B Reactor Tour

 We have lived in the Tri Cities for 12 years and had never taken the B Reactor Tour.  We finally signed up and took the tour! 

The B Reactor made plutonium for the atomic bomb.  This whole reactor was constructed within 11 months and a huge work crew moved out to Richland to work 24/7 to produce plutonium. We met with a tour group in Richland and then took a 40 minute bus ride with the other tourists out to the site. The tour guide gave an interesting talk on the bus. 

Nathan went over to the Far Side! 

Danger signs! 

Command Room

The operator controlled things from here. 

Papa Norm and Gram joined us on the tour. 

Scram means the reactor shut down. That was not wanted!  We found out that the physicist who Elizabeth's school was named after was very helpful in helping the reactor work! For a while, they couldn't keep the reactor running and didn't know why. Leona Libby figured out there was a build up of gas and proposed a solution to the problem. It worked! Without her, the reactor may never have gotten up and running. 

Making silly sentences using magnets. 

Looking at the water pipes that brought in all the cool water from the Columbia River. 

The nuclear reactor that made the plutonium. 

Last Day of School

School is out for the year!  Nathan is now a junior and Elizabeth is now a freshman. It's been a long time since both kids were at the same school so they will have that to talk about. Elizabeth will get lucky and not have to ride the bus like Nathan did. She gets a chauffer every day! 

 

Summer Miles

 Elizabeth is going to run cross country for Hanford next fall. The girls have to run 140 miles to qualify for the Olympia meet. She's started out slowly as to not bother her shins. She's worked her way up to about 2.5 miles jogging.  I bike alongside her while she runs. Jeremy actually runs with her! Her favorite place to run is the park about a mile away. We drive there and she runs. It has a lot of shade so we run there after dinner. It's too hot for her during the day. 

Orchestra Concert Videos

Here are some of the videos I took of Elizabeth's concert. The blog will only post videos less than 49 seconds so I split them up into small sections. If you watch them in order, you should hear the song in order.  Most of these are the Harry Potter soundtrack. 

 

Final Orchestra Concert

Elizabeth had her final orchestra concert of middle school. She's in the middle with the long curly hair. 

Here she is coming up to get her 8th grade orchestra certificate. 

I will try to post some of the videos from the concert. I can only post 48 second or less videos so the songs will be all broken up. 

 

After School Kids

Sometimes when the kids get home from school, they crash on the floor like this and text their friends while chatting about their day. It's cute!