Why I called my book ‘The Apocalypse Factory’ | Guest Opinion

When I was a boy delivering the Tri-City Herald in Othello in the 1960s, I never would have imagined that someday I would write a book about the mysterious government facility on the other side of the Saddle Mountains.

But life takes strange turns, and my book “The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age” came out last week.

Why did I choose such a provocative title?

First, the title does not refer to the site itself. I have great respect for the people who built, operated, and are cleaning up Hanford. My grandfather was a steamfitter at the facility. Some of my Othello friends moved to the Tri-Cities not long after we graduated and have worked at Hanford ever since.

The title refers to what Hanford made. The plutonium manufactured in the reactors along the Columbia River did not just help end World War II. Hanford’s plutonium, along with the plutonium made at another production facility in South Carolina, serves as triggers for the thousands of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. If those bombs are ever used, human civilization will likely end.

Also, as I write in the book, I’m using the word “apocalypse” in the Biblical sense. In the Bible, the apocalypse is not the end of the world. That’s Armageddon, a word derived from an ancient military stronghold on a trade route linking Egypt and the Middle East.

An apocalypse is a revelation — literally an uncovering — about the future that is supposed to provide hope in a time of uncertainty and fear. The plutonium from Hanford, which fueled the first atomic bomb ever exploded, in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki three weeks later, revealed that the world had entered a new era. We still have not come to terms with that change.

The Tri-Cities could help us think through our nuclear dilemmas. The B Reactor is by far the most impressive sight in the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Nothing in Oak Ridge or Los Alamos even comes close to its simultaneous grandeur and menace.

I argue in my book that Hanford is the single most important site of the nuclear age. The B Reactor was the world’s first full-scale nuclear reactor, and all subsequent reactors have used ideas and technologies developed there. Some of the most famous scientists of the 20th century designed and helped build Hanford. Understanding what happened there is the best possible way to understand nuclear weapons and nuclear power and the choices we face in using them.

As others have argued, the B Reactor could serve as the centerpiece of several scientifically oriented attractions in the Tri-Cities, including LIGO, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and a new center for clean energy. But to do that, the B Reactor needs to tell the whole story, not just part of it. People come to see the reactor from all over the world. They know when important issues are being downplayed or ignored. The B Reactor represents one of the great technological achievements of the 20th century. It also represents a technology that has produced massive environment contamination and weapons that could destroy us all.

The recent addition of a “reflection room” at the reactor, where visitors can learn and think about the history of nuclear technologies, is a step in the right direction. But more is needed. The National Park Service will need to create displays that tell the stories of everyone affected by Hanford, including displaced Native Americans and farmers, the people of Nagasaki, and the downwinders who were exposed to radiation generated at the facility.

The B reactor needs an adjoining visitor center that people can reach with their cars. The reactor also needs a new roof, which will be expensive. The T Plant, five miles to the south of the reactor, needs to somehow be incorporated into the park, since the separation of plutonium from irradiated uranium was just as important as what happened in the reactors. Getting all this done will take money, persistence, and political will.

The B Reactor and the rest of Hanford has as much to tell us about where we’re going as where we’ve been. That’s the real message of my book.

This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 11:57 AM with the headline "Why I called my book ‘The Apocalypse Factory’ | Guest Opinion."