COLD WAR PATRIOTS

During the Cold War thousands of military personnel were the B 52 flight crews on alerts twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, missileers deep inside silos in control of the nuclear tipped ICBMs, soldiers with boots on ground in foreign lands like Korea and Vietnam, submariners hauling around ballistic missiles deep beneath in the oceans; In support of these courageous warriors was a large contingent of Cold War Patriots.

More than 700,000 or more Americans worked in secret locations throughout the country during the Cold War to maintain our nation’s nuclear deterrent. In the process, many of us contracted illnesses from radiation or toxic exposures to hazardous chemicals.

We patriots toiled away in this far-flung weapons complex. Nuclear scientists at Los Alamos and Livermore designed the weapons; engineers, designers, construction workers, and production personnel designed, built and operated the facilities producing the nuclear and non-nuclear materials, fabricating the bomb components, and performing the final assembly of the weapons. Other engineers, scientists, technicians and construction workers conducted thousands of tests to ensure the darn things would work as designed.

Our battlefields were on the sage covered desert of eastern Washington, the piney forests of South Carolina, the windswept high plateau along the Rocky Mountain Front Range near Boulder, Colorado, on the ancient lava fields in a remote region in central Idaho, in the valleys of the rugged terrain of east Tennessee, at a high aerie in the Santa Inez Mountains in New Mexico and in a bucolic valley in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We fought in skirmishes in the vast Nevada and New Mexico deserts and in the South Pacific risking our lives and health testing the frightening bombs we had produced. We had secret outposts in the wide-open spaces of Texas and in the wooded hills of Ohio and Kentucky.

Our enemy was time. Our commanders, driven by demands of the Department of Defense (DOD), dictated inflexible production demands for nuclear weapons. We were fighting the clock in order to maintain parity with the Soviet bomb makers. The dangers we faced were not bullets and bombs, but the deadly radiation emitted from the atomic bomb ingredients. We faced the constant threat of radiation sickness that many of us continue battle.

We weren’t in foxholes or trenches, but bellied up to gloveboxes handling and processing the exceedingly dangerous and hazardous bomb ingredients; plutonium, high-enriched uranium, tritium, and beryllium. Not only were these materials extremely toxic with the potential of causing years of debilitating cancers and berylliosis, but also fissionable plutonium and high-enriched uranium could cause instant death and long term radiation sickness resulting from accidental criticalities. The high-level radioactive waste generated during the production of the weapons also posed a serious threat to the production workers as well as to the nearby residents.

Hand in hand with the development of nuclear weapons was the development of nuclear energy for ship propulsion and electrical power. Many of the same engineers and scientists who designed nuclear warheads, built and operated weapon production facilities, also contributed to the advancement of peaceful uses of the atom, not without many of the same hazards.

The efforts of the Cold War Patriots not only provided the nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union, but the entire world benefited from our dedication, ingenuity, and inventions for the peaceful uses of the atom. Reactor concepts developed during the Cold War have been exported to foreign countries, such as France, England, Canada, Japan, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Sweden and a host of others where the technology is being utilized to provide cheap, clean energy.

I was a proud member of this patriotic group. I worked in plant operations at the Manhattan Project’s primary plutonium production facility at Hanford, WA, as a laboratory technician and later as a line supervisor for the production nuclear weapon triggers or “pits”. I Managed facility designs at all of the major facilities that made up the complex.

I was also involved in President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as project manager for the conceptual design for facilities in support of the ground based laser.

The ground based laser free electron laser (GBFEL) concept was based on linear accelerator powered laser beams.
Two concepts were being explored for the SDI; an induction driven accelerator and a rf driven accelerator and involved two separate teams of scientists and engineers. Parson Corp., the company I worked was on the TRW team along with the Livermore National Laboratory. TRW provided laser technology, the laboratory provided induction accelerator technology and Parsons provided architectural and engineering expertise.

I was the Parsons project manager.

The opposing team consisted of Boeing (lasers), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (rf accelerator) and Bechtel National (A/E) services.

The GBFEL concept, simply put, was as follows; a laser beam was combined with the energy from the accelerator creating a laser beam of extreme energy, 500 mega watts, this beam was then directed to optics arrangement where it was conditioned and expanded to 10 meters in diameter, this expanded beam was then directed to 10 meter mirror which reflected the beam to an orbiting mirror in space which in turn refocused the beam which was directed at a Soviet SS-20 during its boost phase thus destroying the missile and its on board nuclear warheads.

Initial construction of the GBFEL, designed by the Boeing team, at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico was halted as the Cold War came to an end in the early 1980s.

We who worked on the project felt that its success went a long way in helping end the Cold War. Although there has been differing opinions allied with the skeptics that the whole SDI was foolhardy. However, the Soviets believed it would work and spent themselves into near bankruptcy attempting to build their own SDI, thus helping bring to an end the Soviet Union.

THE RECUPLEX INCIDENT, HANFORD, WA 1962

My Cold War experiences began in the early 1960s when after graduating from the University of Montana I accepted a job with the General Electric Co. at the Manhattan Project’s primary plutonium production facility at Hanford, WA.

The Hanford Works included reactors for irradiating uranium fuel, extracting plutonium from the fuel and fabricating the plutonium into nuclear weapon triggers or “pits”.

My first job was a lab technician in the PUREX plant where plutonium was extracted from irradiated fuels from the reactors. However, I was soon promoted to a job as a line supervisor in the plutonium finishing plant (PFP) where PUREX product, plutonium nitrate, was converted to metal buttons that were then fashioned into pits by a series of machining operations.

Due to demands for pits, the plant ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days week requiring several rotating operating shifts. I was assigned to B shift. The RECUPEX incident happened on B shift.

The incident happened on a Saturday morning in an area of the building called the RECUPLEX, (Recovery of Plutonium by Extraction).

RECUPLEX processed scarp materials from the “button line” and “pit” machining operations. It was designed as pilot plant but proved to be so successful that it was converted to a production operation. The AEC and GE management pushed it to the limit to meet demands for more plutonium from the Department of Defense.

The combination of solvents and acidic solutions caused the glovebox gloves and windows to deteriorate. The failed neoprene gloves were replaced on a routine basis. The worn out gloves were simply pushed into the gloveboxes and left to rot along with empty plastic containers, bags, and failed plastic tubing until removed during a periodic clean up operation.

One practical joker bagged in some chicken bones leftovers from his lunch. The culprit was never found.

Periodic clean ups were often postponed in order to maintain production. Eventually the floors of the gloveboxes were covered with a black, slimy sludge. The Lucite windows deteriorated to a point that viewing was almost impossible; work inside the gloveboxes was mostly by feel.

Process equipment and piping developed leaks adding rich plutonium solutions to the floor sludge and instrumentation failures added to a dangerous situation.

The design of the plant provided for both administrative and engineered safeguards to prevent a criticality. There where two types of process and storage vessels, with both safe and unsafe configurations. Safe meant that the design was such that high concentration plutonium solutions could be safely stored in a non-critical array. Unsafe meant that only liquids with a low concentration of plutonium could be contained in a safe manner.

As the plant conditions deteriorated and production pushed to meet quotas, the accumulation of waste on the floors of the gloveboxes resulted in a continual increase of gamma and neutron radiation.

Since the RECUPLEX was a pilot operation and not designed as a production plant, a remote operating area was not included. Portable shielding panels on rollers were provided in an attempt to reduce exposure to the operators at the control panel in the area.

Finally, the conditions were so bad that process operations were halted in order to perform a cleanup. Dilute nitric and hydrofluoric acids were used to dissolve the floor sludge and the resulting sloppy solution vacuumed up (slurped) off the floor and into a holding tank, designated as K-9, for analysis prior to discharge to the crib field outside the building. The floor slop was assumed to be low in plutonium concentration and as such the K-9 tank was not a criticality safe configuration.

The process operators were fearful of the work in the area. They were barely able to see into the gloveboxes to determine valve positions and instrumentation gauge readings. As radiation levels continued to increase, some operators refused to work in the area saying it was too dangerous.

They were right.

The room’s interior lighting was dimmed to reduce the glare on the Lucite windows. The floor to ceiling gloveboxes looked like cages for some unearthly beings. The process operators trudged around in their white coveralls and canvas shoecovers, wary of the plutonium beast within the gloveboxes.

During one midnight shift, floor slop with an assumed low concentration of plutonium was being vacuumed into the unsafe storage/transfer vessel. Sometime during the night, either from a leak in the product tank, a faulty valve, or an overflow from an extraction column allowed high concentration plutonium solution to spill onto the floor. Just prior to shift change the slurping was halted. The oncoming shift, unaware of the leak, and unable to adequately view the inside of the glovebox restarted the operation.

They were unknowingly adding a rich plutonium solution into the unsafe tank!

As the vacuuming process continued and the concentration in the unsafe tank neared the critical mass stage, the portable alpha meters called “poppies” began cackling intermittently, then turning into a continuous screech. This electrical interference was an indication of a tremendous release of neutrons as the solution in the tank approached criticality. The operators were quick to recognize something was seriously wrong and already wary of the dangerous situation evacuated the room—just in time.

The solution in the tank went critical. One of the operators reported seeing a “blue flash”, an indication of a criticality. Criticality alarms throughout building went off and the rest of the shift workers evacuated the building as the contents in the tank underwent more criticality excursions. The heat from the criticality event caused the solution in the tank to boil, upsetting the critical mass array. However, when the boiling stopped the solution condensed back into a critical array. This was repeated a number of times over the next thirty or so hours.

An investigation of the accident was conducted resulting in An Official Use only report. Final Report of Accidental Nuclear Excursion Recuplex Operation 234-5 Facility. Date of incident: April 7, 1962. Prepared by the investigating committee. The report has no document number. This report was later declassified and is available for review.

The RECUPLEX plant was never restarted. Eventually a new recovery plant, the design of which was authorized before the accident, was built and successfully operated.

I grew up in Richmond Hill, N.Y. in the 1950's and, of course, it was always assumed the the Empire State Building would be the ground zero targety for the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Communists, as all the kids on the block called. We knew if Manhattan got baombed,we'd probably all die as well, some sooner than later. Despite this though, we did our part, noting the Civil Defense signs, staying off the streets, or going into the subways when the air raid sirens whinned and practiced duck and cover and shielding our eyes from the flash and our heads from the blast. I remember putting my head down on the kitchen table next to my Eggo Waffles (they had newly come on the market to the joy of my Mom who was the only lady on our block who when to work), crying because the Communists had beat us into outer space with their launch of Sputnik, orbiting over us every 90 minutes or so. I even had the good fortune of seeing it fly over us one summer night, though at that point it ceased to be the triumph of evil but a great achievement of mankind. The following year, all the classes at Our Lady of Perpetual Help were double up and we all watched the first Mercury launch with Alan Sheppard and was lucky to see the ticker tape parade with all seven astronauts after John Glenn barely escaped with his life after only three orbits, though he was "go" for seven. (My mother told me at the time that the mission was in trouble. She always knew stuff, like "Our astronauts have been approached." And this stuff was broadcast anywhere and it was before the internet, but she was always right, somehow.) I can remember watching Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe at the UN promising to "bury you," and kissing Fidel Castro on their meeting in Harlem becuase they wanted to be among 'the people'. Years later during the Cuban missile crisis as we did our drills and waited for the bombs to hit NY,and elsewhere, I hoped that my parents would go quickly, they both worked in Manhattan: my Dad as a NY Police Officer and my Mom on Wall St. for an insurance company. (We figured when you vaporized there were not nerves left to feel the pain.) I didn't know what would happen to me but I was sure to be with someone who would look out for me. As it turned out, President Kennedy starred them down and we didn't die after all. The President died though and we were let out of school early that day...I was still in French class coincidentally where I had been doing our bomb drills. My parents came to pick me up,both of them usually, it was one or the other but on this day they both came. Again, we didn't know what was going to happen, the whole country was inahock, everybody crying and glued to their televisions. But we were together: my parents and I, my grandparents, all the family and neighbors. I even watched Jack Ruby shout Lee Harvey Oswald. (My parents were just coming in from grocery shopping.) No that was reality TV!

I was eight years old when I overheard my mother and father discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. My father mentioned something about atom bombs on missiles being fired at New York,etc. They did not know I could hear them,and the thought of atomic destruction had a lasting impact on me. I used to have this recurring nightmare: I would be sitting in my schoolroom looking out the window when I would hear sirens. I could see a large green missile with red lettering on it's side CCCP and the Soviet star slowly falling to earth. Just before impact I would wake up in a sweat. This occurred throughout my early 20's.So yes the Cold War impacted me.

When he came through pittsburgh I was 8 years old and went with my dad to see him pass by in his motorcade. My dad recorded the event on one of those now old fashion movie cameras. Later the FBI questioned him about the recording. LOL

At the parochial high school I attended, the principal, a Catholic priest, was somewhat pompous and very serious about the "duck and cover" drills. One afternoon, he suddenly cam one the loudspeakers and said, "This is a duck drill. Duck! Duck! Duck!" One older nun, our music teacher, just stood in the front of her classroom and said sarcastically, "Quack! Quack! Quack!" She did not know that the principal had opened the "receive" side of the intercom system so he could hear the reactions of the students. When he heard her comment, he assumed it was a student, and he subsequently treated the whole school to a lecture about how serious the drills were.

My father was launch officer for the Atlas missle site in Kansas. I was fifteen. I could accept calls from my friends for 15 seconds. Enough to tell them I couldn't talk. Dad was on Red Alert in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

As a fourth grader, back in the heart of this era, I had a shortwave radio and listened to stations from all over the world. I would send notes to the stations and get attractive cards back from them, verifying that I had indeed received their signal. Radio Moscow was one of those stations, and over time I began to receive more things in the mail from them.

The upshot was that at one point, in 1959 as a fifth grader, I received an invitation to tour Russia, as a guest of the Communist government.

My parents just laughed it off, but it would have been the trip of a lifetime if they'd had the presence of mind to take them up on it !!

I vaguely recall his visit. However I do remember Gary Powers shot down over the USSR in the U2 incident. I was in 8th grade during the Cuban Missile Crisis when this seemingly jocular bafoon didn't mind installing offensive nukes 90 miles from Florida. Not a fan.

When Khrushchev visited San Francisco, he did a tour of the town, including going up and around Twin Peaks, where our family lived. My mother had gone down from our street, Palo Alto Avenue, to watch the parade snake up toward Twin Peaks. As Khrushchev's car went by, she called out, "Dasvidaniya"as a gesture of goodwill. It startled everyone nearby plus the Secret Service, who immediately surrounded her, suspecting that there "was a commie in the woodpile." She was taken aback by the attention: she explained she had merely wanted to greet Khrushchev, but in that time, anyone who spoke any Russian was suspect. My mother, Marian Van Tuyl Campbell, had a world view that it was a very small planet. She was a modern dancer, Founder, Mills College School of Dance, and publisher of the magazine, IMPULSE, Dance in Relation to the Other Arts, which featured dance-related articles from internationally known artists, architects, physicians, et al. She also was a friend of Katherine Dunham, a fellow dancer and member of the US Communist party. It took some time before the ruckus died down and the Secret Service determined that my mother was no threat to international peace, just a citizen trying to extend hospitality to this person with whom her country was at fierce odds.

When Nikita Khrushchev visited Des Moines, Iowa at the invitation of Farmer Garst in 1959, there was an atmosphere of exhilaration, similar to when the Iowa State Fair takes place every year, almost celebratory in this case. Nothing ever happened in Iowa, certainly not on a world-wide scale. It took at least two years for a fad that hit either coast to make it to Des Moines. Remember, this was pre-pre internet days. Most people only used long distance for extreme emergencies (and then only for 3 minutes).

I was a senior in high school, and we had the day off to see the motorcade drive though a certain part of the city. My friend, Joe Ball and I decided to go together. Most of our friends had not the slightest interest in seeing Nikita Khrushchev, but Joe and I were members of the school's history club. And while we were mid-westerners, we certainly knew history when we saw it. Joe was a photographer for the school newspaper, so we got up as close as we could. We only saw his black limousine for a few seconds, and whiz, it went by, but those few seconds were magical. There was no Disneyland in Des Moines to keep him away from, just a huge pride, that of all the places in American that he could have gone to, he chose what was then the richest farmland in the world, right where we lived.

Well, sort of where we lived. Before that moment, and probably forever after, we weren't all that fond of farmland and the smell of hogs and soy beans being processed. But I never forgot that small bit of history I witnessed first hand. Farmer Garst and the good folks of Des Moines weren't going to let a little old thing like Communism stop us from having our day in the spotlight.