Geography
We are located in southeastern Washington State in the communities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick, also known as the "Tri-Cities". Running through the region is the last free-flowing undammed stretch of the Columbia River. The region is primarily farming, with wheat, onions, asparagus and potatoes as major crops. Apples, pears, cherries, and grapes for juice and wine are grown here as well. A major industry is scientific research in environmental restoration. History
Prior to the 1940's the Tri-Cities was a desolate, dry and dusty farming area. In 1942 the US Army surveyed the area for an important part of the Manhattan Project: to make nuclear materials (ie, plutonium) for the atomic bomb. At the height of constructioin over 50,000 people were employed building the infrastructure and facilities in the eastern Washington desert at the Hanford Nuclear Site. The first of eight "production" nuclear reactors went on-line in 1944 to irradiate uranium fuel rods. A production reactor is designed to make isotopes such as plutonium, and not electricity. Enough plutonium was extracted from these rods to make the second atomic bomb that was dropped and exploded over Nagasaki, Japan in August of 1945 to end the Second World War. Millions of lives, American as well as Japanese, were spared as a result.
Since then the Tri-Cities have grown around Hanford and have become a center of research and development into the safe use and handling of nuclear materials. Because producing plutonium from fuel rods made from enriched uranium uses caustic chemicals and produces high-level radioactive chemical wastes, the process is very environmentally unfriendly.
How does Linux fit into this?
Currently many engineers and scientists are employed working to clean up the Hanford environment messed up through nearly 50 years of producing highly radioactive chemicals. Many of these laboratories and scientists are turning to the Linux OS because of the high-power Linux brings to the common PC platform. Many of these scientists and engineers are participants of our user group.