RoVing Walkers: Kennewick, WA

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Kennewick, WA

August 15 - 24, 2019

We have been having a great time visiting with Pam and Mark here in Kennewick! Pam and I have been taking turns fixing dinner, they have taught us two new games and we taught them one.

On Tuesday, August 20 we went on the B Reactor tour at Hanford, WA. The best description comes from the website: "B-Reactor, the world’s first industrial-scale nuclear reactor, was built during World War II as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. One of three plutonium production reactors built in total secrecy at Hanford during World War II, B Reactor produced plutonium for the Trinity test at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, and for the atomic bomb exploded on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945."

Here is a picture of the front face of the reactor. Each one of those fuel tubes had to be monitored for temperature. This was before the days of computers like we have now.

Also a map of the facility.

The B Reactor is the building on the lower right between the two water towers.

They gave us a map of the building and we were free to wander and explore the different rooms like the control room and valve pit, just a couple of many.

The website has a lot of very interesting information at b-reactor.org. If you are in the area the tour is free and well worth going. There is also another tour we didn't take about the area, how they decided to build the facility here, the lives of the people, etc. We'll save that tour for the next time we're in town. We'd also like to visit Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.

Mark has been volunteering at the Horse Heaven Round-Up rodeo most of the week. On Wednesday, August 21 we went to the fair and the rodeo. We enjoyed it very much, but if we do it again we'll go for the reserved seats that have backs on them instead of sitting on the backless bleachers for three hours. They had bareback riding, tie-down roping, mutton busting (those little kids were so cute!), breakaway roping, steer wrestling, saddle bronc riding, trick riding, barrel racing, and bull riding. Some of those cowboys take quite a beating.