X-10 Nuclear Reactor (#atozchallenge)

I have always fancied that the end of the world will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up the globe. ... They [the Americans] are great boilermakers.

— Jules Verne

Five Weeks in a Balloon 

Official seal of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

X-10 Nuclear Reactor

       In my post for the letter N I referred in passing to Oak Ridge, Tennessee which played a big role in the developing of the first atomic bombs during World War 2.   This project, known as The Manhattan Project because it was planned out in an office in Manhattan, expanded to a number of research and development centers throughout the United States.  This effort, which was one of America's most intensive projects ever, resulted in developing and producing atomic bombs within a time frame of less than three years.  

       In order to accommodate the R & D facilities and its employees and their families, the city of Oak Ridge was rapidly planned and built.  By the end of the war in 1945, the city had grown to become the fifth largest city in Tennessee.  After the war the city continued to serve as an important scientific center for the study and manufacture of nuclear materials.

       A key facility at the Oak Ridge Laboratories was referred to as the X-10 Pile, the first nuclear reactor designed for continuous production.  The X-10 Graphite Reactor produced the plutonium necessary for the atomic bomb.  This reactor is no longer in operation after being shut down in 1963 and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

        The three key nuclear facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford,  Washington are now the three sites of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.  Visitors to the park can visit museums and see the original reactors and other components of the laboratories.  For security reasons the X-10 reactor and other buildings at the Tennessee site can only be visited as part of a bus tour provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

         Visiting all three sites would be an epic history vacation for anyone with a strong interest in atomic bomb development, but if you are near any one of these areas a visit to the one to which you are closest is highly recommended.  Oak Ridge is the most accessible to the greatest population area as it sits just a short drive from the most visited National Park in the United States--The Great Smokey Mountains.  The Laboratories are also a two hour drive from Nashville.

            A vacation to the Great Smokies with all of the tourist activities nearby will provide memorable adventure and entertainment for adults and as well as families with children.  There is literally something to please everyone.

        The history of the area ranges from the time when the indigenous peoples such as the Creeks and Cherokees inhabited the land, to the time of the early European settlers, to the Civil War Era and beyond.    The X-10 Reactor is just one more piece of the history that brought the United States into the Atomic Age.

         Have you visited any of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park sites?   Have you ever visited any nuclear power plant or other similar facility?    Do you see a positive future for nuclear energy?
     
   

Related articles

• Nuclear Destruction (#atozchallenge)
• "Chornobyl story is not over" 30 years after the disaster
• Maintaining the bomb
• Exhibit chronicles hard life for blacks at WWII Hanford

Some Vacation Highlights

          I had almost forgotten how beautiful East Tennessee is in the Spring.   The lush greenness of the landscape is vastly different from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles.  In 1966 my family moved into the house where my mother still lives.  Now after forty some years the trees in the yard have grown considerably.   I spent a good bit of time just strolling through the yard, enjoying the variety of birds, the squirrels, and rabbits. It felt like being in a park or a nature preserve.  There is a peacefulness in this place that I did not realize how much I have missed.

View of my mother's house from the backyard.

         One day my daughters, sons-in-law, and my granddaughters all rode up to Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains.   The national park is less than twenty miles from my mother's house.  We visited one of the old Baptist churches that dates from the early 1800s.  We also stopped by the Cable home site which includes a grist mill which still operates and produces corn meal sold to the tourists.  Two and a half year old Marley delighted in seeing wild turkeys, deer, and a large black bear as we drove around the scenic loop--we all did for that matter.

Two of my daughters, my son-in-law, and the two granddaughters in front of the  Cable Grist Mill.

         It was the family time that really made the difference though.   I had the opportunity to spend time with my youngest grandchild, Lillee, for the second time since she'd been born.  I'd seen her when she was first born, and a couple of times in video chat, but it was nice to be around her and to be able to hold her again.  I see my other granddaughter, Marley, more often, but I never tire of watching her learn and grow.  It seems strange being a grandparent, but it's a wonderful strange.  Four generations under one roof can make for a might joyous occasion.   I wish these times were more often.

Granddaughters Lillee and Marley--different parents, but they could pass for sisters.

           On the first leg of my flight to Tennessee, I briefly met a blogger by the name of Kristi Ryan who has a fine looking blog called A Chick, a Flick, and a Kitchen.   She talks about movies and food--two of my favorite subjects.   Check out her blog and let her know that you heard about it from Arlee at Tossing It Out.

          On Monday I will be continuing the Blogging from A to Z evaluation.  Please stop in and voice your thoughts.

           Do you have vacation plans for the upcoming summer?   Have you visited the Great Smoky Mountains?   Do you find yourself talking about blogging to total strangers sometimes?

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In Earth's Womb

           Not long after I first started attending the University of Tennessee in Knoxville way back in 1969, I became interested in spelunking.  It was my friend Marvin Lowe who first brought the topic up and I'm not sure what got him to thinking about it, but he piqued my curiosity and we both started doing some research into the subject of spelunking.

           Now, let me stop here for anyone who is not familiar with the term and explain what spelunking is. Spelunking is the exploration of caves. The word is derived from "speleology", which is the scientific study of caves and their environments.  Typically cavers such as we were are exploring caves on private lands (preferably with the permission of the landowners) and are amateurishly just looking to satisfy curiosity and seek adventure. 

           We were amateurs, but we weren't totally stupid either.  We did  not want to die, so we did our research.  We checked out books about the topic from the library.  I found a spelunking club at the university and we joined in order to be able to have access to the equipment they had for the use of members.  Through our research we found some caves to begin with and began our explorations.

             One cave that particularly stands out in my memory was an opening in a bluff along the Little River in Walland, TN.  The opening was about four feet tall and about four feet wide.  The passage continued as such for perhaps one hundred feet until it ended at a small room which was about ten feet in diameter and six feet at its highest point.  There smack dab in the center of the room, looking like some sort of miniature shrine, was a small pile of feces.  We did not determine whether it was of human origin or from some other animal, but decided the cave was not worth spending any more time in and proceeded to leave.  Being a couple of college guys, we named this cave "Shit Cave" and it became a source of amusement for us for some time afterwards.  

            Our interest in caving did not last much longer after that.  We went to a couple of commercial caves in the area--Tuckaleechee Caverns, Forbidden Caverns, and The Lost Sea Caverns.  The spelunking adventures for Marvin and I ended and so did our association with the Spelunking Club at the university.

           Then a few years later a revival of caving interest came to me through some of my other friends.  We started out by going to some of the cave openings in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Most of them have bars over them and can only be entered with a permit.  Then there is another--Blowhole Cave--which can only be entered with a rope, or a ladder, or by falling in.  Whichever way you enter Blowhole Cave you are still supposed to have a permit.  We would just go to the caves and peer inside as we pondered what it might be like inside them.

          Early in 1975 I moved into a log cabin in the Laurel Valley development in Walland, TN with three of my good friends---Vernon Clouse, Bob Chance, and Wendell Welch.  This development bordered the Great Smoky National Park land.  A short distance from the cabin where we were staying was a trail, an old logging road perhaps, that went to the top of a mountain.  Along the trail there was a sort of rocky place which at the bottom had an opening into the ground.  Some of checked inside this opening and found a narrow passage that led into the earth.  We decided to come back later with flashlights and check it out.

          In other caves it had been at times necessary to crawl on one's hands and knees in some places in order to explore.  This opening was wide but only about twenty inches in height.  One had to crawl into the cave on one's belly or, as was my preference, feet first and on my back.  Either way it was a terrifyingly claustrophobic entrance that went for about thirty feet.  As I proceeded I could hear a sort of distant roar that I soon identified to be the sound of rushing water.  Eventually the passage became higher so that I was able to crawl.  Ahead of us I could see a stream of water coming out of one wall of the cave and as we came to the water I realized that we were at the top of a waterfall that was about twelve feet in height.

          We assessed our situation and determined that we were in a fair sized room the floor of which was sandy and the water seemed to be just eventually filtering into the sand.   We climbed down into this room and looked around to see where we could go from there.  As we stood with our backs to the waterfall, we could see a passageway to our left which we surmised probably continued into the depth of the mountain.

         Since this passage was large enough to enter comfortably, we continued on.  Stooped over, we walked on for quite some distance and as the passage became smaller we continued to crawl on our hands and knees.  We came to a point where the passageway split.  Ahead of us we could see that it was becoming too small for any of us to pass through.  To our left, the passageway continued with dimensions similar to where we were.  We decided to go that way.  It did not go far before the passageway dead-ended in a room that was about fifteen feet in diameter and perhaps five feet high.  The room was unique in that floor was a domelike formation.  We sat on this dome for a while and turned off our lights.

       You have never really experienced absolute darkness and total silence until you have sat in the depth of a cave with lights off and voices quiet.  It is a darkness that you can almost feel touching you, enveloping you, and drawing you into it.  The quiet is so intense that the coursing of your blood becomes a roar and the beat of your heart is like a distant war drum ominously thumping away.  We sat like that for a while, meditating in the darkness, listening, waiting. 

       I guess it became too much for us.  We started talking, joking at first, but then contemplating "what ifs".  What if our lights didn't turn back on-- what would we do?  What if there was some sort of creature down here?  What if there was an earthquake?   We were soon ready to go.  Lights turned back on, we were anxious to be back out of this cave. 

        Later, I think I went back into this cave at least one, maybe two more times.    Some of our other friends who had heard our tale also went at various times.  After my initial visits I no longer had an interest in going back into this cave.   I guess I had started thinking about being in it and it started to scare me.  Years later, sometimes as I was falling to sleep, I would have terrifying dreams about being in the crawlspace cave entrance and being trapped.  I would struggle to wake up and when I did I would often be afraid to go back to sleep for awhile and only succumb when my exhaustion overtook me.  Even now, I rarely have bad dreams, but when I do they usually have to do with that claustrophobic sensation of being trapped in a tight, enclosed space.

        I never did any spelunking after those days in 1975, but since then I have been in many large caverns that are open to the public for guided tours.  If you have never visited a cavern it is really quite an amazing experience.  For those of you in the U.S., I highly recommend the caverns that are part of the National Park Service, such as Carlsbad Caverns or Mammoth Cave.  There are also hundreds of privately operated caverns that are fascinating to see.  Throughout the world are many cavern attractions to visit.  I encourage you to check one out next time you have an opportunity to do so.

          Have you ever gone spelunking on your own?  Would you and if not, why not?  Have you ever been to a cavern attraction?  If so, what was your experience like?