dangerousmeta!, the original new mexican miscellany, offering eclectic linkage since 1999.

It’s interesting how life twists and turns.

I see Y-12 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is opening its doors wider. Synchronicities: My late father got his bunk on a cross-country train ransacked because he said “hello” to Robert Oppenheimer in the dining car during WWII.  I visited Oak Ridge, K-25 and Y-12, as a boy.  Then, when I found myself working in Big Bend National Park during college, I stayed in huts that were ‘surplus’ from this atomic bomb effort (little white shacks with green tar paper roofs).  Now, I’m within spitting distance of Los Alamos.  If I looked through uranium-colored glasses, I could say my life has been framed by ‘the bomb’ ...

Later: Trivia.  Did you know most GI’s in WWII wore radium-dial watches?  The safety of which, at this late date, remains dubious. And don’t forget the “Radium Girls”; the manufacturing sites are apparently still being cleaned up via Superfund.

06/15/05 • 12:45 AM • EnvironmentalHistoryPersonal • (3) Comments

Comments:

Meanwhile, K-25 (for many years, the largest building in the world) is being dismantled. The little two-lane highway that runs by the east side of K-25 and comes out on Highway 61 between Harriman and Oliver Springs is one of my favorite motorcycle rides. Every time I go by, there’s a little less of that gigantic structure - but it’s so big, it will take years to finish the demolition.
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Posted by Wade on 06/15/05 at 02:08 AM

Oh, and speaking of your life being ‘framed by the bomb’ - I grew up in Erwin, TN, which is the home of Nuclear Fuel Services, still the only plant in the US which packages the fuel rods for the Navy’s nuclear subs and carriers. I used to tell people that one of the reason’s I’m so weird is that I grew up breathing uranium.

Posted by Wade on 06/15/05 at 02:13 AM

I visited right after I was fitted with those early light-sensitive lenses in my glasses.  I walked into K-25, and they went black.  Scared everyone to death, including the tour guide.

61.  Ah, yes.  I have family up the Clinton Highway at Claxton and Clinton.  Those roads are familiar ... well, as familiar as my memory make them from 23 years ago.  One of my favorite memories, an elderly man driving a 60’s Impala down the road. Unremarkable, you say?  He didn’t have any tires on the vehicle.  Just rims.  Doing about 30 and making an incredible racket.  He seemed unperturbed.  I didn’t stick around to see if he’d be able to stop the thing on some of those hills.

Posted by Garret on 06/15/05 at 02:15 AM

 

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