A Brief Introduction to Nuclear Fission!

Earlier this week I had the amazing opportunity to visit what has become an important historical site in the state of Washington: Hanford Site's B Reactor. When I began my work at Hanford I had no idea the amazing and devastating role that this site had in the Cold War and shaping international policy ever since. I was remind that just because a part of our history isn't glamorous or victorious doesn't mean that there aren't valuable lessons to be learned from it. The purpose of designating the B Reactor as a National Historic Landmark (the highest distinction for historical property in the US, on par with the White House and the Alamo) is to pay tribute to the feat that was performed in getting the facility built and operational and to learn from the consequences of its success. Of course, being unprepared for the significance of what I was going to see, I had only my cell phone camera to document the experience. I'll do the best that I can to give you a brief recounting of what I learned and saw.

Upon the receipt of an ominous letter from Albert Einstein, warning of the potential for the development of nuclear weapons by Russia, President Roosevelt ordered the construction of the Hanford Site. Its sole purpose was to produce enough plutonium to build a nuclear bomb. The B Reactor was built in complete secrecy and was operational in just 11 months. Engineers worked around the clock using the drafting table and tools that you see below to design the facility and the reactor that would convert naturally occurring uranium into plutonium.
This is the heart of the project, the actual B reactor. We were assured that the levels of radioactivity we encountered during the tour were minimal to zero, but I swear I felt a little buzz in my bones. The reactor is about two stories tall and filled with long rods placed horizontally. They went in the front side as uranium, were reacted, and came out the backside as plutonium plus a bunch of other stuff. This thing is an engineering marvel that I can't even begin to explain properly. These are the water pipes that brought water from the Columbia River to cool the reactor and the finished plutonium. The water was piped right back to the river after being used in the facility. Yikes! The lids are off these pipes because once each year, as part of our nuclear disarmament treaty, a team of scientists from Russia visits and inspects the facility to ensure that no new nuclear materials are being produced. A team of US scientists visits Russian facilities each year in return. The Russians are kindly invited during our 100-degree summer weather and the US scientists are cordially received during the crisp Russian winter months. Hmmm... a little passive-aggressive, perhaps?
Here is a picture especially for my Uncle Benton. It is a very old Tektronix oscilloscope. While I can't relate any riveting details about this thingy-bobber, we were assured that it was very cool and special. So, here it is:
Ah, one of my favorites! Our earnest docent, Richard, attempts to explain basic nuclear physics to a group of mostly college-age interns (yours truly, once again, being the aged, annoyingly talky one of the bunch). See, it's so simple, anyone could make a big ol' batch of plutonium!
Critical warning: be sure to bypass the critical radiation alarm. What the? That cannot be good. But aren't the flashy old signs cute?
There are the splines! These are rows and rows of sensors that measure the pressure inside each reactor tube. High pressure=bad things. Still not sure what "pulling splines" might mean. Imagine, they had to monitor ever single one of these things with their own eyeballs. And it worked.
And here we have control central were an operator monitored and controlled the reactor. Really, really important job.
And, in scary black and white, this is a mask designed to protect a worker from airborne radiation. Most of the process was designed to be automated or remote so in actuality workers were minimally handling radioactive material.
As, I mentioned earlier, this project was nearly perfectly executed and within a year the US had a supply of plutonium that was shortly used to build the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. As many of the historians in the videos that we were shown noted, this changed international politics forever. The devastation of that first (and hopefully last) use of a nuclear bomb has taught us that all-out world war is no longer a feasible problem-solving option, it would be suicide. Maybe we adults we begin using some of those conflict-resolution strategies that we try so hard to instill in our children.

I cannot recommend this tour enough if you are at all interested in US history. With the National Historical Landmark designation, the B Reactor tours have become extremely popular, but we were told that the number of tours being offered is on the rise. If you are interested in learning more: www.b-reactor.org