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Dublin Core
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Title
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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
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MP3, DOCX
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MET LADY...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW MANY PEOPLE HERE WHEN YOU ARRIVED?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>BIG ADVENTURE;</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I’d never really been in a big city very much...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW SPENT DAYS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT DID HANFORD LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU WERE FIRST THERE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>(TAPE ENDS)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>...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..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>OVER A COUPLE OF YEARS THE ENTERTAINMENT EFFORT EXPLODED?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS SUMMER OF 45 LIKE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID YOU KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON AT ALL?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>EXCITEMENT WHEN BOMB WAS DROPPED?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW ABOUT WHEN YOU GOT BACK HERE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I really don’t remember..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID BLAKE TELL YOU WHAT WAS GOIN ON?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>No.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WERE YOU CURIOUS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SENSE OF LOSS WHEN PEOPLE LEFT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yeah, but a lot of them come back...to retire</p>
<p>TAPE ENDS</p>
<p> </p>
<p>END</p>
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
<p>Video Interview of Bill Painter</p>
<p>October 8, 1999</p>
<p>at Battelle’s EMSL Auditorium</p>
<p>Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA</p>
<p>Videotaped by Nick Nanni, Battelle</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: In what area was that?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: To the old U Plant?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Plutonium Finishing.</p>
<p> 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% ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Could you just explain briefly what that was?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How many years was that?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How about what year you retired?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Well, I’ve been retired now for ‑‑‑ ‘89, I think I retired in ‘88.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: (inaudible)*</p>
<p> PAINTER: I’ve been retired more than that.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What’s his name, George?</p>
<p> PAINTER: George Puckett.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Go ask him.</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah. No, you can’t ask him. He’s dead now. Let me think about it just for a second. I retired ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Was it before (inaudible)*?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Almost 15 years ago. It will be 15 years in April that I retired.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Sure.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you understand what it was?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: When did you find out the connection between Hanford and the bomb?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were you already here before you realized that the Hanford was the one where they made the bomb material?</p>
<p> 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 ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: (inaudible)*</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you ever think that your job was short-term, that you’d be moving away?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: It was a brand new industry. Did it feel like it was an exciting industry to be in?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And how did that work out?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: She had to find somebody else to work with?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Like give an example of a piece of process equipment.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Yes.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Could you explain what a magnetic flow meter was?</p>
<p> 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 ‑‑‑</p>
<p>(Tape ran out)</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Maybe that’s interesting. Where was that and what process was it where you were dealing with this?</p>
<p> PAINTER: This was in 236-Z. We was recovering plutonium.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: When you say plutonium waste, what is plutonium waste?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How did you know how much plutonium was in there, in a vessel that you were dissolving, as far as criticality goes?</p>
<p> PAINTER: We, by our system, knew in our columns what we were tapping off, we knew the concentration of plutonium.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Based on what?</p>
<p> 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...</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: I thought plutonium was an (inaudible)*.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: In the 234?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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...</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Replace the light bulb?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How did that affect schedules when you ran into those kinds of problems?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: When you say the hot semiworks, which building is it?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did everybody in your position have a top secret clearance?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Have you ever been followed up since you retired, with all that vast knowledge?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You were applying for your top secret?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And I guess when you went home at night you couldn’t talk about work too much.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And on the bus going out and coming back you wouldn’t talk about work?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Give us your morning routine.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you walk to the bus?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: That’s a long day.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: (inaudible)* smoking.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What was the situation at work? Where were you allowed to smoke at work?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: In the control room?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah. But I quit smoking by that time, so I had no problem. I figured 20 years of smoking was long enough.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Going back to the uranium UO process, that was in U Plant.</p>
<p> PAINTER: That was in U Plant.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: West area.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were they piping that in?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You were using equipment in the cells like the building was designed for originally?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah. Well, it had been modified.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How many cells did it take for one line, do you think? You had 40 cells in the whole building, right?</p>
<p> PAINTER: I don’t remember whether we had 40 or ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Twenty sections, 40 cells?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah, I think it is, yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And you had two lines running.</p>
<p> PAINTER: Right.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So that each was using no more than 20 cells.</p>
<p> PAINTER: Right.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Why couldn’t you get it as clean as they did in T Plant and U Plant originally?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Well, because a lot of this half-life stuff, it was too hot for specs.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: It wasn’t any hotter than when they first did a fresh batch 10 years earlier?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were you bothering to get out any more plutonium, or was that done initially?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Plutonium was not a ‑‑‑ basically, we wanted to recover uranium.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And lots of it, right?</p>
<p> PAINTER: All of it.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Because there were many tons of uranium.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You lowered the tanks by taking out uranium, but your process created waste too?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Wait a minute. Recovered out of the waste banks or out of your own process?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Out of both.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Really?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Was it hot?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Where were you in U Plant for that kind of work? Where was your day spent?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Was that in the canyon?</p>
<p> PAINTER: No. No.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Outside of it?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p>(Tape ran out)</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: ...people weren’t so easy to get along with.</p>
<p> PAINTER: Well, that always happened. Not very often, thank heavens. There was times when there was problems with people.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Never got ahead of you? Never got to be too much.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Do you remember when the Nautilus was built and sailed under the polar ice cap?</p>
<p> PAINTER: I remember it, yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did it strike you as Yeah, now we see where all this is going?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What kind of pressure was that particular one under?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Not like a submarine.</p>
<p> PAINTER: Not like a submarine.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: With instruments, you mean?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Was any of that equipment affected by the radiation that it dealt with? Fogging of glass, or anything like that?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> PAINTER: The canyon?</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Yes.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: When the tanks were empty, it was safe to be in there?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you ever get to ride in the crane?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How big was the cab, that two guys could be in there at the same time?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did it have its own air supply at that point, do you remember?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Do you think somebody gave them a plan for what they had to take off?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: When was the first time you heard the words atomic energy?</p>
<p> PAINTER: When they dropped the bomb.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Not before then?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Working on the instruments?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Like what aspect? Why did they have to bring you in?</p>
<p> 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 ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Better explain what burnout is.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You were working on the rear face of the reactor?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Rear face and sometimes in the control room.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How did you have to dress up in the rear face?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Coveralls.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Was it wet back there?</p>
<p> 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...</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Water was still flowing, though, through the tubes? When you took a thermocouple out, did water come out too?</p>
<p> 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.”</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Oh, there must have been.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You changed a lot, right?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: It was a growing industry.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: A man who liked his job.</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: That’s nice.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Well, good.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Why do you think the instruments were used throughout the site but each area had its own group of instrument people?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Why didn’t they just have one team of instrument people?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: A different tack. Were there any women working on the line with you, operators?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You weren’t exactly trained for your job when you came out of high school.</p>
<p> PAINTER: No.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Where were they pulling people later on? What kind of people would hire out at Hanford?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Well, later on, then, they started Valpariso* Tech in Indiana, we had got quite a few people from their school.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Specific training?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Always in some kind of training because you were always changing jobs, you could always learn from it?</p>
<p> 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 ‑‑‑</p>
<p>(Tape ran out)</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you ever see how they do chemical separations fuel processing in France or countries that have a lot of commercial power?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How would you use a laser to separate out materials (inaudible)*</p>
<p> PAINTER: Well, I don’t know whether I can tell you that or not. But, anyhow, they shoot a laser through it.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Is it something that DuPont might use in a nylon factory? Was it just a normal process they were going to adapt?</p>
<p> PAINTER: No. I don’t think so. I think this was all originated in the labs down in California.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> PAINTER: Both. Both. Both, yeah. Because I don’t know what the classification is on any of that stuff.</p>
<p> 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)*?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Whether you’re pulling out gold or copper or anything (inaudible)*</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Because the people who first designed the process were chemists.</p>
<p> PAINTER: Yeah. Right.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Nuclear (inaudible)*</p>
<p> PAINTER: Right.</p>
<p>[end]</p>
<p> </p>
Duration
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01:39:18
Bit Rate/Frequency
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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
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Bill Painter Oral History
Subject
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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
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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10/8/1999
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project.
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English
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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
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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.
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MP3, DOCX
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John Rector
Transcription
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<p>[partial transcript received 9/7/99)</p>
<p>JOHN RECTOR INTERVIEW,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SO YOU WERE HIRED SPECIFICALLY TO DO MACHINING OF THE GRAPHITE.</p>
<p>WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL US ABOUT THE GRAPHITE ITSELF< REQUIREMENTS< CHALLENGES.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHO WAS DOING THE PROCUREMENT/ DUPONT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>AND YOU WERE REALLY WORKING WITH MATERIAL THAT YOU WERE UNFAMILIAR WITH AND DEVELOPING NEW PROCESSES EVERY DAY...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL ME ABOUT THE SIZE OF THE REACTOR, ETC.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HECK OF A CHALLENGE TO MACHINE AND LAY IT OUT...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>NEW TAPE...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>...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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WOULD YOU START THAT OVER AGAIN?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL US WHAT YOU SAW WHEN YOU CAME AND THEN THREE MONTHS LATER</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Of course they had all the regular operating sensors inside the control room, but they were all working inside the control room.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>How they was able to maintain the secret with so many thousands of people working, is an astronomical responsibility.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MUST HAVE HAD A BILLION RUMORS GOING AROUND...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THE BOMB?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WERE YOU TOLD?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ONE THING YOU MENTIONED WAS THE COMPRESSION OF TIME BETWEEN OCTOBER AND SEPTEMBER.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HUGE THING?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU WORKED IN MAINTENANCE...? SAFETY ASPECTS, HAZARDS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SO FEW PEOPLE WERE EXPOSED EARLY...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL ABOUT HANFORD CAMP...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS THAT RUN BY DUPONT TOO?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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....</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>How they scheduled all this is amazing. My hat’s off to DuPont.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHERE ARE THEY NOW THAT WE NEED THEM?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MATTHIAS SAID TOTAL 145,000 TOTAL ON THE HANFORD ROLLS...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After one of those bad dust storms they said about 8000 left the next day, said I’ve had enough.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS HANFORD CAMP PRETTY WILD?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL ME ABOUT IT.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MANY WOMEN AROUND?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>BUT FAMILIES COULD BE TOGETHER...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW FAR WAS HANFORD CAMP FROM B AREA?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WERE THEY WORKING ON ALL THREE AT THE SAME TIME/</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PEOPLE BUSSED OUT TO EACH OF THOSE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yeah, from Hanford. Cause there’s no place... they were building houses as fast as they could build them, but not fast enough.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(NEW TAPE)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL US ABOUT CATTLE CARS.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS ATMOSPHERE OF COUNTRY LIKE DURING THE WAR...THREAT, STRESS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But I would say the attitude of the people then was supportive of the overall action.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PEARL HARBOR...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHATTER</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHY DO YOU THINK DUPONT WAS SO EFFECTIVE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL ABOUT DESIGN INSTRUCTIONS ETC.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>(CHANGE TRANSCRIPTION TAPE)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[end]</p>
Duration
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01:43:19
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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
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John Rector Oral History
Subject
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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
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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9/7/1999
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project.
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English
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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
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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
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MP3, DOCX
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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
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<p><strong>RALPH SANSOM INTERVIEW- Recorded on 8/8/92</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>FIRST TIME SEEING B REACTOR SIGHT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PROCESS OF BUILDING REACTOR?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I WOULD THINK SO.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW MUCH DID YOU KNOW?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT KIND OF REACTOR AND HOW BUILT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PAUSE, START AGAIN.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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....</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MIGHT MENTION FUNCTION OF GRAPHITE.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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....</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHATTER</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>REACTOR BUILT, SOMETHING IN PROCESS.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID YOU EVER MEET Fermi?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHERE WERE YOU AT STARTUP?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHATTER, YOU HAD REGULAR SHIFT AS REACTOR OPERATOR?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS REACTORS JOB AT B REACTOR?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TRYING TO COOK EQUALLY?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ELEMENTS CHANGED SAME TIME?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>REACTOR UP AND GOING, FAIRLY UNEVENTFUL?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>BEGIN SANSOM TAPE #2</p>
<p>CON’T. SAME QUESTION.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS THERE GREAT SENSE OF URGENCY IN THE AIR?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS THE REACTOR RUN 24 HOURS A DAY?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS IT LIKE GENERALLY IN HISTORY IN AMERICA?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHERE DID YOU LIVE AT THE TIME?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DESCRIBE TYPICAL WORK DAY.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>FIRST YEAR - PROBLEMS OF RUPTURES, SLUGS, TUBE LEAKS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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....</p>
<p> </p>
<p>EXPLAIN RUPTURE.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>QUICKIE METHOD?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>QUICKIE TIME 20 MINUTES?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>3RD JOB, SLUGS IN POOL?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHOLE OPERATION UNDER WATER?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DESCRIBE NOT SPECIAL LIGHTS.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHATTER, TAPE 3</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW MUCH KNOWN OF EFFECTS OF RADIOACTIVITY? PROTECTIVE CLOTHING?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>THAT KNOWLEDGE WAS EVOLVING.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ANY THOUGHTS ON YOUR PART IN NUCLEAR AGE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHATTER</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IN ‘43 WERE THERE A LOT OF PEOPLE HERE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ANY THOUGHTS ABOUT MAGNITUDE OF THIS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MAYBE GREATER THAN PUTTING MAN ON MOON.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>END</p>
<p> </p>
Duration
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00:51:30
Bit Rate/Frequency
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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
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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
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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8/8/1992
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project.
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English
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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
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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
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MP3, DOCX
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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
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Home of Warren H. Sevier
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Interview of Warren H. Sevier</p>
<p>on audio tape (not video)</p>
<p>at his Home in Richland, WA</p>
<p>July 13, 2000</p>
<p>Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Keywords: “200 Area”, instruments, 1950</p>
<p> </p>
<p>[SIDE ONE]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Today is July 13<sup>th</sup> and we are with Warren Sevier in Richland, that is</p>
<p>S-E-V-I-E-R, right?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was the job highly tuned to what you were doing or…?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I was working for an instrument company and the job was instrument technicians.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. Why were they advertising in Cleveland do you think?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t know.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So what time of year do you think it was that you saw the ad?</p>
<p>SEVIER: It had to be during the summer.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Of 1950?</p>
<p>SEVIER: 1950, right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Somewhere in ’50.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And I came here in October of 1950.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Were you married then or have kids or anything?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, I was single then.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So it was pretty easy to pick up and move.</p>
<p>SEVIER: It was yes, um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was the pay better than what you were getting or what was the reason?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah, it was a factory job where I was working.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, right.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And so that’s when I started looking for another job.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And did they pay your way to come out for an interview or how did that work?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, I submitted an application and I guess they gave me the job. There was some correspondence back and forth of course.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. Any negotiation about salary or did they just tell you what it was going to pay?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, they told me what it was.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was it a step up?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah, from factory work?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Great.</p>
<p>SEVIER: What I was doing in the factory was assembling instruments and calibrating ‘em.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. What kind of instruments were they?</p>
<p>SEVIER: They were for powerhouse type, temperature, pressure…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …flow.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: All of which they had out here right?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did you drive out here?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yes, um-hum.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Where did you stay when you got here?</p>
<p>SEVIER: They had dormitories.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: In Richland and I stayed in the men’s dorm.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: About how long did that last?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Let’s see….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You got here in October.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, I think it lasted till, well I stayed till ’52 till I got married.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, so you stayed in the dorms for two years?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And that was a normal thing to do? It wasn’t just for transient temporaries?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah there was 13, I think 13, and men’s dorms and I don’t know how many women’s dorms.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. And did you start work immediately upon getting here?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. So, where was your first assignment?</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So you…yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …they wanted somebody to calibrate it.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: I wonder if that’s why they were advertising in Cleveland.</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, I don’t think so…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: No? Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …I think their ad probably appeared all around the country, I think.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right, right. Refresh my memory in the 700 Area Powerhouse, where was that?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. Where did that power go to, do you think? Steam or?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. So that was a pretty standard non-nuclear job then?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right, that was just until the clearance came though.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And for that job required no clearance….</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …and so how long were you there, do you think? A matter of weeks or months?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh, just a few weeks.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. Any problems getting clearance?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah. So where did you go after that?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Went to the 200 Areas.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, in power or?</p>
<p>SEVIER: In instruments. See they had a separate instrument division.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum, all had their own separate instrument people?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum, but as a group we, most of us, belonged to the Instrument Society.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Cause an awful lot of your instruments would have overlapped with everybody elses.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And I presume that…were there standards that were used throughout the site?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. Was there competition among you guys and the 100 Area instrument people or….</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …didn’t really know what they were doing?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, no problem there.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah. But you did share information?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yes, um-hum.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah both. I worked in T plant…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Were you assigned to T plant, or that was just one of the buildings you took care of?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right, did you ever have to climb the weather tower?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. Was there an elevator or walk up?</p>
<p>SEVIER: They put an elevator in there later I think.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah I did. There was no elevator at first.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You had to climb up?</p>
<p>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….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You had to work on the outside of the tower or how secure was it?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh you could reach from the tower.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. Huh. So</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh, for my whole career, just about.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was it? Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I think so.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Which went until when?</p>
<p>SEVIER: ’88.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. 38 years.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I even got a 35-year watch.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: A watch?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Rockwell, and then of course I retired from Westinghouse.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah. Did retirement work out okay after all those transitions?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah, fine.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay. Cause I know that was always something that it depended on who you were working for.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I worked maybe in to January or February or something like that.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: I guess the part I am interested in the most right now is T Plant specific work….</p>
<p>SEVIER: Okay.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …and I guess what kind of clearance did you need for that versus other places?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I think, you didn’t, you just needed just secret clearance, I’m not sure.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was it?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I’m not sure.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I had TS clearance because I worked sometimes once and awhile in the 2, 3, 4, 5.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: TS, was that higher…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Top secret.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: What was Q level?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Q was normal I think.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: That was just the basic.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, Q.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay but you had a higher one.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well later I did for working in the metal prep building.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right, right. So when do you think you went to T Plant? Was that early on?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah I think so. That would be….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: In ’51 or?</p>
<p>SEVIER: It had to be in ’51.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay. Was that your first assignment in the separations area, actually working on the separations process?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Working in one of the process buildings?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, um-hum</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, okay.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Followed that, or…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well that was before I went into T Plant I think.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: that quickly?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You went into T Plant within the year of getting here…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …but you worked in all those other places too?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And so you weren’t stuck in one building all day obviously….</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, no.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …the assignments came up and they would move you around.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So what were you doing at T Plant when you first got there?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I worked as an instrument technician.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Which meant you could go anywhere in the building to work on instruments?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah, um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: How many of you were there?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Gee I don’t know, maybe counting the shift people, probably 10 in a group.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: 10 instrument people?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Instrument people yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: On any one shift or through the entire, all shifts.</p>
<p>SEVIER: For the entire thing.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So there might be two or three.</p>
<p>SEVIER: One man on a shift. See we were working six days a week. So short change was a matter of a few hours.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: But I didn’t work shift there I worked days but I worked shift later at REDOX.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: When they started up REDOX.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Everything they did at T Plant was remote controlled, so I presume that instruments were as critical as instruments can ever get.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Were you sort of on emergency call and when things came up you had to get to ‘em right away.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, of course as I say they had shift coverage so they had to have a man there all the time.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: But, was it frequently, would the process stop until you guys fixed it?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, because it was batch.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: They get in to the process, I mean start and stop. I’m not to sure…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: But it was a batch process.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: People weren’t yelling at you continually about holding up the process.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh no.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did you know much about the process while you were working there?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Not too much because it was a no no to read run books and things like that.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: The logs.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay.</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right, right otherwise it would be boring reading.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did you ever have to dress up and go in the canyon to do instruments?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: How often was that? Weekly or every now and then?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No it wasn’t very often.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh in the winter time?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Really?</p>
<p>SEVIER: So what they were trying to do was establish a point where they did not need the water to cool the slugs.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: They wanted to find out if they needed it coming over from the reactors.</p>
<p>SEVIER: From the reactor with the slugs. See the slugs…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay…</p>
<p>SEVIER: …provided heat.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: They weren’t set up at the reactor to do these kinds of measurements.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Apparently not</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: It was easier to do it at your place.</p>
<p>SEVIER: It was easier to do with the swimming pool there…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Or the pool rather</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, so they’d measure the temperature in the water and out of the water and…</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …one little thing.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Why didn’t they just empty the water out after taking the fuel out of the cask car?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I’m not sure.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I was thinking about that.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah. So what they wanted to do was ship it over without water in the cask car.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And that was one of the times you had to suit up…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yep.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …then be out there. Where the heck were you when they were lifting fresh fuel out of the swimming pool.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh no you don’t get it.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: You get out of it. You don’t stay in the canyon.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah. And were they, so you put the thermocouple down in the water while it was safe to do so?</p>
<p>SEVIER: In the basket, Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Slugs were in a basket and you put the thermocouple down in there with tongs.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And then…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You’d leave at that point.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …leave right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And the crane operator…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Of course the wire is hooked up and so forth.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. So you were looking down in the cell then. You were working down in, or you know looking over the edge.</p>
<p>SEVIER: _____ (unclear) the pool.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was it big?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah, it was a big pool</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. How many buckets were down there when you were doing this?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh, this was just the one bucket.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Just for the test?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I think it would have been too hot with others.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And they tended to have redundancy in instruments so if something did go out they could continue the process?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I think so in a way.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: But with the batch process of course you could always stop.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: At any given point.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: In the gallery, the operating gallery…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …that’s where your readout instruments are.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And it would be a matter of routine calibration.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Preventative…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: According to a schedule?</p>
<p>SEVIER: …yeah maintenance…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Preventative maintenance.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did that include like the big scales they had.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah we had a scale man.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So, there was always, everyday if there were no problems you still had work to do everyday…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, routine, oh yeah.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I would say infrequent.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Just every now and then?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did you ever go up in the crane operator’s cabin?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah? While it was running or?</p>
<p>SEVIER: The periscopes belonged to the instrument groups.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: While they were working? Or just during off hours would you be up there?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh off hours,</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Cause you couldn’t have any cells open or anything. Even though you were behind a concrete wall.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right. Cause, oh you were working on the outside on the periscopes themselves.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Periscopes, right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right, okay. Was there TV installed at that point?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. You don’t remember any TV screens inside the crane at the T Plant.</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, not at T, not then no.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So suiting up was sort of a normal thing to do? Not frequent maybe.</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, it wasn’t frequent, no.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Usually it was pretty well organized.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: But weren’t the instruments, the other ends of the instruments were all in the cells right?</p>
<p>SEVIER: The sensing elements?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And what would you do if something went out in one of the dissolvers? Or you know…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh they probably, they were on jumpers so the crane operator would take them out.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You would take the whole thing out?</p>
<p>SEVIER: And conceivably it would be hot so they would bury it and you’d have a replacement one in which _____ (unclear).</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And were you the one who would install you know a thermocouple or something in a jumper?</p>
<p>SEVIER: In a jumper, yeah, you wouldn’t build a jumper but you would put the thermocouple in.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Where would you go to do that?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Up at the maintenance shop where they….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: ...built the jumpers.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So they would simply have an order for that and you’d go in and they’d tell you put it in there.</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, sometimes they had spares depending on the instrument.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, I thought it was pretty well thought out, planned before.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You guys weren’t changing things, improving, upgrading all time, where you had to constantly fine tune it?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No I don’t think so, not in that sense.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And the instruments in the gallery was like hundreds of yards of instruments…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: .Did you understand, I guess most of them were repeated instruments though right? There was a finite number of types of instruments.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, they could have weight factors, BG, and temperatures…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …pressures.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Microphones.</p>
<p>SEVIER: They had microphones yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: I thought that was a pretty real black and white way of finding out if something was working.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, you could hear it.</p>
<p>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….</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …and down the operating gallery.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And then the radiation instrumentation. They were at usually Beckman’s.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. All standard equipment kind.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, I don’t think so. It did on, I remember, on periscopes in the tank farm.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: For looking into tanks?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So it effected the glass or?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No the light, we’d have to change out the light bulb, and that was _____ (unclear)</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh yeah. Do you know a guy named Bill Painter?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: He told me a long story once about being involved in a crew where they had to pull the light thing out.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yep, everybody gets a few seconds.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And they all got dosed and they…yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Quick turn on the _____ (sounds like light) thing and then get out of there.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So were you involved in that from an instrumentation perspective?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, that’s when I was in the tank farm group, he was probably in the same group at the same time.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay, and that was just one sort of, not odd, but you know something that came up that you had to deal with.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And that was just the light bulbs?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum in that case, yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Sometimes when they were sluicing and they’d hit the periscope with the sluice uh, you know…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …and then the bulb would just burn out I guess.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. Wow. So, but back at T plant the radiation, you never found yourself having to add a shield or something….</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, hum-uh.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: We did.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh you did?</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …that took a lot of time as far as one man, keeping one man busy, so…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Were there any unique instruments in the lab that you wouldn’t have found elsewhere in the building?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I’m not sure.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was there like chemistry instruments, like _____ (sounds like gastromatographs) or?</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …that would be special.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum. What was the deal with the padlocks on the panels?</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Simply before you could move from to one tank to another.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah we didn’t do that, of course the operators did that.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right. And was that for every tank, was there like dozens of locks all the way down?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum. Every panel board had three or four.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Depending on, you know that’s how they moved the material was they jetted it from one to another.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Jet being a substitute for a pump right?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>SEVIER: I suppose, again I say we didn’t have, I didn’t have, I wasn’t privy to it…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …looking at the log book so…</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>SEVIER: That’s right.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right.</p>
<p>SEVIER: ...or say it didn’t decrease in one, they would know right away.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Cause as soon as they had done a few runs they would have a…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …routine that they would know what it should be.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. What about in the electrical or the pipe gallery, did you ever go down there for instruments too?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah, Um-hum. There were thermocouples there.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Thermocouples down where?</p>
<p>SEVIER: The wires came through the galleries.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh-oh-oh, right.</p>
<p>SEVIER: For the cell temperatures and stuff.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So you might have to tap into those.</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right.</p>
<p>SEVIER: ...cause I would have projects where we’d put in electric things but that was at a later period.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: How about adding new instruments? Was there much of that going on?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: I said earlier improvements, but did they just find new ways to measure things or new instruments to use?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well no, because the new plants were coming up.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Okay. Here comes REDOX, see, which has automatic control.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So they never had to worry about making huge improvements at T plant because it did what it was supposed to do?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. So you weren’t working with people to design new instruments to make it work better.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Not then, later on.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: I don’t think I want any coffee thank you, once sec, I’m going to turn the tape over.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SIDE TWO</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well I don’t know, probably getting your calibration to come out, I don’t know.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: That was the most satisfying part of the job?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I think so, right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Cause you were calibrating all the time?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um, part, yeah part of the time you were doing that right. I don’t think all of the time.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And if it didn’t calibrate, that’s where your skill came in?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Start over and fix it.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, was that the most difficult part of the job too?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um let’s see, the most difficult part of the job was working shift I guess.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, you mean like graveyard?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So what was the routine, what was the schedule? Give or take.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And you would move up a shift?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, no. You rotated. Yeah right, you did rotate. You change shifts which was difficult cause of sleeping problems.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yep. I think since then they’ve learned to keep people on a shift longer right?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, right right. How many tools did you carry around with you? Would you do your calibration at the site of the instrument?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yes.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You wouldn’t take it out? Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well you might, in some cases you might take it back to the shop and work on it.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Well how do you calibrate like a pH meter if its sensor is out in the canyon somewhere?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well you do some substitute voltage, or whatever it was.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: With a separate wire going to the instrument?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Or substitute. You might want to substitute the voltages to calibrate.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I’m not sure on routine. You had a routine, preventative maintenance.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: But was it based on type of instrument where you’d go down and do all the thermometers this week…</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …or by panel board?</p>
<p>SEVIER: _____ (unclear) panel boards probably.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Course it had to correlate with the operation of the process.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, so it wouldn’t interfere.</p>
<p>SEVIER: You couldn’t very well take an instrument out of service to calibrate it when your operating…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …so it had to be coordinated.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And you then had a finite amount of time to get it done.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: But it sounded like time pressure wasn’t a big part of the job.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t think so.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, you weren’t under the gun…</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: …to keep the instruments going.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Of course, you get energetic and work hard and get a little ahead then you could coast a little.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And where were you based? What was your home office?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And were you doing tank farms for both areas?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Lets see, did we do both? I don’t think so. I think we just did the west areas.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Later on we did both though, seems to me.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was that part of somebody’s job as far as…</p>
<p>SEVIER: That would be process operation.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, so how they were using or anything else didn’t really effect what you did.</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, not, hum-um.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was there looking for leaks? Was that part of the instrumentation?</p>
<p>SEVIER: As far as…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: What you guys were maintaining.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …tanks and that?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, well we had projects where we drilled wells around the tank farm.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Monitoring wells.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And put instruments down them?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Or would they take samples out?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well, if you went to the water table they would take samples out but I think the monitoring wells were later on.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And did they have array of instruments down inside the tanks then?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Let’s see what was in the tanks? I guess there were dip tubes for level and BG and I’d imagine temperature…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …and let’s see, how did they measure radiation? Probably at a chamber.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Inside?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Not in a tank itself but maybe in the well down alongside the tank.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay. And how often would you have to suit up and be on top of the thanks?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Not too often.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did you ever have tasks where there was a real short amount of time they allowed you to work on it.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well changing light bulbs was the shortest.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So the sluicing they were doing wasn’t anything unknown, it was just the normal routine for getting the liquids out.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well not…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You went there anyway, did they call you in for it?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And was it just a normal bulb or a spot, or?</p>
<p>SEVIER: It was probably a spot _____ (sounds like involved).</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: But it screwed in light a regular light bulb?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right, um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And one person couldn’t take 15-20 seconds to unscrew it?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, it would take too long.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Wow.</p>
<p>SEVIER: So it was really short.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And they called you in simply to help change the light bulbs.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well I was part of that group.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. And did you use up that week’s allotment of dose?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Probably.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Cause Bill was mentioning something about sitting around not being able to do anything for awhile after some job like that.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Well we always could work out on a cold side though.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Well evidently he didn’t that time.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Well what he was talking about was exactly the same thing you were…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Or maybe they gave him more exposure then they gave…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …in that case they would probably want to keep him from…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Do you remember what your retirement dosage was? Your lifetime dosage?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Not to high.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t think it was too high.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Being exposed was not a normal part of your job.</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, because later, see later on I did a lot of…oh what would you call it…office type work.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right.</p>
<p>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..</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Was the instrumentation at REDOX much more exciting than it was at T plant?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Oh yeah, it was, had automatic control there instead of batch.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So the continuous process was not just monitored by instruments but controlled by it.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Controlled by it, um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Where at T plant it was all padlocks basically.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum, yeah batch.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And switch on a centrifuge, switch it off, entirely manually controlled.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, you can’t now.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Were you at T plant when they stopped using it?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: You had left already.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Manuals for people to use them or to use ‘em.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Use them to maintain the instrumentation.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. To maintain them, not for the operators?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …in that case it was for maintenance.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Later on I worked on operating manuals for the operators but that was for PUREX.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Not operator’s manuals, these were instrument manuals to educate the operators.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh-oh-oh right.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Say that you were a new operator and you’d say “well what’s weight factor?” see….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>SEVIER: You know, like a _____ (sounds like lucidive) about that thick. But anyway, just educate the operators to how the instrumentation did work.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, because there was no other way. Yeah, right.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Because the only visible part of it was when the crane operator lifted out a bucket, put it in the dissolver…</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: … after that everything else was via instruments.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t know, maybe one or two a panel, I don’t know.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, at a panel?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Or a section.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: So there would be quite a few people all the way down at least?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, there may be, depending on the process of course. We’re talking about T plant?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Okay. We might have one or two panels, sections, then again depending on where they were in the process too I guess.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay. Did you ever do any instrumentation for the stack gases going out? Any of the monitoring?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah. I was, was it 291 building?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right, I think so.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah. Yeah we had instruments in that building, stack.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And that was, was that a room where you had to suit up and spend a little time?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No, oh yes you did, to get in there? I think you did, yeah. Right. Going way back.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And they had filters in at that point right? By the time you got there…</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Right. I think when they started it up it had no filters at all.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Right. And then just before I got here they put in the sand filters.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And then later on they went to the silver, I forget what it was called.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Silver nitrate?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, was a step up.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, that was in the building wasn’t it? Yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did they have instruments in the filter?</p>
<p>SEVIER: In the filter?</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, down in the sand?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t think so. I think what they do is measure differential across the various parts.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah. Get the drop across the filters.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Coming in and going out?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t think so.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: They were big. I don’t think they did anything about it.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: And a lot of the stuff that went through it was fairly short-lived right? The iodine.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Iodine…yeah…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …short half-life.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Sometimes. We…usually…most that went to the electricians.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: But we might measure bearings and fan bearings and stuff like that. We had thermocouples on the fans…I remember on the bearings.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, to see if they were getting hot or not.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Um-hum.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Did you ever get called up in the middle of the night to come out?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And that, again, was because they had shift coverage. I worked shift, but that was during the startup of REDOX.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I didn’t like it.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: What did you mean working shift, versus what? What do you call it otherwise?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Working days.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Oh, shift meaning off or normal hours.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And like everybody here they came from some other place at that time. We’re not born here.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Nobody was born here, yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: So they often liked it so they could go home or whatever they were going to do.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t know.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah? Nothing jumps out?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Might be Ladoux Bells and powerhouse, steam flow meters and that, cause they had mercury in ‘em.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum.</p>
<p>SEVIER: And you had piping on them where you had to hook your instruments to them.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: The mercury is in the pump or in the meter?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Hmm.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Because you know flow is related to square root, so in a way it extracts square root for you…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …gives you linear.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Interesting.</p>
<p>SEVIER: But they were sitting in…because of the big difference in pressure they were in mercury for a seal.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Why would, hmmm.</p>
<p>SEVIER: The ring balances were…it was actually a ring that had mercury in it, but it moved, rotated on pivots.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Huh. And you said you liked to dabble with trinkets, were you a clock maker or a radio builder at home?</p>
<p>SEVIER: No. Well I built radios yeah.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah? Yeah, like from scratch? Or from Heathkit or ?</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, Heathkit and junk like that.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Uh-huh. Are they still around by the way?</p>
<p>SEVIER: I don’t know. The last thing I bought from them was an electric filter for the furnace….</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Hmmm…</p>
<p>SEVIER: …but that was quite awhile ago.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: One thing I bought from them was in 1974 probably, was a windshield wiper variable speed edition.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>SEVIER: Yeah, because of foreign inputs these things are real cheap.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Yeah, yeah. I can just see….</p>
<p>SEVIER: I have that little digital camera there real cheap…</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Um-hum, yeah…yeah.</p>
<p>SEVIER: …and all kinds of things like that.</p>
<p>WEISSKOPF: Let me turn this off for a minute.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:51:04
Bit Rate/Frequency
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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
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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
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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7/12/2000
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project.
Language
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English
Identifier
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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
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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
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MP3, DOCX
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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
<p>Interview of Alex Smith</p>
<p>on audio tape (not video)</p>
<p>at his Daughter’s Home in Richland, WA</p>
<p>October 26, 1999</p>
<h1>Interviewed by Gene Weisskopf, BRMA</h1>
<p> </p>
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<p> WEISSKOPF: Today is October 27, 1999. And why don’t you give us your name and spell the last name.</p>
<p> SMITH: Alex Smith, S-m-i-t-h.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did anybody know you by a nickname when you worked here?</p>
<p> SMITH: Smitty.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Smitty? Okay.</p>
<p> SMITH: In the early days. Later on, they didn’t.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Where were the other two plants?</p>
<p> SMITH: There was one in Kansas City and one in Oklahoma. And, of course, back in Remington Arms main plant.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. So they were going to close the plant you were working in.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How did they present the job to you before you went out? How did they tell you what it was?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And did that sound better than ‑‑‑ what was your other option, if you hadn’t taken him up on that?</p>
<p> SMITH: He didn’t have one. He was specifically looking for somebody to work in the 101 Building, I suppose.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. When did you have the interview versus actually arriving in Pasco? What was the time lag, do you think?</p>
<p> SMITH: I was on my way in about three days.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you drive out?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And you got here in December of ‘43.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah, December the 9th. I remember the date.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How many days later was it before you showed up on the job and they were ‑‑‑</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You mean the basic clearance.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Not a secrecy ‑‑‑ you didn’t have a real clearance?</p>
<p> SMITH: No.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: But you were good enough for the job. They didn’t have to investigate further.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah. Well, I think they ‑‑‑ anybody that worked in the arms department had to have some kind of clearance.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p> SMITH: Had to pass a security test. Because they had gone out to people in high school, college, university.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Was the 101 Building up and running when you got there?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: It was producing already?</p>
<p> SMITH: No, they had a ‑‑‑ yeah, they had one assembly line up.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And it was milling graphite?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you again: The 101 Building, at least then, was only used for milling graphite?</p>
<p> SMITH: That’s all.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: That was the primary purpose. Okay.</p>
<p> SMITH: Storage. Had a big storage area for raw graphite that come in unmachined.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And when you went in there, what did you do the first or second day? How did they orient you to ‑‑‑</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So what were you doing the second day that they showed you the room, the building?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were you familiar with graphite at all before then?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And did you know you were on a war effort? That must have been pretty obvious.</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, yes. That was made very obvious. Everybody knew.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Have any clue what they were going to be using graphite for?</p>
<p> SMITH: No. Not a clue.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you know how much was going to be run through there, the quantities?</p>
<p> SMITH: No idea. At that point I had never seen a reactor, never seen the place it was going.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. So they started you as the guy running the swing shift, you said?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And what was that like the first few days that you did it? What was the routine?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What were some of the things that you were told that were really, really important about the graphite?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did they give you a list of sizes and pieces?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And other than the sizes and shapes, what were the other things that they emphasized was critical about the job?</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Four feet, I think.</p>
<p> SMITH: Four? Yeah, four feet.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And you tempered the edges?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes, all had to be tempered.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And you didn’t know why you were doing that, it was just part of the specification?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were there small pieces, too?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And you were milling them down to the finished size?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Till they were ready to be used?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You were doing that as well?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So instead of having to make a dozen different hand checks, you just shoved it in the box and it had ‑‑‑</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Let me rephrase that. Did specifications say plus or minus so many thousandths ‑‑‑</p>
<p> SMITH: Three-thousandths.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ three thousandths of an inch, you expect them to average out.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Some less, some more. But you’re saying they were all heading towards the plus side.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: The tubes? The fuel tubes were aluminum, you had 2,000 of them.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah. I wasn’t sure about that aluminum. I thought surely they’d be stainless, but they were aluminum.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Had to be aluminum. Otherwise the stainless would have shut down the reaction too much, I think.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: This was in the reactor itself?</p>
<p> 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 ‑‑‑</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> SMITH: No.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And that’s when they discovered that the error had been plus, plus, plus?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: That’s amazing.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> SMITH: Normally it depends on position on the roof, or how they took it out. There was four ‑‑‑ well, I don’t remember (inaudible)*.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You wrapped them in paper when you were done?</p>
<p> SMITH: No.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Just left them bare and stacked them?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Right. What kind of clothing were you wearing while you were inside the building working?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: It was separated from the rest of the building?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. Just sort of a clean room for its day?</p>
<p> SMITH: Somebody’s sending a fax.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So you normally just wore a suit and tie, or how dressed up were you?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How long do you think you were there milling, you know, working with the graphite? You started in December ‘43.</p>
<p> SMITH: Fourteen months.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Really? So you did all three reactors, then?</p>
<p> 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 ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So 14 months from December would be like February or March of ‘45?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: All the reactors were up and running.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: The whole plant was running at that point. Okay. And ‑‑‑</p>
<p> SMITH: Well, I don’t think ‑‑‑ well, they’d have to be.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Well, B Reactor started in September ‘44, about nine months or ten months after you started, and ‑‑‑</p>
<p> SMITH: It wasn’t very far behind.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: No, a couple, few months. I think by March they were all up and running.</p>
<p> SMITH: I can’t verify that one way or the other.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> SMITH: Uh-huh.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And then where were you left after that was done?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: C Plant, I think, in the East area.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah. Let’s see, the two were built in 200 West, but one was never started up.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: That was U.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Dealing with the day-to-day ‑‑‑</p>
<p> SMITH: I got a chance on hands-on with all the equipment, at least in the 200 areas.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: As opposed to just working with blueprints and specifications and things like that.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p>[Tape changed]</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: 1947 I think AEC started.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you know of radiation?</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You knew about that.</p>
<p> SMITH: We had to take all the precautions.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And they called it radiation?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: You’ve got your health physicists.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Turn it off?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Was it strictly localized on his head?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What year do you think that was, give or take?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> SMITH: It wasn’t till later we found out that bomb was actually made at Oak Ridge. It was the uranium bomb.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Right.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And did that kind of make your job seem much more interesting?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Which one was that? Where is that?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Are you talking about the one on Jadwin?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Jadwin and Symons, up in that area?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. Yeah, I live right near there.</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, do you?</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Yeah.</p>
<p> SMITH: See, that was just a swamp area down in there.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Oh, by the creek that runs through, maybe.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So, you heard about the bomb being dropped ‑‑‑</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ the 6th of August. Another one was dropped on the 9th of August. The war was over the 14th, or something like that.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So literally a week after you learned what you were doing there, your job might have been done, theoretically.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Really. Sharp businessman.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah, sharp businessman. I kept it in good shape.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were your kids already born before the war was over? Do you have children?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What were you thinking way back, like, say, 1948, ‘49 and ‘50, about where we would be 50 years later with atomic energy?</p>
<p> SMITH: I guess I didn’t have that much...</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: I mean, did it seem to you also that it must be the power of the future?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes. I told you about the rotating hook.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Yeah. What I didn’t know is when was that and where were you at the time.</p>
<p> SMITH: I was at REDOX.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: That was REDOX? Okay.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: To take what?</p>
<p> SMITH: E metal. Enriched.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Oh, right, which came along in the later years.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. Now, the first six months you spent in maintenance, early on? You said they sent you out to the 200 areas?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What kind of work were you doing in there?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you ever go into the canyons?</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What was the typical job where you might be sent into one of the canyons?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What would they have done if it had been hot? What could they have done?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. And just replace the whole jumper?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: The original design was a flat connection?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: And where was the oval used at Hanford?</p>
<p> SMITH: At REDOX.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: REDOX, Okay. They improved the connection.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes. They improved that here.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: But at T Plant, the connections all had to fit precisely?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: When you laid it in there, it had to line up and then just ‑‑‑</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: ‑‑‑ fit perfectly.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yeah.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How did you get down in the cell for that job when you ‑‑‑</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were you dressed in whites, coveralls?</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, yes. Coveralls. In fact, we had the plastic suit.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were you impressed at the size of the place?</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, I saw that ‑‑‑ I think the T Building had an extra length, they had an extra operation.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: The laboratory. The semiworks that they had.</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, yeah. I think it was 900 feet long.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Just about. Almost. It’s 965, something like that.</p>
<p> SMITH: Is it?</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Yeah ‑‑‑ 865.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So it was always skewed as it went down the track?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you ever work on the cranes at T Plant or B Plant?</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What types of things would you be doing with those?</p>
<p> 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...</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Let me ask you this: There were two periscopes that the operator used.</p>
<p> SMITH: Yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Do you remember there being television, a little closed circuit television in the cab?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: At REDOX. So at T Plant and B Plant, you don’t remember TV being there at all?</p>
<p> SMITH: No. No, there wasn’t any. (Inaudible)*</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Yeah. Is it possible they installed it and never used it?</p>
<p> SMITH: No. Well, yes, later on in T Plant it became the main decontamination of the ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: No, no, I mean in the beginning.</p>
<p> SMITH: No.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: In the beginning, there wasn’t a little TV screen in the cab that they never used?</p>
<p> SMITH: No. It wouldn’t be in the cab anyway, it would have to be out in the ‑‑‑</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: No, the screen itself.</p>
<p> SMITH: The screen. Excuse me, I’m sorry. Okay.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> SMITH: All the time.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Were they swaggering, like a fighter pilot? Were they cocky and proud of their job because they ‑‑‑</p>
<p> 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...</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: So you’d schedule it around his schedule, to make sure that the top guy was there.</p>
<p> SMITH: There were very few that weren’t good operators. But there were a few that we just didn’t have any confidence in.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: How many hours would they spend on a shift inside the cab, working it? Would they be there the whole time?</p>
<p> SMITH: No, no. They came out for something to eat, to take lunch. But they put in four hours, probably.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay. Pretty tiring job?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Would they give them charts or something, or lists on how they were to go about?</p>
<p> SMITH: I think mostly they worked by the telephone.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Okay.</p>
<p> SMITH: I don’t know. I can’t answer that.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Did you ever hang out in the cab with them?</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, yes.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: What kind of stuff were you doing? What was your job?</p>
<p> SMITH: Well, they would show me ‑‑‑ when you look down on that, I don’t see how in the world they ever operated.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Looking through the periscope?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: There must have been some pretty extreme pressures to keep the thing running.</p>
<p> SMITH: Oh, in REDOX, I’m telling you.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Especially at REDOX?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Which you didn’t have to worry about in the old days because they weren’t using any, right?</p>
<p> SMITH: That’s right. All the old dissolvers would just dump ‑‑‑ they dumped the whole (inaudible)*.</p>
<p> 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?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Disconnected the pipe?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> WEISSKOPF: Took a lifetime dose?</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(End of Interview)</p>
<p> </p>
Duration
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01:02:27
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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
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Alex Smith Oral History
Subject
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Hanford Atomic Products Operation
B Reactor National Historic Landmark (Wash.)
Radiation
Description
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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.
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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10/26/1999
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project.
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English
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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
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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.
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MP3, DOCX
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English
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Tom Putnam
Interviewee
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Glen P. Stein
Transcription
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<p><strong>GLENN STEIN INTERVIEW- Recorded on 8/1/92</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TRAFFIC, STOP</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>THIS WAS 1943?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU SAID YOU HEARD STORIES AND RUMORS BEFORE...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>AND WHAT WAS THE DEPARTMENT...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Instrument, yeah. Which is controls and uh, recorders and things like that see.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL ME A LITTLE ABOUT INSTRUMENTATION...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT DID YOU HAVE AVAILABLE AS A TEST SOURCE...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT TYPE OF OTHER INSTRUMENTS WERE YOU WORKING ON?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CAN YOU RECALL YOUR FIRST TRIP TO B REACTOR...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHATTER</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was Hanford that was the tough part, this wasn’t see.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHATTER</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE OUT THERE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At Hanford? Or B area?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>AT HANFORD.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID YOUR WIFE JOIN YA?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU BEGAN WORK AT B REACTOR ABOUT WHAT TIME?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WERE YOU THERE AROUND THE TIME OF START UP?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh yes, I was there when it started yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL US ABOUT THAT.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>AND I UNDERSTAND THEY DID...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WERE YOU OUT IN THE BIG PUMP BUILDING THEN?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF THIS WAS DONE...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU WERE HERE WHEN THE BOMBS DROPPED.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh yes. uh huh. ‘46.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW DID YOU FIRST HEAR ABOUT THAT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WE HEARD STORIES, RUMORS...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>GENERAL CLIMATE OF COUNTRY. WERE YOU AWARE OF THAT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TAKE 2, ROLL 2 - SURPRISED WHAT’S BEING MADE HERE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>END OF WAR, GENERAL FEELING SATISFACTION?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WERE YOU AWARE OF ANY PERSONAL DANGER?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ENTRY NUCLEAR AGE</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID YOU LIVE HERE IN RICHLAND?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU COULDN’T TALK ABOUT WHAT YOU WERE DOING.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS THERE ANY SENSE OF THREAT, WARNINGS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ORGANIZATIONS, SOCIAL THINGS FOR PEOPLE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU’D COMMUTE TO B REACTOR?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MOST REMARKABLE THING YOU REMEMBER.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SECURITY QUESTIONS</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SCARING - LOSE JOB OR BIGGER THREAT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>EXAMPLE OF SOMEBODY EVERY SO OFTEN.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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”.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PROBLEM BETWEEN WORKER & SPOUSE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>END</p>
<p> </p>
Duration
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00:32:40
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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
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Glen P. Stein Oral History
Subject
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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
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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8/8/1992
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project.
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English
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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
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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.
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MP3, DOCX
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Tom Putnam
Interviewee
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Monty Stratton
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<h1>MONTY STRATTON INTERVIEW- Recorded 6/8/93</h1>
<p> </p>
<p>[WAS IN INSTRUMENTATION; WIFE ALSO WORKED AS EARLY MONITOR AND SHOULD BE INTERVIEWED.]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW WERE YOU TRAINED, HOW MUCH KNOWN, ANY BACKGROUND?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SUCH AS BECKMANS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IN THE PLANT WHAT FUNCTION WERE THESE INSTRUMENTS SERVING?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They were use to monitor any airborne radiation that was of gamma nature</p>
<p> </p>
<p>NOT A PORTABLE INSTRUMENT..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>THESE INSTRUMENTS MADE A PAPER RECORDING OF WHAT THEY WERE READING, DID THEY NOT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>...I CAN IMAGINE THAT THOSE OUTSIDE THE BUILDING, IN THE CASE OF A SIGNIFICANT INCIDENT, WERE TO SEE WHAT WAS HAPPENING OUT THERE...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID THEY THINK TO PUT SOME DOWNWIND?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>We did not have any of this particular type of instrument mounted in the so-called downwind area, that is, north of Pasco.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS THE VICTORENE A NEW INSTRUMENT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I BELIEVE THESE WERE USED AS PORTABLE INSTRUMENTS, ALTHOUGH THEY WERE HEAVY...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I RECALL ONE THAT WAS ABOUT THIRTY POUNDS..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>THIS WAS A NEW AREA...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>BUSINESS OF RECORDING RADIATION WAS ONLY KNOWN IN RECORDING X-RAYS UP TO THAT POINT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID YOU HAVE ANY CONTACT WITH THE TEST REACTOR THEY USED IN FUELS TO TEST THE URANIUM THEY WERE USING?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I did not have any particular experience with that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THEY WERE USING IT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WERE YOU TOLD?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CHANGE TAPE</p>
<p> </p>
<p>...I told Laura she should be doing this interview because she came here the same time I did...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WOMEN IN YOUR CREW? UNUSUAL?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WITH ALL OF THE EMPHASIS ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT THESE DAYS, DID YOU RECEIVE ANY INSTRUCTION?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID THEY EVER EXPLAIN THAT RULE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS SECURITY PRETTY TIGHT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW DID THEY INTRODUCE THIS SUBJECT BEFORE YOU CAME?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHEN DID YOU FIGURE IT OUT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WERE YOUR OWN PRIVATE THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT IT MIGHT BE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WE HEAR FROM OTHER PEOPLE THAT IF YOU HAD AN IDEA, KEEP IT PRIVATE.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>FOR PEOPLE WITH NO IDEA OF MONITORING, COULD YOU TELL WHAT THINGS ARE MEASURED, ETC.?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>GO OVER INSTRUMENTATION ON EACH TUBE</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SO THERE WERE OVER TWO THOUSAND WAYS TO SHUT THE REACTOR DOWN..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DID THAT HAPPEN OFTEN?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WAS THERE AN ATMOSPHERE OF TENSION, NEW PROBLEMS, NOTHING ROUTINE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SOCIAL CONDITIONS, DESCRIBE</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHY CALLED THAT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT KIND OF HOUSE...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IN B HOUSE WAS IT VERY BARE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHERE WERE YOU WHEN BOMB DROPPED?</p>
<p>The first big</p>
<p>(TAPE ENDS)</p>
<p>NEW TAPE</p>
<p> </p>
<p>..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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU GOT BACK?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PAPER BECAME IMPORTANT...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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..</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW LONG BEFORE PEOPLE KNEW THAT THE MATERIAL HAD BEEN PRODUCED HERE FOR THE SECOND ONE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I would hesitate to comment on that because I don’t remember details... It was quite sometime before it was released, best not comment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHEN YOU REALIZED THE NATURE, WHAT WERE YOUR FEELINGS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>FEEL PROUD?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IN CONTEXT OF WAR EFFORT, JUSTIFY, SAVING LIVES?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>GREG TELLS STORY OF THE WHIZBANG, security...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT KIND OF DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES AS A PUNISHMENT...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>AND WHAT WAS MAXIMUM?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MOST OTHER PEOPLE IMPLIED LOSE JOB...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>More than that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PEOPLE ON BUS PASSED RUMORS, GONE NEXT DAY</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>BACK TO ARRIVAL, WHAT WAS MORALE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I would say generally that morale was good, you knew that you were doing important work towards the war effort, so morale was good.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>PEOPLE WORKING HERE GOT SPECIAL DISPENSATION FORM DRAFT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>OTHER IMPRESSIONS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WORKING FOR DUPONT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I started with Dupont in 1940, so I had some DuPont experience, it was a very good company, a very safety oriented company...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WERE YOU TOLD AS TO WHY THEY WERE LEAVING HANFORD?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I can’t remember...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>END</p>
Duration
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00:37:22
Bit Rate/Frequency
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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
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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6/8/1993
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project.
Language
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English
Identifier
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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
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MP3, DOCX
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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
<p><strong>HARRY ZWEIFEL INTERVIEW- Recorded on 12/14/91</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE BEFORE HANFORD?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE IN CHICAGO?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU WERE BUILDING THE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT DID FERMI DO IN CHICAGO AND YOU IN RELATION TO THAT.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS THE NATURE OF THE FUEL IN CHICAGO AND HOW HANDLED?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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...</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IT MAY NOT HAVE BEEN SLUGS AT ALL?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HE DID HAVE A CERTAIN CHARISMA.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Oh, he, he was, he was. He was just a comfortable old shoe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(CHATTER) WHAT WAS IMPORTANCE OF DUPONT IN THIS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHY DO YOU THINK DUPONT CHOSE TO LEAVE WHEN THEY DID?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW WERE YOU RECRUITED OR WERE YOU ASSIGNED TO COME OUT HERE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS THE TRANSITION TO HANFORD THEN?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>YOU WERE TOWING ONE CAR BECAUSE OF GAS RATIONING?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS THE OVERALL MOOD OF COUNTRY?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO SEE THE PROJECT FOR THE FIRST TIME?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.(?)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT ABOUT THE SCOPE OF THE PROJECT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CAN YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU SAW B REACTOR?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It looked monstrous, it looked so big. And you gotta, gotta bear in mind.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>CAN YOU GIVE ME FULL STATEMENT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>REFRIGERATION FACILITIES.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IT WAS PROBABLY INTENDED TO COOL THE WATER.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>TELL US ABOUT INSTRUMENTATION FOR MEASURING RADIATION LEVELS.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WERE YOU CHECKING WITH EACH LEVEL?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SO YOU WERE WORKING IN B AT THE TIME, AS PATROL?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>HOW DID INFORMATION ABOUT THE SECOND STARTUP HIT YOU?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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</p>
<p>at 4:00 then the boys on the day shift were breathing a big sigh of relief.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>THAT WAS OBVIOUSLY A MILESTONE.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A tremendous milestone.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT OTHER MILESTONES WERE THERE IN THAT PROCESS.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>FEEDBACK AND UPGRADING - WAS THAT SIGNIFICANT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>IN THIS EARLY PERIOD, WAS THERE ANY PROBLEM WITH FUEL FAILURE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SOME DID OCCUR AT B REACTOR DURING THE INITIAL LOW LEVEL OPERATION.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>MARSHALL - ONE OF THE EARLY PROFESSIONAL WOMEN OUT THERE.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT FACTORS MADE IT POSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE THIS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>DUPONT WAS A GREAT COMPANY.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>OVERALL TECHNICAL & INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY OF U.S. MADE IT POSSIBLE.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>SO THEN YOU WENT WHERE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ZWEIFEL INTERVIEW, PART 2</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT WAS THAT ROCKET POWDER TO HAVE BEEN USED FOR?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHAT DID THAT END UP IN AS FAR AS THE WEAPON?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>WHERE WERE YOU IN AUGUST OF 1945?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I GUESS YOU COULD SAY “I WAS THERE.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I was there, that’s right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>REMEMBER IMMEDIATE REACTION WHEN YOU HEARD THAT?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ANY OTHER REFLECTIONS ON THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO PASS TO FUTURE GENERATIONS?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>END</p>
<p> </p>
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
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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12/14/1991
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English
Identifier
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RG2D-4B
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa78ce8c0801a1c0046b2a01fc30fd96e.docx
cb2d06c71602c0051645d5da5ed01d64
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Hanford History Project Finding Aids
Description
An account of the resource
Finding aids for archive collections held by the Hanford History Project at WSU Tri-Cities. The Hanford History Project collections generally relate to Hanford, but encompassing material outside of the Department of Energy Hanford Collection scope. This focus includes the town of Richland, pre-1943 and post-1990 Hanford Site history, and materials relating to Hanford not produced on the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project and Cold War. See list of finding aids for specific collections.
Creator
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Hanford History Project
Publisher
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Hanford History Project
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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 History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
The collection includes 30 video oral histories, 18 audio oral histories, 42 other video tapes, and a binder of notes and correspondence from the Mid Columbia Oral History Association/Coalition.
Creator
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B Reactor Museum Association
Publisher
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Hanford History Project
Date
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1986-2004
Identifier
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RG2P_4B
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F019c973d4494c91f90228098abc7ced8.tif
4157ed58f9788b13b35f834c660557d2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
Publisher
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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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Unpacking Fuel Rod Assembly
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Robotic arms have cut a fuel rod assembly and the assembly is being removed and the fuel goes to processing.
Creator
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Battelle Northwest Photography
Identifier
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Tallent001
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Format
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TIFF
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa56b2aab114825f2b814e1c5f7714c31.tif
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Loading Fuel Pellets
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Picture of a Jerry Tallent loading fuel pellets using a glove box while two other workers observe.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
Identifier
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Tallent004
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Format
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TIFF
Language
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English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F34d21a27be35f8fc9139f225c96f10f4.tif
8cad1071ba5d750ee6326bd29dba6832
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Dismantling Fuel Rod
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Jerry Tallent posing with fuel driver assembly for a photographer proof
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent005
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
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TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F8601a625a8b99ac908415f25f63afcd5.tif
816d88a162afe5239592ab6e84611a00
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Dismantling Machine
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Jerry Tallent and two other workers running a FFTF fuel driver assembly Dismantling machine.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent006
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
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TIFF
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1f44a2dd35d0634f107df1ec41fa2a25.tif
c5a95dca4279621575d6ea6fc7ff46e6
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Viewing Dismantling Machine
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity; Leaded glass windows
Description
An account of the resource
Group viewing the Dismantling machine through a six-foot wall and glass. The wall was lined with lead BB's to block radiation emitted from plutonium. Jerry Tallent on left.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent007
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Format
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TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0c7ed9acf78221ed78bf4c50cfba5a65.tif
93eb508968931b27b6d852f6fc66fc24
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Group Photo
Description
An account of the resource
From left to right: Dawson, W.F. Walker, Pete Titzler, and Jerry Tallent at the far right.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Identifier
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Tallent008a
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
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TIFF
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fa33e140fb225614b1533eecd8ea92139.tif
8f3609c73c7ebed9d6a08d7edcd02fa4
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Group Photo
Description
An account of the resource
From left to right: Dawson, W.F. Walker, Pete Titzler, and Jerry Tallent at the far right.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Identifier
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Tallent008b
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
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TIFF
Language
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English
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F9358bdd5e1747c4ed2f5c9af2d8be45e.tif
a86c086d5b68942db827c7b100712a6a
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
Publisher
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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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Fuel Rod Assembly Manipulator Arm
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
The robotic arm cuts the outside of the assembly and exposes the fuel rods.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
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Photographic prints
Identifier
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Tallent009
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Format
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TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fafc1844bee8e5b2886a06aa39ca718a8.tif
78e2bdc495d529a77ebdb38ba2760689
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Steel Arm
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
A steel arm used in the fuel rod Dismantling machine.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photographic prints
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent014
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
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6d2d7b0f2b216cf6697c5d0207d60d80.tif
bd2e05e9352e410a03993cdf9a71db10
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Foreign Visitors
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity; Foreign visitors
Description
An account of the resource
A group of visiting foreign nuclear scientists and policymakers viewing the Dismantling machine at the Hanford Engineering Development Lab. The dismanteler, developed by Jerry Tallent, cut open fuel rods by welding copper to stainless steel which caused the casing to split open without any radioactive debris.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photographic prints
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent015
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
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe782ab50c5ce918e9b9b2c5475fd8e86.tif
5b5830b7a7ed163103c6af6d8d468f82
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
SN005
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Jerry Tallent operating the SN005, a fuel rod Dismantling machine that he help invent.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photographic prints
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent016
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
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F25840da970c16a15d3baa92b0cf09fc9.tif
c87b23c7d9a85ff1a41adf1fb1357759
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Two Story Glove Box
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
"Greg" demonstrating operation of a glove box assisted by a lift while Jerry Tallent operates lift at the Hanford Engineering Development Lab.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photographic prints
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent017
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
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F3cabd3951b62d579af973211c2752b10.tif
b491113e91367d82118cc78de9c10b8b
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Operating Dismantling Machine
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Jerry Tallent posing as an operator of the Dismantling machine.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photographic prints
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent018
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
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F2fb04117479755c5ee33b0db3a7e06f7.tif
8d716712e14b960285eab19a2ee3f7d2
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Fuel Pin Canister
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Closeup of a fuel pin canister showing hexigonal fuel rod formation.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photographic prints
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent019
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
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F7d507aec6919fd3ac0389ea2532e7dda.tif
900341cf4013020903ea6b82f5d114fb
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
Jerry Tallent, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Jerry Tallent
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Jerry Tallent to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/825">Jerry Tallent oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Dismantling Machine
Subject
The topic of the resource
Nuclear reactors; Radioactive substances; Radioactivity
Description
An account of the resource
Manipulator arm taking apart a fuel rod.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1970s
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photographic prints
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tallent020
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
6/22/2016
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
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd876502694efd6808b2341cb542e57e3.jpg
baa5c95fb5e18c8b94ad27a5fb50a597
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
Edward Milliman, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Edward Milliman
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Edward Milliman to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/817">Edward Milliman Oral History Interview</a>
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
Smoking Rats
Subject
The topic of the resource
Animal experimentation
Description
An account of the resource
Edward Milliman testing animal physiology (heart rate, respitory rate) at Pacific Northwest Laboratory. Photograph number 760818-11
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
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
1970s
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
jpeg
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2E003
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F26a25d699e64698493ef164db99898c6.jpg
af4ec8a0c5ae36278e8c359fb95a0ba1
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
Edward Milliman, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Edward Milliman
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Edward Milliman to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/817">Edward Milliman Oral History Interview</a>
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
Animal Testing
Subject
The topic of the resource
Animal experimentation
Description
An account of the resource
Edward Milliman and another worker running inhalation tests on rodents, likely Syrian Hamsters at Pacific Northwest Laboratory. The red suits indicate that exposure tests are currently being run. Photograph number 760818-13cn
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
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
1970s
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2E004
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fdedaa1a64f0930972dc466d7058a1b4f.jpg
7e9ffed940a1d64e006cea4ec5ee76cc
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
Edward Milliman, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Edward Milliman
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Edward Milliman to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/817">Edward Milliman Oral History Interview</a>
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
Edward Milliman
Subject
The topic of the resource
Animal experimentation; Concrete
Description
An account of the resource
Edward Milliman testing animals for asbestos concrete exposure using inhalation equipment at Pacific Northwest Laboratory. Photograph number 0407E2018
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2E006
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F599deb0802291f00d45c4845e6195bab.jpg
13312f78765398cb43b581d30c352fba
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
Edward Milliman, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Edward Milliman
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Edward Milliman to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/817">Edward Milliman Oral History Interview</a>
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
Rodent Lungs
Subject
The topic of the resource
Animal experimentation; Volcanic eruptions; Volcanoes; Disasters
Description
An account of the resource
Rodent lungs after inhalation tests of "fly ash".
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
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
12/12/1977
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2E007
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc07b10a1d27d23b4fc353a65ef818157.jpg
5b1b012b4932b5905dc824dba6e834fb
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
Edward Milliman, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Edward Milliman
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Edward Milliman to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/817">Edward Milliman Oral History Interview</a>
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
Hamster Disection
Subject
The topic of the resource
Animal experimentation
Description
An account of the resource
Edward Milliman disecting a Syrian Hamster after exposing the animal to different inhilation tests. Photograph number 34352-97-cn
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
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
1970s
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2E008
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Faf448459cdcc5e7efbc2ca494314098a.jpg
806b95874990c92df89106bf9d23c69c
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
Edward Milliman, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Edward Milliman
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Edward Milliman to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/817">Edward Milliman Oral History Interview</a>
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
This is How You Make a Hamster Smoke Cigarettes
Subject
The topic of the resource
Animal experimentation; Cigarettes; Smoking
Description
An account of the resource
Edward Milliman operating a device that forces hamsters to smoke cigarettes. 30 cigarettes are loaded at the top and each corresponds to a hamster. The machine takes a "puff" every few seconds. Photograph number PNL 711513-59
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Battelle Northwest Photography
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
1970s
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2E011
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F5f48c5742bbe5a6b005230ebb7b45a1a.doc
9653e3aad4e552ac04b5d211f225d900
Dublin Core
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Title
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Hanford History Project Finding Aids
Description
An account of the resource
Finding aids for archive collections held by the Hanford History Project at WSU Tri-Cities. The Hanford History Project collections generally relate to Hanford, but encompassing material outside of the Department of Energy Hanford Collection scope. This focus includes the town of Richland, pre-1943 and post-1990 Hanford Site history, and materials relating to Hanford not produced on the Hanford Site during the Manhattan Project and Cold War. See list of finding aids for specific collections.
Creator
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Hanford History Project
Publisher
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Hanford History Project
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Battelle's Company Newsletter (Greenie)
Creator
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Battelle Pacific Northwest Division Publications
Publisher
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Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science, and Technology
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1974-1997
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG4M
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F8b04be0985a935c9e1a0cd36e2c0bf1e.mp4
b7a0a6ff3c846cf683f3690fd2b6fa08
Dublin Core
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Title
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CREHST Museum Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral History; Hanford Site; Richland, WA
Description
An account of the resource
Oral Histories conducted at and collected by the Columbia River Exhibition of History, Science & Technology (CREHST) Museum. The CREHST Museum, closed in 2014, was dedicated to preserving the history of the Hanford Site and Richland, WA and held the Department of Energy's Hanford Collection. After closure of the CREHST Museum most records and archival holdings were transferred to Washington State University's Hanford History Project where they are now held.
Creator
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CREHST Museum, Gary Fetterolf, Terry Andre
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1999-2013
Rights
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All resources have consent transferred to Washington State University's Hanford History Project. Contact Hanford History Project for information on use and rights.
Language
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English.
Identifier
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RG2-4A
Spatial Coverage
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Hanford Site; Richland, WA
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-1990
Provenance
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Oral histories originally conducted by, or collected by, the CREHST Museum. Property and rights transferred to Washington State University upon CREHST closure in 2014
Rights Holder
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Washington State University's Hanford History Project.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Renee Gackle
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Greg Greger
Location
The location of the interview
Richland Community Center
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
TITLE: UNKNOWN
INTERVIEW DATE: JULY 10, 2003
INTERVIEW LOCATION: UNKNOWN
INTERVIEWER: RENEE GACKLE
INTERVIEWED: GREG GREGER
TRANSCRIBER: JUDY SIMPSON
LENGTH: 25.20
RENEE: Hi! We’ll open it up with a couple of questions in the beginning, and then we will open it up with you. If you have any particular question raise your hand or we will keep going.
GREG: One comment, we are competing with them. Please (inaudible-I think it is “please keep in mind I have a) hearing aid.
RENEE: Thank you. Some of the questions that they have given to me from just this sheet here, (inaudible- and get some juicy tidbits about you) and then get these people to talk to you. It says, “You were selected for an Army Special Training Program? Is that right? Will you tell us about that? I do not know anything about that. (Renee points to the audience and asks, “Do you?”.
GREG: The Army and I were into the war and really realized they needed technical trained people; really to protect themselves. So they felt (inaudible). We had to take very hard technical tests and I was fortunate enough to pass these tests. We were actually sent to (inaudible) experience this kind of. (The next 10 or more sentences or paragraph is very inaudible.) (Cameraman was being very noisy…talking making response inaudible. There was loud laughing in background. )
UNKNOWN: Renee, Renee, I can interrupt you as an old friend; you are going to have to speak up. Okay?
RENEE: (She asks a question but it is inaudible. Cameraman is speaking and can not hear question.)
GREG: At that time my brother had been drafted in the military (inaudible- possibly he had owned a flight or light plane) as a flyer. He is a flyer. (Very noisy filming sounds from camera inaudible.) Something about the 13th Airborne (inaudible) and then they decided “What we really need in the Army is the infantry - the infantry.
RENEE: (She asks a question but there is so much noise it is inaudible. The Cameraman is walking in and out of frame. The Cameraman is making a lot of noise with the camera; clacking and clinging.)
GREG: (He answers but it is inaudible because of much banging and clanging of the camera.)
RENEE: I don’t know a whole lot about that. (Many more sentences are inaudible.) Where and when (inaudible)?
GREG: When the ASTP was spent we were sent to various infantry divisions in the state for training; I was sent to the One hundred and third in farming conditions; which was in Haleyville, Texas, and this was a shock (inaudible-they got you a rifle) and had milk (inaudible) and all of a sudden we were an infantry. It was very serious, really serious. What this government would do is training young Private PFCs and then they would be sent away as replacement in Europe. Anyway that must have been “42” or “43” the whole division was sent to Camp Shags’; then aboard a transport luxury liner; “The Monticello” made to carry about a thousand people in peacetime. Thirteen thousand of us were shipped and we landed at Marseilles, France. (Next line is inaudible.) The frontlines were up and beyond that, so we were trucked into where the combat was. We relieved the 45th Division.
RENEE: I can tell that (inaudible). What were you thinking about (inaudible) was it a scary thing or…?
GREG: Well not at that point; I had some scary times of course; of course everybody does the first time, and a lot of fray point’s things that you are not used to. All in all, I was very fortunate.
RENEE: Did you actually participate in combat or…?
GREG: I belonged to “K” Company; we called ourselves “The K Company Commandos”, and we ended up with the most decorative company in the Regiment. As in most things, you have your worst day; the first day you know oh so little, and after that things get better.
RENEE: Does anyone else have a question that you might want..?
UNKNOWN: Did you see a lot of action?
GREG: Oh yes!
UNKNOWN: Yes.
GREG: Actually the German Army was pretty battered-up and it is funny the attitudes; the first prisoner we took, he was sat down with four people guarded him. Two months later we got used to things and things had changed. I have seen where whole companies or regiments were surrendering and we would just wave them back to the rear. We made sure they had no weapons. Sent them back and let the rear people take care of them. So things could change. It was certainly not the first line German Army such as it was in North Africa that we were up against. We ended up; we made quite a dent into Germany; we were past the national line the fifty-third; then in December when the break through, in the north, of “The Battle of the Bulge” we were rushed back to be in a holding position, but we were not actually in it, but we were close enough to see the artillery to the north. We were there over Christmas; then we pulled back and had to retake some of the area we had already taken.
RENEE: So about approximately how much time did you actually spend in the…when you were an Officer?
GREG: Three years.
RENEE: Three years.
GREG: I got out before most of my company that was interesting. When the War was over we were in occupational territory; this was pretty comfortable there were really not many duties and you were looking for things to pass your time. I was surprised, when my military service number was called-up to be; leave the company, go to the States for a furlough, and then go to Japan. There were others that joined me, but I was the only one from my company. Well the idea of a 40 day furlough sounded like it would be worthwhile. I never thought it would happen. I got to the shipping point in France, on the coast, when I came down one morning the Sergeant there in charge said “The news (inaudible) is the Bomb has been dropped.” That of course, would be, of course he used the word “Atomic Bomb”. I had enough physics to know that something new and complicated that I really didn’t know the details of. We went ahead, our group shipped out, although, we heard that we were the last ship that left. While we were in route to New York the second bombs dropped, and the war was over. So, instead of going to Japan we ended up in the States early and the war is over; so in a couple of months I go out. I then used the G.I. Bill to get a Degree from the University of Nebraska. I appreciate particularly well that is another story.
RENEE: So what did you do to have fun? You said that “You were passing the time in periods like this”.
GREG: Well you know it was a time of non-fractionation; you could not even talk to them a German. That relaxed and most towns had swimming pools; guys got up baseball games; you could go up and explore the countryside. Actually we ended up in Innsbrook which was a great place in the Alp Mountains. You could take a trolley from the end of the street, Main Street, right up to the resort. The resort had been reserved for us; so there was skiing there in June and July; because it was such an altitude gain. That is the one place in Europe I wouldn’t mind seeing again; the Innsbrook area.
RENEE: Can you think of how many countries that you actually visited; when you were stationed at?
GREG: France started in France into Germany and Austria. I might mention that what I have always enjoyed; is an unusual experience; the day we were told the War was over everything pretty much stopped. I had gotten the reputation of being a knowledgeable of photography, 35mm photography. I had taken my own camera with me; I had actually taken more than a thousand shot of various types of action. A man from another company knew I had some background in this; he came over with a jeep, we were doing nothing but waiting he said, “How about going with me to that town we just passed, a bigger town? We just went through the town. Nothing happened we just kept going. He said, “I would really like to get a missing part of my camera.” He had a Leica camera; which was a very good camera; it had no take up spool, and until he had it he really could not use it. (Inaudible there was too much laughing.) We went back to this town, that was an interesting experience, there were no troops in the town; American Troops; you would drive down the street, and look down the side streets you would occasionally see a German uniform, but they were trying to get out of sight. We could not find a camera shop, and finally we saw one building and he said, “Let’s try that one.” The reason he said that is sometimes when we would go through a town they would ask that all the guns would be collected at one place; often the County Seat or something like this. Anyhow, we knocked on this door of this rather elaborate building; well we went in to the main door and then went down this corridor; we heard voices in one room, so we knocked on the door and it was all of a sudden silent. Then we could hear somebody walking to the door, and it was opened and here was this long table with very dignified looking elderly people, in it, sitting on both sides. At the end was obliviously the Burger Meister; he had on a special uniform, with a big ban across show his prestige. We all stared at each other and he spoke to the woman, and she said, in English, in broken English, “Are you the people from your country, who have come to help us form our new government?” I was thinking “Wow! What have we got into?” before I could figure out a politically smart thing to say. My buddy said, “Do you know where I can get a piece for my camera?” She then more or less said to them, “They can’t help us.” She shut the door and we were out. I could image what she was saying, “Oh, their just souvenir hunters.” That was my big moment and I missed it.
RENEE: How did you get from (inaudible dropped the bomb) how did you get back to here? In the Richland area and get involved…with?
GREG: Well at the University of Nebraska; one of my good friends was an engineer and he ended up working at Hanford, like in the notes. So after I got my Degree and tried some professional photography work. I made the mistake of not being smart enough to examine a town before we committed ourselves there for awhile. We did this in a town in Colorado; Walsenburg, Colorado. Taking over a studio that someone else had started. Well we were not smart enough to recognize it was a mining town and only about half of the miners were working normally; so after a year we decided this is not where we want to spend out lives. We pulled our stakes and I drove out to Hanford here by myself. I checked in with my friend; who was working in radiation monitoring. He said “I know your background is in photography, but they are hiring monitors.” So I checked in and gave them my background. I had a funny thing happen to me there; they said, “When they were examining my photography credentials; you are over qualified for the one photography job we got; but we are hiring monitors, would you like to have that kind of job?” So I took it and I became a monitor.
RENEE: About how many years did you do that?
GREG: Well I was a monitor for three years and then I became a Supervisor in the monitoring. Then I got into Reactor Administration; I was a measurements person and then when they began closing them down. I got into data processing, and I ended up down at the “Senior Systems Analyst” cataloging the payroll savings plan and the pension plan, and all those things that have to work when you have a couple of thousand who depended on a check every two weeks.
RENEE: So what did you do with your pictures you guys took?
GREG: Well that is another side of it. I was in a position to keep the home address of all the people in the Company; so I made-up a set of 200 of the best of them, and offered them copies to all these guys. Can you imagine 200 pictures for $12? I sold about, my first $1000 worth of pictures. So that was my first money from photography I had really made. We are still in touch because many of those appreciated they did not have cameras and this is great for them to have.
RENEE: Is there any other questions that you have? Yes.
UNKNOWN: Where were you when Pearl Harbor was bombed? How did you find that out?
GREG: I was still home. I was at home. I was not yet in the service.
UNKNOWN: How did you find out about it?
GREG: Radio.
UNKNOWN: How did you feel about it?
GREG: Well our attitude was; they’re so foolish to do that. We did not realize, of course, that they had been building up their military for many years. (Inaudible-we were caught or difficult) I think that was an incentive to get in. I was on a ranch and it left my Father with very little help. Both my brothers and I had gone, but I felt like this is something we had to do.
UNKNOWN: When you were in Europe what kind of food supply system did they have for the troops?
GREG: What kind of a what?
UNKNOWN: What was the food? What did they give you to eat?
GREG: Well the kitchen would supply you if they could, but if, in the combat situation you had the K Rations. You know what they are… Don’t you?
UNKNOWN: No.
GREG: Well it was a couple of packages about this long and this thick, and in it you had one can of Spam; a couple of cookies; some toilet paper; some decaf, no it was powdered coffee. You could make coffee if you had water. That was the meal. There was a slightly better one if you were lucky enough to get it, we call them something else. You had two or three cans a little bit more. What would happen is if we were in reserve for a few days then the kitchen could reach us, and give us something better? A little incident about that I might mention; for the first time after we had been over there for several months; the kitchen we heard got fresh eggs. We thought “WOW” that is something we missed. So the next morning we really lined-up early. Do you know what they had done? They BOILED them! That kitchen crew came real close to being shot! The next day even the Captain got on their case, he said, “Tomorrow you are going to make for each person eggs the way they ask for them.” and they did!
UNKNOWN: How long were you in Europe now?
GREG: Let’s see, we landed at Marseilles in November and I got back in August of the next year.
UNKNOWN: November of which now? That was November of which year?
GREG: Well that would have been “44” and “45”.
UNKNOWN: “44” and “45” so you were right toward the end?
GREG: Yes the tail end, right. That certainly made a difference; the Germans had been heavily depleted. I had another little incident which I really haven’t resolved. When we were following the Germans; the troops over the Rhine River or to the Rhine River they had blown the bridge; even before some of the people had got off it. The rest of them there were in rafts. My company was ahead of me; they went across in rafts. When I came to the edge of the river I found an envelope there, which was unusual, and I stuck it in my pocket when I had time to look at it. It was a series of 13 pictures taken, obviously taken by a professional; a very high rated photographer because it was pictures of Hitler and his top staff; taken eight to ten feet away. The circumstances were a meeting with a Russian, I am sorry, with a Japanese General in a town in occupied Russia. There was German writing on the rear and I have their names; I had it translated. I am trying to think of the right use to make of this. I would like to see it published or make use of some particular fashion; I have not found the right source yet to do that. I have never heard of this meeting; I have tried things on the internet, but so far I have not had much luck in finding what kind of meeting that happened between the Japanese General and the German people.
UNKNOWN: So you do still have the pictures? Were you able to keep the pictures?
GREG: Yes. I still have them.
UNNKNOWN: Those are priceless.
RENEE: So how did you get; how did you relate all that with your craft of flint knapping? I understand your wife, and other things you, and Margaret do.
GREG: Well when I was still in a one room school, a country school, then we had about 8 pupils in 8 grades. The new (inaudible) I suppose I was in the 6th grade in the library which was one shelf this long. Was about a…it wasn’t a Native Indian, but a cave boy; the story of how he and his older brother had to make their tools or go to the tool maker; from the family would make stone points for them. That really stirred up my interest, however, where we lived there was no river near there; I looked all the time I was there. I only found one or two pieces of little rock that were of some Indian origin; now this was at the edge of the sand (hills or field) in Nebraska. I don’t know if any of you have been there are not. When I say sand I mean sand. When I was 4 or 5; I used to pickup and put into a special box any rock that was bigger than my little fingernail; twenty miles north it was all different. Entirely different on the Newbury River…but this is really sand. That is what you’re ranching in.
RENEE: We kind of have to wrap thing up. I just wanted to “thank you” (inaudible-loud clapping) share your life with us. We just really appreciate it. (Inaudible-loud clapping) I am sure that you could share with us some fascinating things.
GREG: Is there any other questions?
UNKNOWN: How did you meet your wife?
GREG: At the University of Nebraska.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:25:23
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Greg Greger Oral History
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford Atomic Products Operation
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Greg Greger as part of the Beverlin Summer Institute for Teachers held at the Richland Community Center.
Creator
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Beverlin Summer Institute for Teachers
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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7/10/2003
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu.
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.mp4
Language
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English
Identifier
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RG1D_4A / T.2010.052.008
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F44c81f341e534568ab5b3dfed073a55d.jpg
93d5de468ad36cbbb3ce9bc903047695
Dublin Core
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Title
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Barbara Brown Taylor, Oral History Metadata
Subject
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Metadata received during oral history interview with Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Barbara Brown Taylor to the Hanford History Project
Publisher
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Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Relation
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<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/826">Barbara Brown Taylor Oral History Interview</a>
Identifier
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RG1D_2N
Dublin Core
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Title
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Father with two children
Subject
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Families; Family members
Description
An account of the resource
"Russell Brown, Russ Brown Jr Age 5, Barbara Brown Age 2 1/2"
Creator
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Brown-Taylor, Barbara
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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01/01/1938
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Identifier
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RG1D_2N001
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F2aa6bf22f129a77b8e536b3b48fa4ad2.jpg
526a7cf90eb79e994bbf493816050533
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Barbara Brown Taylor, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Barbara Brown Taylor to the Hanford History Project
Publisher
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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.
Relation
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<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/826">Barbara Brown Taylor Oral History Interview</a>
Identifier
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RG1D_2N
Dublin Core
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Title
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Cemetery Headstone
Subject
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families; family members; graves;
Description
An account of the resource
"Russell and Lois Brown plots given in Memorial Gardens in Richland for Designing garden"
Creator
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Brown-Taylor, Barbara
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Identifier
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RG1D_2N002
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F995189b7891aeaf0372735bd3a7215fb.jpg
9a96b8af5d8d6c6a424178f96b5511b3
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
Barbara Brown Taylor, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Barbara Brown Taylor to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/826">Barbara Brown Taylor Oral History Interview</a>
Identifier
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RG1D_2N
Dublin Core
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Title
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Family Reading
Subject
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Families, reading
Description
An account of the resource
"Reading a book"
Creator
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Brown-Taylor, Barbara
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, 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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2N003
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F67d462b32a03bd2e8c41083aa3424890.jpg
cfd6edc3e067b076fcde0255414ceac6
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
Barbara Brown Taylor, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Barbara Brown Taylor to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/826">Barbara Brown Taylor Oral History Interview</a>
Identifier
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RG1D_2N
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Young Girl
Subject
The topic of the resource
Children; Play; Gardening;
Description
An account of the resource
"Barbara Brown 1939 3 yrs old New Lenox, Illinois"
Creator
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Brown-Taylor, Barbara
Publisher
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Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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01/01/1939
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2N004
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6f7637a840c789f57ae8a5a57017e83a.jpg
c3cef64aa9174c41fda6d3b49d95b754
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
Barbara Brown Taylor, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Barbara Brown Taylor to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/826">Barbara Brown Taylor Oral History Interview</a>
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2N
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
Father and two children
Subject
The topic of the resource
families; family members;
Description
An account of the resource
"1938 Russell Brown, 2 yr. Barbara Brown, 5 yr. Russ Brown Jr."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brown-Taylor, Barbara
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
01/01/1938
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2N005
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F192007e46d79690a74daf10ffcbf1d95.jpg
90b99eca89b99c1e5c5d521e40289378
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
Barbara Brown Taylor, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Barbara Brown Taylor to the Hanford History Project
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/826">Barbara Brown Taylor Oral History Interview</a>
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2N
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
Man in Garden
Subject
The topic of the resource
families; family members;
Description
An account of the resource
"Easter Apr. 13, 1952 Russell 318 Casey Richland"
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brown-Taylor, Barbara
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford History Project, Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
04/13/1952
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RG1D_2N006
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F2dc77fe19a98b0137d1ca30cd1ebde7b.jpg
dcd776a45e889259a64133fea1232388
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Crates
Subject
The topic of the resource
Crates; Containers; Boxes
Description
An account of the resource
A drawing of wooden crates.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019
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
JPEG
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F5627e4fe6293d7e12b7ecad9c7392894.jpg
1f372298124f7b9f9fb1274a387c60ff
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Extinction Falls
Subject
The topic of the resource
ignorance
Description
An account of the resource
A drawing of a man on a boat marked "Blissful Ignorance" about to go off of a waterfall labeled "Extinction Falls".
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6f15dbd052ea323a14e7633bdafe2cc2.jpg
cd4c6de6bf4b3a5521a4ea61dc993806
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
A User Guide Can Be the Difference Between Success and Failure
Subject
The topic of the resource
User guide
Description
An account of the resource
A comic strip comparing one boat, "Project Titanic," overburdened with technical manuals, is sinking. The other boat, "Project Success," contains only one user guide and is moving quickly and safely.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F105b30bfe1faf38aa8c2b8c85e4fd608.jpg
7f66d637c9f94c333b4e8c6b0d9547fb
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Bodybuilders
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bodybuilders;
Description
An account of the resource
A drawing of multiple body builders merged together
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F9dfb2c910988e037975a273f856b04f5.jpg
aec2e001eb12ca262ff53b411bcba6fd
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Body Builder
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bodybuilders;
Description
An account of the resource
A drawing of a body builder flexing
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fb8eeacd6ff288a3be7862c422fa54c7b.jpg
f1c60e55fd1b8bbb407409101bbb5e0f
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Plant regulations
Subject
The topic of the resource
Books; Factories
Description
An account of the resource
A drawing of a stack of books titled EPA, Regulations, DOE Orders, and Public Law with a factory on top.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1240a2245324dd645060e9784bfa84f1.jpg
f396e277e384839f95115704fde8393b
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Boxes
Subject
The topic of the resource
Boxes; Barrels
Description
An account of the resource
A drawing of boxes and a barrel with smiley faces on them.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fd2104af1680f2e052f8934b8a471ca8b.jpg
d4c302a2bbba0de9f45ec311a466539c
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Box Shipping
Subject
The topic of the resource
Boxes; Shipping; Labels
Description
An account of the resource
A diagram with details on how to properly label a shipping box.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff75f3577e3fe7352dd32dbbe253dae86.jpg
2cb9c75e77a343502fe36c967f70d201
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Box & Barrel
Subject
The topic of the resource
Crates; Containers; Boxes; Barrels; Chemicals
Description
An account of the resource
A drawing of a box of furan gesturing to a barrel of another chemical
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F97da221dc9c70019e6930a5519cba13a.jpg
1875f88fc779c7e27de3b1d6e7f12a17
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
Dennis Brunson, Oral History Metadata
Subject
The topic of the resource
Metadata received during oral history interview with Dennis Brunson
Description
An account of the resource
Items donated by Dennis Brunson to the Hanford History Project
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hanford History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/items/show/2081">Dennis Brunson oral history interview</a>
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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
Packing Hazardous Materials
Subject
The topic of the resource
Crates; Containers
Description
An account of the resource
An illustration to accompany packing procedures for various materials.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Pictures; Cartoons (Commentary)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Department of Energy
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.
Relation
A related resource
Supplementary to Dennis Brunson oral history
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
TIFF
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brunson, Dennis