COFFEE BREAK
B6 — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
SATuRDAY, NOVEmBER 6, 2021
Single woman struggles to connect in new community
nings or at the beach or parties,
I’m seldom included by either
group. One person told me it was
because I’m single; another told
me they didn’t want me to feel
out of place because it was cou-
ples. Is this friendship, or should
I look for friends elsewhere? —
Ready, Willing And Able
Dear Ready: No, this is not
“friendship.” You wrote that
one of these cliques isn’t open
to new members. The women
in the second group may not
welcome you because they feel
threatened by your single status,
which is why you are welcomed
to “work” with them but not
socialize. It’s sad really, and
more of a reflection on them than
on you. By all means look for
friends elsewhere, possibly in
groups in which there are other
Dear Abby: I have been
living in a 55-plus community in
Florida for several years. I’m a
single woman, and I moved here
for the weather and to meet new
friends. In this community, there
are “cliques.” One does every-
thing together and never includes
anyone else. The other is a com-
bination of full-time residents
and seasonal residents.
I’m “friendly” with almost
everyone in each group. I work
with them on committees, in
clubs, etc. However, when it
comes to socializing in the eve-
know us only as the “package
people” because we send gifts.
Please help us figure out what to
do. Our son hasn’t spoken to his
dad in seven months because of
this perceived wrong. We feel it
will be really uncomfortable for
all of us. — To Go Or Not To
Go
Dear To Go: The longer this
estrangement lasts, the more
embedded it will become. You
need to go, see your grandchil-
dren and mend fences, if pos-
sible. Regardless of how the visit
turns out, at the least you will
have seen your grandchildren.
If you make the effort, it may
start your family on the path of
healing.
Dear Abby: When dining
out in restaurants I often see
people stack their dirty dishes at
singles. If you do, I’m sure you
will have better luck.
Dear Abby: My son, daugh-
ter-in-law and 1-year-old grand-
daughter moved across the
country two years ago and have
not once come to see us. They
promised they would come as
often as they could or, I should
say, as often as she went to see
her parents, which is every four
months or so.
They now have a brand-new
baby we haven’t seen due to
COVID-19. We bought them a
special iPad to FaceTime with,
but it hasn’t been used, nor do
they ever call us. They actu-
ally didn’t speak to us for nine
months over a perceived slight.
Now they want us to come
visit them. We desperately want
to see our grandchildren. They
the table before or as the server
removes them. This has never
seemed right to me. Do I need to
change my view of table man-
ners? — Binnie In Iowa
Dear Binnie: Try to be a
bit less judgmental. Although
what you describe is considered
a breach of etiquette, there are
people who are averse to having
dirty dishes in front of them
once they have finished eating.
In a formal dining establish-
ment, the server should be asked
to remove the empty plates.
Dear Readers: Daylight
saving time ends at 2 a.m.
Sunday. Don’t forget to turn your
clocks back one hour at bedtime
tonight. And while you’re at it,
put fresh batteries in your fire
alarms and smoke detectors.
— Love, Abby
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
US government works to ‘cocoon’ old nuclear reactors
and N Reactor — were built
from 1943 through 1965.
They were constructed
next to the Columbia River
because of the abundance
of hydropower and cooling
water needed by the reac-
tors during operation.
All have been cocooned
except K-East and K-West.
Work on cocooning the
K-East reactor has already
started and should be fin-
ished by 2023, French said.
Work on the K-West reactor
is scheduled for completion
in 2026.
The cocoon plan for
K-East and K-West is to
basically construct steel
buildings around them.
Each building is 158 feet
(48.2 meters) long, 151
feet (46 meters) wide and
123 feet (37.5 meters) tall,
French said. The two steel
buildings will cost less than
$10 million each.
Future generations will
decide the final disposition
of the eight reactors, French
said. They will likely be dis-
mantled and buried in the
central area of the Hanford
site, away from the river.
“Robots may be
deployed in the future” for
that work, French said.
Hanford watchdogs gen-
erally agree with this pro-
cess, said Tom Carpenter,
director of the Seattle-based
watchdog group Hanford
Challenge.
“Nobody is raising any
concerns about cocooning,”
Carpenter said. “We’re
all worried about the tank
waste that needs immediate
and urgent attention.”
The bigger question is
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
The Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. —
Costs to clean up a mas-
sive nuclear weapons com-
plex in Washington state
are usually expressed in the
hundreds of billions of dol-
lars and involve decades of
work.
But one project on the
Hanford Nuclear Reser-
vation is progressing at a
much lower price.
The federal government
is moving forward with the
“cocooning” of eight plu-
tonium production reactors
at Hanford that will place
them in a state of long-
term storage to allow radia-
tion inside to dissipate over
a period of decades, until
they can be dismantled and
buried.
“It’s relatively nonex-
pensive,” Mark French,
a manager for the U.S.
Department of Energy,
said of cocooning. “The
cost of trying to dismantle
the reactor and demolish
the reactor core would be
extremely expensive and
put workers at risk.”
The federal government
built nine nuclear reactors
at Hanford to make plu-
tonium for atomic bombs
during World War II and the
Cold War. The site along the
Columbia River contains
America’s largest quantity
of radioactive waste.
The reactors are now
shut down and sit like
cement fortresses near the
southeastern Washington
city of Richland. Six have
already been cocooned for
Nicholas K. Geranios/The Associated Press, File
The decommissioned plutonium-producing DR reactor, left, and D reactor, right, are shown on the Han-
ford Nuclear Reservation, June 13, 2017, near Richland, Washington. The federal government is moving
forward with the cost-saving “cocooning” of eight plutonium production reactors at Hanford that will
place them in a state of long-term storage for decades to allow radiation inside to dissipate until they can
be dismantled and buried.
long-term storage, and two
more are headed in that
direction. The ninth reactor
was turned into a museum
as part of the Manhattan
Project National Historical
Park.
While World War II
ended in 1945 and the
Cold War ended in 1989,
the United States is still
paying billions of dollars
per year for the disposal of
the nuclear waste produced
by the atomic weapons that
played a big role in ending
those conflicts. The biggest
expense is dealing with a
massive volume of liquid
wastes left over from the
production of plutonium,
a key ingredient in nuclear
weapons.
While the liquid wastes
stored in 177 underground
enter the reactor building
to make sure there are
no leaks or rodent or bird
infestations, he said.
Cleanup of Hanford,
which has about 11,000
employees and is half
the size of Rhode Island,
started in the late 1980s,
and now costs about $2.5
billion per year. The
work has been slowed by
technical issues, lack of
funding, lawsuits from state
regulators, worker exposure
to radiation and turnover
of contractors on the com-
plex job.
But the handling of the
old reactors is a bright spot.
The nine reactors —
called B Reactor, C Reactor,
D Reactor, DR Reactor, F
Reactor, H Reactor, K-East
Reactor, K-West Reactor,
tanks will take decades of
work and hundreds of bil-
lions of dollars to clean,
efforts to secure the nine
plutonium reactors are
much closer to completion.
The last two reactors,
shut down in 1970 and
1971, are about to enter the
cocooning stage, when they
are covered with steel and
cement to prevent radioac-
tivity from escaping into
the environment, French
said.
The cocoons are
expected to last about 75
years, by which time the
radioactivity inside will
have dramatically decreased
and there presumably will
be a plan for final disposi-
tion of the remaining parts,
French said.
Every five years, workers
weather
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AROUND OREGON AND THE REGION
Astoria
Longview
43/49
Kennewick
43/47
St. Helens
44/48
38/48
38/52
44/50
43/49
Condon
SUN
MON
TUE
WED
Partly cloudy
Partly sunny and
chilly
Breezy in the
afternoon
A couple of
showers
A bit of snow
and rain
46 35
44 31
44 30
Eugene
41/52
La Grande
29 46 28
Comfort Index™
Enterprise
1
0
0
0
0
46 42
49 38
44 36
1
0
0
2
23 42 26
Comfort Index™
1
47 32
42 39
3
1
0
ALMANAC
NATION (for the 48 contiguous states)
High Thursday
Low Thursday
High: 93°
Low: 12°
Wettest: 1.28”
61°
36°
63°
39°
64°
45°
PRECIPITATION (inches)
Thursday
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Normal year to date
0.04
0.09
0.09
4.44
7.57
0.14
0.23
0.25
8.63
13.83
0.07
0.13
0.31
18.64
19.34
HAY INFORMATION SUNDAY
45%
S at 7 to 14 mph
0.2
0.06
RESERVOIR STORAGE (through midnight Friday)
Phillips Reservoir
Unity Reservoir
Owyhee Reservoir
McKay Reservoir
Wallowa Lake
Thief Valley Reservoir
N.A.
11% of capacity
12% of capacity
14% of capacity
6% of capacity
1% of capacity
STREAM FLOWS (through midnight Thursday)
Grande Ronde at Troy
Thief Valley Reservoir near North Powder
Burnt River near Unity
Umatilla River near Gibbon
Minam River at Minam
Powder River near Richland
El Centro, Calif.
Alamosa, Colo.
Harlingen, Texas
OREGON
High: 68°
Low: 34°
Wettest: 1.10”
Ontario
Odell Lake
Tillamook
WEATHER HISTORY
AGRICULTURAL INFO.
Lowest relative humidity
Afternoon wind
Hours of sunshine
Evapotranspiration
Florence
On Nov. 6, 1953, a coastal storm brought
3 inches of snow to Richmond, Va., and up
to 18 inches to Philadelphia. Wind gusts
reached 98 mph at Block Island, R.I.
SUN & MOON
SAT.
Sunrise
Sunset
Moonrise
Moonset
SUN.
7:39 a.m. 6:40 a.m.
5:33 p.m. 4:31 p.m.
10:01 a.m. 10:21 a.m.
6:55 p.m. 6:47 p.m.
MOON PHASES
736 cfs
0 cfs
18 cfs
46 cfs
104 cfs
8 cfs
First
Nov 11
Full
Nov 19
Last
Nov 27
Beaver Marsh
Powers
43/52
New
Dec 3
41/51
Silver Lake
Jordan Valley
28/46
Paisley
23/46
25/43
Frenchglen
26/45
36/52
Klamath Falls
24/45
City
Astoria
Bend
Boise
Brookings
Burns
Coos Bay
Corvallis
Council
Elgin
Eugene
Hermiston
Hood River
Imnaha
John Day
Joseph
Kennewick
Klamath Falls
Lakeview
Hi/Lo/W
49/41/r
44/28/c
52/33/c
53/43/r
45/19/c
52/38/r
49/38/r
44/23/pc
45/26/pc
52/38/r
56/34/s
48/34/r
47/31/sf
47/28/pc
43/28/c
57/36/s
45/22/c
44/19/c
Hi/Lo/W
52/44/c
48/44/pc
51/42/pc
55/50/r
48/34/pc
56/48/c
49/45/c
48/33/c
47/39/c
52/44/c
56/48/c
47/43/c
48/42/c
49/41/c
40/35/pc
54/46/c
46/35/pc
45/33/pc
36/52
Lakeview
22/44
McDermitt
30/46
RECREATION FORECAST SUNDAY
REGIONAL CITIES
MON.
Grand View
Arock
29/48
27/47
Shown is Sunday’s weather. Temperatures are Saturday night’s lows and Sunday’s highs.
SUN.
Diamond
25/44
Fields
Medford
Brookings
Boise
36/52
37/54
43/53
27/49
23/43
Chiloquin
Grants Pass
Juntura
21/45
30/41
24/41
Roseburg
Ontario
34/53
Burns
Brothers
36/48
Coos Bay
Huntington
23/42
33/44
Oakridge
29/44
30/50
Seneca
Bend
Elkton
THURSDAY EXTREMES
TEMPERATURES Baker City La Grande Elgin
28/47
30/45
Council
25/47
John Day
30/50
Sisters
43/52
Comfort Index takes into account how the weather will feel based on a combination of factors. A rating of 10 feels
very comfortable while a rating of 0 feels very uncomfortable.
25/47
Baker City
Redmond
43/51
46/52
Halfway
Granite
22/39
38/44
44/52
42/51
44 37
3
Corvallis
29/50
40/49
Newport
Enterprise
23/42
29/46
Monument
34/51
Idanha
Salem
TONIGHT
1
Elgin
27/45
La Grande
33/46
Maupin
Comfort Index™
36/53
Pendleton
The Dalles
Portland
Newberg
Lewiston
37/51
Hood River
33/51
TIllamook
25 47 24
Forecasts and graphics provided
by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2021
Walla Walla
39/57
Vancouver
43/48
45/51
Baker City
whether future generations
will be willing to pay the
massive costs of Hanford
cleanup, he said.
Carpenter said the esti-
mated cost to completely
clean up just the tank
wastes at the Hanford site is
around $660 billion.
“It’s rather grim. It’s
multigenerational,” he said.
“This will cost more
than anyone thought pos-
sible,” Carpenter said of
the tank wastes and other
wastes that were dumped
into the ground at Hanford.
“It’s a hidden cost of the
(nuclear) buildup.”
By then, there might
be bigger budget concerns
such as dealing with the
effects of climate change,
Carpenter said.
The most intriguing of
the old reactors is the B
Reactor, the first one built
during World War II. It
will not be cocooned, and
can be visited by tourists
at the national historical
park. B Reactor, which shut
down in 1968, was cleaned
up enough to allow some
10,000 tourists to visit each
year and learn the history
of Hanford. It has been des-
ignated a National Historic
Landmark.
Plutonium from Han-
ford’s B Reactor was used
in the testing of the world’s
first atomic bomb in July
1945. Called the Trinity
Test, the bomb was blown
up in the New Mexico
desert. Hanford plutonium
was also used for the bomb
that was dropped over
Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug.
9, 1945.
City
Lewiston
Longview
Meacham
Medford
Newport
Olympia
Ontario
Pasco
Pendleton
Portland
Powers
Redmond
Roseburg
Salem
Spokane
The Dalles
Ukiah
Walla Walla
SUN.
MON.
Hi/Lo/W
51/35/pc
47/39/r
46/27/sf
52/35/r
51/42/r
48/38/r
53/29/pc
55/34/s
51/33/pc
50/42/r
52/37/r
50/30/pc
51/37/r
52/41/r
45/32/pc
52/35/r
43/26/pc
53/35/pc
Hi/Lo/W
52/41/pc
50/44/c
49/42/c
52/46/c
52/46/c
48/40/c
54/42/pc
56/41/c
56/48/c
51/45/c
57/50/r
51/40/c
55/48/c
53/47/c
46/35/c
50/43/c
47/40/pc
52/44/c
Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain,
sf-snow fl urries, sn-snow, i-ice
ANTHONY LAKES
PHILLIPS LAKE
Partly sunny; cold
Partly sunny
22
15
41
22
MT. EMILY REC.
BROWNLEE RES.
Cold
Sunny intervals
33
26
48
26
EAGLE CAP WILD.
EMIGRANT ST. PARK
Cold
A snow shower
27
13
41
21
WALLOWA LAKE
MCKAY RESERVOIR
Mostly cloudy
Partial sunshine
43
28
52
34
THIEF VALLEY RES.
RED BRIDGE ST. PARK
Partly sunny
Partly sunny
47
24
46
28