Apart from its wine, another thing that the Tri-Cities area is known for (at least for tourists) is Richland’s involvement in the Manhattan Project via the Han­ford Site. While in the area, I decided to book a tour of the B Reactor to learn more about the nuclear bombs used in World War II.

Surprisingly, the tour was free. I showed up at the visitor center at my designated tour time slot and was greeted by a docent who showed us an in­tro­duc­to­ry video and walked through some of the rules with us. Afterwards, the group and I loaded onto a bus (a nicer one with individual chairs in a 2-2 seating configuration, and not bench seats like a school bus) and took a 45-minute ride to the B Reactor.

Upon arrival, we were taken directly to the actual reactor.

After everyone got seated, another docent gave us a brief overview of the Manhattan Project and explained the logistics how the reactor worked and what steps the staff had to take to remain safe from radiation.

If I remember correctly, the docent informed us that there were 2,004 process tubes in the reactor. At first, the plan was to build it with only about a thousand, but on the advice of some engineers, the number of tubes was increased as a safety measure. This ended up being a very wise decision, as there were some unexpected chemical imbalances in the reactor that required more fuel to be inserted, so the excess process tubes were immediately put to good use upon operation.

Displayed on some tables nearby the reactor were some equipment and accessories that were used during the operation of the reactor. For example, there were some fuel tubes that were inserted into the reactor, off-set between two spacer tubes each.

Around the corner was the exhaust fan hallway, which contained four exhaust fans—two steam-powered and two electric.

Originally, this hallway was split into individual “pods” for each of the fans, and the only way to get from one room to the other was around a curvy bend—the architecture was constructed this way because the radiation traveled in straight lines, so if one of the fans were to malfunction, the radiation could be contained in one of the rooms. Since then, archways were excavated into the concrete walls to create the hallway.

Next, I visited the valve pit, which was responsible for passing treated water through process tubes. The docent had a small presentation in this area, and he explained that, until not too long ago, this room was annually audited as part of a peace agreement. The way the room would be checked to ensure the facility was no longer operational was to verify that the tubes did not show signs of having been recently wet.

I don’t quite recall exactly where this photo was from; I believe it might have been from a hallway near the electric equipment room.

Around the corner was the accumulator room, which contained, as you may have guessed, accumulators. They served as a back-up system for inserting hor­i­zon­tal control rods into the reactor in the event of a power failure. There was a mirror between the accumulators that was strategically angled so you could see the inside of the accumulators from the ground; they contained a lot of small rocks.

This was one of the unlabeled rooms right outside the accumulator room, which appeared to have some telecommunications equipment, tools, and in­stru­ments on display.

I eventually made my way over to the secondary “main attraction” (behind the reactor itself), which was the control room.

After thoroughly exploring the control room, I continued my way down the hallway to the fuel storage basin. This area was blocked from public access due to contamination, but there was a viewing area behind some thick glass where we could see where irradiated fuel was stored prior to being shipped to the 200 Area, also known as the Central Plateau.

Outside, there was a train on display. The docent did not specify what this was for, but just from the fact that it is on display at the B Reactor, I imagine this was one of the trains used to transport fuel and materials to and from the reactor.

I talked about this more in-depth in previous blog posts when I started visiting museums a lot more a year and a half ago when I completed the first por­tion of my road trip, but museums like this have played a very large role in lessening my dislike of the topic of history. Throughout all my academic years as a student, history was my most hated subject because the way it is taught in the United States is passive and makes everything appear in­con­se­quen­tial.

Now that I’m actually seeing this all first-hand, I’m able to conceptualize and internalize what happened. Additionally, the docents here were former employees of the Manhattan Project at Hanford, they are lifelong residents of the Tri-Cities area, they are still taking an active role in the clean-up proc­ess, and it’s clear that they truly care about helping people understand the importance of this history.

These docents demonstrated a stark difference from the history teachers I had, especially in high school, where it was a recurring theme for them to just lecture at me out of a textbook. They only cared about the process (i.e., saying that they showed up for class so they can collect their paycheck), rather than caring about the results when it came to the students.

I thought this tour of the B Reactor was amazing, and I am astonished that it was free. Based on quality and the resources they have to put in for trans­por­ta­tion and staffing, they could justify charging ~US$30 for this, and even then, it would still be an amazing deal.

I think the timeframe allotted for self-exploration was a little short, and it was mainly geared towards the casual visitor. If you are an enthusiast or end up getting very interested in the topic, this is absolutely a tour worth attending twice.

For my first stop after leaving the Seattle Metropolitan Area, I decided to visit Yakima, a city inside the Yakima Valley and named after the Yakama In­di­an Reservation (no, that is not a typo—apparently they changed the spelling of their tribe’s name from Yakima to Yakama in 1994).

I only spent a day and a half in Yakima, so I didn’t get to explore too much—I generally stayed around the bend of Interstate 82 and didn’t drive south­west into the suburbs. However, in the areas through which I did drive, my impression of Yakima… is that it is probably one of the most difficult areas in which I’ve ever driven.

The drivers weren’t particularly bad, and the vehicular volume was obviously nowhere close to even a fraction of any major metropolitan area, but at least on the eastern side of Yakima that I saw, I think the city planners did an absolutely horrid job. My best guess to justify the mess is to think that they never expected Yakima to have more than a modicum of population.

During less busy hours, driving around felt fairly normal. However, I selected an inopportune time of around 5 PM to go out to get some dinner and shop at Target to stock up on snacks and sports drinks. Long story short, when there are a lot of cars, it is prohibitively and paralyzingly difficult to get a­round.

Everywhere I went, there were unprotected turns onto major streets, which meant, if you were going straight or turning left, you would just be idly sit­ting there, hoping for a break in the traffic. Even worse, these roads were right by major interstate exits with no stop lights, so there were no man­u­fac­tured breaks in the traffic from signal light flow—you just had to hope that you were lucky.

One example of this was when I drove southbound on North Fair Avenue near exit 33 of Interstate 82 and turned right onto South Fair Avenue Loop to prepare to turn left onto East Yakima Avenue. After literally 14 minutes of queuing up and watching other cars struggle as well, I finally was next in line to turn. I sat there waiting for an additional two or so minutes before I looked in my rear view mirror and saw that the line of cars waiting to turn left be­hind me was so long that it was flowing back beyond the fork in the road, now even blocking the cars trying to turn right. After realizing this is bor­der­line a lost cause, I just started creeping forward and obstructing the flow of lateral traffic until they slowed down enough for me to floor the ac­cel­er­a­tor and squeeze in between two cars. Nobody even honked at me for my dangerous maneuver, which makes me think that they see these antics at this in­ter­section so much that they’re used to it.

At one point, I tried to turn onto Yakima Avenue from a different spot farther down west after departing a business, and even that was nearly impossible (even though it was a right turn) because everyone seems to be parked on the street in the very narrow right-most lane, and with many people in Yakima owning large pick-up trucks and SUVs, visibility is completely blocked.

Again, I don’t know how it is out in the southwestern suburbs, because I never went there, but at least in the busier area by the interstate, they really need to erect some more traffic lights.

 
Apart from struggling to drive, I also visited the Yakima Area Arboretum & Botanical Garden, which was conveniently located near the interstate. The weath­er was nice and brisk, perfect for a quick stroll before heading out to my next destination.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the building was closed for some reason (there was a makeshift notice on the glass doors stating that they’re closed), but the outdoors area was all open and accessible by the public.

Deeper on Noel Pathway into the forest, there was a nicely-maintained pond surrounded by trees, rocks, bridges, and a waterfall. While I was walking through, I noticed a group of people taking what appeared to be wedding photos (you can sort of see the photographer in the picture immediately be­low).

After walking across and up to the northern side of the field, I maneuvered over a ditch to make it to a different path that led me to some nice views of Buchanan Lake.

Once I managed to retrace my steps and hop over the ditch back onto arboretum property, I made my way to the botanical garden area, where I saw the rose garden.

There weren’t too many roses around, probably because of the season, but there were still a handful in bloom.

On my way back to my truck in the southern parking lot, I came across a little island of desert vegetation in the northern parking lot.

For my next stop, I’m continuing southeast on Interstate 82 to the Kennewick–Pasco–Richland Metropolitan Area, better known as Tri-Cities.