Cradle to Grave

To quote a summary of 42 U.S.C. §6901 et seq. (1976):

The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) gives [the Environmental Protection Agency] the authority to control hazardous waste from cradle to grave. This includes the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste.

This took on special significance to me this past week as I helped retire a procedure I also helped create, as part of the Idaho Cleanup Project at the Idaho National Laboratory.

I've been working at the ICP for more than a decade, and still love that the project shares an acronym with Insane Clown Posse. Retiring the procedure, however, felt like a milestone. I remember being in the building at the computer with our criticality safety engineer, inputting responses into the computer and recording the output so we could write the procedure based on the computer's actions.

I got to see the procedure in action once -- I'm trained to be in the vicinity, but not to operate the stuff; I don't like to do lookie-loos when they're unnecessary. Seeing the procedure in action was fun.

And now it's gone.

I hope it was easy to understand.

I'm sure I would have heard about it if it weren't. [Puts down Rubik's Cube.]