Confronting the Past through the Present:

Production Era Professionals' Interpretations

of the Hanford Site 1943-1993

Brian Freer

B.A., Eastern Washington University, 1 989

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS OF FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS

in the Department

of

Sociology and Anthropology

O Brian Freer 1 99 5

Simon Fraser University

January 1995

All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy

or other means, without permission of the author.

APPROVAL

Name:

Degree:

Title of Thesis:

. Brian Freer

Master of Arts

Confronting the Past through the Present: Production Era Professionals' Interpretations of the Hanford Site 1943-1 993

Examining Committee:

Chair: Gary Teeple

Dr. Noel Dyck Senior Supervisor Professor of Social Anthropology

Dr. Ian Angus Asvdaae P-rofesscu of Sociology

Dr. Ted S. Palys External Examiner Associate Professor of criminology Simon Fraser University

Date Approved: , c, ~1 ; 3

I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.

Title of ThesislProjectlExtended Essay

C o n f r o n t i n g t h e Pas t t h r o u g h t h e P r e s e n t : P r o d u c t i o n Era

P r o f e s s i o n a l s ' I n t e r ~ r e t a t i o n s o f t h e Han fo rd S i t e 1943-1993

Author: - ,

(Signature)

B r i a n James F r e e r (Name)

January 12, 1995 (Date)

ABSTRACT

The end of the Cold War has initiated a re-examination of the

consequences of the nuclear age. This thesis examines the

historical role of the Hanford Site from the perspectives of nuclear

industry professionals who arrived for employment during the first

ten years of production operations (1943-1953) and stayed to live in

the locality. Specifically, practical strategies developed for work

in a context of institutionalized secrecy and the rhetorical

strategies employed t o negotiate contemporary criticism, are

explored by means of career-histories. In particular, the thesis

examines the confluence of past and present in terms of the

meanings attached t o the transitions from plutonium production

operations t o the 'environmental cleanup' of the facility.

The thesis is based upon six months of fieldwork in towns

adjacent t o the Hanford Site, and examines these processes through

tape-recorded interviews, participant-observation, and media

accounts. It is argued that forms of occupational identity forged

during World War II and the Cold War mediate contemporary

understandings of the historical role of the Hanford Site for local

nuclear industry professionals.

The ethnographic study of production oriented nuclear industry

work-worlds was a casualty of the requirements of secrecy

evidenced through World War II and the Cold War. Correspondingly,

the conduct of work at these facilities through World War ll and the

Cold War often required oral as opposed t o written forms of

communication. Ethnography is well suited t o examine such

i i i

historical contexts and assess interpretations of past policies,

procedures and operations through oral historical accounts. Further,

this research carries with it a pressing relevance as eligible

research participants reach old age and finally feel ready t o tell

their stories. However, the public re-evaluation of the consequences

of activities at Hanford, such as the Manhattan Project, have

contributed t o a sense of stigma, and, as a result, nuclear industry

professionals are increasingly reluctant t o share their lives with

'outsiders'.

DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to the memory of

Joe E. Bowen (7905-7992)

Grandfather, Fishing Partner and

Center for the University of Washington Huskies

Football Team (7 924- 7 928)

Our relationship allowed me to envision

this research project by teaching me

the significance of life time friendships,

and demonstrating the bonds

between generations that can be forged

through the experience of sharing another's life.

"Righteous Wind"

There's a righteous wind That will blow this city down And a man lost his hope There was no one left around

But that righteous wind Is gonna blow his cares away And take him home At the end of his day

Sometimes he was angry Sometimes he was wrong Sometimes he was weak Sometimes he was strong

Just like a righteous wind He just keeps movin' on You reach out your hand To touch it and it's gone

You know he'd like t o stand Beneath those bright stage lights But he just keeps goin' Howlin' through the night

Come on lay your body down Let the wind and the rain wash your fears t o the ground There's a storm on the ocean, a fire on the plain He ain't asking for one night, he wants you t o remain

There's a righteous wind Blowin' shivers down my spine I t comes down from the Area To the Benton City line

So let that cold wind blow Let it shake that dust around And take him home Let him lay his body down

Written by Nicholas Vroman Lyrics reprinted by permission

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The fieldwork for this thesis was made possible through the moral

and financial support of Barbara and John Freer. Thanks for

extending the hospitality, encouragement and friendship during my

stay downstairs in your home.

To the 'atomic pioneers,' this word of thanks can only begin to

convey my appreciation of the patience and trust offered by way of

sharing life and work experiences with me through this project. I

can only hope that this account will show some evidence of the

sincerity with which we spoke about the past and present.

To Warren Dykeman, thanks for accompaning me, and allowing

me t o accompany you, as each of us confronts the strangeness of a

past that continues t o be recreated in that place we call home.

v i i

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE #

Approval

Abstract

Dedication

Quotation (Lyrics t o "Righteous Wind")

Acknowledgments

List of Photographs

List of Maps

Introduction

Statement of the Problem Methodology

A Review of the Literature Pertinent t o the Topic

Contexts of Science: Research and Industry

Credibility: Recounting a Trajectory

The Figure of Herbert M. Parker

Conclusion

Notes

References

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

. . I I

iii

v

vi

vi i

ix

v i i i

LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS

PHOTOGRAPH

1

2

TITLE PAGE #

Vernita Bridge, Columbia River 9

Hanford Site, looking east from Highway 240

'official looking small yellow sign'

'Zak' and Brian Freer summer 1993

LIST OF MAPS

MAP

1

TITLE

Hanford Site

PAGE #

12

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The American sculptor James L. Acord has described the Hanford

Site as "the cradle of the nuclear age,"' the place where the world's

first full-scale plutonium production reactors went into operation.

This thesis is an ethnographic account of the development of

practical strategies utilized t o accomplish stated objectives among

nuclear science professionals during the production era at the

Hanford Site. In particular, the thesis examines how knowledge of

an emergent technology came to be understood and experienced

culturally through occupational identities.

The production of plutonium at the Hanford Site during World

War II and the Cold War occurred, for the most part, apart from

widespread public scrutiny and criticism in a context of

institutionalized secrecy which was legitimated by recourse t o the

'larger concerns' of what began as Communist Containment and later

became National Security in the U.S. The end of the Cold War has

brought about a re-examination of the environmental and societal

consequences of production operations, policies and procedures at

facilities such as the Hanford Site. Professionals who arrived at the

facility for work between 1943-1 953, and continued t o live in the

area during fieldwork for this research in 1993, began careers near

the end of World War II that continued through the heart of the Cold

War. These professionals are uniquely positioned t o convey their

perspectives on transitions from plutonium production t o the

'environmental cleanup' of production activities. By focusing upon

interpretations of the historical role of, and contemporary issues

regarding the Hanford Site, the thesis addresses stigmas associated

with career-life at a nuclear production facility. As a means t o

convey the experience of stigma, the thesis investigates the

trajectory of the erosion of credibility regarding the Hanford Site

and the nuclear industry in general, as it is accounted for by local

professionals. Through an examination of the ways in which career-

life is spoken about and understood, the thesis explores issues of

responsibility as they relate t o the construction of public problems

at the Hanford Site.

The research for this thesis was conducted during six months

of fieldwork in towns adjacent to the Hanford Site in 1993.

Research participants were identified through network sampling and

material was collected through tape-recorded interviews,

participant-observation and media accounts. Career-history style

interviews took place at the residence of research participants and I

conducted participant-observation when invited t o attend events and

activities with research participants. The local daily newspaper

was drawn upon t o discuss issues related t o the Hanford Site and as

a thematic point of departure for interview sessions.

The concerns addressed through this account contribute t o the

field of "ethnography of science and technology," (Knorr-Cetina,

1995: 141 ) and the larger literature on science and technology

studies (STS) by exploring the dynamic interchange between the

development of professional knowledge and the formation of

occupational identity at a production nuclear facility. The study is

approached through an examination of the processes by which

identity is constituted through social relationships with science,

technology and the environment. Sociological research has, with a

few notable exceptions (eg., Gusfield, 1 98 1 ; Cambrosio, Limoges,

Pronovost, 1 990; Dunk, 1 994; Zehr, 1 994), failed to develop and

employ in its investigations consistent theoretical and

methodological approaches designed t o examine the intersections of

social identity and public problem construction. This may be

explained, in part, by recourse t o the orientation of the sub-field of

environmental sociology, which has relied primarily upon public

opinion survey research (cf. Dunlap et al., 1994). The new social

movements (NSM) literature has demonstrated a thematic concern

for the environment and collective identity formation (Passerini,

1992), however it has typically addressed issues which are

contingent upon the anticipation of significant social change as they

relate t o group interests (cf. Touraine, 1981; Melucci, 1989). In the

ethnography of science and technology literature, Latour and Woolgar

(1979) initiated the development of a research agenda that is

concerned t o examine the nature of scientific work-worlds. In this

respect, the thesis makes its most direct contribution when

considered in relation t o Traweek's (1 988) study of physicists a t the

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Gusterson's (1 99 1 a,

1991 b, 1992) fieldwork with scientists at the Lawrence Livermore

Laboratories and Downey's research on cultural identity in contexts

of science and technology (1 986, 1988a, 1988b) and engineering

studies (Downey, Donovan, and Elliott, 1989; Downey and Lucena,

1995). The academic literature on nuclear facilities has a well-

developed and autonomous counterpart in an emerging body of

research represented by writers such as Rhodes (1 986), and Mojtabai

(1 986) and journalists (Loeb, 1986; Shulman, 1992; Weisman, 1994).

Works such as these often explore uncharted terrains that lead

academic research and provide background material that historians

(e.g., Johnson and Jackson, 1981 ; Gerber, 1992b) have become

dependent upon.

In the remainder of this section I would like to introduce the

reader t o 'the cradle of the nuclear age' by way of what Rosaldo has

termed the analytical narrative, an approach which he notes has the

capability t o "simultaneously encompass a number of distinct plot

lines and range yet more widely by describing the lay of the land,

taking overviews of the situation and providing key background

information" (1 980: 91). From this vantage point, initial encounters

of the locality during the 1 9 4 0 ~ 2 are conveyed from the point of

view of employees who were arriving t o work at Hanford, and key

transitions which impacted the region are identified. Introducing

the reader t o the topic in this manner allows the account t o "focus

at once on historians' modes of composition and their subjects' ways

of conceiving the past" (Rosaldo, 1980: 89). This retrospective

survey of impressions of the area, recounted almost f i f ty years

later, is followed by a contemporary entrance tale, based upon my

experiences during fieldwork in 1993 (Hunter, 1990). These 'entry

tales' form local rites of passage for speaking about Hanford's

history, representing bonds of friendship forged through the shared

experiences associated with entering a remote area t o work on a

project that was both secret and the first of its kind. Entry tales

also served as a point of departure which enabled longtime Hanford

Site professionals to connect experiences with the past of the

facility. These personal recollections of entrance also offered short

moments of comfort through conversational structure during initial

interviews with their apprentice ethnographer, often times 50 years

their junior. Further, as Burgos argues, "before one can speak of a

'story', there must be emplotments: an original situation; something

happens that upsets the prevailing order, and after different events

have taken place, order, old or new, rules once again" (1989: 35).

Whether one is a longtime resident of a community adjacent to

the Hanford Site or 'entering' the site for the first time through this

account, the entrance enables us t o notice moments of difference

and sameness reminding us of closely held connections between

place and cultur,al identity.

Coming t o Hanford in the 1940s: Entrance Tales and First Impressions

... I got off the train in Kennewick and I asked somebody, 'how do I get to Hanford?' ... There was a hotel right near the railroad tracks, and somebody said, 'you can get the bus here.' And I think I made contact with somebody that was connected with the project, I'm not sure. But they said, 'don't worry about your luggage we'll take care of it.' It was sort of a strange place (laughter). ... Anybody could come into the town of Richland, but you couldn't live there unless you were associated with the project, but there was no barricade across the street coming into town. When you retired you left ('Joe,' Interview, 21 July 1 993).3

When Robert Moore arrived t o take up work in 1947 with a Ph.D.

in applied chemistry from the University of Texas, the Manhattan

Project was completed, WW II was over and the tensions of the Cold

War were yet t o become manifest at the Hanford Site. Reflecting

upon the area at that time he notes:

The Richland I arrived at in the summer of 1947 was a far cry from today's. Except for a handful of 'tract' houses and a few buildings which were left from the tiny farming village of Richland, the town had been created almost overnight by General Groves and his Army Engineers. Not surprisingly it resembled the housing one would find at a large military installation ... There were virtually no trees, little grass, and lots of blowing dirt .... Wives brought t o Richland by their husbands were appalled at what they had gotten into (Moore, 1992: 61 -62).

In July of 1943, 'Charles and Betty Franke' made the journey

westward on the Northcoast Limited, a train that travelled from

Chicago, Illinois through Pasco, Washington? 'Charles' was living in

the midwest and began working for a DuPont high explosives plant

after finishing college that year. When he was notified that he was

being transferred t o Hanford, his employer asked if this posed any

problems. 'Charles' replied "I'm planning t o be married in the fall but

I think I can persuade my bride t o move up the date." Additionally he

asked the DuPont Company if his wife could come out with him. To

which they responded "what can she do?" 'Charles' recounts the

remainder of the story as follows:

... he gets on the phone, and ten minutes later she has a job and is all set t o come out with me. So I had a job for her before she knew she was even looking for a job. So two weeks later we got married on a Saturday and left for the far west on Sunday night. On board the train ... were fifteen or so co-workers from the University of Chicago. Here we are on our honeymoon, sharing it with a bunch of co-workers. It was kind of a robust time ('Charles Franke,' Interview, 1 April 1993).

The Presentation of Place as a Geographical Location

The geographical region encompassing the Hanford Site and the

adjacent towns of Kennewick, Pasco and Richland (unofficially, the

Tri-Cities) is known as the Columbia Basin, a namesake it shares

with the U.S. federal irrigation project responsible for the

development of the land as an agricultural area irrigated by the

Columbia, Snake and Yakima rivers. The Columbia Basin Irrigation

Project began t o harness water for agriculture from the Columbia

River in 1952, (Van Arsdol, 1990: 60) less than ten years after the

massive construction projects of the Manhattan Project at the

Hanford Site began in early 1943. Taken together, these U.S. federal

projects demonstrate the imposition of federal government policies

upon a remote western region, carried out in the absence of

significant organized resistance. These two federal projects remain

today as ubiquitous signs of unprecedented transformations.

Changes which simultaneously displaced indigenous Native American

bands, altered the geographical and environmental conditions of the

region and set in motion a series of relatively unrestrained5 and

institutionally legitimated processes underneath the umbrella of

'Communist Containment' and 'National Security' which continue t o

bear consequences in ways we have yet begun to discover.

Traveling to Hanford

If one were t o travel the 352 miles from Vancouver, B.C. t o the

Hanford Site by car in 1994, crossing the Cascade Mountains via

Interstate 90, the journey would take approximately 7 hours. Today,

more than f i f ty years after their initial arrival by train, when the

'Frankest return t o the Tri-Cities from a holiday west of the Cascade

Mountains they may decide t o travel by car and take an easterly

route crossing the Columbia River a t Vantage, Washington then

exiting south following State Highway 243 downstream with the

river. The geology of the area presents itself through outcroppings

of coarse reddish black basalt rock on the banks of the river and the

foothills that rise up from them. The journey into the region takes

one past two dams, first the Wanapum and then Priest Rapids, each

of which harnesses the Columbia for hydro-electric power. They

signal that you are nearing the northern boundary of the 560 square

mile Hanford Site, and offer visual reminders of the need for cold

water for cooling reactors, a guiding factor in the selection of the

area as the plutonium production facility for the Manhattan Project.

The dams remain today as further evidence of construction boom

cycles this regional environment began t o experience with the

construction of the Hanford project and other hydro-electric

projects in 1950s and 1960s (Van Arsdol, 1990: 47; Gerber, 1992a:

56, 1993a: 17).

Crossing the last remaining freeflowing stretch of the entire

Columbia River, known as the Hanford Reach, at the Vernita Bridge

and exiting south onto State Highway 240, you may not be aware of

it yet but you are in the Hanford Site. On a clear day in the distance

t o the east, one may see the world's first full-scale plutonium

production reactors, now decommissioned and silhouetted against

the backdrop of the desert floor. In Nuclear Culture Paul Loeb

conveys an outsider's first impressions of this scene from the air as

a, "series of silver lunar cities surrounded by brown channeled

desert" (1 986: 2 1 ).

4--i --z*

Photograp., 1: Vernita Bridge, Columbia River

Photograph 2: Hanford Site looking east from Highway 240

If you were to continue on your journey, you might begin to notice

barbed wire fences on both sides of State Highway 240. Although

difficult to make out a t 55 mph, official looking small yellow signs

with black lettering are affixed to the fence at approximately 1000'

~ntervals. These signs indicate that the property is that of the U.S.

nepartment of Energy (DOE) and trespassing is forbidden.

.. .

* - . -. _.__._.-------

I-. -- i w - +.-

> 1

3 - =* =? b

Photograph 3: 'official looking small yellow sign'

To the southwest of State Highway 240 is the Arid Lands

Ecology Reserve (ALE), an expanse of sagebrush covered terrain that

was not utilized in nuclear production activities or waste storage

and is dedicated for environmental study and monitoring. The road

you are on separates the ALE from the rest of the site. After driving

several more miles, State Highway 240 begins t o merge with the

town of Richland on the horizon. The proximity of the Hanford Site

t o the town and the flow of vehicles t o and from the facility

suggests the close and ultimately dependent relationships adjacent

communities have with the Hanford Site. In the 1990s these

communities are experiencing a new boom cycle that differs from

the Manhattan Project at Hanford, and the Columbia Basin Irrigation

Project in the region, in that efforts are directed less in terms of

harnessing the power of rivers or atoms than in assessing and

managing both the real and perceived risks associated with the

environmental consequences of World War II and the Cold War.

Assuming that the reader is not presently employed at the

facility or 'badged' for entrance t o the site, entering the facility is

contingent upon securing a visitor's pass or arranging for a tour of

the facilities with the DOE or a company under contract t o do work

at the facility. If the reader knows 'the area' from work or life

experiences, use your 'ethnographic imagination' and compare

personal versions of entry and re-entry t o this locality. If the

reader knows 'Hanford' from media and historical accounts consider

the ways it has been presented in the past and is mapped out

contemporarily in different social and historical contexts.

id, WA

Putting Hanford on the Map

The spatial identification of a town on a political map

indicates not only that the place 'officially' exists, but serves to

conceptually separate claimed from unclaimed spaces. Additionally,

political maps are one of a variety of means by which we organize

perceptions that orient our sense of where we are in relation t o

other places and their boundaries.

If one were to identify the location of the U.S. DOE'S Hanford

Site on a map of the State of Washington it appears as any other

government facility or military installation might, with the

perimeter boldly outlined and name displayed in the center. Now

imagine yourself back in 1944 with a map of the State of

Washington in front of you. The Manhattan Project was top-secret,

thus possession of a map with any mention of it would have been

grounds for treason unless one had a security clearance that

provided access t o this information on a 'need to know basis.'

During the Manhattan Project few people had a 'map' of

Hanford, or Site W, its code name then6 (Gerber, 1993a: 51). This

lack of a map also made it difficult t o place things in perspective.

Initially, employees came t o the construction project t o work

towards an end not made known on an expanse of annexed land which

they had no means t o gauge in relation t o other spaces or endeavors

in human history. Events which initially unfolded in a web of

institutionalized cultural secrecy now percolate and emerge as

versions of this episode of history. As Robert Moore put it, "the

story has often been recounted how the now-vanished little town of

Hanford gave its name t o the ... project" (1992: 57).

Versions of the story began to be put into place when the first

map for public release by the U.S. Government depicting the site's

existence was issued after the bombing of Hiroshima7 in August of

1 945 (Gerber, 1 992b: 1 4). Accounts of this time period often focus

upon events which led directly t o the completion of the goal of

producing an atomic weapon (eg., Rhodes, 1986: 499). Often left

silenced in the margins were the words of people like Annette

Heriford. Annette was a college student in Seattle before the

Manhattan Project came to her hometown of Hanford,* Washington.

In talking about her experience of these developments, she

foreshadows that series of events in a statement which places the

feelings of a young college girl from a small town in a strange

parallel with those associated with the Manhattan Project. This

connection may contribute t o a reconstituted sense of standard maps

of this historical terrain:

... when I was going t o college at the University of Washington, I would say I was from Hanford and they would say "Where's that? I t isn't even on the map, is it?" I got so tired of hearing it that I said "Don't you worry, one day Hanford will be so famous that the whole world will know about Hanford" (Sanger, 1989: 9).

A Standard Vignette o f Nuclear History

Nuclear Decisions: The Manhattan Project and Han ford

On a scale and magnitude unprecedented in scientific

application and bearing consequences both intended and not

anticipated, the Manhattan Project forever transformed the

geographical, environmental, and social conditions in southeast

Washington State beginning in late 1942 (Loeb, 1986: 22; Gerber,

1992a: 11-1 2, 1992b: 6; Moore, 1992: 57). At this time the United

States' secret research division known as the Manhattan Engineering

District (MED) had decided to locate a second production facility for

the creation of materials for nuclear weapons (Gerber, 1992a: 25).

On December 1 7, 1942 (Gerber, 1 992b: 6) when the first

scouting trip was made into the region that was t o become the

Hanford Site (Sanger, 1989: 6), land for the other production facility

at Oak Ridge, Tennessee had already been annexed by the Manhattan

Project? Initially the plan was to employ the three proposed modes

of producing atomic weapons materials10 at the Oak Ridge facility

(Johnson and Jackson, 1981 : 4). At the Oak Ridge facility, gaseous

barrier diffusion had been identified as the "best approach because

it was most like existing technology" (Rhodes, 1986: 489). In order

to safeguard against the possibility of a destructive accident

associated with the as yet untested plutonium production process

interfering with the better understood gaseous diffusion method,

another facility needed to be situated away from Oak Ridge for

plutonium production (Johnson and Jackson, 1981 : 6; Loeb, 1986: 22;

Rhodes, 1986: 496). Commenting on this history, Rhodes notes that

"twelve days after Enrico Fermi proved the chain reaction in Chicago

on December 2, 1942" General Groves cited safety reasons as the

prime consideration in his decision that the plutonium production

reactors were to be situated away from Oak Ridge (1986: 496).11

The ultimate goal of each of these facilities was shipment of bomb-

ready material t o the third component of this triangle, Los Alamos,

New Mexico (Rhodes, 1986: 604) where the actual assembly of the

atomic bomb was t o take place.

Points of Departure: Or, Where does this 'History' Begin?

When we allow our field of analysis t o include written

historical accounts, oral historical accounts generated by the

subjects of history, and contemporary public discourse we may begin

t o move beyond standard historical accounts. One approach t o this

task might begin by anchoring or positioning facets of understanding

a locality as expressed in local terms. From this vantage point, this

thesis is concerned t o examine how nuclear industry professionals

who arrived at the Hanford Site for employment between 1943-1 953

made and continue to make sense of the historical role of this

facility. Here we are not as concerned with recounting the events

that led up to the annexation of the Hanford Site, or tracing the

'accepted history' as though it were on a chronological dateline

(White, 1975). This perspective draws on the insights of thinkers

like Mink who argue "It is clear that we cannot refer t o events as

such, but only to events under a description" (1 978: 142).

The end of the Cold War has initiated a process of sifting

through the past (Bond and Gilliam, 1994: 2) and imagining scenarios

associated with the secrecy, often masked by routines, which

shrouded the Hanford Site. Thus, this account offers commentary on

contemporary attempts t o unearth and verify administrative

decisions, and operations procedures in Hanford's past from the

perspectives of nuclear industry professionals. Thematically, and at

the core of this problem, is a concern with manifestations of larger

ideological structures through forms of occupational identity, and

the subsequent translation of these identities in local

organizational culture at the Hanford Site. The ideologies,

'Communist Containment' and 'National Security' have engendered

styles and modes of communicating, occupationally and publicly,

which must be accounted for if we are t o begin t o understand

Hanford's past in the ethnographic present.

CHAPTER TWO

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

During World War I1 and the Cold War, the operations of U.S. DOE

nuclear weapons production facilities took place in institutional

contexts structured by requirements of information classification

and a general condition of secrecy. The central problem of this

thesis examines the practical development of professional working

knowledge at a US. DOE facility, the Hanford Site. In particular, the

thesis focuses upon occupational strategies developed by

professionals t o accomplish routine operations while negotiating

regulations requirements with other working parties. These

'working strategies' are examined as they correspond with and react

t o the growth of government regulation of the emergent field of

production nuclear science. During the production era at the Hanford

Site these processes found expression through professional

occupational identities. Closely connected t o the central problem is

an examination of the manner in which identities form an

interpretive basis for understanding the historical role of, and

contemporary issues related t o the facility. Specifically, the thesis

explicates rhetorical strategies as they are employed t o speak about

experiences and interpretations of Hanford's past and present in a

contemporary context characterized by a critical re-examination of

the production era.

The primary research question asks how professional

occupational identity mitigates understandings of the historical role

of and contemporary public issues regarding the Hanford Site. A

second research question is concerned t o examine how practical

working strategies were developed and negotiated by professionals

t o accomplish production requirements at a nuclear facility.

Relatedly, the thesis takes up an examination of the rhetorical

strategies employed by professionals t o speak about the past and

present regarding Hanford. In summary, the thesis asks how social

identity is experienced occupationally in terms of public issues. It

also examines interpretations of work-world experiences and the

rhetorical expression of the experiences as they engage public

discourse on nuclear issues.

METHODOLOGY

This account is based upon fieldwork conducted in Kennewick,

Richland and Pasco, Washington, U.S.A., also known as the Tri-Cities.

These cities are adjacent t o the Hanford Nuclear Site and the

majority of people employed at the nuclear facility commute from

one of these three places. Fieldwork methods, discussed below,

comprised the empirical basis with which the overall program of

ethnographic research was executed. This general program was

conducted reflexively, understood in this context t o mean the

process of continually assessing dimensions and interconnections of

social phenomena by situating both the researcher and the

researched in the field of observation and analysis (Bourdieu, 1977;

Rosaldo, 1989). The notion of reflexivity developed through the

present account may be distinguished from solopsistic versions

evidenced in contemporary post-modern approaches t o the

ethnographic endeavor (cf. Dorst, 1 989; Rose, 1 989; Goodall, 1 992)

and in critiques of ethnography (Clifford, 1986). The methodological

approach through which fieldwork was conducted eschews the

excessive partiality and self-absorption which undermine the

development of reflexive sociological analysis, a position advanced

through recent critiques (Marcus, 1989: 16; Barnard, 1990: 58;

Wacquant, 1992: 41). To this end, the fieldwork upon which this

account is based sought t o merge reflexivity with realism, a process

through which the research project is allowed t o emerge by

grounding, continually assessing, and cumulatively building upon

interviews and participant-observation (McCracken, 1 988: 42).

In order t o 'put reflexivity into practice', fieldwork methods

were conducted by means of processual analysis. Discussing this

approach Rosaldo notes that, "this view stresses the case history

method; it shows how ideas, events, and institutions interact and

change through time" (1 989: 92). Thus, during fieldwork processual

analysis was approached through oral history. Doing oral history

ethnographically involves a method in which "the process of

reconstructing the past ... required a double vision that focuses at

once on historians' modes of composition and their subjects' ways of

conceiving the past" (Rosaldo, 1980: 89). This perspective is

especially relevant t o research on interpretations of the historical

role of the Hanford Site because much has been written about the

facility (Loeb, 1986; Sanger, 1989; Van Arsdol, 1990; Gerber, 1992a,

1992b; Moore, 1992; D'Antonio, 1993; Dunlap et al., 1993) and by

virtue of the fact that research participants are often written about

in the third person as 'their subjects'. By working with Rosaldo's

notion of the 'double vision' of oral history, the account provides a

forum for research participants t o respond t o contemporary public

discourse, historical accounts of the area, and in the process

articulate their perspectives on the confluence of past and present

in the locality. Additionally, research participants have had ample

time t o reflect upon the past; in 1993 the average length of

residence in the locality was 46 years (see Appendix One). As an

illustration of the manner by which the ethnographic practice of oral

historical research integrated historical composition with

conceptions of the past, I held interview sessions which focused

upon and discussed Paul Loeb's Nuclear Culture (1 986), a text viewed

as a biased anti-nuclear account12 of Hanford by research

participants, and often times I would piece together clippings from

the local newspaper for discussion with research participants.

From Fieldwork to the Conveyance of a Way of Life

From March t o September of 1993 1 was an apprentice

fieldworker trying t o locate the beginnings of what textbooks called

'snowball', 'network' or 'chain referral sampling' in towns adjacent

t o the Hanford Site. I was looking for folks with considerable life-

experience in the locality in order t o document life-histories. I

later realized that in the course of fieldwork my approach more

closely resembled the documentation of professional career-

histories.

In the eight years which transpired between my graduation

from Kennewick High School in 1985 and the fieldwork for this

project which took place during 1993, the global transformations

associated with the end of the Cold War had encoded a new language

of transition which came to embroider Hanford Site discourse. As

my research interests in the past and present of the facility

developed, I was able t o supplement this burgeoning intellectual

passion with recollections of my life in the area; I consider the area

my hometown and 'grew-up' there from 1973-1 985. My partial

insider status is evidenced through the fact that I was knowable to

research participants based upon my father's continued employment

at Hanford. I was born in 1967, about the time most research

participants were in the prime of their careers.

Research participants spoke fluent English and, as a

requirement of participation in the project, edited each of their own

tape-recorded interview transcripts after I transcribed them and

were offered a copy of these for their files. This activity offers a

practical example of my approach t o processual analysis. In this

regard, I worked with research participants so that my transcription

and their subsequent editing of each interview would take place

prior t o the next scheduled session. This practice made substantial

demands upon those involved in the research process, and allowed

the interviewing process t o develop cumulatively with respect t o

past sessions, giving us the chance t o clarify, expand upon and

explicate points in previous conversations and connect them t o new

thoughts as they emerged in other sessions. This interviewing style

was employed as a means t o explore empirically the theoretical

basis of the study: occupational forms of social identity. To clarify,

the cumulative interviewing process allowed both research

participant and interviewer t o return t o the 'kitchen table with the

tape-recorder' after previous conversations without recourse to,

"formal questioning .... since it involves introducing a particular

context and most often, not a natural one" (Wadel, 1973: 1 14). The

essence of this approach arises from the assumption that one cannot

structure another's representation of social identity in the context

of a particular career-history. This is not t o imply that self-

reportage is void of a critical component. To the contrary, given the

opportunity in a non-threatening forum, most folks are quite capable

of being self-critical about their own activities.

From this approach, the research process developed a structure

in which research participants were able t o offer the research

project new directions through their familiarization with books,

documentaries and their own ideas on the historical role of the

Hanford Site. This process of building upon past interview sessions

through edited transcripts guided conversations much like the

navigational strategy known as dead reckoning, whereby the position

of a vessel is calculated by means of its last logged position.13 In

this sense, the account begins and ends with oral histories; for in

many ways each individual career and occupational group at the

Hanford Site had t o develop its own means of navigating

requirements and regulations while striving t o accomplish stated

objectives. The demands for security during World War II and the

Cold War were experienced occupationally in the context of

institutionalized forms of information classification and a general

code of secrecy. Written documents, in the cases where they do

exist and are made available, comprise fragments of a work-world

experience which a huge amount of administrative effort was

concerned t o ensure occurred outside of the public consciousness.

Locating Research Participants

During a fieldwork reconnaissance in the summer of 1992

(fieldwork officially began in March, 1993) 1 contacted an individual

involved in a community history project14 and we discussed my

proposed research project. I was then invited by this individual t o

attend the weekly l&cheoh of a local civic group, at the conclusion

of which I was introduced to 'Zak', the man who would become my

.primary research participant. That afternoon 'Zak' and I stayed and

talked with one another long after the meeting was adjourned on

subjects ranging fr the declassification of government documents -r

t o his views on the contemporary relevance of sociological research.

Photograph 4: 'Zak' and Brian freer, summer 1993

Although we did not realize it at that point, it was a significant

meeting, the beginning of a relationship that left an indelible mark

on the project by providing me with access to professionals in the

nuclear field. Our relationship is based upon mutual interest in the

subject matter and the respect which emerged from our many

encounters together.

When I returned t o conduct fieldwork that following spring,

'Zak' and I began the actual process of what is known in the

sociological literature as network sampling.15 This method was

utilized as a way of locating potential research participants because

professionals who arrived at the facility between 1943-1 953, still

live in towns adjacent t o the Hanford Site, and are linked together

informally with one another, directly or indirectly, by virtue of their

shared work-life at the nuclear facility and their continued

residence in the locality. An additional argument for the use of this

methodological style was evidenced during interviews in which it

was noted that the 'early days' at the facility were filled with a

team spirit. My task was t o explore the ways in which this 'team

spirit' was connected t o the experience of career-life in an

occupational community. Network sampling seemed best suited t o

allow this spirit t o be evoked through the research project by

enabling research participants t o reconstruct a contemporary 'team'

as a way of exploring the Hanford Site.

At the outset of fieldwork, the actual process of selecting

potential research participants demanded that I communicate what

the project was about t o 'Zak' and that he interpret this and in turn

make initial contacts of those individuals we felt might contribute

t o the project. When contacting potential research participants 'Zak'

would often describe the research project as "an attempt t o

understand the history of the area from the point of view of people's

feelings." 'Zak' described me as a graduate student in sociology from

Simon Fraser University that grew up in the area and graduated from

a local high-school. If the individual was agreeable 'Zak' informed

me and I then contacted the person and we were free to negotiate

our own relationship. In several cases, after an initial introduction

by 'Zak' a research participant would, in turn, provide an introduction

t o another potential research participant as a continuance of the

network sampling procedure. The criteria by which we identified

potential research participants included their reputation as

knowledgeable professionals in the nuclear field, and their perceived

ability t o communicate effectively concerning their career and life

in the area. Additionally, we sought t o locate research participants

from the three main types of work done at the facility during the

Manhattan Project and the Cold War: operations, radiation protection

and administration. Research participants were of advanced age, and

needed t o be in good health because of the demands that the

reflexive approach of the interviewing process entailed in our

mutual endeavor t o interpret the history of the facility. My approach

t o the reflexive interviewing process was based primarily upon an

interactive process which based subsequent interviews on material

collected in previous sessions, this required research participants

t o edit transcripts of interviews in a timely manner in order t o

facilitate the cumulative development of the study.

Most research participants were interviewed alone, and all

interview sessions took place at the residence of the research

participant. However, on two occasions I found myself conducting

what is known as a focus group (Neuman,l991: 251; McCracken,

1988: 29). In both of these cases I was contacted prior t o the

interview and asked if others might participate. On both occasions

these research participants invited two friends t o participate

simultaneously in the interview process.16 By the conclusion of

fieldwork, a total of ten people had participated in the research

process. All research participants were Caucasian, owned and

resided in comfortable homes, were college educated and had been or

continue to be employed at the Hanford Site in a professional

capacity.

The Cohorts of 7943-7953 as a Convoy

All research participants commenced employment at the

Hanford Site between 1943-1953. Thus they comprise a cohort when

defined in terms of their entrance into the area. Traditionally,

demographers and life-course researchers have applied cohort-

analysis as a means for the "interpretation of life histories in order

t o measure variations in life course development according t o

historical period and t o assess the universality of current beliefs

about the aged" (Starr, 1982/83: 257). However, apart from defining

the cultural grouping under study and forming a conceptual reference

point, the notion of a 'cohort' does not further our grasp of the field

in terms of qualitative analysis; as a methodological tool it is

better suited for secondary and statistical analysis. This being

said, I would like t o introduce the concept of a convoy as an

ethnographic strategy for working with a cohort (Kahn and

Antonucci, 1 980; Starr, 1 982/83; Francis, 1 990). Kahn and

Antonucci define the convoy as "the structure within which social

support is given and received" (1 980: 255). In commenting upon her

research of a convoy of women who managed urban housing projects

in a major eastern city, Francis (1990: 407) notes that:

Their forty-year intimate relationship offered a unique opportunity for qualitative, longitudinal inquiry into the meaning, process and role of work-based friendship. (Most studies of co- worker networks have focused only on the scope of the network, the structural characteristics of members or the time spent in interaction).

We may note that Francis' description of the convoy in her research

provides a conceptual bridge for qualitative analysis of this unique

type of social grouping. By examining forms of meaning and

attachment within a convoy, as evidenced in Francis' orientation, an

alternative avenue for research on the life course begins t o emerge.

Focusing upon the qualitative aspects of a convoy by examining

interpretations of cultural contexts allows social analysis t o be

distanced from the positivistic trap of operationalizing the concept

of 'convoy' in order t o measure variations between cases (cf. Kahn

and Antonucci, 1 980: 279).

I t may also be useful to situate the present usage of convoy

with respect t o Sansom's (1 980) distinction between

contemporaries and consociates. Sansom's (1 980) discussion

contrasts Schutz's (cf. Perdue, 1986: 263) notion of contemporaries

(i.e., those of the same time) from consociates (i.e., those who have

shared personal experiences through time). With this distinction in

mind, we are in a better position t o appreciate the significance this

holds for ethnographic analysis: in addition t o being defined

temporally, consociates share time together through close social

relationships. As Sansom notes, "consociate identity is accorded or

is claimed with reference t o a person's history of co-participation

with others in happenings" (1 980: 1 39).

Thinking of the cohorts of 1943-1 953 as a convoy of

consociates establishes the metaphor of a group of people on a

collective journey together and compliments the procedure of

network sampling by forming a conceptual link for qualitative

analysis. Stated differently, late life work-friends were located

through a process of referral which implies a form of cultural

association. From this vantage point, the notion of a convoy gets

beyond the limited scope of the category 'cohorts of 1943-1 953' by

providing a foundation for qualitative discovery. In this sense, the

account does not purport to examine the 1943-1953 convoy's

perspectives on others who "missed out" (Sansom, 1 980: 1 43) on the

shared experience of Hanford's history through working and living

together. The account is primarily concerned with a particular place

as it is understood through a convoy of professionals, consociated

through a set of social relationships forged through continuous co-

presence in an occupational community.

A variety of methods exist t o track cohorts (e.g., 'the entrance

cohorts of 1943-1 953') for purposes of comparision (True, 1989;

Neuman, 1991 ). However, one must bear in mind that advantages

gained by increasing the sheer number of cases with respect t o

quantitative measurement of cohorts represents a social scientific

approach that, while important, is incapable of providing

methodological foundations for the ethnographic study of a convoy's

social, association through time. Further, although cohort research

allows for comparison of cases, it also imposes researcher's

definitions upon respondents situations with attendant limitations

in the realm of response spectrum.

The reasoning behind this critique stems from the recognition

that social analysis of a convoy of consociates is contingent upon

self-reported mutual acknowledgement of "co-participation with

others in happenings" (Sansom, 1 980: 1 39). Ethnography enables

those involved in the enterprise of social analysis t o provide a

detailed account of particular historical moments, as opposed t o the

grand sweep offered by chronological histories of times and places.

Social scientific attempts t o encapsulate the generalized experience

of Hanford's history would be forced t o consider problems of scale

inherent in the processes of matching methods with theoretical

purpose and substantive content.

Career H is to~ ies

Conceptualizing ethnographic research with an occupational

convoy in terms of career-histories is a practical research strategy

that serves several requirements of the study. First, the

examination of career histories developed reflexively through the

course of fieldwork as a methodological alternative t o individual

life-history research. Secondly, by drawing upon reflections of

professional careers the account has the potential t o evoke a sense

of the dimensions and interconnections of cultural experiences

associated with living adjacent t o and working at a nuclear facility.

Professional careers are explored through the thesis as

intersections between larger 'wholes' and lived cultural experience

(Thornton, 1988; Marcus, 1989).

As Plummer notes, "the past decade has witnessed a minor

resurgence of interest in life histories" (1990: 125).

Experimentation with this style of research has also cut across

disciplinary boundaries (Bertaux and Kohll, 1984). As the social

sciences rediscover life histories after a lengthy hiatus, those

writing on the trajectory of this approach t o social analysis (Willis,

1981 ; Ferrarotti, 1983; Marcus, 1986,1989; Goldman and Whalen,

1990) have argued persuasively, substantiatively and through

exposition, for ethnography t o explore mutually constitued fields of

lives and larger social contexts. These concerns have also been

voiced in the life course literature, where connections have been

identified between life course research and larger historical

contexts. The point is made here by Gergen:

the view is becoming increasingly widespread within the lifespan domain that developmental trajectories are historically situated: alterations in life patterns are imbedded within sociohistorical circumstances (1 980: 3 1 ).

From this point of departure, the use of career-histories in

this account seeks t o draw upon the depth of personal experiences

while grounding them within larger contexts. This approach may be

distinguished from generic research on life histories on several

counts. To begin, the life-history approach exhibits a tendency

towards methodological individualism, a perspective on method

which views the individual as the centre of the research enterprise.

In Writing Women's Worlds anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod provides

another interpretation of the limitations of the life-history

approach, "what finally made me reluctant t o adopt the form was the

fact that the life story may contribute t o a sense of the person at

its centre as an isolated individual" (1 993: 31 ). Indeed, by focusing

narrowly upon an individual's life story we are a t a disadvantage, at

the outset, in our attempt t o bridge the experiences associated with

employment and life at Hanford (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984).

The analysis of career-histories establishes an important link

with the primary problem of the thesis; how is the Hanford Site's

past understood and interpreted? Approaching this problem

ethnographically through oral historical analysis, the focus upon

careers at the nuclear facility allows transitions t o be made

between conceptions of the larger 'wholes' associated with

historical processes and the specific moments and activities within

which structure is experienced culturally (Corradi, 1 99 1 : 1 1 3). This

approach may be distinguished from individual life-histories in that

the latter are primarily interested in conveying the experience and

cultural significance of a life, or a composite life, in narrative form.

The impetus for writing a life-history, most often, may be traced

back t o a general desire to convey and unfold the richness of daily

life. Thus it may be said that life-histories begin with individuals

and follow the narrator through the pathway of cultural experience.

Typically, this is accomplished through the use of a personal

narrative which is utilized t o connect otherwise unrelated parts

into a comprehensible story. Categorically speaking, this approach

is not inherently focused upon the examination of substantive public

problems. Additionally, individual life-histories necessarily

contend with a range of experiences that may include topics such as

childhood, religion, health, family, and contemporary daily life. By

contrast, career-histories, (e.g., Wadel, 1973) allow the account t o

focus upon intersections between the perceptions of substantive

problem construction in the public sphere and the contexts of

career-life within which discourse is interpreted. The use of

career- histories in the present thesis developed in the course of

fieldwork a means t o address substantive concerns with the social

construction of a public problem.

Additionally, because the Hanford Site ushered in dramatic

transformations, locally and globally, the separation of life from

professional employment at the facility would be misleading. This

point is illustrated by American anthropologist Andrew Lass, who

comments on his return t o Czechoslovakia in the wake of the 'events

of 1989' by noting, "my friends, fully aware of themselves as

historical beings, presented their 'life-histories' in terms of already

established, historically marked events" (Lass, 1 994: 9 5). Further,

the examination of career-histories in this thesis begins with the

arrival or entrance into the region for employment. This point of

departure provides structure t o career-history narratives by

recourse t o an emplotment. In this sense, the career-history allows

research participants t o structure their experiences through

conventional forms of expression woven through both accepted

versions of the Hanford story and their particular cultural

experiences.

In terv ie wing and Part ic ipant-Observat ion

The research was primarily carried out through tape-recorded

interviews, structured by what McCracken (1 988: 29) calls the

"four-step pattern." This process forms the core of The Long

In terv iew (1 988) and is a practical research strategy for

interviewing which begins by reviewing analytical categories and

the interview design. This step entails a thorough review of the

literature, discussed in the following section, and the development

of preliminary interview themes. In the second step of this process

one reviews cultural categories, and in so doing reflects upon

experiences related t o the topic and incorporates these insights into

the on-going development of the interview themes. This second step

played an important role in the development of this account, as I

was raised in the locality and thus have a "deep and long-lived

familiarity with the culture under study" (McCracken, 1988: 32).

However, I was able t o gain a richer sense of our cultural

commonalities by working through the span between our ages and

generations. I should also note that the negotiation of access was

also supplemented by the fact that I have never been employed at the

Hanford Site and had not lived in the area since graduating from a

local high-school in 1985.

The third and fourth steps of this process involved,

respectively, the interview process and the cumulative analysis of

interviews. lnterview sessions were held at the residence of

research participants, a transcript of the taped-recorded interview

transcript was then given t o the research participant for editing and

comment. Analysis of interview transcripts and notes involved a

close reading of the particular utterances, a process which then

moves t o make connections within and between other transcripts.

As McCracken notes, "each successive stage moves upward t o more

general observations" (1 988: 43).

CHAPTER THREE

A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE PERTINENT TO THE TOPIC

The ethnographic examination of science, technology, culture and the

environment draws upon traditions in anthropology, sociology,l7 oral

history and the history of science. Within this interdisciplinary

field of social analysis, the particular contribution of ethnography18

is to operate in such a way as t o range widely among established and

emergent bodies of literature concerned with the relations between

the organization of scientific knowledge and the cultural and social

contexts of its production and understanding.

Ethnography of Science and Technology

The social science literature discussed below attends t o

substantive areas concerned with the study of cultural and social

identity19 and contexts of understanding and meaning. These

contributions are a means of examining approaches t o the

intersection of science, technology, culture and the environment

that offer accounts of lived cultural experiences inaccessible t o

survey and secondary methods. Additionally, the anthropological

literature discussed exemplifies the perspective of cultural critique

in order t o convey contradictions. These anthropological accounts

also manage t o participate in the 'cultural turn' by confronting the

challenge of social analysis in a manner which demonstrates that

accounts may be framed as contingent without being compromised by

failing t o work through interpretive difficulties associated with

sustained fieldwork. To exemplify, the 'cultural turn' in the

trajectory of contemporary social analysis may approach problems:

by placing into strategic and disjunctive juxtaposition different representations or perspectives so as t o throw light upon the social context of their production and meaning, and t o draw out their implications (Fischer, 1 993: 1 87).

Anthropologists have used ethnographic approaches t o examine

aspects of social and cultural identity as it is reflexively

constituted through relationships with issues concerning science,

technology, culture and the environment. An early account in the

"anthropology of science" (Latour and Woolgar, 1979: 28) reported on

the construction of scientific facts in a research laboratory.

Continuing this tradition is Traweek's (1 988) fieldwork with

physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).

Traweek's (1 988) analysis provides a means of situating the present

account by conceptually distinguishing the shared understandings

which differentiate interpretations of the work-world at SLAC from

that of the Hanford Site. A central component of institutionalized

cultural difference between basic research facilities such as SLAC

and production facilities like the Hanford Site was noted by

physicists who associated applied production work with secrecy.

Cultural contexts of meaning illustrated by contrasting physicists

at SLAC with engineers at the Hanford Site may be situated

theoretically through Van Maanen and Barley's (1 984) Occupational

Communities, a concept which relates t o "a group of people who

consider themselves t o be engaged in the same sort of work; whose

identity draws from the work ... and whose social relationships meld

work and leisure" (1 984: 287). Their position argues for the use of

an array of ethnographic "records of contemporary work worlds"

(1 984: 287) as a phenomenologically oriented alternative t o

conventional frameworks on organizational theory which emphasize

the "rational or administrative forms of work organization" (Van

Maanen and Barley, 1984: 287).

The present account utilizes a phenomenological approach t o

occupations by focusing upon forms of identity and examining

specific ways in which shared understandings of institutional and

cultural contexts "recognized by members of particular work

worlds" (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984: 288), grounded through

occupations, permeate boundaries of community life, and vice-versa.

The occupational community perspective provides an interpretive

basis by which the respective identities conveyed by physicists

conducting basic research and engineers applying the results may be

understood. To return t o our earlier example, Traweek's physicists

"are proud of working at a lab where no classified work is

conducted, because in their eyes basic research has a much higher

status" (1988: 20). On this same subject one research participant

noted that "top scientists think they could all be superior engineers

if they really wanted to."

Gusterson's (1 99 1 a, 1 99 1 b, 1 992) account of the occupational

community at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory explores

post-Cold War challenges facing scientists as the pressure to

justify weapons development and research budgets increases.

Livermore functions in the middle ground between basic and applied

research and his account provides a conceptual linkage by noting

that at this research facility during the Cold War "scientists

steadfastly vouched for the safety of its products. Now that the

new weapons are no longer needed, the old ones have become cause

for concern" (Gusterson, 1992: 22). In this manner, for the DOE and

its operating contractors the reassessment fostered by the post-

Cold War is in part an exercise in risk perception management (cf.

Stoffle et al., 1992). This transition subtly redirects attention

away from 'mutual deterrence' and towards the safety of nuclear

warheads designed at Livermore and the nuclear waste stored at

Hanford.

Thematic concerns with the nature of scientific work-worlds

and their relations with 'publics,' found in the ethnography of

science and technology literature, discussed above, may be further

situated with respect t o professionals and bureaucracy (Layton,

1971, 1977; Morrissey and Gillespie, 1975; Mosher, 1978), the

politics of expert advice (Peters, 1989; Barker and Peters, 1993;

Liberatore, 1993; Rudig, 1993), and perceptions of risk as they

relate t o public problems (Wildavsky and Douglas, 1983; Meehan,

1984; Sagan, 1993). These contributions are drawn upon in

substantive sections of the thesis t o establish connections with

wider concerns located in the literature and material collected

during fieldwork. For example, Barker and Peters provide one means

of 'bridging' theory and practice for the present account by

advocating public access t o the 'inside' of scientific work-worlds20

based upon the criteria that, "the development of science, especially

technology, imposes risks on the public" (1 993: 6). Relatedly,

Rudig's (1 993) scholarship holds a strong bearing on the present

thesis by bringing together insights from the sociology of science

and public policy analysis. Specifically, Rudig notes:

From the vantage point of the sociology of science, controversy is thus not some exceptional phenomenon but an intrinsic element of the scientific process. This contrasts with the demands made on science in terms of public policy and decision-making" (1 993: 18- 19).

Finally, these contributions inform the present account by pointing

t o connections and contradictions at the interface of professional

knowledge and identity and the institutional contexts and public

controversies which often frame these work-worlds. From this

perspective it is important t o keep in mind that this account

explores interpretations of discourse relating t o publicly defined

'problems' at Hanford, but it attempts t o do so by ethnographically

examining social forms of occupational identity in terms of the

processes associated with developing and implementing, and

understanding and identifying with, the application of scientific

knowledge at a production nuclear facility.

Ethnographic Accounts of Nuclear Localities

Several accounts (Johnson and Jackson, 1981 ; Mojtabai, 1986;

Loeb, 1986; Sanger, 1989; Moore, 1992) have examined intersections

between nuclear facilities and adjacent towns and communities.

This genre does not consciously attempt t o draw upon existing

anthropological or sociological literatures. As a whole, these pieces

remain relatively unconstrained by disciplinary conventions and it is

worth noting that during the writing of these accounts only Johnson

and Jackson maintained affiliations with academic institutions.21

In Blessed Assurance, Mojtabai (1 986) profiles the interplay of

work and religious belief in the locality of Amarillo, Texas.

Amarillo's cultural topography is overlain with fundamentalist

Christian beliefs and its proximity t o the Pantex plant where final

assemblage and disassemblage of U.S. nuclear weapons takes place.

This unique context allows Mojtabai (1 986) t o deconstruct versions

of scientific and technological apocalypse with its religious

counterparts as they comprise aspects of local life. Her account is,

in part, structured as an oral history and as such resembles the

approach advocated by Rosaldo (1 980: 89) who notes that "method in

this discipline should therefore attend t o 'our' stories, 'their'

stories, and the connections between them." Mojatabai's approach

illustrates one point of departure for doing oral history when she

writes "there are two kinds of history for Amarillo: one tells of a

city manifestly destined; ... the other is of an accidental city- a

version of events understandably more popular with outsiders than

with natives" (1 986: 26). In the case of the Hanford Site, historians

(e.g., Van Arsdol, 1 990; Gerber, 1 992a, 1 992b, 1 993a, 1 993b) have

tended t o chronicle events in the area through conventional narrative

forms that the oral historian can work from in the process of social

analysis.

Contributions by Loeb (1 986) Sanger (1 989) and Moore (1 992)

address a wide spectrum of social history and examine local forms

of historical comprehension regarding the Hanford Site. Sanger

(1989) approaches the topic by assembling a series of interview

monographs relating t o the Manhattan Project at the Hanford Site

which concern people's interpretations of this time period (1 943-

1945). Johnson and Jackson (1 981) concern themselves with the

same time period and examine the historical significance of the

Hanford Site's counterpart production facility at Oak Ridge,

Tennessee. In Nuclear Culture Paul Loeb (1 986) begins his account

of the Hanford Site and adjacent towns by asking how it is that

people could normalize and thereby routinize both work and life a t a

plutonium production facility. The present thesis utilized Loeb's

study as a cultural account and as an object of an extended

"interview schedule" (Neuman, 199 1 : 23 1 ) whereby research

participants read and responded t o the book during interview

sessions. Moore's (1 992) As I Knew Him is an autobiography of a

chemical engineer who spent his entire professional career at the

Hanford Site. Moore is held in high regard by local professionals.22

Moore's (1 992) memoir contains parallels with the ethnographic

genre through his use of the 'entry tale' and rich descriptions of

career and life in the locality which impart a sense of estrangement

in as much as they are bounded and managed by the distance and

closeness fostered by living and working at a secret government

installation.

Cultural Ident i ty

This section identifies connections between an anthropological

version of cultural identity forwarded by Downey (1 988) with

Hansen's (1 991 : 452) concept of "cultural givens" and collective

identity-formation (J. Cohen, 1985; Harries-Jones, 199 1 ). From this

vantage point, a framework is suggested which utilizes the position

on cultural identity as a central component of an approach t o social

analysis which attends t o interpretive and perspectival dimensions

of public problems as outlined by Gusfield (1 981).

Downey grounds his notion of cultural identity through an

account of a technologically oriented public debate (cf. Downey,

1986, 1988a) concerning "how emergency systems for cooling the

core of a nuclear reactor (ECCS) might perform in the event of an

accident" (1 988b: 231).23 By focusing upon the entrance of the Union

of Concerned Scientists (UCS) at Massachusetts Institute of

Technology into the public debate, Downey recasts the contours of

this group's cultural identity in terms of the ways in which their

"claims 'reproduced' the UCS identity t o the extent that these were

'congruent' with the combination of a shared ideology, the social

interests of the MIT faculty, and established principles of

engineering design" (1 988: 232). His position is further articulated

when he writes that "cultural identity relations also differ from the

sociological concepts of norms and roles by offering no

prescriptions for action, only frames of interpretation" (Downey,

1 988: 258). Hansen (1 99 1 ) established a foundation t o Downey's

position on cultural identity by arguing for the existence of a

background of cultural givens in a manner which makes for a nice

transition t o the case study of the Hanford Site. His argument

develops by asserting that cultural givens facilitate and delimit the

prominence of public issues based upon the extent t o which issues

resonate with "existing and widely held cultural concepts" (Hansen,

1 991 : 452).

J. Cohen's (1 985) critical discussion of the 'identity-oriented

paradigm' on collective-identity formation offers a theoretical

perspective for processual analysis concerned with the emergence

and formation of 'cultural identity' backgrounded in terms of

'cultural givens.' Cohen's (1 985) discussion of collective identity-

formation, provides the thesis with the analytical tools t o establish

ethnographically grounded connections between 'cultural identity',

'cultural givens' and perspectives on public problems. Conceptually,

Cohen (1985) addresses her comments t o debates in the social

movements literature; I draw upon them here insofar as they relate

t o collective-identity formation. The conceptual linkage between

public discourse and cultural identity put forth in the present thesis

is pulled into tighter focus when it is considered in contrast t o

negotiations found in union/rnanagement exchanges which involve

"already organized groups within the sphere of production that are

capable of negotiating demands. The process of identity formation,

on the other hand, involves non-negotiable demands" (J. Cohen, 1985:

692, italics in original). Further, the characterization of the

Hanford Site as a site of contested historical interpretation in

public discourse creates conditions which "involve actors who have

become aware of their capacity t o create identities and of power

relations involved in their social construction" (J. Cohen, 1985: 694,

italics in original). When these considerations are applied t o the

convoy of 1943-1 953 we may note that although the convoy does

indeed "challenge the reality of dominant values" (Harries-

Jones, 199 1 : 5) in terms of public perceptions of nuclear energy and

wastes, they do so in the same shroud of secrecy that has shielded

their activities from public view for almost 50 years. In this

respect, I shall attempt t o demonstrate in the following chapters,

through analysis of occupational identity and forms of rhetorical

discourse, the manner in which the convoy of 1943-1953 provide

evidence of private resistance t o what is perceived as the dominant

public reality on nuclear issues in an occupational community (A.P.

Cohen, 1982: 8).24

My interests are ethnographically based and as such this

literature informs the present thesis in terms of identity-

formation: as a means t o articulate an instance of occupational

identity. In this sense, I do not seek t o produce a theoretical overlay

which portends a locally condoned framework for "members' own

view of their cultures" (A.P. Cohen, 1982: 1 ). After all, my analysis

remains a "construction of members' views" (A.P. Cohen, 1982: I ) ,

but one which does seek t o frame the account in terms of the public

discourse it engages. Stated simply, the account unavoidably

interfaces with ,a nuclear debate which has crystallized into a

polemicized form of public discourse.

The thrust of the thesis attends t o interpretations of the

historical role of the Hanford Site from the perspectives of nuclear

industry career professionals. Institutionalized codes of secrecy

which informed modes of career and community life in the locality

of the Hanford Site now confront a brave new post-Cold War

characterized by a dramatic increase in public scrutiny concerning a

wide range of policies, operations procedures and governmental and

corporate levels of responsibility. It is within this context that

this account deconstructs the notion that contemporary perspectives

af late-life nuclear industry professionals can be understood in

t m s of public relations discourse from those who speak for the

facility in official capacity today. A.P. Cohen offers these

observations which speak t o the significance of this point:

I t seems to me incontrovertible that if people in one milieu perceive fundamental differences between themselves and the members of another, then their behaviour is bound t o reflect that sense of difference; it means something t o them which it might not mean t o others. That is precisely the competence which anthropologists attribute t o 'culture', and t o regard it as no more than a figment of the bourgeois imagination is t o be a sociological flat-earther (1 982: 3).

Public discourse concerning Hanford's past has made

stakeholders of the 'convoy of 1943-1 953'. At issue are

professional and personal reputations, a sense of belonging and

attachment t o locality, and cultural identities forged in a historical

context that is none too far from the metaphorical past that was

another country. The background t o these debates finds the public

bearing witness t o rhetorical dimensions of official proclamations

declaring the end of the 'culture of secrecy' at the Hanford Site.

This has in turn has fostered an increased concern with the

historical record of the Hanford Site. This point is underscored by J.

Cohen (1 985: 692) who writes that "the logic of collective identity

formation involves direct participation on the part of the actors and

the exclusion of representation," both of which figure prominently

among contemporary social movements25 which address Hanford's

past?

Public Problems

Central t o Downey's analysis of cultural identity, as outlined

above, is an integration of "the concept of identity reproduction into

the analysis of negotiation27 processes in technological

development" (1 988: 232). In the case of the Hanford Site forms of

public rhetoric mediate the social construction of public problems

(Schneider, 1985). In this sense, the mode of analysis taken in the

present thesis attends t o ways in which cultural identity conditions

perspectives on public problems. The analysis on public problem

construction draws from Gusfield's (1 981 ) approach in The Culture

of Public Problems and examines public perspectives on the

historical role of the Hanford Site from a similar point of departure

taken by Gusfield regarding the drinking-driving issue. In

establishing a framework t o discuss the culture of the drinking-

driving issue Gusfield noted "the status of a phenomenon as a

problem is itself often a matter of conflict as interested parties

struggle t o define or prevent the definition of a matter as something

public attention should 'do something about' " (1 981 : 1 0). Gusfield's

insight into the process of problem definition relates t o

interpretations of the historical role of the Hanford Site by opening

up the analytical space t o bring the issue t o our attention and

establishing a framework by which t o examine the historical

dimensions of public awareness in a contemporary setting.

OUTLINE OF REMAINING CHAPTERS

The chapters which follow convey two related parts of the Hanford

story, professional work-worlds and the interpretation of nuclear

discourse, from the point of view of the 1943-1 953 convoy.

The fourth chapter discusses the Hanford Site as a U.S.

Department of Energy production facility as distinct from a research

centre. In particular, this chapter describes the work-world

contexts of the industrial researcher. In the latter section of this

chapter the work-world of a production facility is exemplified

ethnographically through an account of a 'working agreement'

relating t o official and unofficial forms of reportage concerning

nuclear waste disposal between a group of geologists and the

technicians responsible for waste disposal. This 'working

agreement' demonstrates a context within which professional

scientists devised practical strategies t o accomplish necessary

tasks and gather essential information at a production oriented

nuclear facility.

The fifth chapter focuses upon rhetorical strategies employed

t o address credibility questions which continue t o plague the

Hanford Site in the post-Cold War, and the ways in which

responsibility for contemporary public problems is negotiated by a

number of interested parties. Credibility questions are discussed in

terms of the transitions associated with the Hanford Site work-

world, and as such are pulled into tighter focus by post-Cold War

concerns with the environment. In this chapter the thesis explores

the convoy's interpretations of the contemporary fixation on 'the

environment' as it has become manifest in public discourse and

official policy changes at the Hanford Site. Themes explored under

this rubric include the perceived shift from 'productivity t o

paperwork', the association believed to exist between the

environment and politics, and the desire on the part of the 1943-

1953 convoy t o highlight the contexts within which nuclear wastes

were dealt with during the first 20 years of operations.

The contours and expressions of social identity that constitute

and shape contexts of meaning for the convoy of 1943-1 953 are a

thematic concern for the thesis. The sixth chapter examines

mediated dimensions of social identity by situating particular

examples of public nuclear discourse as they are understood by the

convoy. This phenomenon is examined ethnographically in terms of

the 1943-1953 convoy's assessment of the work and resulting

reputation of Herbert M. Parker, an integral figure in the

establishment of radiation protection procedures, evaluation and

standards at the Hanford Site.

The seventh chapter summarizies the thesis findings and

readdresses questions initially posed. This chapter provides a

conclusion t o the thesis by considering implications of the findings

in terms of further research.

CHAPTER FOUR

CONTEXTS OF SCIENCE: RESEARCH AND INDUSTRY

Really, there was no invention at all [with the Hanford reactors]. There were only decisions t o be made. (Eugene P. Wigner, quoted in Sanger, 1989: 17).

The case of the Manhattan Project, in particular that which concerns

development and implementation of operations28 at the Hanford

Site29 (Shulman, 1992: 173; Soldat, Swinth and Pettengill, 1994: 4),

provides an excellent example of the shortcomings of classic

analytical distinctions between science and technology (Layton,

1977). At the Hanford Site, production era professionals functioned

as "industrial researchers" (Downey and Lucena, 1995: 171 ). They

were, in effect, part 'scientist' and part 'engineer' and as such found

themselves "grappling with the ambiguities engendered by their

double location as both objects and representatives of corporate

power" (Downey and Lucena, 1 995: 1 67). 'Joe,' a health physicist

and research participant, illustrates how necessity merged science

and technology into a seamless web:

... they had some brand new problems that nobody had been faced with before. In spite of what Michele Gerber says in her book,30 something like, "well you should have brought in outside experts," we did have the best experts ... we had the experts here, there were no other outside experts except maybe at Oak Ridge, and

they were busy solving their own problems ('Joe,' Interview, 12 August 1993).

As Pinch and Bijker note, the notion "that science and discovers and

technology applies - will no longer suffice" (1 987: 20). This insight

is especially conducive t o the ethnographic perspective employed

here based upon my focus on dimensions of social identity evidenced

in knowledge cultures as opposed t o the "actual content of scientific

ideas, theories, and experiments" (Pinch and Bijker, 1987: 18). From

this vantage point, the examination of forms of occupational social

identity begins from a position which holds that "the treatment of

scientific knowledge as a social construction implies that there is

nothing epistemologically special about the nature of scientific

knowledge" (Pinch and Bijker, 1987: 19). 1 should further point out

that my use of 'Research Science' and 'Industrial Science' reflect my

focus upon occupational identity and relate t o the formal

organizational structures within which work is conducted, (i.e.,

contexts of administration and budgetary constraints) and, as such,

are not intended t o be mutually exclusive, rather they are heuristic.

Research Science

The leading physicists who designed the atomic bomb, first at

the Met Lab at the University of Chicago and then at Los Alamos, New

Mexico - J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and Niels

Bohr - endlessly debated the moral dimensions31 and potential social

and environmental consequences of ushering in the nuclear age

(Rhodes, 1986; Sanger, 1989). One means of placing in socio-

historical context these physicists' well founded concerns regarding

nuclear weapons and the threat of an arms race may be located in

the occupational identity of their profession which is tightly

wrapped up around the notion of conducting unfettered basic

scientific research (Latour and Woolgar, 1979). Central t o this

orientation and research style are the linkages that this profession

has historically had with the academy, as opposed t o industry.

'Charles Franke', a health physics32 chemist, characterized the

physicists of the Manhattan Project this way:

These top scientists are all great philosophers and they like to think that they have the world all figured out t o the point where everybody should go their way. One of the oldest things that you would run into i f you did any reading in this area is that they had all kinds of ideas and plans of a demonstration t o the Japanese instead of bombing their city t o demonstrate the power of the bomb. They thought about bringing them t o Trinity t o point out the futility of continuing the war, how many lives that would be saved, and all the suffering through the years of radiation sickness. Those guys were moral philosophers, very idealistic and in the early days those guys were really totally anti Hitler and Nazi. When they caved in I think there was just a great loss of interest ('Charles Franke,' Interview, 28 June 1993).

Indeed, the Danish scientist Niels Bohr had argued, "that it was

a mistake for the American government t o ask it's scientists t o

explore alone and in secrecy the possibilities for development of

nuclear energy as a military weapon- that it would have been better

t o enlist the collaboration not just of British scientists but of

Soviet ones as well" (Kennan, 1994: 8). A central component of the

style of basic scientific research is the notion that it is conducted

in an open and verifiable atmosphere, with a maximum of

interchange between colleagues. This aspect of occupational

identity was seen by many Manhattan Project physicists as being

severely compromised. Oppenheimer himself noted at a meeting

prior t o the Trinity bomb test33 that scientists, "'should be released

t o their universities and get back to basic science'; during the war,

he said, 'they had been plucking the fruits of earlier research"'

(Rhodes, 1986: 644).

As noted previously, Traweek's (1 988) ethnography of the

work-worlds of physicists at an accelerator facility indicates that

these scientists differentiate their work from that evidenced in

applied settings primarily in terms of the openness of the research

process. Here the notion of openness relates t o sense of

professional control and autonomy over the research process. In

applied settings, especially at DOE facilities, scientists are more

likely t o have their research oriented towards a particular goal

identified by a third-party (Hughes, 1987: 64). Downey and Lucena

explicate this point by noting, "as the term applied science has long

suggested, albeit misleadingly, knowledge-producing activities in

engineering appear to occupy a double location both inside and

outside of science" (1 995: 167). Such is the case at the Lawrence

Livermore Laboratories a component of the DOE nuclear weapons

complex where much of the research conducted is categorized as

being 'classified' (Gusterson, 1992). However, when the laboratory

was opened in 1952 it viewed itself, "as a place quite unlike Los

Alamos, a haven from bureaucracy where creative young scientists

could explore novel ideas without rigid management from above"

(Gusterson, 1992: 18). Thus, even within the confines of the

expanding 'military-industrial complex' research scientists sought

to create a sense of autonomy through organizational structure.

Hughes illustrates this point:

Until World War II academic physicists were relatively free of organizational constraints, and during World War II this frame of mind survived, even in such large projects as the Radiation Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Manhattan Project laboratory in Chicago under Arthur Compton, and the Los Alamos laboratory under Robert Oppenheimer (1 987: 64).

Industrial Science

The history of the Hanford Site reads somewhat differently.

It's primary function during the Manhattan Project, and continuing

through the Cold War, was to produce plutonium. In the ensuing

years after the Manhattan Project the nuclear program in the United

States, in particular at the Hanford Site, underwent a series of what

Gerber has called "postwar expansions" (1 992b: 38) between 1947-

1955. These expansions, brought about in part by the escalation of

the Cold War, translated into another hectic pace of construction

designed to produce designated levels of plutonium for the nation's

new nuclear arsenal. Research and development were directly linked

to solving problems of plutonium production and increasing

production efficiency and controlling, monitoring and managing

unrecovered radioactive and chemical by-products of operations

through storage, reprocessing or release into the environment24

During the Manhattan Project, the chalkboards at Los Alamos were

filled with calculations and physicists worked together in groups,

fully aware of the goals set before them by the United States

government. If the physicists were to come to Hanford it was only

for a visit, as Gerber notes, "when prominent scientists came t o

Hanford to consult on problems of engineering and physics, they used

code names. Enrico Fermi was Mr. Farmer, Arthur Compton was Mr.

Comas, and Eugene Wigner was Mr. Winger" (1 992b: 46). By contrast,

the Hanford Site, like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was a place where

engineers figured out how t o operationalize the knowledge produced

by the now-famed physicists, and in turn developed new forms of

knowledge, in a context where rules of secrecy compartmentalized

work into tasks and projects the ultimate use of which only a

handful of people were fully informed about. 'Elliott', a former

Hanford Site geologist, gives us a closer look at the formation of

institutionalized codes of secrecy (DOE, 199 1 : 1 ; Gerber, 1992b:

214) at the Hanford Site through this work-world vignette:

... considering the secrecy in the project there certainly were a lot of oral directions rather than written directions on the job. So somebody may have just said, 'okay, we got t o get going on that retention basin, build it and you will be getting the necessary paperwork in a week or two or a couple of weeks', and it never came through. As it was described t o me more generally, a contractor would be taken out t o a stake in the ground and told t o dig down six feet where he would find a stainless steel waste line. He would then be told, 'your job is t o descend that waste line from that stake t o that other stake over theret, and as soon as that was done he would be moved t o another part of the project and another contractor would be moved in t o extend the waste line t o a building. Neither of them knowing what was at the other end of the line ('Elliott,' Interview, 3 April 1993).

Considering Hanford an "occupational community" (Van Maanen

and Barley, 1984: 297) with a high degree of propinquity and

association through the intermingling of work and leisure

experiences allows us t o begin t o understand how it was that

activities undertaken during the production era, conducted at such an

order of magnitude, could facilitate the creation of an atmosphere

where dialogue about work with others not authorized for

information was kept t o a bare minimum. Gerber provides this

summary of the phenomenon:

At postwar Hanford, secrecy continued t o reign. At the war's end Matthias35 privately wondered whether the suspension of the War Powers Act would 'critically handicap any of our [secret] activities.' His worries were soon resolved. Plant employees signed statements that obliged them not t o discuss, even with their families, most aspects of what they saw, heard, and did at the site. They carried cards that specified the subjects about which they were entitled t o have information. To be safe, they hardly spoke of the huge complex at all. Richland became a town where people simply never talked about their work (1 992b: 47; citing Matthias's 'Journar', June 1, 1945, and Loeb, 1986: 55-59).

Although attempts t o probe phenomenological dimensions of

institutionalized codes of secrecy must take into account that both

research and production facilities were affected, the point here is

that the negotiation and cultivation of work styles which operated

underneath this umbrella should be understood occupationally and

through close attention t o specific cases and instances. This

approach is often overlooked (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984: 289), a

practice which may obscure more than clarify the need t o articulate

cultural and organizational work-worlds of production facilities in

the DOE nuclear complex. 'Charles Franke' offers these insights into

the subtle and often unrecognized cultural dimensions of stigma

associated with nuclear production:

You talk about philosophy, when you go t o health physics or any other big nuclear type meetings it is totally different than going into straight academia. For instance, on my 50 year reunion at a mid-west college i f you tell 'em you are from Hanford, the plutonium makers, you don't get any sense of approval. You just get a sense. When my fellow classmates asked, 'what have you been doing?' If you say you are an M.D. 'oh boy, what is your

specialty?' You say you are a lawyer, 'oh yeah, what kind of cases are you involved in?' If I said I was a rocket scientist I suppose they would be a little interested in trips t o the moon. But i f I tell 'em I work at Hanford and am involved in plutonium production, there is a sort of silence and a sense of disapproval

Brian Freer: You went out of your way t o say, 'plutonium production?'

'Charles Franke': It comes natural. By the time you get around t o telling them it's plutonium you are already in an area they don't approve of. You are not given much credit for being involved in this operation. In contrast t o the lawyer or doctor alumni, which is okay with me, it doesn't bother me. But it also represents the philosophy of idealism of the academic area which these upper scientists are from. They are not only experimenters, they are teachers. Livermore is attached t o the University of California. It's very much a teaching environment, and their idealism stretches into areas that we don't quite touch here ('Charles Franke,' Interview, 28 June 1993).

Beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project and

continuing into the present, all employees doing work connected

with the Hanford Site have background and security checks

completed on them. 'Charles Franke' remembers his first encounter

with the secret United States nuclear program this way:

I had a disclosure at the University of Chicago in April of 1942. They swear you t o secrecy and all that jazz, prior t o disclosing the nature of it. I t was plenty exciting that it was secret, not being able t o discuss it with my fiancee, even when she became my wife, or anybody else and really being bound by this. I had never had an obligation of secrecy that was anything close t o this in all my lifetime ('Charles Franke,' Interview, 1 April 1993).

Additionally, for many of the workers who made the journey t o

the area that was t o become the Hanford Site, as 'Betty Franke'

notes, "it was their first employer. And they went clear across the

country from where they knew anything" (Interview, 1 April 1993).

After the United States entered World War I1 the oath of secrecy

that workers swore to uphold and operate in terms of was put into

practice by the Du Pont Company,36 the Hanford Site's primary

contractor during the Manhattan Project. Turnover was heavy at the

facility at this time, a factor compounded by a labour shortage, and

the area seemed desolate and isolated to many of the newcomers.

Gerber quotes a worker who arrived at Hanford and recalled that, "it

was so darned bleak. If I'd had the price of a ticket I wouldn't have

stayed" (1 992b: 52). 'George Watson' had this t o say about the

setting:

... when I got here everybody I met was working here just long enough so they could make enough money to get out. And I think that it is an indication of the poor wages in that most are still here, 40 some years later ('George Watson,' Interview, 1 April 1993).

Those who did stay t o live and work in the locality note that a

job with the Du Pont Company inspired feelings of pride and loyalty.

In The Children of the Great Depression Elder (1 974) notes that the

1 9 1 6-1 925 birth cohort were raised during a time of relative

deprivation. This point takes on a special relevance when it is noted

that research participants would be considered a part of Elder's

cohort37 (see Appendix One). 'Betty Franke' speaks to this, "on the

money side, you are fresh out of college after struggling to get

through and then there was two of us working and it was fantastic.

We thought we were in seventh heaven" (Interview, 28 June 1993).

Keeping in mind that the individuals from the 1943-1 953 convoy

who participated in the thesis research are also part of the

'depression era cohort,' Elder offers these comments which relate to

the development of loyalty and pride within these groups:

Collective experience is revitalized when problems are interpreted within the framework of a national crisis, an emergency of such proportion that it threatens the common way of life. National survival thus transcends the special and divisive interests of individuals and groups, of social strata and regions. Americans were drawn into their nation's struggle for survival ... the struggle became their civic obligation and their personal hardships part of the nation's experience" (1 974: 295).

'George Watson', who arrived t o work at the facility from

Colorado in 1948 after General Electric had taken over the

contractor role, said this about the 'Du Pont' era at Hanford:

... they have always had a reputation for protecting their employees and their employees always felt that they were really part of the company at Du Pont. I never worked for Du Pont but I knew a lot of people that did work for Du Pont. Some of us accused them of having Du Pont tattooed across their foreheads and across a few other places (mutual laughter). Some people t o this day are Du Pont, after working for several other contractors for some forty years or so they still feel an association for Du Pont, they really had a system for inspiring loyalty t o the company. I have never seen a company that could quite touch them ('George Watson,' Interview, 1 April 1993).

When Oppenheimer instructed his fellow physicists at Los

Alamos to, "get back t o basic research" (Kennan, 1994: 8) after the

Trinity test, the real challenges for engineers, technicians and

craftspeople at the Hanford Site were just beginning. As an

illustration of the contrast between the identities of physicists and

those of production professionals, the insights of Traweek (1 988)

identified earlier may be supplemented by noting that while

physicists display attachments t o the quest for 'truth' and and draw

recourse t o autonomous research environments, professionals at

Hanford were producing something, they were working for a company

towards tangible collective goals. For these nuclear production

professionals the monumental tasks associated with increased

plutonium production requirements were confronted in conjunction

with a multitude of difficulties related t o the radioactive and

chemical by-products of these production processes.38 They not only

encountered scientific and technical aspects of these problematics,

but found themselves conducting their work within the general

context of institutionalized codes of secrecy. Within these contexts

they produced classified information that entered the realm of

bureaucracy thereby creating another dimension t o be negotiated

when this information was requisitioned for further and more

complete knowledge of problems by 'on-site' and 'off-site' parties.

In the following section I offer an instance which conveys the

ways in which a group of geologists devised practical strategies t o

accomplish necessary tasks and gather essential information from

others engaged in work that by its nature offered access t o this

data. This form of work-world negotiation demonstrates how a

'working arrangement' is cultivated t o get the job of science done at

a production nuclear facility.

'Working Arrangements'

The guiding theme for construction during the Manhattan

Project was results with speed. Among the consequences associated

with this pace of construction were problems of holding tank

storage space for radioactive and chemical by-products that were

deemed too toxic t o be released directly into the soil. Gerber

illustrates the context of this situation:

The B and T separations plants that operated during World War II each were connected t o sixteen underground single shelled tanks. By December 1945, however, tanks serving B plant were 70.8 percent full, and those receiving T Plant's high-level wastes were 83.5 percent full (1 992b: 1 64).

The combination of storage space limitations and design

difficulties related t o the containment of wastes inside receptacles

with the pressures to increase production of plutonium during the

Cold War contributed t o a situation where other means of disposal

had to be implemented. Increasingly, those responsible for waste

management at the Hanford Site began to look into ways of reducing

the volumes that were sent t o the 'tank farms' by separating out the

most toxic or high-level wastes with long half-lives from those

less biologically harmful and short-lived. As an example of the type

of strategies being used at Hanford during 1947 t o address the

'waste problem', the wastes began to be re-routed to " 'cribs' " and

"tile fields" (Gerber, 1992b: 148) in an attempt to both contain the

movement of radioactive materials in the soil and manage the

quickly diminishing storage tank space.

A group of scientists responsible for mapping out and

providing information regarding the reaction and behaviour of

wastes with the geological formations at the Hanford Site found

themselves in the "double location both inside and outside of

science," (Downey and Lucena, 1995: 167) needing information

regarding the movement of wastes through the soils without the

budgets or the time necessary to conduct essential research.

'Elliott' was a Hanford Site geologist whose work addressed these

concerns, he provides this example:

... much of our work was what we called a 'field test' on production run materials. It seemed a lot more logical t o run the stuff into the ground and see what happened rather than trying to start up a long involved research project that would have to be changed a dozen times before we would finally settle on something. Rather than trying to formalize it t o the 'nth degree we would try and remain as flexible as possible, but maintain control over what was happening, within reason ('Elliott,' Interview, 28 March 1993).

Doing science at a production nuclear facility necessitated

that creative strategies be adopted in order t o obtain essential

information without causing production t o be interrupted or re-

organized in ways which would require delays and disruptions from

routine operations activities. As a health physicist facing

difficulties associated with monitoring and controlling radiation

releases during operations, 'Joe' recounts an agreement that was

struck between operators and radiation monitors:

... they did not want t o have to wait t o change a sample and analyze it in the lab t o find out what might have been emitted from a stack. They wanted something that would give an instant indication to the operating people what was going on. So a scientist in the group designed a constant monitor t o sample the gases continuously with a solution that passed by a radiation counter ... If something went wrong the operators could shut down the process. And also I could tear off the recording chart and run into the head operator and say, 'hey, look you guys are above your limits.' I remember one guy saying, 'Is that bad?' I said, 'yeah' and they shut down. They said, 'don't tell us that we have to control the dose t o such and such in the environment, we don't understand that. You guys calculate what that means in terms of release limits. Tell us what we can do and we will live with it.' We did and they did ('Joe,' Interview, 12 August 1993).

'Elliott' further exemplifies the relationship between

operators and scientists through a contrast between research and

production:

... the fact that it was a production operation at the plant meant that it was quite unlike a research operation where you have very close control. The numbers clerks were, well frankly they didn't want t o dabble with all these figures and samples and the whole bit ('Elliott,' 28 March 1993).

One consequence of this is located in the contradiction

between needing t o know more about how to manage radioactive

materials that were sent into the ground, water and air, coupled

with the pressure of production demands, and the inertia of work

routines. As 'Elliott' observes, the scientists' motivation to

establish this 'working agreement' rested upon their desire to "know

what the reaction would be with the waste with the ground. With

the soils and materials t o which waste was being discharged." As he

goes on to note, this information was being recorded:

... there were certain procedures, samples were routinely taken. And then the sample would represent a certain volume of waste, samples were taken at certain intervals. It was a matter of trying t o calculate how much total radioactivity had gone t o ground at a given crib site ('Elliott,' Interview, 3 April 1993).

However, as this information entered the realm of the

bureaucracy and became classified, the geologists were faced with

the problem of accessing the information they had collected

themselves at an earlier point in time. 'Elliott' illustrates:

... so it was a case where we knew that if our request for this information went through channels it would probably would have taken months to get an approval for them to transfer the data to us ('Elliott,' Interview, 28 March 1993).

Procedures for accessing classified data had tempos that did

not correspond t o the rhythm of these scientists' work-world,

therefore they improvised and negotiated a 'working arrangement'

with the waste operators:

... so one of our people went and on a personal basis talked the numbers clerk into giving us not only the written figures but any information that was in his head and maybe not in paper ('Elliott,' Interview, 27 June 1993).

In addition t o the delay in time that would have resulted in the

requisition of the official recorded information that these

scientists were seeking, this official written ledger of

radioactivity sent t o ground would have omitted the 'off-record'

amounts that were kept track of by operations people in their heads.

The primary reasons for this 'off-record' factor most probably relate

t o regulations specifying radiation limits t o ground areas and, as

'Elliott' notes, accidents which involved 'spills' of radioactive

material:

... for instance the numbers clerk might officially report, oh let's say three grams of plutonium went to ground at a given site in a given period of time. And then a couple of days later the numbers clerk would call and say, 'oh, you are interested in what went to ground weren't you, well we had a spill and somehow or other we didn't get the numbers down on the sheet, but we spilled fifteen grams on such and such a date. So that number would just be added into the total rather than being identified and inserted into the official form ('Elliott,' 3 April 1993).

With the tight codes of secrecy and regulations covering

workplace activity and procedure, both operators and scientists had

to cover each other's backs. As 'Elliott' recounted the relationship,

"it just seemed easier t o do it on a personal basis and avoid a lot of

the hassle and we were working with them and helping them out

from time t o time" (Interview, 3 April 1993). However, the

operators were the ones taking the risks in this equation and 'Elliott'

notes that it was in the interest of good information t o keep things

off the official record, "we kept our mouths shut and didn't disclose

what we found out, and because they cooperated with us we were

able t o come up with better numbers as t o what was in the waste

stream" (Interview, 3 April 1993).

The general background of secrecy and classified information

that has become associated with the history of the Hanford Site in

the public sphere was also a part of the daily work-world that led t o

the 'working agreement' between geologists like 'Elliott' and

operators responsible for waste disposal. Contemporary efforts t o

examine past practices and activities at Hanford should recognize

this phenomenon as a very real aspect of the past. These are

dimensions of the work-world that not only relate directly t o levels

of radioactivity laid t o the ground in the past, but t o strategies and

'working agreements' negotiated in the present. When I asked

'Elliott' how he felt about the efforts t o re-create what happened

with the waste back then he commented:

... they are going t o have an awful time. Because in so many cases the wastes from one tank were flushed into another tank and then flushed back and then mixed up and so whichever tank had the most storage space would get the waste at that time. There is no hope of being very quantitative about it ('Elliott,' Interview, 27 June 1993).

This chapter began by differentiating research and industrial

work-world boundaries as distinct occupational contexts in the

practice of science. This was accomplished by employing

definitions of work-world realities ethnographically in order t o

convey the point of view of 'research' and 'industrial' scientists. It

was asserted that the endeavors of the 1943-1 953 convoy

constituted a form of industrial science. As a means t o

ethnographically convey the work-world and actual practice of

industrial science during the production era at the Hanford Site, an

informal 'working arrangement' is examined between a group of

geologists requiring information and the operators who generate the

information by virtue of their occupational capacities. It was

demonstrated that this 'working arrangement' was devised in order

t o negotiate official information channels and regulations in order

t o get the job of science accomplished at a production nuclear

facility. The following chapter extends this analysis by examining

credibility implications of institutionalized codes of secrecy at a

production nuclear facility from the point of view of the 1943-1 953

convoy.

CHAPTER FIVE

CREDIBILITY: RECOUNTING A TRAJECTORY

The emphasis has changed, but I've been out since 1978 and as your memory dims and your contacts change you are further and further away from the stuff. All I have left is the newspaper really, and a little gossip among people that still work there ('Charles Franke,' Interview, 28 June 1993)

The contexts of the work-world within which 'Elliott' and his fellow

geologists negotiated a 'working-arrangement' with nuclear waste

disposal operators is a culturally constituted, and occupationally

grounded instance of a practical strategy developed t o traverse the

separation and disconnectedness of work, (cf. e.g., Harper, 1987)

knowledge and practice relating t o one aspect of a nuclear

production facility. The high degree of secrecy that guided

operations through the Manhattan Project was more than a 'policy'

for operations and procedures at the Hanford Site. It framed a

communicative arena that mitigated transitions associated with the

beginnings of the Cold War in the United States, manifest at the

Hanford Site through increased production of plutonium for its

growing nuclear arsenal. These transitions were also templates by

which occupations developed styles and working strategies t o get

the job done. These styles and 'working-arrangements' became

woven into routines that functioned around and with respect t o

'official' written regulations as ways t o accomplish necessary tasks

within designated time frames and institutional constraints. Thus,

'working-arrangements' were developed through the processes

involved with the daily rigors of operations and the difficulties

associated with rigid codes of secrecy and data classification were

often circumvented out of necessity. By contrast, administrators

and bureaucrats who designed these policies were not faced with the

difficulties associated with the translation of their policies into

the realm of action and production. Relatedly, accountability for the

facilities at Hanford was dealt with internally and through

government regulatory channels that were often not a part of public

discourse and, accordingly, did not enter the public consciousness.

When interviews for the present thesis were conducted in

1993 much water had indeed flowed under the Vernita Bridge where

the Columbia River enters the Hanford Site. The Cold War was over,

and suddenly the DOE had decided t o 'officially' alter its game plan

and began t o release formerly classified information relating t o

operations, policies and procedures at the facility. As Gerber notes,

"The last days of February 1986 were shocking ones. The DOE

(successor t o the AEC) released nineteen thousand pages of

documents on the history of the Hanford Site" (1 992b: 201 ).

The convoy of 1943-1 953 had spent their work lives at a

facility that was insulated from public criticism and the spotlight

that often results from intense critical probing and questioning

about accidents and events. Writing further on this phenomenon,

Gerber observed, "the community grief process proceeded through all

of the roller-coaster emotions of shock and denial, fear,

powerlessness and despair" (1 992b: 201 ; see Appendix TWO)?

Gerber's comments certainly resonated with the messages and

official proclamations which entered public discourse. However,

from an ethnographic perspective her observations failed t o bring us

a sense of the lived significance of these 'revelations' in terms of

local contexts of meaning already accustomed to the stigma

attached t o their way of life and locality. Specifically, she failed

to, "make the public message intelligible in terms of private

conversations- and not the other way around" (A.P. Cohen, 1982: 8).

From this vantage point, I would like to begin by identifying some of

the ways in which discontinuities in the hegemony which

legitimated the Cold War, and insulated the Hanford Site, are

conveyed through the perspectives of the 1 943- 1 9 53 convoy.

The Long and Damaging Silence of the AEC

Recounting a trajectory of any contemporary public issue is an

endeavor which often involves participants and observers on all

sides who find themselves, "increasingly pressed to defend or resist

claims to this or that interpretation of the past" (Lowenthal, 1990:

302). This is often especially the case when issues involve

reputations, and the re-examination of the historical record. As I

argue below, one way in which responsibility and credibility is

negotiated for production era professionals among the convoy of

1943-1 953 is by speaking about the Atomic Energy Commission

(AEC), from 1947 t o 1975 (Gerber, 1992a: vi) the government

oversight agency at the Hanford Site.

'Ted', a radiobiologist who arrived at Hanford in 1952, refers

t o the AEC when he discusses public reactions to the nuclear

industry in general:

... you see, there was an overlay of rather dictatorial and nonsensical attitudes in the AEC that were totally unrealistic and not helpful in research. And that kind of attitude is partially why the public has become so suspicious, because things were not discussed and they were not released they were held close t o the chest ... They tried t o keep things too tightly locked, and that is unrealistic. Consequently, while everybody knew that atomic energy was a great boon to mankind, because of the attitude of the AEC you have had this tremendous public reaction ('Ted,' Interview, 1 0 August 1 993).

The origins of contemporary public issues regarding Hanford's

past are also discussed in terms of the development of nuclear

knowledge in general. The observations made by 'Ted' above relate to

the period after the initial groundbreaking work had been done

regarding the creation of knowledge essential t o regulate a

production nuclear facility. During and continuing for some time

after the Manhattan Project at the Hanford Site, there was neither

accessibility t o knowledge nor logistical opportunity for an

oversight agency to develop in tandem with a mode of production

based on technology never before implemented on a scale of such

magnitude. Writing on the relationship between technological

development and its regulation, Rudig notes:

The AEC had thus t o contend with enormous uncertainties. From the beginning, the AEC had never had the resources and expertise t o evaluate applications independently of the parties who had an interest in them. Increasingly, the AEC became dependent on the information provided by the utilities and manufacturers themselves. Safety assessment was largely subservient t o the dominant AEC and industrial interests in accelerated nuclear development (1 993: 21).

In the case of the Hanford Site, the development of the AEC as an

oversight agency resembled a protective membrane which grew

around the facility, insulated it, and controlled information flows by

classifying and segregating data and reports. In some respects, the

convoy of 1943-1 953 feels that their own efforts were ultimately

used against the best interests of the facility, the public and the

environment, as procedures and knowledge developed t o understand

and solve problems they encountered became tools with which

credibility was ultimately jeopardized. 'George Watson' comments

on the progression of this situation:

... most people who are oldtimers of the area would still defend most of the work that went on. We have been criticized a lot and of course the rules have changed considerably since we have started. For most of us, the AEC didn't make the rules for us, we made the rules for the AEC, we made rules so they could then turn around and apply them back t o us. The AEC didn't have the capability at the time. They have since hired a good number of the contractor people and they have improved their expertise t o a considerable extent. Nothing like it was originally ('George Watson,' Interview, 1 April 1993).

'Charles Franke', a health physics chemist who arrived at

Hanford in 1944, expands the field of analysis by including the

general enterprise of science in his criticism of the AEC's policies.

Through his comments we may begin t o grasp how the best interests

of the facility, the public and the environment might have been

compromised on a more significant level. By severely limiting the

flow and interchange of information with other researchers in

relevant fields both 'on-site' and 'off-site' the enterprise of science

was in question:

... specialization and compartmentalization were compounded by this air of secrecy and that was unscientific. Science really advances normally on the exchange of information. Through the history of science there have been outbursts and usually it occurs at times when communication improves or transportation

improves enough that they can get together ('Charles Franke,' Interview, 28 June 1993).

The changes which occurred in the relations between

professionals and their governmental oversight agency speak t o

issues of professional control of work, conceptions of how science

should be approached, and encroachment upon occupational identities

forged during the structured chaos of the Manhattan Project at the

Hanford Site. 'George Watson' recounts the years at the Hanford Site

prior t o the presence of the AEC impinging upon the work-world:

... for the first ten years or so everybody felt really pretty good about working at Hanford. About that time came the shift when the AEC went from being the fair-haired part of the government t o a group that really caught criticism. Since that time the AEC and those that followed have really been on the defensive and I think it is still that way ('George Watson,' Interview, 22 July 1993).

The failure of the AEC t o address the public about its nuclear

programme has had a number of consequences. 'Ted' sums up the

feedback he has received from his children regarding the AEC's style

of conduct at the Hanford Site:

... my children tend t o give us hell for being such poor public relations people ('Ted,' Interview, 10 August 1993).

In addition t o intergenerational responses t o years of

administrative secrecy at the Hanford Site, scientists also

encountered instances in which they must have wondered about the

practicality of extra efforts t o keep the lid on information:

... we had been doing some studies on the Columbia River and wanted t o report river temperatures. We were absolutely forbidden t o report any river temperatures because they were indicative of what production levels [of plutonium] were. And it had been shown that you really could not get good temperature

readings, so we had been going through this hassle on this particular scientific paper trying t o get release for reporting river temperature relevant t o fish life. Well about that time one of our group was flying over from Seattle on a public carrier, and along as they were coming t o the edge of Hanford the pilot points out the reservation and talks about the plumes40 and so forth as steam was coming off the basin and says, 'yeah, those heat up the river.' And he gave the amount in rise in river temperature that they caused in the river and they were very, very accurate numbers that he was using ('Ted,' Interview, 10 August 1993).

The reputation that had developed with professionals regarding

the AEC's penchant for secrecy took on a different dimension when it

was combined with the interests of its primary contractor. 'Elliott'

offers an example that demonstrates how thin the veil of secrecy

and classification was t o many who worked at the facility:

... I went to a staff meeting one time and the manager started talking about an event that had just taken place. Some people had bought some equipment and found that a washer, an insulating washer, was absent so that somebody using that piece of equipment could have got a severe electrical shock. Somebody asked the manager which manufacturer had made this. The manager hmmed and hawed and said it was not really important. Just then a fellow says, 'well for christ sakes 'Karl', why don't you just admit it was GE that made it' ('Elliott,' Interview, 3 April 1993).

Institutionalized codes of secrecy also fueled a form of

administrative procrastination. With little incentive t o change a

situation maintained through the tight control of information, the

AEC is viewed by the convoy of 1943-1 953 as contributing t o the

failure t o anticipate that the shroud of secrecy would, at some

point, be lifted in a context of increased public access and concern.

'Elliott' connects this point t o Gusfield's (1 981 : 12) discussion of

ownership and disownership by noting that the handling of

information in the past affects the DOE'S ability t o exercise an

important aspect of public problems - the sale:

... so they are finding out they are having a difficult time t o tell their story. People are reluctant t o believe what they are told and are reluctant t o permit activities that could have been sold if a more complete story had been available ('Elliott,' 21 March 1993).

'George Watson,' a principle engineer in chemical processing

and radiation protection, focuses his analysis of contemporary

problems of credibility on the way in which the AEC handled the

information it did release:

I think one of the real problems was the secrecy of the place. They would, after being forced, let out a little bit of information and that letting out a little bit was never the complete story. And then they would be forced a little bit more and then they would have t o let out a little bit more information and it just made them look kind of bad ('George Watson,' Interview, 22 July 1993).

In a similar fashion t o the strategies developed as 'working-

arrangements' by production operators and scientists,

administrators in the AEC were faced with conducting their

activities in the web of secrecy that they fabricated. After years of

operating in an arena exempt from public scrutiny, dilemmas began

t o surface regarding the dismantling of the security edifice:

... in 1963 there were strong currents going each way. There was a continued pressure for security classification, even of administrative events. On the other hand there were those that were trying t o get the story out, who were concerned about cover-ups that were taking place. At that time I was concerned about security classification of many administrative affairs, covering it up just t o be covering it up. And, I felt that the then AEC [now DOE] had lost a lot of credibility because they had covered up so many events. They were more public relations type

things than criticality, just because the classification covered up the criticism of the appropriate bodies ('Elliott,' 27 June 1993).

Production era professionals of the 1 943- 1 9 5 3 convoy also

draw upon their experiences t o provide commentary that future

stewards of the Hanford Site may find useful:

... the AEC used security as a means of covering up administrative problems that if generally known would have created a lack of credibility. But, viewed in the long term would have had a better perception by the media and by the general lay public. They would have been in a much better position t o have owned up t o a lot of these things earlier. They would have gotten a black eye at the time, but their position in the subsequent years would have been much better ('Elliott,' Interview, 3 April 1993).

'Elliott' goes on t o provide an illustration of this point that

explains, in part, the dramatic increase in public information

regarding contemporary activities at the Hanford Site in the post-

Cold War:

... there would have been a little rough time at the beginning, but they wouldn't have had t o put in nearly the effort that they have had t o in the last few years t o obtain credibility. I have noticed how they now make a big point of it in their publicity. For instance, the supplement in the Tri-City Herald this morning described their waste vitrification program. They make quite a point of telling the public what they have been doing. They make no bones about it ('Elliott,' Interview, 3 April 1993).

In the following section I continue t o explore interpretations

of the Hanford Site from the perspectives of the 1943-1 953 convoy

by examining meanings associated with the contemporary concerns

with a loss of credibility as it is accounted for by transitions

associated with the move from 'productivity' t o 'paperwork.'

From Productivity to Paperwork

The rhetorical (Paine, 1981 ) strategies employed by the convoy

of 1943-1 953 in 1993 t o address the erosion of credibility in terms

of the ramifications of the AEC's policies of security and

classification, place distance between the past and present, and

establish a sense of separate spheres of a work-world that was

inhabited concurrently. Thus, the distinction is made between

scientific work and administrative practice and policy, a point that

is taken further through discussions relating t o the development of

'working-arrangements' devised by scientists t o negotiate

administrative policy, and by identifying consequences t o the AEC's

approach to its oversight capacity. These rhetorical strategies deal

with issues relating t o the erosion of credibility retrospectively. In

this sense, they follow threads of experience into the past by

employing description thereby delineating parameters of work-

worlds by circumscribing the boundaries of these worlds. Carr

places this approach in phenomenological perspective by noting that,

"the retrospective view of the narrator, with its capacity for seeing

the whole in all its irony, is not in irreconcilable opposition t o the

agent's view but is an extension and refinement of a viewpoint

inherent in action itself" (1 986: 61 ). In this section, descriptions of

the spaces of work-worlds are augmented through a form of

narration which recounts temporal dimensions of the progression

from 'productivity t o paperwork'.

'Ted' recounts the transitions associated with conducting

research at the Hanford Site.

Brian Freer: If you were to reflect on your experience out there [at the Hanford Site] as a researcher and biologist conducting studies near a plutonium production plant, do you have any thoughts on that in terms of the research that you have done, and the type of research that you have conducted?

'Ted': I have absolutely very positive remembrances. In fact, at that time it was so much more pleasant t o do research than it is now. Because at that time there was a plant wide mission and if you wanted some help from a guy over in physics or chemistry you could call him up and explain it and he would give you time or help or whatever. And you could work very much as a team as compared t o now, the first thing you have t o ask when you call somebody else for help is, 'what is your cost-code?'41 That is a very, very different kind of approach. And as you are well aware, you have so many environmental papertrails that now it is hell t o cover all of the paperwork that is required ('Ted,' Interview, 10 August 1993).

'Elliott' describes how the research environment became

infused with 'non-researchers' who created additional steps that in

some cases appeared t o curtail the process. His comments also

speak t o the delay in knowledge standardization that allowed the

scientists t o be out in front of oversight agencies and regulations

until they caught up with the learning curve:

... initially there was some start of regulation of course but it didn't really impact us for quite a period of time because we were doing essentially pure research. And there was nobody else that knew any more about it than we did. It happened over a period of years. With GE and then Battelle when they came in, accountants and the legal beagles lawyers- pretty much kept hands off, but ultimately they began t o get stronger and stronger and the organizational policy guys began t o get thicker and thicker and thicker (laughs), ultimately it reached the point where it was hardly worth doing any research because the lawyers and accountants seemed t o find ways t o preclude your doing anything. So sometimes you would say, ' to hell with it' ('Elliott,' Interview 27 June 1993).

Doing research at a production nuclear facility provided the

context in which 'working-arrangements' were negotiated in order t o

produce necessary data t o understand, in the case of the geology

underneath the Hanford Site, how the wastes reacted with the soils.

The pressures of production schedules and the routines that

operations workers developed t o accomplish these tasks were

aspects of the work-world within which scientists addressed

research questions at this facility on a daily basis. However, when

the learning curve was surmounted by regulators at the facility

procedures and policies began t o develop that were often perceived

as detours to the 'real work' that needed t o be accomplished:

Brian Freer: Now sometimes you would say, ' to hell with it.' But sometimes did you find ways of doing things?

'Elliott': Well, sometimes we would go about doing it without notifying anybody. If we knew that certain information had t o be obtained t o answer a question often times we would go ahead and get the information, i f it wasn't a big job, without going through our management. Because we knew that management or the lawyers would probably say, 'no you can't do it.' But we would go ahead and do it anyhow. We would just keep quiet and be careful ('Elliott,' Interview, 27 June 1993).

'Joe' refers back t o the time when GE was the primary

contractor in order to convey his thoughts on the increase in

regulations. His comments speak t o the separate lines of

development that the growth of regulatory agencies took in relation

t o types of scientific knowledge and working strategies that they

sought to control and monitor. In particular, his observations

provide commentary on the forms of organizational structure within

which scientific knowledge was compartmentalized and separated in

order for agencies t o create a sense of control. Additionally, around

'Joe's' narrative is woven the theme of the interconnectedness of

knowledge regarding the emerging field of production nuclear

science that the 1943-1 953 convoy pioneered:

... a lot of the dilution of responsibility grew from the top down. Government imposed all the environmental regulations. EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] has someone who is in charge of this environmental concern and someone who is in charge of that environmental concern, and somebody else who is in charge of still another environmental concern. For example, you've got radioactivity, and you've got chemicals. There are all these organizations that are set up t o deal with different pieces and in some cases they operate independently of each other and you've got a big wide organizational spreadout horizontally. The government contractors' organizations reflect this type of organization. Before, the organization was more direct with clear lines up and down. At one time I remember GE saying there should be no more than seven supervisors between the lowest guy on the job and the top man in the company ('Joe,' Interview, 21 July 1993).

One theme which emerges from 'Joe's' narrative is the notion

that in the formative years at the Hanford Site, individuals were

held accountable for their actions and therefore were vested with

more responsibility. The gradual dilution of responsibility

identified by 'Joe' is attributed, in part, t o the increase in rules,

regulations and procedures that increased the level of complexity

and paperwork t o levels that seemed unproductive. As these new

forms of administrative procedure became institutionalized and

encoded, the perception among the convoy of 1943-1953 was that it

resembled the 'burgeoning bureaucracy':

... when we got here we used to be able t o do things without a lot of paperwork. We had rules and regulations and we had work

permits and you were trained in radiation work and were supposed to know what you were doing. GE had a philosophy which did not allow work by committee. Every job had a written job description which spelled out accountability, responsibility and authority to go along with it. And they made it stick, they gave people authority. When I wanted something done I knew who to go to and he was not afraid to sign a piece of paper. He didn't have t o get fourteen other signatures t o go with it ('Joe,' Interview, 21 July 1993).

'Joe', the only research participant employed full-time during

fieldwork in 1993, contrasts this scenario with the contemporary

situation at the Hanford Site:

... now what we have are people who, in my opinion, are afraid to make a decision without covering themselves. So now, if you get a piece of paper and it has got fourteen signatures on it, it still may have errors in it and the signatures do not mean it is correct. It passed by fourteen desks is all it means. The responsibility is diluted ('Joe,' Interview 21 July 1993).

The dilution of individual responsibility that 'Joe' associates

with the increase in regulation procedures is a way of speaking

about the transitions involved with the change in official mission of

the Hanford Site from production of plutonium t o the cleanup of the

environment. In the wake of these transitions, the sense of

accomplishment and pride which many scientists have for their

tenure at the facility emerges as being tightly connected to the

sense of contributing t o the general national defense through

production of plutonium:

... when you prepare an Environmental Impact Statement all you have is a piece of paper. You have no product you can sell. There is no product to enhance the gross national product. So this environmental paperwork is not productive. Besides cutting down all the trees you need for the paper ('Joe,' Interview 12 August 1993).

The transition from production to cleanup was officially set in

motion in 1989 through the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and

Consent Order? As Gerber notes, this agreement brought about

official pronouncements from Washington, D.C. which indicated a,

"'fundamental change in priorities' within the chain of weapons

production, with greatly augmented emphasis on health and safety

and the environment" (1 992b: 21 0, citing Seattle Times, June 28,

1989).

With the advent of these events, the presence of the post-Cold

War was beginning t o be felt at the Hanford Site. However, for the

convoy of 1 943-1 953, interviewed in 1 993, these transitions were

not viewed as startling revelations, they seemed to follow in logical

progression the trajectory of the decrease in public trust

surrounding the nuclear industry. Further, these transitions take on

a degree of poignancy when they are considered as representations

of the completion of the challenges associated with the Manhattan

Project and the Cold War. Challenges which interfaced with the

realms of science, engineering and research in an attempt t o harness

nuclear energy towards a common goal, and common enemy. The

post-Cold War has ushered in a sense of uncertainty that is

conspicuously without a geo-political threat. The absence of these

dimensions from the Hanford scene provide a conceptual backdrop by

which efforts to assess and the environmental consequences of the

arms race associated with the Cold War are attributed a low level of

status.

'Joe' articulates this point by noting that when nothing is

produced it is a net drain on resources as opposed t o stimulating the

economy:

... when you write an Environmental Impact Statement you have a piece of paper for a regulatory agency, it is not a product you can sell. It is not an invention that you can patent and/or use through a license and start making something. It doesn't provide jobs for anybody else other than paper pushers, who might say, 'well you didn't do this right and you have got t o do this.' Or the staff regulatory agency stays employed because they have got t o read this stuff and call you back on it, and you have got t o redo it again. There is no product that goes to the marketplace ('Joe,' Interview, 1 2 August 1993).43

At the dawn of the nuclear age, as it was experienced at the

Hanford Site, the future of the emerging industry seemed t o be

unbounded by limitations. A number of points were in its favor

through its connection t o the advancement of America's increasingly

global interests of capital and military, its potential as a

commercial and domestic energy source, and the pathway t o

scientific knowledge that it embodied. The assessment and

management of the consequences of this programme at the Hanford

Site hold, in the words of a chemical engineer:

... a restricted future application because it does not result in profits. You don't produce anything, and you do not have a product. Let us be sure we do not demean it too much, you do gain skills in how things are done environmentally, in terms of what you can and can't do. But whether you can do them or not is largely political ('Charlie,' Interview, 6 April 1 993).

Additionally, 'Charlie', who arrived in 1948 with a Ph.D. in

chemical engineering, had this t o say when he was asked t o comment

on the Hanford Site as a place of future employment for young

chemical engineers entering the job market:

... I do not think it is a good place for getting practical chemical engineering experience. This cleanup thing is just not broad enough based. It is too political for one thing, and I think it is extremely narrow with respect t o applications. So, and I have told other people this, I've said, 'I'm glad I am not looking for a job at Hanford today.' Because I just don't see it as a place where 1 could enhance my skills in a practical way ('Charlie,' 6 April 1993).

'Charlie's' commentary on the future of the environmental

cleanup also speaks t o the considerations of career and longterm

employment:

... a young professional would look at this and say, 'where do I go from here?' They talk about all this being cleaned up in 30 years. Well, if I came here at the age of 22 in 30 years I will be 52, or even younger than that because the last technical part of this will probably be done in the last ten years and where do I go from here? ('Charlie,' Interview, 6 April 1993).

In this chapter I have examined how the convoy of 1943-1 953

accounts for the general loss of credibility concerning the Hanford

Site. This thematic was approached through an analysis of the ways

in which responsibility is rhetorically assigned, temporally and

spatially, regarding the perceived decline in credibility. Production

era professionals identified the government oversight agency (AEC)

and the gradual move from 'productivity t o paperwork' as primary

components in the erosion of credibility. The next chapter continues

on this general theme by examining radiation protection as a

specific element of the discourse of credibility at Hanford. The

analysis presented examines the reputation of Herbert M. Parker, a

primary figure in radiation protection at the Hanford Site, from the

perspectives of the 1 943-1 953 convoy.

CHAPTER SIX

THE FIGURE OF HERBERT M. PARKER

Technological developments have in recent years attracted increasing criticism, rejection and public protest. Nuclear technologies have been among the most prominent subjects of such adverse reactions (Rudig, 1 993: 1 7).

The erosion of legitimation surrounding large-scale scientific and

technological enterprises, while introducing a critical element into

discussions surrounding these endeavors, has, in many cases,

increased new forms of categorical acceptances and dismissals of

claims t o knowledge in this area. This section explores this

phenomena in terms of the Hanford context through analysis of

'nuclear discourse' with the 1943-1 953 convoy which confronts a

loss of credibility by speaking about the figure of Herbert M. Parker

and his career in public radiation protection at the Hanford Site.

Viewed from an ethnographic perspective, two points may be

noted for social analysis concerned with responses t o criticism due

t o a lack of credibility. First, past practices and policies are

investigated and new proposals must heed new levels of scrutiny.

Second, opportunities t o diminish the communicative distance

between the fields of science and technology and interested publics

often remain unsaid and unformulated. Ethnography, in particular

oral historical analysis, may address these themes by giving written

expression to ways of thinking that often do not make the transition

into the public realm. For production era professionals of the 1943-

1953 convoy, public scrutiny and criticism of the past has

conditioned a sense of stigma comprising a cultural reference point

which shapes understandings of the present.

Discourses of Technological Controversy: 'Proximity To', 'Alienation From ' and 'Trans-Science '

This section seeks t o demonstrate the contemporary

significance of ethnographic research on occupational social

identity located in scientific and technological knowledge cultures.

This is accomplished by employing Rudig's (1 993) argument

regarding limitations of the human capacity to make assessments of

large and technologically complex systems as a point of departure.

This position is developed with respect to the relatively recent

widespread acceptance of the social constructivist approach t o

examining scientific and technological risks and problems (H.

Collins, 1987; Latour, 1987; Pinch and Bijker, 1987; Barker and

Peters, 1993; Macgill, 1993; Knorr-Cetina, 1 995; Watson-Verran and

Turnbull, 1995). In light of these insights, social analysis of

knowledge cultures and their allegiances takes on a newfound

relevance in the face of mounting evidence (Weinberg, 1972; Hafele,

1974; H. Collins, 1988; Sagan, 1993) which points to the probability

that the content of many of these controversies may be "beyond

human understanding and thus incalculable" (Rudig, 1993: 27).

I begin by outlining Rudig's thesis on "sources of technological

controversy" (1 993: 1 7) as a means to develop the position that

ethnography has a significant contemporary obligation t o examine

forms of occcupational social identity and trajectories of

allegiences with respect to 'trans-science' public problems. One

such area of scientific discourse which offers an illustration of a

'trans-science' public problem concerns the nexus of scientific

advice and institutional pressure regarding radiation release into

the environment from the Hanford Site. This 'trans-science' public

problem is examined ethnographically through an analysis of the

reputation of Herbert M. Parker, a central figure in radiation

protection at the Hanford Site, from the point of view of the 1943-

1953 convoy as a modest substantive example of mediated social

identity and professional allegiances regarding a public problem.

Addressing the literature on social policy, in particular that

pertaining to scientific advice t o policy makers, Rudig (1 993)

identifies two theoretical perspectives which attempt to explain

differences in scientific and technological thought. Drawing upon

the work of H. Collins, Rudig identifies an approach he designates

the 'proximity to' thesis which holds that, "certainty about natural

phenomena ... tends t o vary inversely with proximity to the scientific

work" (H. Collins, 1988: 726, quoted in Rudig, 1993: 19). According

t o the 'proximity to' thesis, those closest t o the actual processes of

experimentation are the least confident of scientific and

technological knowledge. As H. Collins goes on to note, "distance

from the cutting edge of science is the source of what certainty we

have" (1 988: 726, quoted in Rudig, 1 993: 1 9). Rudig contrasts this

with a perspective he terms the 'alienation from' thesis, "a number

of studies have shown that members and supporters of protest

movements against nuclear technology are generally employed in the

non-industrial service sector, such as education and the arts, or

stand outside the formal economy altogether" (Lowe and Rudig,

1986, quoted in Rudig, 1993: 19). Viewed from this perspective,

variations in positions on controversial scientific and technological

issues may be attributed to estrangement from the " 'inside'

experience" (Rudig, 1993: 19) of scientific work.

Rather than attempting a synthesis of these competing

perspectives at this apparent impasse, Rudig uses Weinberg's (1 972)

notion of 'trans-science' t o illustrate their surprising similarity.

As Rudig notes, 'trans-science' is a modern predicament

characterized by the realization that "nuclear power technology

cannot be defaulted on an experimental basis. Any experiments

conducted on, say, the adequacy of nuclear reactor safety features

can try to approach, but never achieve, full operational conditions"

(1 993: 25). Rudig goes on to point out that, thus informed, "nuclear

energy could be defaulted only on the level of rejecting the logic of

'trans-science' itself" (1 993: 25). If we are t o agree with Weinberg

(1 972) for a moment that scientific and technological controversies

are, t o varying degrees, of a 'trans-science' nature, they become

transformed into objects of the social, as opposed t o the scientific,

domain of judgment, rendering "'proximity t o science' and 'alienation

from technology' synonymous" (Rudig, 1993: 27). At this juncture it

should be clear that ethnography has a crucial role to play in helping

to understand dimensions of social identity in contexts of

professional support and dissent of 'trans-science' controversies.

To remain on this point briefly, while Rudig may indeed be correct

that 'trans-science' renders the 'proximity to' and 'alienation from'

dichotomy synonymous, it should be pointed out that no matter how

close or far away one is from the conduct of science, its subject

matter must be both generated and communicated to others in order

for it to exist (Gusfield, 1976). Put another way, if those 'alienated

from' the scientific enterprise began creating knowledge bases

(which some indeed have) they would encounter constraints

embedded in the practice of science and communication of science.

Herbert M. Parker as Industrial Researcher and 'Trans- Scientist '

Downey and Lucena (1 995: 171) note that industrial

researchers often "find themselves to be neither scientists nor

engineers yet both at the same time." Herbert M. Parker's tenure of

employment at Hanford fits squarely within Downey and Lucena's

definition of the industrial researcher (cf. Reich, 1983). Quite

often, Mr. Parker and others underneath his direction in radiation

protection at Hanford, would be faced with simultaneous requests

for scientific data, design improvments on existing equipment, and

justifications for the funding of research projects intended t o

answer the very questions asked of them. This predicament, in and

of itself, would have challenged even the most agile of managers, a

situation which was compounded by the fact that the field of

radiation protection was in its infancy during the early years of

operations at Hanford (Kathren, 1980; Kathren, Baalman, and Bair,

1986).

When production era professionals speak about radiation

protection at the Hanford Site, the figure of Herbert M. Parker

(1 91 0-1 984) is often invoked, which suggests the significance the

convoy of 1943-1 953 has attached t o his tenure at the facility.

Born in Accrington, England, he received a Master of Science degree

in physics from the University of Manchester in 1931 and from

1932-1938 he was a staff researcher at the Holt Radium lnstitute in

Manchester where he investigated, "scientific aspects and

application of radiotherapy for malignancies" (Kathren, Baalman, and

Bair, 1986: xiv). In 1938 the top-secret Manhattan Project was a

few short years from beginning to assemble a core group of

researchers and Herbert M. Parker was offered a position in the

United States at the Swedish Hospital Tumor lnstitute in Seattle.

At Swedish Hospital Parker was in charge of "radiological physics"

(Kathren, Baalman, and Bair, 1986: xvi) under the guidance of Simon

T. Cantril for only 4 years when Cantril, who had been asked t o

direct the radiation protection program at the Clinton Laboratories

in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, called for Parker t o join him as "Chief of

the Physical Measurements Section of the Health Division" (Kathren,

Baalman, and Bair, 1986: xvii). In a prime example of the

intersection of biography and history (Mills, 1959: 6), Parker was

asked t o depart from Oak Ridge to head implementation of the

radiation protection program at the Manhattan Project's plutonium

production facility at Hanford and he did so in the summer of 1944

(Gerber, 1992b: 48; Kathren, Baalman, and Bair, 1986: xviii). Parker

was head of health physics until 1956 when he took charge of the

entire Hanford Laboratories, a position he held until the operations

contract t o manage the entire facility held by the General Electric

Company was diversified into separate production and research

contracts in 1965. He remained as a full-time consultant t o

Battelle Memorial Institute, the company in charge of the newly

diversified research laboratories, until 1 97 1 . The erosion of legitimation surrounding large-scale scientific

and technological enterprises noted by Rudig (1 993) above found

expression with respect to the Hanford Site as the Cold War began to

dissipate. Commenting on the processes involved with beginning t o

assess the legacies of wartime historical pasts Powers notes,

"when wars end the belligerents begin t o speak and write about what

happened - indeed, their willingness to tell the truth is one sign that

the fighting is really over" (1 994: 10). At Hanford, as Gerber points

out, "the last days of February 1986 were shocking ones. The DOE

(successor to the AEC) released nineteen thousand pages of

documents on the history of the Hanford Site" (1 992b: 201 ). In the

midst of the hundreds of cubic feet of documents lay written

fragments which allowed the public t o recast previously unverified

concerns about radiation releases from the production nuclear

facility and waste storage site located in southeast Washington

State. Federally funded studies were commissioned beginning in

1 9 88 (e.g . , Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project;

Hanford Thyroid Disesase Study), the media spotlight began to

search into Hanford's past in the absence of the hegemony of Cold

War ideology, and almost fifty years of production activities began

to percolate into the public consciousness after years of offical

silence and unqualified assurances.

Within this context, the 1943-1 953 convoy of production era

professionals interviewed in 1993 faced public criticism of

operations policies and activities which had until then portrayed

Hanford, through their efforts, as "the workhorse of the nation's

defense effort" (Gerber, 1992b: 202). In this sense these

professionals reflected upon career experiences in a shadow of

public scrutiny and "find themselves grappling with ambiguities

engendered by their double location as both objects and

representatives of corporate power" (Downey and Lucena, 1995:

167). For example, at Hanford the primary mission during the

production era was t o produce plutonium. Professionals who worked

with Mr. Parker in radiation protection were saddled with the

tenuous mandate of determining how much radioactivitiy could be

safely released during the processes t o chemically separate the

plutonium. In what may appear at first glance t o the uninitiated as

an exercise in futility, Mr. Parker was given an institutional

authority t o monitor, regulate and control operations activities

based upon his determination of acceptable limits regarding

occupational, public and environmental radiation levels.

'Joe,' a radiation protection specialist who commenced

employment at Hanford in 1948, offers these insights which begin to

show us how Herbert Parker went about this complex task:

... Parker impressed me and other people I've talked to. Being British he had a dry sense of humor and seemed to be a little bit stern and stuffy. Either he mellowed or we got t o know him better and he seemed t o change t o where he came across as a pretty nice guy ... he was intelligent, knew the English language and could always choose exactly the right word when he wanted t o convey a certain meaning. And he always wrote beautiful reports and letters which had words in there that noted that "this may not be the final answer, as we learn more about this business it will be subject t o change." He never gave the impression that it was locked in concrete. When he said something people

respected him well enough that they would usually do what he thought was correct.

Brian Freer: There is a certain amount of respect that he commanded through his actions. It seems that he didn't say, "you have t o respect me because I'm in this position." People respected him for what he did.

'Joe': Just the physical image of the man was enough, he had a presence. When he came into a room or a meeting you knew that he was a knowledgable and authorative person almost just by looking at him. After you heard him talk and you worked with him for a while you realized your initial impression was true.

Brian Freer: So the whole package worked out.

'Joe': He was just the perfect person in my mind for the job that he had here at Hanford. He was ideal. And for a long time, we were out in the forefront, I think, of radiation safety, environmental monitoring and things like that ('Joe,' Interview, 12 August 1993).

'Joe's' comments provide an insight into the importance of the

development of an appearance of professional competence in the

field of radiation protection and control at a facility that was

geared t o produce nuclear products for the nation's growing arsenal.

Additionally, 'Joe' begins to sketch out the occupational dimensions

of power experienced by industrial researchers in contexts

characterized in terms of "ambiguities engendered by their double

location" (Downey and Lucena, 1995: 167). Picking-up on this theme,

'Charles Franke' describes how Herbert Parker managed the 'double

location' that encumbered his position as a senior-level Hanford

manager:

... [there were] two sides of Herb Parker. One was that he was a great advocate of Hanford, that we were indeed doing things right. He appeared before a congressional committee and did a great job.

One of the great stories is of Herb Parker appearing before this congressional committee and telling them how safe things were done here. The other side is that Herb was always raising cain out here backing up his radiological protection people that were finding things wrong and/or experiments that should be done and getting money t o run experiments to find out. He was a constant proponent for improvement, at the same time he was going t o Washington [DC] and saying how great things were. He is not a two-faced guy, but that was his job. He was doing both very well. In fact so well that in the early days of the Hanford Lab. Herb Parker was made the head of that organization, which had a much broader scope on things. The Hanford Labs. had a much broader scope than just radiation protection. Herb was the most logical choice for that position ('Charles Franke,' Interview, 28 June 1993).

Focusing upon the 'double location' of the industrial researcher

as radiation protection engineer at Hanford through the reputation of

Herbert M. Parker allowed the convoy of 1943-1953 t o convey their

interpretations of the constant negotiation that occured between

professional values and institutional forces. Social analysis

concerned t o explore dimensions of the notion that "professionals

may have values that conflict fundamentally with the requirements

of their public jobs" (Peters, 1989: 277) must concern itself t o

"make the public message intelligible in terms of private

conversations- and not the other way around" (A.P. Cohen, 1982: 8).

Most certainly the nature of modern professional work in

bureaucracies is, by its very nature, a child of conflicts. This point

takes on a special relevance for ethnography when we return to our

earlier position, which asserted a contemporary obligation for

social analysis t o examine 'trans-science' public problems as they

are mediated through professional identities. The task of the

ethnographic approach is t o unfold interpretations of the meanings

behind the apparent conflicts and the strategies that industrial

researchers like Herbert M. Parker devised to achieve designated

production targets while staying within established safety limits

and cultivating professional allegiances.

'George Watson,' an engineer in radiation protection, discussed

the 'double location' of radiation protection in these terms:

... Herb had a great philosophy and he really instilled it throughout Hanford. You don't hear much criticism of him from Hanford. You'll hear criticism based on things that happened ... In one instance he allowed a 200 area program because they were desparately short of tank space. And they didn't have any new tank farms coming on line. So he did a study, or had some of his people do a study, which did an analysis of the use of soil columns for storage [of radioactive wastes]. But you have t o realize that he was under tremendous pressure from the military. Because the military was just clamoring for more nuclear weapons and they were putting pressure on the AEC and so Parker worked out a system that, in the end, didn't work out too bad.

Brian Freer: In terms of pressure that he was feeling from outside?

'George Watson': It could be that they would have just pushed him aside if he hadn't went along, it could have been, I don't know that. Because the military had the power ('George Watson,' Interview, 22 July 1993).

'George Watson' continues on this theme by conveying the

pressures which came t o bear on the field of radiation protection at

the Hanford Site through his career experience:

... I can remember a lot of pressure. One night I was out at a dance and I got a call from my boss. He asked, "how come they set the shift exposure [shift exposure is the maximum permissable dose of ionizing radiation allowed t o a worker per shift] at this on days and tighter when they are on swing shift?" He knew the story about how people working in different locations handle

things a little differently. But he just wanted to show that he was aware and he looked into it carefully. So I went over something that he knew already. But he was in a position to say that he had checked into it. We were forever fighting that problem ('George Watson,' Interview, 22 July 1993).

The abstract sense of 'pressure' became much more tangible

when it involved a specific piece of machinery integral t o

operations:

... in the 200 area, in most of the facilities the crane is the heart of operations and they cannot operate without it. It is what they use for repairs, and the crane in the Redox44 in particular caused a lot of trouble. We were having exposure problems on the crane one time and when they went up to steam clean it, they burned out all the motors on the crane and they had t o go get all the electricians they could and rewind all the motors.

Brian Freer: Were those motors up very high?

'George Watson': Oh yes, they were up. And there are a lot of them. You have several hoists and power hooks. But boy they put pressure on us t o get that back in order, this was the mid-fifties. The operations people had the attitude of, "look, don't you hold us back." But one thing, we got very good backing all the way down the line. Back to Parker if you had to, but I never had t o go anyplace.

Brian Freer: What do you mean by, "I never had t o go anyplace?"

'George Watson': They always would do what I thought they should do.

Brian Freer: Would you say that some of this would hinge on the fact that Herb Parker commanded respect?

'George Watson': Oh man yes. There is no question about that. A lot of people in the early days that worked for Parker didn't like him and tried t o get out from underneath him and into operations. This happened for two reasons, operations was the place to go for promotions and that sort of thing and Parker could be pretty tough to work for ('George Watson,' Interview, 22 July 1993).

The occupational experience of the 'pressures' associated with

the escalation of the Cold War was often interpreted by

professionals in the field of radiation protection as an accepted

aspect of 'larger good' they were performing in the service of the

national interests. Although justified on the more general level of

the national interests, the process by which local practices were

recast as professional allegiances may be attributed, in part, t o the

respect given Herbert M. Parker by those whose work fell under his

direction. In 1993 'Joe' had 45 years of continuous employment at

Hanford in radiation protection and offered these comments:

I was in the Health Instruments Department under Herb Parker. HI seldom had any mass layoffs. Parker seemed to be able t o plan pretty well ahead ... In fact, when they started shutting down the production reactors in the '60s he had an information meeting with his employees and said, "not t o worry, already 70% of the research in our Department is non-production research." He had been planning this for years ('Joe,' Interview, 21 July 1993).

The development of professional loyalty also seemed t o stem

from Mr. Parker's ability t o implement a definition of the work-

world which addressed professional concerns and production

demands through the concept of safety:

... [the reactor operators would say] "if you want us t o operate that way then fine, we'll do it." Herb Parker probably had something to do with that. That is the philosophy that was installed; safety was great with GE [General Electric]. If you had a safety concern it was addressed. Parker had a safety council meeting each month, if you were assigned to that group you participated regardless of your level in the organization. For example, someone might have said, "well there is a big chip out of the sidewalk in the 300 Area and somebody is going t o trip over that." Or they could mention, "this streetlight has been out for a week." If you gave a work order to a maintenance person and

wrote on it 'safety concern' they got on the problem. They took care of it right now ('Joe,' Interview, 21 July 1993).

The theme of 'safety' spoken of by 'Joe' is part of the

interpretive basis with which professionals were able t o develop

confidence in their work and allegiances t o Herbert M. Parker's

program. 'George Watson' contrasts the conservative approach

Parker took with that of other nuclear sites:

... Parker was an amazing person. He always felt very strongly that you should limit radiation dose t o the lowest level, even though many times that level would cause no physical damage as far as they could see then. And it was really because of Parker that they lowered the allowable dosage over the years and now everybody uses the 'least amount of exposure possible' principle.

Brian Freer: Was there a bit of a battle fought over this?

'George Watson': There was. I recall some fellas coming [to Hanford] from another site and talking about our exposure control program in the 200 Areas versus their exposure program. They felt that they should work their people right up to the limit, which is exactly the opposite philosophy that we had. If we could do the job with none [exposure] with a little effort that would be the way we would go.

Brian Freer: So these guys had their parameters set and figured they were going to max them out with workers?

'George Watson': That is right. [they thought] "we are not doing our job if we don't use their full allowable exposure ('George Watson,' Interview, 22 July 1 993).

'Joe' continues on this topic by extending his earlier comments

regarding Mr. Parker's astute abilities as a 'planner' t o include

foresight in the establishment of standards for occupational

radiation exposure:

... for a long time regulators limited whole-body external and internal exposure t o workers with separate kinds of limits. Early on the external limit was 15 rem per year. Someone suggested that if the whole body was being exposed maybe there might be synergestic effects.. . . The experts decided t o divide the whole- body by three just to be safe. The whole-body limit has been 5 rem/yr45 up until just now. I believe the DOE is trying to lower the limit t o 2, but it has stayed at 5 for a long time.

Herb Parker was on some of the national and international radiation committees in the early years. He knew that the occupational limit would be lowered from 15 t o 5 eventually. He said, "we are going to 5 rem right now," so before the official reduction was made Hanford was already operating with a limit of 5 rem/yr.

Brian Freer: But he wasn't the manager of the Hanford Site though.

'Joe': He reported directly to the GE manager, W.E. Johnson, for many years, and he carried a lot of weight. I have letters from production people saying, "we want t o relax your iodine limit for such and such brief period and then we would put out three weeks worth of iodine in one week and none for two weeks, or such similar considerations. Herb would say, in essence, "heck no," very politely of course. He would explain his decision by noting, "the limit I had set at that time of 10 curies per week released for all the separations plant is based on annual average meterological conditions and if you do all of this in one lump you might hit a bad period of weather and lead t o exposure we wouldn't like to have" ('Joe,' Interview, 21 July 1993).

The efforts Mr. Parker had undertaken t o execute and maintain

radiological monitoring and control, illustrated so clearly through

'Joe,' were transformed into tragic irony in December 1949. During

that winter month Herbert M. Parker encountered a request for the

suspension of iodine-1 31 release limits in the form of a covert U.S.

Department of Defense/AEC operation which effectively usurped

what authority he had managed t o cultivate at Hanford through his

"double location" (Downey and Lucena, 1995: 167). Although one may

speculate that Mr. Parker responded to this specific 'request' (known

as the 'Green Run' for its use of short-cooled or 'green' reactor fuel)

in writing by suggesting certain parameters be followed, "the

specific reasons for the Green Run are still classified by the U.S.

Department of Defense," (Gerber, 1992b: 9 0 ) 3 However, it is clear

that there was much more behind this operation than demand for

increased output of plutonium.

The 'Green Run' took place in a crucible of Cold War paranoia,

(Boyer, 1985) exacerbated by the detection of the U.S.S.R.'s first

atomic weapons test on 3 September 1949, determined by the U.S.

government's top-secret monitoring system known as AFOAT-1 to

have been detonated on 29 August 1 949 (Ziegler, 1 988: 222).47 AS

U.S. national interests were defined at that moment in history, the

Soviet Union was seen as a threat t o U.S. global atomic dominance.

The verification of the first test of an atomic weapon by the Soviet

Union had come ahead of U.S. intelligence estimates of Soviet

capabilitites, thus "the AEC had assumed that the Soviet's rush to

make atomic weapons was causing them to use short-cooled fuel

(about twenty days out of the reactor). Such 'hot' fuel would be

subject t o detection at considerable distances from the U.S.S.R."

(Gerber, 1992b: 90-91). Ziegler confirms this by noting, "the

Russians accelerated their programme by neglecting to 'age'

radioactive waste from plutonium production" (1 988: 21 8).

Replication of these assumed conditions in the former Soviet Union

conducted experimentally in the Hanford environs enabled the

Department of Defense/AEC t o calibrate instruments and test

monitoring systems designed t o detect the alleged use of 'short-

cooled' fuel in the Soviet nuclear programme. A regional newspaper

ran a story which contained this summation of the 'Green Run',

"reading between the lines, this was the Cold War, and they were

wondering if they could speed up production of plutonium" (Gerber,

1992b: 91; citing Keith Price in the Spokesman Review - Spokane

Chronicle, 6 March 1986: A6, A1 2).

Although written records indicating the specific reasons for

the 'Green Run' remain classified by the U.S. Department of Defense,

the blatant disregard for the consequences, environmental and

social, of this operation in the past have effaced the credibility of

the DOE in the present. 'Charlie,' a retired chemical engineer,

sketches the 1943-1 953 convoy's boundaries of responsibility for

this operation with respect to Herbert M. Parker, and Hanford in

general, by stating:

... I believe Herb Parker, a man whom I didn't like personally but certainly respected in terms of his intellect and reason, objected to the so-called 'Green Run,' at least I'm told this and I believe this, because it was terrifically urgent the way Hanford was suppossed to operate by not properly aging the fuel before it was processed. But the military says we have got to do this. He was overruled by the military. I have nothing but great respect for Herb Parker and his control over health issues at Hanford. He had his head screwed on right, and anybody that tries t o downgrade the quality of the efforts at that time by these kinds of people, I find very repugnant. These guys knew what they were doing. It just carries through all, not only health issues, but engineering and chemistry. The general management of Hanford was, I think, of the highest quality at that time. Any effort t o downgrade this is repugnant. They have disqualified themselves as competent observers and recorders of history ('Charlie,' Interview, 6 April 1993).

This chapter has provided an analysis of the reputation of

Herbert M. Parker, and in so doing explored the issue of

responsibility regarding radiation protection at the Hanford Site,

from the perspectives of the 1943-1 953 convoy. The chapter began

by discussing the notion of 'trans-science' in terms of the work of

Rudig (1 993). It was then asserted that Herbert M. Parker was both

a 'trans-scientist' and industrial researcher by virtue of his

managerial capacity at the Hanford Site in radiation protection.

The reputation of Herbert M. Parker was examined from the

point of view of the 1943-1953 convoy in order to convey an

instance of mediated social identity in a context of public discourse

regarding the issue of radiation protection. Finally, the "double

location" (Downey and Lucena, 1995: 167) of Mr. Parker's position as

an industrial researcher is exemplified by means of an analysis of a

covert operation known as the 'Green Run' which took place at the

Hanford Site in December 1949. By recounting this historical event,

in the context of an examination of the 1943-1 953 convoy's

allegiances to Mr. Parker as a manager and scientist, I provide a

modest substantive demonstration of local and extra-local

boundaries of authority and power at a U.S. government outpost

during the Cold War.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CONCLUSION

Distilled t o its most common feature, ethnography is a written

endeavor. Moments of interaction, instances which provide lasting

impressions and the organization and execution of interviews are all

central t o the craft of ethnography; but each of these aspects must

emerge through the written text in order for the process t o

contribute t o the enterprise of social analysis. Therefore, at the

outset of the conclusion I would like t o note that while I am

responsible for the writing and analysis which comprise the thesis,

I feel compelled t o explicitly state that the contributions of

research participants with regards t o the 'findings' should not be

overlooked, understated nor misrepresented. What I seek t o impart

at this juncture is a sense of the high-degree of competence with

which research participants contributed t o the reflexive interview

process. I might point out that not only does the reflexive interview

process place substantial demands upon research participants, it

also requires them t o develop a conception of a research project

which, during much of the fieldwork, is often frustratingly difficult

t o frame in terms of the question, 'what are we looking for,' in

concrete and specific language.

One of the ramifications of executing a cumulative

ethnographic study, in terms of individual interviews, is that it is

next to impossible t o cleanly and neatly separate and distinguish my

direction of the interviews from that offered by research

participants by way of their insights. As I indicated earlier, no

matter how well research participants guided the project during

interviews, the ethnographic endeavor is ultimately a written

endeavor. With this in mind, I have attempted to write in such a way

that the contributions of research participants emerge through the

analysis. So often during interviews, insights were offered that not

only added to the study in general, but also allowed me t o better

understand the nuances of different contexts. This mutual process

enabled me t o come t o terms with the possibilities and limits of

this project.

Summary o f Thesis Findings

Some of the findings are of a 'methodological' nature. For

example, in the course of writing-up the account I discovered that

the qualitative network sampling procedure had assembled a convoy

of research participants, as opposed to the more quantitative cohort.

Relatedly, my interests in evoking meanings associated with living

adjacent to and working at a production nuclear facility demanded

that the study be approached in terms of career-histories as a

means t o demonstrate the social basis of occupational identity.

Finally, I believe the methods employed t o conduct the research for

the thesis proved t o be an adequate means t o address the challenges

posed with respect t o the aforementioned obligations of

contemporary ethnography to examine allegiances of stakeholders in

scientific and technological controversies in the interest of

diminishing the communicative distance between interested parties.

Chapter Four, "Contexts of Science: Research and Industry"

differentiates these respective scientific work-worlds from the

perspectives of professionals in these distinct occupational

communities. It was argued that a primary means by which research

scientists draw boundaries around their work-worlds is in terms of

openness, or lack of such, in the research process. The thesis

exemplified this distinction with reference t o physicists in

Traweek's (1 988) ethnography, and by contrasting the nature of

Manhattan Project activities at Los Alamos from those at the

Hanford Site.

Industrial scientists, on the other hand, evidenced a sense of

stigma in speaking about their careers. This chapter argues that the

sense of stigma is amplified when considered in relation t o the

feelings of pride and accomplishment with respect t o the mission

they feel was accomplished at Hanford, not only for science in

general, but for their nation.

As a means t o ethnographically demonstrate dimensions of an

industrial science work-world, the thesis explicates a 'working

arrangement' between a group of geologists and operators at the

Hanford Site. Through an examination of this 'working arrangement,'

it is shown how practical strategies were devised by industrial

scientists t o accomplish stated objectives in order t o 'get the job of

science done' at a production nuclear facility.

The thesis is also concerned with the confluence of past and

present as it is understood by the 1943-1 953 convoy. As a means t o

examine this confluence, the thesis examines the specific ways in

which responsibility for the putative decline in credibility is

rhetorically assigned, temporally and spatially, from the point of

view of the 1943-1953 convoy. The AEC was often implicated by the

convoy for precipitating the demise of public trust in the Hanford

Site and the nuclear industry in general. Ubiquitous

institutionalized codes of secrecy, negotiated by the convoy as a

part of professional career-life, were attributed t o the growth of

AEC bureaucracy and to bureaucracy in general. It was noted by

several research participants that a substantial portion of the

credibility problems could have been averted, t o some extent, i f the

AEC, subsequently the DOE, had owned-up instead of covered-up, a t a

much earlier phase of the game.

One of the central issues with respect to credibility at the

Hanford Site concerns radiation release into the environment during

the production era. The sixth chapter examines this issue through

analysis of the reputation of Herbert M. Parker, a central figure in

radiation protection at the Hanford Site, from the perspectives of

the 1943-1 953 convoy. This chapter offers a modest

exemplification of occupational social identity by explicating how

identity is mediated in terms of professional allegiances regarding a

public problem.

Review of Initial Research Questions

The primary concern of the thesis has been an examination of

social identity as it is experienced occupationally in terms of public

issues. The thesis approaches this research question through an

analysis of practical working strategies, and the occupational

contexts in which they originated, as they were employed t o

accomplish stated objectives while negotiating the imposition of

bureaucracy upon the work-world of industrial science.

The growth of bureaucracy is accounted for in terms of the

ways in which it impinged upon and constrained the practice of

science at the Hanford Site. As a means t o examine interpretations

of the trajectory of a burgeoning bureaucracy, research participants

responded t o the general thematic, 'how did things get like this?'

Reflecting upon the confluence of past and present at the Hanford

Site allowed the thesis t o explore meanings associated with the

social experience of occupational stigma and the corresponding

rhetorical assignment of responsibility, from the point of view of

the convoy.

Central t o this mode of analysis is the presupposition that the

conduct of work at a production nuclear facility engendered

significant attachments, loyalties and allegiances with respect t o

the occupational community and public issues focused on Hanford.

Ironically, it seems that institutionalized codes of secrecy which

bounded industrial science work-worlds established contexts within

which the formation of occupational identity occurred by forcing

professionals t o create, devise and execute practical strategies t o

'get the job of science done.' Further, occupational identities at

Hanford are a substantial component of social identity and as such

inform and provide an interpretive foundation for understanding the

historical role of and public issues related t o the facility. The close

relationship between occupational and social identity is a

consequence of the decline of Hanford's credibility and the resultant

stigma experienced by nuclear industry professionals.

Implications for Further Research

The thesis may provide substantive, methodological and

theoretical direction for further research. Substantively, the thesis

should serve to heighten sensitivity t o the interconnections between

institutional contexts and actual practice of professional scientific

work. The significance of this nexus may also enable social analysis

to reconsider the primacy of meaning in the study of public

problems. Specifically, the thesis may contribute to a 'remaking'

(Rosaldo, 1989) of social analysis through its attention t o the

processes associated with the imposition of institutional overlays

on professional life. In particular, the thesis seeks t o unmask the

practice of science and technology by detailing practical working

strategies as a means t o illustrate the experience of bureaucracy

from the point of view of industrial researchers. From this vantage

point, science and technology studies may develop ways to include

the definitions of social realities from the point of view of research

participants in continued investigations. Thus informed, we may

begin t o work towards research strategies that take seriously the

notion that the ways professionals view themselves and the

allegiances they hold are a significant source of understanding with

respect to the self-critical potential of stakeholders in

controversial issues.

The above points must be considered methodologically if they

are to contribute to the practice of 'remaking' (Rosaldo, 1989) social

analysis. Considering the findings of the thesis, it would seem that

the study of controversial 'trans-science' public problems need not

proceed from an overtly confrontational stance with respect t o

research participants. Stated simply, increased sensitivity t o the

experiences of those who have an interest in outcomes and the

construction of the historical record may be a useful point of

departure in attempts t o diminish the distance between social

analysis and the phenomena it seeks to explain. In positioning

analysis of the Indian 'problem' Dyck had these thoughts:

... the most useful contribution I might make would not be t o

his

1 point an accusing finger, but rather to introduce into public discussion a set of considerations that are often overlooked ... or which may in some cases be unknown (1 99 1 : 5).

Theoretically, social analysis of the environment, science and

technology must come t o terms with a world that is much more

complex than previously acknowledged. A primary point t o consider

at this juncture concerns the recognition that social phenomena does

not come 'ready-made' for social analysis. For example, the

historical tendencies of sociological research in this field (e.g.,

attitudinal measurement of environmental issues) must go beyond

traditional investigations of environmental groups and policy-

makers (Bowden, 1994: 243). In this sense, social analysis may

begin to develop approaches which allow for a more complete

understanding of the social construction of public problems.

In conversation with the artist, 15 March 1994.

NOTES

The selection of a chronological point of departure for this account is based upon the career-lives of research participants as they relate to employment at Hanford. Obviously, 'history' did not begin with the advent of the Manhattan Project in Washington State's Columbia Basin in early 1943. Native American bands consider the area annexed by the federal project as their homeland and settlers into the region prior to 1943 experienced dramatic and longlasting social and environmental changes as a result of the rush to produce the first atomic weapons. Accounting for these collective historical experiences through historical and ethnographic composition, among other forms of recorded self-reportage, is imperative in order for us to begin to comprehend the diversity of lifeways prior to the imposition of this federal endeavor, and the consequences of the first 50 years of its existence. 3 Occupational information regarding each research participant is listed in the appendix. 4 Pasco was, and continues to be, a railroad hub for the State of Washington. During the Manhattan Project it was the closest public rail link to the Hanford operations and many workers first experienced the locality by departing from the train at Pasco, Washington.

In the case of the Hanford project, my use of 'relatively unrestrained' relates to the lack of public power in the operations and policies at the facility. However, it would be a gross misreading of history at the Hanford Site to equate this lack of public resistance with an absence of conflict and dispute over operations and policies from within different occupational communities within the facility. For example, the relationship between those responsible for radiation protection and those in charge of production operations of reactors and chemical separations often placed people in those fields in opposition to one another. 6 Donald L. Collins, a "staff officer involved with Manhattan District activities," (Kathren and Ziemer, 1980: 21 8) notes that "prior to the use and public announcement of the bomb, it was estimated by the Security Department that some 200 persons were officially knowledgable of the end product of the project" (Collins, 1980: 39). 7 The material for the bomb called 'Little Boy' dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 was produced at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility known as the Clinton Engineer Works. The material for the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945 was produced at the Hanford Site. Manhattan Project physicist, and later the Director of the Oak Ridge facility, Alvin M. Weinberg, had these thoughts on the use of the Nagasaki bomb, "I don't think the second bomb, the Nagasaki bomb, was necessary. No, that was strictly General Groves. In fact, I was drinking whiskey with Groves one night in a hotel bar in New York after the war and he more or less agreed that the second bomb was not needed. He didn't say why. Groves was first of all a military man" (Sanger, 1989: 24). 8 For another account of white settler life in the vicinity of Hanford see Talesof Richland, White Bluffs & Hanford 7 805- 7943: Before the Atomic Reserve (Parker, 1979). 9 Describing the Oak Ridge annexation, Rhodes (1 986: 486) notes, "In the ridge- barricaded valleys of this impoverished hill country, far from prying eyes, the United States Army intended to construct the futuristic factories that would separate U235 from U238 in quantities sufficient to make an atomic bomb."

In 1942, the three routes to the atomic bomb being considered in the Manhattan Project were electromagnetic separation, plutonium, and gaseous barrier diffusion (Rhodes 1986: 488).

Manhattan Project physicist Alvin M. Weinberg gives much of the credit for the design of the Hanford facilities to Eugene P. Wigner. Weinberg goes on to note, "so much of modern physics' structure and so on goes back to Wigner. His role in the Manhattan Project is not fully appreciated and the central role he played. You would not have had Hanford on the time schedule you did had it not been for Wigner" (Sanger, 1989: 23). In his account of the selection of the site for the 'piles' or reactors Wigner provides this version, "the site was not unreasonable, but it doesn't matter where it is. Water is very important, but I think it should have been built on the Potomac, at the end of the Potomac River. General Groves felt a remote site was best. We did not object. We objected, at least I strongly objected to the Du Pont Company, which had not knowledge of nuclear physics, and very little knowledge of the engineering problems. Otherwise we did not feel it was important whether it was at Hanford or close to Washington, D.C." (Sanger, 1989: 18). 1 2 Hanford discourse distinguishes 'outside' journalists, such as Loeb (1 986) from 'whistleblowers' by invoking the latter label to mark fellow co-workers who 'go to management' with workplace problems or 'leak' potentially damaging infomation to the press. 13 In navigation, dead reckoning is used when other means are unavailable. I employ the term here to suggest that the ethnographic use of career-histories is one of the last available means to examine, firsthand, recollections of the work-worlds in which operations and policies at the Hanford Site were developed and implemented. 14 This individual was not interviewed during fieldwork and has never been employed at the Hanford Site. Additionally, this person is not within the entrance cohort of 1943- 1953 as defined in this account.

This procedure is also known as chain referral, reputational or snowball sampling (Neuman 1991 : 204; True 1989: 104).

As McCracken (1 988: 28) notes, "Focus groups can be useful, particularly when respondents promise to be more forthcoming with the stimulus or the safety of a group of fellow respondents."

Public concern with the 'environment' during the past 20 years has been heightened, in part, due to the salience of "global environmental change" (Dunlap, 1993: n), "the prospect of global warming, caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide (C02 ) and other 'greenhouse gases' in the atmosphere" (Lutzenhiser and Hackett, 1993: 51) and "the hole in the ozone layer" (Rudig, 1993: 30). Environmental sociology in North America has self-consciously developed as a forum for disciplinary attention t o these issues, however the sub-field retains several fundamental limitations indicatative of a residual positivism that continues to truncate the development of sociological analysis. Methodologically, a primary reliance upon survey and secondary methods has precluded the sub-field from participating in the resurgence in qualitative approaches that has taken place across the social sciences (Bertaux and Kohli, 1984; Plummer, 1990; Hammersley, 1992; Hamel, 1993). Hansen (1 991 : 444-45) provides a nice summary criticism of these tendencies based upon the association between public opinion on environmental issues and media coverage of these issues and longitudinal studies which point to "a relative stability as well as ubiquity of environmental concern." In response to these criticisms several associated with this tradition of research in the past, (e.g., Rosa et a1.,1988: 154; Dunlap and Catton, 1993: 274) have defended their approaches, in part, by calling for an overhaul of the sub-field. See Freer (1 994: 307-09) for a discussion.

l 8 Accounts which align themselves with postmodernism (Dorst, 1989; Goodall, 1989; Rose, 1989; Manning, 1992) often seek to manuver in ethnographic terrain by means of hyper self-awareness as a reading on reflexivity. This mode of ethnography also draws upon a self-referential notion of representation. This has contributed to a solipsism which finds expression in forms of extreme-partiality, eschewing interpretive responsibilities associated with the rigors of continuous fieldwork. For example, Dorst's (1 989) The Written Suburb: An American Site, An Ethnographic Dilemma operates within a self-imposed and constructed 'dilemma' related to the conduct of ethnography in a locality with a ubiquitous interpretation of itself which existed in written forms prior to the conduct of his fieldwork. The route Dorst takes to address the 'pre-written' state of Brandywine culture takes the form of 'post- ethnography' whereby the researcher becomes a passive collector rather than an active investigator. Ethnography of this genre is akin to 'tourist ethnography,' and as such insulates itself from addressing critiques of representation by abdictating key aspects of ethnographic work, such as interviewing and sustained cultural interaction, each of which remain integral to the craft and practice of ethnography.

The examination of social identity differs from the study of attitude and opinion (cf. Freer, 1994: 307ff) in that the latter are typically measured operationally and involve a concern with individual cognition as opposed to relationships between and amongst individuals. 20 Barker and Peters also note, "... the 'fact' in science is a much more fragile item than most lay persons (or even many scientists) are willing to accept. Most facts are, in reality, determined by theory and the particular measurements of the observer. As such they have little meaning outside a system of theories and conventions" (1 993: 5). 21 The dust jacket of City Behind a Fence (1 981 ) notes that "At the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Charles W. Johnson is associate professor of history and Charles 0. Jackson is associate dean, College of Liberal Arts, and professor of history." 22 One research participant, himself a retired Ph.D. chemical engineer with extensive occupational knowledge of Dr. Moore's career said of Moore, "... he was a hotshot chemist, a good manager and provided information. He was a highly qualified chemist." Dr. Moore's colleague goes on to note that Moore was a keen observer of the political scene, this stands in contrast this particular research participant's awareness, "... one thing that stands out is that he [Moore] sure knew more about politics of the site. Some of these guys out there were in the forefront and I was kind of following behind. They were up front struggling with all this and they probably had a more accurate view of the politics. There were politics going on for sure." 23 See Rudig (1 993: 20-24) for another version of this controversy. 24 By 'private resistance' I mean that which surfaced during interview sessions and also those aspects of expression regarding Hanford that occur between close associates, not intended to become part of public discourse. It might be said that the contexts of these expressions are the inverse of what Paine has termed "ethnodrama" (1 985: 191). 25 Cohen (1 985) prefers 'contemporary' to 'new' in her discussion of social movements. Here I agree with Cohen based upon her assessment that "there is little agreement among theorists in the field as to just what a movement is, what would qualify theoretically as a new type of movement, and what the meaning of a socialmovement as distinct from a political party or interest group might be" (1 985:663). 26 Among these groups are the 'Downwinders', the Hanford Education Action League (HEAL), and Heart of America Northwest. The 'Downwinders' have established a presence based upon the contention that their residence, which is downwind from the Hanford Site, exposed them to levels of airborne radioactivity which were higher than accepted levels. HEAL and Heart of America Northwest are regional Hanford Site

'watchdog' groups which monitor conditions, information and policy directions at the facility as a means to inform and educate the public. 27 'Negotiation' in this sense refers to "processes in technological development" (Downey 1988: 232) and as such remains analytically distinct from cultural identity formation and reproduction which as Cohen notes "involves nonnegotiabledemands" (1 985: 692, italics in original). 28 The facilities at Oak Ridge were utilized to separate uranium-238 into the isotope of uranium-235 through electromagnatic separation and gaseous barrier diffusion (Rhodes, 1986: 489). The third approach considered viable by the MED was the production of plutonium in piles, soon to be called reactors. However, General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, in order to minimize risks and unforseen dangers of the new process, chose to locate the plutonium facility far away from not only the plant where the two other avenues were being tested, but from populated urban centres (Rhodes, 1986: 496; Gerber, 1992b: 25). 29 The Manhattan Engineering District (MED) was created as an internal division within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to supervise the Manhattan Project in June of 1942. The MED designated what has become the Los Alamos National Laboratory as 'Site Y', Oak Ridge National Laboratory was first given the code of 'Site X' and was then known as the Clinton Engineer Works, the Hanford Nuclear Site went by the code name of 'Site W' (Johnson and Jackson, 1981 : xix). As Gerber notes, the area that is known today as the Hanford Site was also known as Gable Project, Hanford Project, Hanford Engineer Works, and when the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) came into existence in 1947 the area became known as Hanford Works. For a short period between 1975-77 the area was offically named the Hanford Reservation, since that time its official name has been the Hanford Site (Gerber, 1992a: vi). It should be noted that in local discourse the Hanford Site is typically talked about as simply, "the area." 30 This is a reference to Michele Gerber's (1 992 b) book, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy o f the Hanford Nuclear Site. 31 The person in charge of the Met Lab, Dr. Arthur Compton, is described by an Army Lieutenant with considerable time at this research facility as, "well versed in religion and theology, occasionally putting things in perspective by reminding us that we were developing a new source of energy which, like fire, had a potential for great destruction or for great benefit to mankind, depending entirely on how man chose to make use of it" (Collins, 1980: 39-40). 32 Gerber describes the field of health physics, established by the MED in 1943, as an area where researchers studied, "biomedical effects of ionizing radiation and devised methods of shielding and monitoring radiation workers" (1 992b: 28-29). A principle engineer in chemical processing noted that "I hired in as a tech. grad. in the health instrument department, which is more or less a codename for the radiation protection department." Ronald L. Kathren, health physicist and historian of the profession, notes "for all practical purposes, health physics is synonymous with radiation protection" (Kathren, 1980: 123). For a history of the development of this profession see Kathren and Ziemer (1 980). 33 Eugene P. Wigner provides this support to the insights of 'Charles Franke' on the physcists' attitudes towards the use of the atomic bomb, "when the Germans surrendered and it was very evident that it would be used against the Japanese, several of us felt it was unreasonable to destroy many Japanese lives in order to demonstrate it. We wrote, actually James Franck formulated it, a petition. We were practically all in favor of demonstrating the bomb in the presence of Japanese scientists and government men over unihhabited territory, hoping this will convince them. General Groves was very much

against it. I don't know if the Nagasaki bomb was necessary, the first one apparently was necessary" (Sanger, 1989: 19). 34 This is a necessarily cursory synopsis of a very complex series of interrelated scientific, engineering and administrative problematics inextricably linked to and translated from U.S. policies regarding nuclear energy. A totalizing account of this historical scenario would be destined to reproduce many of the difficulties of scale and unintended consequences surrounding the Hanford Site that we are only in the earliest stages of beginning to comprehend. Relatedly, Rudig (1 993: 25-26) drawing on the work of Weinberg (1 972) and Hafele (1 974) writes, "...nucler power technology cannot be defaulted on an experimental basis ... from what Weinberg and Hafele are saying, nuclear energy could be defaulted only on the level of rejecting the logic of 'trans-science' itself ... such a link explicitly addressed by Hafele and Weinberg becomes particularly pervasive in terms of the growth and complexity of large technological systems. While individual elements and devices of of such technological systems may be tested to a satisfactory degree, increasing scale and complexity make it impossible to test the full operation and impact of such systems." 35 U.S. Army Colonel Franklin T. Matthias was head of operations during the Manhattan Project at the Hanford Site (1 943-1 945). 36 The full name of this company at the time of the Manhattan Project was E.I. duPont Neumors 81 Co. (Gerber, 1992a: vi). 37 Elder's description of the 191 6-1 925 depression era birth cohort includes these remarks, "the cohort has historical significance as a major source of World War I1 veterans, the postwar 'babyboom,' and the presumed generation gap ... the males served an average of three years in the armed forces during the war, and the females were occupied in the 'familistic' postwar years with child rearing. Most of the men and women married during the war and had their first child shortly thereafter in a period of relative affluence" (1 974: 5). Compare Gerber's description of postwar Richland on these themes, "Richlanders were well paid and generally well educated and healthy. Their birth rate hovered at record highs throughout the middle and late 1940s, and their death rate (especially the infant mortality rate) was well below average. In 1946, one- sixth of the entire population of Richland was under the age of six. By late 1948, the atomic village had the highest birth rate in the nation" (1 992a: 61). 38 During the an hat tan Project the facilities at the Hanford Site were not designed for prolonged production operations, this amplified the difficulties faced at the onset of the Cold War regarding increased production demands and the ramifications associated with these transitions. As a lived cultural illustration of this phenomenon, a married couple that arrived in 1952 noted that, "very few people that came felt they would be here for any length of time. They came with the expectation that they would be here temporarily. We came here thinking we would be here 3-5 years. We were at a colleague's retirement and he said that he had thought he would be here the same amount of time." 39 Appendix Two consists of a review of Gerber's (1 992b) On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site. The review is authored by Ronald L. Kathren and appeared in the journal Health Physics May 1993, Volume 64, Number 5, pp. 553- 554. 40 Plume is a term which designates underground bodies of nuclear wastes in the soils. 41 'Cost-code' is an accounting mechanism that ties labour expended to a specific project. 42 This agreement is also known as the Tri-Party Agreement. The three parties to this agreement are the Department of Energy, the Enrivonmental Protection Agency and the State of Washington.

43 Interviews were conducted cumulatively and, as such, research participants were able to work directly from copies of transcripts of past interviews during subsequent interview sessions. 44 Gerber notes that Redox was "a facility and the process for separating plutonium and uranium from irradiated reactor fuels by using successive steps of Reducation and Oxidation with solvent extraction" (1 992b: 301). 45 The rem is defined as, "a unit of measure for the dose of ionizing radiation that gives the same biological effect effect as one roentgen of X rays" (Gerber, 1992b: 301 ). 46 In her section on the 'Green Run' Gerber does not offer any citations by Herbert M. Parker relating to the decisions leading up to the actual 'Green Run.' However, she does provide evidence of later discussions relating to a general reduction of cooling time for 'fuel' (see 1992b: 90-92 and notes on page 248). 47 Ziegler's thoroughly researched and well-documented account of the detection of the U.S.S.R.'s first atomic weapons explosion by AFOAT-1 as having occured on 29 August 1949 (1 988: 222) contrasts sharply with that offered by Gerber who writes, "in late September 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb. The blast was not announced but was detected first by Hanford's atmospheric-monitoring equipment throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska" (1 992b: 90).

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Appendix One

Reference l ist o f Research Part ic ipants as they appear in the text.

Name

'Joe'

'El l iott '

'Charlie'

'Zak'

'George'

'Charles'

'Betty'

'Ted'

'Vicky'

Occupation Employment Status and Dearee Durins Interviews

Environmental Full-Time Radiation Monitor/ Health Physicist B.A. Geologist Retired/Consultant Ph.D. Chemical Retired/Consultant Engineer Ph.D. Electrical Retired Engineer/ Engineering Administration B.A. Personnel Retired/Consultant Protection/ Principle Engineer Chemical Processing B.A. Chemist Retired 73 Health Physics B.A. Administrative Retired 76 Assistant

Section Mgr. Retired/Consultant 75 Research Biologist Radiobiology Ph.D. College Retired 74 Instructor B.A.

Career Span

1 948-present

Appendix Two

On the Home Front The Cold War Legacy of-the WHILE DOUBTLESS the subject matter will be of interest, this Hanford Nuclear Site, by Michele Stenehjem Gerber, book is a disappointment and is em~fiaticall~ not mum- University of Nebmka Pnss, Lincoln, 1992, 3 12 pp. m&d. In it would be a k h d n a to both the author

and the publisher were it quickly withdrawn and quietly + 12 PP. of picture (hard cover), $35, ISBN 0-8032- fo%onca 2145-2 (cl). Despite the title, the broad technological scientific, and

educational legacy and implications of Hanford arc virtually 001 7-9078/93/$3.00/0 ignored as arc important discoveries of the moment (for Copyright (Q 1993 Hcaith Physics Society atample, Fermi's discovery of xenon poisoning doesn't even

554 Health Physics

rate mention), and only 221 of the 312 pages arc devoted to narrative text

Although written by a professional historian, it is rife with e m n and distortions and more a polemic ( a d not a very good one at that) than a suious and imparrial historical study. Health physicists may overlook the missptlling of Otto Glasser's surname on pages 177 and 277, and may be amused by the identification of radiologist Simcon Cantril as a health physicist (p. 841, health physicist Herb Parker as radiologist (p. 48). or even health physicists Jack Hedy as a chemist (p. 90). and Carl Gamertsfdder as an 'X-ray &fraction (sic) scientist" (p. 48). They will be amazed (and hodled) by the cxtizodicary asscru'cn on pagc 51 that official Mmhartan District policy was high amputation of limbs with plutonium contaminated cuts. documented only by rcferrnce to a pop ular polemic book written in 1948. And. thcy will be abso- lutely flabbergasted to read that the rad was established in 1928 by the International Congress of Radiology as *. . . a measure of exposure from a source of ionizing radiation . . . (and) not a measure of dose. or radiation absorbed . . . (p. 77%"

Although each chapter is provided with copious end notes and references, and much of the text is documelited with references. examination of these reveals heavy refiance on news media accounts and other popular or lay publica- tions. References to the peer reviewed scientific litcratum are few and presumably accurate, although highly selected. Quo- tations and paraphrasings from references am frequently taken out of context and presented in such a way that their original intended meaning is obscured, distorted. or even changed: for example. on page 3. a quote from Chapter I of General Groves' book on the Manhattan Project is presented out of context and in edited form. apparently to give the implication that Groves was referring to the environmental hazards of Hanford rather than to a much more broad com- mentary of the political and econorr..: implications of the Manhattan Project. which is clear when the cited paragraph is read in its entirety.

Key standard sources such as the L000+ pagc tome

h4ay 1993, Volume 64, Number 5

Rrrdioactivity and H d h by J. Ncwcil Stannard, and books and artida in the peer reviewed literature pertaining to the historical ~ I o p m e n t of radiation protection standards, such as those by L a d n S. Taylor, a towaing figure in radiation protection for more than sixty yean, arc virtualIy absent from the listed rrf~cllccs and presumably were either not consulted or d c i i i y ignored.

More genually, the book lacks cohesiveness and breadth. and is poorly organized and disjointed in its historical pm- entation. The emphasis is on the fim 20 yean of Hanford. and then curiously skip to modern timt; it is anything but the complete history promised on the dust wrapper. The author's olrscsdan with pvcmmental secrecy 6 obvious- thus the author charact& what were dearly routine oper- ational meetings on health and environmental aspects as secret, imputing a ntfarious and dandestine quality to them. and more importantly seems to lack an undananding of why the operations at Hanford were kept secm, or wen what the cold war was, or what it was all about

?be author's bias and polemical style arc apparent throughout the text and notes, d d y iilustratcd not only by the dorementioned Groves quotation, but by a gratuitous and incongruous lengthy end note (p. 294) which presents a distoned picture of the convoversiai Mancuso study. The fact that this book canits the imprimatur of a university p r ~ ~ is particularly disconcerting, for it lends credibility to an un- scholarly and misleading book How a respected univenity press could publish a work so Ilawed with erron, bias. and poor scholarship is a mystay indeed. But whatever the rea- sons-lack of appropriate peer review, lapse in editorial judge- ment. or what have you-the University of Nebraska Press should be very, very embarrassed by this disgraceful pretense of scholarship bearing its name.

RONALD L KATHREN Health Research and Education Center Warhingron Sme Univeniry Richland. WA 99352