The Hanford Site was first proposed as a nuclear production facility 70 years ago this month in December 1942:
Seventy years ago during World War II, the Hanford Engineering Works was built as part of the Manhattan Project, becoming the first full-scale plutonium enrichment facility in the world.
Its plutonium was used for the test of the world’s first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site at Los Alamos, NM, and the bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.
Over the next six weeks, the National Archives at Seattle will be posting formerly classified images of life in this unique community during a crucial era in Washington State and American history.
Today’s images were posted on their Facebook page.
Source: Hanford Photographic Negatives, 1943-1945; DuPont Collection; Records of the Department of Energy (RG 434), National Archives.
One of the better gifs I’ve seen lately. This guy needs to run for president. He has the “ready for the press cameras” look down.
(Source: nicklugo)
Record Collecting with Ian Rankin: The King of Tartan noir shares his love of vinyl - scratches and all
(My favorite author, and one hell of a nice guy.)
Gerd Ludwig’s “Long Shadow of Chernobyl” project
Internationally-renowned photojournalist Gerd Ludwig has spent years documenting the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In 1986, errors at the plant in Ukraine led to an explosion that ultimately caused over a quarter of a million people to permanently evacuate their homes to escape the radiation and radioactive fallout. Over the course of several trips to the site and the region for National Geographic Magazine in 1993, 2005, and 2011, Ludwig has amassed a documentary record of a people and a place irreparably altered by a tragic accident. His 2011 trip was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign. Now Ludwig has released an iPad app with over 150 photographs, video, and interactive panoramas.
The only person I know who could find something like this is my friend over at Wings over Iraq. I actually laughed out loud. Most excellent.
