No chance: for once Richland, Benton County, Wash., has the honors of "a" Wall Street Journal, is a history of radioactive rabbit droppings. In its edition of December 23, 2010, the business daily said in effect how we discovered there in October droppings which maddened Geiger counters, how we had to find the rabbit in question, and especially, especially, knowing where this brave animal was passed.Not difficult to imagine yet. Benton County, where the city of Richland, home since the 1940s, the Hanford complex that produced the bomb "Fat Man" dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Hanford is the birthplace of nuclear weapons in the U.S., the secret-defense program called "Manhattan Project", the B Reactor was a historical monument in August 2008.
It is also the site in the world's most contaminated after the Chernobyl radioactive isotopes. Admittedly, Benton County is willing to forward the beauty of the steppe bordering the Columbia River, fishing for wild salmon, the Indian folklore of the tribe of the Nez Perce and 7000 hectares of vineyards (more than one hundred of wineries!), but for Hanford that this region is known.
The site produced the bomb that drove Japan to surrender. "Peace! Concluded with our bomb" was the headline in a local newspaper in August 1945. It was also at that time that thousands of workers of the complex became aware of what they were making! In this factory top secret information was strictly compartmentalized.
Like the rest. Richland, and the town of Hanford, were in the early twentieth century that small farming villages. But in 1943, the federal government buys all the land of Hanford and Richland, expropriated the people of Hanford double-locked the city of Richland, brought 25,000 workers and builds the atomic complex on the steppe.
Richland is a "Federally Controlled AtomicEnergy Community". Homes, buses, trees ... everything belongs to the U.S. Army. In 1954, the city was finally permitted to elect a mayor who will ask the federal government additional rights for its citizens. But the United States while living in the paranoia of the Cold War.
Since the Korean conflict, produce more plutonium is a priority. It should then not until 1957 that the government started selling houses in the city to its residents and 1958 for Richland becomes a normal town, where you can come and go freely. Normal but special nonetheless. The last reactor was closed here in 1987.
During these forty-five years, has developed a true culture atomic mixture of pride and apprehension. But the pride is there. The streets have names of U.S. generals (Patton Street, Sherman Street, etc.). Or outright names that feel like their radioactivity as Proton Lane, Nuclear Lane Curie Street and, of course, Einstein Avenue.
As for the Richland High School and its football team The Bombers (bombers), it adopted a symbol that is chilling: a great big mushroom cloud bursting of the "R" in Richland. There have recently been some discussion within the school to replace the logo with something less aggressive - we proposed the B-17 Flying Fortress.
But supporters of the fungus have won. The pride of the atom is deeply rooted in local culture, it is even tattooed on fungi biceps and calves. Today, however, the nuclear Richland is mostly synonymous with decontamination, waste disposal and vitrification. In 1989 was voted a cleaning giant $ 30 billion (the equivalent today of more than 40 billion euros), one of the largest in the world, managed by the U.S.
Department of Energy, the Agency of Environmental Protection and the State of Washington. The yard is huge. In 1989, 200 million liters of waste in 177 tanks splashed, 67 had already fled. This left 290 tons of materials containing plutonium around 9 Hanford reactors, not to mention acres polluted groundwater affected waste stored on the banks of the Columbia.
Twenty years later, work is well advanced on the 1500 square kilometers of the site, but there are still things to do for several years, even decades. Richland residents are well aware, some of which are involved now in educating their neighbors and establish a citizen watch that contrasts with the "pride atomic" traditional.
Hunting rabbits irradiated does not unduly reassuring.
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