in the B Reactor area, as I recall there were either three or four buildings out in the corners of the area, they were called the 614 buildings, and in each one of these buildings would be one of these victorene integrons. They also had several of them mounted inside the buildings, as I recall there would have been one or two of them mounted around the reactor building, but they were primarily designed to monitor airborne radiation of a gamma nature. THESE INSTRUMENTS MADE A PAPER RECORDING OF WHAT THEY WERE READING, DID THEY NOT? There was a recorder, this was a micromax recorder, a strip chart recorder, and it gave us a continuous record of the operation of the instrument.. ...I CAN IMAGINE THAT THOSE OUTSIDE THE BUILDING, IN THE CASE OF A SIGNIFICANT INCIDENT, WERE TO SEE WHAT WAS HAPPENING OUT THERE... That’s true, this was the intent. Just as a matter of record, those instruments were mounted in buildings in rather remote areas, for instance we had one building in Benton City. There was another mounted in a person’s home in Kennewick, another one mounted in a person’s home in Pasco, so there were some scattered around in various locations.. DID THEY THINK TO PUT SOME DOWNWIND? We did not have any of this particular type of instrument mounted in the so-called downwind area, that is, north of Pasco. WAS THE VICTORENE A NEW INSTRUMENT? I don’t think it was completely new, but it was new enough that we didn’t have very much experience with it, and had to learn the operation of it, that’s for sure. This was a company back in Cleveland Ohio, it could have been a person’s name,.. A Beckman is a micromicroammeter, and it had a monitoring device, these were parallel instruments mounted in and around the reactor building, this was a popular location for them. We had as I recall four of these Beckmans with the chambers mounted in a and around the reactor pile, I’m trying to recall any other locations for these Beckmans, I can’t recall any but there probably were some. I BELIEVE THESE WERE USED AS PORTABLE INSTRUMENTS, ALTHOUGH THEY WERE HEAVY... The Beckman that I am thinking of was probably not quite portable, because it was a very heavy instrument, now he’s most likely referring to a different style of Beckman, because Beckman had gotten into manufacturing radiation monitoring instruments, and I don’t recall but there was probably a more portable instrument... I RECALL ONE THAT WAS ABOUT THIRTY POUNDS.. This is the one that would have been mounted in the panel, such as the one that would have been used for monitoring the reactor status. I’M CURIOUS WHAT WAS THE PROCESS OF MONITORING WHAT THE MONITORS WERE READ, ON WHAT CYCLE DID SOMEONE CHECK TO SEE WHAT THESE INSTRUMENTS HAD RECORDED? Well, the victorene, which had its chart recorder going 24 hours a day, these instruments would be serviced, especially the ones out in the remote buildings, probably twice a week. But the ones in the reactor building course you had instrument people working around the clock, and they would be monitored at least on a shift-change basis. So we had frequent occasion to look in on the status of what was happening. I WAS CURIOUS TO KNOW IF YOU COULD RECALL THE SITUATION THAT FIRST MIGHT BE RECORDED BY THESE KINDS OF THINGS, DID THIS EVER HAPPEN SO YOU WOULD HAVE HEARD OF IT, AN UNUSUAL READING? I don’t recall any particular instruments that read unusual occurrences, especially on the victorene instruments. The Beckmans, they were sitting there monitoring the situation all the time, they used those for reactor startup and monitoring the status of the reactor during operation, but for any unusual instances, I don’t recall any particular instances at the moment. CAN YOU COVER WHAT KIND OF INSTRUMENTATION THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN USED TO INDICATE THE FIRST INDICATION ON STARTUP- WHAT KIND OF INSTRUMENT SHOWED THE FIRST NEUTRON TICKLE? It would not have been the victorene or probably not the Beckman. There was an instrument we used on normal startups in which a very sensitive radiation monitoring chamber was inserted in one of the process tubes. As I recall, in the early days this instrument was inserted from the rear face of the of the reactor. The instrument would be pushed in one of the operating tubes a certain distance and left there until the first indication of reactor activity, at which time the reactor would be brought up to the one megawatt elevation, and held at that power level while an instrument man and a monitor would go on the rear face and remove or pull that instrument back out of the hot area, and as soon as the instrument was pulled back, the monitor and the instrument man would leave the rear face and then they would be able to increase power level...it would have damaged the tube to where it would have been inoperable. I’m sure there were occasions when you were in that situation. I was trying to think the other day who the person was that was with me on the rear face of F Reactor where I eventually went to follow the startup. One of the person was a monitor I believe it was Phil Jerman, I think he went with me on the rear face, and we pulled the tube and got to the point where we could go with it; I think that was the only time I did it, I was a foreman at the time and wanted to see what the operation was like, so I went back and did the job to follow through with it so that I could instruct other people as to what was done. Phil went on to be a manager. THIS WAS A NEW AREA... The field of instrumentation was certainly new at that point in time. Just to go back for a moment within my own history, I’d worked for the DuPont Company in Richmond Virginia, and my first experience with instruments was with a Clayton Northrop micromax which I later found out was used as a recording instrument here at Hanfrod, but that was back in the early years of my instrument experience, back in the mid 30’s when I first got involved with instrumentation. BUSINESS OF RECORDING RADIATION WAS ONLY KNOWN IN RECORDING X-RAYS UP TO THAT POINT? There wasn’t a lot of instrumentation, a lot of the equipment was developed here at Hanford, and some of the companies, like Victorene and Beckman, I think they were relatively small companies to start with, but the Hanford Project no doubt put them on the map and got them started because of the large orders of equipment that we purchased from them. So it was a new field, and we had to develop a lot of the equipment and we learned as we went. DID YOU HAVE ANY CONTACT WITH THE TEST REACTOR THEY USED IN FUELS TO TEST THE URANIUM THEY WERE USING? I did not have any particular experience with that. DID YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THEY WERE USING IT? I think my first inkling of what was really going on was probably two or three months after I arrived here at the Project, and begun to see the types of instruments that were used and started getting familiar with the equipment that was involved and discussing the process that was taking place. I finally was given a tour of one of the reactors when I was still assigned to the 700 area, this was probably sometime the early part of 1944. But I certainly didn’t know what was happening before I came here. WHAT WERE YOU TOLD? In my case I was actually told very little. In fact, I didn’t even know that I was going to be in an instrument department or division when I was interviewed by Walt Simon. I really didn’t know what I was going to be involved in until I came on the Project...I just happened to think of an interesting aspect of the integron instrument which we talked about earlier... CHANGE TAPE ...I told Laura she should be doing this interview because she came here the same time I did... WOMEN IN YOUR CREW? UNUSUAL? Well, these were girls that were available just like I was in ammunition plants. The girls that worked for me were sent here from other ammo plants; Laura came from the Denver ammo plant... WITH ALL OF THE EMPHASIS ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT THESE DAYS, DID YOU RECEIVE ANY INSTRUCTION? Never heard of it, in fact, I probably would have had trouble getting a date with my future wife if we had conditions then like we have now. Cause I wrote her a little note and left it on her desk one day, and she accepted the invitation to go out for dinner...it was funny, we were married four or five months later, April, 45, then I went up to F area, and when I came back to the 700 area later, cause she was still there, they had to send her to the 300 area because they wouldn’t let her work for me. DID THEY EVER EXPLAIN THAT RULE? Probably from a favoritism standpoint... I was going to mention something interesting...when the Victorenes were shipped to us, the meter that was mounted on the front of the instrument mentioned what we were trying to measure; the word “millirenkins” was in bold letters across the face of the instrument. For security purposes it was necessary to remove the meter from the instrument, disassemble the instrument, take the meter face off, and very boldly paint in black paint, remove the word millirenkins for security purposes so nobody could read the word millirenkins and know what we were measuring. WAS SECURITY PRETTY TIGHT? Security was awful tight. To go back from a security standpoint...when I was sent out here, the only thing that I could tell anybody was that I was going to Pasco and would be in Richland, and I couldn’t tell anybody anything at all about the plant. After I arrived here and was given security orientation, one of the things that were were told was that if we took a trip from Richland to any of the remote areas, and if we told anybody about it outside the plant we could not mention mileage figures. We could not even say how far it was from Richland to any of the areas that we traveled to. If I wrote a letter to my friends or relatives, that’s how strict it was, I couldn’t even say how far I would have to travel to go to work, for instance, if I worked out in a remote area, I could just say that I worked in a remote area but I couldn’t give mileage figures. That’s an example of some of the security. HOW DID THEY INTRODUCE THIS SUBJECT BEFORE YOU CAME? Well, they just told you you are being shipped to Hanford.. the security wasn’t stressed until after we arrived here and went through security orientation... WHEN DID YOU FIGURE IT OUT? I think it came in bits and pieces, probably over the course of learning the equipment the y were using and getting tours of the project, you gradually learned what was actually happening, so it came not as a complete surprise, but only by bits and pieces did you gradually pick up what was happening here. WHAT WERE YOUR OWN PRIVATE THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT IT MIGHT BE? Well, when I first came to the project, you’d drive out around the project and you’d wonder, gee, I wonder what in the world is going on, is it all underground? We got bits and rumors about why it was underground, you could get that much from conversation, so you’d drive out and wonder, well what are they building? What could be underground? It was anybody’s guess in the early days. WE HEAR FROM OTHER PEOPLE THAT IF YOU HAD AN IDEA, KEEP IT PRIVATE. You don’t want to talk about it. When they tell you about the fines and penalties involved, you were very careful not to talk about it. Penalties? Death. Well, you think of the couple the Rosenburgs that were executed, well when things like that are brought to mind you were very careful not to talk about the nature of your work. Security was one of the prime subjects in those days. FOR PEOPLE WITH NO IDEA OF MONITORING, COULD YOU TELL WHAT THINGS ARE MEASURED, ETC.? Well, primarily we were looking for any release of radioactive material, that’s the big push for instrumentation. That’s not the only thing we’re measuring, we have instruments for measuring other things like water flow through the reactor. We have instruments that measure the flow rate and temperature; flow rate and temperature are the big things we were measuring in the operation of the reactor. So there’s a lot of instruments involved in that, so radiation monitoring is not the only thing we’re concerned with in instrumentation. It’s a big field, I can think of other instruments that we would use, wind instruments, for instance, that were concerned with air flow and direction of wind and what was traveling in the wind. Instrumentation is a broad field, so there were many things we were measuring. GO OVER INSTRUMENTATION ON EACH TUBE To begin with we had flow instruments, we were measuring the total amount of water that was being pushed through the reactor for cooling purposes, we had the flow instruments, we were measuring the temperature, course the flow and temperature were one of the means for measuring the power level of the reactor, the amount of heat rise in the reactor that gave you a measure of your power level. Some of the very important instruments that we used in the reactor were what we called pannelet gauges. This was an instrument that measured the pressure across an orifice that was located on the inlet side of each operating tube. This pressure gauge was very important because if for any reason you lost flow in any operating tube, you had a serious problem, and you wanted to shut the reactor down, to reduce power in that reactor quick-like to keep from damaging the tube. Each one of these panellet gauges was in the reactor SCRAM circuit for shutting the reactor down. That was one of the very important instruments, especially in the early days. SO THERE WERE OVER TWO THOUSAND WAYS TO SHUT THE REACTOR DOWN.. If you had two thousand tubes in the reactor you had a panellet gauge for each one of those tubes and any one of those tubes that if for any reason you lost flow, such as a rupture in a tube, caused the flow rate to change, the pressure would change, and in turn cause the pannellet gauge to in turn give a trip one the SCRAM system. DID THAT HAPPEN OFTEN? I’d like to say not too often, but more often than we’d like to think. The operating people didn’t look forward to that occasion but we did have failures of panellet gauges and we did have human error, occasionally we would have problems with the panellet gauges, and we could put an electrical jumper across each gauge and remove it if we had authority from the operating people. So a particular panellet gauge that appeared to be giving some trouble we could put a jumper across that gauge and remove that panellet and replace it. But sometimes we would foul up and not get the jumper in the right place and down goes the reactor. I don’t like to think of those cases but it did happen...If the reactor had been operating for a period of time it would more than likely be twenty-four hour shutdown; now I’m getting into operating experience which I wasn’t all that familiar with, but I do remember on occasion when say on startup, if the reactor was coming up, and you had a shutdown, if it hadn’t gotten to too high a level you had so many minutes to restart. WAS THERE AN ATMOSPHERE OF TENSION, NEW PROBLEMS, NOTHING ROUTINE? A lot of the things that we did, as I look back now, although they were certainly not unsafe, as we knew it in those days, they probably would frown on it nowadays, because we have more strict rules and regulations now, but we certainly didn’t do things then that were unsafe, we did things as safe as we knew under the conditions at the time. But with the experience that we’ve had over the years some of the things we did would probably be considered unsafe now, just because of experience we’ve gained in the meantime... Without the experience behind us we had to rely on our best judgment at the time. SOCIAL CONDITIONS, DESCRIBE Dust storms. When I arrived in Feb. of 1994, didn’t see too much of the dust situation until the summer months came on, but I lived in a dormitory for a year after arriving here and I do remember the dust storms that we had during the summer; I recall one night I left the window open in the dormitory and I woke up in the morning with a big coat of dust all over everything and that was typical. Dust was a big problem. With all the construction work and lack of trees, the ground was torn up and the least bit of wind would bring up what we call the Termination Winds... WHY CALLED THAT? People would come here, take on the job, and not realize the weather conditions in this area, work here for a while and everything was rosy until the wind would start to blow and you’d get one of those terrific dust storms, they’d say, this is enough for me, I’m leaving, and they would terminate. WHAT KIND OF HOUSE... I was living in the dormitory and I married one of the girls that was working here and we accepted a B house, a duplex, that was the first house we had in the north end of town and then after we lived here for a few years we moved to what is now an H House. IN B HOUSE WAS IT VERY BARE? Dust was still one of the main problems, even after being here a year, because construction work was still going on, grass was still being planted and trying to get it to grow, trees were at a minimum, so there was still a lot of dust problems even in the early days. WHERE WERE YOU WHEN BOMB DROPPED? The first big (TAPE ENDS) NEW TAPE ..that’s the only consolation I have for the use of the bomb... where was I when the bomb dropped? My wife and I had gone on a vacation trip up to Mt. Rainier...All of a sudden this information became available, well, we read the newspaper that a bomb has been dropped and the President has announce so much information, so we wonder, how much can we talk about it, well, we better be quiet about it, don’t say anything...We get a telephone call, a frantic telephone call from my supervisor trying to reach us at Mt. Rainier, he finally got ahold of us and he says to us Don’t Say Anything, he was so afraid that we would start talking, reading the newspaper that had been released, that Hanford was involved in this bomb, he was so afraid that we would start saying things that we shouldn’t, so he made this frantic telephone call to us, to tell us don’t say one word about anything you know about the project, in fact I don’t think we even told people we even worked at Hanford. so we escaped any consequences... WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU GOT BACK? Well, when we came back, once again we were told don’t say anything that isn’t released publicly, you’re still under the same obligations that you’ve always been to remain completely silent about anything that you know about this project, the only thing that’s released is released publicly, so it was a long time before you would even talk about anything that you knew regarding the project to any outsiders. PAPER BECAME IMPORTANT... Bad thing about it was that in those days you would read in the newspaper, there would be a lot of rumors, and you had to be careful about what you read to separate rumors from what was officially released, so you had to still be careful about reading the newspapers and talk about what was in the papers, because you can very well imagine all the rumors there would have been in the papers.. HOW LONG BEFORE PEOPLE KNEW THAT THE MATERIAL HAD BEEN PRODUCED HERE FOR THE SECOND ONE? I would hesitate to comment on that because I don’t remember details... It was quite sometime before it was released, best not comment. WHEN YOU REALIZED THE NATURE, WHAT WERE YOUR FEELINGS? It’s hard to remember any specific feelings, it’s all a part of the work we were doing, and so we’re here and we’ll do what we can to continue with it, we realized that it was important work, I don’t remember any strong feelings, it was part of my work... FEEL PROUD? I suppose in those days we did, I don’t remember feeling one way or another at the time, but I suppose at the time we did feel proud to be a part of at least the closing aspect of the war... IN CONTEXT OF WAR EFFORT, JUSTIFY, SAVING LIVES? I think the most we can say at this point in time was that the use of the material that was produced here at Hanford certainly contributed to the close of the war a lot earlier than it would otherwise, I think that’s the best way you can put it. GREG TELLS STORY OF THE WHIZBANG, security... Even at this stage of the game there are certain things that we have never been told that we are released from the original requirements... I don’t want the noose! WHAT KIND OF DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES AS A PUNISHMENT... We were given documents to read in which the consequences were spelled out very specifically what the punishment would be if you released certain information, so it was spelled out in black and white what the punishment would be... AND WHAT WAS MAXIMUM? Death! Yes, death, you would be executed or subject to punishment which could result in execution if certain things happened, so you had to be very careful about not saying things that could lead to that type of punishment. MOST OTHER PEOPLE IMPLIED LOSE JOB... More than that. PEOPLE ON BUS PASSED RUMORS, GONE NEXT DAY I never heard that myself, but probably... I never had top security clearance, but even a Q clearance which I had till I retired, even that type of clearance required a lot of secrecy. BACK TO ARRIVAL, WHAT WAS MORALE? I would say generally that morale was good, you knew that you were doing important work towards the war effort, so morale was good. PEOPLE WORKING HERE GOT SPECIAL DISPENSATION FORM DRAFT? Like in my case when I first came here I was given a classification that kept me from being called into the draft... It was essential to the war effort. OTHER IMPRESSIONS? I think many of us when we first came here thought that we would be here for two years at the most, but as time went on we became aware of the importance of the project, and became more acclimated to the area and what’s going on, so like in my own case, I was here the rest of my life, but a lot of people were only here for a short time...some of us continued to stay here. WORKING FOR DUPONT? I started with Dupont in 1940, so I had some DuPont experience, it was a very good company, a very safety oriented company... WHAT WERE YOU TOLD AS TO WHY THEY WERE LEAVING HANFORD? I can’t remember... END Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:37:22 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Monty Stratton Oral History Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Monty Stratton for the B Reactor Museum Association. Stratton worked in Instrumentation at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project and Cold War. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 6/8/1993 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4A 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 B Reactor Museum Association Oral Histories Description An account of the resource Oral History Interviews conducted by the B Reactor Museum Association. The collection is split between a series of audio oral histories taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s by Gene Weisskopf that focuses on the T-Plant, and a series of video oral histories done in the early 1990s by Bill Putman that focus on the B Reactor and Hanford construction. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3, DOCX Language A language of the resource English Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 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 Tom Putnam Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Harry Zweifel Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound HARRY ZWEIFEL INTERVIEW- Recorded on 12/14/91 Okay, well my name is Harry Zweifel and I was a shift at B area during the startup, I was a uh, shift supervisor on what they called patrol. We wandered around the building and saw that everything was as it should be, no radiation, undue radiation and so on. WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE BEFORE HANFORD? Well my experience before Hanford started out in uh, with Dupont in explosives, uh, TNT back at Kankakee and then I ran a training school in Wisconsin up at uh, Barksdale for TNT operators. And during the period of a 1940, latter part of ‘41 and ‘42 uh, I was in, as I say, in operations and in training school and uh, we followed the construction of the TNT lines and then the startups thereof and I was sort of a monohouse what they call a monohouse specialist. And then following the, as soon as all twelve were operating why uh, I became in charge of a shift in uh, TNT and uh, then was on days as the senior supervisor, actually an apprentice senior supervisor, I guess, and uh, one day early in uh 1944 I received a call from the head office TNT and the superintendent told me that uh effective, it was Friday, effective that Monday I was transferred on loan from Dupont to the University of Chicago. And I said “Well what am I going to do?” and he says “I don’t know, nobody told me, they’ll tell you when you get up there.” On Monday morning, uh, I think it was early February by that time that I went up and I was told by a fella named Dr. Kircher Q. Bellis that uh, that they’re going to split the atom, they’re going to make an atom bomb. And my job was going to be helpin em develop the uh, semaworks(?) under west stands doing the sep separations, developing the process for separating plutonium from the metals and I stayed there until I came out here and that was uh, I think that really was, things are starting to blur now but it was the end of a 1944. And we uh, I was following construction of the B reactor, my particular responsibility was what they call bellfield valves. You remember those George? They were uh, they were the valves that permitted us to quickly drop the, so called, poison solution into the vertical safety rods in case of a uh, of a an event where the reactor was gonna run away and you couldn’t get the VSR’S in and then this liquid went in all the thimbles. I spent about 3 months up there workin on the bellfield valves and droppin the materials and timing it and so on. And then once construction was done why I went in to uh, as I say, the patrol unit. WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE IN CHICAGO? Well in Chicago, when I went up there, we went in to the uh, under the west stands the (?) works and it was quite an experience. We had the, we had the squash court right next to Dr. Ferm’s reactor, his first reactor was... and they were just finishing their experiments and decided that yeah they could uh, keep the uh, reaction going and uh, we were building then the (?) works and we built it all ourselves because they wouldn’t let any laboring people in based on the security. YOU WERE BUILDING THE? The tanks, we, all the tanks and the and the piping for the, run running the solutions. We had our own little dissolver and then we’d jet over into these tanks. We had plastic lines and oh we had quite a time. We learned how to melt lead bricks, built our own shielding and so on. We did it all ourselves. Later on why we even got into a what later became the redux operation, we were doin uh, extraction with the liquids (?). We built that ourselves. And I became a, towards the end, I became the uh, supervisor in charge of the actual operation there. WHAT DID FERMI DO IN CHICAGO AND YOU IN RELATION TO THAT. Well ok. Fermi was strictly on the reactor side. And he was uh, he was the man that was doing all the studies on the graphite, how they moderate it, how the neutrons acted and so on. And at that time they were still trying to prove that they could sustain the uh, a uh, nuclear reaction. And uh, I, that was uh, I think that was the time it may have been in B reactor startup but I don’t think so. Something about the Italian navigator has landed and so on; which was the signal that uh, the reactor could be made self sustaining. And that was, that was a key right there, if it, if it hadn’t that would have been it. WHAT WAS THE NATURE OF THE FUEL IN CHICAGO AND HOW HANDLED? Uh George, I don’t, the fuel, I don’t really know exactly, as I say, I was, you know, they, I was on the chemical side. But uh, they had a ra, radioactive solution, rather potent, I think, a source, that they were using. And beyond that, I really don’t know how their, how their reaction... IT MAY NOT HAVE BEEN SLUGS AT ALL? Oh no, no I don’t think it was, no. Uh, I’m not, well they could have uh gotten clinton slugs, they had some, you know, from their reactor down there. And later on we started up our summer works that’s what we were running is the clinton slugs, they were sending those up. But, it if I can digress a little bit, Fermie was such a wonderful character, I just, (?). Uh, when we first, when I first got up there, he, they held an orientation for, oh maybe, 20 people. And uh, Ave Compton was there, Regner was there, Phil Morrison was there talkin physics and uh, they would each get up and they said what they had - these people there doin this and these people there doin that. There’s several sites, you see. Uh, Fermie, they all stood at the rostrum and uh, rather formal. Uh, Fermie got up there and he, first thing he sat on the edge of a table lookin at...and he always had a little stub of a pencil. No, maybe two, three inches long, that’s all, he played with that and so he stuck it in his ear and so on. So he was telling us what he did. He said: “Well I have these people at site B, they do this and I have these people over there, that do this.” He said: “Well I’ve got people all over, I don’t know what they’re doin.” He was kind of a breath of fresh air. He could meet em in the halls and of course there’s long halls in front of the squash courts and you could stop him, ask him a question, he’d stop and answer. So would Morrison. But some of the rest of em were more standoffish and too busy to mess around with a guy like me. But uh, Fermie was there and I really had nothing to do with him except meeting him in the halls and hearing him in a lecture and so on. HE DID HAVE A CERTAIN CHARISMA. Oh, he, he was, he was. He was just a comfortable old shoe. (CHATTER) WHAT WAS IMPORTANCE OF DUPONT IN THIS? Absolutely. The function of the Dupont Company I don’t think they ever received all the recognition that they should have. When, when you consider the design and the construction of these facilities and how successful they were, right from the beginning, it it’s astounding. I just think it’s beyond belief that they could do it and as far as I’m concerned Dupont was were the star of the whole outfit. And they sent good people out here; they had, boy, they had good people, top notch. Such that...(CHATTER). Well Dupont, Dupont would, I think that they never received the applause that they should have for the job they did. With the, nobody’d ever had a reactor other than the few blocks of graphite laid up and uh, in B squash court, uh, and we built the thing, designed and built it and it was successful almost right from the beginning as far as the reactor goes. There was a mistake made in how many, how much uranium you needed to keep the reactor goin so that you weren’t poisoned out by the iodine, but uh, it was an astounding thing. Uh, as I said, they had excellent management and they sent their best out here. They had some real good people and they were so much different than some that we had from then on, it seems to me. WHY DO YOU THINK DUPONT CHOSE TO LEAVE WHEN THEY DID? I think that Dupont at that time were kind of fed up with the way things were being run here. Uh, later on I think they were, you know, they were brought back in to Savannah and I think they hated that. And I really believe that this work and the Savannah work really set them behind as a chemical company, if you look at em now they’re havin a tough time, they’re, where it was all owned by the family now it’s own considerably by uh, Bronfran(?) who’s a liquor distiller and uh, and in a, not happily. I think that they, they really got behind on a lot of their research and so on in that long period where they were doing other things. HOW WERE YOU RECRUITED OR WERE YOU ASSIGNED TO COME OUT HERE? Like I say, they called me in on a Friday afternoon and said you’re transferred on loan to the University of Chicago, be up there on Monday morning. We were in Kankakee, of course and just 35 miles outside of Chicago so it was no great big thing bein there but it was a shock especially when you ask the superintendent of TNT “Well, what am I going to do there?” And he says “Nobody told me, he says, I don’t know.” And it was an entirely new, different group of people, you know, more uh, uh, scientifically oriented. PHD’s all over the place and some names you had heard and so on. WHAT WAS THE TRANSITION TO HANFORD THEN? Well that was uh, I was just telling George, Ward Botsford who was a friend of mine and he was he was back there at site B makin mirrors for instrumentation. So we were gonna come out here together and we both had cars, so we rented a tow bar. And his car was bigger so we towed mine. And so we drove out here. And I think, along about a, a little bit south of Spokane we both would have gladly turned around and gone back, what are we doing in a place like this? You know. It was quite a shock from a pair of city boys to see the desert and nothin nothin around there and couldn’t see how we could do anything out here. Of course, we both knew what we were gonna do out here, but sure didn’t look like a very good place to do it. YOU WERE TOWING ONE CAR BECAUSE OF GAS RATIONING? Yeah, um uh. And uh, that way we could both drive and we made a few side trips, did a days fishing at Yellowstone Park. But we got out here and went into the transient quarters and wasn’t went through the next day security and then we were, I was out in the area and Ward was, I’ve forgotten where they sent him. But there was an interesting thing there too on this transition. After being for a year and a half in uh, chemical separations and so on, I got out here and they said I was gonna be in the reactor. I’d never, I’d seen a reactor and it was really a surprise. And I didn’t want to do it because I really had an awful lot of experience in the one place and uh, I really had quite a bit of jump, you might say, on most of the other people who would be here. But it was real interesting, all my notebooks from (?) I got out here and they were too classified for me to see. I never did get em. So we went out to, we went out to the area, I went out to the area then, B and uh, followed construction, went through the startup and went through startup of F and then I went over to 200 areas for uh, more construction following and startup over there. I got, that’s where I got the unfortunate name of bein in construction and startups I think is that followed me all the rest of my life. WHAT WAS THE OVERALL MOOD OF COUNTRY? That’s, it was. Well, you know, we were still losin a lot of lot of uh, soldiers and marines uh, going into these various islands, the McArthur island hopping. And uh, you saw the uh bloody pictures of Tarawa and you saw a lot of the pictures of Guadalcanal and so on and so forth. Uh, I think that there was still a great deal of tension and so on while you began to see that on the long run that uh, that the Japanese were going to lose but at the same time you knew that there was gonna be an awful lot of American lives lost. It was not a happy situation. And, of course, that’s one reason why I was happy to see em drop the bomb because I’m convinced that saved many many thousands of American lives. (AND JAPANESE LIVES PERHAPS). It might have because, you know, by that time they’d had their fire storms over Tokyo and it’s questionable whether uh whether the bomb killed more than those fire storms did over Tokyo, I’m not sure. WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO SEE THE PROJECT FOR THE FIRST TIME? Through the dust storms, well we saw the through the dust storms and that’s where you, a lot like we had this spring. Those we would have called termination winds in the old days. But, it was an amazing thing. I think, if I remember the numbers, there was over 100,000 construction workers here and they had their dormitories uh, from uh, the old Hanford area and down in there. And actually, that was one of the places we used to be able to go at night to get a pitcher of beer. But you never went by yourself because there was some rough characters. There was all sorts of stories in those days, uh, about, you know they kept the men and women separated by big barb wire fences and there was all sorts of stories goin on there. And there were fights, a lot of fights, and uh, a patrolman at that time, I don’t know whether he was kiddin me or not, came off a shift and he said he’d found a body in a garbage can. That’s quite possible cause there was some rough people. But uh, dust storms, all the houses were still being, most houses were still being built. And you had the big argument about what kind a house you’re gonna have. And of course, well I lived in a dormitory for three months. My wife was back in Illinois, with our one little boy. And it was not a particularly happy period. You looked at it as, well this is a job, there’s others in the army doin a lot worse that this, so uh, you’d grit your teeth and you didn’t sign up for the termination wind.(?) WHAT ABOUT THE SCOPE OF THE PROJECT? Well, time let’s see, what was it, the 550 square miles if I’m not mistaken it was something like 5 to 600,000,000 dollars worth of construction and uh, it was so vast it, we didn’t know everything that was goin on, what was bein built, bein built and being built fast. And then, there was a shortage of material. You waited a lot of times for some valves to come in, of course, we had it a lot easier than any place else in the country other, of getting material. That was real interesting, you know, there was an awful lot of waste, a lot of thievery went on, cause a, a lot of the people in construction they had they’d gather them from anywhere they could. CAN YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU SAW B REACTOR? It looked monstrous, it looked so big. And you gotta, gotta bear in mind. CAN YOU GIVE ME FULL STATEMENT? Yeah, the first time I saw a reactor was the first reactor I’d ever seen, other than the little pile. (CHATTER) When I first went in there why I was pretty green about the reactors. I had to start readin manuals real fast to find out what was, what the was gonna do there and how it happened. Because uh, there was this tremendous block and of course they were still, still putting up a, a the B blocks and so on and they were starting puttin up graphite inside there and we got to see all that and uh, uh, that was quite uh, edify, for my edification and education. But it was a tremendous place. I be, I’d wondered whether I’d ever understand what it was all about and how to get around it. And then, of course, there was, we were a little leery about that much radiation, uh, the emphasis certainly was on safety. That’s why I found it so difficult to think, to hear that Dupont did so much other, down in Savannah, something doesn’t ring true. Or else it’s a different breed of cattle maybe, I don’t know. REFRIGERATION FACILITIES. Well, it, the facility, refrigeration facilities were in B. Each one of the reac, water plants, you know, had something a little different to them. And I think you’re right. I think B had a refrigeration system. F had somethin about a water treatment system, I don’t remember what uh, D had. But uh, they were tremendous units, but there again George, the separations of the people, I never went over into a water plant. You know, to see what was going there. First of all, we didn’t, we didn’t leave the building in uh, the early days toward, after we started up why then they started goin to the change house to each lunch. But outside of that you didn’t go. And you certainly, if you were a reactor man, you didn’t go over and go around the water plant, you know. So we were uh, we knew of course, how much water was comin over. We knew somethin about the quality of it, we knew the pressure. We knew a little bit more about 190 and the pumping because that was so important to us. But when you start gettin down on the, as you say the refrigeration, or some of the water treatments or the filtration plant of the river, I think it was probably uh, I don’t think I got to the river pump house until after I came back here in ‘46 and was in engineering design and did some work down at the river pump house. Only then did I see some of that stuff. IT WAS PROBABLY INTENDED TO COOL THE WATER. Yeah, that that’s right. You, you weren’t, you, like a I heard Don say on the cooling, we were always trying something different, you know, and there was so much unknown in the beginning. I marvel sometime at how quickly we’ve progressed because really in the beginning uh, you were cautious because you didn’t know that much, how it was gonna, bear, look look - as an example that uh, while Fermie and Compton had an idea that the reactor might die from pois, xe, xenon poisoning, but uh, they weren’t real sure of that. They weren’t sure enough that they didn’t go ahead and start and see what happened. And that was a lot of our, a lot of our training. Uh, but you lean so far over backwards on safety that uh, I never, I never felt endangered. TELL US ABOUT INSTRUMENTATION FOR MEASURING RADIATION LEVELS. Well, you’re probably more George, as far as instrumentation measurin, you probably know way more about that than I do. Of course, we all had our chances in the early days of carryin a Beckman(?) around and when we did anything. But uh, they were pretty crude. And you got one arm longer than the other. They must of weighed 35 pounds wouldn’t you think? And we’d traipse all around checkin on leaks and doin this and that, uh...(CHATTER) Beckman was an instrument, George can tell you more about it, for really, just only measured (?)(?) (?). Didn’t it George? And uh, we would go around the building with these, we were always checkin to make sure that there were no leaks and no stray radiation and uh, uh, that was one of the jobs that the patrol people did and in com in combining with the radiation monitoring experts. WERE YOU CHECKING WITH EACH LEVEL? Yeah, yeah, at the doors to the rear face, you know, to make sure that the air flow was in the right direction and nothin leakin out from the door. We went across the top of the reactor and uh, made sure that there was no gas leaking up there. Of course, we didn’t go within the circle of the VSR’s. SO YOU WERE WORKING IN B AT THE TIME, AS PATROL? In B, yeah. (YOU WERE THERE AT STARTUP?) Oh, yeah. Well that was, that was a terrible thing cause we didn’t know that much about it. But we started up and uh, very low level, of course, and I was on 4 to 12 at that time. And we came in the next day and everybody had a long face and they were all unhappy that the reactor was dying from the xenon poisoning. And uh, well it went down. Fermie and Marshall, Dr. Marshall and his wife, they were a young pair of physicists and very good. They worked with a Fermie a lot and uh, Morrison was there, Compton was there and they were burnin up their slide rulers. And uh, it didn’t take them too long and they said well okay you just have to put in uh, several more slugs per column and uh, we think we’ll be alright. As I remember, that’s what they said, we think we’ll be alright. So we went up very fast and as I recall, we put in about uh, about 50 more inches of slugs and uh, we were doin that as fast as we could, as a matter of fact it’s kind of interesting. Doc Marshall was a nice young guy and you could talk to him a lot, and uh, we had these old charging machines. Uh, you put a, you put your slug, you take it out of a box, you put it on a little ramp and it rolled down and then you had a lever and you pushed that. And I got him on one of the machines charging and then wouldn’t give him any relief. And he, he kept talkin “Come on, I gotta go somewhere” and I said well, you just stay and do a few more tubes and you’ll be alright. And he laughed and he was a good sport about it but uh, uh, that was a real critical period. And you wondered, you know, you had, you had to have faith that Compton and those guys knew what they were doin and they did. HOW DID INFORMATION ABOUT THE SECOND STARTUP HIT YOU? Well, on the second startup how did we feel. Well, you had to have confidence, especially those that came from Chicago, there weren’t too many but, but we had great confidence in Fermi and Morrison and the uh, and the Marshals. And like I say, as you had heard, you could look from the office into the control room and you could see them and they’re burnin up their slide rules and talking and so on and they came out and with the solution, proposed solution, adding extra uranium and uh, you know, at that time as I say, we were not that knowledgeable. A lot, especially me, coming from the 200 area operation you know I, I didn’t uh, it took a long time, I had a fine guy workin, that I was workin for at that time, Fran Mask, very intelligent guy and had achieved a lot of na, of knowledge at Clinton Labs. And he explained to me about iodine and how it degraded into xenon and xenon captured the neutrons so that there wasn’t uh, could be a sustained reaction. So, it was, it was a bad period because there wasn’t the confidence that the thing would, gonna go, you know, general confidence. You hoped and you thought it probably would, but you didn’t dare bet on it. And we were we were all anxiously waiting that next startup and, as I say, I was on 4 to 12 and we uh, between the 4 to 12 people and the l2, 12 to 8 people we finished the recharging the extra metal and they started up on day shift. And uh, the boy, when we came on at 4:00 then the boys on the day shift were breathing a big sigh of relief. THAT WAS OBVIOUSLY A MILESTONE. A tremendous milestone. WHAT OTHER MILESTONES WERE THERE IN THAT PROCESS. Well, you gotta, you know, after a prolonged period is kinda what I looked at, if you remember that the reactors were said to be designed for 250 megawatts, and uh, I think one of the big big milestones was when we raised from 250 to 400 megawatts. Of course, that paled to the 2,000 that we got later on. But uh, it was awful big, awful big. You had to make a little changes, raise the pressure of your 190 pumps and uh, do a little reorificing and so on. But it was a great thing, because we, by that time we knew, hey we can run these things. And uh, a matter of fact we were probably gettin a little cocky, but uh, that was the big one. FEEDBACK AND UPGRADING - WAS THAT SIGNIFICANT? Well, it was to me because, you see, I left in May of ‘45, I left the 200 areas and went to rocket powder and uh, went around after rocket powder went to 3 or 4 more plants for du, for Dupont and by that time I was firmly in the design phase, design and construction and startup. And I was goin from plant to plant, so. We had two children at that time so uh, I quit Dupont and I hated to do that and came back here. And when I came back here I went into operations for a short time again, just to get my feet on the ground, but then I went into straight engineering design and I, I had part of building DR, building and design DR & H and uh, eventually ended up following all of the K reactors for opera for operations. Being in on design of those, so. IN THIS EARLY PERIOD, WAS THERE ANY PROBLEM WITH FUEL FAILURE? Oh yeah. That, that’s probably another milestone with the fuel failures. And uh, we were a frightened bunch of puppies when we realized that we had a slug with a hole in it, you know. And uh, uh, the first the first episodes at getting that out and how to do it, the, all learning, hadn’t been done anywhere before, you know. And uh, had to build all the equipment, how to push it, what do you do with it when you push it out the rear pigtail into the into the pool. How do you handle that. What about the water there, is it gonna be contaminated so badly. So that was a, that was a real milestone, George, I’m glad you mentioned that. Later on, of course, we ran at such high power levels and uh, high temperatures and we had a lot of em and I can remember one time we had a, we had a, it was at H, we had a critical W - you remember that’s when you shut down for lack of, for lack of electrical backup. And, we had been watching a specific tube in the H reactor, feeling that it was going to be a rupture or gonna stick. So when they shut down uh, we went into getting that out. Sure enough it was a sticker, but we got it out before the critical W was over. And that was, that was quite different than the first time. I think the first ruptured slug or stuck slug we were down for a week. SOME DID OCCUR AT B REACTOR DURING THE INITIAL LOW LEVEL OPERATION. Well George, whether there was an original loading, whether there was any fuel elements, I guess I’ve forgotten that if it did. It’s kinda, it certainly is uh, I think, probable but I just don’t remember if we did. MARSHALL - ONE OF THE EARLY PROFESSIONAL WOMEN OUT THERE. I think she was. Um uh. As you know, in the beginning, we had no women out there. The nurse was the only woman in the area. Uh, but, Mrs. Marshall, I’ve forgotten what her name was now, she was a good physicist in her own right and I don’t remember any other women being active in the work at that time. She was a Fermie protege. WHAT FACTORS MADE IT POSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE THIS? First of all, I think it had number one priority in the country, backed by the president. It was in a war time period where there was a different attitude towards work, I think. You had your Rosie the Riveters and we had our people out here just as dedicated, I think. Get it done, get it done. And uh, you worked. Well, in the beginning, you know, we worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week - we didn’t uh take time off. We’d get home, go down to the cafeteria and eat go back to our dormitory a couple hours a playin bridge or whatever, go to bed, get up and do the same thing all over. Uh, so you had the priorities, you had the work ethic and you had a pretty high cadre of well trained people. Well, here’s an example. Uh, if you were asst. superintendent back with Dupont back there you came out here you what they called an area supervisor. If you were a uh, area supervisor and you came out here you’d be a senior supervisor. I was a senior supervisor, came out here and was a shift supervisor. So, you had, you had people, one, almost 100% engineers or chemists or whatever the discipline was required and most of them had shown some potential or they wouldn’t have been here. There was an awful lot of real good people left back - Kankakee, Memphis and a few other places. They skimmed the cream off, they thought. Some of em weren’t so creamy. DUPONT WAS A GREAT COMPANY. Well, of course I don’t, my thought is that Dupont was the best. Uh, and my feeling is that each succeeding contractor went down just a little bit and uh right towards to end, well I think it started with GE. You sent two type of people out here, as far as I’m concerned. This may be heresy but, you sent two type of people out here. You sent out young ones that you want to see whether they can advance to the next dead, or you set, sent out some people who were at a dead end and uh, sent out here, okay here’s a little reward but we’re gonna get rid of you too. But I think you had excellent people. Design wise, design and engineering wise, Dupont at that time, was the best in the country, I’m sure of that. OVERALL TECHNICAL & INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY OF U.S. MADE IT POSSIBLE. Oh, well yeah. We’re on the war time footing, you know, and we’re putting out the maximum effort with good people. The work ethic was there. My chemical experience here was, when I left, after we got B & F reactor, as you might imagine, the 200 areas were behind the reactors in construction. The main the primary job here was to get the reactors built and then the separations. So I followed the design and construction of a 221B and 221U. The only one I missed was 221T. And uh, I stayed there then for the startup of 221B, I was I was in charge of the control office. And uh, then of course that’s when I left there in Septem, er May of ‘45. I didn’t want to leave. I tried to stay another week but Bill Kay said “You get out of here, you’re transferred.” SO THEN YOU WENT WHERE? Oh then I went to Hercules rocket powder and we learned to make rocket powder there. Then I went down to Indiana plant 2 and we built that rocket plant. It was a $75,000,000 plant as I re, no $275,000,000. We made 207,000 pounds of rocket powder, we started up in about uh, mid June. Dropped the bomb August the 8th and we shut it, started shuttin down on the 9th. We made 205, 207 pounds of rocket powder. I had an interesting experience there uh, I was in charge at that time of what they call final testing. It was a, ultrasonic testing, x-ray and fine final inspection. And uh, my boss told me, plant one was smokeless powder and they were gonna shut down there, he said go on over there and interview those people and hire 70 operators. So I went over there and I met with all these operators and I told them how great it was they were gonna get laid off here but they could have a job here and rocket powder was so much more important at this time that you’ll work much longer. ZWEIFEL INTERVIEW, PART 2 I had an interesting experience there. I was in charge at that time of what they call final testing. It was uh, ultrasonic testing, x-ray and then final inspection. And uh - plant one was smokeless powder and they were gonna shut down there - he said go on over there and interview those people and hire 70 uh, operators. So I went over there and I met with all these operators and I told them how great it was they were gonna get laid off here but they could have a job here and rocket powder was so much more important at this time that you’ll work much, much longer. Well I hired em in June and in August my boss said “Go and lay em off now.” And they were, they were not happy. WHAT WAS THAT ROCKET POWDER TO HAVE BEEN USED FOR? Oh, well you’ve seen these rockets in the war games and so on, at uh, the propellant for explosives, you know. And, boy, we’d burn, it was really ?, 50% nitroglycerin, 50% nitrocotton; and uh we made a lot of different shapes but they were ? shape. Mark, mark 18 was 39 pounds, and we burned the, in the testing we burned the uh, 39 pounds in a little over 2 seconds. WHAT DID THAT END UP IN AS FAR AS THE WEAPON? Well God, they put em in tanks George and they had, you’ve seen these Russians had a big batteries of them that fired and we did that too. It was quite a thing. WHERE WERE YOU IN AUGUST OF 1945? I was makin rocket powder at plant 2 in Indiana. And we were living in mud flats. And when they dropped the bomb there were a lot of people there that had come from out here, not a lot but some. And then we heard that the Japanese were gonna surrender. We had a two day party. I GUESS YOU COULD SAY “I WAS THERE.” I was there, that’s right. REMEMBER IMMEDIATE REACTION WHEN YOU HEARD THAT? Oh man. Well, return to, return to a peace time life. Get outta mud flats, at the, living conditions there were the, way worse than out here. We had a little pot belly wood stove in the living room and uh, water recirculated through there for hot water. It was miserable and uh, uh, just well, you can imagine. No more of your friends were gonna be gettin shot up uh, we could live a lot different. You know, after a while your, there were a lot of things that were short. Stand in line for this and that. And uh, just lookin forward to peace time. ANY OTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE? Well, in reflecting back I always felt privileged to have been a part of it. And uh, you always felt in those days, well, you should have been in the service. And I went, I went up in Chicago and twice tried to get into the Navy and each time they’d say - “Well, what are you doin now?” And I’d say well I’m in explosives. “There’s the door, get out.” But uh, you AL, you always felt that you shou, you should have been, in your age group, you should have been in the army and not out here. You felt glad that was over. But you did feel that uh, some sense of gratification that you had some part in ending the war. ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO PASS TO FUTURE GENERATIONS? Well, I wish I could tell more of this generation that they’re makin a big mistake if they don’t proceed with a the use, the peaceful use of the atom. Forget all this stuff, the unfounded rumors of what might happen and so on that our friends in Portland and Seattle seem to thrive on. And uh, we’ve sure raised a lot of family here, haven’t we George. And none of em have two heads and none of em have been poisoned. It’s quite possible to have a healthy nuclear industry. I just wish we’d get on with it because petroleum’s running out and besides petroleum’s too good to be burning in gas, in automobiles, it should be making chemicals and medicines. I have no more that I can think of. END 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 Harry Zweifel Oral History Interview Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Harry Zweifel for the B Reactor Museum Association. Zweifel was in Radiation Patrol and Startup Operations at the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource B Reactor Museum Association Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/14/1991 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. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RG2D-4B https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6636b7d3ee2798561e5afe99caf2da22.JPG 1e22122264ec625e8c5e2ce56b375112 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb4a77dbb03596cf36d5d337a3b5f42a5.pdf e09664da34b9a91f8f4cdfd651377fd4 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe6f5ee7f141b337982328a96183b1fdd.mp4 d0903c921bd7b6006b4ff4f9bbf7d5ac 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 Shirley Carlisle Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Shirley Carlisle on November 7, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Shirley about her experiences growing up in Richland. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us? Shirley Carlisle: Shirley Ann Carlisle. S-H-I-R-L-E-Y. Ann, A-N-N. Carlisle. C-A-R-L-I-S-L-E. Franklin: Great, thank you, Shirley. And it’s okay if I call you Shirley, right? Carlisle: Sure. Franklin: Okay. So, you were born in Richland? That’s correct? Carlisle: I was born in Kadlec. Franklin: Okay. And Richland was still a—until—and you were born what year? Carlisle: 1947. Franklin: Okay. And that’s when— Carlisle: It was still under government control. My mother had an Army doctor. Franklin: Okay. And so, to have lived here at that time, your family must have worked— Carlisle: My dad was a Hanford patrolman. Franklin: Okay. And when did your dad come to the area? Carlisle: My grandfather died in Pasco in 1937. My dad came out after that. Franklin: Oh, so your family was here before the Manhattan Project. Carlisle: Before, yes. Before the Manhattan Project. Probably ’34 or something like that. Franklin: Okay, and do you know what your grandfather did in Pasco? Carlisle: My granddad homesteaded down along the Columbia River. Franklin: Oh, wow. Carlisle: So, he had a small little homestead down along the Columbia. Franklin: And so your father came out before your grandfather died, or after? Carlisle: You know, I’m not really sure. It was sometime around the time that my granddad died. Franklin: Okay. And what did—did he come to take over the farm? Carlisle: He—yes, he came out to help his mother and he had five brothers and sisters, so he came to help with family. Franklin: Was he one of the older? Carlisle: He was the oldest. Franklin: He was the oldest, okay. So his brothers and sisters still lived with his father and mother on this homestead. Carlisle: Right. I had two aunts—or, an aunt and an uncle that graduated from Pasco High School about 1947, ’48. Franklin: Okay. So what led to your father starting to work at Hanford? He must’ve worked for DuPont eventually, right? Carlisle: He did. That was his first job, was DuPont. He had worked, you know, around Pasco, the farms, that kind of thing. Franklin: Okay. Do you—mention why he got a job at the Manhattan Project? Carlisle: Well, because it was the going thing. And it was much better pay. And he didn’t think there was security there—longevity, I should say. Yeah. He actually worked there maybe ten years and still didn’t think he was going to be there very long, so he bought farm in Colville and when Hanford went down, he was going to go back to farming. Well, we never went back to farming. Franklin: So he must’ve moved—did he move to Richland, then, when he started the job? Carlisle: Yes. Franklin: Okay. Carlisle: My folks, they were married in ’45 in Hood Park, and then his—their first house they had was 90 Craighill, a little one-bedroom prefab because it was just the two of them. And he went to work for Hanford as a patrolman. My dad wasn’t a very big man; he didn’t particularly care to like being a patrolman because it was kind of rowdy in those days. And so my dad quit. So my mom said, one day about two weeks after he quit, a knock on the door and this Hanford patrolman, and they wanted to know where my dad’s at. Well, he’s out in the backyard. So they go out and talk to him, and patrol leaves and my dad comes back into the house. My mom says, well, what did they want? He said, I can’t quit. So my dad went back to work. Because it was a war effort. So my dad couldn’t quit. So they put him, then—he was working maintenance, then, after that. And eventually ended up in power. Franklin: Oh, okay, in power, where? Carlisle: He was the junior power operator out in the Area. Franklin: Okay. Do you know where specifically he was stationed? Carlisle: The last place he worked at that I remember was the D Area. But he was in several of the different areas. Franklin: And was he running the power plants that supplied the reactors? Carlisle: You know, I really—they didn’t tell you a whole lot, and I really don’t quite know exactly. I just know his title was like a junior power operator. Franklin: So instead of quitting, he was kind of forcibly transferred because they needed— Carlisle: They agreed that they would put him in a different job other than the patrol. Franklin: Well, because also if he quit, they would have to leave the house, right? Carlisle: Right, yes, and they were prepared to do that, because Dad didn’t particularly like all the rowdiness and stuff that was going on at Hanford. He wasn’t a big man, so he just wasn’t able to handle some of the fights and stuff that happened out there. Franklin: Oh, okay. How did he get in—did he do any security or law enforcement previously to--? Carlisle: No, no. Franklin: No? Carlisle: They hired everybody on the spot. My dad was like 5’7” but he was very stout, and so I guess, maybe, because of his stoutness, they figured he could handle that. But he said he was a little too short for that. Franklin: So he was placed into that job, then. Carlisle: Yes, yes. Franklin: He didn’t pick being a patrolman, okay. Carlisle: His mother also worked out there. She worked in the kitchen in one of the barracks-type places. Franklin: Oh, in the mess hall? Carlisle: In the mess hall, yes. Franklin: Oh, wow, so a long—like, several generations or two generations— Carlisle: Right. His brothers and sisters—his sister was a telephone operator for two years out there. Franklin: Oh, wow. Carlisle: And then one of his brothers was a truck driver out there. Franklin: Oh, wow, so a big kind of family—you know. Carlisle: Yeah, it was a whole-family thing. Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting. Did any of them continue to work after the war, at Hanford, or was it just your dad? Carlisle: Well, Dad was out there about 27, 28 years. Franklin: Right. Any of his other family? Carlisle: No, no. Ella Mae was only there about two years. Franklin: She’s the mother? Carlisle: The sister. Franklin: The sister, oh, okay. Carlisle: And Grandma, which was Mary, she was only there maybe a year. Franklin: Oh, okay. And did they have to ride all the way out from Pasco up there, or did they get— Carlisle: Of course, Dad lived up here in Richland, so he got on the bus and went out. And Grandma, I think lived in a barracks. Grandma and Ella Mae, her daughter, lived in a barracks out there. Franklin: Oh, wow. Carlisle: Because Ella Mae, I think she walked to wherever she was going. Franklin: Oh, wow. Did your family know any of the settlers that had been in the area before 1943? Carlisle: Not that I’m aware of. Because they were basically from Pasco. Franklin: Sure, but they had known that those people had been evacuated. Carlisle: Yes, oh, yes. Franklin: Did they ever talk about that? The evacuations? Carlisle: No, uh-unh. Franklin: Okay. So your family lived in a one-bedroom prefab before you were born, right? Carlisle: Before I was born. Franklin: And then moved to a two-bedroom. Carlisle: Right, because my mom was pregnant and so we moved up above the hill to a two-bedroom prefab. Franklin: Okay. What do you remember about growing up in a prefab? Carlisle: You know, the things I remember, I think, are so normal that—for other people that didn’t live in a government town would not be—it would be different. I can remember us having FBI agents walk down the street, which I thought was very normal for everybody. You know, asking about your neighbors and interviewing you about what was—what your neighbors was. That was very typical. I can remember that. Usually two guys walking down the street. The little house that we lived in, it was supposed to be temporary so it didn’t have any skirting or anything on it. My dad had to put skirting on it so I wouldn’t crawl underneath the house. And it didn’t have a—it just had flat roof. My mom said, one time when I was little, we had a sandstorm because I lived on the edge of town. She had gone to Burbank where her sister was living. And when she came back—she had left the windows open. She had to put me in the little utility room to clean up all the sand that had blown in, because it was so sandy. And we had a hot water—hot water—a water tank not too far from—just across the street from us. And down the street was an air raid siren that they tested, I remember once a month; it might have been more than that. Franklin: So, there was no hot water heater in the house? Carlisle: No, what I meant to say was it was a water tank—a big water tank for the city. Franklin: Oh, that supplied the water. Carlisle: The supply, yes, yeah. Franklin: So like one of those classic ones on the stilts? Carlisle: Yes, with stripes on it. Black and stripes and— Franklin: Oh, wow. There’s one of those in the town I grew up in. It’s like the tallest thing in our town. Carlisle: Right. Franklin: Yeah, we call it the water tower. Carlisle: Yeah. They eventually took that down and it laid on the ground for a long time and we—they took the top off of it. So us kids got to play inside of it. It was really fun to run up and down the walls of that thing. Franklin: Oh, I bet. And by that time, I guess, the city had put in sewer. Carlisle: Right. Franklin: Right. So, if your water came from a tank, what—do you remember what the bathroom—were there bathroom facilities? Carlisle: Yeah, yeah. Franklin: Oh, okay. Carlisle: Yeah, we had the sewer line and the bathroom and—yeah. We had an irrigation ditch that ran right behind Carmichael and down towards what’s now the freeway. Franklin: Oh, wow. Carlisle: Right above Fred Meyer’s was an irrigation ditch. So we had irrigation water. Franklin: Oh, wow. And that had been there from the people before, right? That irrigation ditch had been laid before, for the old farming residents of Richland? Carlisle: In the area that I lived in, as far as I know, there was not a lot of old—well, there was no farm houses that I remember. Where Carmichael was, I vaguely remember that was like an orchard in that area and some of the houses that—the first house that we lived in had like a peach tree or an apricot tree or whatever it was in the yard. So there was still fruit trees left from when it was an orchard. So there really wasn’t a whole lot of farmhouses. Franklin: Oh, wow. Your mother’s family, were they from the area as well? Carlisle: She came out from North Dakota in probably, oh, ’43, something like that. Franklin: Did she come out to work at Hanford? Carlisle: No. Her sister was the one that lived—her sister’s husband worked for Hood on the dairy, which is now Hood Park. So she came out to stay with her sister. Franklin: Okay. And how did—so her and your father met— Carlisle: Yeah. My Uncle Wayne, my aunt’s husband, his dad had a truck farm, and they all lived in the Pasco area, and they just knew my dad, and so— Franklin: Kind of set them up. Carlisle: Yeah, he did. My uncle actually asked him to come out to the house and he needed an excuse, so he was going to buy some car parts that my uncle had. The only thing is, my dad didn’t have a car. He had to borrow a car to out to buy these car parts to see my mom. And then the dog bit him, so. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow, what an eventful day! Carlisle: Yeah! Franklin: That’s a really cute story. So, what we know about the prefabs is that they were not really built to last— Carlisle: Correct. Franklin: They were houses from the Tennessee Valley Authority. They were from the New Deal. So it’s kind of amazing that most of them are still standing. I’m kind of wondering what—your parents kind of grew up in older houses, maybe craftsmans or farmhouses. Did they ever talk to you about their impressions of the prefabs, or did they have anything they liked about them or anything they really didn’t like about them? Carlisle: Well, you know, they both came off farms, so I’m sure that having an indoor toilet was, you know, quite nice for them, because they were used to having the outdoor toilets. My mom was very happy with the little house that she had. It came furnished. I still have some of the prefab furniture that we had when I was a little kid. Franklin: Oh, wow. Carlisle: They did everything for you. If the lightbulb went out, you called, and they came up and changed the lightbulb. They had people that came and emptied the garbage. We had three crews that came around. We had a little cubby hole in that prefab and there was a little tiny garbage can; they would take it out of the cubbyhole, set it on the street. The next crew would come along and pick it up, and the third crew would come along and put it back. My mom locked herself out, she’d call and they’d just come up and unlock the doors and let her in. Franklin: Oh, wow. Were your parents pretty happy with that level of kind of control, right, by the government over the domestic situation? Carlisle: You know, I don’t think they really thought it was control. I think they just thought that it was benefits of the job. Franklin: Sure. It’s always kind of—strikes me that a lot of that service that’s done for these people kind of similar in a lot of ways to descriptions of a socialist utopia, you know, where—full employment, provided housing, and all services provided to people. So your parents were happy with that benefit of the job. Carlisle: Yeah. Because they came from—my dad came through the Depression, where he didn’t have anything. He and his brother roamed the fields of Wyoming picking up animal bones to take to the bonemeal factory to make money. Franklin: Really? Carlisle: And so this was really nice. Franklin: Yeah, I bet. So your—you mentioned earlier that your father always kind of had this anxiety about the security or kind of permanency of the job, but he ended up staying there for 20— Carlisle: About 27 years, yeah. Franklin: Yeah, so, wait, why did he choose to stay? Did he ever talk to you about why he kept on the job? Carlisle: Well, because it was a good job. I mean, he had health benefits and, you know, all kinds of things that he wouldn’t have had if he had gone to farming. So that would’ve been his second choice, and that’s what he bought, was a farm, up in Colville. And never did go there, because he didn’t know whether Hanford was going to be here that long or not. He didn’t know what they were making out there. Hadn’t a clue. So. Franklin: Sure, sure. What did your family do with the farm out in Colville? Carlisle: Well, they had until like the ‘50s and then ’57, ’58 and then sold it. He rented it out and from when he bought it to when he sold it, he rented it out. And then he decided that maybe Hanford wasn’t going anyplace and that he would continue on out there. Franklin: Did your mother ever work out there? Carlisle: No, she didn’t. She worked for Newberry’s in Richland. Franklin: Oh, okay, and that was a department store. Carlisle: Yeah, it was a department store. Franklin: And that was in the Uptown? Carlisle: Yeah, in the Uptown. Franklin: In that corner now where the antiques— Carlisle: Where the antiques store is. Franklin: And how long did she work for Newberry’s? Carlisle: Oh, she worked there until it closed and from the time I was little, so probably about 20 years. Franklin: And do you remember when it closed? Carlisle: You know, I don’t. Franklin: Okay. Carlisle: It was—I don’t know. Franklin: It’s okay. Carlisle: Yeah, I just— Franklin: Newberry’s was a chain, correct? Carlisle: It was, uh-huh. Franklin: Kind of like a Woolworth’s? Carlisle: Right. Franklin: Yeah, that’s kind of a forgotten era of retail today. Carlisle: Yes, yeah. Franklin: What did Newberry’s provide? Like, what kind of things did they sell? Carlisle: Oh, at Christmastime, they had Toyland upstairs. Wow, that was pretty good. Franklin: Ooh. Carlisle: Stores closed about 5 or 6:00 at night. And the only night they were open late was Friday night. And then at Christmastime they might be open on Saturday late. And never were they open on Sunday. Franklin: So the Uptown was kind of the locus of shopping. Carlisle: Yeah. Franklin: In the area. Do you have any other memories about that area? Carlisle: Well, of course, I could walk from my house to Newberry’s. And my mom—of course, I didn’t drive, so then I would ride home with her sometimes. Of course Uptown Richland, we had Macy’s, The Bon, that was up there. Franklin: The Bon Marché, right? Carlisle: Bon Marché was on the corner of Jadwin and—in the Parkway, up there. Franklin: Oh, right. And what was a Bon Marché? Carlisle: It—what was it? Franklin: Yeah. Carlisle: It was a clothing store. Franklin: Like a Macy’s, or--? Carlisle: Yeah. Franklin: Some of the others— Carlisle: Well, Bon Marché went from Bon to Macy’s, so. Franklin: Oh, okay, gotcha. Gotcha. Interesting. And then do you remember the Parkway being an actual park before they paved it through? Carlisle: No. Franklin: Oh, okay. Carlisle: I remember the theater down at the end, that we could go to the theater down there, and then Uptown Theater. And there was a drugstore in where there’s a bunch of offices now, where the Players is. But, no, I don’t remember that it was ever anything but the Parkway. Franklin: Okay. Did you go down to Howard Amon much at all? Did you go down to swim in the river and did you have many interactions with the--? Carlisle: I actually didn’t swim in the river very much. My dad actually preferred the ditch. We’d go across the street, and my dad was a good swimmer, so he would swim in the ditch. But we didn’t—he didn’t—he might’ve when he was—before I remember, he might have done a lot of swimming in the river. Franklin: Okay, interesting. So you went to school in—all your schooling was in Richland, or K through 12, right, was in— Carlisle: Marcus Whitman, Carmichael, and at that time, Columbia High School. Franklin: Okay. Do you remember doing civil defense drills? Carlisle: Oh, yes. Franklin: Okay! Can you—it’s so foreign to so many people today, especially anyone of my generation or younger. Can you talk us through one of those? Carlisle: And it was so normal for us. I don’t remember whether we did it—at least once a month, maybe every two weeks; I can’t remember. And when I was a kid, the air raid siren would go off. Because we had air raid sirens, and it would go off, and we’d have to go out in the hallway and get down on our hands and knees and duck our heads, and then we’d have to wait for the all-clear signal. And then as soon as we could hear the all-clear signal, then we could go back to class. But that was normal for us. Franklin: Was it, really? Carlisle: It was normal. It wasn’t anything scary; it was just something we did! I don’t know that at age that we really truly understood what that was all about, but— Franklin: Sure. How long did you do those for? Carlisle: I think we did them probably up until I was in—Carmichael is now middle school, but it was junior high then. And we would do, a couple of times, they loaded us all on buses and took us on an evacuation route in case we needed to be evacuated. So probably until I was in junior high school. Franklin: Do you remember where the evacuation route went? Carlisle: You know, I don’t think it was very far. I know we went down Wellsian Way and around and I really don’t know that it was very far, but. Franklin: What was the atmosphere of that like, for the children? Was that kind of like a field trip-type thing? Carlisle: Yeah, it was more of a fun-type thing. Because I—you know, most of us, a lot of us had lived here all our lives, so we were familiar with that kind of thing. That was not un-normal for us. So it was a day to get out of a few classes. Franklin: How old were you when you first knew what was being produced at Hanford? Carlisle: Oh. You know, I don’t know that I ever really—until I grew up and maybe got into high school, really, understood what was going on out there. Because, like I said, what was normal for us was, you know. We didn’t know anything. If I asked my dad what he did out in the Area, oh, he read dials or that kind of thing. And he would tell me more of the animals that he saw out in the Area. My mother would make him two sandwiches: one cat food sandwich and one sandwich for himself. He would feed the cat food sandwich to the raccoons and he’d tell me all about that. When he worked in town, he would bring me birds and all kinds of things that he would find. Franklin: Huh. But I assume, at some point, you did start to kind of piece together, you know, understand that—when did you first really understand Hanford’s kind of connection to the Cold War and all of that? Carlisle: Probably—you know, when you’re a kid, you don’t—those things don’t mean a whole lot to you, especially when you’ve grown up with that. So probably when I was in high school, and when my dad—I knew that when my dad couldn’t quit, because it was a war effort, then I kind of understood then that, you know, it was a war effort. Franklin: Sure. Sorry. I just lost my train of thought. And so, then, you went to Columbia High as well, and the mascot at that time was the Bombers, right? There’s been—it seems like there’s always kind of a simmering controversy surrounding that mascot, and I’d like to ask you your thoughts about that. Carlisle: Well, you know, the bomb does terrible things, but it also stopped the war and put the end to the war. So, there’s two sides to that. So, it—to me, it’s, the mascot being the bomb, that’s what we were all about, that’s what we made here, and, so that’s fine. I didn’t— Franklin: Okay. Were you ever concerned—when you started to realize that there was—your dad was working next to a nuclear plant, were you ever concerned or was your mother ever concerned about his safety, or, you know, any kind of effects from being so close to radiation? Carlisle: Not when I was growing up, but as I got older, I was very much aware of that, and was actually involved in a lawsuit. Franklin: Oh, really? Carlisle: Concerning that. Franklin: Okay. Carlisle: Not because I—I was a downwinder, a Hanford Downwinder. So for 20 years, we kind of fought with the government. Franklin: Can I ask you more about that? What made you join—or, what made you initiate that? Carlisle: Well, I had and still have a disease that the emissions that was going on, it increases that disease. So I decided—my aunt was also involved in Hanford Downwinders. She also signed off on that, but she was able to get the—she was exposed to stuff out in the Area, so she was able to get the, whatever it is, the money that they give out for that. Franklin: The EEOICPA? Carlisle: Yes, yeah. Franklin: Yeah. How did your litigation attempts turn out? Carlisle: Well, it—I think it went on for 20 years. It was very interesting. We eventually lost. I think there was two cases that won, and we eventually—we settled. I shouldn’t say we lost. We settled. Franklin: Okay. Are there terms—can you discuss that settlement, or is there— Carlisle: Yeah, I’d rather not. Franklin: Sure, I totally understand. I guess, I’d like to ask you about the—so growing up in Richland, your father worked for the Site, then eventually you have a disease that is linked to emissions at Hanford. Joining that lawsuit, was that hard for you, kind of having grown up in this very patriotic, pro-Hanford atmosphere? Did you feel like you were turning on the community or on yourself, or—how did you feel about—was there a conflict, I guess, is my question. Carlisle: Yes and no, because we were very proud to be working for Hanford. But it was sometimes really hard to realize that we weren’t told everything that was detrimental to our health. So that becomes kind of a conflict, like you don’t want that to happen to somebody else, so you want to bring that out. It maybe wouldn’t ever benefit me, but it certainly might benefit someone else. Franklin: Right, okay, thank you. So you would’ve graduated—when did you graduate high school? Carlisle: ’65. Franklin: ’65, okay. So I guess I’ll get to that in a minute. So Richland was privatized in 1958. Carlisle: Correct. Franklin: I wanted to hear your thoughts on what you remember about that. Carlisle: Well, that was when we were able to buy our houses. So my dad bought the little prefab on the corner, the two-bedroom prefab. I think he paid about $2500 for it. Because it was a corner lot, it was a little bit more expensive than the other ones that were like $2300. And then eventually the lady that lived next-door moved out, a couple years later, and we bought the precut, and my dad paid $8000 for that. He paid more for his car than he paid for his house. Franklin: Is there a difference between precut and prefab? Carlisle: Yes. Franklin: Okay, can you describe that for me? Carlisle: The prefab, those were ones, twos, and three-bedrooms. They were pretty small. They had the flat roofs that were saltbox-type things. They were some of the first temporary ones. The precut is about 1,150 square feet, and it was built more to stay than the prefabs. Franklin: Did the precuts come in after World War II? Carlisle: The one I’m living in now, I think it was built in 1948. Franklin: Okay, okay. Are those considered Alphabet Homes, or are they— Carlisle: Yes, yeah. I think it’s a Q or something like that. Franklin: Oh, okay, okay. So it is a—and they kind of placed those in that prefab neighborhood. Carlisle: Right. Franklin: Right, because there is a distinct, kind of, zones of mostly what we call Alphabets and then others where it’s mostly prefabs. Carlisle: We had a precut on the corner, a prefab, and a precut. And they took the prefab out of the middle of that and then separated the place. The place that I live in, I think there was a prefab there before it, because the plumbing all runs to the front of the lot; whereas now it’s in the back of the lot. So they took out a lot of the prefabs and put in the precuts. Franklin: Okay, and do you remember when they switched the roofs over on the prefabs? Carlisle: 1950—I think I have it on those pictures there. Franklin: Yeah. 1951? Carlisle: Yeah. Franklin: Okay. You probably don’t remember much about that. Carlisle: No. Franklin: I imagine Richland, when you were a small child, would’ve been pretty devoid of trees or kind of still starting to grow? Carlisle: Yeah, a lot of the people went down to the river and got cottonwoods and the trees to bring up to the houses to plant. So, yeah, there was—we had a few small trees in our yard, but they were—because it was orchard. The neighbor across the street had two peach trees in their front yard. And eventually, of course, they got taken down and different trees put in there. Franklin: Was it the government that took those down? Carlisle: No, well, probably the homeowners. Franklin: Oh, okay. Carlisle: Or, not homeowners, but the people who lived there. Franklin: Sure. Were your parents excited, nervous about the transfer of Richland to its citizens? I’m wondering if you remember anything about like kind of the general mood at the time? Carlisle: No, my dad had the choice of staying with the City of Richland and working with the City of Richland if he wanted, or actually going out to the Area. Because my dad actually worked at the sewer plant. The Rose Bowl, when I was a kid. And when the city switched, then he actually went out in the Area and worked in the D Area and I think he worked in B and several different areas. Because he worked for DuPont, he worked for Douglas United Nuclear, he worked for GE. I think he retired from Douglas. Franklin: Yeah, that would make—you said he worked out there 27 years? Carlisle: Yeah. Franklin: Yeah, okay, that would make sense with the timeline. Yup, okay. As I was trying to like do my mental math. But pretty happy about that transfer of ownership, then? Carlisle: Yeah, yeah. Franklin: Yeah. Okay. So you graduated in ’65. Carlisle: ’65. Franklin: We’ve been piecing together a bit of history and just started a new oral history project on civil rights in the Tri-Cities, and we know that there were a few African American families that lived in Richland. Do you recall going to school with any of the African American families there? Carlisle: When we were in high school, we had some football players and some basketball players that were African American. But we didn’t have a great population of that. We didn’t have any issues. I mean, civil rights didn’t exist to me. Franklin: Okay. Now we know that Kennewick had sundown laws which barred blacks from owning homes in Kennewick and being there after dark, and most lived in Pasco. Did you ever—and there were some NAACP demonstrations around the time that you would’ve graduated, and a little bit of strife. Did you hear anything about that? Did that impact you in any way? Carlisle: No. I remember, we’d go to Burbank and the African Americans usually lived in east Pasco. Franklin: Yeah. Carlisle: But that’s all I remember. I mean, it didn’t seem to be any—no problems. That I remember, anyway. Franklin: Sure. Did your family go much to the other cities in the Tri-Cities, or did you mostly stay—do most of your shopping and socializing in Richland, or did you get out in the wider area? Carlisle: Well, when I was little, there wasn’t a whole lot in Richland, and my dad was from Pasco. So we would go to Penney’s in Pasco. My uncle lived in Kennewick for, you know, 50 years. So we didn’t do a lot of shopping in Kennewick, but usually my dad gravitated towards Pasco. Franklin: Oh, okay. Do you still have family in that area? Carlisle: No. Mm-mm. Franklin: Oh, okay. So after you graduated, then what did you do? Carlisle: I went to CBC for a couple years, and then I went to Eastern Washington State. And then I came back, and I went to work for Payless / Rite Aid on the 29th of October. I’ve been there 48 years. Franklin: Wow. Is that the one on George—? Carlisle: No, it’s on Lee. Franklin: Oh, right, sorry, I always get the Walgreen’s and Rite Aid confused. I shouldn’t, because that’s my pharmacy. Carlisle: Within two miles of that, lived, worked, and was born within two miles of that area, all my life. Franklin: Wow, so you’re really rooted-in-place. Carlisle: Absolutely. Franklin: When you—how long were you at Eastern? Carlisle: I think I was there—I didn’t graduate. I think I was there about a year. Franklin: Oh, okay. Did you—is there any memorable—when people found out you were from Richland, were there any kind of memorable conversations, or did you find it—how was it, living in a community outside of Richland, I guess is kind of my question. Anything you noticed? Anything that was odd to you, or--? Carlisle: No. Franklin: People kind of treat you— Carlisle: I have a friend that lives just three blocks from me, that actually, we went to Eastern together. But she didn’t come to the Tri-Cities until she was in sixth grade. So when I talk about things that went on when I was a little kid, she can’t relate to some of that stuff; she doesn’t quite get it. Because her dad came out later and worked in the Area. Franklin: Oh, right, so she wouldn’t remember the government ownership. Carlisle: Right, the agents walking up and down the streets. That kind of thing. Franklin: I wondered, was your father working out on Site when President Kennedy came to visit? Carlisle: Yes, he was. Franklin: Did you go out to see him? Carlisle: I did. Franklin: I’m wondering if you could—what your memories are of that day. You would’ve been like a sophomore? You were a teenager, right? Carlisle: Yeah. Franklin: What are your memories of that day? Carlisle: Well, it was hot, and it was dusty, and it was dirty, and we were back in the crowd, and we just about saw him, and that was about it. About six helicopters came in, and you didn’t know which one he was in. That was it. I can remember Father Sweeney giving an invocation and Volpentest being up there talking. And then Kennedy talked, but how much I saw from the distance I was at? I don’t know. Franklin: How many people do you think were there? Carlisle: I don’t know. It seemed like maybe there was thousands. But I would guess, I don’t know, 5,000-6,000, maybe? 3,000? I don’t know. Franklin: Was that your first time ever being out on Site? Carlisle: Pretty much, so, yes. It was just out in the middle of the desert, so didn’t see anything. Franklin: Right. Have you been out on Site since then? Carlisle: I have, yeah. Franklin: Okay, and for--? Carlisle: I’ve done the B Reactor tour and some of the other tours. It’s very interesting. Franklin: Oh, great, okay. Let’s see here. What are some of your memories of some major events in the Tri-Cities like plants shutting down in the late ‘80s when Hanford—when things started to shut down. Carlisle: My dad—well, I remember the guy across the street took an early retirement and then had to go back to work. Voluntary retirement, and then had to go back to work because they needed him back there, I remember that. My dad, I think retired about the same time. But he didn’t have to go back; they didn’t call him back. You know. It didn’t seem to be any—my folks didn’t seem to be worried about it, because my dad was getting up there into the retirement age, so it was no big deal. Franklin: What do you remember about the end of the Cold War and the stopping of production at Hanford? I imagine that must’ve made the community pretty nervous about what was going—the economic future of the Tri-Cities. Carlisle: It did, and I think there was a sign on George Washington Way that said, last one out of Richland, turn out the lights, type of thing. So, yeah, people who were not long-term people like my folks were, they moved, they went back to where they were from. But they were still building up and things were still going along. It took a little time, but, yeah, we’re getting there. Franklin: Do you remember the Hanford Family at all? Carlisle: No. Franklin: Okay. Do you remember—what impact did Chernobyl have on the community that you can remember? Carlisle: Well, you know, everybody was concerned, of course. But as far as—I’m sure that sent people out in Hanford scrambling to make sure that everything was okay out there. But I don’t remember anything, other than the terrible thing that happened at Chernobyl, I don’t remember related to us. Franklin: Do you have any memories of social scene or local politics or other insights into life in the Tri-Cities since you were a child? Carlisle: Mm-mm. No, it was all—you know, just—it was very normal for me. All the things that went on. I have a hard time relating to the fact that other towns don’t have the cookie cutter houses that the government built. Because that’s the way I was grown up. Now I realize you don’t—you watch your kids. But when I was growing up, everybody had a Q clearance; everybody knew their neighbors. My mom had no problems with us girls sleeping out in the front yard and running around half the night. Franklin: Sure. And also everybody had a job, right? Carlisle: Everybody had a job. Franklin: It was literally a town of full employment. Carlisle: Yeah. Franklin: And people had strong background checks. Carlisle: Right, right. Franklin: Probably make it one of the safest communities you could— Carlisle: Right. Franklin: You know, because so much crime is caused by low economic status, and so, yeah, yeah, it’s— Carlisle: So you know, those were times that we had no problems. My mother was never afraid that if I was outside playing that something was going to happen. Even if the neighborhood guys were walking across the street—we had the bus stop where the buses stopped to pick up the guys—she knew all the neighbors and she knew they had gone all through security clearances, and she had no issues with that. Franklin: Sure. Did you have a bus stop on your street? Carlisle: Right across the street from the house. Franklin: Wow, and your father would get on and get off. Carlisle: Yup. Franklin: Did you have a private telephone, or did you have like a party line system? Carlisle: Oh, we had a party line. Well, we actually didn’t have a phone until my mom got pregnant with me, and then we had a phone for a short length of time. And then after that, the phone got taken out, and we had phone booths on a couple of corners. One lady across the street from us, the Stanleys, had a phone, and she said, anytime you need the phone, just come on over. My door’s always unlocked. So we would use her phone. But for the most part we would use the phone booth. And then when we first got a phone, it was a four-party line. And then got down to two-party line. Franklin: And then eventually— Carlisle: I’ve had two phone numbers in my whole life. Franklin: Oh, wow. Wow. One—I assume, one would’ve been for— Carlisle: A Whitehall number, and then when they changed it from Whitehall, then, to this one. Franklin: Oh, wow, that’s really interesting. I don’t think many people can say that. I know I’ve had so many phone numbers, I can’t even keep track of them. Okay, I think I’ve reached most of my—at the end of my questions. I just have kind of one large reflective question, and that is, what would you like future generations to know about living in Richland during the Cold War? Carlisle: Well, I think we were very unique and very blessed in many ways to be able to—my dad had a sixth grade education. So to be able to work at Hanford and end up with a good retirement and a pension and medical care, that was very, you know, wonderful for him and my family. So Hanford did well by us. Franklin: What about for yourself? Did you ever feel any fear or excitement or anything, being so close to the producer of two-thirds of the US nuclear weapons stockpile? Carlisle: No, because we didn’t realize all that. You grow up with that, and it just kind of sneaks up on you quietly. We never had any problems from it. No, I never—it never bothered me. Franklin: Okay. Carlisle: Always joked about it, you know. The water—turn off the lights and I’ll glow in the dark, type thing, but—heh. And I remember my dad would call home and say he was hot and he had to take a bath. And he said you never got scrubbed down until you scrubbed down by a Hanford nurse. And he would get something maybe on his shoes or just a minor thing, and, boy, they were scrubbing him down. Franklin: Wow. Carlisle: But that was normal for us. It was a different frame of mind, because if I lived in a different town, and I came to this town, this would not be normal. But for me, it was normal. Franklin: But on the flipside, though, you have a—you and others have a disease that’s likely caused by what happened out at Hanford, so it also, though, impacted you in a very personal way—you and your family probably in a negative way, you know? Carlisle: It did, to some extent. And it’s hard to say that, yeah, my aunt passed away from causes related to Hanford, and that was terrible. But on the other hand, she got a lot of benefits, too. So, you know, it’s hard to really—things happen and she could’ve been someplace else, you know, and things could’ve happened. She could’ve been in a church and got shot. Franklin: Sure. I guess what you’re saying is it’s complicated. Carlisle: It’s complicated, yes. Franklin: What would you like—you know, there’s always, Hanford’s critics are often really focused on that latter part I was just talking about, on the effects of Hanford, you know, people in Spokane or on the west side or elsewhere. What would you like them to know about growing up near it and also being affected by it? What’s your perspective that you could give to them? Carlisle: Again, like I said, you know, it’s hard for me to judge outside of where I’ve lived all my life, and so, you know, I would hope that everybody takes into consideration what has happened in emissions and stuff like that that maybe could’ve been controlled. But you look at that B Reactor out there, and you think, oh my god, how did we live through all of that? Because it looks so antiquated compared to what we have nowadays. So, I don’t—you know. Franklin: Okay, well, Shirley, thank you so much for coming and sharing your insights with us. I really appreciate it. It’s good to hear from people that grew up in such a—it helps to understand what a unique environment Richland really was, when you were a child. Because it really—there’s very few—you can almost count on one hand the number of cities that were like that in the United States. Carlisle: Right, right, and when you say unique, it was unique, but we didn’t realize that. I didn’t realize—I mean, having been born here, I didn’t realize we were unique. I thought everybody lived like we did. So that was not unique to me. Franklin: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Carlisle: You’re welcome. Franklin: Yeah, I—when I first found out about it, you know, it was just like— Carlisle: You’re not from here? Franklin: No, I’m not. I’m from Alaska. Carlisle: Oh! Franklin: And I’ve lived in Alaska and Hawai’i. Carlisle: Well, they had-- Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:47:46 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Shirley Carlisle Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Description An account of the resource Shirley Carlisle was born at Kadlec Hospital in Richland in 1947. In this interview she talks about her parent's work at Hanford and growing up in Richland 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 An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 11/07/2017 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. 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This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F63597890b84a4bfcdd0fa256e4c9c15d.jpg ffb070bd2b52785563acbfaadfe10742 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa9b2de3cbe40e470ac71fb166d655fb8.mp4 5cf2ec6e1c33811ff74fe4b4f0fb6cb1 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 David Chambers Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with David Chambers on July 5, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. We will be talking with David about his experiences working on the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us? David Chambers: Is David H. Chambers. D-A-V-I-D. H. C-H-A-M-B-E-R-S. Franklin: Great, thanks, David. And do you prefer David or Dave? Chambers: David or Dave, either one. It’s immaterial to me. Whatever’s easiest for you. Franklin: Okay, great. So, tell me, how and why did you come to the area to work for the Hanford Site? Chambers: Well, when I first graduated from college, I taught school for a while. I taught school in Pasco. I went back to the University of Wisconsin – Stout branch, but I was from Wenatchee, Washington. And the Tri-Cities was kind of an up-and-coming community, so I ended up teaching school here. And then I quit teaching school and went to work in engineering for Boeing Aircraft Corporation. There were just too many people in Seattle, so I wanted to get back over here, and got an opportunity to go to work for Battelle Research Laboratories and so I took the job. Franklin: Okay. And what did you do at Battelle? What was your job there? Chambers: I was called a senior engineering technical person. Franklin: Okay. And that sounds kind of vague, so I’m wondering if you could unpack kind of what your job duties were and what kinds of projects you worked on. Chambers: Well, we did a little bit of everything. The first four or five years I worked for Battelle, it was out in the 200 West area. 221-T, head end. And we did what’s referred to as simulated reactor explosion tests. Franklin: Really? Chambers: And what we did, we had a containment vessel and a little reactor core inside of it. And we vaporized high levels of uranium, plutonium, et cetera, different radioactive material, and put it in the reactor and looked at the metals that would withstand it and the coatings we would try to use to utilize to protect stuff, and the chemicals and washes to clean it up after an explosion. So that’s what I did for about four or five years. Franklin: And what kind of work came out of that? Did that lead to changes in reactor design or things used to clean up? Chambers: Well, I’m sure that it did, because stuff was utilized at Chernobyl and also at the Three Mile Island. Basically, sodium hydroxide, NaOH is the best thing we found to wash them down. And after it was washed down to the bottom of it, we collected samples, and run those samples through liquid nitrogen so we could cool it down and put it into little 500-mililiter bottles. And then we set it in the computer that was in a whole room at that time, with air conditioning, naturally, and analyzed it so we could see the drop in the radiation as the time went on. Franklin: Wow. How did your previous work prepare you for this job of testing—reactor explosion tests? Chambers: Well, it didn’t, really. We had a lot of high PhD people that were actually analyzing all the stuff, and there were several of us that basically just did the experiments and stuff. The computer analysis went to the PhD people that analyzed it and looked at it and wrote all the paperwork. At that time, you know, we were kind of bitter enemies with Russia, and yet they were able to get that information somehow and utilize it. And I don’t blame them. Battelle put it out and maybe charged people for it. It was a government-funded program, looking at ways to protect people. That’s what it was for. We didn’t have much protection at all; we had a pair of surgeon’s gloves we put on our hands. That was about it, you know. And a white lab coat. So that was basically what we used. Filled those little bottles with the white surgeon glove, set it over, so. Franklin: Wow. How much shielding was between you and the simulated reactor in these reactor explosion tests? Chambers: There was a lot of shielding there. There was concrete walls, plus the reactor core was steel and metal and stuff and what-have-you. And all the atmosphere was protected because all of the velocities of air went through all kinds of filters and stuff before it was ever released to the atmosphere. And the liquid went into those tanks that are out there now that everybody’s worried about. So any of the chemicals and stuff that we washed down, any of the cleanup that we did on the stuff that we utilized in it, all went into those tanks out there. We also had canisters that we set around, positioned, in the containment vessel at different altitudes, different spaces. And they had little carbon filter systems in them, and we’d switch them on and pull the air through them, and then we’d check the little deals. So, again, over a period of time, we’d do like maybe 15 minutes after it happened, maybe 45 minutes, maybe an hour-and-a-half. Utilization time to see how it dropped off over the periods of time. And it was through—they had these little round canisters, if I remember right, I think they had thirteen of these, each one had like thirteen of them in it, and so we could turn them on individually. So pull air through them, and then look at the radiation content and see the slope that it went down over a period of time. Franklin: Interesting. Chambers: And then we had another facet out there that we utilized. We had a separate building outside of 221-T head end that we had a reactor core in it and put waters in that and had two shields in it, metal shields, and used high pressure nitrogen stuff between the two of them, so that as they heated up the water and put it under tremendous pressure, it wouldn’t blow. When it released the pressure, then it would blow. And we did that along with the other—to see what damage, and what would happen when one blew. One time, in fact the last time we utilized that, they made a little mistake and got the pressures and stuff a little bit too high, and the walls on the reactor, that simulated reactor were six inches thick, and when it blew it split it. And not only that, but it blew the frame back in the concrete and sucked the walls in on the building and lifted the roof off of it. We had a neutron generator sitting out to measure stuff. I don’t know where it went to. Nobody that I know of has ever been able to find it. And it was a tremendous thing—the steel—tremendously heavy. And that volume of water and steam and everything went out of that place, and I don’t know where that neutron generator—we looked and looked and looked for it. Never could find it. I don’t know they ever did find it. Franklin: You mean, it— Chambers: It just went somewhere. Franklin: It flew away. Chambers: It flew away or disintegrated, I don’t know. And that was—we weren’t supposed to talk about that for a long time, and so I never did tell anybody. Several years thereafter, I had a good friends that I fished and hunted with, Bob Cullowith[?], he was the head engineer on the FFTF, so he understood. We were hunting—this was, oh, 25 years after it happened—and I told him about it. So our manager, Gordon Rodgers was a skier and Bob Cullowith[?] would go up to Bluewood skiing. And one day he was sitting next to Gordon on the bus. He mentioned that to Gordon and Gordon said, well, I guess it’s time we can talk about it now. At the time it was supposed to be secret; nobody’s supposed to know it. Franklin: [LAUGHTER] That’s a great story. So to your knowledge it was never found? Chambers: No. We looked and looked and looked for it. We had an RM out there always onsite. Irving Winters was an RM, really a nice fellow. They call radiation monitors something different now, but at that time they were RMs. Went out with Geiger counters and everything. We looked all over that country for it; I don’t know where it went to. Franklin: Wow. Chambers: To this day, I don’t know whether anybody knows where it went to. Franklin: Wow. That’s sure a good thing that no one was standing where that neutron monitor was. Chambers: Oh, why, no, we wouldn’t let anyone out there, because it blew out with tremendous force and velocity. Well, as I say, it pulled the sides in the building and lifted the roof. A tremendous deal. And that reactor core is a pretty good size, and it was mounted in steel and stuff, six inches thick, as I say, and it split it and blew it clear back against—broke the mounting brackets and blew it back against the concrete. And our manager was really upset at that, and I don’t blame him. Because they just made some mistakes. A lot of people think you can’t compress water. But they found that you really can, and when it blows, it blows with tremendous force. In fact, they did a test somewhere, I think maybe Idaho or somewhere, where an engineer was doing that and then it got too much pressure and it blew and just disintegrated him. Franklin: Wow. Chambers: And that’s been several years ago, 40 years ago or so. So that—water compressed can end up being pretty dangerous. Franklin: That sounds like some pretty—I mean, obviously this work would have really big impacts on safety and knowing how to construct better reactors. But this sounds like pretty dangerous—there’s definitely some hazards involved with this testing. Chambers: Well, I don’t think there was really hazard that way. The hazard we were subjected to was the chemicals and the radiation back in the samples that we took, and taking the little air samplers apart. They were little stainless steel deals that we put charcoal in them and filters of a different kind in them. And again, we had a little deal we stuck in our pockets, a little dosimeter, they call them. But if you got too high on them, guys would leave them in their lockers, so that they wouldn’t send you home or whatever, you know? And if you thought you were getting too much of it. So that’s basically the exposure problem was what really was dangerous to us, as far as the reactor core and stuff—we were away from it, we were back in the building when it blew or standing off to the sides and back of it, and watching it when stuff like that happened, or in labs. Franklin: Would you be watching it through like shielded glass or CCTV or—? Chambers: When we vaporized the radioactive material, we were watching it through lead glass. Very thick lead glass. Franklin: So, when guys would get too much dose and get sent home, would they be sent home without pay? Is that why they would leave their dosimeter? Chambers: No, I— Franklin: Because you’re the first person I’ve heard that from, and I— Chambers: I think they were all paid, as far as I know. I don’t think anybody lost any pay. They just sent them to do something else or sent them home or something, what-have-you, so they wouldn’t lose pay. If you got overdosed. Like McCluskey, out there, he was paid all that time. Franklin: Sure. I guess I’m just struggling to understand why someone would intentionally leave their—overexpose themselves over the limit just to keep—there are other guys that could do that job, right? Chambers: Well, you know, a lot of the knowledge at that time wasn’t where we are now. A lot of this stuff they didn’t know back then. You can’t blame them, because it was a job and it paid good. They didn’t know the dangers then that they do now. They know a lot more—like asbestos is a good example. Every pipe we had out there, everything was insulated with asbestos. Well, they didn’t know the ramifications of asbestos, you know, 70 or 80 years ago. World War II, every ship that was built had asbestos all through it. But they learned. Franklin: It’s a great insulator. Chambers: Yes. Fabulous. But very deadly if you—you know. Even to people at home, from the clothes that you take home. The women washed them and stuff, you know, they’d get the fibers and breathe it in their lungs, like coal dust, you know? 100 years ago they didn’t know what coal dust would do, and now they—so a lot of those, a lack of knowledge. Franklin: Mm. You also alluded earlier that this had been a pretty high point in tensions with Russia during this part of the Cold War. Do you think that might have played into the attitude of just wanting to get the job done? Chambers: I think so. I think that they were accept—very acceptable to utilizing our knowledge when it came to cleaning up the reactor and stuff. They had to when Chernobyl happened. I think, if you look back, a lot of our people went over there. A lot of Battelle people went over and helped them, because—that was actually in Ukraine. Chernobyl’s actually in Ukraine; it isn’t in Russia, you know. And lately I’ve been seeing some specials on TV showing the beautiful city that they had there and all the amusements and stuff, it’s just sitting there in ruin, because they can’t go to it now because it’s so highly radioactive. But their reactors, you know, were vertically cooled, which means that the cooling water’s all on the bottom. So they got a hot spot and bubbled the water, so the top of the reactor didn’t have any cooling water. Where ours are horizontally cooled. We got the cooling water up here as well as down there, so we don’t have that problem. Different philosophy of making a reactor. Franklin: Sure, sure. So what did you—so after the reactor—you mentioned you worked at the 221-T head end doing reactor testing, and then you looked at different chemicals for cleaning up. What did you do after that project? Chambers: I went down to the 300 Area and went to work in Robert Marshall’s—that was the manager. I worked directly for a PhD by the name of Gerald Kulcinski. And he actually, I told a young man later, the smartest individual that I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. And you see him on television every now and then on Discovery Channel, A&E and they’re talking about him. Because he left here and went to University of Wisconsin and he’s in charge of the fusion reactor—the old reactors are fission. What we’re trying to develop now is fusion, where you get 100,000-degree plasma and you can keep it going and contain it. Well, we can get to 100,000 but to keep it going and contain it is different, and that’s what they’re working on. He was kind of in charge of that. Went all over the world to do that kind of stuff, and he’s a professor at the University of Wisconsin. I think now retired, but he talks about now what’s energy on some planet out there and if we could get that energy from here we could run this world for a lot of years and stuff. They’re way out there in this stuff. Franklin: So what was he doing when you went to work out in his lab? Chambers: We were doing metallurgical research. We were taking various types of metal that we were trying to fiddle with or mend or develop or what-have-you, and putting them in reactors around the country, different levels of radiation and then bringing them back to the lab and seeing what kind of damage they sustained. And the way we would do that, we would thin them down with a variety of ways and then put them in electron microscope so we could magnify stuff and see stuff several thousand powers magnification and then look at the damage that the metal sustained. Franklin: And what was the purpose of that work? Chambers: Well, again, to try to develop metals for different things and to try to develop metals that the reactor wouldn’t harm, and to make all kinds of stuff out of, I guess. Stainless steel now has become widely used in all kinds of cookware and knives. When I was a kid, you never thought of having a knife blade, a pocketknife blade, made out of stainless; they were carbon steel. Now they’re all stainless. Franklin: Hmm. So was stainless steel one of the metals to come out of that work that had high applicability for all these different scenarios? Chambers: Well, I’m sure it was. I’m sure Battelle had a lot of work, because they’re a very competent company in a whole lot of different areas. People don’t realize what kind of research they do and a tremendous amount of developments in everything come from Battelle. I think it’s a very, very good company, my personal opinion. Franklin: Were there any tests of metals that stood out to you in that work? Chambers: Not really anything; it was just a combination—and you’d put them in the reactor at this level. At University of Washington, I took some samples over to their reactor, put them in at their level, downtown Seattle and people didn’t realize in Seattle they had a reactor right downtown Seattle with Dixy Lee Ray running it. Very brilliant lady, you know? And we’d send them everywhere and then bring them back and, say, thin them down and just look at what happened. Of course, one of the things that took place when we did that, our lab became very contaminated. Because some of the metal was thicker, so we had to thin it down to start with. Well, I bought a little milling machine with a magnetic base on it and then glued the samples to a piece of carbon steel with epoxy resin and superglue. And then planed them down with a horizontal milling machine. All of those particles and everything went into the atmosphere in our lab. And then, we’d put them in a little holding device and used high current and various acids to spray against it with the current and to thin them, etch them down, until you could finally see some light. And then we put them in the microscope. So all of that atmosphere was what we breathed. It was just in the room. So it became a very contaminated lab. You can understand why. But, again, we never thought anything about it. It was a job; we just did it, you know? Franklin: Were you wearing respirators— Chambers: No. Franklin: --or anything? Any kind of protective--? Chambers: We didn’t have anything on but our street clothes, like this. Or you could change into a pair of coveralls if you wanted to. Most of the time, we didn’t. But I think I’m probably the only one left alive. My compadre, Jack Humason, a great friend of mine, he and I both worked straight for Gerald. He died about a year ago. Had cancers through the bone marrow and all in his blood and stuff, and just fell over dead, went in the hospital. One of the guys I hunted with, Jones is his name, Maxwell Jones, I read in the paper here three or four months ago that he ended up back in Tennessee doing stuff. And he died. And he’s quite a few years younger than I was, and so was Jack. So I’m lucky. I don’t smoke and I’m not a drinker or anything. Unfortunately, I’ve got bad COPD from all that stuff. Franklin: Wow. Yeah, it’s amazing, I can imagine that just a little—what you’d be inhaling would be a really effective—a cocktail of different— Chambers: That’s correct. Franklin: You know, because you’re getting all these samples in from all these different reactors and these different types of metals and milling them and everything. Chambers: Well, yes, and of course the acids and stuff that we were utilizing basically to thin the metals down with the current, the fumes from that that you were breathing, that didn’t do your lungs any good either. Of course, that’s what’s, again, more of what’s in those tanks out there that they’ve got to find a way to drain those tanks and solidify that material. Unfortunately, our vitrification plant is a long way behind time. Franklin: Yeah. Well, it seems like, just from what you just described and talking with other people, it seems like it’s that mix of things that are in the tanks that seems to be a lot of the problem. There’s all these different chemicals and all these different solids and, you know, it’s like a grab-bag. Chambers: Yes, there’s everything under the sun in those tanks and what-have-you. Of course, the acid content and the strong NaOH, that’s what causes the tanks to etch away, leech away and stuff. And you know what an acid will do; pour it on metal, and it’ll eventually burn right through it, you know. Unless you got—if they’d have built the tanks out of stainless to start with, it’d been far better off. But, again, it was knowledge, lack of knowledge. They didn’t have any idea. We had a war to win. When they did this stuff, or when they started doing it. And then we had a cold war for years that we were worried about everything, so we had to do stuff. Now, you wonder if you could win a war now. With the attitude that’s in this country now, it makes you wonder if you could do the things that you did. You couldn’t do the things that they did back then. Franklin: Yeah. So how long did you work at the metallurgical research lab? Chambers: Well, that was over five, about six years there. I had about eleven years in at Battelle. Franklin: Okay, and then you left Battelle? Chambers: Yes. Franklin: Okay, and why did you leave Battelle? Chambers: Well, I had a business going. I had the last year or two, couple of years I was with Battelle, and then I finally went to that full-time. Franklin: Ah, and what business was that? Chambers: I owned Water World Marina, Incorporated at Pasco Boat Basin. Franklin: Oh, okay. So you retired at Battelle to go full-time with your boat business. Chambers: That’s correct. And then I ended up having, oh, about, oh, I don’t know, at the most probably ten or twelve people working for me for—I was in that for 25 years. Franklin: Oh, wow. And so then you sold that as well? Chambers: Yes, that’s correct. Franklin: So you’ve been retired for a while. Chambers: Yeah. Well, I retired and my buddy bought me out, and then not long after that, why, he called me up and said, Dave, would you please come down and go to work for me, you know? Help me out? I need some help, you know. So I said, okay, I’ll do that, I’ll help you out. Franklin: Yeah, it’s hard to stay retired, I’ve noticed. I interview a lot of retired people. Hard to stay retired. When you worked for Battelle, did you live in Pasco the whole time, or did you ever live in Richland? Chambers: No, I lived in Kennewick. Franklin: Oh, Kennewick. Chambers: At the time. I live in Pasco now, but all the years that I worked for Battelle Research Laboratories, I lived in Kennewick. Franklin: Oh, okay. And so you would do the commute every day out to the— Chambers; Yes, that’s correct. And to start with, another thing I don’t understand, we’d drive to the bus lot in North Richland, right off of, basically a continuation of George Washington Way and a couple other streets went together, and had a big parking lot there. And then you get on the buses and ride out to 2-West. And I never could understand why in the world they got rid of those buses, because it kept a lot of cars off the road, and a lot of—one bus carrying 50 or 60 people is a whole lot more economical than a bunch of cars driving out there. Franklin: Yes, yes, it is. Chambers: I couldn’t understand why they got rid of them. It was something you could relax, both going and coming from work. Franklin: Sure. Yeah, I’ve heard that from a lot of people who rode the buses how much they like them. It sure does seem to make a lot of sense to have them. Chambers: No, it didn’t make a lot of sense to get rid of them. Franklin: I think I just have a couple other questions. Yeah, I have two more questions. I’m wondering if you could describe the ways in which the security and/or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work. Chambers: Well, I don’t really think that the secrecy or the security impacted it, except that you didn’t take the stuff home with you. You didn’t advertise to everybody what you were doing, and we were beyond a war, in the Cold War. During World War II, people didn’t even really know what they were doing out there, most of them. There were people in the know that did, but the vast majority of them didn’t know. Well, when I went to work there, everybody knew what you were doing. People downtown didn’t know a lot of the stuff and weren’t privy to the writings and stuff that were going on out there. That went strictly to the government or to some organization. And Battelle does a lot of private company research. And that’s probably more secretive than government research, because if you’re doing research for a company and they paid you a lot of money, they most certainly don’t want a competitor to get that knowledge. So that’s probably more secretive than the government work was when I was out there. And then I can understand why. So I don’t think it impacted what we did at all, except that you were limited on what you could take out there and what you could bring home. You couldn’t bring anything home unless you had clearance to do it. And you most certainly couldn’t take any kind of weapons out there. And dope was prohibited. People maybe tried to take it in and stuff, but I didn’t see any of that in our groups at all. And a lot of our groups, not many of them even smoked. I don’t smoke, and Jack Humason didn’t smoke, and Gerald Kulcinski didn’t, and Homer, our manager didn’t smoke. Very few people. Some of them smoked pipe, and some of them smoked cigarettes. But there were more people that didn’t smoke, even back then, than did. So. Franklin: Interesting. Well, that’s—I mean, good for them. Chambers: Yes, yes. Good thing I don’t, as bad as my COPD is. When I went through the impairment evaluation—started on the deal against the DOL in October of 2012. So it’s been almost five years. And had my impairment evaluation last August. They put you in a little room, and put all connected up stuff, and then they put you on a bicycle with stuff on you. And I had, my lungs got an 86% impairment with my lungs with all that stuff and what-have-you. So I have to breathe inhalers all the time. And then I have a heart that beats fast, because of the oxygen transfer, there are no blood vessels shut down or anything for the oxygen transfer. So I have to take medicine for that, so. Franklin: Oh, wow. Chambers: So it catches up to you after a time. But fortunately, I’ve lived for 82 years, you know. And to say, I don’t know of anybody—there may be one or two still alive that worked out there, but I don’t know, most of them are gone. Franklin: Yeah, well, it seems like you were really in contact—close contact with a lot of different types of material and different ingestion pathways for chemical and radiological materials. Chambers: Yes, we were. Both places. In the 2-West area, doing the experiments there, and then the metallurgical stuff. Yes. And especially—the chemicals are probably the worst things. Radioactive material does damage to you; it cooks you from the inside out. But the acids get into you, and we used sulfuric acid and nitric acid and picric acid. Picric you have to be very careful of. It’ll get in here, and it doesn’t burn immediate—it gets down and then burns from the inside out. It’s a very dangerous thing. And then we used some ether and stuff and what-have-you. And you have to be careful with ether, because if it crystallizes and then you twist the cap off, it’ll explode. So you have to be very careful with ether. Franklin: Jeez. Chambers: Ether, highly explosive. And we used some of that. In fact I found some of it down in the lab in 221-T, heading downstairs, and it was setting up there, in the bottom been sitting there for a long time with crystallization on them. So I called them and they took it out in a container somewhere and blew it up, I guess. Franklin: Wow. Chambers: So. Franklin: That’s really scary. Chambers: But you don’t mess with it, you know. You just leave it alone, you know? As long as you leave it alone, you’re okay, and get people in there that know how to handle it. Franklin: Wow. So, David, my last question is kind of a reflective question, and that’s, what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War? Chambers: Well, I think, the thing is to know that we had a job to do, because the world was, at that time, was in a very dangerous situation with China and Russia both. Plus, North Korea. And the bugaboo now, again, is North Korea. And we had things we had to learn and stuff we had to do. And it’s hard to realize, for young people to visualize what the world was like then with Russia developing all kinds of stuff. Shot France’s powers down. When we really—to start with, had a plane that would fly above their missiles. But then they developed a missile that’d shoot them down. So we had to do some utilization there to free him and trade him, you know, to get him back. And Russia was developing stuff. And they had weapons that would blow us to pieces, and we had weapons that would blow them to pieces. And it was just a dangerous situation that we were trying to de-escalate, cool down, and so we just kept doing stuff. It was a job to do, and you had to understand that the world was a different situation then than it is now, and it’s becoming that situation again now. With North Korea and Iran and now Putin in Russia again, and China’s trying to build up islands in the South China Sea. So it looks like we’re heading down that same road again. So. Franklin: Great, well, David, thank you so much for your really great stories and interesting—you had a very interesting jobs out there. Chambers: Well, I think I did. Franklin: Yeah, you did, and I appreciate you taking the time to tell us about them today. Chambers: Well, then, as I say, you know, Battelle was the main instrumentation in this. And you read in the paper what they’re doing all the time now, so I think that’s a wonderful company to have here, and they do a lot of very fine things, I think. Maybe some people don’t like them, but I think they do a wonderful job, and I’m glad we’ve got them here. Franklin: Oh, good. Yeah, they have their hands in a lot of different— Chambers: That’s correct. Franklin: A lot of different stuff. Chambers: And even security, going into airports and stuff. A lot of people don’t realize where that came from; that came from Battelle. Franklin: Yeah, yes, it did. Chambers: You know? And we looked at some IUDs that were put in women in different parts of the world. Intrauterine devices to stop pregnancies. And then analyzed them. And you find that women in different parts of the world destroy those IUDs at different rates. Maybe it’s from their diet, diet and food or what they eat or what-have-you. But just interesting things. Very interesting things. Franklin: Yeah, that is very interesting. Well, thank you. Chambers: You’re welcome. Franklin: Okay. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:33:34 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 221-T 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 David Chambers Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Description An account of the resource David Chambers worked for Batrelle in the 200 Areas 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 An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 07/25/2017 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. 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This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F7194ce577e47504c63002b978488faf3.jpg fec812f761a66cb868de1623907fd0d9 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F4f96830baf7c716580f9b628fb86b21b.mp4 0cb1dd85a78b125f9469688f27c3d344 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 Glen Clark Location The location of the interview Northwest Public Broadcasting studio at the Washington State University Tri-Cities campus. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: Okay. So, before—so I have a little boilerplate at the beginning, and then we’ll just go straight into it, and I’ll ask you about your dad and mom and— Glen Clark: Okay. Franklin: And what you remember, what they told you, and then your childhood in Richland. Okay, great. Clark: I’m just following the lead. Franklin: Okay, good. Well, eventually, you’ll have to lead. Clark: Okay, I will. We’ll BS with the best of them. Franklin: Okay, awesome. Ready? Lori Larsen: Yeah. Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Glen Clark on February—March 7, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Glen about his experiences growing up in Richland and his father’s and mother’s experiences growing up in the area before Hanford—before the Hanford Site came. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us? Clark: It’s Glen Clark. G-L-E-N. C-L-A-R-K. Franklin: Great, thanks, Glen. So your father and mother were both born here, in the old towns of Hanford and White Bluffs? Clark: They were raised. Franklin: Raised, okay. Clark: Yes, and actually, I think my dad was born at Hanford. Franklin: At the town of Hanford. Clark: Town of Hanford, yes. Franklin: And then your mother came to White Bluffs? Clark: Right. Franklin: What can you recall about what they’ve told you about their childhoods in the area? Clark: You know, we could go on for hours. Franklin: Okay. Clark: And I had the opportunity, three or four or five times to go out to the site with them, or with my dad and uncles. They used to have a Hanford-White Bluffs picnic every year here in Richland. And if you signed up ahead of time, they’d badge you and you could actually go out to—normally, we met at the high school, what was the remnants of the high school. Franklin: The Hanford high school. Clarke: The Hanford high school. And then from there, they just said, go any place you want. Obey signs, obviously, radioactive signs, and be out of here by 1:00. Franklin: Wow. Clark: So we had an opportunity to go out and actually was able to get into, I call it a basement, but the hollow under my grandparents’ home, that is still there. Franklin: Really? Clark: Yeah, it’s basically a hole in the ground. Franklin: Okay, that would’ve been like a cellar? Clark: Right. Franklin: Okay. Clark: So I think it was a two-bedroom house and they raised six boys there. But slept on the porches and out in the sagebrush or wherever they could find someplace to sleep. And my mom moved here later than that. She wasn’t born here. I think she was born in Prosser. And her stepfather worked for Atomic Energy Commission, and that was actually prior to the Hanford Site being taken over. And they had an orchard out in the White Bluffs area. Franklin: So—but he didn’t work for the AEC before the Manhattan Project. Clark: He worked for the AEC before the Manhattan Project. Franklin: Okay. What was the scope of the AEC at the time? Clark: You know, unfortunately, I was too doggone young to listen to my step-grandfather, who was quite a bit older than my grandmother. But anyway, I didn’t get the opportunity to really find out what was going on then. Franklin: Sure, sure. And do you know roughly when your mother moved to White Bluffs? Clark: No, she went through high school in White Bluffs. Franklin: Okay. Clark: So her grandparents were from Prosser. He was a colonel, Colonel Baker. He was actually a real estate and insurance guy back, turn of the century, and did some surveying work. My grandmother was editor of the paper in Prosser for several years. Franklin: Okay. Clark: Great-grandmother. No, grandmother. Great-grandmother. Great-grandmother. I’ll get it right here sooner or later. Franklin: And how many times did you go out with your father and uncles, out to the Site? Clark: It was either four or five summers that we got an opportunity to go out there, and we’d go down to the pump station along the river, which is just down the road from their old house. And there’s over on this side was a guy by the name of John Kashier, had a five-acre, ten-acre spread. And he was also very prolific in making moonshine. They finally—the sheriff at the time finally caught him, so he went to Walla Walla for several years. Franklin: The penitentiary. Clark: To the penitentiary, because they frowned on that back in those days, I guess. Before he went to the penitentiary, he stopped at my grandmother’s, my grandparents’ house, and gave them a roll of money, and said, could you save this for me until I get back? So they did; they put it in their safe, which was a pipe in the side of the cellar, in the basement. They had a pipe, and they stuck that money in the pipe. So that was kind of the highlight, when he got back to them, he got his money back. So there’s a lot of stories of, you know, the kids going down. John Kashier’s house had a dirt floor, as the story goes, but it was just immaculate. It was swept clean. And he was a bachelor, and he always had a can—or, not a can, but a handful of peanuts and raisins for each of the kids. So I guess by all accounts a very good neighbor. Franklin: Popular one, too, I bet. Clark: With the kids. Franklin: And with the adults, right, for the— Clark: Yeah, for the moonshine. Franklin: Would this have been during Prohibition? Clark: Possibly. Because, like I say, they were pretty intent on him. You don’t normally go to prison, I don’t think, so it probably was during prohibition times. Franklin: When was your father born? Clark: Well, he’s 92. Going to be 92. Franklin: Will be 92. So, 1925. Clark: Math wasn’t my best—yeah. Franklin: Okay. Interesting. So what years did you go out with him? When was the last time you went out? Clark: I think it was the last year of the Hanford-White Bluffs picnic, and that’s probably been gone eight years now, probably, is the approximately the last time they had that picnic. People were just getting pretty elderly. Franklin: Sure, I mean, the last people born in those towns would’ve been born in the early ‘40s, so we’re approaching a wall. Clark: Right. Franklin: And who was running the Hanford-White Bluffs Pioneer Association? Clark: You know, I talked to somebody on that. The one that I know best, and not that I really know her, is Annette Heriford, was really active in that. And then there was another gentleman that—They had a banquet the night before where everybody could kind of mix together, normally down at the Shiloh and then the next day they would have the picnic in the park. Franklin: Was that Harry Anderson? Clark: Harry Anderson, yeah. Franklin: Okay. We recently just got the collection of his papers and all of the association documents. Clark: Mm-hmm, right. Franklin: And so you would go down there with your father and your uncles, you would go to the homestead, right, or the old house. And what else would you go see? Clark: Well, we would then drive down to the pump plant which my grandfather used to operate. Franklin: Oh, the pump station. Clark: The actual pump station where they pump water into Hanford. And drive around and see the different—you know, Gilhulys lived here, and I used to pick asparagus in that field, and—so just kind of doing a little tour. And then we’d normally go by, because my dad retired from 200-East and West house, power houses in 200 East and West Area. So then we’d normally drive around the outside of that and then book on out. Franklin: So your father also worked at Hanford? Clark: Yes. Franklin: So he was one of the—was born there, but then was not fully displaced— Clark: Well, yeah, he was. They came in and took the property. Franklin: Yes. Clark: “Buy.” It wasn’t really a buy; it was just, you get out of here and we’ll give you this amount of money. Franklin: Sure. Clark: And they moved to Yakima. Franklin: Okay. Clark: So that was in early ‘40s, I would guess. Franklin: 1943, yeah. Clark: Yeah. And then my dad enlisted in the Navy. And served in WWII. And then afterwards he went back to Yakima and worked for Picatti Brothers, which is pump operation. Franklin: For irrigation? Clark: Irrigation and domestic, and they rebuilt motors, and then he got on at Hanford as a motor-winder. Franklin: And what is a motor-winder? Clark: They actually rebuild electric motors, all the coils that are inside of them. I don’t think they do that anymore, probably, but back in the day, they did. They actually rewound them. Franklin: What kind of electric motors? For--? Clark: Anything. Any kind of electric motor. That’s what he started at Hanford doing, was in the motor shop. Franklin: The motor shop. And this was in the 200 Area? Clark: That was, I believe, in the 200 Area. And then he finally worked his way up. He was, when he retired, he was foreman for power and maintenance. He had a couple of crews, 18, 20 people, different crafts. Franklin: How long did he work for Hanford? Clark: Well, he retired when he was—started in 1950. And so 40, 40-plus years. Franklin: Oh, so he retired in the ‘90s, wow. Clark: Yeah. Franklin: And so you said he worked his way up in the shop from being a motor-winder to a foreman. Clark: Right. Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting. That’s quite a long career. Clark: Yes. It was, you know, it was a good job. Franklin: Did he ever talk about—what were his feelings on the forced removal and then being back there, working for that same project? Clark: You know, I just think he got over it. Franklin: Yeah? Clark: Everybody was in the same shape, as far as the old-timers that had lived out there, were in the same shape. Get out. Franklin: Was there any bitterness, do you think? Maybe initially, or--? Clark: Oh, I’m sure there was a lot of—I mean, those people would be saints if there weren’t bitterness. The story goes that one of the guys had an orchard, and he said, just—cherry orchard, I believe. And he said, okay, just give me another month so I can harvest my cherries, and I’ll give you the land. And they said, no. Out. So the story goes. Franklin: Right. Clark: So I’m sure that there was a lot of bitterness. And I’m sure, in those days, nobody knew why. Or what was going on. They just knew that they were gone. Franklin: Did your father ever express any bitterness or resentment? Clark: I don’t believe so. I never saw that. And, actually, my grandparents who moved into Yakima didn’t either. But, there, again, some time had lapsed. Time, they say, cures everything. So. Franklin: Except for old age. Clark: Yeah, well, yes. I keep thinking that, maybe I ought to petition the government to give it back to who it was taken from. Which would be an interesting legal challenge. Franklin: Well, yeah, on a few levels. Because, you know, before white settlers came there was also another— Clark: Indian. Franklin: Yeah, another claim to that land. That would be very interesting. That would face some immediate legal challenges from, I think, many— Clark: Oh, I’m sure that, yeah, definitely would. But the Indians used to stop by my grandparents’ all the time. Franklin: Really? What—did they tell you about that, or--? Clark: Yeah, they’d just say, oh, Johnny Buck stopped and walked in the house and had dinner with us. You know, he was kind of the chief, I guess, of the—And my grandfather, for a period of time, was a Benton County commissioner. So anything that happened in his end of the county, he was kind of—he’d take charge of it. So he knew all the Indians. He used to, the story goes, that he took the family car and went down to Horn Rapids, which is now Winwash or whatever-in-the-heck it is. But the Indians had deals set up; they were netting salmon. So anyway, they gave him as many salmon as he could haul. And he loaded up the backseat, you know. I’m sure it smelled great. And then he went around to the community and handed out salmon to people that needed food. So it was interesting. Franklin: Yeah, that is very interesting. Kind of acting as a redistribution agent for that. So your grandparents, your family had pretty good relations, then with— Clark: With the Indians. Franklin: With the Wanapum. Clark: Oh, yes, yes. Franklin: That’s interesting because I’ve heard other stories from other people who mentioned friendly Wanapum visits, or they would ask people to store things for them if they were going to, like, a fishing camp and they didn’t want to carry everything. Clark: Yeah, no, they stopped—Dad tells one story that the whole tribe stopped by. They were moving to some different area for fishing or for root collecting or whatever they were doing, and the whole tribe came by and waved and stopped for a little bit. Franklin: Wow. Clark: So they were all on very good terms. One of my uncles—there was a lot of arrowheads and those type of things that they found over the years. One of my uncles has actually took a bunch of his collection up to the new museum that they just built up at one of the dams. They built a nice museum, so he donated a bunch of his collection to them. Franklin: Oh, that’s cool. Clark: Actually, I think all of them. Franklin: Oh, wow, that’s great. That’s always good to see that, to hear of that stuff getting— Clark: Back to where it— Franklin: Yeah, repatriated. Clark: I mean, it wasn’t against the law at the time. Franklin: Sure. Clark: It is now, obviously. You’re not supposed to pick anything up. But back in those days, was just doing their thing. Franklin: Right, and if there ever were laws they weren’t as enforced really, much, as they are now. Clark: Right. Franklin: No, that’s good to hear. Clark: They used to—the boys, the older boys—there were six boys, and my grandfather used to go up to Priest Rapids and there was some kind of logjam up there. They would make a raft out of these logs that are floating down from dam construction or whatever they were doing on the river. And then they would float that to Hanford, which was a couple-day ordeal. And that was their firewood for the winter. So they’d pull it up, with the horses, and pull it up on the bank, and cut it up. Franklin: Wow. That sounds really dangerous. To make a raft out of logs. Clark: And you know, all the boys survived. Franklin: Yeah, I’m sure. Well, they also knew how to do it, though, too, right? They had learned. I can just imagine somebody trying to do that today and probably getting killed. Clark: Yes. Yes, probably most likely. Franklin: Very much, I respect that knowledge of how to make a raft, a serviceable raft, out of reclaimed logs. Clark: Well, they’d just lash it together, and put a big boom pole on it. They’d do one or two rafts, and away they went. Franklin: Wow, wow. That’s really something. Clark: Yeah, it’s quite an undertaking. And of course back in those days, they didn’t have chainsaws and all that stuff. So it was a tough way to make some firewood. Franklin: Yeah, well, also, though, your options around here are pretty limited if you don’t want to burn sagebrush all the—which I imagine isn’t very good firewood. Clark: I wouldn’t think so. Franklin: Where did your father fall in the six boys? Was he— Clark: He was number three. Franklin: So he was square, pretty much, in the middle. Clark: Right. Franklin: Did any of your uncles work for Hanford? Clark: Yes. My number two uncle worked out there for many, many years. I can’t even tell you what he—well, he worked with my father. I think on a different shift, but he was in management of some sort or another. Franklin: Are the six brothers still pretty close—or were they pretty close? Clark: They’ve been close all their lives. Franklin: And did they all stay in the same area? After the displacement? Clark: No. Well, the two youngest went to Yakima with my grandparents, because they were still in school. Then all of the older ones were in the service. And then when my oldest uncle got out of the service, then he moved to Yakima and went—his entire life, he only worked for one company and that was Picatti brothers. Who was a friend of my grandparents. The elder Picattis. And they’re still a viable company. So my uncle retired from Picatti Brothers after, I don’t know, a lot of years. Franklin: Your grandparents probably knew him from then— Clark: From Hanford. Franklin: From working at the pump. Clark: Yeah. They—because grandpa used to do, like, general contracting. Hand-dig wells. And so they kind of worked hand-in-hand with Picatti Brothers for pumps and that kind of stuff. Franklin: Oh, I see. Clark: They’ve been family friends for years. Franklin: Would all of the boys often get together and go on the picnic—the White Bluffs-Hanford Reunion? Clark: Normally there was three or four. Franklin: Three or four. Clark: Yeah. Well, probably, a lot of times there were five. One of my uncles ended up moving all over the Northwest for a power company. So he was, a lot of times, down in Medford or over in Montana. Someplace way out of the area. So he normally didn’t come up for the picnic, but the rest of the other five did. Franklin: What did your grandparents do after moving—after being—moving to Yakima after being displaced? Clark: My grandfather—my grandmother didn’t work outside of the house. Franklin: Sure. Clark: But my grandfather went to work for PP&L, Pacific Power and Light. Franklin: Oh, okay. Clark: And he was running a substation there in Yakima for a lot of years. Franklin: Did your grandfather ever get a chance, or grandmother, ever get a chance to go back onsite? Clark: If they did, it was before my time. Franklin: Okay. Clark: They weren’t with us for those years that I went out. Franklin: Sure. When did they pass away? Clark: Now, that’s going back ancient history. Franklin: Okay. Clark: I should’ve brought my book. I’ve got a book that chronicles the whole family back, the Clarks and the Straddlings, which—but I didn’t bring it. Franklin: That’s okay. Do you remember your grandmother or grandfather talking about the displacement, their feelings about it? Clark: I didn’t really, like I say, they were displaced in ’43, ’42-’43, whatever. I was born in ’50. So, no, they’re not going to talk to a five-year-old, anyway, about that. So, yeah, there was never really much of any hard feelings that, at least, were apparent. Then they moved a lot of the graves to Prosser, which is where my grandparents were also buried. But they were buried at—they had never have been buried at Hanford, obviously, or it wouldn’t have been able to be moved. But then they moved a lot of those graves. Actually, I was—we go up there for Memorial Day every year and decorate graves. So I was cruising the—which sounds like fun, cruising the cemetery. And I found that John Kashier’s grave, which is—that one section is Hanford-White Bluffs. They were moved there. So I found his grave. Franklin: Was your family close with any other families that were displaced and stayed in the area? Clark: Not to any great extent. I mean, they kept in touch, but not—others, couple that were fairly close, the Burford family, and then the Meek family. And the Meeks used to own BB&M, was one of the owners of BB&M in Uptown Richland. So Dad used to see them quite a bit. And Don Burford still calls him. I think he’s in Port Angeles or someplace over there and still calls him every once in a while. Franklin: Because your father is still alive, yes? Clark: Yes. Franklin: Okay. And you said he’s 92. Clark: He’s going to be 92. Franklin: Going to be 92. So what about your—do you remember any recollections of your mother from growing up in White Bluffs, or her family’s— Clark: They didn’t have the roots as deeply in White Bluffs as they did in Prosser. Franklin: Ah, I see. Clark: So, it wasn’t as big a deal, I don’t think. Because they had not been there—I guess they had an orchard and something out there. But they hadn’t been there as long as—and of course, with my step-grandfather working for AEC, you know, that was kind of all tied-in. I don’t know how long they actually lived in White Bluffs. Or whether he was one of the first ones there and then the movement came. I can’t tell you. Franklin: Sure. Did you—when you would visit the site with your father and uncles, do you remember any other—are there any other experiences that stand out to you, anything else you saw, or— Clark: Yeah, I mean, there were deer everywhere, as there still are. And we were driving along the river, and there’s a couple of baby bobcats that went up a tree. Back in those days, I was a little young and tougher. A little dumber, too. So I decided I was going to try to get those bobcats. And make pets. Well, they convinced me that that would not be a real smart move. Franklin: The bobcats did, or your— Clark: No, my uncles. Dad and uncles. Franklin: Yeah. I bet Mama Bobcat would have something to say about that. Clark: She wasn’t immediately visible. Not that she wasn’t there. Franklin: I was going to say, she was probably watching. Clark: I would guess. Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Clark: But like I say, I was a little younger and dumber back in those days, and a whole lot tougher, so. Franklin: Anything else that stands out to you? Clark: No. It was interesting just to go through and they would point out, well, Gilhuly’s family lived here, and this is where John Kashier lived, this is where such-and-such lived, and this is where—you know. And then we’d go by the old store, which wasn’t there, but the bank in White Bluffs. And then they would talk about, you’d go in there for a nickel and get three ice cream cones or something. So it was interesting. Franklin: And so you moved to Richland in—right, you were born in Yakima? Clark: Born and moved, three days old. I don’t remember the move, but I understand I was three days old when I moved to Richland. Franklin: And you grew up in Richland. Clark: Yes. Franklin: And so your family, you guys lived in an Alphabet House, then, when you were a kid? Clark: Yes. Franklin: A government-owned house. Describe that, describe growing up in Richland in the government days. Clark: It was a great place to grow up. You’ve heard the stories. I mean, we rode bicycles without helmets, we drank out of the garden hose. I remember, I don’t know how often it was, but all the houses—not all of them, but most of the houses had coalbeds. And they would just drive up with a coal truck up to your little chute in the basement, the little window, and they opened up the window and filled it full of coal, and that’s what we heated with. But you didn’t—I was pretty young; I think they started selling those houses, if I remember, ’56, ’57. Franklin: 1958. Clark: Okay. So I was still pretty young to understand, but somebody’d come over and change light bulbs. Normally it was three people, because you had to have safety, and you had to have the manager, and the person who actually screwed the light bulb. So that was just the way it was. And for many, many years after that, when I finally got older and got into business, there was still a lot of people in the business community that didn’t like doing business with Hanford people. Franklin: Really? Why is that? Clark: Because there was the perception that they had been given, for many, many years had been given everything. I mean, you didn’t change your own lightbulbs. So there was that mindset. Franklin: Was that a perception within the community of Richland, or more of a Tri-Cities— Clark: More Kennewick, Pasco. Franklin: Kennewick, Pasco thing. Clark: Right. Franklin: Dealing with Richland people. Well, I guess to a small extent, that was somewhat true. I mean, the level of home service you were talking about. You paid your rent and people came and delivered your coal to your house. Do you remember what kind of house you lived in? What Alphabet? Clark: Yeah. My dad still lives there. Franklin: Oh, okay. And what house is it? Clark: It’s a B duplex. Franklin: A B duplex. And where is it? Clark: On McPherson. 1300 block on McPherson. Franklin: Oh, okay. And that’s where you grew up and— Clark: Right. Franklin: And went through childhood and everything. Do you have any examples of people not—that kind of—because kind of I’m fascinated about that inter-cities relationship between Richland and Pasco and Kennewick. Clark: Yeah, and I don’t have any specific other than you’d go into a business and be negotiating something with—and, you must be from Richland; you have that attitude. Of course, back in those days, you didn’t live in Richland, basically, unless you worked at Hanford. Especially up until ’58. I mean, if you lived there, you basically worked at Hanford or some kind of subsidiary. Franklin: Right, you might have worked at a business in Uptown, or owned a business that had, though, that had the government contract to run that business. Clark: Right. We had a good friend of mine I went to school with that his dad had a floor covering company in Richland. It took him a couple of years to get a contract to be able to do that, but anyway, he finally did. And spent many, many years in Richland doing floor covering. Franklin: Mm. So you say that was kind of a perception from Kennewick and Pasco businesspeople that Richland people were kind of coddled or entitled? Clark: Yeah. Franklin: I guess is the word they’d use? Clark: Entitled, maybe, is a good word for it. Franklin: Okay. And did that persist for a while? Clark: For a while, I mean, it wasn’t—because I didn’t really start in the business and I didn’t graduate from school until ’68, from high school. So it was after that, into the ‘70s before it—and then of course by that time, Richland had greatly expanded; a lot of people had moved in that didn’t work at Hanford. So it kind of changed that whole focus. Franklin: Sure, sure. What do you remember about going to school in Hanford, especially in regard to—were they doing civil defense drills and things at the time that you were in elementary and middle school? Clark: Right. You know, it wasn’t a huge deal, but they’d have an air raid, and you’d crawl under your desk. It wasn’t a huge deal, but they did it on a regular basis. So there was some thought to that. Franklin: Were they practicing emergency routes at the time that you were in elementary, middle school where kids would get on buses and they would practice leaving town. Clark: No. No, there wasn’t any of that that I recall. Of course, you have to understand, my first day of kindergarten, I went to a different school than what I ended up graduating from. First day of school, they got me to school, and when I came home, my folks had moved. And it was like three months before I found them. Nah, I’m kidding. [LAUGHTER] But, no, I don’t recall any bus route. I remember one time as a cub scout, I was able to, with cub scout group, go up to the Nike missiles up on the hill. At the base of Rattlesnake. And got a tour—somewhat of a tour of those missile silos. Franklin: Wow. Clark: And to this day I can’t tell you whether there was actually any missiles in them or if they were just the empty—just the facility. But I don’t think they’d let a bunch of cub scouts around a bunch of Nike missiles. Franklin: Well, I mean, you never know. Clark: And kids were a little dangerous, you know. Hit the wrong switch, and— Franklin: You’d hope they’d have slightly better security for launching missiles than that. Clark: You would hope so. Franklin: When did you first—do you remember when you first found out or became aware of what was being made at Hanford? Clark: No, because it was—you know, by the time that I was like going to school, I mean, that was out. I mean, obviously, they had used the atomic bombs and—so, everybody knew what it was. Franklin: Were you ever worried about the effects of radiation or of production on your dad’s health, your family’s health? Clark: You know, it’s always—I’m in the real estate business, and have been for 40-some years, okay? So one of the first things we got—you know: I don’t want to be anywhere close to Hanford. Okay, people moving into town, not working at Hanford, well, we want to stay as far away as we can. You know, if the people who were in charge of safety lived in Spokane, I might be a little concerned. But they live right here, too. So, really, I was never—never overly concerned that there was any kind of an issue. I mean, it’s all the Hanford employees had their dosimeters, their little badges they have. And then there was a metal box on our front porch for many, many years that the urine sample went in. They’d come around and collect them and they’d check just to make sure people weren’t getting a dose that they weren’t expecting. Franklin: That was for employees, though, right? Clark: Employees, correct. Franklin: So, but what about—did you ever wonder about just the general—anything getting into the air or the water or anything like that? Clark: No, like I said, the people that are in charge of that live here, too. So I was really never all that—and we used to hunt up on the Columbia River, on the Hanford Site, on the shoreline, which was legal to hunt waterfowl. And you know, you just never gave it much thought, that there was still a lot of messes, or still is, out there. Franklin: What about the—given Hanford’s role in the production of material for two-thirds or three-quarters of the US nuclear weapons stockpile, did you ever worry about Hanford—about their being a danger in Hanford from a Cold War perspective? From a—that there might be reason to be doing all that civil defense, that Hanford might be a target? Clark: Well, that’s why they had the Nike missile; that’s why they had Army out here. Franklin: Sure. Clark: Obviously, it was a factor. But one of the times that we went on the Hanford-White Bluffs picnic, and we were all staged there at the old Hanford school, high school, and here came a helicopter. And it swoop, swoop, swoop, sat down right there out in front of everybody, and three guys get out submachine guns. And it kind of goes—okay. And obviously, it was a show. But we were able to go tour the helicopter, so-to-speak, and talk to the people. And I asked them, I said, how—because they have heat-seeking stuff, or did. I don’t even think they have helicopters anymore. But they had heat-seeking. He said, I can find a snake if I want to. If I turn it down to that, I can find a snake. So, obviously, security. And we, being raised in Richland—you know, what does your dad do? Well, he’s Hanford security. One of my buddies all through school was a courier, and he used to take highly secret stuff on trains. And they would take it wherever they were going, Savannah River, wherever, on a special train. And they were all armed with machine guns—I mean, it was pretty brutal. Franklin: Right. Clark: But they just—so I’ve always felt safe. I mean. The Cold War was the Cold War, and Khrushchev taking off his shoe and beating it on the table was part of the rhetoric. Franklin: Right, right. Clark: They have kind of the same thing now. Franklin: In— Clark: [LAUGHTER] In our president. Franklin: Ah. Can you elaborate? In what way, like how— Clark: Well, he’s a little off the wall, kind of like Khrushchev is. Now, I like him; don’t get me wrong. But he’s a little off the wall. Franklin: Yeah, he can get a little—act a little quickly sometimes, maybe. Where—luckily, in the Cold War, clearer heads prevailed—clear heads prevailed. Clark: Right. Franklin: Because I guess that’s where they—I understand the physical security, spies and operatives wouldn’t come, but what about—I mean, much of the Cold War was ruled by the fear of—because most of the nukes were on ICBMs or in planes, so I’m wondering, what about that more existential fear that could’ve become real, of Hanford likely being a site in a nuclear war? Clark: Really didn’t cross my mind. I mean, I honestly would be more concerned right now, because of North Korea, than I was back in those days. There wasn’t really any great fear. Franklin: Right. Yeah, luckily their rocket technology isn’t as good as the Soviets’ is yet—now. They keep trying, though. Very much so. So you live in Richland. Did you go to Columbia High? Clark: Yes. Franklin: Now Richland High. Clark: Right. Franklin: So, proud Bomber. I’m wondering if you could—since you would’ve—you graduated in 1968, right, so you came of age in a very turbulent time in American culture. Clark: Mm-hmm. Franklin: I’m wondering if you could speak to any kind of civil rights action in the Tri-Cities and what you observed if anything— Clark: Not in Richland; in Pasco, yeah. During that timeframe, there was some riots. Pasco High School wasn’t exactly the safest—well, I shouldn’t say it wasn’t the safest place, but there was a lot of unrest. I mean, they kept their thumbs on it, but there was a lot of unrest. Franklin: And what kind of unrest? Clark: Oh, girls of different nationalities ganging together. But it really didn’t spill over into Richland. I’ve got good friends that are African Americans and there was several that—one in particular I went to school with, and then two years older, Fred Milton, who was a big, big black guy, a football player, was a good friend of my older brother’s, so he’d be over at the house all the time. Franklin: And this was in Richland. Clark: This was in Richland. But originally, the stories go, and I believe the stories to be true, there wasn’t any black people in Richland or especially in Kennewick. They were all Pasco. Franklin: Right, because Kennewick had had sundown laws that prohibited homeownership. But there were a few African Americans in Richland, though, right, because— Clark: There were, but not many. Not many. The guy that just passed away was a realtor for many years; I knew him well. Franklin: CJ Mitchell. Clark: CJ. His family was in Richland there. And you know, great family. I mean, it’s—so, yeah, we just—it never was really an issue during my time. Franklin: Sure, sure. Do you remember the JFK visit in 1963? Clark: I do! I was actually out there. Franklin: Were you? Clark: Yup. Franklin: Okay, I’m wondering if you could describe that. Clark: [LAUGHTER] That’s been many years ago. Franklin: Well, sure. Clark: As I recall, it was just hotter than hell. And somehow I went out—I can’t remember now even how, but we got to see him. Maybe it was a scout deal or cub scout deal or something, but, anyway, I was able to go out there and see him. At the time, it was a big deal. Franklin: What else do you remember about the event? Clark: Really not much of anything, other than it was hotter than heck and longer than—you know, when you get a president speaking and a couple of senators speaking, and they’ve all got to say everything they can say. Franklin: Right, also, I bet there’s a lot of lead-up to the actual event. What did your mother do? Clark: She worked. She retired at the public health department. Franklin: Okay, was that for Kadlec or for— Clark: No, for Benton and Franklin Counties. She wrote the checks. Franklin: Oh, okay. Clark: She was a bookkeeper of some type. So I’ve always had a good in with the folks there at the health department. You want your check? Approve this plat or you don’t get your paycheck. Obviously, she wouldn’t do that, but it was always a good story. Franklin: Yeah, I bet. Did she ever work any with Hanford or anybody out at Hanford? Clark: You know, I think she did very early on, but that really would’ve been in the, probably late ‘40s. Because I don’t think, you know, with four kids to raise—I know that she didn’t work after, you know, in my memory. Franklin: Did she ever go out to the Site with any of the reunions? Clark: Not to my knowledge. Franklin: Okay. Has she passed? Clark: Yes. Franklin: Okay. And so then after you graduated from Columbia-slash-Richland High, did you stay in the area, or--? Clark: Stayed in the area, actually bought a B house. Franklin: Oh. Clark: In ’70, I believe. Franklin: Really? At 20 years old. Clark: At 20 years old. And I sold it, I think, ’72 or ’73 and bought some other properties. Ended up moving to Kennewick for a while, and then ended up, in ’80, I think, I bought a house in Pasco. Franklin: Okay. Clark: So, where I currently am. Franklin: And so did you get bitten by the realtor bug early on then, or--? Clark: You know, when I bought my duplex in Richland, I paid $18.5k for it. And I don’t remember much about it. I was kind of doing odd jobs, and I worked for this realtor, Clair Groves, used to have Allied Brokers down the river shore. I said, Clair, if you ever find a house, a B duplex, I’m interested. So anyway, he called me one day, I found one, I looked at it, 18.5. Okay, how much down? $600. So I borrowed the 600 from my grandmother and bought it. And the only thing I really remember off the closing statement was how much money he made. Of course, I didn’t pay him; the seller did. But still. And I thought, that’s a pretty lucrative business; I can do that. So, yeah, so in ’72 I got a license to—and I’ve been in it ever since. Franklin: Ah, I see. So you’ve bought and sold property, then, all over the— Clark: All over the Tri-Cities. Franklin: You’ve sold, I assume, a fair number of old Alphabet Houses or prefabs. Clark: Yeah. Prefabs is—I’m working on one now that I own, and I’ve owned one or two others. But that’s it, because they’re a bearcat to—there’s no halfway fix. Franklin: Right. I live in a prefab. Clark: I know. But if you start remodeling it, there’s no going partway. You’ve really got to do it, do it all. Franklin: Oh, okay. Right. Well, they were really never—I mean, they were temporary housing. Clark: Oh, yeah. Flat roof, just like, an oven, I guess, the first couple years they were there, and then they put the peaked roofs on them. Yeah, they were built to last four years, five years. And a lot of them are still there, and a lot of them are excellent homes. Franklin: Yeah. Do you find you have a special affinity for Alphabet Homes? A connection? Are you keyed into that history at all? Clark: Yeah. No. Well, the market for As and Bs, and Cs, if you can find a C, and there’s another one, D, I think, that are duplexes. They’re almost not—they’re very hard to find, available. So, and the price has gone from, I paid $18.5 for mine, and I sold it for $26, I think. Now they’re about $175 to $200-plus depending on condition and what’s been done. Franklin: So you find they’re desirable, then? Is that what— Clark: Yeah. And extremely well-built. I mean, obviously, they’re getting old. Franklin: Yeah. Clark: But they used extremely good lumber. Because it was a war effort, and they came in. I mean, some of the duplexes actually had full basements that were all completely built that way. And then they found out that the contract said you don’t do that; you only do half-basements. So they went and filled them back in with dirt and put the wall in that was standard. So, yeah, it’s interesting. But they’re good solid properties. Franklin: Great. Clark: And there’s been a lot of money in Richland because of the price they paid for their real estate when they bought them in ’58, so they were paid off, you know, a few years. So people have been able to afford to upgrade them. So it’s hard to find one now that’s original. I mean, something’s been done to them over the years. Franklin: Oh sure, I mean, you’re talking— Clark: Human nature. Franklin: We’re talking about houses that are 70 years old or more, or around there. That’s pretty standard for—at least as far as the—you’re talking especially about insides, right, the guts of the house. Clark: Right. Franklin: Not so much the— Clark: Not so much the outside. Franklin: Well, and if you change the outside too much, then it’s not really the same house anymore. Clark: When I was a kid, probably 12, 12 or 13, my dad went in partners with a guy who bought, I think a half of one of the barracks out here at Hanford when the Army moved out, and then they were going to just tear them down. So we went out and tore it down. We got the lumber that we tore down, recycled it, and my dad built his big garage with it, and we put an addition out the back of the B house on his side. That was a lot of fun. Franklin: Interesting. That’s kind of neat. That’s also kind of historic, or interesting reuse operation, kind of combining this historic Army structure with—that’s very interesting. And that was done in the ‘60s? Clark: Yeah. Franklin: Yeah, that’s really cool. I do historic preservation, so it’s always kind of interesting to hear of good reuse projects like that. Clark: Right. Franklin: And the flavor, that’s great, too. So, being a graduate of Columbia and Richland High—at that time, you graduated, were they using the Bombers, the cloud imagery? Clark: Yes. Franklin: I’m wondering—that’s a very—I don’t know, loaded, or charged, symbol. Clark: [LAUGHTER] Franklin: I’m trying to find a way to phrase that properly. I think you get—I think you know what I’m getting at. I’m wondering, can I get your thoughts on that, on that particular symbol and that mascot? Clark: You know, it served us for many years. I guess I’m just an old redneck, but politically correct is—I mean, it’s just gone way overboard. I’ve got a very good friend of mine that just lost his wife a couple of weeks ago. And she was from Japan. She’d tell stories during the bombing and stuff that they’d take all the kids up and hide them in caves in Japan. But there wasn’t—there hasn’t been really any animosity between us and, like I say, her, she’s been a friend of mine for years. But there wasn’t any—so the bombs created a lot of death, yes. How many lives did it save? And the cost of invading Japan in human lives would’ve been—because those people would’ve fought to the last person. So the war got over, a lot of people didn’t die that could’ve died on both sides. So it was kind of like this, one of the necessities of war. Franklin: Hmm. I wonder, though, how—as that generation is—the World War II generation is almost gone. Clark: Right. Franklin: I’m wondering, how strong of a—how that connection will carry on as— Clark: You mean with the bomb logo? Franklin: You know there’s a generation now that is the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of that, who kind of come— Clark: You try to change it again, and you’re going to get those of us, and there’s a couple of people I can think of their names, that would just have a fit. And very vocal people. So, yeah, maybe another 30 years, when us old guys are all gone, too, maybe they’ll look back and say, well, let’s get rid of that. But it’s just like that R in ’67, that R that was placed up on the hill and that the school district in their infinite wisdom decided to remove without telling anybody. And people came up in arms about it. And now they’ve replaced it. Old school. Franklin: Cool. Is there anything that I—or, actually, no, sorry, second-to-last question. Clark: Okay. Franklin: What would you like future generations to know about growing up in Richland, living in Richland during the Cold War? Clark: You know, I have absolutely no complaints. It was still, then, pretty much a small town, extremely safe town. I mean, you’d be out at midnight, and nobody worried about any kind of violence going on. Or if you’re 17 years old and you got picked up with a six-pack of beer, the cops’d get you. Pour it out, and go home. I mean, it was just laidback, small town, everybody knew everybody. Which is a drawback, because it’s going, who are you taking out tonight? Well, I’m taking out--. Who are you taking out? Oh, yeah, I know her mom real well. Oh, good. That’s not what I wanted to hear. Franklin: That’s interesting. I hear that a lot. And it strikes me that that—the factors that underlie that seem to be that everyone—it was so safe and so secure because the government before ’58 had a very tight control over who lived in the town. But also it was a town of almost full employment and good employment and government employment. So there seems to be—in a town with all this safety and security and freedom, there was also this heavy government hand in some ways. Clark: You know, there, again, in ’58, I was eight years old. So I certainly wouldn’t have felt that. But, yeah, I mean, you couldn’t paint your house or anything that we’re just used to. I mean, you could have it painted; you could get somebody to come in—they’d send a crew of 12 to paint your house; it took them three weeks, you know? But, yeah, there again, I was awfully young to be able to—I probably wouldn’t have felt any of that. Franklin: Sure, sure. Clark: But growing up, like I say, it was—in a fairly wealthy town, from the standpoint that basically all the water and sewer, electricity, all of that stuff was, in essence, given to the city when it became private. So the people in the city didn’t have to pay for it. Now, obviously, we’re paying for it now because a lot of it’s getting old and they have to update the infrastructure. Franklin: Sure. Clark: But that wasn’t the way in the beginning. Because it was all basically in top shape and given to the city to say, here, operate it. Franklin: Right. I mean, they needed good facilities to get good people to come and stay. Yeah, that’s good— Clark: And I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of stories of people coming here and the first windstorm blew them back out of town. Franklin: Oh yeah, very much so. Yeah, it seems people that stayed were more often the exception than the rule in those early days. But that’s a good point, that Richland, when it incorporated, really had started off on a very good foot in terms of all that government investment really created Richland as this middle class, upper middle class city. In comparison to Kennewick and Pasco which had much different origins. Clark: Right. Franklin: And that, like you alluded to before, that might explain—not, you alluded; that you stated, that might explain some of that resentment. Clark: Potentially. Franklin: Potentially. Clark: I mean, they wouldn’t actually put a sign up on the front door saying no Richland people allowed. So it was— Franklin: Kind of subtext, kind of underneath the surface, when the Richland people were gone, they might be like, oh, those Richland people, again, you know? Clark: Well, there again, the wages weren’t top wages, but they were pretty close. They were good-paying jobs. And where most people, you know, I mean, your dad worked at Hanford. You can’t get fired from Hanford, or it’s extremely difficult to get fired from Hanford. You just showed up, did your job, and okay. It’s not the real world, I mean, people in Kennewick and Pasco didn’t have that. I mean, you only worked if you could make the boss money. And in this case, the boss was the people, the taxpayers. So it was kind of like, hey, you’ve got a job here forever. Franklin: Well, and the product was one of very high demand. Clark: Yes. Franklin: You know, at war there. Clark: Well, it’s basically, it’s been good for a lot of families. Franklin: Oh, yeah, very much so. Well, great, Glen, is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention? Clark: No, I think you’ve pretty well done a good job and kind of covered the bases. Franklin: Okay, well, great, thank you. Thank you so much. Clark: You betcha. Franklin: Okay. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:01:51 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Glen Clark Subject The topic of the resource White Bluffs (Wash.) Hanford (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Description An account of the resource Glen Clark grew up in the pre-Manhattan Project towns of Hanford and White Bluffs and later moved to Richland as his parents went to work at the Hanford Site. 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/7/2017 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Language A language of the resource English 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 the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0992948e0811e502f33a2bd348c050ec.JPG 5291abbce0561a907b2d7644e150dd77 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6ec2237aa7c6afe662829d90aa1b99c5.mp4 8c4228f038926fb13821ea6d37770f4d 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 Frank Cobb George Swan Location The location of the interview Home of Frank Cobb Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Frank Cobb and George Swan on August 28, 2018. The interview is being conducted at the house of Frank. I’ll be talking with Frank and George about their experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us, starting with Frank? Frank Cobb: Frank Cobb. F-R-A-N-K. C-O-B-B. Franklin: Great. George? George Swan: George Swan. G-E-O-R-G-E. S-W-A-N. Franklin: Great. When did you two start working together? Swan: Hmm. Was it in the late ‘70s? Cobb: No. Swan: Mid-‘70s? Cobb: I met you in 1980. Swan: Okay. Yeah, we started out where I had projects at the dams on the Columbia River with National Marine Fisheries working with the traveling screens that we put down in the turbine intakes. Frank came on and became one of my maintenance men, and we pretty much formed a team from there on. I was kind of like the junior lieutenant and he was a sergeant major under me. You know, we’re both old marines, so we tend to look at it in that respect. But basically, I was a biologist project leader, and Frank was head maintenance man, doing a lot of the fabrication and making stuff happen in the field so we could get the research projects done. Franklin: What types of research projects did you two do together? Swan: We did the traveling screen stuff at different dams. Putting the traveling screens down and they’re elevated to divert juvenile salmon and steelhead that are drawn in to the turbine intakes with the flow of the river, and then divert it up into gate wells. And then they find a bypass orifice that would draw them through into a bypass system. Takes them down and around the dam into a collection facility. And then they were collected and sorted and some of them were tagged for studies and so forth, and they were taken downstream below all the hydroelectric dams, so they didn’t have to go through any more of them, and release down there. And there were juvenile salmon and juvenile steelhead, primarily. Eventually—did you work with me on the radio, tracking stuff later on? Cobb: No. The first time he and I really worked together was after I got started diving, and we did a spawning survey in 1986. Swan: I was a fisheries research biologist, but also I had an extra duty as diving supervisor in the NOAA diving program for the National Marine Fisheries in the Inland Northwest area. Frank was interested, so I got him into it with me. I had learned to dive recreationally when I was in the Marine Corps many years before. I was not a military diver, but when I got out, when I was going to college, I fed myself off Puget Sound, collecting seafood and spearfishing and collected samples for the different researchers at University of Washington and the Seattle Marine Aquarium. Eventually got appointed as the diving supervisor for NMFS for different things we did underwater, projects. And a lot of it ended up being at the dams in the gate wells and around some of the structures. And then eventually when we got into this checking water withdrawals, pump intakes, all the way from little, small things, somebody plopped the line in to draw water out to water their lawn, up to big industrial and agriculture things. We had a project that ran for about three years, locating all these, finding out who owned and operated them, and inspecting them. The end-goal was to find out if there were fish protective facilities on those intakes that were protecting the juvenile fish that were migrating downstream, again, salmon and steelhead and other resident fishes. Let’s see. Guess that was about it. Then our director of coastal zone and estuary studies in Seattle, Wes Ebel, also a former marine—he was a diver, but he was getting up in years and also his responsibilities didn’t let him get in the field much anymore, but he was a diver in our program up until a certain point. One day out of the blue, he came to me, called me up, and said, get some people asking if we could do a deep water spawning survey in the Hanford Reach. Could you guys do it? And I said, hell, yes, we could do it. And he said, okay. See what you can put together. And I went out in the shop and talked to Frank about it, and I said, we can do this, can’t we? [LAUGHTER] And Frank said, we can do anything. So that’s how it took off. We started—I started researching the literature, finding out about other outfits that used underwater devices to run surveys or collections or different things. And we found that some guys used a sled, like we came up with, to evaluate the turtle excluder on some of the shrimp fisheries in the gulf. They were, you know, netting shrimp, but they were also getting a lot of sea turtles. And they wanted to figure out a way to keep the turtles from getting caught. So they had designed what they called a turtle excluder that would divert them out of there. And in order to—I mean, this is kind of a simplified version; they did a lot of other things, too, but—they used, when the shrimp boat was towing this thing, then it would be towed on this sled and they could actually underwater, you could kind of fly it around, and they’d film what was going on, and that’s how they were able to—instead of just putting it down, undetermined if it would catch any or not, they could start to look at what works best to try to divert the turtles from getting caught and that sort of thing. Cobb: Wasn’t the first one made out of a Stokes litter? A Navy Stokes litter? Swan: Yeah, they actually used Navy Stokes litters that they had onboard ship in World War II. You know, that were-- Cobb: With the wings on it. Franklin: You mean to carry, like a litter, to carry a body? Swan: Yeah, you’d lay a guy in it, and it was a tubing frame and then it had a wire basket that you’d lay the wounded person in. Well, they took two of those and built them into a framework. And then they came up with a diving plane so they could go up or down. So we took that and went a little further with the sled. Frank came up with the one that you’ll see after a while, here. When it was first built, the Plexiglas was clear, of course, and you could see out through it. Now it’s kind of yellowed from sunlight and all that, but it was like a windshield underwater. It would divert the flow over us. Otherwise, we had a tremendous—you had the current of the river coming. We didn’t tow into it when we did our survey; we went across current. So we were catching whatever the river flow was at that point, and having that—we started out with some small things, and then Frank kept coming up with some little bigger and better. You couldn’t go too much. If you get too carried away, it’d be like a bass plug wobbling down there, from the resistance on it. But he got it worked out pretty good, so it put the flow above and below and around the divers. Of course, we’re on scuba, and then we had a problem with, as we’d exhale bubbles, they’d get drawn in front of us, and it was full of bubbles for a while and you couldn’t see. So he came up with some slots that helped let some flow go through there and trained those bubbles and pulled them away from us. So then we had a clear line of vision. That’s kind of in a nutshell. I don’t know if I’ve missed anything or not. Those are the basic things that we worked together on and gradually ended up with a— Cobb: Yeah, as far as that sled, kind of the evolution? Like many things have been throughout history, somebody starts out with a design, somebody else modifies it for their purposes, and that’s kind of the evolution of it. Swan: Yeah, the actual original was just a diving plane, a board, that a diver with scuba gear on would hang on to. And he would just manoeuver that board and it could make himself go up and down being towed by a boat. Cobb: An underwater airplane. Swan: Yeah. And it just kind of grew. Different guys would get different ideas, you know, and expand on it. And that’s how we ended up with this. Cobb: You’ve heard that term, there’s no I in team? Franklin: Yeah. Cobb: That’s what all this was about. There’s no I; it’s we. Swan: Yeah. Franklin: Frank, how did you get started doing fabrication? Cobb: Well, I had a shop teacher in high school that taught me to weld. And then I went four years in the Marine Corps. And then I’ve always done fabrication work, whatever I could figure out to do. And then when I was in the same place he worked, I did a lot of fabrication down there. I never learned anything in school. I was hands-on. Swan: Frank actually fabricated a lot of the big test frames that we hung mats on and things, when we tested the traveling screens or did modifications to the screens. I mean, it was—all the way from little, small items to gigantic things that had to be handled with cranes to move it around and install it. Franklin: Wow. So, what was this 1986 spawning survey, deep water spawning survey, in the Hanford Reach, what was the goal of the project? What were you tasked with finding? Swan: Well, we were approached by the Corps of Engineers that had talked to the director I was mentioning, and knew that we had a dive team, and asked if we could do anything to determine if salmon were actually spawning deeper than they could see from the air. Because up until then, the way they did their counts of salmon spawning was they would fly in an airplane and look down. And when the salmon sweeps the sediment clear where they’re establishing a redd, or stirring up the gravel to lay their eggs and fertilize them—it’s called a redd, R-E-D-D. That’s the way they were determining the amount of spawning that was going on all up through the Hanford Reach. They would fly it once a week for a couple months, or it was usually, they’d start in September and, well, maybe even longer than that. They’d go, I’m pretty sure through November and maybe into December. But the Corps of Engineers had been approached by an organization in Wenatchee area that was trying to promote marketing their produce, like apples and fruit. And see if they could get barge traffic coming all the way up the Columbia to Wenatchee. There are no locks in those dams, so they couldn’t lock the barges through. But they had come up with the idea of a lift, like they have in Europe, I guess. In some of the dams where they would pull the barge in with a tug below the dam, and this cradle would come out, start raising it, and that barge would be disconnected from the tug, and they would lift the barge up to the top of the dam, over it, down into the fore bay. They’d have another tug there that would couple up and take it to the next one. The concern was those tugs and barges going up through the Hanford Reach in those spawning grounds, what effect was that going to have on the salmon spawning? So that’s where they came up with the request to see if we could put together a project to try to measure the spawning and that’s how we got into that. And when we began to use the sled, you know, you could go across the shallow water, which you could see from the air and you already knew they were spawning there. But then we’d start to go deeper, as we went across the river. And we in fact found, in some locations, based on the average main level of the flow in the reservoir, we found that salmon were actually spawning down to 32 feet or so, something like that. Franklin: What was the depth that the plane could view? Swan: The sled? Franklin: No, sorry, what was the depth—you said that before— Swan: Oh, the airplane? Franklin: That the airplane, yeah, how deep could the airplane reliably view to? Swan: I don’t know for sure; it’d depend on water clarity. But I would say on the average, probably ten to twelve, maybe 15 feet would be about max. Franklin: So you were able to go down about double. Swan: Yeah. Franklin: And did you find a lot of salmon spawning in the deep water? Swan: Yup. A lot. Cobb: Yeah, one year the return was like 100,000 of the upriver brights. Swan: Yeah. Franklin: Was that what researchers had expected to find? Or was it a surprise? Swan: I don’t think so, because, as I recall, the guy that was the project engineer for the Corps—[LAUGHTER] He wanted to—we were going to do another study the next year, but what we found out worked against him. And I think it was the Northwest Power Planning Council had approved the study with the Corps of Engineers’ funding. But when they found out how much spawning was going on, to what extent, they put the kibosh on the project right away. They said there’s no way we want barges and tugs running up through those spawning grounds. So, in a way, our success meant our demise. Because we would’ve liked to have done another year of study. But at the same time, they determined that there wasn’t any point in going on with it, because they could see right away it was not a desirable situation to ever try to let get started. Cobb: Between Priest Rapids Dam and just north of Richland is the last free-flowing part of the Columbia River. I think I’ve got that right. Franklin: Yup. Cobb: And that’s part of what people were interested in, not destroying that. Franklin: Right, known as, yeah, that section is, I believe, known as the Hanford Reach. Cobb: Yeah, basically the Hanford Reach, yeah. Franklin: So tell me about how you operated the sled. It’s a two-man sled, right? Cobb: Right. Franklin: And were you the driver as well as the fabricator? Cobb: Yeah, I mean, I usually was the one flying. Flying underwater in a denser medium. Swan: Yeah, we had guys who started to take over and pilot it, but Frank was primary—he was chief pilot, I guess you could say. Franklin: Chief pilot. And so it uses a rudder system. Each hand controls a different rudder, right? Cobb: Well, each wing—it can be individual, so—but at one point we were entertaining ourselves. We were doing barrel rolls. I’d put one wing, can go like this, do barrel rolls, flying upside-down. And, anyway, it was probably illegal to have that much fun making a living. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: And how would you be seated in the sled? Cobb: You’re laying down. Franklin: Laying down, okay. Swan: In the prone. Franklin: So one person is flying the sled and the other person is--? Swan: The observer. Or he would be—we had a button that if he passed over a redd on this, well, what we should probably—Each of our test sites, or sample sites, were, what, 2,000 feet, from upstream to downstream. We would start at the top, the boat would manoeuver across. We had markers set on the bank, and he would go all the way across. Once they were to the other side, then they would drop back 150 feet, and come back across to the other side. And we’d keep doing that until we finished the whole thing. Now, the boat had this towline with a sled on the end of it that was 150 feet. And attached to that towline, so that when the sled was down, just about above us was a float with a cluster of prisms, the reflector mirrors, that no matter what the position of it was, if a beam, a laser beam was sent from shore out to that cluster, it would reflect back. And they had a computer survey company that worked with us how to computer set up. As we would go across, the observer had this button, also had voice communication, but we kind of had a duplication in case our voice system went out. We had this button you could push, would send a signal to shore or vice versa. If the other failed, hopefully, between the two of them. And as the sled would go across, and the guy that was the observer would see a redd, he would just say, redd, and he’d punch the button. As he did that, there’s an antenna on that float that would trigger a signal to the shore, and this tracking device they had would instantly tch-tch, and it would log in the coordinates of where the redd was. And that’s on the maps I showed you, the little red dots? Franklin: Yup. Swan: That’s how they get logged in. Franklin: Oh, okay, okay. Swan: And that’s the basic nitty gritty of how we did this thing. Cobb: I think I gave you some stuff on paper that shows the sled and what he just described. Franklin: Yeah. Cobb: In other words, back in the old days, antique. Now there’s GPS, we could’ve done the same thing, but in today’s GPS. Franklin: Yeah, and we’ll digitize those materials and make them available with the interview for the viewer. So, Frank, you used the sled again to do another survey by N Reactor. Or, no, by one of the reactors, right? Cobb: We did. Basically, pretty much every place that George and I did the spawning survey, we’d punch into the bottom of the river, and we would extract groundwater samples and the target was hexavalent chromium. Now, what else was in those samples, I have no idea. I don’t think anybody wants us to know what we were exposed to. Franklin: Where did—who was leading this project to do the groundwater sampling? Cobb: It was a guy by the name of Steve Hope, and he worked for CH2M Hill, who at that time was basically contracted to Bechtel. I think at this point, CH2M Hill is independent of Bechtel. But Steve Hope was the biologist in charge of it. And there, again, it was relative to the salmon. The EPA and the Indians wanted to know. Franklin: How much hexavalent chromium was in the groundwater? Cobb: Right. Franklin: And what year was this? Cobb: Pardon me? Franklin: What year was this? Cobb: I think ’95 and part of ’96. Franklin: And so what did you find? What were the findings of that survey? Cobb: Well, I think I gave you some paperwork on that also. As far as numbers, I don’t—I don’t remember, and I never—that was not part of my job. So I didn’t—but the concentrations were higher than—I shouldn’t say this—higher than Battelle said it would be. Which they also said we couldn’t do it. But we did it anyway. Franklin: They said you couldn’t do the groundwater survey? Cobb: They said we were not capable of doing it. Franklin: Why is that? Cobb: Well, for one thing, they were questioning our qualifications as divers. Steve Hope had been a Navy diver. I was certified with NOAA’s dive program and two others. But they never bothered to find out we were getting ready to embarrass them, because they said they had told DOE, I believe, that it couldn’t be done because of the high flows. Anyway, a guy came to me, wanted to know if we could do it, and I told him the same thing I told George: you can do anything. Shortest route to failure is do not try. Franklin: Mm-hmm. Was the same kind of—were you also the pilot in that? Cobb: Yes. Franklin: That’s right, and was it the same type of work and same areas, in fact, that you had done--? Cobb: Well, basically, most of the same areas that we did the spawning survey was the same place we did the groundwater sampling, the same areas. Not quite as many as we did in the spawning survey, but basically the same geographical locations. Swan: He drove pipes into the substrate to collect the groundwater, right? Cobb: Yeah, we’d drive those in and then we would purge out the actual river water, with syringes. I think you’ve got pictures of those. And then we would take three samples and they would go to, I think, three independent labs for analysis. Franklin: I imagine that must be—I mean, the flow of the river in that area is pretty fast. How did you keep everything steady enough to take these kind of samples? What was that experience like, being in the river in the sled? Cobb: Well, there again, like with the thing in ’95, ’96, we’d anchor the boat, and then we would park on the bottom and keep the wings down real low, just tight to the bottom. And then the guy beside me was the one that would—basically it was a concrete chipping hammer, gear-operated, to punch in. And then had a long enough anchor you could drop back there again and transit so far back. And then you have to pull the anchor and go and then re-anchor and do the same thing. I forget how many hundreds of feet on the anchor we had. Anyway, they said, can you? And we said yeah. Swan: They were able to stay in place long enough that they drove those pipes down deep enough that they could sample the groundwater after sucking all—purging all that river water out of there so they could get valid samples of the groundwater coming in. And that’s basically what had been said that they couldn’t do because there was too much flow; you’ll never be able to do anything. And they were able to accomplish it that way. Franklin: Wow. Cobb: One of the sayings I love, and I told several of them out there, people a whole lot smarter than I am, I told them, do not limit me by your limitations. Just because you cannot do it does not mean I can’t do it. Franklin: Um. Cobb: That’s one of those shut-up-Frank deals? Franklin: No, no, no, no, no. I just—you did it, so there’s nothing else to say about that. The work was done. So did you use the sled in any other surveys? Cobb: Oh. Let’s see. No, actually, anything that amounted to actual projects, no, I don’t believe so. Swan: The original sled, when we were all done with the spawning survey, and eventually they disbanded our diving group, said we’d outlived our usefulness, and they could call Rent-a-Diver if they needed divers—this is our fisheries outfit. So we kind of pfft, dissolved. And I had all this gear and so I passed it onto other diving units that were still active. And a guy who was up in Alaska got the sled. The last I heard, he was going to use it up there for trying to do studies on king crab. I guess king crab, when they spawn at night or something, they have a behavior of coming together—or maybe it’s the juvenile ones, I’m not sure. But they form into a big ball for protection. And then come, I guess, daylight or whatever, or a certain time, they’ll disperse. Anyway, he was doing a study on something about that, and I don’t know anymore than that for details, but— Franklin: So then, is this sled the same one that was used on the surveys? Swan: No. Franklin: No, okay, so what is the provenance of this sled? Cobb: Well, when I—I was 40 years old when I went to work for the fisheries and I was too old to learn to work for the government. So I went back to shoeing horses full-time, and I built the sled strictly on speculation, thinking someday somebody would want me to do another project. Somebody heard about it and Steve Hope came to me, and I’d already basically had that mostly built. And he told me what they wanted us to do. So then I finished it. Franklin: Okay, so that sled was used in the hexavalent chromium survey. Cobb: Correct. Franklin: And is it safe to say, is it pretty much a copy of the sled that was used in the fish--? Swan: An improved copy? Franklin: An improved copy? Cobb: It is basically—well, slightly improved, but mostly just slightly modified. Franklin: And what were the modifications between the two projects? Cobb: Between the two? Well, I made the wings a little bit more surface on them, and then where the divers lay, I made that where you can reach down—basically, it is very little different than the one that George and I used. Franklin: So how—when you were done with the hexavalent chromium, was the sled just not needed? How did it end up back with you? Cobb: Oh, it belonged to me. Franklin: Oh, so you supplied it to the— Swan: He was a private contractor at that point. Cobb: I was a private contractor. In fact, when I told them how much I wanted, they didn’t want to pay it. So they started calling diving companies. All the diving companies says, say what? There is no such thing as that. That does not exist. Nobody knows—there’s still nothing. It does not exist. So, then, they kept coming back to me. I’d be out shoeing horses, and they would keep calling me on the phone, trying to beat me down on the price. And I told them, no. That’s what I want. So that made me a sole source. So then they finally agreed. And I made them put a cancellation clause in it. And of course that was Bechtel, and they said, well, we can’t do that. And I said, well, then I can’t do that, either. Because I knew what they were going to do. As soon as we satisfied the Indians and EPA, they would cancel the rest of the contract. Which they ended up doing. And then they ended up owing me the $46,000. And I had to go to war to even get that. But anyway. I had heard enough about how Bechtel does business. And they figure they’re the only ones in town to make nay money, and us little dumb guys, we’re supposed to work for nothing. Anyway. Franklin: That’s great. So is there anything else you guys would like to say about either survey, or the sled? Cobb: Not me, really. Other than that I had an awful lot of fun doing it. Franklin: It sounds like a lot of fun. Cobb: It was for me. Swan: The only thing I can think of is, that spawning survey we did, I thought we accomplished something highly unique, and so did a lot of other people. The thing that kind of irked me was, my higher-ups just, like, oh, shit, you guys are just having fun, you know, no big deal. But we got more accolades out of other agencies that were amazed by what and how we did it. I even gave a presentation at Scripps and a couple of different research divers’ conferences, and they were blown away by what we had accomplished. We had Dr. Don Chapman that did a whole bunch of work on the Vernita Bar early, salmon spawning stuff. He came and— Cobb: [LAUGHTER] Swan: I think he was a little skeptical about what we were doing. And so he was up in years then, but he was still diving. So we said, well, you want to go for a ride on the sled? Yeah, I would. So, he went with Frank. I’ll let Frank tell you about that. Cobb: Oh, anyway, we were about the highest flow—our flow meters topped out at ten meters per second, and I don’t know what the flow was there, but the sled was just kind of bouncing around. It was kind of like a gusting wind. So he went across with me, and that was one of the wider places. So we got back over and dropped back, and I said, well, Dr. Chapman, you want to take another ride with me? Anyway, I won’t say the words he said. He said, no! Let me off of this thing! And then I did some diving for him later. That’s another subject. He hired me to do some more diving for him, after meeting him in that particular environment, anyway. Swan: Anyway, a nutshell, to finish up that thing, is, I had some people approach me, and they said, how come we haven’t heard more about this? And I said, I don’t know. My higher-ups didn’t seem to be too impressed with it, you know? Well, a guy in Great Britain got ahold of me and wanted me to come over there and give a presentation on it. He was instrumental in a journal over there called Regulated Rivers. So, we published the paper in it. It’s back in mid-, late-‘80s. It’s “Spawning surveys in a regulated river,” or something like that. I don’t remember the title; it’s been 20-something years. Franklin: Sure. Swan: Anyway, it’s in a journal called Regulated Rivers out of Great Britain, and it gives a real good nutshell of that whole spawning survey project. Cobb: But, yeah—oh, go ahead. Swan: To me, that was kind of, okay, somebody finally paid attention and we got some recognition out of it. Which is what I kind of appreciate you guys doing this. Because, hell, we thought everybody’d just forgot about everything we did, you know? At least you guys are going to try to get recorded so that down the line when we’re long gone, somebody’ll say, jeez, those crazy guys did that! Cobb: The only thing, last thing I got to say is, I’m still very happy that they did not go up to the free-flowing part with dredges for barges and it’s still basically the way we left it. Swan: Yeah. Franklin: Yeah, that is definitely a major accomplishment. Cobb: I’m glad I was instrumental in them not doing that. Swan: I will never forget sitting there in that meeting. We were just there, not to present anything, but just to see what went on. And the guy who was the project leader with the Corps of Engineers who had contracted us to do the diving project—There was a lady on the power planning council there—and I don’t even remember his name, it’s been so long ago. But she listened to the presentation and everything. And then they had a break, and they got together and discussed it and they came back. And she pretty much said, Mister whatever-his-name-was, how is the best way to expedite your demise with this program, or something, in so many words. In other words, she said—no more. We kind of went, phew. And he just went livid. And I don’t know what happened to that guy. Last I heard, he had disappeared. He couldn’t deal with it. But I thought, well, we did our part, and we showed you, you know? And that’s what you asked us for, so. Franklin: Yeah, no, that’s great. I mean, without that, if barges and dredges were up, it wouldn’t be the Hanford Reach anymore, and it might not be a national monument. That’s really one of the great national—ecological treasures of this whole area. Swan: So I guess without really making a big deal out of it, Frank and I can feel like we were instrumental in helping preserve the Hanford Reach. Franklin: Yeah. Cobb: I’m just glad I didn’t get arrested for having too much fun. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Right! Well, I told you guys, we do—part of the tours that the national park offers is this pre-Manhattan Project tour where we go to these former sites: Bruggemann warehouse, and the Allard pump house at Coyote Rapids, and the White Bluffs ferry landing. Now they’re very peaceful and you can get a sense of the history there, and if there were barges coming up through there— Swan: Yup. Cobb: Oh, yeah. Franklin: I mean, it would totally change the entire character of the tour. It would just be jarring. Swan: And they would have to dredge those channels and then repeatedly keep them cleared so that would have a hell of an effect all the way up through there. It would also probably affect the flows that would come out of the dams upstream in order to keep enough water for the barges to keep going. So it would’ve affected it tremendously if they’d ever approved it. Franklin: Well, great. Well, Frank, and George, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about these surveys and your guys’ work, having fun in the river, diving around. I’m very—I’m jealous of— Cobb: I’ve run that whole river clear, all the way. I know that river. I know where to stay out of trouble. And everybody used to tell us, you can’t run that river with a prop boat; you’ve got to have a jet boat. Swan: Oh, yeah, that’s something we ought to make a point of. We did that whole thing with an inboard-outboard, and we only dinged one prop, and it was just a goof, you know, loading the boat or something. We did that whole thing and never destroyed one propeller. And they kept telling us, you’ve got to do that with a jet boat. Well, the inboard-outboard seemed to work for our purposes better, so. Franklin: What would be the reason for the jet boat versus the— Swan: Oh, we wouldn’t have a propeller down there to catch the bottom, you know, and you could run in shallow areas. Now, later I did get a jet boat when we were doing our—more of the water withdrawal stuff and that worked out pretty good. But the other problems you run through those milfoil areas and if you don’t zip right through, you’ll suck it full and it’ll pug the intake and you’ve got to go underneath and rake all that crap out. Cobb: And then on top of that, one of the boats—I kept telling them to stay out of those shallow places. So they suck rocks up the propeller. I kept telling them, don’t do that! Twice they did it. Swan: Yeah— Cobb: And I’ve run that whole thing up, prop boat— Swan: Suck the gravel up there, it’ll just chew the propeller up. Cobb: Well, it’ll jam the propeller up, and then if you don’t have an outboard to get you back home— Swan: Yeah, you’d better have an outboard on the set like a trawling motor for fishing. Cobb: I do not want a jet boat. They take at least two or three times as much fuel, and I can go any place I want to go with a prop boat. You just got to know how to read the river. If you don’t know how to read the river, a jet boat will get you in trouble. Franklin: Yeah. Cobb: Anyway, shut up, Frank. Franklin: Nope! No, you’re good. Well, thanks a lot, guys. I think we’ll now switch to getting some shots of the long-awaited sled. [VIDEO CUTS] Cobb: [INAUDIBLE]--and they tried to use it and it scared them to death. And they called me up, wanting me to train them— [VIDEO CUTS] Franklin: We’ll get a couple more pictures while it’s all nice and up on these sawhorses. So you still do horse shoeing? Cobb: Oh, yeah. Franklin: Yeah. Until you’re 80, right? Cobb: No, not me. [INAUDIBLE] Franklin: Oh, okay. Cobb: I’m a young guy. Franklin: I mean until you’re 80. Cobb: My brother—[INAUDIBLE] [VIDEO CUTS] Franklin: Yeah, I understand that. I agree with that. Cobb: [INAUDIBLE] [VIDEO CUTS] Cobb: [INAUDIBLE] people to take care of them. Franklin: Makes sense. Cobb: We’d do the barrel roll one direction, and then the other way of course, and then I’d do upside-down. And the flow, if it was high enough flow, you didn’t even have a tendency to fall out. Franklin: So the flow was kind of keeping you— Cobb: Oh, yeah. Franklin: Wow. Cobb: And then you had— [VIDEO CUTS] Tom Hungate: How it connected, you had a cable, I presume, to the boat? You said that was 150 feet or so? Cobb: [INAUBDILBE] Attached through here, and it was attached to the boat. And the flow, the faster the flow was, that’s what gave you the maneuverability. Franklin: And so then it’s the driver, pilot, on the left here, right? And then the surveyor, researcher, here on the right. Cobb: Correct. [INAUDIBLE] primitive. You want to fly it sideways, you went along like this. If you wanted to do barrel rolls. Side down, and then come back up, like this. Anyway, it’s very maneuverable, if you have enough flow. If the flow is too slow it’s real sluggish. Franklin: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But I guess that’s where it’s really kind of made for the Hanford Reach, right? Cobb: Right. Franklin: Because the flow there is fast enough for you to have real maneuverability. Cobb: Right. Franklin: Right? Cobb: I always wanted to fly an airplane. [VIDEO CUTS] Cobb: [INAUDIBLE]—as far as the wings. [INAUDIBLE] experimentation. Franklin: To kind of stabilize the back of it? Cobb: Yeah. Franklin: Yeah. Wow. [VIDEO CUTS] Cobb: Isn’t it nice and [INAUDIBLE[? Franklin: Yeah, it’s really not that—I mean it’s easy enough for two people can— Cobb: Well, when we were deploying it on and off, I had a set of runners, and this wasn’t on it. That was back in the front. And that was sitting down low on the water, and the flow slid up good, and that winch would float it up onto the boat. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:51:48 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Frank Cobb and George Swan Subject The topic of the resource Columbia River Salmon Hanford Site (Wash.) Description An account of the resource Frank Cobb constructed the "Redd Sled" to survey the salmon redd's of the Columbia River and to perform underwater water sampling near Hanford Reactors. George Swan worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and oversaw the salmon monitoring program where the Redd Sled was first created. 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 8/28/2018 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. 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This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F4a35f372f4b52570ee849e45d2d5926a.JPG cffa87237eafbc5227c6dc8eb9c913cc https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd244e6972247b281ea3b84e454b5d96e.mp4 67e666aad21ba00e26e7fb583d01d4b9 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 David Criswell Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an interview—an oral history interview with Dave Criswell on July 20, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Dave Criswell about his experiences growing up in the Tri-Cities and working at the Hanford Site. So, Dave, the best place to start, I think, is the beginning. Where—why don’t you tell me when and where you were born. David Criswell: Born in Portland, Oregon. [SIGH] I guess there’s nothing wrong with 1937. We moved to the Tri-Cities the first time, Dad and I drove up here after midnight, January 1st, 1948. We only lived in Pasco for all of ’48 and part of ’49, and then we moved up to Hungry Horse, Montana. We returned here in spring/summer of 1953. I entered Pasco High School as a junior. The school was brand new that year. They’d just opened the doors for us. So I graduated in 1955. I don’t recall how I ended up being selected as part of a program to become an engineering assistant, was the program, in 1955. They were conducting night classes that we had to take. At the same time, during the day, we would work in the labs out at Hanford in different labs. I started off, because I wasn’t 18 yet—my birthday didn’t come until October; I got hired in September. So 17-year-olds couldn’t work on the Hanford Project. So, Richland, being a government town, and DOE ran everything, including the city library, there was myself and a couple, three other 17-year-olds went to work in the library until we were old enough. And then we were assigned to labs out at Hanford. I was assigned to a chemistry lab in 325 Building. We were separating radioisotopes, from I know not where, to see how efficient the process was that they were using for separation out there. I can’t even remember the names of some of the materials that we were separating. The one that I can remember is ruthenium, I think it was. But day in, day out, taking samples and running them, cooking them down, putting them on filter papers, and then that would go to a lab for reading. Some point in time within first year or so I worked, I was transferred out to 222-S, another chemistry lab, doing the same thing. I suspect that maybe whatever I was running the analysis on was a little fresher than the stuff we had in 325 Building. It must’ve come from right there in the 200 Area. But the same thing. The only thing that—real memory that I had was when I graduated from high school, I wasn’t—I didn’t have—I wasn’t as tall as I am now. I graduated at 5’7.5”. Franklin: Wow. Criswell: And weighed 135 pounds. Went to work out there in September of that same year, ’55, and I was 6’0” and weighed 135. Tired. Man, I was tired. I don’t even know if I ate when I got home, I was so tired. Going to bed was the most interesting thing I had. But at some point in time, in the period of time that I was working at 222-S, apparently had another growth spurt. Because every day you could drive out to the gate of 2-West and then you go through the badge house. And you would then climb on a bus that would take you to whatever events inside of 200 West you were going to. We were going to S, so that’s where we went. And one day, I got off the bus and something knocked me to my knees, and I fell out of the bus. I brought a box with me, and in that is a report that said that they thought maybe I was inattentive, that I had hit my head on the bus, and fallen on the ground. Well, it didn’t dawn on me until years later, maybe even when I read that doggone memo, that the reason I hit my head is I’d had a growth spurt, and all of the sudden I was too tall to go through that bus door without hitting my head. Co-worker said I didn’t throw a shadow on a sunny day, I was so skinny. And ended up being about 6’4” at some point in time early on. Uh— Franklin: Oh, sorry. Criswell: I could not get a hang of chemistry. The night school was difficult for me. I hired a tutor to try and help me; I still couldn’t get the hang of it. They determined I probably wasn’t going to work out in a chemistry lab. And they transferred me into tech informations in 300 Area. If you’re not familiar with that old building, that was the one just inside the south gate of the 300 Area on the west side of the road. That had the plant’s library; across the hall, it had the security files. Documents were stored over there. I didn’t have anything to do with that. Basically, I was putting books on a shelf. I also had the job of traveling all over Hanford. When somebody would have a safety meeting, they would occasionally call us and ask us to bring a film that they had heard about, or asked if we had a film that they hadn’t seen. So, I traveled all over. Franklin: So kind of like a AV, audio-visual, tech? Criswell: Yeah, that’s exactly what it was. Only, I was using 16-milimeter projector. Old-fashioned stuff. I don’t even know if you could find one of them today. Franklin: Oh, we actually—our declassified—not declassifying, but getting ready for public release, some of the materials in the Hanford Collection, and we had to purchase a 16-milimeter projector to view some of the old movies. Which could possibly be some of the old movies that you showed. There’s some about safety, and there’s some of the promotional ones produced for Hanford. Criswell: We had some Walt Disney flicks. We had one that—Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. I think that was The Ventriloquist. Franklin: So, wait, so, these weren’t—these were like movies and shows? Criswell: Some of them were. They were movies. They dealt with safety things. Franklin: Oh, okay. Criswell: They dealt with security, with reinforcing the security, you know, you can’t do this, you can’t do that. I learned early on in the early days if the film broke, I had to take it downtown to a little Quonset hut behind the old Federal Building and they had plant photographers down there. There was a photographer down there that knew how to splice the films. Anyhow, they determined if I was going to keep coming down there, that I needed to have the equipment to repair those things and keep the stuff going and they wouldn’t have me running downtown all the time. So I ended up learning how to do that and take care of my own films. I did that for a couple, about two-and-a-half years. And someplace about 1958 I guess, I ended up being offered a job. I had a coworker that he was married, he had kids, and both of us were offered the job. I wasn’t—I didn’t have the expenses he had. And I told our manager—we were both in there at the same time—told our manager that he had to take a job, and I could wait for the next one that came along. And he said, no, you don’t understand; there’s two jobs. The metallography lab needs a tech in 326 Building and they also need a tech down in 306 Building. So both of us got a job about the same time, transferred out. The other tech’s name was somebody by the name of Ray Beauchamp. And he ended up, a lot of his photography work in metallography ended up being in national competition. And he won a number of awards. He also had the privilege of polishing moon rocks that came back from one of the moon trips. I think that’s probably on display out at one of the Battelle buildings out there, even today, I would guess it’s still there. But he had a lot of notoriety. And I worked inside the fence. I was working on materials that were of nuclear nature before they went into the reactor. And then you end up with things being even more irradiated; you had higher dose rates on the stuff that came out. The work that I did in the lab in 306 Building was to see what the material looked like before it went in the reactor. It was a base study, basically. And then when they came out of the reactor, they took it to another facility in the 300 Area called 327 Building, Radio Met—radio metallography. And they cut up the slugs that they got out of the reactor and they looked at the integrity of the cladding on the different types of slugs they were getting out of there. They’d section them, pass the sections into the next cell. They’d sand on them, pass them into the next cell. They’d sand them down even more, ultimately getting a mirror finish polish on them, then they could put them onto the cell that the metallographs, old photograph metallographs. The technicians that worked over there, I was amazed at what they were able to do with everything that was being handled by manipulators inside of two feet of them, or four feet. I don’t know how thick those walls were, but it was amazing what they could do. I was doing the same thing, hands-on. It took me a while to learn how to put a polish on there that I could photograph without having scratches. [LAUGHTER] That was the secret. You also couldn’t round it off; you had to have it essentially flat. The higher the magnification goes, the flatter it has to be; otherwise, you don’t get very much in focus. So I worked there until, let’s see, I guess that would’ve been August of 1961. I took a vacation and I took a honeymoon at the same point in time, and when I came back, I had a new job. That job just kind of morphed into the job I retired from. It was a materials testing facility down in the 314 Building. Again, in the material that we were using there, it was all cold, new materials that they were going to be using in reactors. Their concern was, how far could a crack grow before it became critical and it went full-length? If this happened, then, essentially the reactor was done, you know. So they wanted to know how big a crack could it grow before—and the water would then be coming out, how much water would they lose before they could determine that they had to shut it down, pull that part out, replace it? They wanted to know what kind of a warning sign they were going to get. Franklin: And this was for the fuel slug that would go in? Criswell: No, because you’re not running water through the fuel slug, per se. It’s not going to leak. You’re talking about process tubes. Franklin: Oh, okay. Criswell: Probably the first—I don’t know if we did anything on the K Reactor; I think that was in another facility. I didn’t have anything to do with that. I know there was another facility that was testing graphite. But K Reactor and N Reactor, those two had process tubes that they put the slugs into. They were both water-cooled. Franklin: Okay. Criswell: So they wanted to know if they were going to be able to determine when things were getting anywhere near the critical point, and they could shut it down, pull the process tube, and then start it up again. We also developed inspection probes for the reactor in 300 Area, what they referred to as PRTR. Let’s see, Plutonium Recycling Test Reactor. And here, again, they wanted to know from our inspections, what we could determine as far as wear and tear on the process tubes. So, we were actually sitting right on the faceplate of the reactor, with the access port open, running our inspection probes down. One had a camera that took 16-millimeter images of what we determined was down there. And the other one was an inspection probe that sensed the space between the process tube and another tube. And I didn’t really understand all of the process in PRTR. Anyhow, at that point in time, my wife and I had at least one child, and I don’t remember exactly what the date was, but I came to work on a Monday morning and was told to report to PRTR. I was amongst the first that they suited up. Over the weekend, a test that had been in the reactor failed. And in turn, that test caused damage to the two tubes that the test was inside of. Damaged those, and water was released and it went right down into the very lowest level of that reactor, the bottom shield. And they dressed us up, put all kinds of monitoring equipment on us. Anyhow, went through what looked almost a porthole in a sub, and it was only probably about four feet high, to go through. Gave us a mop and a bucket and told us, one at a time, we were in there mopping up as much as we could in 20 seconds, and we had to be out of there. I have no idea to date what my dose was on that. Anyhow, I spent two more days over there, but never went back down there. They determined we had too much dose and we were sent back to our labs. That was the end of PRTR. They never did bring that thing back up for operation again, as far as I know. Franklin: How long did it operate, do you know? Criswell: I got married in August of ’61. And got a letter from President Kennedy in October of ’61. Had to report to Fort Lewis the day after Thanksgiving in ’61. I got out in August 1st of ’62. Reported back to Hanford, and when I got back there, we were building the inspection probes to inspect. So, I don’t know if PRTR was operating at that point in time. It might’ve been close to that point in time. And anyhow we finished it up, and we probably spent maybe three or four outages where they’d—every time they’d have an outage where they’d pull fuels out or do something or whatever, then they’d give us two or three days to go in and inspect. It was twelve on, twelve off for us, for the techs. And they had the top shield had two rings that they could rotate. By rotation of the two rings, they could get us to the center and to the outer of all the process tubes. The inner ring would actually rotate and go all the way to the outside and all the way to the inside. The outer ring would rotate around, so they could—they’d set it up for us and they’d have the thing open for us when we got there, and we’d just start running stuff. Anyhow. Franklin: What did you go to Fort Lewis to do? Criswell: In 1961, Jack Kennedy was having problems with Russia and the Cubans. We were also involved in the Vietnam War at that point in time. My service dates include the Vietnam process, but I had nothing to do with that. We didn’t really know what the heck was going on. There was more secret over there that, what was going on, that we just didn’t understand. One of the strange things was that I got assigned to an amphibious truck outfit out of California. Know what the DUKW is, it’s a floating deuce-and-a-half truck. You can sink it with an M-1. Just fire at the waterline, it’s going to sink. [LAUGHTER] When I got over there, the day after Thanksgiving, there was nobody there to receive us; we spent Friday, Saturday, Sunday sitting around in a bunkhouse, essentially, waiting for somebody to show up. Finally, Monday, we started getting processed. But the strange thing was, after things got up and operational—I was the only one that had ever worked at Hanford. They gave me the job of explaining how to avoid radiation. I found it really strange. Here I am, a Spec/2, an E4, and I’m giving a lecture on how to avoid radiation. Basically, if you’d double your distance from your source, you divide the radiation exposure by four. That was a real handy thing, if you just get yourself as far away as you can in the shortest period of time. That was the message we had to give everybody. Our company was picking up duffel bags and equipment from other companies that had been brought in. We were loading them onto a MATS aircraft over at McChord Air Force Base, loading a great big aircraft with all kinds of stuff. Anyhow, we never saw the troops get on them when we were loading their material. Strange thing was, in July of ’62, we were told we’d be going home August 1st. And no explanation. Nothing. We still didn’t know why we were there, outside of we were loading troops onto airplanes to go to Berlin. Anyhow, much later, I had a friend who was a mess sergeant, and at that point in time, he worked—when he wasn’t in the military, he worked as a tech for Bell Telephone. He quit that job and he went to a company, Collins Electronics, down in Texas. Next thing I know, he’s in Vietnam installing new avionics in military aircraft. And I found out later, he was all over the world installing new communication electronics. Ultimately, he’s got plaques on his walls referring to him as Colonel—I’ll stop the last name—Colonel. Anyhow, he told me, good grief, that had to have been in ’71, ’72, nine, ten years later. He said, do you know what you were over there for? I said, no, not really. Basically what it was is the Russians had been in the habit of rotating a division into East Berlin, or East Germany, and the old one would go home. In ’61, they rotated a second—no, good grief, mind block—rotated another group in there and didn’t send one home. So now they got two. At the same time, the Russians are moving missiles into Cuba. Jack Kennedy, if he was still alive, you wouldn’t want to play poker against the man. What I found out, and I don’t know what the date was, but I have in the past ten years, I have seen confirmation of what I was told about three different times, different people. Some of them were military talking to our news people. But Jack Kennedy, I think it’s a little jet, I think it’s a B-47, a little—actually two pod jets hanging from the wing, small jet engines hanging from the wing. They got one sitting in the tarmac in front of Boeing Museum of Flight in Seattle. We had well over a thousand of those things. The term I was told was thousands. You can see pictures of those things lined up in the desert down in Arizona. They’re waiting to become beer cans. Jack Kennedy ordered all those things loaded up and he sent them all to Russia. I may be in trouble for this, but it’s a story that not very many people have heard. But it’s true. It happened. He sent them all up. Plus, they knew that all of our subs, basically, they didn’t know exactly where they were, but they knew we had them, they knew the numbers. And they knew that our missiles were capable of making the trip. They could actually see all of the jets headed there. They knew they could take out a lot of them, but they knew they couldn’t take all of them out. They knew they were going to get hit, and they were going to get hit hard. The Russian leadership blinked. They got on the phone and they called Kennedy and they told him, you turn those planes around. Turn them around now, and we’ll pull out of Cuba. We’ll take the division out of Germany. Things will go back to the way they were. And they did. And August 1st, we went home. But never a word as to why we were there; never a word as to what the heck was happening when they released those planes. I didn’t know why I was asked to tell people how to avoid radiation. Didn’t have a clue. So, came home, went back to work, and same organization, group, I was with when I left. That was still GE. I was still with GE. Franklin: So were you—when you got pulled to Lewis, were you in the Guard? Criswell: No, I was active Army. Franklin: Oh, you were active Army. Criswell: Yeah. Franklin: Okay. But the whole time you were active Army you were stationed at— Criswell: I could’ve been there until August 1st or if the Russians didn’t call Kennedy, I probably wasn’t coming home. Franklin: Right. Had you—so were you in the Army before you got called up to— Criswell: Yeah, I’d spent six years in National Guard. Franklin: Okay, all right. Criswell: Pasco National Guard. Franklin: Okay. Criswell: When my six years were up, which was probably about April of ’61—I think someone was unhappy with me leaving, and they put my name in there. Strange thing is, at the point that I got released from the Pasco National Guard, they were an amphibious truck outfit. So my MOS was a key personnel as a filler for an amphibious truck company from California. It made sense why I ended up there. I mean, quotation marks around my name. It had to stand out, you know? I don’t know how many of us there were nationally. I don’t think there were that many of us. I think there was truck drivers that were pulled in to help fill, mechanics to help in the shop, what-have-you. I was one of the few people that came in, I think, that knew anything about an amphibious truck. You know, how you have to take care of it and what-have-you. It was interesting time, but I’m glad, maybe, they didn’t tell us what the heck was going on, because then, you know, I think it would’ve put a whole new light on why we were there, and something for us to really worry about, I think. They basically kept us like a bunch of mushrooms. [LAUGHTER] So definitely kept us in the dark. But anyhow, once back here, went back to work for the same company, the same actual group. They had developed or were in the process of putting together the probes to inspect the reactors. That just morphed into all kinds of different things over the years. One of the engineers that came to work, he was new, he was hired from Boeing, he was interested in fatigue cycling. Franklin: What is that? Criswell: Cycling is, there’s thermal cycling—the reactor heats up, it cools off when they shut it down for a period, heats up, cools down, and you’re talking about a lot of heat. You’ve got mechanical cycling where you have load changes. Everything that’s built probably has a fatigue starter in it someplace. Either something in the manufacturing, in a casting, in the machining. Things happen when you’re making parts. They wanted here, again, to see how long—we actually put together a system where we were fatiguing process tubes that had a little slot machine partway through it. Then we had to put endcaps on it. Then we had to pressure cycle each thing. Something like the reactor. You got water pressure going through there, and then they shut it down. We were doing this cold. And ultimately, the crack would grow. And the first problem we ran into is the crack was growing, but then it was leaking. The crack didn’t go all the way through, initially, but once it got growing, it went all the way through. So we were having oil squirting out every which way, on this end was oil. And we could pressure to, I think, 2,000 psi is what this machine could do. We weren’t getting that high. So we had to come up with a way of keeping it from—keeping the oil. So we figured out a way to patch the inside of it with a thin piece of material, yet it was flexible enough that it wouldn’t hurt the integrity of the load cycling. Ultimately, we figured out how to make this thing grow until it blew. And then, I mean, you had gallons of oil all over. After the first one, where it was just squirting like that, then we have to have it turned toward the measuring device which is optical. When it blew, I’m on one side of what we’re doing, and the engineers are on the other side. Anyhow, they didn’t know how to turn the thing off. It had a second part to the system that would replenish the oil that it was losing to expansion. It was an air-operated pump that would just put more fluid in there. Anyhow, they couldn’t turn it off, and I had to duck underneath the stream to get around. Then I had to mop up all the oil. So the next thing was to come up with a hood that we could do the test in that had a glass that we could look through, but when it blew, the oil would just drain back into a bottle. Instead of—oh, I had a mess in that basement. I had to clean it up. That was one of the tech’s jobs. Well, ultimately, ended up the company that made that first piece of equipment, electronics, the machine that would cycle the oil pressure, was an MTS corporation out of Minneapolis. And we ended up with a lab in the basement at 326 Building, we had ten different machines that went—one machine, I built. It was a 1,000-pound machine. And we had machines, the rest of them, MTS built, and they went up to a half-million pounds. Some were 100,000, 50,000, 20,000, 10,000-pound machines. The whole idea of all these machines was to take a chunk of metal that they were planning on using in the reactor or find out which one they could use in building the reactor. They would fatigue it, and they’d fatigue it different speeds, they’d fatigue at different temperatures, and different environments. Replicating what environment the part might see if it was being used in a reactor. So ultimately, we ended up having to send a whole bunch of polished specimens just like the ones we were testing in 326 Lab to the reactor. I had to polish all of these things, and we’d put them in a stack, and we had to separate them so we could keep the fluid flowing between them to keep them cool, and we sent them over to a reactor. They would irradiate these for a period of time until they got a certain exposure rate, then they’d send them back. We’d take the top off, we’d extract certain specimens out of there, and then we’d put new ones back in, and then we’d send—it was, you know, just constantly. But then we had a collection of irradiated materials so that we could compare the radiation damage to the same materials as we were testing in the labs. This allowed them to get a good idea of what they could expect for the mechanical integrity of the material once it was irradiated by the reactor. Franklin: And what kind of material was this again? So this wasn’t fuel, this was— Criswell: No, this was structural material. Franklin: Okay, so, like a process tube? Criswell: Maybe a hanger that held up pipes, or maybe it’s the support for the reactor vessel. I don’t know what parts they were looking at; I have no clue. I just know that we went through maybe a couple dozen different types of materials. There’s 314 stainless; I remember that. 316 stainless. Maybe there was, there’s Hastelloys and Inconels. They refer to them as superalloys. These are all high temperature materials that are designed to operate at high temperatures. Franklin: Was there anything—did you come across anything surprising in the tests? Anything that was unexpected? Criswell: I just ran the tests. Franklin: Right. Criswell: I’m the one that—in doing the fatigue cycling, you’d cycle it, to begin with, a large number of cycles, maybe 20,000 cycles. It might run a week, and then I’d open up the—turn things off, open up the furnace door, put a microscope in there and measure how far the crack had grown. Franklin: Okay. Criswell: And the idea was to get about a twenty-thousandth—twenty-thousandths—0.020 of growth. As it would begin to grow longer and longer, then the fatigue cycle would become shorter and shorter. So finally, I’m down to where I’m measuring these things a couple, three times a day. And every time I’d open up, maybe this doggone thing is running at 1200 degrees F. And I open it up; I’ve got to get in there and measure that thing. And my eyes, I mean, I don’t know what—numerous times a day, I’m opening this thing up, and I’m putting a microscope in the furnace door, and I’m measuring how long that crack is, get the furnace door closed, get it back up to temperature and start the cycling again. And I did this—oh, good grief—probably from 1965, and I was still doing fatigue cycling to the day I retired in 1999. Franklin: Wow. Criswell: Some of it, with GE and Battelle, in the early days, and Westinghouse—Westinghouse, we basically fixated on the structural materials. Battelle, when I worked two times with them, they had a different charter that they worked under. The government allowed them to test materials for small companies that had questions about what they were doing. That was probably more interesting than when I was working for Westinghouse, because Westinghouse, day in, day out, everything was the same. The only thing different was when they finally got the materials back from the reactors and they sent me over to 324 Building and we set things up in there to start running tests on their irradiated material. There was problems in that process. You’re looking through four feet of leaded glass at a test frame that’s probably two, three feet from the glass. I guess the only thing that made things work is, with my height I’m able to get up—at the top, the lead glass is tilted. It’s not vertical; it’s tilted looking through the cell wall. I’m having to look down through there to get as vertical a sight on the crack that’s growing as I can. Otherwise, every plane of glass in that window—that’s not a single pane; it’s multi-paned—would give me a little bit of—it would-- Franklin: It would bend the image, right? Criswell: It would distort the image. Franklin: Because of refraction. Criswell: Yeah, refraction or—I wasn’t getting a clear image. And that was, oh man, just a real learning process. The whole idea of the polishing before they went into the reactor and became irradiated—I put a mirror finish on them. The last polishing that I did had to be vertical to the crack’s growth across it. The idea being that when you opened the thing up, and you shined a light down from the top, the image that you’re looking at is black. You don’t see the light. But if there’s a crack growing, then the crack would show up as a white line. You can measure from the initiating point, there’s a machined notch in the specimen, so you measure from here to the crack tip. We did this for a couple, three years, over a 324 Building. For whatever reason, I guess money ran out, for that program. Battelle is a little more interesting. I was able to run tests on aircraft parts, ship—One of the problems, going clear back—not that I had anything to do with Liberty ships, but if you remember clear back in the early ‘40s, they were sending ships out that they were making as rapidly as they could for the Second World War. They’d run into the North Sea, and all of the sudden, the ship is floating—what’s left of it is floating in two halves until they sank. They rapidly developed a test called a nil-ductility drop-weight. They determined that the problem was in the structural material of the ship and the weld material that they were using to weld the plates together with. Strangely enough, my dad worked during the Second World War part-time—well, actually he had two jobs. One with Bonneville Power and one eh worked for a period of time for a shipyard in downtown Portland, and he was of small enough stature, they were sending him in between a double hull of a ship to weld. I don’t know if he was working on Liberty ships or what. But anyhow, the nil-ductility test, they would weld with a very brittle weld material. About a two-inch bead on top of a plate and then we’d cut a notch in that. And then you could, at different temperature, drop a given weight a given distance, so that you have how many foot-pounds you hit it with. If it didn’t break, that was fine. So you make things get colder until it breaks all—I think just the one side; that was a break. Some of them would break part-way across; that wasn’t a break. If the break arrested itself, fine. But if it would go all the way across, then that was a failure. So you’d end up going back to where you keep dividing things in half on the temperature until you found out where it would break and where it wouldn’t break. And then the temperature it wouldn’t break was nil-ductility. But I did run tests on ice breaker, I think it was the Polar Star, I think is the one, we said, a big chunk of this Polar Star, my gosh, that thing’s thick. The idea is that they would ride up on the—they didn’t cut and break it; they would ride up on it, and the weight of the ship would bust the ice. They didn’t know the history of what material was in there, but they wanted to make sure that they didn’t have any material from the Liberty ship era in it. I mean, the Polar Star was old enough, I guess, they had to worry about it. I’ve done testing on aircraft parts. Again, I mentioned earlier that you can impart a crack starter into a finished part. If it’s a threaded part, you can get this if, say, the coolant material is interrupted for just a second. Well, then, you’re going to get a hot spot. You can turn and make sure you can get the stuff going again, and you can start it again, but chances are, it isn’t going to break immediately, but over 1,000 cycles, this crack is going to grow more and more and more through this thing, and then it’s going to break duct-ally over here on this part. And that’s the part that broke last. This part over here, I mean, if you look at it under high enough magnification, it looks like a bunch of waves have washed up on the shore, each one making another line on the shoreline. You can actually go backwards through those waves to where is the smallest part, and you can find that there was a hot spot there, or there’s a piece of carbon there that was embedded in the material at some point during its manufacture. In the early days when I was in metallography, we had to use metallograph. Probably the highest you could go without having image problems was, say, 200, 250x. It would go to 500x; you could probably go to 1,000x, but you’re only going to see just a very, very small part of what you’re looking at. You’re not going to see—because getting a flat surface that doesn’t have any curvature at all. So the era of the electron microscope came in and that allowed us to not only not have to polish it; you could look at a fractured surface, I mean, something that has been pulled apart, and you can actually see down into the fractured surface. That allowed us to take a look at broken pieces, you can look at those benchmarks, you can look, and if there’s a piece of material— In one case, a copper part was actually failing and it was catastrophic when it failed. Copper, pure copper, is something—you might as well be looking at a blank wall: there’s nothing there to see. I mean, you can polish it and there’s nothing there to see. It’s strange stuff. Anyhow, I’m down to the tip where the crack is at. We had to break it apart. This stuff, in order to form it, they had formed it using a thermal weld, or explosive weld process, where you put two plates going different directions, and then you hit it with an explosive charge. This thing, they kept breaking them. What we found was, I noticed something that looked completely different. In this whole thing, there was one piece that looked different. Electron microscope, again, you can zero in on one item, hit the button, and basically, it’ll melt a little piece of that, and it will tell you what you’ve just melted. It will tell you that, okay, this is carbon, or this is iron, or this is, in this case, it was phosphate. You know, phosphate’s part of the explosive. There’s a material, a copper material, it’s called phosphated copper. They can use that as a spring material in making copper parts where they want flexibility, but they also want to keep contact. I don’t know if it’s what they use in, say, a flashlight where they make contact with the back of the battery. Excuse me. But anyhow, it’s something like that. But the problem with phosphated copper is that it’s also extremely brittle. I knew that from some exposure I’d had years before. When I found that, I went to the engineer, I says, this is the problem. And the end result was they were able to tell the customer, okay, you’ve got to find another way of fusing these together that doesn’t use phosphate. I told you that parts that are machined or, the one I’m thinking of is they were basically putting a serial number on every part, and then these were being used in some sort of a structural event. For some reason, these things were breaking. What we found was that if they had a part that had a 1 laser-etched on it, or a 7 with a vertical line on it, or a 9 with a vertical line on it, an L, F, Es, anything with a vertical line on it, these things didn’t last any cyclings at all. They’d break. We noticed that, say, a Z, we could cycle a Z for almost forever. What would another letter be? Ss. They didn’t break. Franklin: X. Criswell: A zero, that’s a round zero, it didn’t break. So our suggestion was that they change their laser. If they’re going to keep using a laser, instead of having vertical lines, that a 7 would have an angular line on it. Nines, maybe a circle, like a 9. Stay away from vertical lines. It was a simple one, but, you know, it was an answer we were able to give them. We actually did testing for a little mom-and-pop company down in Irrigon, Oregon. He got the license to build a gimballed trailer hitch for fifth wheels. A standard trailer hitch didn’t allow for any torqueing. If you’re going over a curb someplace. If you’re backing into a parking place and you’ve got two different levels, you know. You tried to unhook, you’re going to have a problem. They actually came up with a gimballed trailer hitch; they had the license for it. But they wanted to know, how many cycles would this take? We were able to tell them, hey, you know, with the exception of maybe a farmer carrying 50,000 pounds of hay on a flatbed trailer, you’re probably not going to have a problem. If it’s just an RV trailer, I wouldn’t worry about it. I actually did testing for Ti Sports. They came to us. They had developed a new welding technique, and they wanted to know how good it was or wasn’t. So we compared a lot of their old welds to their new welds. And found the new weld was significantly better than their old weld. Franklin: And what product was this for? Criswell: Ti! Titanium. Titanium bikes. Franklin: Titanium bikes. Criswell: Expensive bikes. Apparently one of the problems that they’d had with the early ones was that the weld technique left something to be desired. So they developed a new one, and it was much better. Battelle was interesting, because there was always something new coming in the door. Franklin: It says here that after you retired, you took up a part time job at Battelle as a security escort? Criswell: That wasn’t with Battelle. Franklin: Oh, okay. Criswell: That was with a couple different companies. When I retired, essentially, November 1st, I took that day off. It was my first retirement day. I went back to work on November 2nd, half-time. I worked Monday through Wednesday noon. [LAUGHTER] They were setting up a new lab. Somebody remembered I’d worked in the metallography lab years earlier. The tech specialist that was setting up the metallography in that lab retired. They needed somebody else, and somebody’s memory remembered me. So I’m working part-time before I retired in there, and then I’d go back to my lab and do some testing, if it required. And they were bringing in somebody new. But the facility I was going to be working in, it was going to be a secured facility. It had special requirements, everything. By the time I was asked if I’d mind going full retirement, which was in April—It was financial situation, they had a lady who also had worked in metallography and she was still young, they wanted her to continue in that respect. But the lab was going to be secured. We were taking pictures. In my case, I was using a copper penny to check out how things were working. Totally new metallograph, it was all digital, I mean, it was much different than anything I was used to. So having to set this thing up so it would work with computers. Oh, man. The only thing significant there that we found, and I did find, what was going to be a security problem, made a suggestion, and they got excited. We had to go out and find something new that was going to meet security requirements, so I guess I did my part. [LAUGHTER] Knowing what they have to do in a secured facility—every time an engineer or a scientist writes a paper, before it can be released, it has to go for review. It has to be—it can be unclassified or it’s given a classification. If it has given a classification—number one, in ’99, when I retired, things were being transmitted by the internet—no way were they going to transmit anything via the internet, if it’s classified. At least, not when I got out of there. You know, if they had to transmit someplace else, it was hand-carried if it’s here on Hanford. If it’s got to go to somebody that’s working on the same program at another facility, you’re going to have a courier take it; it’s not going via US Mail or it’s not going via the internet. So this is the way things work. Before I retired, I did some escort work with foreign nationals. They could work in certain facilities, but they couldn’t go elsewhere. So after I retired, full retirement, April of ’99, my wife saw an ad in the paper, anybody that still has their clearance or can get a clearance may have a part-time job for you. And my wife saw to it that I signed up for that. [LAUGHTER] I was put back to work out at Dash-5, construction work out there. Construction craftspeople, temporary, they’re not going to go to the trouble of getting them all a full security clearance. Each security escort can escort up to five. If you’ve got two, though, you need to have two escorts, and then you can escort up to nine. Because if one person has to go to the head—you know. So we always had a few extras. But if somebody’s got to go to the tool room or if they got to go talk to somebody, they have to have—the escort has to escort them to that point, be with them full time, escort them back. You can’t leave nine people short, so. Just keeping, making sure they didn’t wander off making trouble someplace. We have to be aware of where the radiation areas are. We can’t go there. So did that for another eight years. Took another short time job with—kind of with Battelle again. That lasted for about five, six months. Then I’ve been retired since then. Franklin: Finally retired? Criswell: Yeah. To say the least, I kind of miss it. I guess one of the things that—they sent me to a couple of short courses on something called failure analysis. Again, why things break. It kind of fit in with what I was doing, only I was the reason things were breaking. I mean, I was getting paid good to break things. Who could argue with that? You could hire an eight-year-old to break things for you. [LAUGHTER] But that half-million-pound machine we had, an interesting one. They sent the actuator back to the factory and set it up so it would high rate. I forget what the rating would travel at, but it would break things up to 500,000 pounds in the blink of an eye. Or you could do it slow. It would go either way. You had control over how that machine worked. We were doing work for, I guess, Areva at that point in time. We were doing some testing for them. But, again, Battelle was interesting. I do miss it. I was kind of hoping I could be summer relief or something like that after I retired. But they brought in—matter of fact, the gentleman I recommended for the job ended up getting it. I hope he isn’t too mad at me. I think that was one of the—it bothered me. He was a long-time Westinghouse employee. When I retired in ’99, I think he might still have been working for Westinghouse. Or—but anyhow. He had either four or five weeks of vacation. And he was a tech specialist. I guess they hired him as a tech specialist. So he could keep his vacation. Shortly after he was hired in, Battelle determined they needed to tighten up on finances or some darn thing, and they saw fit to reduce him back to a technician, and he lost some of his vacation, I understood. That didn’t go well. He wasn’t happy about that. He’s a good man. I recommended him, because he’d worked with MTS equipment. He knew it. And I knew him to be a self-starter. You weren’t going to have to hold his hand and have somebody there with him full-time; he was going to work. One of the people that put a name in for the job, I didn’t know him, never heard of him. And the other one was a tech specialist, but he hadn’t worked with that kind of equipment, either. And I didn’t know whether he was a self-starter or not. So Mike got the job, and I guess Mike is still there. Good grief. 17 years later? Franklin: Yeah. I have a couple questions I’d like to return to some stuff you said earlier, if you don’t mind. Criswell: No. Franklin: When you mentioned you moved to Tri-Cities January 1st, 1948 at midnight—why does that stick out to you so strongly in your mind? How do you--? Criswell: Well, the family had a get-together. They were in Portland to celebrate New Year’s Eve. After that, Dad and I climbed in the car and drove to Pasco. Franklin: Why? Criswell: Because he had a new job up here. Franklin: Oh, okay. And what did your dad do in Pasco? Criswell: He went to work for a company called Empire Electric. Empire Electric had a shop, a storefront, there on Lewis Street about three, maybe four, doors west of the corner building there on, let’s see, that’d be the northwest corner of 4th and Lewis. That corner building in 1948 and up through ’61 was a drugstore. Can’t think of the name of the drugstore, but it was a drugstore. Anyhow, Dad worked there for a year—better than a year, anyhow. He got the— You know, I don’t know what Dad did for them. I really don’t. Dad was kind of a public informations officer. When the opening came up, up at Hungry Horse, Montana, he took the job up there as public informations officer. We were there for, oh my gosh, we moved up there in February. I’d never seen so much snow in my life. And cold, my gosh, it was cold. But it wasn’t as cold as it got. I actually saw 40-below when I was still in grade school. I had to put on the skis and I actually skied down to the grade school. It was downhill from our house. I mean, when it got 40-below, it was clear. I mean, it was so clear, it was beautiful. Because what humidity was still in the air was coming out as little sparkles. It’s amazing. But I hated it. My grandmother on my mom’s side was into knitting, and she knit us kids, out of wool, probably some of the first facemasks. She found a pattern for these things. They had a mouth, they had a place for your nose, and two eyeholes. At 40-below, the tears from your eyes froze to the wool. You might want to turn this off. By the time I got to school—you can edit it. I’d have a wad of snot hanging on that wool, and it’s frozen. And my mouth, breathing around here, I got a lot of moisture around here. This probably wasn’t snot, probably vapors. But, ugh, terrible. It got worse. Franklin: I was going to say, I grew up in Alaska and I remember some really— Criswell: So you know what I’m talking about. Franklin: Cold. Oh, yeah, where you— Criswell: Did you have a wool one, or did they finally come up with those nice nylon ones that slick them? Franklin: No, we had the nice nylon. But still, you’d get the—you’d go outside, and you’d feel the heat being sucked out of your nose and your mouth as soon as you open to breathe, you just feel the moisture being pulled out of your face. It’s cold, yeah. Cars won’t start, usually. Criswell: Oh, yeah, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. Franklin: Yeah, I don’t miss those days. Criswell: Hungry Horse was interesting. Summer times were great. Get the fishing pole and go fishing. Summer time was that. Excuse me a second. Franklin: No worries. And so when you returned, spring/summer of ’53, what was your family—did your mom work at all this whole time, or was she a housewife? Criswell: Housewife. 1953, the job up in Hungry Horse was done. President Truman had come through, dedicated the dam. My dad actually wrote the speech. Public informations officer, he wrote the speech, he knew the information about Hungry Horse. Anyhow, I do remember, I was either in the eighth grade or I was in high school, going to school in Columbia Falls at that point in time. We went down to where the railyard went through Columbia Falls. Train’s stopped, Truman’s on the back platform on the train, he talks to the crowd out there. I mean, all the kids in school went out there. And then he climbed in a car and up to Hungry Horse he goes. So, that’s one of the memories. When Dad came back down here, he had a job as, again, kind of a public informations officer for Franklin County PUD. Franklin: Oh, okay. Criswell: That was ’53. In 1960, Dad, Mom, and the rest of the family packed it up and went to Springfield Municipal Utilities. He actually sold himself the job of being the director for Springfield Municipal Utilities and down there, that was water, sewer and electric. Franklin: And where is— Criswell: It wasn’t part of the city. They were a municipal utility that was separate from the city. Franklin: Are you talking about Springfield— Criswell: Springfield, Oregon. Franklin: Oh, Springfield, Oregon, okay. Criswell: He held that job until he retired in 1960. I forget exactly when he retired. But he was there—no, went there in ’60. 1980 he retired. So he held it for 20 years. Franklin: Wow. Criswell: And then he ruined the family name; he took a job as a—oh. [LAUGHTER] Kind of a political job. Lobbying! The Oregon State Legislature. [LAUGHTER] We kidded him about taking that job. Franklin: Getting into politics. Criswell: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Anyhow. Franklin: So— Criswell: About the only job Mom had is, both Mom and Dad were involved with what is now the Water Follies. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was the Pasco Water Follies. And the races were down at Sacajawea Park. Dad was president of the Pasco Water Follies for a period of time, and I think Mom—I forget if she was the treasurer or the secretary, I forget which. Maybe both at one point in time or another. But they were heavily involved in the Pasco Water Follies. I’m pretty sure that Dad came up here only once to watch the Water Follies after they became the Tri-City Water Follies, and he saw the new boats running. I don’t think he enjoyed them as much as he did the old thunder boats. That’s the part I always enjoyed. You go down there in the Columbia and the thunder boats are running five in a heat, it almost felt like the ground you were standing on was shaking when they were going by. That’s the part I really miss. I know the new ones go a whole lot faster, but. There’s just something about the old boats; they were special, as far as I was concerned. I knew John Owsley. He had the Pasco Boat Basin. He was probably responsible for the sleds they use at the Tri-City Water Follies. I know he was building them. He built a couple small ones, probably for the Pasco Water Follies. Ultimately, he ended up building kind of a three-point sled that he thought would go faster out there in the river to get to the crashes a little bit quicker. The whole idea was you didn’t have to haul somebody up over the transom of a boat to get them in; you basically just float them onto the back of the sleds that he was building. I thought that was pretty good. I know that when I was in the service there in ’62, came home on leave, and things were pretty tight for the wife and myself. John gave me a job. I guess somebody complained about not having any railings on the docks down there. He gave me a job to build railings on there for him. I did that on leave one time, and he was in the process, I think of building that three-point step one at that time. But things are different today, I’ll tell you. Franklin: Yeah. How did you meet your wife? Is she from the area? Criswell: Oh, that’s another one of those stories. [LAUGHTER] Strange you should ask that one. Somebody else asked me that question here, this past week. I blame it on a Pasco police officer. I was going to night school, oh, I don’t know what I was taking. A number of different night school classes I took over at CBC. I was taking another one. I was working, trying to get myself up to a decent grade point average. But I wasn’t having a whole lot of success. I had a C over there. But anyhow, part of my problem was that in 1960, early ’61, I was baching it, cooking for myself, studying. I get into the studying, I’d burn my dinner. Didn’t have the money to replace it. Decided it’d be cheaper for me if I went down to—it was the Payless Drug on the corner of 4th and Lewis. Payless Drug, they had a lunch counter down there, they cooked dinners down there. I’d get myself a supper; I’d sit there at the counter and study. Anyhow, I was doing that. One evening, police officer—and I mentioned to whomever I was talking to this week, I want to go over to Pasco and find out this police officer’s name. He had kind of a walking beat in downtown Pasco. He was an older gentleman. And he came up to me, he says, Dave, I got a couple of tickets for you. Whoa, what the heck? I’m working at Hanford; I don’t get tickets. I’ve got to be careful. I look at him real strange. Tickets? What kind of tickets? What’d I do wrong? He’s messing with me. He says, well, these are kind of special tickets. I said, what kind of ticket? He said, they’re tickets to the policeman’s ball. These two are for you. I said, I’m not going with anybody! Who am I going to get? He says, I’ve been drinking coffee here. He says, you’ve been watching that little lady over there. He says, you go ask her to go to the policeman’s ball. So I did. And I’d been cashing my checks here, and she’d been cashing my checks. She knew how much I earned. Didn’t pay any attention to what my name was. I had to always take my check downstairs and get it approved by the owner of Payless Drug at that point in time. I think his name was Tom Bishop. Yeah, it was. Tom Bishop. So Tom knew my family. Knew it wasn’t any problem with me getting my cash checked. So he’d initial the check, I’d take it back up, and this little gal would cash my check. So I asked her out. She said yes. Good grief. Next month it’s going to be 55 years. My wife and I have hardly ever been parted. Only when I went over to Fort Lewis. That didn’t last long. We moved the trailer that we were living in over there. A few trips where they sent me to school to learn something, one thing or another. That’s been our—[LAUGHTER] So I need to find out the officer’s name so I can blame him by name. Or thank him. Franklin: Yeah, Officer Matchmaker? Criswell: Yeah. He real did me a real favor, I’ll tell ya. Franklin: Aw. Criswell: But I would like to find his name. I have no idea what his history was or what happened. But after 55 years, I assume by this time, that he’s deceased, unfortunately. I wish I woke up to that question 30 years ago. Franklin: Is your wife from the area? Criswell: She’s born and raised here. Born in Lady of Lourdes Hospital. My two natural-born children were born in Lady of Lourdes Hospital. I don’t know—I know in the early part of my wife’s—they had to—I guess they had to get over to that hospital in a—I guess they had to cross the river in those years in a ferry boat. Franklin: Okay. Criswell: They had a little boat that ran back and forth across the Columbia. Franklin: Wow. Criswell: I’m not too sure what year the old green bridge got built. But I do know in the early days. Another strange piece of information was that my great-grandfather moved to the Northwest from Michigan, I guess. And he went to work in a lumberyard, lumber mill in north Idaho, a place called Harrison, Idaho. His job was training the horses and seeing to the horses’ needs that went out into the woods to pull the logs back in. And my grandmother, when she became of age, she worked in the millinery shop there in Harrison, Idaho. My wife and I have determined, at the same point in time, her grandmother’s family is living in Harrison, Idaho. I think her grandfather, her great-uncle, and an uncle were working in the woods logging up there. So, both of our ancestries have got connections to Harrison, Idaho. A couple, three years ago, my wife and I went up there with my wife’s sister, and we were looking for gravesites. And we found a couple of my wife’s family members in the Harrison graveyard, up on a hillside, up above Harrison there someplace. And still couldn’t find my great-grandfather. Turns out that Coeur d’Alene has two graveyards. And my sister looked in one, but didn’t look in the other one. My sister lives up in Sandpoint. And could not find our great-grandfather. Anyhow, on one of our trips up there, I took the time and went over to the other graveyard and found a gentleman mowing the lawn. He got off, went into the office, came back out, got a book, looked in the book, took us over and he pointed right at a gravesite where my great-grandfather was buried. Turns out that my first name is great-grandfather’s last name. And I always thought that Engelbert Humperdinck’s name was all made up. I never heard of anybody named Engelbert in my life, so I thought that was all a stage name. Turns out, my grandfather’s name was Engelbert David. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Sounds like that should kind of be reversed. Criswell: Yeah! Thank goodness I didn’t get hung up with Engelbert. But I believe my great-grandfather came to this country—he was an immigrant—he came to this country from Austria. I’m not too sure what year he came here. I don’t know how old he was. My great-grandmother and one of my great-aunts, apparently, died during a measle epidemic. I have no idea what year that was. But anyhow, Engelbert David packed up his one remaining daughter and apparently a girl that she was friends with, maybe family friends, and apparently they had problems. Maybe lost some family members also. So he brought the two girls out to Harrison, Idaho. I think, two things make me believe that maybe Engelbert David—he apparently changed his name sometime after my grandmother grew up, he remarried. Now his name on the tombstone is Egbert David. This is quite common. David is probably a frequent name of people who are of Jewish faith. And living in Austria, in probably the late ‘30s, or maybe even early ‘30s, things were not too favorable to the Jewish religion. I think that might’ve been the reason for the migration. And maybe the reason for changing the name at some point in his life. But my dad’s father, my grandfather, was blind at the time. My youngest years, almost totally blind by the time I remember him. He was a radio operator for the railroad—telegrapher for the railroad. And then he went to work in the merchant marines, was in the merchant marines when the Second World War blew up. And then he was in the Pacific. But his eyesight got so bad he couldn’t see to write anymore. And he couldn’t read the messages that had to be sent. So they had to release him. So I grew up—Grandpa Criswell was kind of funny. Let’s face it, in some ways he was a bit bigoted. I do believe that he was bigoted toward the Jewish faith. I’m sure my dad and his brothers ribbed him incessantly about some of his bigoted views. But they were all a bunch of cards, as far as I was concerned. They were some of the funniest things they ever came up with. But anyhow, he couldn’t see my dad and his brothers laughing at him, unfortunately, but maybe he would’ve changed his mind with time. But strange things. So I really don’t know that much about Great-grandfather. My grandfather lived to be 101. My grandmother lived to be four hours short of 102, deceased a few months later. Literally, if she’d lived to midnight, she would’ve lived to be 102. But aunt and uncle moved them down to Florida when they were in the 80s. I think my uncle was figuring they only had a few years to live. That didn’t happen. My grandfather, when he was packed up and ready to leave, he didn’t want to go. They were flying him down to Florida. Uncle Hank worked for the United Airlines. He’d made arrangements for them to fly. Probably made arrangements then to fly them first class. The story granddad got was that all the coach seats were full; they’d have to seat them in first class. Of course they got real good treatment, so granddad didn’t mind traveling anymore. But when he was getting ready to leave, he didn’t want to fly. Visited him just before he left. And I asked Granddad, I says, why don’t you want to fly? Because it’s a great way to travel. He tells me, straight-faced, they fly so high you can’t see the ground. I’m thinking to myself—I’m polite—I was thinking to myself, Granddad, you can’t see the ground you’re standing on. You know? I don’t understand why—you know. One of my uncles was coming by to take him down to see the Rose Festival parade. Oh, that’s cool. Well, we’re not going to the Rose Festival parade; I'm upset. Why? Well, they’re taking us to the warehouse that they decorate the floats in. What’s the matter with that? You don’t have to stand there for hours to watch. You can’t see anything. His reason for not liking the warehouse versus standing on the street is he doesn’t get to see any of the pretty girls. He hasn’t seen a pretty girl for 50 years. [LAUGHTER] Well, I don’t understand him. Anyhow, that’s my granddad. Franklin: When you—[LAUGHTER] Thank you for that. You started work at Hanford, were you still living in Pasco? Criswell: Oh, yeah. Franklin: Did you ever move to Richland, too, or did you live in Pasco the whole time-- Criswell: No. Franklin: --you worked at Hanford? Criswell: My wife and her family lived in Kennewick. But when Helen and I first got married, before we got married, I was living in a little studio apartment there in Pasco. And we found a single-wide 50-foot mobile home. We figured this’ll hold us for a while. We set it up on a lot there in Pasco. Right across the highway from the outdoor theater there. Anyhow, that was supposed to hold us for a few years. Well, we moved in and a few months later, we ended up having to pack it up and move it over to Olympia. And then we moved it back to Pasco when we got out in August. So we lived in Pasco. While we were in the service, my wife knows that she was expecting our first. Anyhow, after we moved back, we discovered that our single-wide mobile home and an infant—we were wall-to-wall toys within no time at all. We found somebody who decided that their house was too big for them to care for any, and they were willing to make a deal on it, and we took their house. So that was—then we moved to Kennewick. I guess, basically, we either lived in Kennewick or just outside of Kennewick now for a number of years. It’s been— Franklin: One of the things— Criswell: Excuse me. Franklin: Oh, no, that’s okay. There’s kind of several big events or things that happened in the Tri-Cities during the ‘50s and ‘60s. One of them is—it’s kind of commonly known that Pasco, especially east Pasco, was one of the only places that African Americans could live when they first came to Hanford during the Manhattan Project, and then was one of the only places they could buy property, up until, you know, civil rights legislation kind of forced some changes. I’m wondering if you could speak to any of that, or if you ever noticed segregation or witnessed that, or kind of your experiences living in Pasco during that time? Criswell: Well, I lived in Pasco in ’48-’49. I guess I never noticed it. I wasn’t old enough to understand those things, I guess. ’48, I would’ve been 11. ’49, probably living in Montana by then. Yeah, we moved up there in February of ’49, so. Anyhow, by the time we moved up there, didn’t seem to notice anything. Moved back to Pasco in spring of ’53, summer of ’53. Junior in high school. There was students that were black. Some of them I got to know. There weren’t very many. Yeah, it was strange. But when I was a kid going to Portland, I didn’t—this wasn’t something that I saw in Portland. I didn’t know it; I didn’t understand it. My wife, however, she went to Kennewick schools. Kennewick was one of the cities that, I guess, on the Kennewick side of the bridge, the old green bridge, there was some sort of a sign over there. I never recognized it as being there, but it told our black population that they needed to be out of Kennewick by sundown. Both my wife’s family and my family, that’s not the way we were brought up. My wife’s family were essentially farmers, lived on the outskirts of Kennewick and went to Kennewick schools. My wife’s family lived just on the west side of Kennewick. The only way to get to Pasco was across that old green bridge, so you had to go through Kennewick. My wife says that they had people to come from Pasco that would help her family on the farm. They were blacks, black people, Negro, whatever term is politically correct, socially correct. I don’t want to offend anybody. But their family, their kids grew up, their kids played on her farm. If they ended up picking until sunset to get the crop in, the family, kids all went out and they slept in the barn, or the extra bedrooms, or I guess my wife and her sister, bedroom was probably in the basement of the little house they lived in. So the families that were working on the farm worked and then they slept down there. But they all ate together. Somehow my wife grew up, didn’t know that there was a problem, didn’t understand the difference. Franklin: Do you remember the civil rights demonstrations in Kennewick? I think it was 1963 or 1964 when the NAACP— Criswell: I didn’t. At that point in time, I’m out at Hanford working. Franklin: Sure. Criswell: Went to work out there in August, no September, of 1955, I hired in out there. I was working with colored people, black people. There Fort Lewis, I met a gentleman who didn’t end up in my company, but while we were there on Friday, Saturday and Sunday before the troops came back to Hanford—they were all gone for Thanksgiving. Anyhow, he played for pro ball for, I think, the New York Giants. Big man. Told great stories. Great stories. He entertained the few of us that were stuck in that barracks for the weekend. You know, they stuck us in that barracks over there, it was empty, it had the cots, the mattresses were folded up, no blankets. There was no coal for the furnaces, no hot water. Having had experience with Fort Lewis, I became—I don’t want to say a leader, but definitely I knew what the heck to do to get around things. So I had three or four of the other gentlemen that were stuck there with me—that may have been the one from New York Giants; I don’t really recall. I had my sleeping bag, so I was all right. But anyhow we needed to get heat. So I told the guys, let’s find some boxes. And after dark, we went down the line and found some barracks that had kindling. We found barracks that had paper. We found barracks that had the coal. Anyhow, we took anything we could find. I knew all about those barracks. We got a fire lit. We knew we had to take turns watching that fire through the night and we had hot water in the morning. We had heat in the barracks through the weekend; we just had to keep watching that fire. All of us ended up having a fairly decent weekend; it could’ve been miserable because there wasn’t anybody else there to help us. They threw us into that barracks and, adios, we got the weekend off. That’s the last we saw of them. Well, we got the fire lit, and we had power in the day rooms, so we had television and we had a pool table. I guess maybe we shared some of the coal with the day room so it’d have heat. Monday morning here they come back and we all got to take physicals and we all end up getting busted up and going different places. Franklin: Did you go to the N Reactor dedication when President Kennedy came to— Criswell: N Reactor. No, I didn’t. I don’t know why. Probably because I was working. [LAUGHTER] And sometimes, they didn’t even want me taking a vacation when I needed one. They let me know they would remember that. If I insisted on a vacation, they couldn’t stop me, but they’d remember it. You know, getting a raise was—My dad was here for that. Because Dad was part of the—what’d they call that group of power companies, public utilities? He was part of that. At one point in time, he was president of BWIP. Of the contributors or whatever-the-heck they called that group. Anyhow, he was one of the—he was up here for that. He sat in the audience. He was up here for all the BWIP meetings that they would hold. No, that wasn’t BWIP. BWIP, Basalt Waste Isolation. No, he was one of the, I guess they call them stakeholders. The electrical utilities that signed on for—but anyhow, he was here for that. And for all of the meetings they had here for that. He was here when the president came up for the dedication. Seemed to me that was Kennedy, wasn’t it? Franklin: Yeah. He came for the dedication of N Reactor in September of 1963. Criswell: Okay, well, I know where I was. If that was in late ’61 or spring of ’62, I was over at Fort Lewis. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: No, it was September of ’63. It was just about two months before the assassination. Criswell: September of ’63, okay. Well then, okay, yeah, I remember that all too well. Yeah. Franklin: One of my last questions is one a little earlier, probably, when you were going to school, but when you were here in Pasco or in Hungry Horse do you remember doing lots of civil defense things? Because that would’ve been right during the height of the Cold War. So what can you tell me about civil defense? Criswell: I don’t think Hungry Horse they were worried about it. They never did anything like that up at Hungry Horse. Franklin: What about here in Tri-Cities? Criswell: I’m trying to think about Tri-Cities. Pasco High School, brand new school, graduated, second graduating class from Pasco High. I don’t remember anything special about it. I really don’t. And I don’t—after I graduated and then the Russians started playing around like they did in—that’d have been late ’61. Yeah, late ’61, that’s when they pulled all of us in. And then in ’62, and ultimately they sent us all home when they talked the Russians into pulling everything out of Cuba. But it was a strange time. Franklin: Did you ever feel any sense of urgency or fear, living so near to Hanford? You know, knowing what was being produced, how it was contributing to the nuclear weapons stockpile? Criswell: Well, when I was over there at Fort Lewis in—it would’ve been ’62, probably the early spring of ’62—I am a lowly Spec/4. That’s the equivalent of a corporal. I got called into the office and I was told I was going to give a class on irradiation and avoiding irradiation, minimizing exposure to radiation. And they had me a book and I had no clue as to why they were giving that to me. I didn’t have a clue. They didn’t tell us nothing over there! I mean, hey, we were a bunch of mushrooms. Anyhow, I had to give the company I was part of a breakdown on, you know, how to avoid radiation. Basically what the difference was between contamination and radiation. There’s a lot of people don’t understand that today. You double the distance, you reduce your exposure by four. That’s one of the big things. Get the heck away from it as fast as you can. You don’t know where it’s at, but distance from the source is big. I had no reason why I’m giving this class. The only reason I understand now why I’m giving a class is I worked at Hanford. [LAUGHTER] That’s it. I didn’t know what I was talking about. [LAUGHTER] So that’s why I had to give this thing. So I did my best. And that’s the last I ever heard of it. We never had another seminar on it. There was never anything else about it. Franklin: Interesting. Criswell: It was a strange, strange period of time. But I don’t think anybody really understood what the period was. Nobody in the military told us, really, why we were there. Nobody told us a thing. We were a bunch of mushrooms. It just didn’t make sense. Didn’t make any sense. But, you know, number of years later, I was told why things happened the way they did. And Kennedy, if Kennedy was born today, you wouldn’t want to play poker with the man. He pulled the ultimate bluff on the Russians. Every B-52, and we had a thousand, or more than 1,000—I think they’re B-52s, the lightweight ones? Or are those B-47s? Franklin: I think those are B-47s. Criswell: Okay, B-47s. Lightweight. They got two engines hanging on a pod on either side, on the wings. And they’re all small, lightweight bombers. Had thousands of those things. And to my knowledge, they’re still all lined up in the desert, down there in Arizona, unless they made beer cans out of them. But sometime, probably the early part of ’62, Kennedy pulled the ultimate bluff. He wanted the second division pulled out of East Berlin. He wanted the missiles out of Cuba. And he told the Russians—no, he unleashed all those B-47s at the same time. And the big ones. All of our big ones. The Russians could see them. There wasn’t any questions. The Russians could see that they weren’t going to be able to stop them all. They knew that they were going to get through. We were going to lose a lot of planes; we were going to lose a lot of crews. But we were going to have one big mess. I forget who the heck the Russian was at the time. He got on the phone with the Kennedys, he says, turn those planes around. Turn them all around. He says, we’ll pull out. We’ll get the stuff out of Cuba. The extra division will go out of East Berlin. And that’s the way it went. But we, at Fort Lewis, we didn’t hear a dumb thing about it. It wasn’t until years later that a friend of mine told me what the heck had happened. Kennedy pulled the ultimate bluff. You don’t want to play cards with a guy like that! But if I’d known, I think I’d have—I don’t know what the heck you’d do. Franklin: Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about before we conclude the interview? Criswell: The only thing I can say is my career at Hanford was interesting. I did a lot of different things. I’d still like to be working out there. I’d still have a ball working out there if I could. Unfortunately, I had a senior engineer PhD do a number on me. Franklin: What do you mean by that? Criswell: He lied. Franklin: Okay. Criswell: Okay. He wanted to come into my lab, he wanted to set up a series of tests. At the point in time, I was telling management that we’ve got to get new controls for the equipment we’re operating. These things are getting old, they’re unreliable. I knew this machine would fail. I couldn’t predict when, I couldn’t figure out why. I referred to it as a ghost. I mean, one time it does something wrong, and the next time you go to look for it, it isn’t there, it’s working perfectly okay. But you can’t trust it no more. This PhD insisted that I use this particular machine. There’s another one sitting alongside of it that would’ve done the job. He wants to use this machine. I tell him, no. This machine is flaky; it can’t be relied on. He tells me before I leave his office, before we run any tests, your fault, the machine’s fault, I’m going to get you. So, either the first or second test, I’m sitting there. We run a block of cycles, we take a reading. Start it up again, run a block of cycles, take a reading. It’s at high temperature, what-have-you. So I’m tilted back against the cupboard, waiting for the cycles to end. All of the sudden, bang! Doggone thing fails. Oh, by the way, I told the engineer that I directly tied to that, hey, this isn’t a good machine, you don’t want to use it. But he insists on using it. Anyhow, he goes running to my manager. It’s all my fault. He lived up to his word. And my manager accepted it. Franklin: Wow. Criswell: So I didn’t get a raise. And that would’ve been January 1st of ’99. I didn’t get a raise. So I wrote a letter, put it in my file that, no, this wasn’t my fault. And I had told him it wasn’t my fault. But I tried to keep the thing going, work to make sure that things ran properly, but I needed some support from management. I didn’t really get the support I wanted until after I left. Franklin: Right. Criswell: When they brought in the gentleman that replaced me, then they replaced all the electronics. But if I can figure out what—each one of these electronic things has got a whole bunch of drawers in it, and it’s got a whole bunch of pieces in each one of the drawers. If you can figure out what controls what, and it stays broken, then you can fix it. But when it goes back and forth, no. That’s when I call it a ghost. It didn’t work. So, anyhow, they kind of promised me that if things worked out, I’d get a raise in July, mid-term, mid-year. Anyhow, that didn’t happen. So I decided, well, I’ll be 62 in a couple more months and then I can retire. And I did. But I came back half-time. I’d probably still have been out there. I don’t know how long I would’ve worked. Hey, I enjoyed the work. It was interesting, and I was good at it. But unfortunately I couldn’t get the backing to replace the equipment when I needed it. And I ended up taking the hit. Unfortunately, this particular engineer, scientist, ended up causing problems for others. I guess, maybe, I’m kind of happy or proud about one thing. The gentleman I recommended to take my job ended up with it, and he’s still there. Franklin: That’s good. Criswell: I picked a younger man who, I’m assuming he’s still there. That’s been a lot of years. Franklin: Maybe you should call him up. Criswell: I probably ought to. I know that—I talked to him a few times since they moved out of the building we were in and moved downtown. That was one of the things they did, was they had to leave the basement that I was in. And they asked me about moving this big piece of equipment, this half-million-pound machine, how are we going to get that out of there? I told them how it was done. Anyhow, I don’t know what went wrong. But they had that—I suspect I know one thing. They had to back the semi down a ramp to the basement of the building. And if they got cockeyed or if the wheels are sitting in the hole, the deck on the flatbed is going to be canted. So they have to lay this huge frame down on its side. They have to get it over to where there’s an elevator that goes up to the half level that it’s got to go out of. But when I was there, they did this. They had to support this huge frame using railroad ties. And I’m there to watch, make sure that they don’t do anything wrong. All of the sudden, I hear this really screwy noise. And I go out in the hall. They’re out in the hall with a chainsaw cutting creosoted railroad ties to length to prop the elevator bed at a half-level between the floor level and the exit level. Because it won’t support the weight of this machine. So they got to support it there, and then they got to put a ramp going out. So anyhow, there’s this blue fog going down the hallway. I mean, this is—railroad ties with creosote on them, they’re cutting them with a chainsaw out in the hall of the building. [LAUGHTER] Stinky poo mess. But they got it out. This is when I was there. And they take it over to 324 Building. And they lift it up, they sit it on the ground upright, they take the lid off of 324 Building, the roof off of it. They take the shields off of 324 Building, they set them on the ground. And then when they got access to the hot cell in 324 Building, they go over there and they pick this machine up and they lift it up, over, and they set it down inside of the hot cell in 324 Building. They’re going to do some low level work. They wrap it with plastic and everything else. And then, later on after they finish doing whatever testing they were going to do, they pick it up again to go through the reverse, they bring it over and they set it down. Some other point in time, they take that thing—they’re making another lift on it, and anyhow, it crashes down. The actuator on that thing is about three feet in diameter. It generates 500,000 pounds of force using 3,000 psi of oil pressure. And it crashes. No, that’s upright, yep. Anyhow, yeah, they got it sitting off the ground over at 324 Building, outside of the cells, getting ready to make a lift. And all of a sudden, the cable comes loose from the drum on the winch on the crane. And this huge doggone frame drops a foot or two, down onto the ground. Anyhow, one of our engineers is looking around behind, he’s headed back to 300 Area proper. He looks behind him, and he can see the cable of the load cell going up, coming back down, going up, coming back down. And then pretty soon it just falls to the ground. It’s come off the drum on the frame. So anyhow it’s sitting there on the ground. And now the riggers have got to go through about four months of writing reports on why they dropped this thing. So anyhow, they lift it up, they finally lay it back down, and they get it over to our lab and they lift things back up, and they put it back in our lab. We make sure it’s nice and clean, it’s okay for use. When they get ready to take it out of that lab—this is after I’ve left—and they’re putting it onto a flatbed truck, instead of using a crane to move this thing with, they’ve got—they haven’t hired the riggers. They went out and hired a tow truck company. [LAUGHTER] They’ve got a flatbed truck sitting there by the rollup door, and it’s going down here, and apparently it’s tilted to the side. And they’ve got nothing on there to keep this thing on there. Anyhow, instead of lifting it, they’re dragging it up an I-beam incline on rollers. They’re using a tow truck in front of the semi that’s going to haul this thing over to the new building where it’s going to be installed at. So they get it up through the rolling doors and onto the flatbed truck, that apparently is at an angle. One of the gentlemen that’s watching this, he says, all of the sudden they get it out there, off the I-beam that it’s been pulled out on, and this thing starts to roll sideways off the flatbed truck. And it falls off and crashes. Well, this huge actuator is really quite a delicate piece of equipment. Number one, the rings inside of this piston—I don’t know how many are in there; I’ve never seen the inside of one of these things. But the cylinder itself is coated with silver. It’s got a silver plating in there. And the silver in this case is there for additional lubricant, besides having the—it’s a paraffin-based hydraulic oil is what they’re using, so very specialized. But when it lands on its side, you’ve got all the weight of that piston going to one side. And you’ve got seal rings in there, you’ve got wiper rings in there, to keep the oil inside of the things, so that it doesn’t leak oil very much. And then there’s a provision for oil that does get by the seal rings to go out and go back to the pump. That’s about that big around. Well, when this thing smashed down, it dented those seal rings. It dented everything in that doggone thing. Well, they sent it back to the factory, but—no, they didn’t! No, they did send it back to the factory. I’m getting mixed up, because I wasn’t there. I’m trying to remember everything. But they did send it back to the factory, but it was to make sure the columns in the load frame were vertical. I don’t know if they rebuilt the actuator or not. I really don’t’ know, but I don’t think so, because it came back, it’s leaking oil badly. Because the seal rings in there and everything are flattened on one side. I mean, you’ve got tons of force, wham. And if it came off the bed of the truck, that bed’s got to be four, five feet in height. So to my knowledge, it’s still leaking today. But that was a pretty special piece of equipment, and I wish to heck—like I said, I wouldn’t mind going back to work. [LAUGHTER] I enjoyed it. They’ve got new electronics now. To my knowledge, everything’s working fine. Franklin: New stuff to play with. Criswell: This is kind of specialized equipment. The old stuff, the old bald ones, the old Instrons, they’re not—you just program to do one thing. One thing. It’s either to travel a certain distance at a certain rate or you could tell it to increase the load at a certain rate. Either way. If you’re increasing the load, when the specimen starts to break, it starts to travel faster to keep up. So for most testing, when you’re testing something like this, you want to have this thing traveling at a certain ram rate. This way the load goes, and when it starts to yield, it bends over, and then it starts to drop off and it’ll fail. So this is the way it’s supposed to work. MTS will do it any way you want it to do. It’ll control the speed of the actuator; it’ll control how fast you load something. But when it starts to break, and if you’re under load control, it’s supposed to keep loading so many pounds per unit of time. When it starts to fail, then it isn’t keeping up, so it speeds up. This thing can go really fast. And then it can control load, displacement. It can also control—you can use something called an LVDT where it opens, it’s on the deflection of the specimen you’re trying to break. So there’s different ways of breaking things. But anyhow it’s all closed loop. You tell it you want it to go so many pounds per unit of time, it’ll do it. You tell it you want to go one inch in an hour, it’ll do it. But only one of those things can it do at the same time. And if it’s leaking oil, it isn’t going to keep up. So anyhow they’ve got a mess. They can’t keep up with it now I guess. My recommendation was they send it back. I don’t know. That’s an expensive process, plus they’ve got to get that actuator out of there. Franklin: Well, Dave, thank you so much for sitting down and talking with us today. I really appreciate it. Criswell: Yeah, it’s a good thing you caught me before my mind’s completely gone. Franklin: Yeah. No, you had so much to say. I mean, it was a great interview. Criswell: Yeah. Franklin: I appreciate you sharing your knowledge. Criswell: The equipment was great. It really was great. You program it right, it’ll do what you want. But like I said, when you’ve got a ghost in your electronics, it works most of the time, but one split second it goes haywire, whatever you’re doing is gone. And some of these things, you’ve got to be real careful of. Franklin: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Criswell: You betcha. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 02:17:59 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps Hanford Sites Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview 300 Area PRTR 222-S K 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 David Criswell Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource David Criswell worked at various facilities in the 300 area including separations labs and the PRTR. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy. 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The Hanford Oral History Project operated under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who were 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 the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F086b14362420c4dd52a43bbf5e5e0b36.jpg 3b9817accaa1e01263a76c3dc07ed128 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0bc49f909539b18632f713f021af9ab5.mp4 dcc3c56a58bfbaa6987b71cc189ab983 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 Jim Daughtry Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Jim Daughtry on April 4, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jim about his experiences working on the Hanford Site. And for the record, Jim, can you state and spell your full name for us? Jim Daughtry: James Daughtry, spelled D-A-U-G-H-T-R-Y. It’s often misspelled and often misspoken, but that’s what it is. Franklin: Great, and James is J-A-M-E-S? Daughtry: J-A-M-E-S, James. Franklin: Okay, but you prefer to go by Jim, correct? Daughtry: Sure, yeah. Franklin: Well, whichever— Daughtry: No, I go by Jim. Franklin: Okay, good. [LAUGHTER] So, Jim, tell me how you came to the area to work for the Hanford Site. Daughtry: Yes, I was hired in 1973 by Peter Hoffmann. Peter Hoffmann was earlier with Battelle Northwest, but at the time, he was a manager in Westinghouse. I guess it was referred to as Westinghouse Hanford Company at the time. He had a physics background and he had responsibilities related to the physics aspects of the Fast Flux Test Facility. Franklin: Okay. Daughtry: So, I had contacted him and expressed interest in coming here and came out for an interview. And eventually, we reached an agreement and I came in to work and he assigned me to a core engineering group, and assigned to a manager by the name of Bob Bennett, who was the manager of core physics at the time. Franklin: Okay. And where did you come here from? Daughtry: Where did I come here from? I had been with Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois. Franklin: And what were you working on there? Daughtry: Well, interestingly enough, I was actually working on the engineering mockup experiments for the FFTF. That was the connection. I had been working on that for a couple of years, and those experiments were ramping down, and I thought, well, okay, I have that experience and it would be of value here. So that’s why I contacted Peter Hoffmann, and we went on from there. Franklin: What interested you about the FFTF? Daughtry: Well, of course I got interested early on, because of the experiments we were doing. We were doing experiments there that would be used to calibrate the computer codes that would later be used for all of the physics analysis for FFTF. So, the interest was there because I knew what FFTF was all about. Franklin: And when you say computer codes, we’re talking about a much older type of computer, right? Were you using punch cards at that time? Daughtry: Yes, indeed. Yes. Actually, it was interesting, because the Department of Energy had turned the design responsibility for the FFTF to the advanced reactors division at Westinghouse Corporation in Pittsburgh. So they had their own computer codes, which were of their advantage, anyway. I was working at Argonne National Laboratory; they had their computer codes. And out here at Hanford, they had their computer codes. They were all different. They did about the same thing; they didn’t always agree exactly the same. But we knew that the codes that were developed here would be the ones that would be used as we started up the plant and did the final calculations. And also, those needed to be calibrated with the experiments that were done at Argonne National Lab. So you said punch cards? Yes. When I first came to work here, our offices were in the Federal Building, first floor of the Federal Building. I believe the computing center was in the basement of the Federal Building. We would prepare the calculations for the day and those would then be punched on punch cards and those then would be probably verified by someone else, and then go into the computer. I don’t remember now what the turnaround was, but I suppose if it was a large calculation, we might have to wait until the next day to get the results. Franklin: Wow. How did you get the three different systems to match up? Or what kind of effort did it take to get those three different systems to kind of match up so this engineering mockup information and the headquarters in Pittsburgh, how’d they all talk to one another? Daughtry: Well, there were a lot of meetings, of course, between the Advanced Reactor personnel in Pittsburgh and the personnel at Argonne National Lab, and people here at Hanford. But it wasn’t necessary for the codes to match up. They had to be close enough that they could decide on what experiments to run at what we referred to as the engineering mockup. I even brought a picture that you might see. This is what the—this was called ZPR-9. ZPR stands for Zero Power Reactor. The engineering mockup was assembled there. This would be a front face. The core of the reactor in FFTF is about three feet high, four feet in diameter. This represents the core and the shield. But, see, this was done at the engineering mockup near Chicago. Franklin: Oh, at Argonne. Daughtry: Yes, at Argonne. This was designed and built based on meetings between the people here at Hanford and the people at Argonne. They decided what experiments to do, and they designed it what they thought at the time that the FFTF would look like. Anyway, I just brought that to show, because you never see what the actual core of FFTF looks like, because—but this is the front face of a— The way this works is the engineering mockup was divided into two halves, and it was movable. So that when it was pulled apart, it would never go critical. It was only when it was brought together and the control rods moved out, it would become critical. But it never operated at power. It was called Zero Power Reactor. It never reacted at power. It was just an experimental facility. It was very important to the final design of the FFTF. Because by building an assembly that replicated what FFTF was going to look like, then they could run a whole series of experiments on it to predict what we would see when we ran the FFTF. Franklin: Okay. Backing up a little bit, what was—I guess, maybe enlarging the scope. What was the purpose of the FFTF and the breeder reactors, breeder reactor program? And how was it different from the other reactors at Hanford? Daughtry: Well, the Fast Flux Test Facility was built to test materials and fuel that were going to be used in the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor Program. Liquid metal, meaning sodium, which would be the coolant. And by fast reactor, it means that the neutrons’ fissions would occur while they were at high energy, rather than, in light water reactors they are allowed to, what they call, thermalize, to come to lower energies where the fission cross-sections were higher and the probabilities for fission are higher. But the breeder program, you probably know, it was intended to build a reactor that could convert depleted uranium into plutonium, and so it could make fuel as it burned fuel, and therefore it could extend the usefulness of the uranium supply by orders of magnitude. Franklin: Great. And so what kinds of—you mentioned your work at Argonne and the engineering mockup was critical to the success of the FFTF, which makes sense, right? Building this prototype would allow you to work out kinks. Were there any significant kinks or things that you figured out doing the mockup that changed the as-built of the FFTF? Daughtry: I’m not sure I can answer that. The design of the FFTF was not completely finalized during that time, so there were some changes made to the design of our experiments there as the design work proceeded. Again, with the design, final design was given to the advanced reactors division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. They had their offices in Pittsburgh. But I mentioned that, not so much to highlight that aspect, but just to point out that when I came here to work, the first job that I had was to analyze the experiments that had been done in engineering mockup. And so the experiments were all done to support the final design, the planning for the startup and testing in the FFTF. So my first job there was analyzing the experiments that we had done back there. So that and then I came into an organization that was called the core physics group, and that was managed by, at that time, by Bob Bennett. The core engineering organization, which included him, and Wilbur Bunch who managed the shielding and criticality group, were all focused, pretty much, on planning for the startup. We were not involved, really, in the design of the plant. That was still under Westinghouse Electric’s responsibility. But we worked with the Department of Energy to design what we called a reactor characterization program, which was to determine the characteristics of FFTF. That was done during the acceptance testing program. We had a fairly extensive set of physics measurements that were done shortly after the reactor went critical for the first time. So, much of our work from ’73 up until the time that the plant first went critical had to do with the preparations for that, and also preparations for refueling after the plant started into normal operation. Franklin: Oh, okay. And what was the date that the FFTF went critical? Daughtry: I believe it was 1980 when it went critical. As a matter of fact, I have another little thing that I can show you about that. There was an announcement that I still—I kept a copy of that. Well, anyway. This was February the 9th, 1980. Franklin: Ah, February 9, 1980. Daughtry: You may have seen a—this has been shown before, a number of times. It shows the—it’s a diagram that was taken off of the charts in the control room. This shows the time of day, and this shows the neutron count rates in counts per second. And what it shows that at this time, when this line became straight, this is a logarithmic scale; it shows that the power level or the flux level is increasing exponentially. And you can even pick out from this the fact that it had increased by about a factor of ten in less than a minute. Franklin: Yeah. Daughtry: And so at this point in time, we confirmed that the reactor was critical, February the 9th, 1980, at about 3:46 in the afternoon. And then they inserted the control rods a little bit at this point and leveled it off at a higher power. This was still essentially at very low power. It was not at full power. We were just demonstrating that we could take the plant critical. Franklin: Oh, okay, interesting. Earlier when you said you worked in this reactor characterization program for the DOE to determine the characteristics of the reactor, the reactor design, I guess, then, was solidified, but maybe the plant design was still being worked out? Or how did this work with this reactor— Daughtry: No. As a new reactor, there was a fairly extensive acceptance test program. You had to verify that all of the plant was working the way it was supposed to work. Part of the acceptance test program was this reactor characterization program, which was primarily a physics program. We were measuring things like the neutron spectrum, the energy spectrum of the neutrons in the reactor, reaction rates of all—of various materials. Any materials that would be used, we would want to determine the rate at which the reactions would occur. And part of that would be the fission rate, the rate at which fissions would occur, and a wide range of fissionable material that was actually in the reactor fuel, but it could be in experiments that would be in the reactor fuel. So we would measure the gamma ray distribution, and the heating from gamma rays. This was done throughout—I mentioned to you that the size of the actual fueled region was only about three feet high and four feet in diameter. This was surrounded by a stainless steel reflector, they referred to it, and the fuel pins would have stainless steel above and below the fuel part. Franklin: And this was in the sample, or this was in the final reactor? Daughtry: This was in the actual reactor itself. And we had sample—special characterizer assemblies, that we’d call them, that were made that we could put the test pieces into, in order to make the measurements. Franklin: So then this is a much smaller reactor core than the plutonium production reactors. Daughtry: Yeah. It was— Franklin: Because B is massive. It’s a massive face. Daughtry: Yeah, this was operated at a thermal power of just 400 megawatts, whereas a full scale reactor might operate at 2,000 megawatts power, and then they would be generating electricity from that. So this was just a small version. But the fuel assemblies were similar in size to ones you would put into a full-scale reactor. Franklin: Okay. Daughtry: By “an assembly,” an assembly is a collection of pins that are held together and then put into the reactor core in one long, it’s referred to as a fuel assembly. Franklin: And then that was irradiated inside the core. Daughtry: Yes. Franklin: And then pulled out. Daughtry: Yes, now—yes. This particular, the Fast Flux Test Facility, was designed to test fuels and materials that would be used later on in the breeder reactor program. So it was intended not to have long operating power production cycles, but to have cycles that you could put a test in and run it for a period of time and then take it out and examine it. So there was a whole different organization from the operation organization that did that. Westinghouse Hanford Company had a fairly extensive program to do research on reactor fuel, reactor—oh, various types of stainless steel, materials that would be in there, and just see how they performed in the environment that you’d anticipate in a breeder reactor. Franklin: So this, then, was pretty kind of cutting-edge research for this program, but also very different from a lot of the other activity going on at Hanford. Daughtry: Well, yes, it was entirely different from the weapons program. So the FFTF was unique in that respect. I and many others never worked in the weapons program at all. We were all here because of our interest in the possibility of a breeder reactor program in our country. Franklin: Hmm. And so how—could you tell me a little more about the breeder reactor program? Is it still running, how long did it run for, what’s the status of that? Daughtry: Well, it was in full swing when FFTF was—when the decision was made to have that. There was great anticipations that we could build reactors that would breed fuel. And so the Department of Energy had some degree of enthusiasm. So they wanted to have a robust testing program. FFTF was the center of that testing program. There was other work, of course, going on at other national labs. At Argonne National Lab, in particular. But the Department of Energy, with obviously some probably politics involved, decided to build the FFTF here at Hanford. So it became an important step in the overall breeder program. Unfortunately, by the time the reactor started up and was ready to go into operation, the breeder program was not as enthusiastically supported by the administrations, for various concerns. They were concerned about nuclear proliferation and other issues. And eventually, I believe it was under the Carter administration, decided that they wanted to terminate the breeder program altogether. So by the time FFTF had been successfully demonstrated that it went critical, went to full power, that it could operate, and do what it was intended to do, its reason for being disappeared. Franklin: Ah. Daughtry: So there was quite a bit of effort, following that, to determine if there were other ways to use FFTF. To generate medical isotopes to support other missions and so a great deal of effort, after the breeder program was—well, there was a lot of hope that the breeder program could be resurrected. But they had to find some reason to continue to operate FFTF without the breeder program that it was intended to support. Franklin: Right. So its entire reason for being was gone before it was—really, before it started. Daughtry: Well, I’m not sure about the exact date now, when the breeder program was terminated, but certainly, it wasn’t long after the reactor started up and went into operation and began its design testing programs that the Department of Energy was looking for ways to cut back on the cost. So immediately, shortly after the initial power ascent, they tried to cut back on the staff out there, and our group, which was under Bob Bennett at the time, was split up into two parts. One part stayed out at the plant to help, actually, it was necessary for fuel management, to determine, to plan the fuel loading for each cycle. And then the other group went back into what would be the Hanford Engineering Organization to be involved in other activities. However, it wasn’t long before we were asked again to do analyses for FFTF to support alternative missions, to estimate how much tritium we could produce, how much plutonium-238, how much of other materials, how much medical isotopes. So there was a lot of work of that nature that was done after the plant had gotten into full power. I might mention, I did—you know, achieving criticality was a major step, and it was something that everybody who had been involved in it wanted to be here when it happened. I brought this picture because it says—this was just a picture of the plant. But all around it is the signatures of everybody who was present at the time when it actually did go critical. At that time, the president of Westinghouse Hanford Company was John Yasinsky, and you’ll find his signature is up near the top there. And the project manager was John Nolan, who later became president of Westinghouse Hanford. Franklin: Yep, I see his signature. And I see Bob Bennett. Daughtry: There. Franklin: Yeah. Daughtry: So anyway, all of those people were here. Which reminds me that the day before this occurred, the project organization wanted to make sure that indeed the plant went critical, because all of these people were going to be here. So they’d have been very embarrassed if we’d pulled out the control rods and the plant wasn’t critical. Franklin: Right, right. Daughtry: So I remember the day before, we had a meeting. And my group was responsible for projecting criticality. And as we met there with the operations organization, I remember—I don’t remember who all was there at the time—but I remember the question came up, they said, well, we have, I think, 58 assemblies in the core now; should we proceed with withdrawal of the control rods? And I remember saying, no, we need to add one more assembly. So we added, I think it was the 59th assembly. And then the next day, they pulled out the control rods, and sure enough, the reactor went critical, and of course, everybody was there and everybody applauded and I believe they may have passed around a bottle of champagne. I don’t know; I didn’t get any. But anyway, it was a big deal, because it had been started back in the mid-‘60s, and this was 1980. So you see a lot of time, a lot of effort had gone into it and of course the cost estimates had gone up and all of that. Franklin: And you yourself had at this point—you weren’t there from the beginning-beginning, but you had been working on this thing for seven-plus years. Daughtry: Since 1973, yes. And actually a little before that, since I was working on the critical experiments before I came here. Franklin: Right. Daughtry: So, yeah, I spent almost all of my career after graduate school working on the FFTF. Franklin: Wow. Daughtry: And how long did the FFTF run its various research missions? Daughtry: I don’t remember the exact dates. But it ran through several operating cycles in which many tests were irradiated. I cannot tell you when it was—when the decision was made to shut it down and not operate anymore. It would’ve been in the—I think it would’ve been in the mid-to-late-1980s. I don’t remember the exact date. Franklin: Okay, yeah. You had mentioned other ways—other alternate missions for the FFTF, other ways to use the reactor. Were some more successful than others? Daughtry: Well, none were completely successful. I’m sure what the Department of Energy would be looking at would be, it takes so much money to actually operate the reactor. You have all the operating crews, you have the security, you have safety organizations, quality assurance organizations. So you have a large number of people and you could squeeze it down only so far and still operate safely. So that cost a designated amount of money. So what the Department of Energy would look at is, how can I get a return comparable to the cost from some other mission? So they looked at a lot of different possibilities. But none of them came up to the point where they said that either this or any combination of these missions put together did they feel would justify the cost of continuing operation. I was not in that aspect of it. But that’s just my take on it, that it came down to dollars and cents. Franklin: As many things do. Especially in the world of the federal government. So then it really was designed, then, for its original mission. Daughtry: Oh, sure. Franklin: Which it never really fulfilled. Daughtry: And it was not intended to run forever anyway. But it was intended to operate for a long time, because they anticipated a continued testing program that—and to follow up to this was to be the Clinch River reactor in Tennessee. That’s when that was canceled and then the breeder program was canceled. As successful as FFTF was, it still didn’t have, any longer, reason for being. The experience was really great. The personnel that operated the plant were extremely capable, extremely—they set an amazing record. And I felt that the people I worked with here were just top-notch. I was pleased. I’ve heard many people in the management realm complain about not being able to get good workers, skilled workers. That was never my experience. The people that worked in my organization were just exceptional. And that was true of most of the people involved in the FFTF program. Franklin: Great. Did the FFTF influence any other reactors, either in the United States or worldwide? Daughtry: Well I think, Japan had their own test reactor, and I believe they—well, I know that they had some experiments in the FFTF, and were interested in the results of those experiments. They had continued on, and their breeder reactor program was not terminated at the same time ours was. It eventually was, but theirs had extended on quite a few years beyond our program. And I’m thinking that some of us who were involved in the startup and testing at FFTF went over to Germany to talk to people there who were planning to start up a similar test reactor to the FFTF. Unfortunately, they didn’t ever start up. They got very close. They brought the fuel in, they built the entire reactor, and they brought the fuel in. But I think the state, one of the organizations there, never gave the approval to operate it. And so it was never done, never operated in Germany. So there was interest around the world. Russia went further than we did in liquid metal—the breeder programs. And I’m not abreast of what they have operating now, but they did build probably the equivalent of our Clinch River plant and then maybe even beyond that. Franklin: Mm. What did you think of Richland when you arrived here in the early ‘70s? Daughtry: Okay. Well, I had grown up and spent most of my early years and education and all in the eastern part of the US. So when I came out here, my family and I arrived by car, I believe July the 1st. And we didn’t have a home, so we had to look for a home. But the temperature that day was over 100. We were fortunate they let us stay in the Hanford House while we were waiting. We did finally, after the first week, found a home, which we purchased, but couldn’t move into until the end of July. So we stayed at the Hanford House for almost 30 days. And outside of the Hanford House, I believe the bank had a sign out there that would have the temperature on it. Of the first 30 days, 15 of them were over 100. So that was our introduction to Richland and to Hanford, and to the Tri-Cities. It was quite a change, quite a change from what we were used to. But it’s all behind us now and after 1973 to now, that must be something like 44 years? We thought this is a, really an easy place to live. Franklin: And did you purchase a house in Richland? Daughtry: We did. We purchased a house in Richland. Franklin: So you lived in Richland. Daughtry: We did for 20 years, and we then later built a home out in Benton County where we live now. So we lived in Richland in 20 years, and we’ve lived where we are living now for 24 years. So we have, I guess, about 44 years in the Tri-Cities. Franklin: Sure. How has Richland changed from when you moved here in the ‘70s to now? Daughtry: Oh, well, not just Richland, but I believe at the time, I’m pretty sure Richland was larger than Pasco, and Pasco has grown. West Richland was almost nothing, but now West Richland has boomed. The Tri-Cities as a whole have changed more than Richland itself. The whole area has just—has thrived over the years. But it’s still a comfortable place to live. Franklin: Sure. Were there any—considering you had worked for different national labs in the field of nuclear technologies since getting your degree, was there any—you kind of were, maybe more indirectly, I guess you could say, involved in the Cold War, or directly involved in technologies that played a vital role in the Cold War. Did you feel connected to that conflict at all in any way, or did you feel any anxiety about living next to a place of weapons production during the Cold War? Daughtry: No, I did not. I was aware of what was going on, and I was aware of what happened at Chernobyl. I was aware of what was happening here at Hanford as far as weapons production. But I was focused on our mission, and that consumed my time and I was never uneasy about living where I was living. But, no, I never ended up working in the weapons program at all. After FFTF was shut down, I spent a short period of time involved in some of the calculations, criticality-related calculations, for the cleanup effort. But that was a small part of my career; most of it was with the FFTF over those years. Franklin: Speaking of Chernobyl, how did—I’m wondering if you could give me your impression on how that incident kind of reverberated in this community? Daughtry: Well, I think one of the first concerns that people worried about around the country was the N Reactor was a graphite-moderated reactor and Chernobyl was, too. So people wanted to compare it. But there was significant differences. And again, I wasn’t involved in that, so I could not tell you what exactly the differences were. But people argued that, no, no, no, the N Reactor was not like Chernobyl. But other people around the country were not so convinced. And ultimately, of course, that was shut down as well. But we hated to see Chernobyl happen because any major accident anywhere in the world affects everybody else in the industry. So we hated to see an accident anywhere. That was, unfortunately, a very serious one. Franklin: Yeah. Probably the worst manmade nuclear accident—Fukushima is the result of a tidal wave, and so, nature— Daughtry: Yeah, tsunami and a tidal wave. Franklin: Nature played more of a role there. So, okay. Thank you. When did you retire from Hanford? Daughtry: As I recall, it was December of 1994. So I had that—I’d worked for Westinghouse about 21 years. I think, if I recall, it was the next fall that Westinghouse, essentially left and Fluor took over operation here at Hanford. So all of my time here at Hanford was with Westinghouse. Franklin: What drove your decision to retire? Daughtry: Well, I don’t know. It was a bad—it was not as healthy a time. It seems like there was so much effort to reduce cost. And the cleanup program had not, seems like, gotten the support that it got later on. And the FFTF had been shut down. There were other things that we could do and other things that we did do, but—I think because of the Department of Energy were putting pressure on Westinghouse to cut back staff, they offered early retirement incentives. I looked at the opportunities and what there was left of interesting work to be done, and I just decided to take the early retirement opportunity. Franklin: What I’m getting is kind of a picture of a kind of a rudderless era, maybe, in some ways, compared to the production period. Daughtry: Well, yes. That was really a time of great enthusiasm when we had this mission and we had a goal. So many times, you’ll see government projects start and go a while and then stop and never be completed. For example, there was the superconducting supercollider. It was to be built in Texas. And it was funded and it was approved. But then eventually, probably due to financial issues again, it was terminated. So you see so many projects that start and don’t make it, but we saw it. We didn’t see the breeder program, but we saw a reactor whose concepts were first developed in the mid-‘60s. They went all the way to completion. The reactor was built, it was operated successfully, and to see something really successful is really a good part of a career to see that sort of thing happen. After that, of course there was other work, and there was the cleanup program. But I never saw anything here that engendered the same level of enthusiasm that the FFTF did. Perhaps there were that I was just not aware of. But I was happy that I had the opportunity to work there when I did. Franklin: Right. What did your wife do while you worked out at the FFTF? Daughtry: My wife has a degree in physics as well. Franklin: Oh! Daughtry: An undergraduate degree. But she came here, and we had, at that time, two children. So her goal was to make sure those children were raised properly. As time went on, she became quite interested in gardening and decided, as the children got older, that she’d join the Master Gardener program here in the Tri-Cities. So she actually worked with that for, I believe, over 35 years, she was involved in the Master Gardener program. She assisted the program director, Marianne Ophart. So that was a great fulfilment for her. She found a real place where she felt like she could contribute, and she did. Franklin: Oh, wow. Great. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War? Daughtry: Well, that then goes back mostly to the work that went on here that I was not involved in. I think you need somebody else to answer that question. The Cold War competition between the Soviet Union and the United States led to a series of burst of activity here at Hanford. They felt like that they needed to make more weapons periodically. So Hanford did its share. And of course we’re paying much of the price for that now, because we have the remnants to be cleaned up. That’s taking much longer than anyone might have anticipated. But at the time they were producing plutonium here, that wasn’t the major concern. A major concern was that there was a competition between the Soviet Union and the US. But that’s a whole different area, and that’s not my—that was not my involvement, where I was involved. Franklin: Sure. Let me rephrase that question, maybe tailor it better to you. What would you like future generations to know about working on the FFTF and the breeder reactor program? Daughtry: Well, I think future generations should remember that there is a concept that has been proven, that we could generate electricity, and we could—we do have, in the form of uranium, a fuel that could last for a long, long time. It doesn’t produce greenhouse gases. So it’s there, and it hasn’t gone away. The fact that we’re not following right now doesn’t mean that it won’t be followed sometime in the future. But I believe that FFTF served its purpose then. It might have accomplished a great deal more than it actually did. But the breeder program is something that was not just a pie-in-the-sky; it was real. And it’s still a possibility, and perhaps we’ll have to just see what the future holds. Whether that will ever resurrect itself remains to be seen. Franklin: Great. Is there anything that we haven’t discussed that you’d like to talk about today? Daughtry: Not that I—I think we’ve sort of covered the issues, covered the things. I just hope, you know, what I’ve been able to pass on to you is somehow helpful. Franklin: I think it is. Thank you very much, Jim, I really appreciate it. Daughtry: Yeah, appreciate it. Franklin: Your photos, would we be able to make digital copies of those and place them with your interview? Daughtry: Sure. They’re easily—I think they would be available. Franklin: Great. So if you don’t mind, what I’ll do is I’ll take those with me and I’ll make digital copies, and when we process your interview in a couple weeks and make a DVD out of it, we’ll slip these in the mail along with the DVD. Daughtry: I think those are the ones that I mentioned to you. Franklin: Okay, great. Is there any others that you think are of historical significance that you’d like to have with your interview? Daughtry: This is the first ascent to full power. Franklin: Oh, okay. Daughtry: And it went up step by step. There was also—I don’t know, does that show there was a bunch of signatures around there as well? Franklin: Yeah. Daughtry: So it’s a similar thing, that people wanted to be there the first time the reactor got up to its designed operating power, full power. And by that time, it could be that John Nolan may have been taken over as president of Westinghouse Hanford. I’m not sure of the exact time. But it’s a similar sort of thing. Achieving criticality was one major step, but another major step was when the reactor actually reached full power for the first time. Franklin: Great. Wow. This is great. Thank you so much, Jim. Put these in my folder here, and I’ll put these in a nice protective envelope when we mail them back to you— Daughtry: Okay. Franklin: So they don’t get all beat up. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate— Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:52:47 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Jim Daughtry Subject The topic of the resource Fast Flux Test Facility (Wash.) Westinghouse Hanford Company Richland (Wash.) Description An account of the resource Jim Daughtry came to the Hanford Site to work at the Fast Flux Test Facility. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 4/4/2017 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, who can provide specific rights information for this item. 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This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F4b3b39e87ce2507d604a1502d8a7ab60.jpg 770df6b0e7699c07a4956c77fd36fe8a https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F52781766779487f891c66cb12dd10aac.mp4 80f3a4e1bf5e27d53fb0329c79865a7f 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 Elaine Davis Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: Are you ready? Elaine Davis: There. Franklin: Better get that closed. Ready? Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Elaine Davis on September 2, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Elaine Davis about her experiences growing up in Richland. So, the best place to start is at the beginning. So why don’t you tell me where and when you were born? Elaine Davis: I was born September 27, 1948 at Kadlec Hospital. I grew up on 1918 Howell in Richland and I went to school at Jefferson Elementary, Chief Jo Middle—Chief Jo Junior High at that time, and Columbia High School. Franklin: And Columbia later became Richland? Davis: Richland High School. Franklin: Yeah, the gentleman I just interviewed also went to Columbia High School. And so, Elaine, we’ve already talked a bit, and I’ve read your bio here that my intern put together, and so you were born here, but your dad, your family didn’t work at Hanford-proper, right, but they worked for the government here? Davis: My dad, I think, worked for the Manhattan Project. He came in March 1944. And my mother came out in June of 1944, after she finished nursing school. And then my brother was born on the 2nd of August, 1944, and he was the first baby born in Kadlec. They didn’t have bassinets at that time; they put him in a dresser drawer. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: How new was Kadlec Hospital at that time? Davis: They had just completed the emergency room and the maternity section. Franklin: Okay. Davis: So my mom was admitted on the 1st, but she didn’t have him until the 2nd of August, 1944. Franklin: So your brother is somewhat of a local celebrity at the time, correct? Davis: Yes, he is, right. He was grand marshal for one of the parades that Richland had, with my mother sitting beside him, and they were the grand marshal. Franklin: I guess he kind of, in some ways he might symbolize—the first birth of the community, right, is something for the community to kind of gather around. Because up until that point, right, there was no one who worked for the Manhattan Project who had any kind of—no one could say, like, oh, I was born in Richland. You know? Davis: Mm-hmm, right. Franklin: Or at least the new Richland that was—is distinct from the— Davis: Because Richland did exist before the Manhattan Project. Franklin: Right, yeah, but most of those people had had to leave and were of a very different—they would’ve had very different lives and memories of Richland than all of the people that would’ve came. Davis: Yes. Franklin: So what did your father do at the Manhattan Project? Davis: He worked—he was one of the—not the first male nurse out on the Project, but one of the first male nurses out on the Project in 1944. Franklin: And— Davis: And— Franklin: Oh, please. Davis: But he didn’t, you know—he didn’t know what was going on. All he knew is he was here as a nurse to help out in any way he could. Franklin: Do you know where he worked in those early days? Davis: He didn’t tell me where he worked. I’m sure it was probably because it was so secretive. Franklin: Right, right. So then he transferred over to Kadlec when it was completed then? Davis: Yes. Franklin: Okay. And what did he do for Kadlec? Davis: He was the administrator for Kadlec. Franklin: Okay. So was he then in charge of like the day-to-day operations? Davis: Yes, he was. Franklin: Okay. And you also mentioned that your mother worked there? Davis: My mother worked from the time I was 13 months old, and she worked until I was in the third grade, when I was about nine. She went to work for Dr. Buren Lee for 17 years and then they started the Richland Clinic. She worked for Dr. Ballmann for 17 years after that. But she continued working until she was 78 years old. Franklin: Wow. Davis: Because of having Alzheimer’s, they had to let her go. Franklin: Right, right. And what did she do when she worked for the doctors? Davis: For Dr. Lee, she was a surgical nurse. For Dr. Ballmann, she was his medical nurse. Franklin: And how long did your father work at Kadlec for? Davis: I’m going to say for maybe a year, year-and-a-half, after Kadlec came into existence. Franklin: Okay. Davis; And then he worked for HEHF when they got the contract. Franklin: When was that? Davis: I’m not really sure when that was. He worked until he was 65 for HEHF as the administrator. Did all the hiring and firing for HEHF. Franklin: Okay. It says here that your father lived in the barracks at one time? Davis: He lived in the barracks for the first three months. And then they lived on Armistead—and I don’t know the exact address—for four-and-a-half years. And then they moved into 1918 Howell, three months before I was born. My mother was out watering the new lawn when she started her labor with me. Franklin: How—sorry. Did your father have any stories or anything about—or your mother—about—well, actually, I guess that’s a good question. So your father came in ’44, and your mother in June ’44. Do you know if your mother worked on the Manhattan Project? For the year— Davis: No, she didn’t. She did not— Franklin: Okay. Davis: --work for the Manhattan Project. But she did tell stories of standing in line for rations, meat rations, sugar rations, coffee rations, when it was 110 degrees and no trees. Franklin: Oh, man, wow. Davis: They would both talk about the terminating winds that people would just leave because it was dusty, so dusty you couldn’t see. And every day, you had to clean out your window sills because of the dust that piled up in the windows. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Wow. Do your parents have any other stories about that time? Anything that sticks out to you that you can remember? Davis: Now, they went and watched Eddie Feigner, the baseball player, was here. They went to a lot of baseball games to watch him, and they did a lot of their own entertaining. They played bridge every week, and rode their bikes an awful lot, played a lot of tennis. Franklin: I see. Oh, that’s good. I mean, you got to stay entertained. Tell me about growing up in Richland, you know, being a government town. I understand you would’ve been young for a lot of that, but during the Cold War, being this government town. Davis: I remember in grade school, we had to do duck-and-cover under our desks. We did that once a week. Franklin: Can you walk me through that process? Davis: You got under your desk and got on your knees and put your hands over your face, and you waited until they said everything was clear. Franklin: And you said you did that about once a week? Davis: Once a week. Franklin: So that means you got—I bet everybody got pretty—was it the same time all the time, or did you just hear the bell and know it was duck-and-cover time? Davis: You’d hear the siren and they’d have you—give you directions to do the duck-and-cover. Franklin: When did you understand, first understand, what was at Hanford or what was being produced at Hanford? Davis: I think that I learned about it when I was about 14, 15 years old. Franklin: Oh, really? Davis: Yeah. Franklin: Okay, and what do you remember about that? Davis: That everything was secretive. Nobody could discuss their jobs, what they were doing, or anything. So there was a lot of secrecy in it. But we didn’t question it. Franklin: Really? So, what did you think about it, when you found out what was being made at Hanford? How did that make you feel, or— Davis: I think it made me, you know—that saved our country. If we hadn’t done it, we might be slaves to the Japanese or to the Germans. Franklin: What about the work that had happened after the World War II, what about the continued—because, you know, when you would’ve found out about that, right, there was still a lot of production for the Cold War weapons arsenal. What about—so, I understand that feeling of in the World War II there’s that feeling you mentioned about being physically at war with other countries, declared war. But what about the Cold War? Is that trickier to draw a feeling about, or how do you—what about the Hanford’s relationship to the USSR and to the Cold War and to the nuclear weapons stockpile? Davis: It was, I thought, was scary, growing—learning about it. There was nothing that we could do as citizens ourselves. It was up to what the government—it was their decision, not ours. I really don’t have anything to comment on. Franklin: Sure. I just—the main reason I ask that question, these kinds of questions is for people—I grew up at the very end of the Cold War, but for myself and for people to come, it’s illustrative, I think, to hear from experiences of people that lived in that time and lived with the fear or the risk or just in that situation. Because it’s so unique. Davis: It is. Franklin: And such an interesting period of time, because World War II is so easily well-defined, and it ended with a lot of joy here and this kind of momentous occasions. Whereas the Cold War had its ups and downs. Davis: Right. Franklin: So that’s why I ask those—not to sort of draw any kind of gotcha moments or anything like that. But to just explore how you felt, or, like, the feeling of the sense of being in that conflict. Davis: I didn’t do a lot of reading, but I did listen to a lot of the news commentators and stuff like that. So just learning about it was an experience to go through. Franklin: Oh, yeah, I bet. So you would’ve found out about Hanford as a teenager, and then do you remember the sale of when Richland became privatized? Davis: Yes, I do. Franklin: I guess you would’ve been about ten. Davis: My dad showed my brother and I the biggest check we’d probably ever see written by my parents when they bought their house for $8,000. He took it with him when they signed the papers so that—we had ownership of our house, rather than the government coming in and changing lights; we changed our own lights, we could do reconstruction or construction—remodeling on the house and stuff like that, where we couldn’t before. So it was a great experience for my brother and I to go with them and to see what the process was in buying the house. My parents’ first house. Franklin: Did life change for you substantially after Richland was—or did you notice changes? Davis: I didn’t notice anything changing. We never locked our house or our cars. The kids in the neighborhood played out in the summer until 11:00 at night and you didn’t have to worry about children missing or being molested. We were a safe place to live and grow up. Our main activity was going to the river and swimming and water skiing everyday during the summer. During the winter, we snow skied. My dad learned to snow ski at 48. Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Davis: We taught him. He took a few lessons, but he learned, basically, from my brother and I. Franklin: Wow, that’s really cool. And so you graduated in— Davis: 1967. Franklin: And then what? Davis: Then I went to two-and-a-half years at CBC. And I’m dyslexic, so I could take about 12 credit hours. And then I decided after two-and-a-half years, I could get a job in the Area and my dad said—I said, can you help me get a job? And he says, I don’t want to be owing to anybody for getting a job for you. He says, if you get a job, you’re going to have to get it on your own. So I laid out of school for a year-and-a-half and I worked at Roger’s of Walla Walla in a potato shed. We had no air conditioning. Franklin: Whew. Davis: You inspected the potatoes and they were done then made into French fries. They’d come down the conveyor belt, and you’d pull the potato off that was rotten, or it wasn’t good enough to be used. So you pulled them off. And then you also packed five six-pound bags into a box and put it on the conveyor belt to go into the freezer. Another job was to make the box—the boxes were made, but you had to put it on a conveyor belt down to where it was put into—the potato sacks were put into the boxes and shipped to the cooler. What made me decide to go back to school was, I was working graveyard the whole year-and-a-half I worked there. But I’d worked there three summers and got a job full-time. Two women got into a brawl, biting, kicking, scratching, and I quit that night and said, I’m going back to school. I went back to school and majored in recreation, park administration at Eastern Washington University. It was a state college then. Franklin: Right. Davis: And I worked between my junior and senior year of college for the Richland Recreation Department. And then after I graduated from college, a year-and-a-half after I graduated from college, I got a job, my first job at Exxon. My salary for the whole year was $5,000 a year. Which was low in ’74 when I started. But everything was lower. Prices were lower then. And then I worked for them for four years, and then I got hired in by United Nuclear in 1978. And I worked in document control through many changes of companies until I was laid off in 2005. And then— Franklin: Oh, wow. Davis: 27 ½ years. And then I got a job working for the Richland School District as a bus aide for special needs kids, and just loved it. And I just quit working when I turned 66 two years ago. Franklin: Wow, that’s really—well, it’s great that you really enjoyed your last job. Records control, was that at the Federal Building? Davis: In the Federal Building, when I worked for United Nuclear, I went out and changed the operating procedures for N Reactor and the production of making the fuel rods for N Reactor. And then I worked in all aspects of document control for 25 years. The last job I worked at was procedures. I would take around procedures for safety operations, environmental, and I’d get the signatures from the engineers and that’s what I did. Franklin: And so what did—when you’re doing document control, what would those duties usually consist of? Davis: What would what be? Franklin: Sorry. When you were doing document control, what did that consist of? Like, what were your duties? Davis: Like I said, I retired records, and they were stored in records storage. Then my last job, like I said, was working with the engineers on writing of the procedures. Franklin: Interesting. It’s very similar to what I do as an archivist, is I manage records as well. Although in a different—manage them for research use. But it’s very similar steps, right? You follow a disposition schedule, you file the records in appropriate places, after a certain time you send things to— Did you send things to the National Archives at certain times, or--? Davis: No, we didn’t. I did not. But my group did. Franklin: Okay. How big was your group? Davis: We had about six people in that, in all different aspects. Franklin: How many different contractors did you work for, starting with United Nuclear? Davis: I worked for about four different companies. The last one was CH2M Hill. Franklin: Okay. And so what were the other two? Davis: Boeing. And I can’t remember what the other one was. Franklin: Is it Lockheed? Davis: Yes, Lockheed Martin. Yeah. Franklin: Yeah, I’ve seen their— Davis: It was Boeing and then Lockheed Martin. Franklin: LMSI. Davis: LMSI. Franklin: I’ve seen that on a lot of the documents we have in the Hanford Collection. Davis: Yeah. Franklin: I just—it’s nice to kind of trace that—I’m just going to write that down. United Nuclear Industries, Boeing, LMSI, CH2M Hill. Thank you. That’s very helpful to me, actually. Because it’s not always clear to reconstruct form the documents. So your brother, the famous Ed Quigley, Jr., the Richland-famous Ed Quigley, what did he do? Davis: He has a degree in social—not social work—psychology and sociology as a double major. But he didn’t—he got into the clinical aspect of it and didn’t like it. And then he started taking—his first wife, Chris, was accepted into Dalhousie University in Canada and they moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. And he started—that’s where he started his clinical work and decided he didn’t like it. So he was really interested in music, and he took guitar lessons and now he is teaching at Ted Brown’s Music Center in Tacoma. He’s been there for 40-some years. Franklin: Wow. Davis: And he just went with us to Canada. We went to Canada for a month. Just got back last week. And he went with us. That’s what he does. Franklin: Oh, cool. Davis: And he lives in a beach house which has got 210 stairs up and down to his house, so anything you bring down and all the garbage has to go back up. Franklin: I bet he stays in pretty good shape doing all that, right? Davis: Yeah, he is. Franklin: Yeah, I was going to say, that would—maybe I should get 210 stairs to my house. Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about your work or growing up in Hanford or your parents? Davis: I can remember, during the time that we were government, if you dialed 0 you got the FBI. Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Did that accidentally happen in your new household? Davis: We did! Once! [LAUGHTER] And got in trouble for it. Franklin: Wow. Davis: You know, we lived in a real sheltered community. When I was growing up, there was only one person that—or one family that I knew was divorced. They were a doctor and his wife and their three kids. That was the only divorce that I knew. So we were a pretty sheltered community. If your kids got in trouble, you were out of here. They didn’t put up with it. But I feel blessed to be in a community that was so caring and so carefree with letting us play outside. Now, you don’t let your kids go outside without being chaperoned. Some of my friends have got grandkids, and they don’t let them out of the house, because of the crime situations, child molestations. So I feel pretty blessed that I lived in a community where nobody bothered anybody, but you knew everybody. Franklin: Right, but I suppose a lot of that is due to kind of the single focus of that community being on Hanford employees, right? Davis: Right. Franklin: And the government control of the—the fear of—maybe not the fear of retribution, but knowing that there was kind of something watching over you. Davis: Right, right. Franklin: Which was the government. What about—did you—like the racial situation in Pasco or Kennewick ever make a mark on you, or do you remember any, like the civil rights era kind of stuff in the Tri-Cities? Davis: As a child, or as parents, our parents never took us to Pasco because of the racial situation there. And Kennewick didn’t allow any blacks, either, at that particular time, growing up. They were all in Pasco, on the east side. So we didn’t really go to Pasco a lot, or to Kennewick. We just stayed in our own community. Franklin: Because Richland just excluded—until ’58, you couldn’t live there unless you worked there, and they didn’t hire many African Americans. Davis: No, they didn’t. Franklin: At all, because there was no civil rights legislation to push equal—you know, push away discrimination in housing or employment. As you mentioned, Kennewick had sundown laws that kept African Americans from owning property. What about, is there any other significant events in Tri—do you remember like the Atomic Frontier Days parade? Davis: Yes, I do. That was one of the big things in Richland, was to go to the Atomic Frontier Days. We went every year, and just had a lot of fun. Franklin: How long did those go till? Davis: Now, that, I’m not sure. I can’t remember that. Franklin: Do you remember President Kennedy’s visit in 1963? Davis: Yes. I was let out of school to go hear him dedicate N Area, N Reactor. Franklin: How was—can you talk a little bit about that? How was that? Davis: Lots and lots of people. It was so crowded. It was good to see—that was the first time I’d ever seen a president up close. Franklin: How close were you? Davis: We weren’t right up front, but we were in the midst of the crowds that was out there. And it was a great feeling. Franklin: Wow, that’s great. Any other events in the Tri-Cities’ history that come to mind? Davis: No, I can’t remember a lot about that. Franklin: How did—so you worked for several different contractors and you also worked from production to shutdown to kind of cleanup. I was wondering if you could talk first about, how did your job change with different contractors? Or how was that—did the work situation change at all, or was it pretty constant? Davis: No, you did the—I was doing the same job that I was assigned to. Nothing seemed to change when a new contractor came in. Franklin: So was there kind of a lack of like an organizational culture with each contractor? Davis: Now, when we went—when CH2M Hill came in, we had to apply for our—re-apply for our jobs, and that was real unsettling to everybody. Because you didn’t know whether you were going to be the one that was going to be out on the street or whether you weren’t. So that was a lot of pressure was put on us. Franklin: Wow. I bet. What about, how did your job change at all from production to stoppage of production and then to the cleanup phase? Davis: Now, from production we changed a little bit, but not a whole lot. And then when we went into—I was laid off in 2005. And so I don’t know—I didn’t work with any of the cleanup completely. Like they are now. So I don’t know. Franklin: What kind of—well, but then—since production stopped in ’87, ’88— Davis: Yeah. Franklin: What happened in those years of the ‘90s and up? Davis: Well, N Area was still going. And then when they closed that down, things started changing, document-wise, with that. Franklin: How so? Davis: You had different things that we were given to do that were different from what we were doing when we were in production. Franklin: Could you describe that? Or like maybe some—what was different about them? Davis: I can’t really explain it. Franklin: Okay. Davis: But it was different. We had different things to do and different things to follow during that time. Franklin: Okay. Is there any example that comes to mind? Davis: Not really. Franklin: Okay. Let me see here. How did—can you describe how this kind of element of security or safety impacted your work at Hanford? Davis: You took pleasure in your job, and you were really loyal to what you were doing. You just had a great sense of gratitude for how we were doing it and what we were doing. Franklin: That’s great. What about for your father? Was he ever—do you know if he was ever impacted by security restrictions or safety stuff, or how that affected his job? Davis: That I don’t know, because he didn’t really discuss that with us. Franklin: Right. Davis: His work thing was separate from his family and social life. So we really didn’t hear about it. Franklin: Oh, right, okay. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War? Davis: I think that, you know, we were safe. And then when the Cold War came on, we weren’t as safe, because we didn’t know if somebody was going to send a bomb over and destroy us. Or destroy themselves, because we would probably retaliate. And to think that we could wipe the whole world out by what we were doing. We just didn’t trust each other. And we still, to this day, don’t know a lot about what’s going on either. We know more, but we don’t know everything. Franklin: Mm. Yeah. That is very true. One of the last things I’d like to ask you about is your relationship or your involvement in the B Reactor Museum Association. Davis: We just joined in June, so we’ve had— Franklin: Of this year? Davis: Yeah. Franklin: Oh, okay. Davis: So we’ve had two meetings [LAUGHTER] before we left to go to Alaska. Franklin: Oh, okay. And why did you choose to get involved in that? Davis: We wanted—because we both, both Charles and I worked here, and we wanted to get active in the organization to promote what Hanford’s about and the B Reactor especially. We went on the July 16th thing to B Reactor. It was great. We learned a lot. Just to walk into that face, and see the face of the reactor. Franklin: Was that your first time to B Reactor? Davis: That was my first time. Franklin: Yeah, it’s almost a religious experience in some ways. Davis: Yes, it is. Franklin: To be confronted with that massive, powerful reactor. You said your husband, Charles, worked on Site? Davis: Yes, he did. Franklin: And what did he do? Davis: He worked, to begin with, as a Hanford Patrol. And then he went from there into nuclear operator, and then from there he went into operations at T Plant. He was one of their administrators. He wasn’t high up, but he— Franklin: And how long did he work at Hanford for? Davis: He worked for 24 ½ years before he got laid off. Franklin: Oh, okay, and what years were those? Davis: Okay, ’78 to 2003. Franklin: Oh, okay. Davis: ’80. No, I take it back. 1980 through— Franklin: And—oh, sorry. Where did you guys meet? Did you meet at Hanford? Davis: No. We met square dancing. Franklin: Oh, okay. That’s really great. Did you meet him before you were working at Hanford or after? Davis: No, after. Franklin: Okay, you worked there pretty much around the same timespan. Davis: Mm-hmm, yeah. Franklin: Oh, that’s really interesting. Cool. Davis: You might want to interview him, too. Franklin: Yeah, that would be really interesting. Davis: He wasn’t born or raised here, but— Franklin: No, but that’s—it’s really good to get—one of the things we’ve been looking for is perspectives of those who worked during the later Cold War. Because, you know, it’s such a big event. Davis: Right. Franklin: And then the shift, too, from production to cleanup is a really important shift that will become more historical as time goes on, so it’s good to get the people while they have fresher memories than trying to make them drag out stuff from 50, 60 years ago. Which is—if that’s the best you got, then that’s the best you got. Well, great, Elaine, thank you so much for the information and the interview. Did you want to narrate some of the stuff you brought, or did you just want to donate that to us to scan? Davis: I’ll donate that to you. Franklin: Okay, great. Well, we’ll have that and we’ll put it in the file with your interview and so people can take a look at that, too, to kind of—if they want to see pictures of Ed, Jr., and all the newspaper articles. Well, I mean, I think there’s really something important about a community coming together to celebrate that first new life. That’s so important at the beginning of a community to see that happening, it makes it, I think, a nicer place to live. So that’s really neat. Well, thank you so much. Davis: You’re welcome. Thank you. Franklin: Yeah, watch out for the microphone up above you. Sorry. Davis: Oh! How’d I do? Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:42:39 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Elaine Davis Subject The topic of the resource Richland (Wash.) Hanford Atomic Products Operation Douglas United Nuclear, Inc. Description An account of the resource Elaine Davis grew up in Richland in the early Cold War. Her father came to Richland in 1944 and was an administrator at Kadlec Hospital. Her older brother was the first baby born in the new town of Richland Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 9/2/2016 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, who can provide specific rights information for this item. 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This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F9b9686e50c88c457899c6d7831221e3f.JPG d2cbc16ee310bc1c491a5128b063e47a https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F89eaaa9583a9445b5b1ec0f7bb88fbe0.mp4 f972553908e020e5deaacbd5c300a90a 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 Marilyn Devine Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Em DeVine on May 21, 2018. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Em about her experiences growing up in Richland and working at the Hanford Site. For the record, can you state and spell your full name for us? Em DeVine: M-A-R-I-L-Y-N. D-E-capital-V-I-N-E. Franklin: Great, thank you. And you prefer to go by Em? DeVine: I prefer Em. Franklin: Okay. DeVine: Although most people down here know me as Marilyn, because I didn’t change it until many years later, after I had left. Franklin: Oh, okay, gotcha. So tell me how your family came to the area to work at the Hanford Site. DeVine: Well, we didn’t come from far. We’re from Ellensburg, Washington. Franklin: Oh, okay. DeVine: My dad was a fireman there. And I know nothing about how he heard about the Project or anything like that. But he came to work at Hanford in 1943 and then the family didn’t move—he came early. Perhaps July or June. But the family didn’t move until December 6th of [19]43. And the reason I know that is because it was my brother’s 10th birthday. That’s the only reason I know the date that we moved. We lived in a farmhouse that of course had to be abandoned by the owners. It was ten miles from Hanford; it was three miles beyond White Bluffs. So we were in the country. And I’m so sorry I didn’t ever ask my dad why—how we happened to have the privilege of being there. Franklin: Maybe because they wanted him to be close, close to the fire station in case there was— DeVine: Possibly. Franklin: --an emergency. DeVine: Right, that’s certainly plausible. Franklin: Because I know that some patrolmen were allowed to live in some of the old houses, because they wanted them close. And how old were you when the family moved down? DeVine: I was nine. Franklin: You were nine, okay. DeVine: Yes, I had just turned nine the month before. Franklin: So your father leaves some time in the middle of 1943. And did he tell you why he was coming down to Hanford? DeVine: No, I don’t remember knowing why he was gone. They must’ve told us he was working someplace else. Franklin: What were your first impressions of the Hanford Site when you moved here? DeVine: Oh, of our house? Franklin: Yeah, of the whole thing. DeVine: And that area? Well, it was definitely old and dead and dry. The house was old and not a very—well, it wasn’t very good. We didn’t have running water. We had one electric light. We had a wood stove, of course. The bosses, the rulers of the Project, they had people build us a water barrel. It was up on stilts, and they would bring water every week. That was our water supply, except that it was a farm house and there was a barn a little bit down a hill. I can remember my brother and I loading up pots of water from that well and taking them in our Little Red Rider wagon to the house, and that was what we bathed in. Franklin: Oh, wow. DeVine: We drank and cooked with the other water, yeah. Franklin: Right. Did the house in Ellensburg have more modern— DeVine: Oh, my, yes. Yeah, it had a telephone, running water, lights in every room. It was very different situation. Actually, there were four kids. I had an older sister. She was eleven at that time, and my younger brother was probably about four, three or four, years old. The house had a kitchen, of course, and the dining room, and what was probably called a parlor, and then a living room, and one bedroom. But it had a covered, or a screened-in sunporch, I suppose it would’ve been. Franklin: This is the house here out at Hanford? DeVine: That’s the house at White Bluffs, right. So we three older kids had beds in that room. And then my baby brother had a crib in my parents’ room. It was—well, my mother had chickens. I think she had five chickens. And we had a dog that we had taken with us. While we were there, we bought two young goats, which were an awful lot of fun. Now my sister, Charlene, didn’t have a good teacher. The school system was not great. It wasn’t well-developed at that time. So she and my younger brother, because our mother was sickly quite a bit at the time, they moved back to Ellensburg with relatives. So it was just Terry and me for most of the time that we were there. It was a wonderful place to live, I thought. I mean, for kids that age, exploring and—it was just a really, really great opportunity, experience. Franklin: Were you near any other houses? DeVine: No! No, there was a number of fields between us and the houses that were along the Columbia River. They looked big and nice. They were painted white and all that stuff. It was really nice. Franklin: Were there any crops left on the farm? DeVine: No, just—well, actually, there probably was wheat or hay. But I didn’t really recognize it as such. But looking back, thinking back, there probably was some. But it was more just like weeds. Yeah. Franklin: What can you tell me about the school system out at Hanford during the war? DeVine: Well, the grade school kids went to what had been Hanford High School. It was a two-story brick, or block, construction. It’s still there. The high school kids were bussed into Richland, here into Richland. We went on double shifts. We had the morning shift, so that meant, I think, school was like from 6:00 to 11:00. Something like that, maybe 7:00 to 12:00. Very crowded rooms, although we all had desks. Because our mother was sickly, my older sister, my sister and the baby went back to Elle—I said that already. Sorry. Franklin: Oh, sorry, go ahead. DeVine: You go ahead. Franklin: Okay. DeVine: [LAUGHTER] Franklin: What did you do for leisure time when you were out there in this farmhouse? DeVine: Oh, gosh! We explored. Not too far from our house, there was a gravel pit. And one of the things that I especially remember is that my brother would stand up at the top, and I would go down below into the gravel pit. He would throw rocks down, and we would see if we could break them open to see if there was something interesting inside. We knew about thunder—hmm, now I have to think, the rocks that have something really—thunder eggs. I don’t think we found anything precious. If we thought it was, we would take it to our mom and have her look at it. That summer, spring after we were—before we had to leave, there was a meadowlark nest not too far out in one of the fields. That was fun to go watch the babies grow, and then they flew off. And as I recall—I could be wrong—as I recall, I was there when they took off, and each of the four birds went in a separate direction. Like, as if it had been planned or scripted, you know. I don’t know about that. Sometimes we would go down to the river and wade and catch minnows and take them home in jars. That was pretty much what we did. Franklin: Did you go like shopping with your father or down to the construction camp or into the town of Richland at all? DeVine: Not to Richland, no. We went into Hanford; there was a doctor’s office there. I was having health problems, too, so we would go there for odds and ends of things. Yeah. And my mother was hospitalized there for a short—a few weeks. And, no, I never did see the inside of any of the—well, let me take that back, because different famous groups came through to entertain as part of the war effort. I remember Truth or Consequences came, and then there were some others. We went in to those events. Franklin: So you’re kind of a local—like, I guess almost as local as you could get, coming down here, except for the people that had been displaced. DeVine: Right. Franklin: But you must’ve went to school with kids from all over the US, right? DeVine: Yes, yes. Franklin: I’m wondering if you could talk about that, about being in this community where everyone was brand new. DeVine: Yes. There was a huge campground—trailer park, and I met one of the girls there was Louanna Ivers. She and I were friends up until she passed away just a year or so ago. Franklin: Oh, wow. DeVine: Yeah. Which was fun. It was fun to have someone that went all the way from fourth grade through. Franklin: Where was she from? DeVine: Mm, Oklahoma somewhere? I don’t know exactly. But yeah. Everybody else that we knew was from someplace else: Utah, the South, the deep South. Yeah. Franklin: Did you know anything about the communities that had been there before the Manhattan Project? Did you ever run into anybody who had been displaced from the area? DeVine: No, not that I know of. Franklin: Okay. DeVine: I surely must’ve. I know that I heard somewhere along the line. Some of the people went to school to learn what they needed to do so that they could move back and work. But they weren’t allowed into their old homes, into their old homes out there anyway. Franklin: Did you live near any of the Hanford facilities? Or did you watch any of them go up? DeVine: Actually, the reason we had to leave in June of 1944 was because they were building B Reactor. We couldn’t see anything except that this concrete thing was going up. But we had to leave anyway, and our house wasn’t finished in Richland. So we had to go to for a few months, and then I think we came from Sunnyside in August to a prefab. Yeah. That was kind of interesting, too. We lived about a block from the stockyard, which was rather odorous. [LAUGHTER] Given the wrong wind direction. [LAUGHTER] But, gosh, we had a real house. It was a real kitchen, toilets, running water, electricity— Franklin: This the house in Richland? DeVine: No, the house in Sunnyside. Franklin: Oh, this is Sunnyside. DeVine: Right. So then when we moved to Richland in August, I think, of ’44, we were in a little prefab. And I asked—I wish I had remembered to ask my dad—I think I said this before—why we had gotten to live north of White Bluffs, because we didn’t have a telephone. There wouldn’t have been a way for them to contact him. That I can think of. Of course, my memory’s fuzzy at this point. Yeah. In Richland we had a prefab on the corner of Swift and Wright. Franklin: How many buildings—bedrooms, sorry. DeVine: Three. Franklin: Three-bedroom prefab? DeVine: Yeah. And I asked my dad not that many years ago why we had a prefab when there were bigger houses. I said, was it because of the money, the rent? And he said, probably. [LAUGHTER] He probably didn’t really remember either; he was pretty old by that time. But that was the last street west at that point, and that’s why my mother chose it. She did not like being hemmed in. Franklin: Oh, right. Yeah, because at that time it was just open—everything was just fields and-- DeVine: It was open. We played all the way to the Yakima River. And there was an old car body chassis out there. And of course there were rattlesnakes and bull snakes and scorpions. But nobody that I know ever got hurt with any of those things, yeah. It was a good place to live. Franklin: How did the prefab compare to other houses you had lived in? Was there anything unique about it? DeVine: [LAGUHTER] Well they were called cracker boxes. You may have heard that. Because of their shape; they were just a big square put on a platform that was about three feet on over side smaller, so that you had a place to play in—[LAUGHTER] I guess a place to play in the shade. Franklin: And they had the flat roofs then. DeVine: And they had a flat roof, yes. They had a swamp air conditioner in one window. Franklin: Swamp cooler? DeVine: When the sand blew, it came in the house. It was very dusty anytime we had any kind of a wind storm. We were lucky. We had nine peach trees. We were planted right in the middle of a peach orchard. My dad, being a farmer at heart, knew exactly how to take care of those trees. He had the best peaches in the city, and he would have contracted each year with a store to sell the peaches to them. Every year we had a big wind storm that blew most of the peaches off. So, yeah, that was very—a sad situation for him, especially. Because it sort of made him feel like nothing he did went right. You know what I mean? Franklin: Oh. Yeah, yeah. DeVine: Yeah. Franklin: I know exactly what you mean. DeVine: And we didn’t have grass; we didn’t have paved streets, no sidewalks. We had irrigation water, one irrigation hose in the yard, which was different than our house water. Franklin: And from when you moved in until ’58, they—did your parents stay in that—did you stay in that home the whole time? DeVine: No. Franklin: Okay. DeVine: We moved in ’48. We moved out to a ranch house, and it, again, was on the last street west, on Cottonwood. That was before Cottonwood Loop was built. So, once again, we were out as close to the open as we could be. And that made us all very happy. It was nice. It was four bedrooms. We fit in a little bit better. I think I was going into high school at that point. My sister, she lived with us for two years before she graduated and went to college. And then my older brother and I graduated in ’52. My younger brother graduated in ’57. So we’re all Richland Bombers. Although the high school was called Columbia High School at that point. Franklin: Yeah, Col High. DeVine: We consider ourselves—yeah. Franklin: It’s always interesting that it was Richland High and then became Columbia and is now Richland High again. DeVine: Right, right. Franklin: So you were in Richland—you moved into the house on Wright in ’44. DeVine: Correct. Franklin: So you were in Richland when the war ended. DeVine: Yes. Franklin: What do you remember about—I’d like to ask you about two events. The first would be the dropping of the bomb. What do you remember about that, that day, that time? DeVine: I remember that there was jubilation and people were saying, the war is over, the war is over. I don’t know why we had the car home that day; maybe our dad was—he worked shiftwork, so maybe he was sleeping. Anyway, the four of us kids got on the hood of the car with American flags and my mother drove us all around through town, yelling and celebrating that the war was over. It was later, I think, that I realized that the Hanford Project had had such a pivotal response to that. Franklin: Hmm. And that’s also a time when a lot of people— DeVine: Contribution to that. Franklin: Contribution, right. That’s also a time when a lot of people found out what was being done, even a lot of the workers. DeVine: Exactly. Franklin: Do you remember your parents talking about that moment when they realized what they had— DeVine: No. I don’t remember, except that I know my uncle, my mother’s brother, was in the war. And he went around—supposedly went around yelling, my brother-in-law did that! My brother-in-law did that! [LAUGHTER] And I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s the story that was passed on to us. So it was a wonderful time. It had been such a fearful time for us. When we lived in Ellensburg, we had—the college had been taken over by the Army. We had war bonds to buy; we had parties and weekends and people coming to town to try to get people to spend more on war bonds. And you could buy victory stamps, and when you got your book full of stamps, then you could buy a bond. And my brother and I sang over the radio—it was a really big thing, and there were airplanes flying over. There was a tank in a parade. So there was a lot of fear. We knew that we could be bombed, or we were led to believe that we could be bombed. We practiced air raids by ducking under our desk, which is pretty ridiculous. All of the houses had cans of sand in case of fire. All of the houses had blackout curtains for nighttime. So there was a lot of fear. But also a lot of joy in our lives. You know, I think our parents and our relatives did a really good job of trying to neutralize that fear. Franklin: Did you have a victory garden as well? DeVine: We did, yes! My dad, being a frustrated farmer, he had a big garden in our yard there. But he also had what we had a victory garden at my great-grandparents’ home. So he had two big gardens going on. Franklin: Richland, for all this time that you were living—or until 1958, was a government town. DeVine: Yes. Franklin: I’m wondering if you could—what you remember about that era in respect to that peculiar nature of there being really no private property in Richland. DeVine: I don’t think we knew the difference. Franklin: What kinds of things was the government responsible for in terms of people’s housing? DeVine: Well, they chose the designs. [LAUGHTER] They chose the colors. They chose what would be where. They did not dictate anything about landscaping or anything like that, that I know of. It just seemed like a normal town, really. Except that we didn’t have the streets and those kinds of things. But that didn’t really affect us. And then when we did get pavement downtown, when we’d go to a show on Saturday for a dime, we would go barefoot and we would stand in the shade of a building and then we would run as fast as we could across the pavement to the next shade. Because the pavement was so hot—blacktop pavement—was so hot on our feet. But it just—well, I remember one thing, too, that we had very long lines at the post office and they probably had long lines at the bank, although I don’t really remember going to the bank. I remember going to the post office. Franklin: The town had a pretty active bus system. DeVine: Yes, they did! And it was free. Franklin: Yeah. DeVine: Later. All the workers could ride the bus to work. And in fact, many years later, I did that when I was working at 300 Area. I rode the bus a lot of the time. Not all the time, but a lot of the time, yeah. Franklin: What schools did you go to? DeVine: Well, we started out at Sacagawea because Marcus Whitman hadn’t been completed by that time. But that was only until maybe Christmas break. Then we went to Marcus Whitman. And then, of course—there was no junior high at that time, so then we went straight to Columbia High School from eighth grade. So it was a four-year high school. Franklin: And what year did you graduate? DeVine: ’52. Franklin: ’52, okay! DeVine: Yes. Franklin: And then you went to—you being working out on Site, shortly afterward? DeVine: Yes! I was 18. So I had to have a birth certificate to prove that I really was. I worked at 300 Area as a lab assistant. What we did was process sheep pee to—it was just for a local control of the nuclear activity in the animals. I don’t even, to tell you the truth, know what they were looking for. We just were told what to do and we did it. I loved it. Franklin: Yeah, why? DeVine: I like anything science or anything medical. A number of years later, I came back. I had married, moved, had children, came back. And then I got a job as a chemical analyst. And, oh my goodness, that was such a good job. I really loved it. It was important. It was also in 300 Area. Then our little unit ran out of money, and I was the last hire, so I had to go to work at B, in B Reactor for six months until the new budget was passed. Franklin: What did you do out at B Reactor? DeVine: I swear to goodness, I do not know. I know we were processing samples. I don’t know what they were looking for, I don’t know where the samples came from, anything about it. Except that when I went on the tour of the B Reactor, I thought, oh yeah! This is—I do remember it. So I don’t know very much about that. It only took about six months to be out there. And then I remarried and got pregnant and moved to Alaska. Franklin: Okay. DeVine: So that kind of— Franklin: So you worked out on the Site—for how long total did you work out there for? DeVine: Oh, total, oh gosh. Not very long, actually. Maybe five years was all. I really hated leaving Richland, because for one thing, I really enjoyed the work. And I loved the people that I worked with. And it was important work. So—but I left, because I had to. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: What were the most challenging or rewarding aspects of your work out at Hanford? DeVine: Well, the rewarding part, especially when I was a chemical analyst, was knowing that it was so important for our safety, locally. But I think it was an international safety, as well. All we were permitted to say was radiochemical analysis of fission products. That’s how secret it was. But we did know, because they thought it was important for us to know, what we were doing so we would be especially careful, and especially precise. I guess the hard part would’ve been being in a closed system for the entire work day. The challenge was just doing a good job, you know? It was just a wonderful job. Harvey Tenney was our chemist, and then they went on up from there. Franklin: Did you have to wear any type of special protective clothing or equipment to handle— DeVine: Yes. Well, we wore lab coats. And of course gloves and safety glasses. We did not wear the masks. We didn’t have our hands in places where the radioactivity was so great that we had to wear the big gloves. These were just medical nursing gloves. Franklin: What about radiation monitoring? Were you monitored at all? DeVine: Oh, yes, absolutely. We wore a badge and on the badge was some sort of thing that could detect radiation. We checked our hands before we left work, and then we turned in our badges once a month to be read. At one point, I did get what’s called crapped up when I was working out at B Reactor. It was interesting. At one point I had to take off my dress and wash it. And of course I had a lab coat to put on. They washed it. And then I wore it home, of course. And another time, they were going to check my house, but I hadn’t taken anything home. If I had, I would’ve been fired right then. But I hadn’t taken anything home. So it was fine. Franklin: Where did you—did you live after you graduated and you started working on Site? Did you still live with your family? DeVine: I lived with my parents for a while, and then when I came back, I had three children, so I bought a prefab, a little three-bedroom, added another bedroom and remodeled the bathroom. It was on the corner of Hoffman and Smith. So I was on another corner, yeah. Franklin: Okay. I know that area pretty well. It’s kind of over by where I live. Could you describe a typical work day as a chemical analysis— DeVine: As a chemical analyst? Franklin: In the lab? DeVine: Well, yes, we would go and show our badges to get through the gate, go into the building, 325, I think it was. And put on our white shoes and our lab coat. Go into an airlock, close the door behind us, and then we could go into the actual lab. I can’t really give much about that, except that we prepared samples and then they were taken out to be radiated. And then we would get them back a few days later and process them again to see what the radioactive content had been. And I have no idea of any of the finished information, of the ending information. Yeah. Franklin: Right, yeah, that would’ve been passed up the chain. DeVine: No! [LAUGHTER] Franklin: What are some of your memories of any major events in Tri-Cities history, such as plants starting up--? DeVine: No, I don’t really remember anything like that. Atomic Frontier Days was the big celebration of the year in the summer. A big parade and all that. And the sports activities were an important thing. Franklin: I’m wondering if you could talk about the Atomic Frontier Days. What kinds of themes were there and what kind of activities were common in those celebrations? DeVine: Well, we had a parade, like I mentioned. And we had a Miss Tri-Cities. Hmm. I’m sure we had baseball games that were connected with it. Speakers, politicians would come and speak. I don’t remember any famous entertainers coming like they did at Hanford during the wartime. But—oh, one thing that I thought was fun. We had a swimming pool, Richland, the town of Richland had a swimming pool down by the Columbia River. And I thought it was really a huge pool and it may not have been. But there were so many people here that you could only swim for an hour, and then you had to get out and stand in line again for another hour to try to get in again. That made an impression on me [LAUGHTER] because I just had never heard of such a thing before. There wasn’t enough space for everybody to swim at the same time. Franklin: Yeah, wow. DeVine: They since filled that in and built another one up at Richland High School. Franklin: Yup. Yeah, the George Prout pool. DeVine: Yes. Franklin: Were you here when President Kennedy visited? DeVine: Yes, I was! Franklin: Did you go out to see him? DeVine: I did not. Franklin: Oh, okay. DeVine: My mother went. She was sick with cancer at the time, and she felt like she had touched him when he walked by. Whether or not she actually did, I don’t know. But it suited her to think that she had actually touched him. It was a very big thing, that visit was a very big thing around here. Yeah. I’ve seen pictures of it. But I didn’t—and I knew it was going on. But I don’t know why I didn’t go. I might’ve been at work. I don’t know what day of the week it was or anything. Franklin: Could you describe the ways in which security and/or secrecy at Hanford impacted your work? DeVine: Well, we always felt real safe. [LAUGHTER] It’s not like life today. It wasn’t a big deal; we just had our badge, and we turned them in each month and got a different one. So probably we rotated. That’s the only thing I can figure. They wouldn’t have been able to do all the badges, like, for instance, over the weekend or something. Because that job in 300 Area was just straight Monday through Friday, 6:15 to 2:00-something. Yeah. So it wasn’t a big deal. Franklin: What about the secrecy aspect? Did that ever impact your daily life or your friendships or relationships with anyone? DeVine: In a way, it probably did. You know, we had the signs: we will bury you; Khrushchev saying, we will bury you. And loose lips sink ships. And how important security was. Now, when I first got that job—maybe I shouldn’t say this, but when I first got that job as a lab assistant, I was telling a friend, a neighbor, about it. And she thought I went too far. Franklin: Oh. Like you had said too much about what you were doing? DeVine: What I was doing, right. Franklin: Oh. DeVine: She asked me, thermal heat or—? [LAUGHTER] And I said, oh, yeah—no. So, her sister, I guess, was the one that told me that she thought I’d said too much. Franklin: Oh, wow. So there was like kind of community policing in that regard. DeVine: There was, yes. Franklin: Do you remember—I’d heard stories that there were FBI agents that would kind of walk down the street or go to people’s houses to interview people about— DeVine: I think we were aware of that, yes. Yeah. Interesting. Franklin: Yeah, isn’t it? It’s kind of—it’s strange. When you were in school, did you have to do the duck-and-cover drills, civil defense drills? Was that a concern? DeVine: No, I don’t—I may be wrong. But I was so impressed with the ones that we had in Ellensburg, that anything else probably wouldn’t have been important enough to even think about. Franklin: Knowing what was being made at Hanford, and knowing the geopolitical situation—you mentioned the ‘we will bury you’ signs—and knowing that Hanford played a large role in the development of atomic weapons, did you ever feel like you were on the frontlines, or like the Hanford community might be a target in case of an eruption of hostilities? DeVine: You know, I think probably a lot of people did. I don’t remember feeling that. Now, I may have. That’s been a long time ago and a lot of things have happened in my life since then. Maybe that’s why is not a big memory. But I don’t think that I—there’s always fear of war and terrorism and stuff like that. But I don’t think it affected my life significantly at all. Franklin: How long did your father work out on Site until? DeVine: Well, he started in ’43, and then he would’ve retired probably when he was 60 or 65. He retired as a fireman there. Franklin: Oh, okay. DeVine: And I don’t—I was gone. I don’t know what year it was. Franklin: Did he stay in Richland his whole life? DeVine: He did, he did. They moved away for a little—five years or something. Then they lived up in Chelan for a while, on Lake Chelan, in Manson. But then he came back and lived here until he died. Franklin: What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War? DeVine: Well, it was a unique situation, certainly. Many of us have stayed in touch with people. Part of that is the result of a thing we call—it’s like a daily newsletter, we call it The Sandstorm. So that we know what’s going on among our friends. They talk a lot about no other town ever being like this. I don’t buy that, myself. I think there were a lot of safe towns, unique towns. But it was interesting. We didn’t really know the difference, I don’t think, at that time. I mean, things were safe. You could walk home any time of the day or night. Neighbors played in the streets, you know? Things like that. But I think that happened in a lot of towns. But we, because we were here, and maybe because we came from so many different places in the United States, we saw it as being very unique. And I don’t know. Franklin: Certainly, until ’58, you had to have a job at Hanford or be working— DeVine: Correct. Franklin: --to live in Richland. DeVine: Right. Franklin: So everyone had a job. DeVine: And many of them were, like, the stores. You could be an employee in the stores and things like that. You didn’t have to have a job on the reservation. Franklin: Right. But even those stores all had to have contracts with the Atomic Energy Commission— DeVine: Right, right. Franklin: --to operate the store. I think, maybe, that’s where a lot of people feel the community is unique, certainly because most towns didn’t have 100% employment and were owned by the government. DeVine: That’s true. That’s true. Franklin: I mean, there was no private—there was private property, but there was no—all the land and everything was— DeVine: Right, right. Franklin: It certainly is very interesting. DeVine: Yes, it is. Franklin: In how we think about small town America. DeVine: Right. And I don’t even know what small-town America is like, anymore. I think it’s changed so much since I was a youngster. Franklin: I wanted to ask you, when you moved back to Richland in 2000—how had the Tri-Cities changed from when you had left to when you came back? DeVine: The most staggering thing was the growth. The busy streets, the highways going in. Just the stores, traffic, all the time. It was—that was the thing that struck me the most. Franklin: Well, Em, thank you so much for—I guess I’ll, last point, is there anything else you wanted to say in regards to— DeVine: I can’t— Franklin: Your life in Richland? DeVine: Nothing significant comes to mind. I’m sorry. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: No, it’s fine. I just didn’t want to end without giving you the chance to—if there was something that you had thought of. DeVine: Right. Well, there’s lots of things, but not important enough to— Franklin: Well, I don’t know about that. What comes to mind? DeVine: I guess all high schools have this rah-rah-rah mentality. And we did, perhaps in the extreme. Because we had come from all over, there was just a different kind of closeness, maybe. And inclusion, they would call it now. [LAUGHTER] I don’t think we even had that word back then, as far as people are concerned. Yeah. Franklin: Because everyone—that’s another thing, actually, I wanted to ask. So you had family that was close by. DeVine: Yes. Franklin: Extended family. But many others didn’t. DeVine: Oh! Franklin: Do you think that led—how do you think that impacted people? Is that maybe what led to some of that inclusion? DeVine: Oh, I think it was so hard on so many of those families to be far away form any relatives at all. And yes, I think you’re right, that that did have something to being neighborly and being inclusive in our schools, and really gelling as a community. It must’ve been absolutely horrible. Now, my mother was raised, born and raised in the Ellensburg, Kittitas Valley, as was my dad. And she called these hills, those bald-headed hills. I mean, she really, really did not like the topography. [LAUGHTER] The fauna. Franklin: Right, she must’ve missed the trees and— DeVine: Oh, my gosh, it was terrible. But our neighbor from Kansas called them mountains. [LAUGHTER] You know? So there was just a different perspective for everybody that came here, and what was great and what was terrible. But I do think that having people come, and some of them maybe never seeing their relatives again. I don’t know about that. But it must’ve been just— When I drive through the countryside now and I see these farm houses, I think back to the days when women were out on their own—families, with their husband and whatever children—all by themselves. And I think about that every time I go by these buildings that are somewhat isolated, still. But they have cars, they have phones, they have TV, you know, so they can get around and they can see what’s going on in the world. We had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world, except the war. Yeah. Oh! President Harry Truman came and visited and talked. Franklin: Oh. DeVine: And the Richland High School band marched in a parade for him. That’s the closest I ever got to a president. Franklin: Do you remember what year that was? DeVine: Gosh. Well, I was in high school, so it had to have been ’49 or ’50 would be my guess. Franklin: So during the second term. DeVine: Yeah, ’49 or ’50. Franklin: That brings me to another question. So after the war ended, it looked like Hanford might shut down for a while. DeVine: Yes! Franklin: And I’m sure some people were probably making plans to move or leave or figure out—do you remember—did your family have any such plans or— DeVine: I think there was quite a bit of turmoil for a lot of people in that regard. But then they just kept finding things to do and finding things to do. There was a lot of—I think there were a lot of families that left, fearing that it would shut down, and went and found jobs other places. But a lot of us stuck around, just hung in there. Franklin: And there was a new boom in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s when they built K East and K West and some of the other reactors. How did that impact Richland, and do you remember much about that? DeVine: I have no idea, except that people came in. I’m still astonished by how many houses are being built here. Where are the people coming from? Who are these people? Why are they coming here? [LAUGHTER] You know? Franklin: Back then or right now? DeVine: Now. And I probably thought the same thing then. Why are all these people here? Franklin: Well, I’ll tell you, as someone who’s trying to buy a house right now, it’s a tight market and everything’s getting snapped up. Yeah, I wonder that, too. But our economy must be good. Housing’s tight. DeVine: Yeah, it’s very interesting to watch it. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m trying to buy a house, too. I need a bigger house. I bought a small house just for me. Turn that off. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:49:52 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Marilyn DeVine Subject The topic of the resource White Bluffs (Wash.) Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Description An account of the resource Marilyn (Em) DeVine spent part of her childhood in White Bluffs, living in an old farmhouse during the Manhattan Project. Her father was a patrolman and had to be stationed on the site. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 05/21/2018 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, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Language A language of the resource English 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 operated under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who were 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 the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff3da4d16bba583704caea6d400bb98ce.mp4 cbd5b1985472081504ab0215ba4f5c1a https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F57cb3e60dc53182221069668bb36efb4.JPG fdcdc00119f25a1ff49da8ae8822fac3 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 Marilyn Drake Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: We’re ready. Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducing and oral history interview with Marilyn Drake on July 17, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Marilyn about her experiences in the Hanford area. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us? Marilyn Drake: My name is Marilyn Drake. It’s M-A-R-I-L-Y-N. Drake is D-R-A-K-E. Franklin: Great. Thank you, Marilyn. And so tell me how and why you first came to the Hanford area. Marilyn Drake: Well, I was born in the state of Kansas, and when I was about five weeks old, my parents headed west. And somewhere when I was a baby, I would guess less than a year old, we ended up at White Bluffs out in the Hanford Area. Not long after being here, because of the dust storms and things, I got dust pneumonia, so my parents had to leave. So they ended up in Belfair, Washington. My father was planning on working in the shipyards there, and instead went to the Aleutian Islands. So anyway, we were out of the area then until about 1950, ’51. He was well enough to come back here and work as a carpenter out in Hanford. We lived in North Richland, the first time, in the 200-block, I believe it was, of north Richland, in the trailer park that was out there. Franklin: Oh, wow. Marilyn Drake: And it was approximately a mile long and two miles wide. [LAUGHTER] So it was a big trailer park. Then, of course, being on construction, he was in and out of jobs, because they’d finished up or whatever. So we had a home in Ellensburg and we’d go there until he got a job again, and we’d come back. So the second time, we were in the 1100-block on F Street in north Richland. I have fond memories of that time. I loved the John Ball School that was there. I went fourth grade with Mrs. Campbell. Fifth grade was—I take that back. Fourth grade was Mrs. Atkinson. Fifth grade was Miss Campbell, and sixth grade was Mr. Hoffman. Mrs. Atkinson gave me a love of knowing about travel, I guess. She shared experiences with being in Switzerland, which really got me interested. Taught us some things abut the Danube River. Then Miss Campbell was the next teacher, and I enjoyed her. And then Mr. Hoffman, he shared where he was during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was decorating for a high school prom. So we went to school at John Ball in sixth grade until about halfway through the year, they moved us into Richland to, I believe it was, Marcus Whitman School, if I remember correctly. Evidently overcrowding. But the school was a neat place. We were in Quonset huts. The big cafeteria was huge; at least it seemed that way to me when I was a child. That was the times when teachers stayed with the class from the morning until they went home in the afternoon. So we wouldn’t go in the cafeteria, and we’d all join hands around the table, and we’d say the Lord’s Prayer before we had lunch. Which nowadays would not be done. [LAUGHTER] We had a Christmas play there. I played the accordion and I played We Three Kings of Orient Are for the play that was going on. When we went outside to play, there wasn’t any grass; it was all dust and rocks. So we took—the girls anyway—took the rocks and laid out floor plans for houses, and we’d play house while recess was going on. We also had air raid drills which, we all went out and there was a big ditch out there that we all jumped into, covered our heads with our hands, and got ready, in case it happened. The rooms were smaller Quonset huts; they had wings off of the main hallway. Whoever sat in the last of the row had to be a short person, because otherwise they’d hit their head on the roof of the Quonset hut. Franklin: Yeah, the semi-circular roof. Marilyn Drake: So it was an interesting school, but just really had fond memories there and really enjoyed it. I still think about it. And had some good friends. Each block in the trailer park, at the end of the block, there was a playground. We had swings and a couple teeter-totters. I think that was about it. The rest was an open sandbox and so on. So we kids spent a lot of time in the playground. There was also a large laundry room that had restrooms—because most of the trailers in those days didn’t have bathrooms in them. So you had restrooms there and there was a laundry room across the end of it. So usually after dinner, mostly the girls would go to the laundry room, and we would have a small ball. And we played bouncing against the wall and clapping your hands to catch it and so on. That was our form of entertainment. We didn’t have the TV and the Xboxes and so on that people have today; we had to make our entertainment. Franklin: Did you have a radio? Marilyn Drake: Yes, we did have a radio. I remember my father listening to the news, which I didn’t enjoy. But. [LAUGHTER] As I was young, then. Franklin: I never enjoyed it when my father would watch the news on TV when I was young, either. Marilyn Drake: Well, there were times he would lay on the couch and go to sleep and the radio was up above that in the front window on a ledge. So I’d sneak up the side of the couch and crawl across the back when he was asleep and either turn it off or change channels. And the minute I did, he’d wake up. So it was futile. Franklin: So did your trailer have a restroom? Either one that you lived in? Marilyn Drake: The first one didn’t. It was just a bed in the back, and we had a couch in the front. The second one had a bathroom and it was one-bedroom so I had the couch to sleep on. Franklin: Did you have any brothers or sisters? Marilyn Drake: I had seven half-brothers and a half-sister, but all of them didn’t live with us. Once in a while, one would come and stay a while. So I was more or less an only child. Franklin: I guess that makes it easy in a one-bedroom trailer. Marilyn Drake: My parents were quite a bit older; they were in their mid-‘40s when I was born, so— Franklin: Okay. Marilyn Drake: I grew up with older people. So the kids were mostly—the other kids in the other family were mostly grown and on their own by that time. So that was interesting. I remember the pharmacy or drugstore as we called it then in north Richland. Always loved to go in there because they had a big rack of magazines, all kinds, outdoors, comic books, whatever. Liked to do that. My neighbor next-door, they had two children: a daughter that was older than me and a son that was about three years younger, who I just reconnected with this last week. Franklin: Oh, really? Marilyn Drake: We hadn’t seen each other since 1954. So it was interesting. We had a good time visiting and we’re going to do more things together. His parents wouldn’t let him go to the movie unless I went with him, so it was kind of my first date. [LAUGHTER] Baby-sitting, I guess. But nice family; they were from Nebraska. Most all the people out in Hanford were from somewhere else, because they came in here to work. My maiden name was House, and this gentleman I just talked about that I reconnected with, his name is Tool. And across the street were the Surpluses. And so people would come by and say, did you guys put these signs up to be funny, or what? They didn’t realize we were actually with the names that we had. So just fond memories of the whole situation. [LAUGHTER] I remember the old steam plant that used to be, I think, on the hill not far from here. As you started up into north Richland, it was there. And that’s what they heated, I guess, the old barracks and stuff. So you had the big tubes that ran along the streets. Close to there, there was part of the lot that it as on, they had these piles of, I think, it was coal. And if you went there, you could find mercury. Being stupid kids that didn’t know better, we’d go and play with the mercury in our hand or whatever. Not a good idea to do, but we did. It was part of growing up, I guess. Had some pretty good dust storms during that time, which the Tri-Cities used to be well-known for. Also, a few rumbling thunderstorms that moved through. The streets at north Richland were paved by the time I lived there, but there are some pictures in the book that I brought that shows it without paved streets. There were several thousand people lived in this area. Franklin: Do you remember—you said there were blocks of these trailers, do you know roughly how many blocks there are and the amount of houses per block? Marilyn Drake: Okay, these were trailers, so you had 12 blocks long, or wide, whichever way you want to call it, by 24 blocks the other way, so— Franklin: Okay, and that was that mile by two miles? Marilyn Drake: Yeah, more or less. It was a big place. And we rode our bicycle everywhere; we didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped. It was a lot to explore around the area. We could ride down to the river and see what was going on down there. Franklin: Now, were these personal trailers that people brought or were they government owned? Marilyn Drake: No, they were personal. Each trailer had a roof, a second roof over top of it, just like the roof of a house, because of the heat. So that helped somewhat, because there wasn’t much air conditioning around in those days. We did get an old, old swamp cooler that my parents put in the backdoor of the trailer that we had, which helped. But it could get pretty hot. So anyway you had all these roofs that there were that many roofs over that many trailers. Franklin: Wow. And did the government provide those roofs for each trailer? Marilyn Drake: Yes. Yes, they provided. Franklin: Okay. And did they provide any other amenities? Marilyn Drake: Just the washroom and utility room area. I think, if I remember correctly, we paid $20 or $25 a month to the government for rent on the lot. You could raise—it was big enough that you could have a small garden or flowers, whatever you wanted. And people kept them up pretty well. Franklin: I bet. That was another thing I was going to ask about. Was there much landscape—you mentioned the roads were paved by that time and at the John Ball School there was no grass. But was there landscaping in the trailer court? Marilyn Drake: If each person wanted to put it there. There was nothing—the playground was dirt—actually sand, around here. So we weren’t the cleanest kids around when we came in from playing. But it was, I guess, what you’d call pristine compared to today’s standards. Most everybody had grass, which we had water to water it with and stuff. If they liked flowers they could have flowers. My folks planted up the one side, they strung, just off the—there was a wood deck, just like a porch. Just off of that, my mother got some, they were called something-cucumbers, and they strung them up, and they grew up the strings, so that you had shade. That helped a whole lot with the heat, too. So that type of thing, yeah. Franklin: Let’s see here. At school, you mentioned doing the air raid drills. Did you ever have to do evacuations? Where they would get people on buses and they would go outside? Marilyn Drake: No. Just, we went to the ditch and dropped down and covered our head. Franklin: Oh, wow. So I guess it must’ve been interesting having—you probably didn’t remember being in White Bluffs, but having been at White Bluffs and then now, the area’s totally transformed. Did you ever meet anybody from the old towns of Hanford and White Bluffs after you came back to Richland? Marilyn Drake: Not that I’m aware of. I’ve read stories, and I have the book that is put together about Richland, which shows things and tells about the schools. I’ve heard about the families that had to move out, government came in and said, tch, so many days and you’re out of here, and took it over. Which seemed kind of sad, because some of them had been like pioneer families. But it was for the nation’s cause, so. Franklin: You said that your father moved to Richland to do, was it carpentry? Marilyn Drake: Mm-hmm. Franklin: Why did he move to White Bluffs originally? Was it to farm, or to do carpentry? Marilyn Drake: To do carpentry. He went to work for—or, I think he went to work for Hanford. I don’t know how long that lasted because of my illness. But, yeah, he had been a builder of wooden barracks in Kansas when I was born. So for whatever reason, it was move west, young man. I guess. So he came out here and he was more or less a rough carpenter. Didn’t do finish work and stuff for the most part. Franklin: Okay. And do you know what kinds of buildings or projects he worked at on the Site? Did he ever talk about that at all? Marilyn Drake: I don’t know that he ever named them like 300 Area or 1000 Area or whatever that way. They built a lot of forms for buildings out there. He ended up with three broken ribs at one point because someone had put a two-by-four, stood it against the wall, and he bent over to get something out of his toolbox and the two-by-four came down and hit him across his back. Franklin: Ooh. Marilyn Drake: So he was kind of in pain for a while until that healed. But I don’t remember him specifically saying exactly where he worked. Franklin: And you said that after a while, when you were in sixth grade, your family moved into Richland proper, right? Marilyn Drake: Mm-hmm. The school did. We still lived in north Richland. But they did. Franklin: Oh, the school did. Marilyn Drake: Yeah. Just our class. Franklin: Okay. Marilyn Drake: I think it was the sixth grade class that they took the whole class in. And I’m assuming it was because they had too many students and needed the room at John Ball. And I was only there part of—I think we left in March of that year. The job ended here, and we ended up going up to Bridgeport, Washington to work on the Chief Jo Dam up there. So I was only a part of the sixth grade year. Franklin: Did you mostly hang out with north Richland kids, or did you know anybody in Richland? And was there a real—it sounds like there was kind of a separation between north Richland and Richland. Marilyn Drake: Yeah, more or less. The kids were usually the kids that went to school out there; there were quite a few of us. I remember one classmate, his name was Ronny Sloan. He liked beans. And my mother would make ham and beans, and whenever that happened, Ronny got invited to dinner. Because he enjoyed the beans. There was the Saltz family, which had, I believe, 12 kids. They had a very small trailer, but they had a truck that had like cattle racks on it, and they had canvas over the top of it. Most of the boys, I think, slept in the truck. They eventually owned a trailer park in Kennewick until a few years ago, and apparently sold it. Franklin: Oh, wow. Marilyn Drake: So I’ve been able to track a few of the kids, not knowing—not talking to them, but at least knowing where they were. Franklin: Were there stores in north Richland, or did you do your shopping in Richland proper? Marilyn Drake: For the most part in Richland. Like I said, there was a pharmacy, I believe there was like a soda fountain in the pharmacy if I remember correctly. I don’t remember any—there was a movie theater. That’s where we went to the movie. Saw Titanic with this neighbor I was telling you about. The original Titanic. I don’t remember any of the stores being there. Uptown Richland was really pretty new at that point; it had just opened not too long before that. So we went in there for groceries and anything else that we needed. Franklin: Okay, great. So then eventually your family moved away, right? You said up to work at the—which dam? Marilyn Drake: Chief Jo, up at Bridgeport, Washington. Franklin: But eventually, you came back to Richland, right? Marilyn Drake: When I graduated from high school in 1960, I was looking for a job and came down to Pasco and applied for Pacific Northwest Bell as a telephone operator, and I got the job. Had met my husband and he was in Sunnyside and I lived in Yakima when we met. But he was also down here with his parents. We ended up being married here in Richland by Judge Erickson. Franklin: Okay. Marilyn Drake: Our daughter was born in the old Kadlec Hospital which was the old barracks from the Hanford time. And then we moved away then to Michigan for five years, came back and spent 13 years here. We bought an F house and lived in it. Over on Mahan Street. Ended up in California for 23 years, which we didn’t initially plan on, but it worked out that way, and we came back in 2007 to retire here. Franklin: Okay. And what did—and so you said you lived here for 13 years, so from ’70 to ’83. Marilyn Drake: Mm-hmm. Franklin: And your husband worked out on Site? Marilyn Drake: Mm-hmm. Franklin: And where did he work? Marilyn Drake: He worked on FFTF, Number 1, a lot of the other places out there, 300 Area. Bob Drake: 2 West. Marilyn Drake: 2 West. He was construction, also, so you worked whatever job was going at the time. Bob Drake: The office buildings in the 300 Area, yeah. Franklin: I just want to say, for the record, Marilyn’s husband, and you prefer to be called Bob, right? Marilyn Drake: Yeah. Franklin: Right, Bob Drake is here. Just so—for whoever’s watching in the future. And what did you do while your husband worked out on Site? Marilyn Drake: I had a daycare in my home. Franklin: Okay. Marilyn Drake: Over that period of time, I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 children that went through my daycare. Plus raised my own three children. We had two boys that were born in Michigan while we were there. Yeah, so we had three children. Then my mother—my father passed away, and we moved my mother in with us. I had no trouble staying busy. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Yeah, I bet. Marilyn Drake: It was a busy time. But enjoyable time. We had good neighbors and enjoyed them. Couldn’t say enough about our neighborhood at that time. Hated to leave, but work is work and you like to eat, so— Franklin: Yeah. And how come you left Richland at that time, in ’83? Marilyn Drake: Because WPPSS had shut down the plants out there, the construction of them. For about a year-and-a-half, my husband was without work, and we finally decided, better start looking before the savings account dwindled. He and some other men from here went down to South Bay of San Francisco and found work there. That’s where we ended up living, was in California, for the 23 years. Franklin: Okay. Marilyn Drake: And there I went to work for the school district as a head custodian and spent 14 years. Franklin: Oh, wow. And how come you ended up moving back to Richland? Marilyn Drake: Well, in the process of living in California, my husband was an over-the-road truck driver for a while. We kind of watched everywhere we went, didn’t find anywhere that we liked any better than we like it right here. So then we came back. Our daughter lives in Yakima. Our two sons came back about the same time we did; the one son was here a little bit ahead of us. So that was the first time in 23 years that we’d all been in the same state together. So it was a—we just kind of like the area. This is, we consider home. Bob Drake: Consider it home. Franklin: Sure. No, that makes sense. Well, great. Was there anything else that you wanted to say about— Marilyn Drake: Let me think a minute to—just that we really like the Tri-Cities, the history is here. Our kids went to Richland School District until we moved to California. The two boys graduated from down there. They had good friends here and stuff, and still keep in contact. So just really enjoyed it, and like the history that is here. Got a lot of water to play with if you want to. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Yeah. I wanted to ask you a couple more questions that are on my sheet here. I wanted to ask, what are some of your memories of any major events in Tri-Cities history, such as you talked a little bit earlier about the WPPSS plants shutting down. So I’m wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about any of your feelings about that and how it impacted your family and your life? Marilyn Drake: Okay. About the time that WPPSS shut down, we were living in a rental house in Richland Village. The newspaper sent out some reporters to the schools to interview some of the kids to see how this was affecting the families. Just happened, our daughter, who was a third grader at the time, was one of them that was interviewed. She had heard in the morning, my husband had asked me something about money. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but he made the comment that he only had $0.38 in his wallet. Well, she picked up on this, and she told a story that Daddy only had $0.38 in his wallet and we just didn’t know how we were going to buy food or any of the things we needed. So it made the paper. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Oh, wow. Marilyn Drake: The one night I was fixing dinner, and I can remember, I was stirring gravy, and the phone rang. There’s this man’s voice on there. He’s, I understand you’re having a hard time making ends meet, something to that effect. So my gravy is getting thicker and thicker as he’s trying to talk to me. I didn’t recognize his voice. Finally, I told my husband, I said, you talk to him. But it turned out it was the father to this young man that I just reconnected with. He had read the article in the paper and had called to give me a bad time about it. [LAUGHTER] Franklin: Oh, jeez! Marilyn Drake: So that was kind of a fond memory. We did go out and watch them set the dome on the— Bob Drake: Number 1. Marilyn Drake: The Number 1 plant out there, which was interesting. I’ve always regretted—because you couldn’t—used to couldn’t take cameras out there, so I didn’t take a camera that day. Well, it just happened that that was the day everybody could have a camera. So I didn’t get pictures. But it was very interesting watching that huge dome go on there. Bob Drake: The crane that they set that dome with was, at the time, the largest track crane in the world. And it still is, as I recall. Marilyn Drake: It’s the Lampson crane. Franklin: Oh, wow. Marilyn Drake: That had the big cement deals on the back of it to counter balance it. It was quite a sight. Franklin: Was that the first time you had ever been out on Site? Marilyn Drake: Yes, for me. Franklin: Oh, okay, for you. Marilyn Drake: Yeah, we’d gone through the highway that goes out to Vantage many times, but you could just see from a distance. There was always signs, no camera, don’t take pictures, you know. Franklin: Yeah, don’t stop. Marilyn Drake: Yeah. So, that was an interesting time. Franklin: How did that affect the community more generally? Marilyn Drake: Well it— Bob Drake: A lot of people lost their jobs. Marilyn Drake: Yeah, there were like 6,000 people lost their jobs in a very short period of time. Bob Drake: In about a week’s time. Marilyn Drake: So it was rough on everybody. The Tri-Cities always seems to come back, though, when they’ve gone through something like that. Hanford was one of those things that when the funding was there, jobs were good, and then it kind of petered out. So things would be quiet a while, and then they’d give some more money, and so here we go again. [LAUGHTER] So, being construction, if you’re smart, you save some money while you’re making it, to get you through those times. And usually the bad times were always around Christmas time, because weather’s bad and that was usually layoff time. So you better have some laid back a little bit. And of course I had my daycare, which helped out, too. Franklin: Yeah. Marilyn Drake: And I only did that because our youngest son, we were in a neighborhood that was mostly retired people, and he didn’t have anybody to play with, so I thought, well I’ll take care of a child or two and he can have playmates. Well, that mushroomed on me. [LAUGHTER] So I became an owner. [LAUGHTER] But. Franklin: What were your memories of like the social scene and maybe like local politics of that time that you lived in Richland? Marilyn Drake: Things, as I recall, were fairly quiet in those days. We didn’t have the problems that we’ve got today, because we didn’t have as many people, for one thing, I think. Richland was the smallest, I believe, of the Tri-Cities at that point. It was an All-American city. I believe it was in 1959, if I remember right, which was a little before we moved here, but we enjoyed our government house that we bought. It was well-built. About 1200-and-some square feet we raised three children in. They have fond memories of living there, which surprised me. [LAUGHTER] As far as the politics, I don’t remember—I remember President Kennedy, when he came and talked at Hanford. Franklin: Yeah. Marilyn Drake: That was a big deal here. Franklin: Did you—but you didn’t get to go see--? Marilyn Drake: I didn’t get to go to that, no. We watched it on TV in those days. So, I did get to see it. The hydroplane races are a big thing, still, here. They used to be a little bigger than they are now. But that was a big thing for everybody to go to the hydroplane races. Tri-Cities has always been a giving community. Not just Richland, but the whole area. When there’s a need for a family or whatever, people chip in and give. That’s very nice. Franklin: Great. I guess my last question is, what would you like future generations to know about living in Richland during the Cold War? Marilyn Drake: That it—I know there’s been a lot of controversy over the years with the Richland Bombers. I never thought of it that way. It was just a mascot that the high school had. I think that it’s a good place to raise children. There are things here now to do. Like I said, when I was a child, you made your own fun. And we stayed out of trouble doing it. [LAUGHTER] Like anywhere, there are problems. More so now than there were years ago. It’s a nice clean place to be. We’re kind of located where it’s not that far to Spokane or Portland or Yakima or Seattle. So you’re not confined just to the Tri-Cities. It’s becoming more and more farming all the time. The desert is not what you think of as a desert anymore. It’s green! [LAUGHTER] We don’t get the dust storms that we used to when I worked at the telephone office in 1963 through ’65, the Horse Heaven Hills were all wheat fields. So in the spring, they had the fields tilled up and then the winds would come. There were many times that the highway would shut down because of the dust; you couldn’t see. So that, with the vineyards and stuff that we have now, that’s not as much of an issue. So I just like the Tri-Cities. It’s good weather. We did have a little bit of snow this last winter, but that’s not all bad. Bob Drake: It is rare. Marilyn Drake: It’s rare for here, yeah. So just enjoy being here. Franklin: Oh, great. Well, thank you so much for coming and taking the time to interview—or let us interview you. Marilyn Drake: Enjoyed it. Thank you. Franklin: Okay, great. Watch the microphone when you stand up. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:30:14 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Marilyn Drake Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) Richland (Wash.) Description An account of the resource Marilyn Drake grew up in the North Richland Construction Camp, attended the John Ball School, and then lived in the town of Richland. Her father worked at the Hanford Site. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/17/17 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, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Language A language of the resource English 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 operated under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who were 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 the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fdc0f2cdd12f6011b8d91de6fd335cf02.mp4 2c1ac9f583c71829747c1d137160ba4f 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 Drake Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: Same deal. I got the introductory boilerplate, and then we’ll just, we’ll get right to it. Marilyn Drake: Okay, thank you. Franklin: Ready? Marilyn Drake: Yeah. Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Robert Drake on July 17, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with Bob about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us? Robert Drake: Robert J. Drake. R-O-B-E-R-T. J. D-R-A-K-E. Franklin: Great. And you prefer to go by Bob, correct? Bob Drake: That’s what most everybody calls me, yes. Franklin: Okay. Is it all right if I call you Bob? Bob Drake: Business world, doctors and so on, they all call me Robert. But that’s— Franklin: Okay. Well, I’ll just call you Bob if that’s all right with you. [LAUGHTER] Bob Drake: That’s fine. Franklin: I’m not a doctor. So. Bob Drake: [LAUGHTER] Franklin: I just play one on TV. So, Bob, tell me how and why you came to the area to work on the Hanford Site. Or just first came to the Site in general. Bob Drake: Well, I graduated from Sunnyside High School in 1959. I didn’t even know the Tri-Cities existed until one night, my dad decided to bring me down here and show me Pasco, anyway. Then— Franklin: I guess that would’ve been kind of the big city of the area, right, besides Yakima? Bob Drake: Yeah, I think Pasco, at the time, was the larger of the three cities. Franklin: Okay. Bob Drake: Because it was the oldest. Franklin: Yeah. Bob Drake: Then my dad and my mom and myself moved down here, and we lived in a mobile home park in Pasco. He was working on one of the dams up the Snake River. Then I went to Montana myself and worked in a sawmill up there for about, I don’t know, six months or so. Then my dad told me, come on down, he says, I’ll get you called up on the dam as a laborer Monday morning. Well, I sat for six months without any work. I finally went to work in Columbia Park, and I worked in Columbia Park for five years. Franklin: And what did you do there? Bob Drake: A little bit of everything. Drove dump truck, bucket loader, mowed with the mowers that they had at the time. I just—whatever I was asked to do. Franklin: Sure. Bob Drake: So then, how we got to Michigan was, this gentleman and his wife came out, and I was taking care of the campgrounds in Columbia Park at that time. I did that for two years. But anyway, Fred Driller was his name, and Jackie was his wife. He was a pipefitter, and he worked out in the Area out here. Well, he’d get laid off every so often. After he went back to Michigan, he wrote me a—well, he called us. He said, Bob, if you come out, he says, you can get any craft that you want to be in, as an apprentice. Well, I went back and the first job that offered me an apprenticeship was in truck driving. I told them, no, I didn’t want to do that. And then finally decided that—my dad had always been a carpenter, so carpentry would be good enough for me. We spent five years back there. Our first son was born in the old Beyer Hospital in Ypsilanti, Michigan which was just east of Ann Arbor, about maybe five miles. Then they built the new Beyer Hospital. Well, I was a carpenter and I worked on the new Beyer Hospital. So our second son was born in the new Beyer Hospital. It’s kind of a joke between the wife and I, when we moved back to Richland, they had built the new Kadlec Hospital. My wife looks at me and she says, don’t even think about it. So, yeah, we already had our daughter. But anyway, I went to work for George Grant, I believe was the first contractor I worked for. I take that back; it was Lydig. Lydig was the first one. Then George Grant and Halverson pretty much kept me busy for most of the years I was here, except for when I worked at FFTF and at Number 1. Franklin: What was the name of that first contractor? Lydig? Bob Drake: Lydig. Franklin: How do you spell that? L-I-D-I-G? Marilyn Drake: That’s right. Bob Drake: I only worked for them the one time. Franklin: Oh, okay. Bob Drake: My brother—yeah, Lydig, he worked for them for years. But I only worked for them the one time. Franklin: And what did you—what was your job at FFTF? Bob Drake: FFTF? Franklin: Yeah. Bob Drake: Oh, I was just a carpenter. Franklin: And like what did you make? What did you— Bob Drake: Forms. Forms for—and every time we’d get the forms built for a pour, we had to wait for a whole month before they made that pour, because if they made the pour, it was already obsolete. What the deal was, every month they’d get in new—mm! Marilyn Drake: Specifications. Bob Drake: Mm. My mind’s blank. Marilyn Drake: Specifications. Bob Drake: Well, specifications, but that wasn’t they called it. But anyway, because if they wanted to make any changes in the pour, they would do that. Franklin: So this was like a wood form— Bob Drake: Yes. Franklin: To mold the concrete? Bob Drake: For pouring walls. Franklin: Oh, for pouring walls, okay. Bob Drake: Yes, that’s what we poured mostly. When I went to work there—I worked swing shift for about nine months. Franklin: Okay. Bob Drake: Then I quit that job and went to work elsewhere. Franklin: Okay. And then you mentioned that you worked at WPPSS, the Washington Public Power— Bob Drake: Yup, I started up pretty much on the ground floor of that. Made the base for the containment, was the first big pour that was made. And then the form worked for the containment was poured in ten-foot heights and we went up to over 300 feet. Franklin: Wow. Bob Drake: But as you got used to—you got used to going up to those heights, because it was just ten feet at a time. Franklin: Sure. Bob Drake: I never got afraid of heights at that time. And like my wife said, we worked out there until they got ready—in fact, the carpenter work was virtually done when the big layoff came. They had come out about maybe three weeks before that. Superintendent on the job told all of his carpenters, we wouldn’t have to worry about work because he had 24 other plants on the drawing board at the time. Not knowing that the nuclear system was just about done as far as that went. Franklin: Yeah. Bob Drake: But, yeah, it was quite a deal. I remember the one guy that, on our crew, Ray was his first name; I don’t remember if I ever knew his last name—but because of the information that we’d received, he and his wife went out and bought a new home, new cars, new everything. And then they walked up to us about three weeks later and handed us our final check. Ray said, you can’t lay me off. I got to have this job. And the boss says, we’re sorry, but we’re—they’re shutting it down. And as far as I can remember, it seems like to me, that one of the guys told me that Ray had had a massive heart attack and died shortly after that. Because of just the worry of how he’s going to make his payments on his home and stuff. But up here at the golf course in Kennewick, Meadow Springs, a lot of the guys that worked out there, men that worked out there, had gone up there and bought homes. They just let them go back, because they couldn’t afford to make the payments if they didn’t have any work. So they just all left the area. Most of the iron workers went to Denver, Colorado. Most of the carpenters went to South Bay, California, down around San Jose. Franklin: Which is where you ended up. Bob Drake: Yes, that’s where I ended up. Yeah, and it was really a surprise when we went down there. The parking lot at the carpenter’s hall was pretty good size. And there must’ve been probably 60 or 70 of us carpenters that had our—well, we stayed in the parking lot of the carpenter hall. And they welcomed us there because they said the carpenter hall had been broken into several times. But I take it you’re more interested in the things that went on-- I worked at the Tank Farms. Franklin: Oh, really? Bob Drake: Yeah, worked for George Grant when we were pouring bases for the tanks. I don’t remember which farm it was that I worked on. I helped build several of the office buildings in the 300 Area. It was Grant and Halverson. Halverson was out of Spokane; Grant’s local here in Richland. But, like I say, for the 13 years we lived here, George Grant and Halverson, out of Spokane, kept me pretty busy. Franklin: What were some of the unique challenges doing carpentry at Hanford versus elsewhere? Bob Drake: It wasn’t any different. I remember one time, we’d made the lift that had the forms all formed up and ready for a pour. And they had the company people come out and check the forms and everything, and they said everything was fine. Then they sent the government inspectors out and they said—well, before they ever wanted the forms they told us they weren’t going to okay that pour. Well, 59 straight days we were there, waiting for them to give the okay to make the pour. Now, that meant Saturdays and Sundays, so we were taking home some pretty good paychecks. We mostly sat around and did nothing, just waiting for them to give us the okay to make that pour. And then they made the pour, and then of course, we made the next ten-foot lift. But yeah, 59 straight days that we were on the job. Franklin: Wow. [LAUGHTER] That is classic. Bob Drake: Yeah. Franklin: I’d like to ask a similar question to the one I asked your wife: what are your memories of the major events in Tri-Cities history such as the plants shutting down, WPPSS shutting down, and also but the plants starting up, like FFTF. Bob Drake: Well, by the time FFTF took off and was actually functional, we were living in California at that time. Franklin: Oh, yeah, that’s right. Bob Drake: Number 1 was, I believe, 65% done when they laid most of the people off. The only carpentry work left to do out that at that time was building scaffolding and such for pipefitters and the electricians. And then it was several years after that before they ever got Number 1 online. What was the question again? Franklin: Oh, just, I wondered, some of your events of the shutdown. Bob Drake: Oh, the one thing that sticks in my mind—when Columbia Center first went in, Richland was offered to take that in, and be in the City of Richland. But for some reason, the heads of the city decided they didn’t want to take the Columbia Center. Which I thought at the time was kind of foolish because of the tax revenue that they could get off of it. But, yeah, they allowed Kennewick to take Columbia Center. Franklin: Ah. Bob Drake: But that’s the one big thing that I thought was a little bit ridiculous, as far as the city— Franklin: Tri-Cities history? Bob Drake: Yeah. Franklin: You mentioned, earlier, that you—or your wife mentioned earlier that you have stage IV lung cancer that you link to working at Hanford. Is that something you want to talk about? And if not, that’s totally fine. Bob Drake: Yeah, it don’t bother me at all. In fact, I’ve come totally at peace with it; did shortly thereafter because I am a Christian, and if the good Lord decides to take me home with him, it’s a win-win situation. Franklin: Sure. Bob Drake: It was a big surprise, because prior to getting the information that I had the stage IV lung cancer—I play golf three days a week, and I walk the course. Never ran out of breath or anything like that. Then the winter hit, and I was—neighbors on each side are—well, the one lady’s 90 years old, so she couldn’t scoop snow. The neighbor on the other side, he has lung problems and he’s on oxygen 24/7. So I was scooping their driveways and sidewalks with snow, and never got short of breath. The good Lord had his hand in that, too, because I was sitting at home one day and the phone rang. And it was our primary care doctor’s nurse or receptionist called and said, Bob, according to our records, you haven’t been in in over a year for your physical. So we set up a date, went up there, and she checked my breathing and everything, and said more or less that I was fine. And then Marilyn, my wife, said, why don’t you tell her about when you lay—because six or eight months prior to that, when I’d lay on my right side when I was in bed, I had a hard time breathing. And so I mentioned it to her, and she checked my lungs again. She said, I’m going to send you downstairs and have an x-ray taken immediately. And then she said, within the next two days, I’ll give you the results. Went down and had the x-ray taken and left. By the time we got home, the phone was ringing, and we answered, and it was a doctor. She said, I want you to see a pulmonary doctor. She said at Kadlec they have three of them. She said, I want you to take the first appointment you can get. So my wife called and it was 4:00 in the afternoon and they were all gone home, but she left a message on the phone. The next morning, we got up and we just kind of lazing around the house. The phone rang, and again, the receptionist or nurse from the pulmonary doctor said we want you at Kadlec Emergency ASAP. So went over there, and they took—they had the x-rays and the doctor looked at me and he says, I can almost guarantee you, you have stage IV lung cancer. So, anyway, the next day, the three pulmonary doctors got their heads together and decide the next step they needed to take. So they decided to go in and take— Marilyn Drake: A biopsy. Biopsy. Bob Drake: I can’t— Franklin: A biopsy? Bob Drake: Yes, biopsy. So the next morning at 6:00, I was in and the doctor took the biopsy. It took seven days to get the results back. But anyway in the meantime, the pulmonary doctor that I had, he said that I had anywhere from three to five liters of liquid in the area where the lung was supposed to be. Well, the lung had totally collapsed. Franklin: Wow. Bob Drake: That evening about 5:30, he put the tube in, in my side, and drained about a liter-and-a-half of liquid. And—[LAUGHTER]—my wife has some pictures she can show you of—I was sitting in my bed, trying to watch TV and I was propping my eyes open, trying to—because all of the sudden, I couldn’t see the TV. She looked at me and I was swollen up like a toad. Well, what had happened when he took the biopsy, he must’ve nicked the lung, and the air was going into my body— Franklin: Oh, my gosh. Bob Drake: Yeah, and they related it to— Marilyn Drake: Rice Krispies. Franklin: Rice Krispies? Bob Drake: Yeah, Rice Krispies. Yeah, it was really strange. Franklin: Wow. Bob Drake: So anyway, they had virtually every nurse off of every floor down there wondering what they could do for me. And the head nurse on the fourth floor where I was at, she finally decided that they better call the doctor in. Well, it was about 8:30 when the doctor got in there, and he put this other tube in my side that was about at least a half-inch in diameter. They started pumping all of this air out of my system and so on. I was in the hospital for nine days. Franklin: Wow. Bob Drake: That was during the worst part of the winter when the weather was really bad. Then they sent me home and told me to go see the cancer doctor. I walked in and sat down in the room, and he told me, he says, Bob, if you don’t have anything done—any procedures done, you’ve got three to four months to live. So, anyway, as time went by—well, I took five days of massive radiation, five consecutive days. And that was over with. Then it was about six weeks before they got the okay for the medication. Pfeifer, I believe, is the name of the company, but it was going to cost $15,300 a month for the medication they were—it was a pill they were going to put me on. Well, I couldn’t afford that. So, anyway, the nurse and other people said, well, have you had your income tax made out yet this year? And we said, no. So they said, well, go down and get your income tax made out as soon as you can. And we took all that information back to the cancer doctor’s office. The lady there sent the information back to Pfeifer, and they said that they would give me my medication free. Franklin: Wow. Bob Drake: Which was a good—well, it was wonderful. Anyway, my oldest son and my wife were sitting there, and I said, if the pill makes me deathly sick, I’m not going to take it anymore. I’ll just—meet my maker. My oldest son says, Dad, you got to consider you’ve got loved ones here that love you. Well, anyway, as it turned out, the first morning I took the tablet, it made me a little nauseated and a little bit weak. The second morning, virtually the same thing only a little less, and since then, it hasn’t bothered me at all. Franklin: Hmm! Bob Drake: And I take that cancer pill twice a day. Franklin: Wow. And what led you or the doctors to suspect that you had got that—that cancer was linked to Hanford? Bob Drake: Well, I really can’t say. But anyway we filed through the government for the program they have going. Franklin: Right, the EEIOCPA, I think? Bob Drake: I believe that’s right, yeah. Anyway, they accepted my—you know. The forms that we filled out and sent in and so on. Franklin: Oh, that’s great. Bob Drake: So, yeah, I was accepted into the program. Franklin: Oh, that’s great. Bob Drake: Because of the time period that I worked in the Area was the main reason that I got accepted in without any having to prove or so on. Franklin: Right, because you would’ve been out there doing carpentry work during production. Bob Drake: Yeah. Yeah, well, like I said, I worked in the Tank Farms, and I remember looking over at a tank maybe 60, 80 feet away and it had rust around the bottom. You could tell that it had probably leaked. Franklin: And you were there constructing new, additional tanks. Bob Drake: Yeah, we spent some time out there building new bases for more tanks. Franklin: These would’ve been the double shelled— Bob Drake: I believe, so, yes. Yeah. Franklin: So concrete surrounding the steel. Bob Drake: I believe so, yeah. Franklin: Well, great. I mean—great that you were able to get into that program at the end easily without too much of a fuss. And thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing your story with us. Bob Drake: Well, it’s—no problem. Franklin: I’m wondering if you could describe any ways in which secrecy or security ever impacted your work? Bob Drake: No. Out at—when I worked out at 2 West, I had to check through the gates every day. Of course any time you worked in the Area, you had to go through the gates. But out there once a week, we had to get new permits and new tags that we wore around our necks. And those checked the radiation that we received while we were out there. Franklin: Mm-hmm. Bob Drake: But, no. It wasn’t that bad, the security, at all. Franklin: Okay. That’s good to hear. And my last question is what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War? Bob Drake: It was just—to me, it was just another job. As far as the future generations, I still think that atomic energy is probably among the best electrical plants that you can build. And me and my wife have discussed this before, we’ve told each other many times, that we’d much rather live around an atomic energy plant, as to a—come on, dear, help me out. Marilyn Drake: Chemical. Chemical. Franklin: Chemical, or— Bob Drake: Chemical plant, yeah. Anytime. Franklin: Yeah, you hear that a lot from people that live next to nuclear power plants and chemical plants, yeah. That’s a very— Bob Drake: Well, you think of all the ships, most of the ships we have now in the Navy are atomic powered. And they’ve never had any problems with one of those, that I know of. Franklin: Right. Bob Drake: So, yeah. I’m not afraid of atomic energy. But chemical plants, yes. Franklin: Yeah. Yeah, me too. Well, great, well, Bob, thank you so much for sitting down and interviewing with us today. I really appreciate it. Bob Drake: I just wish my memory was still quick enough that I could answer your questions without hesitation and so on. Franklin: You did a great job. That’s just how it happens with memory. You know? It’s just the way it goes. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:27:18 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Robert Drake Subject The topic of the resource Fast Flux Test Facility (Wash.) Washington Public Power Supply System Hanford Site (Wash.) Description An account of the resource Robert Drake was a carpenter on the Fast Flux Test Facility, the WPPSS Project, and the Tank Farms. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/17/2017 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, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Language A language of the resource English 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 operated under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who were 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 the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F73092d11e38acf02e3f9139b59ff29ad.JPG 855dc47ad850f54f3f4a02b434262fd0 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F433d0cbcf01c6525d92c4404f0e21d8e.mp4 b708f88df97c4cbe45941c20fca189c6 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 Bernal Femreite Location The location of the interview Washington State University Tri-Cities Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Bernal Femreite on June 12, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Bernal about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us? Bernal Femreite: Bernal Femreite, known as Bernie Femreite. The spelling is B-E-R-N-A-L. Last name is F-E-M-R-E-I-T-E. Franklin: Great, thanks a lot Bernie. So, tell me how and why you came to the area to work for the Hanford Site. Femreite: Well, during university, I was determining where to go to work and what kind of work I wanted to do. And the last—about in graduate school, I became very interested in nuclear energy. At that time, Hanford was still a very viable part of the weapons program. Most of the reactors were still running in the late ‘60s. They had a big program here and a lot of very interesting work for engineers. I was a metallurgical engineer, so everything about the Hanford fuel production was intriguing. And beyond that, I had read about everything I could about the Manhattan Project. The whole thing was fascinating to me. The fact that they went from a theory and some practical experiments to full-scale production in such a short time, under wartime conditions, obviously, that whole thing was very intriguing to me. So, long story short, I had—at that time, engineers coming out of university had a lot of opportunities. So I had a lot of choices. But I was particularly taken with the choice to come here with Douglas United Nuclear at the time. So I took that position and began as what they called process engineer in the 300 Area, where we were producing fuel for the K Reactors, C Reactor, D, and N, N Reactor. We were using the standard process at the time, which was encapsulating the uranium for exposure in the reactors. And we were—my job was, I was charged with developing a new, better and faster process for doing that. So I spent most of my time in what became known as the Small Pilot Plant in 300 Area. And we were producing a new method of encapsulating the uranium slugs that was faster and more reliable. Franklin: How was the old—I wonder if you could walk me through the steps of the old process and how your new process was different. Femreite: Well, the old process was what you might call a canning process. We had pre-formed aluminum jackets that came in, basically, the shape of a cylinder with a cap on one end. The uranium slugs came in milled to a certain diameter. They had a whole through the center for cooling, additional cooling. And then that was inserted inside this aluminum can, which we call cladding. And the whole thing was dunked under what we call a eutectic alloy of aluminum and silicon. That has a relatively low melting point. That would just flow in and form a bond between the uranium and aluminum. And they put a cap on the upper end, and then machine off the excess material. Then they would put on, ultrasonically, they’d weld on a small aluminum fin, which we called a leg, which gave the fuel slug some clearance between the tube that it would go into and the reactor, would allow the water to run past it. Franklin: Right, so that water could go around the entire— Femreite: Yeah. Franklin: Yeah, I’ve seen those. Femreite: And through the center. Franklin: Yeah, there are kind of fins on all sides. Femreite: Yeah, you’ve seen them, probably at the N Reactor—or the B Reactor Museum, if you’ve been out there. Franklin: Yes. Femreite: There are some examples of those. That was called the AlSi process, and it referred to the aluminum-silicon alloy that was used to bond— Franklin: Is that spelled how it sounds, A-L, S-I? Femreite: Yup, mm-hmm. It’s capital-A, L and then capital-S, I. So it stands for—it’s aluminum-silicon. It’s the scientific nomenclature for aluminum and silicon. And that process was developed and used for a long time. It had some disadvantages in that it had some byproduct, or leftover product waste that had to be disposed of. So there was the—AlSi would become—well, it would become fairly radioactive from being exposed to the uranium in—small amounts of uranium would be dissolved in it. So that was kind of a hard thing to deal with. Franklin: Can I ask how—what was the process for disposal of that spent product? Femreite: Well, I don’t know that part. Our job was to get the job done, and other people dealt with the disposing of waste. We can tell from what we’re finding in the papers today about the disposal of waste here, was there was a variety of methods, including just plain old burial someplace. Franklin: Yeah, the 300 Area, if I remember correctly, had some interesting waste footprints in the ground. Femreite: It does. And the area surrounding it as well. North of there they had burial pits. They had a waste pit over to the, it’d be the west side, towards what now is the Areva plant. And there were different places. Franklin: So this AlSi process, was this the original process used? Femreite: As near as I can tell, that was the original process. Now, they, in the early years, I read a lot of the classified documents as a young engineer when I first got here to understand some of the history. And they had experimented with different alloys and different heat treatments and things like that over the years, and finally settled on what I was familiar with, as the new engineer on the block, so to speak. I was chartered with developing what was called the hot die sizing process, which was to take the uranium slugs and basically extrude a coating of aluminum onto the slug. Franklin: Like using— Femreite: We used—we put them through what was called an extrusion die. And we’d start off with a small can shape of aluminum. That would sit in the die, and then the uranium slug would come down on it, and we’d basically squeeze the slug through the die, almost like toothpaste—although it was solid. And that would bond the aluminum to the uranium slug. Once it was bonded that way, all we had left to do then was to put a cap on the end. And then that the cap had to be bonded as well, so in order to do that, we used specialized heating coil. And we put the end of that fuel into that heating coil under pressure. It was called induction heating. That would bond that cap to the slug and to the other aluminum. So it was a much simpler process; it basically had no waste, except maybe some aluminum that would be machined, just to dress it up. And of course that aluminum was recycled, so. It was faster than the AlSi process. So my job, for most of the time I worked there, was to develop that, and also to solve any technical problems that came up in the existing AlSi process. So the AlSi process was still big, because that’s how the factory was set up. And we developed our hot die sizing process on a pilot scale. Then we moved the pilot line into big production facility and ran it in parallel with the big production facility and kept track of cycle times and quality. We were trying to prove that on an industrial scale, this was going to be an improvement to the AlSi process. I should mention that that whole thing sounds quite simple. But in the end, it was complicated. Each one of these fuel elements went through a very tight quality control process, where every single one went through an ultrasonic defect device—detector for defects in the fuel. That was all done with ultrasonic sound. Franklin: Huh. How did that work, exactly? Femreite: Well, the sound was transmitted through the cladding onto the uranium, and you get a certain pattern if there’s a good bond there. If there’s a bad bond, you get a completely different pattern from the ultrasonic sound. And so you could detect any, what we call, unbonded areas. You had to have a good bond on every part of the surface, because if you didn’t, you’d get a hot spot in the reactor. And that would, basically, cause the fuel to melt at that point—the cladding to melt at that point, and it would leak. We didn’t want leakers in the reactors because then that led to contamination in the water that flowed through those. Franklin: And you might have to shut the reactor down, too. Femreite: Yeah, if you got enough—if there were enough leakers in there to where you were getting high radiation readings on the discharge side of the reactor, they would have to shut it down, discharge that fuel, put new fuel in. That was not very efficient, and it was time consuming and fairly expensive. Franklin: Yeah. Femreite: So the quality control part of the process was very stringent. Franklin: So where was the uranium machined? Where was it formed into the— Femreite: That came out of a plant in Ohio. Franklin: Okay. Femreite: I think—I forgot the exact name of the plant, but I think it was Fernald. They came in by train in big wooden, pretty strong wooden crates. And then the aluminum was purchased on the market from various suppliers. We had a tight specification on which alloy and dimensions and quality and all that. So the aluminum was pretty generic, but it had to meet all of our specifications. Then the uranium, of course, came from Fernald and that was a single source. Because that was all government-run. Franklin: So was the hot die sizing process a success? Femreite: It was, yeah. We produced, on that parallel line, we produced most of a reload for one of the K Reactors. At that time, K West and K East were twins. So you didn’t know which reactor your load was going to go into. They determined that out there. So that fuel did go into the K, one or both of the K Plants. Franklin: Right. Femreite: So yeah, it was an improvement. And they would have—I believe they would have continued on that path and retired the AlSi process, but about that time, they determined that they weren’t going to run the K Reactors anymore. C had already shut down, or was preparing to shut down. So there wasn’t going to be demand in the business reason to change their method. And if they had—at that time, I think they had just put the Ks on standby, in the event that they might need to get back into producing plutonium. But they were already getting plutonium out of N Reactor and it was still running. So the demand for plutonium dropped, and so they began to phase things out. If they had needed to ramp production back up, it would’ve been fairly simple to start everything back up, because it sat there, basically, on reserve for quite a little while. Franklin: So, and what timeframe was that, when— Femreite: Well, it was late in the history of Hanford. I began work here in 1967 after graduating university. And so that was basically about a three-year deal, before things started to ramp down. So about 1970, they were threatening layoffs and reduction of staff and that kind of thing, simply because they just weren’t going to produce that much fuel. Franklin: Right. Where did you go to university; where did you get your bachelor’s? Femreite: University of Idaho. Franklin: Okay. Femreite: Mm-hm. Franklin: So are you from the area? Femreite: I’m from north Idaho. Franklin: Oh, okay. Femreite: Yeah, mm-hm. Franklin: So then in 1970, you transferred to Exxon, right? And went into commercial fuel production. Femreite: Yes. Franklin: And how—I wonder if you could talk about that transition and how that industry was different or similar, you know, how the work was related. Femreite: Yeah. The work there was—first of all, it was all what you would call private enterprise. So Exxon was in business to produce fuel for big commercial power plants. At that time, there were—I don’t know the exact number, but some 20 to 30 nuclear power plants operating in the United States producing electrical power. Those were built mainly by General Electric and Westinghouse. And in Europe, craftwork union was doing the same thing, and there were a lot of power plants in Europe. So Exxon decided they were going to get into this in a big way, even though they were an oil company, they knew that they were really an energy company. So they decided that they could build fuel and supply it to these power plants in the US and in Europe. So they began the business here, largely on the basis that there was a lot of technical know-how here. They knew that they could recruit from Hanford, which was basically winding down, and they had the access to Battelle. And Battelle had a huge amount of knowledge, collectively, about all things nuclear. So Exxon came in and bought land inside the City of Richland city limits and got all the permits and built the plant. So when I started work, it was a piece of sand out here on Horn Rapids Road. And we had offices downtown, rented offices downtown. There were only just a handful of us. So I had the good fortune of coming in on what they call the ground floor. Exxon—by the way, Exxon was called the Standard Oil of New Jersey. It’s only in later years that they rebranded themselves. And so the plant—the business out here began as Jersey Nuclear, just an offtake of Standard Oil of New Jersey, and that’s how they began. I have a picture of their business sign here if you want to keep that. So that was, for us that had worked there for a long time, the sign was pretty significant, because it was the very beginning of a long-standing business. At any rate, they were a taxpaying business in the City of Richland, and everything was commercial and they had to meet all of the standard safety regulations and all that that any industry does. So they began from, like I said, a flat piece of sand to building a plant out here that could produce this fuel for these power plants. That fuel, as a process engineer and as a metallurgist, that fuel was far more complicated in its design. Franklin: And why was that? Femreite: Well, the fuel for Hanford was, as I explained earlier, just a slug that was a uranium slug, we called them, that was encapsulated in a cladding and then tested and put in the power plant. But the fuel for commercial plants—and you’ve probably seen displays around the Tri-Cities and different places—are individual pellets about the size of a pencil eraser, more highly enriched than the fuel for the plutonium reactors. And it’s encapsulated in a pretty exotic alloy, zirconium alloy. So each tube, then, produces heat and a lot of it. So they have to be made to extreme precision and very high quality. You have to build them with a very robust process, and then you have to test them under very robust conditions to make sure that they’re going to produce and perform the way they’re supposed to. So the whole thing was quite interesting. And over the years, what we called the nukes, the nuclear engineers, who were experts on how to load these power plants with different kinds of fuel, they came up with a lot of different designs. Basically all the same design in terms of outward appearance. They were tubes with uranium pellets in them. But they varied the sizes and the enrichments and all that kind of things to get better performance in the power plant. So that whole thing was pretty challenging for all of us. Franklin: You had mentioned that Exxon, Jersey Nuclear, Standard Oil, New Jersey Nuclear, Exxon, had drawn—or one of the decisions to put it here was the availability of knowledge of the nuclear industry. Did a lot of former Hanford workers go to work for New Jersey Nuclear? Femreite: They did. Franklin: Okay. Femreite: Yeah, there were quite a few. And there were a lot of—well, not a lot, but quite a few scientists from Battelle that were retained, you know, under contract. They helped us build the first reload, as an example. Our first reload went into a power plant by the name of Big Rock Point and Oyster Creek. So they kind of held our hands to get that first delivery made. To start from zero requires a whole lot of stuff, because you have to come up with all your procedures and all of your quality documents and methods and processes and you have to train your staff. So it’s really quite a complicated enterprise to bring something from zero to fully functional business. Franklin: And how long did you stay with that company? Femreite: Well, I retired there 30 years later. Franklin: Oh, so in 2000? Femreite: Yes. Mm-hmm. Franklin: And did your job change at all during those 30 years? Femreite: Yes, mm-hmm. Yeah, I started out as a process engineer, individual contributor. And the last five years I was the vice president of manufacturing and the Richland plant manager. So I managed to work my way through the organization. Franklin: Yeah. Femreite: But it was all very challenging and all very gratifying work. In that 30 years, we replicated the Richland plant in Germany. Mainly because—well, I should back up. We delivered a lot of fuel in the United States and quite a bit of fuel overseas. Overseas, there was a huge tariff on the fuel because it was imported. Germany kept saying, well, you know, if you guys want to beat this import deal, you should just build a plant over here. And we can facilitate that, and suggest a place that’s suitable for that kind of business. And they did. They struck a deal with what, by then, was called Exxon. We duplicated—replicated this plant in a small village in northwest Germany, and began supplying Europe from that plant. We took all the best technology from the Richland plant that we had developed up to that point, and we had developed a lot of it, and then transferred it to Europe in that little—what I call a little—Lingen plant. It was actually a sizeable plant in what was a very friendly village there. So that was quite remarkable, too, because we had to recruit people that didn’t know what nuclear even meant to come to work there. But they were all crafts of different kinds: welders, machinists, and other crafts that’d come through the trade schools or industry in Germany. So we put together a very successful operation over there. And so that, then, basically, put an end-run on the tariffs. And it was good for their economy and good for our business. So it turned out quite well. Franklin: How did the fortunes of what is now Areva respond to kind of the ups and downs of the nuclear power industry, at least domestically? I know that—I feel like there’s been some downturn in that industry or has come under a lot of criticism in the past few decades. Femreite: Yeah, well, yeah, there is a lot of bad publicity, which is unfortunate because it’s a clean—it’s basically a clean energy. It doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases and all that kind of thing. But the bad publicity with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and all that puts it at a real disadvantage, and there’s a lot of public opinion against it. But as a business, we just carried on. Despite the publicity, there was still demand for electricity. And that didn’t go away. [LAUGHTER] So the utilities that ran the power plant just said, well, we’ll do everything we need to do to keep our plants safe. But we have to carry on, because people want their light to turn on when they go home. So it wasn’t quite as remarkable a result as some people might think, from a business standpoint. But there are becoming fewer and fewer power plants because the ones that were built a long time ago are getting old or are so old they had to be closed down. So there are fewer. Although the Nuclear Regulatory Commission keeps saying that they’re prepared to license some new plants, improved plants—what they would call improved plants. But basically just from a business standpoint, it was fairly stable. The hardest part of meeting the market was to meet the power plants’ schedules, because they have, as you might know, just like the plant up north here, Energy Northwest, they closed down about every two or three years to refuel. When they do that, they want their fuel then and then only. So you have to run your business to kind of match up with the refueling schedules of these various plants. Franklin: Right. That makes sense. And so you went back to Hanford in 2001, right? Femreite: Yes, after I retired, I was asked to participate in a, oh, I don’t know what the—you might call it a short study, about a month’s study, of industry experts that they assembled to figure out why they were having so much trouble in the K Plants, getting the fuel out of the basins and dried and stored. They developed a process to do that, and basically it took the old residual fuel in the basins out there, put them through a drying process and encapsulated them in a very strong container. And that’s stored out there in the 200 Areas. Franklin: What is the drying process? What is that doing? Femreite: It’s basically a vacuum. They put it in a big chamber and run a vacuum on it for a long time—a relatively long time. Franklin: And why is that done? Femreite: Well, they want the fuel to not corrode any further. Franklin: So how is the fuel being stored? Femreite: It was being stored in the water pools at K East and K West. So they were stored underwater in 30 feet of water, as a shield. It was spent fuel, so it was hot, radioactively hot. Well, thermally hot, too. And that was stored in those pools and had been for years by 2001. I was familiar with those plants because I worked out there when I began in 1967. Because I’d go out there a lot to consult with the engineers that were running my pilot—my new fuel through their plant. Franklin: Right, well, you might’ve even have helped to make some of that fuel that was in the basin. Femreite: Oh, absolutely, yeah, sure. I should digress a little bit. When I first came here in ’67, I was out at those plants and for my own pleasure I interviewed a lot of the old-timers that had worked there through the war. And I was always fascinated by the fact that they didn’t know what they were actually doing there, because it was secret. It was all compartmentalized. So you could talk to a person who worked on, like the front face of K Reactor, and he’d tell you that that’s all he knew at that time; he didn’t know what went on anywhere else. [LAUGHTER] And furthermore, they couldn’t talk about it. So that whole thing was very intriguing to me. But, anyway, back to our topic, I was one of, I think, about 12 people, so-called industry experts, that were called in to understand why things weren’t going well out there, and they weren’t meeting anything close to their schedules that they were supposed to dry this fuel and store it. So they brought in experts in almost every field. A lot of them were safety experts, regulation experts, and things like that. I went there as a manufacturing expert. So we spent, I think, two weeks there. I determined very quickly that they were not running that as a what I call a manufacturing process, which it really was. They were running more as an engineering process. So I wrote a report about that at the end of my little short tour of duty there and left it with the management. Then I went on a trip, a vacation with the family after that. Well, I got back and my phone was ringing of the wall. They said, Bernie, you need to come out here and help us figure this out, because we think that we have all this advice from all these people, but this seems to be the real key to getting this straightened out. So I then went to work under a contract, and basically taught them what’s called a constraint management manufacturing. Which we used in our own plant. And what that means is that any process—you can name almost any process: human process or manufacturing process, or almost any process—and you can find what’s called a bottleneck. You can put together any scheme of sequential operations. One point in there will be what’s called a bottleneck, or what I call a constraint. The real secret to making that all work is to zero in on the constraint and figure out if it can be made better or not. If not, manage the constraint and everything else pretty much takes care of itself. And so I called it constraint management. It’s called different things. In order to—so you’d identify the constraint, and then you put in modifiers that support the constraint. You put in what’s called queues, upstream and downstream, which a queue is just simply a place to store things that you either going to process or that you have processed. And then everything else pretty much runs itself. And they had a serious constraint out there, but they weren’t managing it; they were trying to—a group of engineers that were making charts everyday, trying to schedule everybody for every hour of the next day, to get them to do what they were supposed to do. [LAUGHTER] And it wasn’t working out. So I taught them how to do constraint management and what we call process control. Just in a short time, it just started working great. And in fact, the constraint turned out it wasn’t the constraint that they thought it was, because once we focused in on it, they got smart about how to run it, and it moved the constraint further downstream. So that became the new constraint down there, and then we started managing that as the constraint. So anyway, long story short, it put everything put together very well. Their production levels went, like, improved by three or four times. And I think they ended up actually beating their endpoint schedule before by implementing that method. Franklin: Oh, wow. Femreite: So it was pretty gratifying. And I got a lot of calls about how well that worked, and they were quite happy with it. So that was very successful for them and very gratifying for me. Franklin: How long were you on that project? Femreite: I was there for—that only took us about three months. Franklin: Oh, okay. Femreite: Yeah. They wanted me to stay on and work as a consultant there, but I told them, look, I’m retired. My job now is to stay retired. So I declined to do that. Franklin: Was that the last time you worked out at Hanford? Femreite: That was the last time I worked there, yeah, mm-hmm. Franklin: Great. Well, we’ve got to most of my questions. I do have a couple more just quick ones. I’m wondering, was Richland—I know you came to Richland after the town had been turned into private ownership. But I’m wondering if Richland was still, at that point when you arrived, if there was anything remarkable or unique about it, or what your impressions were compared to where you had grown up? Femreite: Oh, definitely. You could tell that it was still very much a government town. There wasn’t a lot of infrastructure here, compared to what we’re used to now. Columbia Center was just desert, for instance. There wasn’t anything out there. The government housing had just, as you said, turned back to civilian ownership, just a few years prior. The housing around town was still largely what had been built for the war effort or after the war. Franklin: Did you live in an Alphabet House when you arrived here? Femreite: I lived in what was called a Richland Village house, which was government construction. Richland Village was just north of Safeway, that whole area in there. Those were all mass-produced government houses. They weren’t really called an Alphabet House. I could’ve been in an Alphabet House very easily, but it just turned out that the Richland Village was a good choice for renting. I wanted to buy a home, but I didn’t want to do that immediately upon arrival here. I kind of wanted to get the lay of the land. So we rented what’s called a Richland Village home at the time. At that time, that whole place was run by one business. One business owned all those houses and rented them out, and were wanting to sell them to individual owners. So a lot of them are rented, and I’d say maybe half of them had maybe been sold to individuals at that time. But as you drove around town, it was largely still the government-built houses that you saw. Very few new construction. And the furthest, the northern extent of Richland at that time was where the 7-Eleven is on G-W Way down here, on Saint. In fact, that area where the 7-Eleven is and Washington Square Apartments was a drive-in theater. [LAUGHTER] It was still operating. [LAUGHTER] And the houses on Harris—there were no houses between G-W Way and Harris Street. But at the time we came here, Harris was being developed as a new upscale development. So all those homes along Harris there that are along the river were upscale houses. To get there, there was one street over to Harris, I think it was the street that goes past the 7-Eleven now, and you went across the desert to this strip of land along the river where these homes were being built. I was explaining to your colleague a while ago, this campus was one building, and it was called the Graduate Center. Franklin: Yes. Yeah, it’s what’s now the East Building of our campus. Femreite: Yeah. So, yeah, it was still kind of a frontier town in my opinion at the time. It was quickly changing. We saw a whole lot of changes in the time we’ve lived here, that’s for sure. Franklin: And where did you end up—I’m assuming you ended up buying a house. Did you end up living in Richland? Femreite: I did. Our first home was what I’d call a starter home, just off of the boundary of the Richland Village. There was a string of little, three-bedroom two-bath places that had been built and we bought one of those. Later on, there was a new development further north. I don’t recall if it even had a name, it just—a lot of nicer homes, bigger homes. Split-level and that kind of thing. So we ended up going there, moving there later on. And then I was asked to go to Germany, so we sold that and went to Germany. And came back and lived in a similar house in that area. Then Exxon asked me to go to Idaho Falls. We went down there and ran a secret weapons project that I never talked to you about earlier. But Exxon was asked to go down there and run what was then a secret project, military project. Then when we came back, we moved to a home on Harris Avenue and lived there until I retired. Franklin: Oh, okay. I’m wondering if you could describe the ways in which security of secrecy at Hanford impacted your work while you were there? Femreite: Well it made—you had to be very, very conscious of it. I had proper clearance to where I could get almost any kind of classified document that I wanted, and I needed to, because there was a lot of science developed there that was Top Secret. So as a practical matter, every engineer there had a fairly sizeable safe. And we kept all of our documents in that safe. Including documents that we had checked out to use or to read or whatever. And then our own writings, our own documents, were sent to a classification officer before they were published and he gave them their appropriate classification level. So at the end of the day, you made sure that everything that was classified was in the safe. And then patrol would come around in the evenings and odd hours, just to see if there was anything left that shouldn’t be. Or unattended. You could not leave a classified document unattended; you had to have it with you. If you left it on your desk and walked out, that was a no-no. If you were going to go somewhere, you locked it back up. Franklin: Did you ever run afoul of— Femreite: No, I never did get a security infraction. I knew people that did. Franklin: That’s good. Did you ever have something that you had authored become classified to where you couldn’t use it again? Femreite: Well, I could use it, but others couldn’t. Uh-huh. Yeah, I had several things that were classified. Mm-hmm. Franklin: My last question is, I’d like to ask you what you would like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War? Femreite: Well, the Cold War for people of my age was very concerning. I was raised in the period where they were teaching students to duck under their desks. [LAUGHTER] As a civil defense exercise. There was a lot of information and publicity, or maybe even propaganda, about the threat of nuclear war. A lot of films got shown in the schools about what nuclear war was about, and what atomic bombs were like, and what you might be able to do to protect yourself, or might not be able to do to protect yourself. And then there was, of course, the headlines about tensions between Russia and the United States. Cuban missile crisis and all that. So it was very disconcerting. As a child, or an adolescent, I was worried about it, as were my colleagues about the same age. And then as a young engineer, working here, it became clear that there was a lot of very high technology being developed and that was important to our health and safety as a nation. It was guarded very well. People were quite dedicated to their work here. That was always very gratifying to me, that people weren’t taking it lightly; they knew what their responsibilities were and how important it was. So for anybody looking back on it, I think they can just be grateful that there were a lot of folks that had a very high principles and very high expectations and were very capable. And, you know, now, in retrospect, there are quite a few workers who were essentially overexposed. At the time they didn’t know it, and neither did management, but in retrospect you see reports of people, a lot, that have lasting diseases and that kind of thing, from the exposures they took here. So, those folks are heroes. They laid their life on the line for the rest of us. They’re every bit as much a hero as the people that were fighting the war, I think. Franklin: Great, well, thank you, Bernie, for coming in and talking to us about your career. Femreite: Yes, it was my pleasure. Thank you. Franklin: Okay. Awesome. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:50:37 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 317kbps 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 Bernal Femreite Subject The topic of the resource Hanford Site (Wash.) B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.) Hanford Atomic Products Operation Description An account of the resource Bernal Femreite came to the Hanford Site to work for Douglas United Nuclear. He worked in the 300 Area, and at many of the Hanford reactors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 6/12/2017 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, who can provide specific rights information for this item. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 Language A language of the resource English 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 operated under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who were 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 the US Department of Energy collection. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa34f5002b84e87e09306b4a310b85284.tif aac46f70692cb0e7a5e48e49e214bb46 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Camp Hanford Iron Workers at Hanford Power House, Feb 4 1944; demolished 1946 Subject The topic of the resource Construction workers; Iron & steel workers Description An account of the resource Three iron workers in uniform standing in front of the Hanford Power House. D 2279 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 4th, 1944 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 tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.126 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffd9820bfd50e1bce22eb4c2b0aaf4129.tif dcc084797b9bdae6698f0ff1d5fe2253 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Cinema, Camp Hanford; Feb 4 1944 Subject The topic of the resource Motion pictures Description An account of the resource A group of about fifteen lined up at the cinema box office at Camp Hanford. Insets: CINEMA D 2299 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 4th, 1944 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 tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.127 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb8f90db6cd36e94e20999599379c44e6.tif e2c35b5d5a935c17bda0a58dfb3c2d69 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Trailer camp at Camp Hanford, 1944 Subject The topic of the resource Housing; Description An account of the resource A block of trailer homes at Camp Hanford with fenced lots. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944 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 tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.128 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffb8982c5a35f89fe85b5cf69eaeb0ab0.tif 71c7b4a91e20b030f15eb70b2c00fcef 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Shoe Repair Store, Camp Hanford; Apr 15 1944 Subject The topic of the resource Shoe stores Description An account of the resource A shoe sale and repair store on the banks of the Columbia River. Insets: SHOE STORE AND REPAIR; Hanford Shoe & Repairing Co. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.129 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F238d517ffa52e4ba7ee68fadb91ebb00.tif 7535dcf6b97403f25564e3d310e05bfb 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Trailer camp living, Camp Hanford, 2-14-44; playground in trailer camp Subject The topic of the resource Housing; Trailers; Mobile homes Description An account of the resource A group of eleven children in the fenced playground at the corner of Iraq Street and Eisenhower Avenue in the Camp Hanford Trailer camp. Playground includes a double swingset and a sandbox. Insets: IRAQ ST.; Eisenhower Ave. D - 3242 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 14th, 1944 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 tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.130 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0d9d8f5c8a7bd498770143aed298d4e9.tif a189c11f2e90aeec4e58f6bb56985a77 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Tavern #4, Hanford, 6-14-44 Subject The topic of the resource Taverns (Inns) Description An account of the resource Tavern. D - 3264 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource June 14th, 1944 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 tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.131 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ffb44afeed2c3cd3cd746062bab0de307.tif 27ab3d0703720d2e9ea8906b0eea7e88 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Office, Camp Hanford, c. 1944 Subject The topic of the resource Post offices Description An account of the resource Post office during business hours at Camp Hanford. US Flag stands on the roof of the building. Insets: Post Office; (unreadable) D 3265 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource c. 1944 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 tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.132 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F842c74d8141c69e870ce4cca2a882e65.tif a23ab8b1a53198a705ae907f5827b130 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Shoeshine Boy, Camp Hanford (Aircorp Plane in Background) Jun 17 1944 Description An account of the resource A young boy shines a man's shoes at Camp Hanford. Aircorp Plane with number 218521 on tail is parked by the brick building. Insets: 218521; D 3269 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource June 17th, 1944 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 tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.133 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F9aef42361f27e1dfccdd52e25bf1311a.tif 9d2fe7845c993a94cc4b476ece3d5688 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Library, Camp Hanford Subject The topic of the resource Libraries Description An account of the resource Library building at Camp Hanford. Small shed with number 118 in the background. Insets: LIBRARY; LIBRARY HOURS: 10:00 A.M.-10:00 P.M. TUESDAY (?) SATURDAY, 1:00-6:00 P.M. SUNDAY; D 3328 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at tricities.hhp@wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.134 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb263141bc16c93e3dbce321bf34c4af3.tif 8336d8af4a74b7ad0e466a82dba2a6e0 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 D2323 Building - Optometrist Shop on "A" Avenue Jul 13 1944 Subject The topic of the resource Opticians' shops; Propaganda Description An account of the resource An Optometrist's shop on "A" Avenue at Hanford. Two war propaganda posters are displayed on the side of the building - one reading "BACK OUR INVADERS" and another with a twin prop fighter place and unreadable text. Insets: Optometrist; D2323; A Ave.; BACK OUR INVADERS Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 13th, 1944 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.135 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F43e1155b4c956e9dc7f77568a9ad7542.tif 097fe59b951986378a6f66eaaacce624 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Automobile/Truck Service Garage Jul 11 1944 Subject The topic of the resource Vehicle maintenance & repair Description An account of the resource An automobile and truck service garage at Hanford with two buildings. A sign reading "SAFETY" is posted on the front door of one of the buildings. Most of the vehicles in the parking lot have "U.S.A." painted on the doors. Insets: Transportation; Safety; D4029; U.S.A. I C (unreadable) SP68H-62; 2 B; 3 B; U.S.A. I B 1023 ME Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 11th, 1944 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.136 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff1139198898494f1af81532ee4d29382.tif 876f5b68389b148f7e6b24eef1c2e74c 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Drug Store, Barber Shop, Beauty Salon Strip mall Subject The topic of the resource Drugstores; Barbershops; Beauty shops Description An account of the resource A strip mall including a drug store, barber shop and beauty salon. A large sign outside advertises community activities, such as a free vaudeville show. Insets: Drug Store; Barber Shop; Beauty Salon; Community Activities; Free! Vaudeville Show; D4073 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 1st, 1944 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.138 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fcec8e17133b0c56827d8834617d18f48.tif 5c86e9a47527c2e6d74526c099bd20f3 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Home Office and Shop; Steam Heat Supply Plant Subject The topic of the resource Industrial facilities Description An account of the resource A steam heat supply plant, with home offices and shops close in the background. Insets: D4072 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 12th, 1944 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.137 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe8b7ce476ed33ff65b45860e7f8a65f3.tif 8e7d4a8f81a30ccc0ebca82f97d6da02 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Welding Training Facility Subject The topic of the resource Welding; Defense industry Description An account of the resource A welding training facility on the banks of the Columbia River. Signs on a fenced section of power line and a water tower emphasize safety at the Hanford Site. Insets: WAR PRODUCTION TRAINING WELDING; DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE; SAFETY; D4075 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 12th, 1944 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.139 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe2ae7a657d6aea0494bdd3fc6d284eaa.tif 4963703418c7073d67dc9d134e839a7a 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Drinking Water Storage Tanks Subject The topic of the resource Water tanks; Cisterns Description An account of the resource Four drinking water tanks, about 25ft wide and 25ft tall. The premises is loosely fenced off from the road. Insets: D4079 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 13th, 1944 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.140 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fba6bc91ecf6cca611dba0585cb788f40.tif 10cc46d3c8517f4bb3da18d30603924b 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Auditorium in Richland Subject The topic of the resource Auditoriums Description An account of the resource The main auditorium at Hanford. Empty when photo was taken. Insets: AUDITORIUM; STOP - THRU STREET; D4080 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource July 13th, 1944 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.141 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F31d412b6a989b99f0a6bb5d4faa6d552.tif 86b002e961d9dbab05673e1f189338d6 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Water Storage at Hanford Subject The topic of the resource Water tanks; Water towers Description An account of the resource A water tank and tower with supporting buildings and power lines. Insets: DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE; CLEARANCE 13FT 6IN Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.142 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd86e5acb1e87562bc1c2c32cd6fb71a4.tif 533d78e16f8bf2efb6f5bbd72c63e59e 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Hanford Area Road Intersection Subject The topic of the resource Roads Description An account of the resource A named (unreadable) road intersection leading to Hanford, controlled by a 2-way stop. Dense sagebrush fields immediately surround the intersection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.154 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb5b612918e226c9c0102ad1c4fab8a51.tif 508f31df27c77a64dd13b588b760d4c8 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Hanford Area Showing One of Three Canyon Buildings in Background Description An account of the resource Insets: D 4547 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.155 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F58f7b4629a916aad9e7cbedf155c36c7.tif 55b118ed82c0a4b70cdd21df17e864b0 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 200 Area Entrance Subject The topic of the resource Security checkpoints Description An account of the resource Looking South From 200 West Main Guard House at Road and Security Fence Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.155 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fca4e4592867a03ac1b439198f9c7d60e.tif b1365ed447228e6b06d030b630baa550 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Employees leaving the 200 West Area Subject The topic of the resource Security checkpoints Description An account of the resource Buses, cars and employees leaving work from 200 West Areas, Guard Gate Insets: D 4548 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.157 https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa0eca6edd65c7f9cbc550e52577d2d9b.tif 3a4717ec4338de62caaa82b6185d3fae 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 View From 200 West Guard Gate Building Subject The topic of the resource Guards; Guardhouses Description An account of the resource Photo taken from the top of the 200 West Entry Checkpoint. Two fence gates are situated ahead on the road. Insets: D 4550 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.158 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F9b7a5182c41b263fac081328cbf15525.tif 56807303f47f6ad5479dd9c19ea4522d 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 U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection Description An account of the resource Photographs from the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943-1990 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. 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 Hanford Area Crossroad Subject The topic of the resource Roads; Safety Description An account of the resource Intersection of two unknown roads near the Hanford Site as a full bus drives past a sign reading, "I Want You to be a Full Time Safe Worker -H.E.W." The sign features a woman in uniform with several tools behind her. Insets: D 4551 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Hanford 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 collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource .tif Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HASI.1996.001.159