Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1028393
42 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2018 A few years back while vacationing in the Tri-Cities area of Eastern Washington, my wife and I took a tour of the Hanford Site near Richland. The Hanford Site contains nine nuclear reactors used to produce fissionable materials in atomic weapons. These reactors were all shut down by the fall of 1989 and are now being cleaned up and entombed to pro- tect the environment. However, the very first one built—B Reactor—has been designated a national landmark and refurbished for tours [1] . The tour was a fascinating experience and I would highly recommend it if you are ever in the area. The fact that the whole project was put together during World War II, in such a short amount of time, is amazing. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved in differ- ent sites across the country and most did not know what was being produced—only that it was critical for the war effort. A whole city was created at the Hanford Site, with housing, shopping, hospitals, schools, and entertainment facilities for those who worked there [2] . Of course, the creation and use of atomic weapons is a very serious matter and I am not trying to comment on either side of the issue. Instead, I want to look at how and what these people did to accomplish something that had never been done before. For example, sim- ply providing dessert for the workers required machines to create over 7,000 pies for just for one meal served in the cafeterias that totaled eight football fields in size. The reason I bring this up is to highlight an engineering achievement. The original design for the reactor came from scientists at the Met- allurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) in Chicago, and they specified that the reactor needed to be built with 1,500 fuel tubes [3] . However, the engineers from DuPont who built the reactor Contract Positions: Go the Extra Mile Tim's Takeaways by Tim Haag, CONSULTANT Figure 1: Fuel tube loading face at B Reactor. Go ahead—count them.