The Yellowstone Conundrum (43 page)

East of Yakima, Washington

 
Tears drained down from Andy Everett’s eyes; he was crying so hard he could hardly see the road ahead; state highway 24 cut through scenic rolling, barren hillsides between Hanford and Yakima; so, he pulled over. Ahead was Yakima, the wine-growing capital of Washington State; the 8
th
most populated city in the state; a valley where 75% of the hops used in making domestic beer in the US were harvested.

 
You have to go back. You have to go back and get them.
  They did so much for you. Andy’s guilt had grown from a chimp, to a Howler, now to full-sized gorilla. He had no doubt that if he hadn’t found a way out the containment building, that he’d be dead by now. Only twenty-eight miles in the distance, the sky was a drunken rainbow of pinks, oranges, reds and yellows with blue sky in the distance and straight up. He got out of the car, balanced himself on the hood, and threw up, or tried to. On a normal day he would have already had dinner, breakfast for regular-shift people and be getting to enter his cave, complete with black-out windows and fans to knock down any noise.

 
He used his thumbs to alternately blow what seemed like a bag-full of snot out his nostrils; the crying stopped, his shirt wet from tears and not from the exertion of getting out of Hanford alive. His gorilla guilt was for his parents, whom he’d left behind. They’d done everything for him and on a day when he knew his Dad could have used a hand getting Mom out of the house and to safety, he’d run away. They might die and not know he was OK.

Surface of 200-West tank farm
                            corroded single-shell 1M gal tank

Construction pictures of tanks

  At 2:25 PST thirty-four of the remaining 152 (of 177 total) tanks at 200-West exploded in near unison, almost in Chinese firecracker sequence—
bang, bang, bang, bang
—fashion, except in this explosion series, the explosions weren’t atomic or hydrogen bombs like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but instead were individual bunker-busters, blasts that alone were powerful, but together were much more than the sum of its parts. 

 
The earth shook, the sky over the Hanford Reservation was vaporized as thirty-four million gallons of radioactive crap were set off in explosions not imagined by their designers.
Let’s see, we’re going to simultaneously detonate thirty-four million gallons of radioactive waste.  Hmmm, what’s going to happen?

 
Uranium 235 and Uranium 238; used in the production of nuclear weapons, crud-encrusted waste water, vaporized and sent on a three-mile high road trip. Most of uranium by-products ingested by through poop, but the remaining 1% enters the kidneys and is processed by the kidneys, exiting as urine. Some stays in the bones where it could theoretically stay for a very long time.

 
It didn’t matter much; nobody downwind of the Hanford 2:25 PST explosion was going to live very long, anyway.

 
Plutonium 238, 239, 240 and 241; this stuff doesn’t digest very well, instead when its inhaled, goes to the lungs, and down the bone/liver trail.

 
Strontium 90; God designed our precious bodies so that bones would be made stronger and live longer when calcium enters the game; unfortunately, God didn’t make Strontium 90, mankind did, and this by-product tricks the human body into thinking it is calcium; goes right to the bones.

 
Cesium 137 travels a different route, and is distributed to the soft tissues of the human body.

  Thorium, the “safer-energy source”,
helps develop lung cancer and cancer of the pancreas, as well as bone cancer.

 
Other portions of the cocktail include: Carbon 14, Cobalt 50, selenium 79, technetium, antinomy, neptunium 237, americium 241 and curium 243/244. No scientist would dare to defend any of the above as “natural”. 

 
At 2:25 PST 34 million gallons of this crap had been vaporized on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and spewed into air in all directions. The shockwave from the explosion burst in all directions, technically a detonation wave where the wave is driven by a chemical reaction behind the wave itself, proceeding outward at supersonic velocity. 

 
The speed of sound is 343.2 meters/second. The shock wave from the massive Hanford storage tank explosion spread at speeds varying between 2000 m/s and 10,000 m/s depending on if the material exploding was liquid or solid, solids moving at a much faster rate. In this case the shock wave was moving at speeds closer to 2500 m/s. Overall, speeds were 70-80% higher because the explosion occurred in a pressurized area (underground storage tanks) instead of exploding on the surface in open air.

 
The Columbia Generating Plant was 15 miles from the explosion. A mile is 5280 feet. Divide that by 3.28 feet/meter, close to 1600 meters. The shockwave ripped across the desert from the 200-West tank farms to the structure of the Columbia Generating Plant in 9.6 seconds, give or take a tenth of a second.

EXPLOSION:

The
Lord
is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. 
3 
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 
4 
Yea, though I walk through

(SHOCKWAVE HITS)

the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. 
5 
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 
6 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the
Lord
forever.

Psalm 23, Holy Bible

And:

(EXPLOSION)

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed by thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. They will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread

(shockwave hits)

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.

Amen.

 
Too late, Joe. 

  Standing next to his red 2007 Jeep Wrangler, with snot still drooling down his chin, Andy’s face lit up like someone had taken a photo requiring a flash. On top of the ridge overlooking Yakima Valley, Andy was twenty-eight miles from the 200-West tank farm explosion. The shockwave of compressed air from the simultaneous explosions reached the top of the ridge in a tick under 18 seconds, about enough time to recite either prayer but not both.

 
Andy Everett recited neither prayer. He just stood there, like the rest of us would, thumb stuck up his ass and snot drooling from his right nostril. The shockwave knocked him off his feet and into the drainage gulley on the north side of highway 24. The shockwave also flipped his red 2007 Jeep Wrangler head over heels and landed on top of him.  As would sometimes happen in real life, the Wrangler didn’t crush him; the aluminum roll bars didn’t land on his chest and cut off his circulation; no, the Wrangler’s difficult, stiff roof acted like a tent, a very tight tent—almost like a glove.

 
Andy Everett was in a drainage ditch, pinned down by his own car, unable to move. 

 
Sure hope it wouldn’t rain anytime soon.

  Andy’s parents and the good citizens of Pasco, Kennewick and Richland; the Tri-Cities; weren’t in much better shape.  The shockwave from the explosions reached the Tri-Cities about the same time they did Andy; the problem was, Andy was in the middle of nowhere and the Tri-Cities were real cities, not ready for 1) a shockwave that would destroy buildings, kill people, immobilize traffic, shake infrastructure like an earthquake or 2) the death cloud that followed from the tank farm explosion(s). 

 
Across the Columbia River in Adams, Grant and Franklin Counties, where “Downwinders” had for 40 years railed against the DOE and Department of Defense over the Hanford site; radioactive emissions, groundwater spills, radioactive material showing up the food chain, strange patterns of cancer, bad milk from cows that ate the bad grass; they were the “winners”.

 
But no one was taking a victory lap on February 20
th
; instead, farmers and their families east of Hanford watched as red clouds rose above the 200-West tank farms. The only thing any of them could have done was to get into the fastest car they had and head out of Dodge to the south.  But, families didn’t leave family-owned businesses quickly.  Instead, they were mesmerized by the Clouds of Death.

 
By 1:30 the clouds began to
chinka chinka chinka
deposit red particles of irradiated crap across the beautiful rolling farm fields of central Washington; land with rich soil and perfect climate for a multitude of products; apples, wheat, corn, soy beans, grapes.

 
By the middle of the afternoon, as the sky turned red above them, citizens of central Washington were already dying. All it takes is a breath or two of good ‘ol Strontium 90 to take not only your breath away, but your life. The pain of death by irradiation was beyond what a Marquis de Sade would have dreamed of—bleeding out from the inside, crapping your intestines out through your asshole and your brain leaking through your ears—all the while your heart is still beating and you’re screaming
kill me kill me
.