Interview with Richard Vaughn Wyman, June 13, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Richard Wyman June 13, 2005 Boulder City, Nevada Interview Conducted By Suzanne Becker © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Richard Wyman June 13, 2005 Conducted by Suzanne Becker Table of Contents Introduction: birth, childhood, education 1 Work history in the mines, uranium mining 3 Work on Western Gold and Orphan Mine ( uranium mine) 5 Life in St. George, recollections of watching atmospheric tests 6 Goes to work for REECo in early 1960s after end of moratorium based on skills as geologist and surveyor 9 Explanation of mining a tunnel ( for Marshmallow shot) 11 Purpose of Pile Driver shot, bureaucratic and technical logistics of completing the project on time 12 Description of different types of atomic tests ( weapons, weapons effects, Plowshare, Vela Uniform) 16 Description of typical work day at NTS ( of a mine construction superintendent); explanation of different types of mining/ drilling done at NTS 17 Discussions of: living at NTS away from family; role of unions at NTS 20 Recollections and opinions of protesters 22 Issues surrounding safety of uranium mining, radiation exposure, safety precautions 23 Discussion of safety measures related to tunnel re- entry and exposure 24 Discussion about validity of St George, UT exposure to radiation and compensation claims; perceptions of NTS and Downwinders 26 Animal experiments at NTS ( different types and purposes for) 28 Explanation of how a chimney is formed post- shot 30 Watching Sedan ( Crater) shot and description of dust cloud 31 Questions about effects of fallout on St. George, UT and brief discussion of Baneberry venting 32 Issues surrounding Yucca Mountain debate ( geological soundness, political) 34 Description and geological usefulness of land that is NTS 37 Discussion of his and his wife’s work at University of Nevada, Las Vegas 38 Conclusion: life in Boulder City; family 41 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Richard Wyman June 13, 2005 in Boulder City, NV Conducted by Suzanne Becker [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 3, Disc 1. Richard Wyman: I’m Richard Wyman. I was born in Painesville, Ohio and brought up in Ohio. I served in the Navy from Ohio. I went to college at Case Western Reserve University, and that’s where I met the woman who became my wife. She was Anne Fenton, and I married her. We went to the University of Michigan then. At the University of Michigan, we got our master’s degree in geology, each of us. Suzanne Becker: Both of you? Each of us, yes. We each did. Now, can I stop you for a minute and go back because geology is a pretty specific thing. You said you grew up in Painesville, Ohio? Yes. Where is that? Painesville is about thirty miles east of Cleveland, on the lake. And Cleveland at that time was separated from Painesville by a large distance of farms and nurseries. Today, it is more or less encompassed, that whole area, with residential houses. But in those days, it seemed further. What was it like growing up there? Wonderful. Wonderful. Did you develop an interest in geology there, or had you always had it? Well, to some extent, I did, I believe, because my father was interested in it. And this is an area that was heavily glaciated, so during the glacial age, it was covered by ice. Then afterwards, UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 the Great Lakes formed from the melting of the glaciers. It was an interesting place to live. And it was rural. There were farms and woodlands and wildlife all over the place, and very different from today. It must’ve been nice to grow up out there. It was nice. What kinds of things did you do? Well, you can fish and you can hike and you can go swimming in the lake or go swimming in the river. We played some kinds of ball that they don’t do much anymore. It’s called one- a- cat or work- up, baseball games they are, that don’t require teams. A game will just get started and people will join it during the progress and people will leave during it. You don’t see that anymore. Today, everything seems so organized. So this was more of a pick- up game with the neighborhood, kind of. Yes. You said your dad had an interest in geology. What did he do? Well, he was in insurance and real estate. He just was interested in it. But I got interested in geology actually when I took a course in college with a girl that was taking geology, and I wanted to sit next to her, [ chuckling] and I discovered it was a really interesting thing. Who knew? And then how did you meet your wife? She was teaching mineralogy labs at Western Reserve and I took mineralogy and I had her for an instructor in the lab. OK. Interesting. So you developed an interest through the girl. And you majored in geology, as well? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 Yes. I was in civil engineering at Case Western Reserve, then geology and mining geology at the University of Michigan. Anne was a mineralogist, primarily, interested in the minerals. And later on, I followed that as a geologist in working for mining companies. I worked first for New Jersey Zinc Company in New Mexico. Then we went to Peru. Well, first we had a daughter born and she lived only a short time and died, so we thought we’d get away— we went to South America, to Peru, where I worked for Cerro de Pasco Corporation in Cerro de Pasco, Peru. High in the Andes; 14,300 feet high where we lived. Wow, that must’ve been beautiful! How long were you out there? Nearly three years. Oh, that’s wonderful. And Anne taught the school for English- speaking children. Many of the professional people were Americans or English or Europeans or others that wanted their children to speak English, and she [ 00: 05: 00] taught the school for English- speaking children. Now, I want to back up just a minute. You and Anne met, then— In Ohio. Receiving your master’s. Yes. And when did you marry? We were married in December 1947. We’ve been married fifty- seven years. Wow! That’s terrific. And that happened in Ohio. Yes. OK, and then from there you guys moved to— UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 We studied at the University of Michigan. We went to Peru. And after coming back from Peru, we lived in Arizona for a while. That’s where our son Bill was born. Our son William Wyman was born in Prescott, Arizona. Wow, you’re the second person in a week I’ve talked to that’s lived in Prescott, Arizona. Is that right? Yeah. Well, it’s a nice place to live. Yes. Anyhow, there I worked for New Jersey Zinc Company and— What sorts of things did you do? That was an exploration project, looking for ore deposits. Then I was hired by a uranium company, Western Gold and Uranium, Incorporated. That and its sister company, Golden Crown Mining Company. The two companies shared my salary. I was their only professional employee. It was two small companies. And we moved to St. George, Utah. OK. For work? This was for Western Gold. St. George was their main office, and also they had a mine at Silver Reef near St. George, and we developed a mine in Grand Canyon called the Orphan. The Orphan is in the Grand Canyon National Park, two miles west of El Tovar on the South Rim. And when you say you developed a mine, that means you— describe that process. There was nothing, no mine there, just an ore deposit. Obtaining the ore deposit and all of the legal ramifications were part of it, but developing the mine, this had to have an aerial tramway put in from the rim down to a thousand feet below the rim, vertically. Actually, more than that. And on the slope is where the ore deposit was discovered. It was discovered by an old man UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 named Daniel Hogan back in the 1890s, and it had not been developed into a mine but it was a patented mining claim; it was private property in the national park. And that’s how we were able to obtain it, and that’s how we were able to develop it. We later developed it by sinking a shaft 1,500 feet, which went down below the ore body, and then make a drift out to the ore body. And by this time I had left Western Gold. I didn’t work for them anymore. But that in itself is a very interesting history. Morrie Castagne, the man that I hired as superintendent there, wrote a book about it. Really. What years were these? Well, we were with Western Gold from November 1953 until April 1959. And you were at this time in St. George, Utah. Yes, we lived there. Now, St. George is probably best known at this point for being downwind of the [ Nevada] test site. Well, that’s one of its claims to fame. Well, it’s a very much larger city now than it was then. In those days, it was 5,000 people. Today, I think there are seventy- five or eighty thousand. Yes. Definitely bigger. What was it like living there? Were you aware of the test site? Of course. It’s a small Mormon town. We were non- Mormons in the 1 percent that was non- Mormon. And how was that? But we survived fine and they were good people, good people to work for, work with. I had operated the mine at Silver Reef. At Silver Reef, we produced uranium and silver. And at the Orphan Mine, which we also produced at the same time. That was a uranium mine, and the [ 00: 10: 00] highest- grade uranium in the United States. The highest grade. Very lucrative mine. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 Sounds like it. So you had an awareness of the test site probably for several reasons. Oh, yes. Well, for one thing, they always let us know there was going to be an aerial test. In those days, in the 1950s, all of the tests were in the air and at the Nevada Test Site, which was something like 125 miles west of St. George. So fairly close. Well, “ close” depends upon what you think is close. A hundred and twenty- five miles isn’t close for most things. Anyhow, they would tell us there’s going to be this test at a certain time. Usually it was just about before daybreak, early in the morning. So there were a lot of tests but in the early ones, we used to watch them. We would go up on the Red Hill, which is north of St. George. There’s a red cliff, if you remember. Up on top of that, you had a clear view to the west, and at the particular instant, you would see the light. You would not see a fireball or anything like that, but it would light the sky up to the zenith. You could look up and you’re looking at light. And you don’t hear anything yet. Just the light. OK, then we would hop in the car and drive down, back to St. George. At that time, we had an apartment in a house with some other people. We would put on a pot of coffee, and by the time the coffee was done and we poured the coffee, you would hear the noise. It was about fifteen minutes or eighteen minutes later, but it was enough later that you had time to go down and put on a pot of coffee, and then you’d hear the noise. And shortly thereafter you would feel the shock. Sometimes you’d feel the shock earlier, too, depending upon where it was, but the shock comes through the earth and the noise comes through the air. So then it’s a long ways away. These were always shot during a time when there was not much wind, so there was not much [ that] ever got to St. George, regardless of what anybody says. If the wind is blowing five miles an hour, and it’s blowing directly towards St. George, 125 miles, it’s going to take a long time for the fallout to get there. It UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 disperses all the time. It’s completely dispersed, by the time it gets that far. There’s not much. However, we could pick it up with a Geiger counter. When it comes down, we could— since I was in the uranium business, we had a Geiger counter, and I would put it in the back yard and we could tell when the fallout started. But it was kind of interesting. What did you think about that? I mean first of all, you actually got to witness an atmospheric test which— For ten years. Which not a lot of people— For ten years. What was that like? What did you think about that? Well, this was for our national defense, and we certainly supported it. A lot of people in St. George worked over there, and I eventually went to work over there. Were you ever concerned about the fallout, especially picking it up on the Geiger counter? No. By the time it gets there, it’s so little, it was not even in a rank with the ore that we mined. It was not as radioactive in any way as the ore that we mined. And also it has a very short half- life. The half- life is— the radiation never really ends, it just keeps reducing by 50 percent over a period. So anyhow, short half- life material. That’s interesting, too, the ore that— working with uranium is also fairly— It’s much, much more radioactive than this. [ 00: 15: 00] Right. What were your thoughts about that? Were you ever concerned? Probably not. We tried to keep clean and not get any ore into our food or into our mouth, and to keep your hands clean and your body clean. Later on, we worried about it more than we did at the time. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 More in a hindsight kind of way? Yes. How long were you in St. George? We lived there until May 1963. So approximately— Ten years. Ten years. OK. And at what point did you end up at the test site? I went there to the test site— oh, first off, after I quit Western Gold, I quit Western Gold in about April 1959, I started my own exploration mining company called Intermountain Exploration Company. We looked for porphyry copper deposits, lead and zinc, gold and silver. We didn’t look for uranium. And we found some interesting prospects, but we were underfinanced, so it couldn’t pay me a salary. So eventually I had to get another job. Well, in about August 1961, the Russians fired a series of ten aerial shots— back up a minute. In 1958, there was a moratorium declared on atomic testing. Nobody did any after that. And the Russians were supposed to honor that and we honored it. But they didn’t live up to their part of the agreement. In August 1961, maybe July and August, they shot ten in the atmosphere. Those ten very large ones in the atmosphere indicated they had to have been preparing for years. One of them was the largest ever shot in the atmosphere, fifty megatons. That’s fifty thousand kilotons, fifty million— OK. So the thing is, these were shot, then the United States woke up. And the president then was President [ John F.] Kennedy, and he resumed the testing at the test site. So we heard the test site was resuming. At that time I had been a mine superintendent at the Silver Reef and at the Orphan, and I had had the experience of developing two mines. So I figured I had some experience that was UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 valuable to them, besides which I was a geologist and I was a surveyor. Anyhow, I went over to the Nevada Test Site looking for a job. And I first went to Holmes and Narver. Holmes and Narver was the architect- engineer. They did the design work for tunnels. And they said they didn’t have anything but they said REECo did. That’s Reynolds Electric[ al and Engineering Company] and to go see Don McGregor. Don McGregor was the tunnel manager for REECo, and he was up to his ears in hiring people and work. He was just overworked. And I showed up there looking for work. He had two telephones going and a line of people waiting to see him. I said, If you hire me, I can take a lot of this work off your hands. I said, I can handle these people coming in, I can handle these phone calls. I can relieve you of a lot of this work. He said, Can you start now? And I said, No, I can’t. I said, I came over here and I don’t have any clothes or anything to stay overnight. And I said I would have to— You’d driven from St. George? Yeah, I’d have to go back home. Anyhow, he hired me that way. So you just showed up and— That’s a lot different than the way you have to go today, isn’t it? It sure is. [ 00: 20: 00] Anyhow, he hired me. And what he had in mind [ was] that I would be the construction superintendent for the tunnel for a big shot that was coming up called Marshmallow. I can show you more about Marshmallow, tell you more. But he showed me a picture of a pipe arrangement and he said, Could you build a thing like that? I said, Of course. [ Chuckling] And full of confidence. Anyhow, that’s what I ended up doing. But in the meantime, they were having a lot of problems of supply. They were running tunnels and they lacked a supply of rail. The tunnel rails, forty- pound rail, forty pounds to the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 yard. Mainline rails are ninety pounds to the yard, so that’s too heavy for the tunnels. The bull gang that lays the track wouldn’t be able to lift the rail, so it has to be the forty- pound. Lighter than that’s not able to support the train; heavier than that, the men can’t work it. So forty- pound rail is what they needed. And he had not been able to get any because in order to have some rolled, it was like a year before you could get delivery. We wanted it now. The Russians just fired these ten big ones. So he said, Find me some rail. So anyhow, I went over to Colorado and I made some phone calls, found a place where they had just torn up a railroad that went to a small town up in Colorado, and it was forty- pound rail and they had it stacked in their yard. In Denver? In Denver, yes. And so I said, We’ll take it. I thought I had the authority to say that because of the way he talked to me. I said, We’ll take it, I was glad to see it, and to start loading it up. I said, We need it now, and we do need it now. Then I called him up and I said, Well, I got your rail. [ Chuckling] And he said, You what? I said, I bought it. [ And he said], You didn’t have the authority to buy it. I said, There are three truckloads out on the road right now. Anyhow— he said we had to have bids. [ And I said], But there’s nobody else has it. [ And he said], Well, that makes it easier to get the bids, doesn’t it? So anyhow, we bought that rail. I also bought fan line the same way. It came from the Eisenhower Tunnel, which is the highway tunnel that goes under the Loveland Pass. Through the mountain, right? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 Yeah. So that was my first experience with buying stuff for the test site. This was in October that I hired on, October 1961. And with REECo. With REECo, yes. And by December, you see, it’s winter now and I started the Marshmallow tunnel, holed it off. Marshmallow was a vacuum- pipe shot simulating in outer space. This was an outer- space shot to know the effect of an atomic blast on many kinds of materials and on other missiles. So this is the beginning of the antimissile series, which is still controversial today. Anyhow, I successfully completed the construction of that and the pipe two months early. And this was unheard of out there. Really. Now, how long did that all take you? It was from December to May. OK, and that was still two months early. Yeah. So that was detonated and it was a very successful experiment. What all goes into completing a tunnel? Was that different than starting the mines, some of the mining work that you had done before? A mine is intended to dig ore out of the ground to sell commercially. A tunnel is aimed at making some purpose other than mining. In this case, to go underground to a place where you want to detonate this thing, and also to make a large enough tunnel so that you included all this [ 00: 25: 00] pipe, an array that they had, and also to include thousands of miles of coaxial cable for their experimental use. So the purpose is entirely different. The method of mining the tunnel is very similar because you drill, blast, muck, drill, blast…. You drill it with compressed- air drills, you load the holes with explosives, you blast it, and that advances— it breaks up the rock, and then you muck it out. You dig it up with what’s called a mucker, and a mucker has a big UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 front end shovel and it pulls the muck back and puts it into ore cars and then they— this is how you advance it. Drill, blast, muck. Then they bring the ventilation line forward, the rail track forward, and the air line and water line forward. And it’s all on a cycle. So you just keep on doing that till you’re done. Now, how far underground was this particular tunnel? Well, it was about 3,000 feet from the portal when you portal in, but it was vertically maybe 800 feet, something like that. OK. That’s still significant. Now, you said Marshmallow was a successful shot? Yes, successful in that it did not blow out the portal, it didn’t blow up the experiments, and they got the data that they were looking for. What that data is, I haven’t really any idea. It wasn’t my business. You see, the security is on a basis of need to know. I didn’t need to know those things, so I didn’t know those things and I wasn’t introduced to them. But I was introduced to the scientists and all. If you’ll hold this a minute, I’ll show you a couple of things in the other room. Sure. OK.( showed pictures of science and tech teams]. [ 00: 26: 54] End Track 3, Disc 1. [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 4, Disc 1. OK. So Marshmallow. Now, what year was that in? It was shot in 1962. And then I worked on some others. Pile Driver was getting started then. Pile Driver is an underground construction experiment to see what kind of underground structures would be developed to resist a direct atomic attack. It was something like our NORAD [ North American Air Defense Command] underground facility in Colorado, where if the enemy, any enemy were to hit it with an atomic bomb, we would want to have it structurally safe. And that was what we were testing, about 200 of these individual structures underground. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 But I decided about that time that I wanted to do other things, so I left the test site and I went with the Sunshine Mining Company. Sunshine Mining Company is a silver- mining company up in Idaho. They used me as a mining engineer for developing a new, improved ventilation system. And then I was superintendent of tunnel construction for them at the Exchequer Dam in California. On the construction of a new dam in California called the Exchequer, and I was the tunnel and gate shaft superintendent. But Mr. McGregor was having trouble with Pile Driver. Pile Driver was being started and it was way over budget and underperforming. It was going at half the speed it should— the construction was— and costing twice as much money. And I had done very well with Marshmallow, and he wanted me to come back to the test site and do Pile Driver. So I quit Sunshine Mining and I came back to the test site, and moved to Boulder City at that time. What year was this? Well, ’ 64, but I arrived in Boulder City on January 1, 1965. So ’ 65. In ’ 65, then, I took over Pile Driver in a way other than what you might think. The man that was doing the construction on Pile Driver was Glenn Clayton and he is a very capable miner and mine operator, but he did not have any experience with this kind of thing. It had to have a new kind of planning because all of these structures had to be built in concentric arcs at particular distances from the place they were going to install a known atomic bomb in order to test these structures. And they had to be done in such a way that you could do the excavation and do the various kinds of structures without getting in the way of one another. Consequently, it wasn’t the kind of a thing you could do if you just came to work in the morning and decided well, you’re going to do this or you’re going to do that. It had to be very carefully planned in order to have the logistics proper to move the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 particular structural materials to the right places at the right time. It had to have a detailed plan, something Mr. Clayton had never done, but I had done. So first off, I wanted to know why it was taking so long. It turns out that people in the Department of Defense [ DoD], various generals and admirals and colonels and so on, liked to visit the test site, and they liked to come out there because they could go to Las Vegas. So here they are. He’s running a tour, essentially, of Pile Driver, and these people, uniformed officers, show up underground. They are holding up construction. They’re in the way. Maybe they think it’s interesting to them, but they’re stopping the men from doing the work. Everything had to go through that one shaft, all the material, all the men, all the ventilation, the water and concrete, and visitors. The first thing I did was to talk to DoD about not having visitors come into there, and they cooperated 100 percent. I said we could [ 00: 05: 00] set up a Saturday when there were very few people working; have some of them come down then and just put some men on to take them underground, but we— During the regular work day— Saturday wasn’t at that time. Earlier on, they were all work days. But anyhow, that worked. That helped a lot. And then I met with a man named Asa Morrison who was an expert with using the computer for planning. He and I and Glenn Clayton spent dozens of evenings— we would spend at the test site our evenings making this plan for the development of Pile Driver. Huge sheets of paper would be all around this room and the next room. And this was all put on computer cards, IBM [ International Business Machine] cards in those days, and then the progress was monitored every day so that we knew what materials were going to go to which of those sections. So now we had a plan, and the plan was followed, and it was completed. No more time was lost, it was back up onto schedule, and no more money was lost. And that was my second big one at the test UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 site. They made me assistant manager of operations in charge of mining. Mr. [ Harold] Cunningham did, promoted me. So that’s what I was until I quit the test site. When did you leave the test site? It was in 1969, in June. I left there to go to teach at UNLV [ University of Nevada, Las Vegas] in the fall of 1969. What did you teach at UNLV? I taught civil engineering and some geology courses. My wife Anne was already there, teaching. She’d been there since 1966. Wow. So you guys have seen some changes on that campus, as well as in the Las Vegas area. Well, yes, I think there were a hundred faculty then, eighty to a hundred faculty. Combined. Total. And now there are that many in engineering. Right. And how long were you at UNLV? Twenty- three years, and then I retired from there. I do consulting for various things. Good. Now, just going back to some things that you did at the test site, I guess first I’m curious when you got out to the test site, what did you think of it? I don’t understand what you mean. Well, I guess you were already familiar with the test site, but I’m wondering what your impressions were. Was it what you had expected or— Yes, it was pretty much what I expected. I was familiar with the desert, familiar with the Nevada culture, and I knew people that had worked there. OK, so you were familiar. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 And I knew about the testing itself, the aerial testing. They didn’t go back to aerial testing, so even though I think there was one aerial test later on, the aerial testing essentially was ended in 1958. Beyond that, there was practically none. There was none while I was out there. What areas were you in? Like Area 16, Area 15. Pile Driver was in Area 15. Marshmallow was in Area 16. The miners’ camp is Area 12, so many of the tunnel shots were in Area 12. They are usually in Area 12. Marshmallow and Gum Drop were in 16. Hard Hat and Pile Driver were in Area 15, and Tiny Tot. Tiny Tot was another interesting one. [ 00: 10: 00] Well, for one thing, let’s see some of the programs they have out there. Mainly there are two kinds of atomic tests. There are weapons tests and weapons effects tests. The weapons tests are testing that might be used in war. The weapons effects tests are testing what an atomic weapon will do to our own infrastructure or weapons or whatever. So with the weapons effects tests, they always use a known bomb, a five- kiloton or a one- kiloton, that they already know how it’ll behave. They’re not testing new bombs. With the weapons tests, they do test new bombs. But there also is another third kind is the peaceful uses, Plowshare. Plowshare I was very interested in. So you have the weapons tests, the weapons effects test, the Plowshare tests, and then another called Vela Uniform. What’s that? It’s how to hide a test from your enemy. How to conduct an atomic test so that they wouldn’t know about it. And that’s called— Vela Uniform. However, as far as I know, we were always able to detect our own tests, so consequently we would always be able to detect their tests. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 17 Right. And that’s done by measuring vibrations or seismic energy in the— Yes, this sort of thing. Tiny Tot what I mentioned was an open sphere and they put the test in the middle of the sphere, so it’s not coupled to the ground. It’s just like an aerial shot underground. So it does not put out the same kind of vibrations as any other test. How these came out, I don’t know. I was never privileged to know. So essentially you built the tunnels for them. Yes. And I think you described it earlier but what was a typical day like when you were constructing the tunnels? Typical day? Yeah, what— for the most parts. Well, during the construction, I first lived out at the test site and came home on weekends. Then later on, I lived in Boulder City and commuted daily. That’s ninety miles to the test site. And with the daily commute, I would drive into Las Vegas and catch the bus. Later on, the buses came all the way to Boulder City, but at first, most of the time, I just drove into Las Vegas and catch the bus, and then ride out there. And on the ride out there, in the evening coming back, I would prepare for teaching a course at UNLV and do the work on the bus. And then I taught at UNLV at night courses while I was working at the test site. And that’s how I got my job there. But you get out there in the morning, you go through the main gate, you show your badge— there’s a badge check on everybody.