Meliorism Redux

This afternoon I found myself standing on the steps of More Hall Annex on the University of Washington campus, chatting up a woman from the Department of Energy. She had come from Hanford to have a look at the building -- which once held a small nuclear reactor -- and perhaps offer support to the idea of making it into a museum of nuclear history. Steve Gilbert, the guy who had dreamed up the whole museum idea and invited me along as a possible co-conspirator, had gone to park the car. So the DOE lady and I stood looking down through the plate-glass windows into the empty concrete shell of the reactor, grateful for the swooping eaves that sheltered us from the drizzle.

With the professor who had agreed to let us in and show us around, we reviewed the building's history: built in 1961 to house a research reactor for the university's nuclear engineering program; used as a robotics lab (among other things) after the reactor was decommissioned in 1988; stripped and decontaminated in 2007; slated for demolition last summer; saved by an architecture student who managed to get the place landmarked, against the wishes of the university and two years before it reached its 50-year mark (usually a requirement for the National Register of Historic Places).

When Steve arrived, we made our way down to the back door on the lower level, agreeing that the building, dilapidated though it was, still somehow exuded a distinct Kennedy-era brand of soaring optimism: a faith that the world's problems don't stand a chance against the onslaught of mankind's ingenuity, and that new technology will surely pave the way to a bright future. Even with the equipment gone, the electric wiring stripped out, and the asbestos flooring scraped away, it was easy to imagine those smart, confident optimists hard at work in the control room:

Looking over the reamed-out space, I remembered that my grandfather was one of those guys -- he never set foot in this particular control room, but he spent much of his career in others like it, first at Hanford, then at GE. One of his proudest achievements was overseeing the construction of India's first nuclear power plant -- I remember a giant calligraphied thank you letter from the Indian government framed on his office wall.

I know any nuclear history museum worth its salt would have to devote much of its exhibitry to detailing the folly of that whole techno-optimistic line of thinking. Not just the unintended consequences -- the strontium in the milk and the warming of the Columbia River and the plume of radioactive waste still creeping into the groundwater -- but also the deliberate, horrific destruction wrought by nuclear technology. My grandfather was proud of the role he and the other Hanford workers played in ending World War Two, but neither he nor anyone else considered Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be signposts on the road to a bright utopian high-tech future. Quite the opposite, in fact: as those of us who grew up in the looming shadow of Mutual Assured Destruction can tell you, those mushroom clouds took a mighty toll on our faith that guys in white lab coats would play any part in our salvation.

All of this is part of the story this building has to tell. And I have to say, from inside the blasted-out core of the old reactor, with the chilly November dusk closing in around me -- that averted Cold War apocalypse felt eerily close by.


We can't ever forget the dangers of relying on technology to solve our problems (especially the problems we have created... with our technology). But I have to admit I'm craving a little shot of that brazen, can-do, Kennedy-inspired optimism these days. As our leaders head into the climate talks in Copenhagen next month, as Seattle answers my friend Alex's call to become North America's first carbon-neutral city, as we field questions from our kids about the planet they will inherit, I'm ready to tap back into the idea that human effort can make the world better.