Fiestaware: Understanding Radiation

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote a blog on Fiestaware when I noticed that the Post Office had issued a stamp honoring the man who had designed the original Fiestaware line (Frederick Hurten Rhead).  My tone was a bit lighthearted, as one color of classical Fiestaware was made with a uranium glaze that gave it a distinctive orange color, so it had become something I personally enjoy collecting and using.  (Well, collection may be a bit exaggerated, but I do have a couple of pieces, and I also have a couple of pieces of Vaseline glass, a product that similarly used uranium to color glass.  And for any other would-be collectors, I do want to note that the Fiestaware that is in production today doesn't use that glaze.  You have to look in antique shops.)

 

I did not think I would ever have a reason to revisit this subject, but yesterday's news featured an article about a school at which a hazmat emergency was declared because a student brought in a small sample of uranium-containing classical Fiestaware!  The first thing that has me scratching my head is that the student brought it in because they were demonstrating the use of a Geiger counter.  A Geiger counter needs a little radiation to show it's stuff!  Duh!  The second thing that struck me about this story is the profound ignorance that still surrounds anything with the "r word"--radiation.  

 

 People seem to be able to put other risks in perspective, but whether because of history, because it is invisible, or for any one of a number of other reasons I have heard, people do not seem to be able to understand even the basics of radiation.  This clearly is one factor that has dogged the nuclear power industry for its entire existence.

 

 I wish I had a magic answer to this dilemma, a way to educate people and to make them understand what they should fear and what they do not need to fear.  But it is clear that, as we continue to try to educate the public on the safety of  nuclear power plants, we need to keep in mind that we should be sure the educational tools cover things more basic than the nuclear power plants, in particular, the radiation from not only the nuclear plants, but from even such innocuous items as an antique orange plate.

 

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"Secret Cities": A Look at Nuclear History

Architecture and the Manhattan Project 

I recently visited an exhibit on the Manhattan Project at the Building Museum in Washington, DC.  The exhibit has been open since early May, so perhaps some people reading this blog will have seen it already.  But if you haven't, and if you live in the DC area or have a chance to visit, I highly recommend the exhibit.  It is open until March 3, 2019, so I hope a lot of people will have the opportunity to view it.

Called "Secret Cities," the exhibit focuses on the extraordinary requirements for housing generated by the opening of Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Hanford laboratories during World War II, and how they were met.  This is appropriate, of course, since this is a museum about buildings and architecture, but by doing so, it focuses attention on something many of us don't think about--the fact that thousands of people had to be brought to these sites and housed, fed, and entertained, all under a shroud of secrecy.  

The exhibit puts the housing issue in context--it discusses other attempts at the time to turn out modularized housing, it includes examples of the work of some of the famous architects of the day and how their innovations influenced the designs, and it even illustrates some of the post-war housing construction that built, at least in part, upon the experiences of the Manhattan Project. 

While the exhibit focuses on the housing, it also does a good job of covering a number of other aspects of the 3 laboratories and the communities that lived there.  It includes displays that show some of the major facilities built to conduct the research and production at the laboratories, and gives brief explanations of the scientific principles that were explored and exploited.  It discusses the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and controversy surrounding the decision to drop the bombs.  It talks about life on these remote, secret sites, and shows examples of the signs, the badges, and the announcements of social events.  And it is frank about the poor treatment of African-Americans working on the sites--the segregation and inferior housing.

The exhibit even includes a couple of pieces of Vaseline glass (also called uranium glass) and Fiestaware.  My most amusing moment in the exhibit came as I was reading that display and overheard someone behind me opining to no one in particular that it must be dangerous to eat from those dishes.  I couldn't help myself.  I turned to him and said, "Only if you eat the plate."

While a lot of the history and science covered in the exhibit will be familiar to people in the nuclear community, for me, the focus on the design and construction of the housing and on some of the memorabilia from life there at the time provided an added dimension to what I already knew.  I think others will also find that the exhibit provides a unique focus on some aspects of the Manhattan Project we too often take for granted.

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Uranium:

Not Just for Reactors

With this blogpost, I take a little break from the weighty issues of the day. A trip to my local Post Office the other day brought me face to face with the USPS's latest stamp offerings focusing on "pioneers of American industrial design." The set features, as one might guess, designers of things like telephones and typewriters and table lamps and clocks and radios and cameras. But there among them was one that especially resonated with me. A picture of two Fiestaware pitchers, one in a familiar brilliant orange-red glaze. A glaze made possible by the use of uranium.

Yes, uranium. Long, long ago, boys and girls, in the days before nuclear reactors, uranium was a by-product of mining for silver and other minerals. Enterprising people of the day, looking for uses for this material, found it did wondrous things in pottery and glassware. The orange-red glaze used a uranium oxide and was a signature feature of the Fiestaware product line starting in the 1930s. So much so that when the US government commandeered all supplies of uranium as part of its effort to develop the bomb, the company went into decline.

Actually, Fiestaware was not the first product to use uranium. Glass containing uranium oxide has been found in archeological sites dating from Roman times. More recently, so-called uranium glass (also sometimes called Vaseline glass because of its yellow-green color) was popular from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Uranium glass has an interesting property that makes for a fun parlor trick. When exposed to ultraviolet light, it fluoresces. Of course, that characteristic is a consequence of the electrons, not the nucleus, but it is fun to demonstrate just the same.

I probably first became aware of Fiestaware when I attended the opening session of an ANS meeting over 20 years ago. With all due respect to the many distinguished people who have made presentations at the opening plenaries of ANS meetings over the years, the one I most enjoyed was by James Acord, an artist who gave a highly entertaining presentation about his desire to use Fiestaware in his sculptures, and his long battle with the NRC to obtain a license (yes, really!) to possess the uranium in the large quantities of Fiestaware he was acquiring. I am pleased to report that he was ultimately successful in that endeavor. I am less happy to report that, in the course of looking up some things for this blogpost, I learned that he died this past January.

I'm not an avid antique collector, but after hearing his presentation, I started to keep an eye out for pieces of original Fiestaware in the characteristic color. (Fiestaware is in production again, but doesn't use uranium glaze.) I more recently branched out and acquired a piece of uranium glass. I figure it is only fitting to use a piece or two when I entertain guests.

It's been interesting to watch people's reactions. One woman who has a good technical education surprised me by visibly backing away from a Fiestaware platter on the table. Most people, however, are just curious. Since the colors and the fluorescence are more in the realm of chemistry than nuclear science, even nuclear engineers are perplexed by why the color of the glaze is orange-red and the color of the glass is yellow-green, and why the glass fluoresces but the glaze does not.

Now admittedly, the Post Office series was not meant to honor Fiestaware per se, but rather to honor the man who designed the Fiestaware line (Frederick Hurten Rhead). Nevertheless, I thought the fact that one of 12 stamps on American industrial design features an early use of uranium was significant. So, although the Post Office's stamps would not ordinarily be a subject for one of my blogposts, I felt I could take a late summer break from the more serious stuff and write about Fiestaware and uranium glass.

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