Wallace Idaho and the Sunshine Mine

After he graduated in chemistry from the University of Idaho, Dad went to work at the Sunshine Mine located between Wallace and Kellogg in Northern Idaho. There were other mines in the area and, together with the Sunshine mine, produced more silver than any other part of the world. Silver is generally found with lead and lead was needed in the war effort. This may be why dad's job as a chemist in the mine kept him out of the war until 1944.

Carol and I drove up the West coast, stayed with friends in Palo Alto, with Carol's brother in Spokane, and then over to Moscow. We visited our daughter, her husband Preston (a law student at U of I), and their cute daughter Allison. After a week in Moscow, Melanie and Allison got in the car with us and we then drove to Wallace, Idaho, where my sister Susan and I were born while dad worked at the mine.

There is a "Sunshine Mine" exit off the I-90. We took it and drove to the mine. We went into a building and talked to an employee of the mine, who told us that the amazing silver deposits had run out and they are now exploring for more. I told the employee that dad worked there as a chemist in the mid-1940's. The employee showed us the building that contained the lab but, because the mine was not producing, the building was closed.

The photo immediately above is a sign describing Wallace as a mining center. Exactly above that is an overview of many of the buildings at the mine. The top left is me standing by a sign reading "Sunshine." The top right above is the building in which dad worked.

Purple People Eaters vs. Uranium Diversion

This is the story of dad's assignment to remove uranium from the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Laboratory.

The information here came from dad, from records obtained from the Department of Energy, and from interviews of two former employees of the plant.

The Atomic Energy Commission (now Department of Energy) was considering “loaning” uranium to other countries, including Iran (an ally back then). But the concern of the AEC was whether the material could be stolen and used for non-peaceful purposes. So an official in Washington requested a test to learn if theft was possible. The assignment was given to the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant, part of the INEL, West of Idaho Falls, Idaho. A memorandum dated in January 1958 started the process and the test began June 4, 1958. A final report dated December 31, 1958 was sent to the official who requested the test. The test was given the code name “Project Diogenes.”

Three groups were set up to run the test. First was the group assigned to steal uranium. This group would be comparable to native employees at a foreign plant. Second was the group whose purpose was to stop the theft, comparable to US employees at the foreign plant. These people were required to wear purple lab coats and could not talk to the other employees. The theory was that Americans in a foreign plant would not be able to speak the local language. Because of the lab coats, they were dubbed the “Purple People Eaters,” after a current hit song. The last group acted as umpires.

The Purple People Eaters were AEC employees from around the country, brought in to stop the thefts. The reports state that these employees thought they would have a lot of fun finding the uranium and could also spend time fishing and hunting in Idaho. As time passed, and they grew more frustrated, they began to fight among themselves and to cause various problems.

Dad, Bill Pearson, was a manager at the Chemical Processing Plant, the purpose of which was to receive spent nuclear fuel rods and to chemically extract out the remaining uranium separating it from the impurities created during fission. The uranium (now in a liquid form--uranium hexaflouride ) was piped down to the "basement" of the plant where it was put into containers and shipped to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. At Oak Ridge, the uranium was reprocessed back into metal form and installed into fuel rods.

But some of the uranium that went through the plant was already highly enriched, with a high percentage of U-235, capable of being formed into a nuclear bomb. Nuclear submarines, for example, are powered by highly enriched uranium. This uranium is the subject of Project Diogenes.

If you want to learn more about the Chem Plant and its functions, copy this link and paste it into your browser: http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/Documents/4460713.pdf

Dad had worked at CPP from the very beginning and was familiar with the plant and its plumbing and was trusted enough that he was given the assignment of diverting uranium.

Dad stated that he had special lunch box made. The box contained a "thermos" that was shielded with lead. He tapped into a pipe and attached a pump that came on and off with a timer. The pump filled the "thermos" and he took the uranium out of the plant. There is no information on how he was able to remove the uranium out of the plant or where he took it from there. He did say that he removed enough to make more than one bomb. The final report, that of December 31, 1958, states that 6.8 kg was removed. A critical mass is about 2 kg, so enough for 3 bombs was taken from the plant.

The test was scheduled to last from early June 1958 to the end of the year, but the 6.8 kg of uranium was removed during the early days of the test. Because of this, the test was ended on July 10, 1958. The final report noted that the removal was successful but that methods to prevent such theft had to be incorporated into the agreements with other countries to prevent such thefts there.

UPDATE:  My brother Bill called on 21 November 2013 and we discussed an Economist article about nuclear power reactors.  The article noted that todays nuclear power plants are designed such that plutonium is a byproduct.  This follows Adm. Rickover's desires for additional fissionable material.  But there are better designs, designs that are safer.

This lead Bill to talk about something he had just learned about the Chem Plant.  Not only were they purifying out the uranium from the fuel rods, but they were also obtaining large amounts of plutonium!

Dad never mentioned this nor was it apparent from any of the documents I obtained from the Department of Energy via the Freedom of Information Act.  When I said this to Bill he pointed out that the plutonium part of the equation was very secret.

Then we wondered whether it was uranium or plutonium that dad removed from the plant pursuant to the test. 

Radiation

While in college, I had a Summer job working for a contractor at the "site" West of Idaho Falls, Idaho, my home town. "The site" is the short-hand term for the Idaho Nuclear Energy Laboratory. (The facility is now called the "Idaho National Laboratory"). The following happened in, I believe, the Summer of 1966.

The contractors at the site used the Summer employees as substitutes for permanent employees who were on vacation. Moreover, we could be exposed to a year's worth of radiation in the three months of Summer.

Another Summer employee was, my high school classmate, Lloyd Barker.

Lloyd and I were often teamed together on two-person jobs. We talked constantly, but worked hard enough that we generally finished our assignments an hour or more early and then had nothing to do. So our supervisor, Ed Jewkes, told us we should ask someone nearby for additional work whenever we finished early.

One day we were working in a "hot cell." This is a building within a building in which radioactive items are stored. The cells are shielded and safely hold tools and parts that are contaminated with radioactive particles. I do not recall what we had been assigned to do in the hot cell, but I do remember that we were wearing special clothing and shoe covers and that we finished early.

A nearby HP (Health Physicist), whose name Lloyd now recalls may have been "Hernandez," asked us to open up the inner chamber of the hot cell (building in a building in a building) and take out a plastic bag of tools, and clean the tools to remove the radioactive particles. If successful, this would make the tools useable again. The tools were crescent wrenches, screwdrivers, and the like. The total value was likely less than $25.

Because we were talking, neither Lloyd nor I noticed that an alarm went off almost immediately upon opening the bag. The HP who assigned us to clean the tools, ran in and asked us why we did not react to the alarm, but also said that it was probably just one particle stuck in the filter. He changed the filter in the alarm, and left, but the alarm soon went off again. The HP came back in and said it must be a "beam" that was causing the alarm to sound! He then UNPLUGGED the alarm. We had opened up a bag that had a lot of bad friable stuff in it.

The HP had us read our dosimeters but they had gone off-scale, meaning that there was more radiation than they could read. The HP took our film badges. [Lloyd later became a supervisory HP and looked up the records of this event and learned that the HP reported we had been exposed to ZERO radiation!].

The HP led us to the locker room where we threw our clothing into a special container from which the clothes would be buried if washing would not remove the contamination. The HP ran a geiger counter over us, found radiation on each of us, and had us take a shower. Lloyd remembers a radiation detector built around a doorway leading into the locker room that went off when someone opened that door to enter the room. In other words, there was a lot of radiation.

As it turned out, Lloyd had americium in his left lung. [Americium does not occur naturally, but only as a fission product. It is used in smoke detectors]. I had something radioactive that I had swollowed. It may have been Cobalt 60.

Lloyd got to go home that evening, but I had to stay there, cook my own dinner in the cafeteria, and sleep in a bed in the lady's rest room. There was a shift change at 4:00 p.m. and another at midnight. The HP who took over at midnight, and who continued monitoring the radiation and its movement, was Ron Harker. Ron remembers the event to this day and has spoken to my brother Bill about it.

The next day, I was put in a room made from pre-World War II steel. (Steel made after that date has a small amount of radioactivity due to the nuclear bombs that have been exploded since that time.) The "site" was used, years ago, to test Naval guns. Parts of old battle ships were the targets. The inside walls of the room are covered in copper because copper is easy to clean. In this room, I sat on a comfortable lounge chair and listened to music while a machine measured all the radiation in my body. There was a spike in one of the isotopes of one of the elements, but I now forget which. Ron Harker thought it might have been cobalt 60. The half-life of cobalt 60 is 8 days. The man in charge of the room at the time was Dale Olsen. I telephoned Dale, but he did not recall this particular event, but does remember dad and also Lloyd. Dale indicated that this sort of contamination happened from time to time.

From there I went to a series of higher and higher officials to explain what happened and to be assured, over and over, that I was in no danger, would have a normal life, would have normal children if I wanted, and certainly had no reason to file a law suit. Meanwhile, the "spot" was still moving and I was given a container that looks somewhat like a lunch box, but had another purpose. I was expected to take the box home and carry my feces back to the lab in it. They wanted it, really wanted it, they said, so it could be analyzed in some weird way. The first day they gave this to me I intentionally "forgot" it. The second day, I took it from their office, but intentionally left it in my locker at the site. The third day, all traces of the radiation were gone and the opportunity had "passed."

Our supervisor never again told us to look for additional work when we finished early.

Trip to North Carolina

On April 1 we flew to North Carolina for a family reunion. The entire clan was there and a good time was had by all. It was nice, as the "patriarch," to see my wonderful children and grandchildren together and to note their accomplishments. Our kids are all college educated, married, and have children. They are all caring and loving. Each one married a person of great character and warmth.

The top photo is everyone but Carol, Emma, and me.

There is a game called "Angry Birds." The kids love it so much that Carol sewed together some birds. Then we made a slingshot in Andy's huge backyard to launch the birds. Emma is about to launch a bird in the second photo. Some flew clear over the fence into the neighbor's yard. We met Emma at a park to celebrate her birthday and launched a "bird" onto the roof of a shelter. Andy climbed up to rescue the bird.

The kids had fun at the beach, bottom photo showing Evan and Seth.

As Carol reminded us toward the end, it is difficult for us to all be together and always a true joy. I love my family and being with them.