Made in Hanford

Made in Hanford PDF Author: Hill Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
At an isolated location along the Columbia River in 1944, the world's first plutonium factory became operational, producing fuel for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II. Former Seattle Times science writer Hill Williams traces the amazing, tragic story--from the dawn of nuclear science to Cold War testing in the Marshall Islands.

Made in Hanford

Made in Hanford PDF Author: Hill Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
At an isolated location along the Columbia River in 1944, the world's first plutonium factory became operational, producing fuel for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II. Former Seattle Times science writer Hill Williams traces the amazing, tragic story--from the dawn of nuclear science to Cold War testing in the Marshall Islands.

Working on the Bomb

Working on the Bomb PDF Author: S. L. Sanger
Publisher: Continuing Education Press
ISBN: 9780876781159
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The history of the Hanford Engineering Works, a site in eastern Washington that produced and separated plutonium for the Manhattan Project.

Nowhere to Remember

Nowhere to Remember PDF Author: Robert Bauman
Publisher: Hanford Histories
ISBN: 9780874223606
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Drawn from Hanford History Project personal narratives, Nowhere to Remember highlights life in Hanford, White Bluffs, and Richland--three small eastern Washington agricultural communities where Euro-American settlers transformed acres of sagebrush into fruit orchards and neighbors helped neighbors. But in 1943, families received evacuation orders, and Manhattan Project restrictions meant they could not return. Covering settlement and development, the arrival of irrigation, dependence on railroads, Great Depression struggles, and World War II-era experiences, the volume examines regional trade and transportation within the context of American West history. It also details the tight bonds between early residents and early twentieth century experiences of the region's women, utilizes oral histories to tell forced removal stories, and finally, conveys displaced occupants' reactions to their loss.

Atomic Frontier Days

Atomic Frontier Days PDF Author: John M. Findlay
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295802987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Outstanding Title by Choice Magazine On the banks of the Pacific Northwest’s greatest river lies the Hanford nuclear reservation, an industrial site that appears to be at odds with the surrounding vineyards and desert. The 586-square-mile compound on the Columbia River is known both for its origins as part of the Manhattan Project, which made the first atomic bombs, and for the monumental effort now under way to clean up forty-five years of waste from manufacturing plutonium for nuclear weapons. Hanford routinely makes the news, as scientists, litigants, administrators, and politicians argue over its past and its future. It is easy to think about Hanford as an expression of federal power, a place apart from humanity and nature, but that view distorts its history. Atomic Frontier Days looks through a wider lens, telling a complex story of production, community building, politics, and environmental sensibilities. In brilliantly structured parallel stories, the authors bridge the divisions that accompany Hanford’s headlines and offer perspective on today’s controversies. Influenced as much by regional culture, economics, and politics as by war, diplomacy, and environmentalism, Hanford and the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick illuminate the history of the modern American West.

Atomic Geography

Atomic Geography PDF Author: Melvin R. Adams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780874223415
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Perhaps the first environmental engineer at Hanford, Melvin R. Adams spent 24 years on its 586 square miles of desert terrain. His thoughtful vignettes recall challenges and sites he worked on or found personally intriguing--like the 216-U-pond, contaminated with plutonium longer than any place on earth. In what Adams considers his most successful project, he helped determine the initial scope of the soil and solid waste cleanup. His group also designed and tested a marked, maintenance-free disposal barrier, expanded a network of groundwater monitoring wells, and developed a pilot scale pump and treatment plant. Adams shares his perspective on leaking high-level waste storage tanks, dosimeters, and Hanford¿s obsession with safety. He even answers his least favorite question, insisting he does not glow in the dark. He leaves that unique ability to spent fuel rods in water storage basins--a phenomenon known as Cherenkov radiation.

The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age

The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age PDF Author: Steve Olson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393634981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
A thrilling narrative of scientific triumph, decades of secrecy, and the unimaginable destruction wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb. It began with plutonium, the first element ever manufactured in quantity by humans. Fearing that the Germans would be the first to weaponize the atom, the United States marshaled brilliant minds and seemingly inexhaustible bodies to find a way to create a nuclear chain reaction of inconceivable explosive power. In a matter of months, the Hanford nuclear facility was built to produce and weaponize the enigmatic and deadly new material that would fuel atomic bombs. In the desert of eastern Washington State, far from prying eyes, scientists Glenn Seaborg, Enrico Fermi, and many thousands of others—the physicists, engineers, laborers, and support staff at the facility—manufactured plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and for the bombs in the current American nuclear arsenal, enabling the construction of weapons with the potential to end human civilization. With his characteristic blend of scientific clarity and storytelling, Steve Olson asks why Hanford has been largely overlooked in histories of the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Olson, who grew up just twenty miles from Hanford’s B Reactor, recounts how a small Washington town played host to some of the most influential scientists and engineers in American history as they sought to create the substance at the core of the most destructive weapons ever created. The Apocalypse Factory offers a new generation this dramatic story of human achievement and, ultimately, of lethal hubris.

The Hanford Plaintiffs

The Hanford Plaintiffs PDF Author: Trisha T. Pritikin
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700629041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
For more than four decades beginning in 1944, the Hanford nuclear weapons facility in southeastern Washington State secretly blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest with low-dose ionizing radiation, the byproduct of plutonium production. For those who lived in the vicinity, many of them families of Hanford workers, the consequences soon became apparent as rates of illness and death steadily climbed—despite repeated assurances from the Atomic Energy Commission that the facility posed no threat. Trisha T. Pritikin, who has battled a lifetime of debilitating illness to become a lawyer and advocate for her fellow “downwinders,” tells the devastating story of those who were harmed in Hanford’s wake and, seeking answers and justice, were subjected to yet more suffering. At the center of The Hanford Plaintiffs are the oral histories of twenty-four people who joined In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation, the class-action suit that sought recognition of, and recompense for, the grievous injury knowingly caused by Hanford. Radioactive contamination of American communities was not uncommon during the wartime Manhattan Project, nor during the Cold War nuclear buildup that followed. Pritikin interweaves the stories of people poisoned by Hanford with a parallel account of civilians downwind of the Nevada atomic test site, who suffer from identical radiogenic diseases. Against the heartrending details of personal illness and loss and, ultimately, persistence in the face of a legal system that protects the government on all fronts and at all costs, The Hanford Plaintiffs draws a damning picture of the failure of the US Congress and the Judiciary to defend the American public and to adequately redress a catastrophic wrong. Documenting the legal, medical, and human cost of one community’s struggle for justice, this book conveys in clear and urgent terms the damage done to ordinary Americans in the name of business, progress, and patriotism.

Science and Technology for Environmental Cleanup at Hanford

Science and Technology for Environmental Cleanup at Hanford PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309075963
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The Hanford Site was established by the federal government in 1943 as part of the secret wartime effort to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The site operated for about four decades and produced roughly two thirds of the 100 metric tons of plutonium in the U.S. inventory. Millions of cubic meters of radioactive and chemically hazardous wastes, the by-product of plutonium production, were stored in tanks and ancillary facilities at the site or disposed or discharged to the subsurface, the atmosphere, or the Columbia River. In the late 1980s, the primary mission of the Hanford Site changed from plutonium production to environmental restoration. The federal government, through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), began to invest human and financial resources to stabilize and, where possible, remediate the legacy of environmental contamination created by the defense mission. During the past few years, this financial investment has exceeded $1 billion annually. DOE, which is responsible for cleanup of the entire weapons complex, estimates that the cleanup program at Hanford will last until at least 2046 and will cost U.S. taxpayers on the order of $85 billion. Science and Technology for Environmental Cleanup at Hanford provides background information on the Hanford Site and its Integration Project,discusses the System Assessment Capability, an Integration Project-developed risk assessment tool to estimate quantitative effects of contaminant releases, and reviews the technical elements of the scierovides programmatic-level recommendations.

Legacies of the Manhattan Project

Legacies of the Manhattan Project PDF Author: Mick Broderick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780874223750
Category : Atomic bomb
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"The Hanford History Project held the "Legacies of the Manhattan Project at 75 Years" conference in March 2017. Professionals from a broad array of backgrounds-working scientists, government employees, retired health physicists, downwinders, representatives from community groups, impassioned lay people, and scholars working in a host of different academic fields-attended and gave presentations. The diverse gathering, with its wide range of expertise, stimulated the remarkable exchange of ideas in this book"--

Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance

Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance PDF Author: Robert Bauman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780874223828
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Mid-Columbia region history mirrors common American West multiracial narratives, but with important nuances. In "Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance," the third Hanford Histories volume, four scholars draw from oral histories to focus on the experiences of non-white groups such as the Wanapum, Chinese immigrants, World War II Japanese incarcerees, and African American migrant workers from the South, whose lives were deeply impacted by the Hanford Site. Linked in ways they likely could not know, each group resisted the segregation and discrimination they encountered, and in the process, challenged the region's dominant racial norms.