February’s calendar features the UMTRCA Disposal Site in Green River, UT. Union Carbide Corporation constructed a uranium mill in 1957 and operated the facilty until 1961. In three years, the mill processed 183,000 tons of ore and generated an estimated 114,000 cubic yards of radioactive tailings, covering an area of 9 acres to an average depth of 7 feet. The pyramid shape protects the engineered cell containing the contaminated materials.
UMTRCA Disposal Site, Green River, UT
The calendar also lists some intersting February Atomic Events as well as a complete listing of the 86 atomic shots during February from 1951 to 1968.
Download your Atomic Tourism calendar for January 2025! This month’s featured image is the monument at the Trinity Site on the White Sands MIssile Range, taken during an open house in a rare moment without people nearby. On the reverse, you’ll find a timeline of some significant Manhattan Project and Cold War atomic events in chronological order. Following that is a complete listing of all atomic shots during the month of January day by day. Get yours today!
Steve Olson presented a talk and question & answer session about his newest book, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age, at the Graham Pierce County Library on Saturday, February 11, 2023.
The Apocalypse Factory tells the story of plutonium from it’s discovery by Glenn Seaborg at the birth of nuclear fission, the technology of using and testing plutonium as a weapon, the development of Hanford and the reactor complexes, and the Cold War aftermath and reliance on the manufacturing of plutonium.
Much has been written about uranium, the Manhattan Project, and the development of the first atomic bomb used on the citizens of Hiroshima. Mr. Olson’s book looks at the second atomic bomb, using implosion and plutonium, which was used on the citizens of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. More importantly, plutonium pits became the standard for the U.S. stockpile of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, creating the Cold War and the arms race.
As Glenn Seaborg noted on his discovery of plutonium:
I was a 28-year old kid and didn’t stop to ruminate about it… I didn’t think, “My God, we’ve changed the history of the world.”
(as cited in Olson, 2020, The Apocalypse Factory, p. 31)
Steve Olson is the author of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens (winner of a Washington State Book Award), Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes (a finalist for the National Book Award), and other books. He has written for the Atlantic, Science, Smithsonian, and more. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
