High and dry
Sep. 29th, 2024 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat_sochoI'm back home in Tonopah after an uneventful night in Las Vegas, and after a couple good nights sleep (at the Stratosphere and here at home) I feel 2000% better. Weight is up, unsurprisingly, but BG and BP are both okay.
Had breakfast/brunch from the drive-through at Jack in the Box north of the Stratosphere on my way to Dunkin; the sausage scrambler sandwich was good, but I really would have rather had it on a croissant. Got iced coffee and sinkers at Dunkin, and then headed out of town without stopping at the Maverik on Lake Mead Boulevard, since it looked like I had enough gas to get home. As I passed though Indian Springs, though, I had second thoughts, and when the turnoff to Pahrump came along, I took it, and stopped at the Maverik there for fuel and fluids. (You cannot have too many fluids while driving through rural Nevada.) A brief stop in Goldfield to dispose of fluids followed, and I eventually got home around 1630. Unloaded the car, did the FMJRA, and spent some time on Civicrack to relax before going to bed shortly after midnight.
As for the conference in Oak Ridge, well, it was very interesting to hear from other Board chairs about how things were going in their particular bailiwicks. Compared to Hanford and Oak Ridge, we here in Nevada don't have much to worry about, but the former two sites have a LOT of cleanup remaining to be done, and during the tour on Tuesday we saw a few reactors that have basically been isolated and monitored since they'll be lethally "hot" for the next 300 years unless somebody develops technology to let us decontaminate or reprocess the contents. I imagine when the Board chairs meet again at Hanford in February we'll see more of the same. In comparison, the former Nevada Test Site doesn't have anything remotely that nasty, though due to ongoing Defense and Energy work we won't be seeing tourists trooping in to see the Sedan Crater and other sights of interest any time soon. It was also very encouraging to hear that work at WIPP in New Mexico continues, because every year of safe operation there means the arguments against opening Yucca Mountain get weaker.
Had breakfast/brunch from the drive-through at Jack in the Box north of the Stratosphere on my way to Dunkin; the sausage scrambler sandwich was good, but I really would have rather had it on a croissant. Got iced coffee and sinkers at Dunkin, and then headed out of town without stopping at the Maverik on Lake Mead Boulevard, since it looked like I had enough gas to get home. As I passed though Indian Springs, though, I had second thoughts, and when the turnoff to Pahrump came along, I took it, and stopped at the Maverik there for fuel and fluids. (You cannot have too many fluids while driving through rural Nevada.) A brief stop in Goldfield to dispose of fluids followed, and I eventually got home around 1630. Unloaded the car, did the FMJRA, and spent some time on Civicrack to relax before going to bed shortly after midnight.
As for the conference in Oak Ridge, well, it was very interesting to hear from other Board chairs about how things were going in their particular bailiwicks. Compared to Hanford and Oak Ridge, we here in Nevada don't have much to worry about, but the former two sites have a LOT of cleanup remaining to be done, and during the tour on Tuesday we saw a few reactors that have basically been isolated and monitored since they'll be lethally "hot" for the next 300 years unless somebody develops technology to let us decontaminate or reprocess the contents. I imagine when the Board chairs meet again at Hanford in February we'll see more of the same. In comparison, the former Nevada Test Site doesn't have anything remotely that nasty, though due to ongoing Defense and Energy work we won't be seeing tourists trooping in to see the Sedan Crater and other sights of interest any time soon. It was also very encouraging to hear that work at WIPP in New Mexico continues, because every year of safe operation there means the arguments against opening Yucca Mountain get weaker.
