Tag: nuclear culture

by jad

Trip Like I Do—Hanford Works, June 28

Somewhere past this barrier is the B Reactor, where plutonium was manufactured for more than a quarter of a century and was used “in the first nuclear bomb, tested at the Trinity site, and in ‘Fat Man,’ the atomic bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.” By 1966, the N Reactor came on and this death factory started to produce electricity, so up until that moment, the massive amount of energy produced here through the splitting of atoms and collision of neutrons “served no social purpose,” as Richard White so poignantly puts it. He goes on: “Everything at Hanford seemed … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—Hanford Works, June 28” →

by jad

Trip Like I Do—Eastern Washington, June 27-29

For the longest time, I avoided taking photos of human beings like the plague. No one’s ever happy with how they look, so if they know you, they’ll be sad, and if they don’t, why are you pointing a camera in their face? I couldn’t imagine walking up to a stranger and asking them for something so terrible as their photograph—who would say yes? Would you? I’d never in a million years. And yet, turns out that much of that anxiety is a set up for one of those “expectations versus reality” memes. As you might recall, I deliberately devised … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—Eastern Washington, June 27-29” →

by jad

Trip Like I Do—Silica Road, June 28

Somewhere along #SilicaRoad, June 28—We caught a glimpse of this bus on our way to #Sunland and I just had to stop on our drive back. There were several NO TRESPASSING signs around it, but no physical barriers to stop me. On one corner, there was a tiny cardboard sign stuck to it that said RADIOACTIVE in a much-too-casual scrawl. We were actually on our way to the general vicinity of a former nuclear reactor, so I thought about that word for two seconds before promptly ignoring it. We laughed the whole thing off as we drove away; and yet, … Continue reading “Trip Like I Do—Silica Road, June 28” →