July 13, 2017

• Hanford B Reactor and other Updates

  
  First and foremost, Carl made it home. The family and I were touring Hanford B Reactor all day so my good friend Erin picked up Carl. Thoughtful Erin even had a lunch sack packed knowing he would be hungry. He got off the bus about 8 PM. Thank you Erin.

  
  One more delayed update, Veronica played the Cello at church on Sunday. Afterwards we headed over to our favorite sushi bar Billy Beach. Bria has been living with us while her house is up for sale. She moves to Denver later this week. Keeping with a longstanding Redpath tradition, we welcome all and this has been a truly spectacular month with Ileana, Sofia, and now Bria who is recovering from four tooth extractions. I got high marks from her mother Brooke for our care during Bria's recovery. The Redpaths earned high praise from Bria's dentist during a follow up today.

  
  Steve, Veronica, Judy, Karen, Richard, and Étienne in front. Tuesday evening was a wonderful visit from Veronica's and Carl's grade school teacher from Price Harris in Wichita. We all look back on teachers that nurtured and jump started our love of knowledge, learning, and life. Karen tops our list. Veronica's love of reading, music, and filming all got a jump start from Karen. We do not thank Richard for inspiring Veronica to learn the banjo! Veronica still has the finger picks but has moved on to cello and now the Ukulele. Carl enjoys the sciences and paleontology. From the looks of him after Camp Orkila, I think he spent the two weeks digging! Thank you Karen and Richard.

  Now the great trip to Hanford.
  
  Some great trips begin with a bus ride. After waking at 7 AM and driving three and a half hours, Sofia and Ileana enjoy yet another 45 minute ride, "backtracking" the route we just drove, to get to the site. The B Reactor tour is incredible. The docents all worked there and love to share their depth of knowledge.

  
  The tour starts with a short lecture right in front of the working face of the reactor. I got a real feel for what it was like for the men and women to load the uranium into the unit. This front face was relatively low radiation and of course now, completely safe. 16 slugs of uranium are loaded into each of those tubes. The slugs weigh about 8 pounds each. After about two weeks of reaction time, the uranium has gone through several reactions and becomes plutonium. The plutonium product was not so safe. These were pushed all the way through the reactor to the back side where they fell into a pool of water. A later picture will show the transportation containers on a rail car. The containers were submerged in the pool of water on the back side of the reactor and loaded with the plutonium.

  
  Sofia and Ileana examine a mock up of the reactor. The second picture shows all the plumbing required to control the heat from the reaction. In this unit, heat is a byproduct not used for production of steam or electricity. Finally, the railcars with those transportation containers used to move the plutonium from Reactor B to the Purex facility.

  
  This was a Atomic Energy Commission facility complete with very military processes. Here we have Sofia and Veronica displaying the Broom Stations found throughout the facility.

  
  Sofia and Étienne take turns sitting at Reactor Control. This station was manned 24/7 from the moment the reactor went online till the day it was shut down 30 years later. The water temperature for each reactor tube was monitored and manually adjusted for optimum production. Étienne stands in front of that board, Watch Out!

  
  What a great tour. This brought back so much of my live story from growing up in a military family, working in the Air Force on nuclear bombers, and being on the design team for a nuclear defense missile.

  After another bus ride back to our car, we set out on the three and a half hour ride back home. 107 degrees is a far cry from the 78 degrees waiting for us at home.

  • 9:00 am
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