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Harvard scientists have also felt the pressure to avoid bumping up against the new ethos of secrecy and censorship. Presley Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics R. John Collier is one of the nation’s foremost anthrax researchers. He worked on anthrax for years before white powder in the mail became a national obsession. New federal laws regulating research on things such as anthrax led Collier to destroy his only samples of anthrax to “avoid attracting terrorists and more of the press than I wanted,” he told The New York Times...
...Most notably, there are ladies bathrooms everywhere at Harvard Law School,” she says. “That’s a big change. You don’t have to run through a sleet storm for two blocks to use the powder room...
...recent winter day, more than 2,000 ft. below the surface of the McArthur River mine, Dale Powder operated a scoop tram from a niche in the rock wall 100 ft. or so from the vehicle. He wore a hard hat and rubber boots, a radiation detector and a shoulder harness with a pair of joysticks that he manipulated through his heavy work gloves. The scoop tram looked like a dump truck with the cab lopped off. On solid-rubber tires 5 ft. high, it carried freshly mined ore in soccer-ball-size chunks to the "grizzly," the big grated...
...Powder is from Uranium City, 186 miles northwest of the mine, and near the end of his day shift, he was one of only two dozen or so miners at work underground at McArthur River. Where Powder works, it's as dry as a bone, but a few hundred feet away, in a neighboring tunnel, a perpetual fine rain falls. The porous sandstone that encases the mine's ore zone is saturated, even in winter, with water melting from the frozen surface. To keep the water from pouring into the mining shafts, Cameco's engineers have pulled off a remarkable...
Here's how it works: McArthur River uses two horizontal floors, above and below the uranium-ore zone. One floor is 1,740 ft. underground and the other is at 2,100 ft., where Powder was stationed on the day of our visit. To start mining a new section of ore, a drill is used to dig a 15-in. pilot hole from the upper level to the lower one. Once the drill bit punches through the ceiling of the lower horizontal shaft, the drill is removed and a 10-ton, 10-ft.-wide reamer with tungsten-carbide teeth...