Monday, July 21, 2008

Reservoir & Waterfall

I've been doing a lot more outdoors stuff lately up here. I have to say, I'm pretty lazy, but it's been surprisingly enjoyable to get out and about. We've been doing some cliff jumping in a local reservoir and also hiked down a waterfall. I actually have something approaching a tan, and spending all day hungover in the mountains is a touch better than laying around hungover in sad sad Idaho Falls.

Today I went on a tour of something called "the site" at INL, about 1 hour away from town. It's basically the lab part of the complex where they condition spent fuel and where the advanced test reactor is located. We also saw EBR-1, which is the first power reactor in the world, and lit the town of Arco, ID for one glorious night in the 50s.

Two members of our tour group was assigned to wear dosimetry tags, which record the dose of radiation one is exposed to. I was one of the lucky tag bearers, so of course, as we are going through the metal detectors at one of the facilities, I put the tag through the x-ray machine. That is a big no-no, and when the data from the tag comes back, it'll look like I was fried pretty good. The tour guide was pretty cool about it, but I felt like a pretty big dumbass.

Overall the tour was pretty good, and I enjoyed seeing the army guide with their M-16s, and I also got to play with some of the robotic arms. Anything to get out of the office for a day...

2 comments:

Spacebeer said...

Cliff jumping? Robotic arms? Radiation? You are going to think Austin is soooooo boring when you come back.

Joolie B said...

No, she won't! We've been busy with our...uh...

Crap.