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What I did last week

mrs2a50

mrs2a50

Pretty much the best.ever.
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Apr 12, 2007
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Because of security concerns, no one was allowed to say who our "high level visitor" was last week that turned everything upside down and kept me so late at work. But now that it's over (and it was in the paper yesterday) I can say that I provided administrative support to the Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu. Which probably means absolutely nothing to anyone here, but it's a pretty big deal around here. And while I'm totally not a "star struck" type of person, he's the highest person in government that I've ever met, which made it kind of cool.

As a bit of (boring) background, I live near the Hanford Nuclear Site, where the plutonium was made that was used to create the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. So there are a lot of scientists and other smarty types who are trying to figure out what to do with all the contaminated water and land that's out at the site now (since they did nothing at the time to contain any of it). They're in the process of building a vitrification plant that will contain and eventually turn the contaminated water into a glass product so it can't leach into the water table. They're building something called "black cells" to hold the water until it can be vitrified, and Secretary Chu was here with a review team to determine the safety and probability of success of these black cells.

So anyway, that's my little scientific story and lesson for y'all today. And I must say, I'm actually highly impressed I was able to spew all that out into a somewhat understandable form! :giggle
 
It must have been very exciting! I'm glad to hear they are working to try to improve the site. Any breakthroughs here will translate into other water contamination as well.
 
Well I have no idea who that is, but it all sounds pretty exciting anyway. LOL
 
oh... that sounds really exciting!!! So were you all like CIA not being able to tell anyone?
 
I just finished reading a book that had a WWII bunker that was used for bomb making and when they were done, the government built a 3 ft concrete dome over the top of the site and walked away. So, this sounds like the makings of a great book plot! :)
 
That is very cool, Julie! I want to know if you had a code name for him?
 
Very cool Julie! I can't believe nothing has been done all this time... I guess ignorance was bliss on my part
 
Not so secret squirrel that I was sworn to secrecy - it was more of a "need to know" basis, and there were a lot of people who needed to know. But it certainly wasn't something I could randomly post at TLP :giggle

We didn't have a technical code name, no. Personally, I was just calling it "The Visit"

Krista, there's been a lot that has been studied, and remedial measures that people have tried to implement, but it's such a HUGE job to try and clean up this area. If the plant is finalized and completed, it will process 53 million gallons of contaminated waste water. So while they did nothing at the time the plutonium was created, a lot has been done since then to try and fix the situation. At the time, the focus was on creating the bomb, and the aftereffects were a secondary issue. The tanks that the water is currently stored in have leaked, and leached the contaminated water into the groundwater.
 
Oooh very cool!! I like smarties! And this is one of those situations I feel so grateful that they are focused on solving big and scary problems such as this one!
 
Very interesting and exciting I'm sure! I find it crazy too, that they are now just doing something about it... It's kinda scarey...
 
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