[photos] The Hanford site
Some other photos from our visit to the Hanford site last Friday (also known somewhat mysteriously as the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection). We saw the tank simulator, the origami bulldozer, armed men, big fences, huge buildings of forbidden purpose, dead submarines, a nuclear reactor tug, a laser range finding black hole detector (well, the outside of the building for that sucker) and a bunch of old, cool tech.
My favorite thing was the radioactive underground railway. Apparently in the early days of plutonium processing, one of their solutions for disposing of contaminated equipment was load it onto railroad cars and push the cars into a dead railway tunnel leading away from the site. Now there's a tunnel full of highly radioactive rolling stock they need to remediate. There's something very poetic and weird about that. Talk about the subway to Hell.
The tour was a lot of fun, and chock full of story ideas.
Bob Brown of RadCon (and the OPR), and our very able tour guide Rick
Us'ns, specifically Gayle Weiner, Gerry Nordley, Lizzy Shannon,
jaylake, lasirenadolce, and davidlevine.
The tank simulator. Well, actually, it's a real tank, but it simulates the underground storage tanks they have all over the place out there. Home of the origami bulldozer.
Close ups of skiffy people looking all safe and stuff.
The origami bulldozer, and its controller.
Nuclear waste, on the hoof. Some parts of the trip were forbidden to photography.
As usual, more at the Flickr set.
My favorite thing was the radioactive underground railway. Apparently in the early days of plutonium processing, one of their solutions for disposing of contaminated equipment was load it onto railroad cars and push the cars into a dead railway tunnel leading away from the site. Now there's a tunnel full of highly radioactive rolling stock they need to remediate. There's something very poetic and weird about that. Talk about the subway to Hell.
The tour was a lot of fun, and chock full of story ideas.
Bob Brown of RadCon (and the OPR), and our very able tour guide Rick
Us'ns, specifically Gayle Weiner, Gerry Nordley, Lizzy Shannon,
jaylake, lasirenadolce, and davidlevine.The tank simulator. Well, actually, it's a real tank, but it simulates the underground storage tanks they have all over the place out there. Home of the origami bulldozer.
Close ups of skiffy people looking all safe and stuff.
The origami bulldozer, and its controller.
Nuclear waste, on the hoof. Some parts of the trip were forbidden to photography.
As usual, more at the Flickr set.