Nostalgia & History > Hanford Site Southern Connection

I tripped across a great article on the history of the railroad lines serving the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington.

https://www.historylink.org/File/10804
 

great information on historylink.org     they do excellent work....thanks for the link, visiting Hanford is on my bucket list...I want to see their preserved rail equipment.   Arlen

I took the tour back in 2019, and it was quite interesting.

We met in an industrial park, and a bus took us out to the reactor. I highly recommend it.

We had a few minutes at the end of the reactor tour to check out the rail equipment. Neat stuff.

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I received a book for Christmas that was an easy read and a great history of the Manhattan Project along with the history of the construction, expansion and decommissioning of the Hanford Nuclear Site.  The Apocolypse Factory by Steve Olson.  Not super detailed, but a great overview and history for general readership, including a lot of interesting and amusing anectodes.   I recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Factory-Plutonium-Making-Atomic-ebook/dp/B07ZTSVNL5/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3DTZKH57JTDT8&dchild=1&keywords=the+apocalypse+factory&qid=1614367258&sprefix=the+apocolypse+factor%2Caps%2C861&sr=8-1

- Norm

 

walstib Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I took the tour back in 2019, and it was quite
> interesting.
>
> We met in an industrial park, and a bus took us
> out to the reactor. I highly recommend it.
>
> We had a few minutes at the end of the reactor
> tour to check out the rail equipment. Neat stuff.
>
> Posted from iPhone

I read that the irradiated slugs of plutonium were moved from the reactors to the processing plants by train.  I assume that these cars were of special construction to shield the highly radioactive contents.  I assume that the locomotives moving these trains were manned and, likewise, had to be heavily modified with shielding.  Does anyone have photos or diagrams of these cars and know how they were loaded and unloaded?

When I wasn’t there in 2019, they had two locomotives, and two flat cars on display.

Each of the flats — one was a center-depressed flat— was carrying big metal box-like things. I believe they were some sort of vessels to carry material. From a distance, they resembled modern-day transformer loads.

The two locomotives didn’t appear to be modified for nuclear service, but I don’t know what specifically the two were used for.

I’ll try when I get home to dig up a couple of photos from my visit so you can see for yourself.

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Here are three shots I snapped outside the Hanford reactor on my Nov. 8, 2019 tour.

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I hauled radioactive waste into the Hanford site from various contaminated around the country as well as the Savannah site. Lots of funny stories hauling that stuff. The people at Hanford were a bunch of goof balls, but they got the job done.

Not sure anyone will read this 2-day old thread, but....

The flatcars were called cask cars, having lead-lined wells that were filled with water.  The small car is a 1st generation cask car with one well.  The larger car is a 2nd generation well car with 3 wells.  These cars moved the irradiated slugs from the reactors to the chemical processing plants, where plutonium was extracted.  The slugs were loaded into casks under water at the reactors, the casks were sealed and then placed into the wells on the cask cars.  At the chemical processing building, the cask cars were pushed into the unloading bay one at a time, the loco was uncoupled and the bay door was closed.  An crane operator would then remove the casks from the car.   The locomotives did not have any special modifications for nuclear service, but they were regularly checked for exterior contamination.

Thanks for posting the article.

Ted Ferkenhoff
Flagstaff, AZ

I’m still following this thread.

Thanks for the info on the cask cars.

Posted from iPhone