Inside a nuclear inspector school: How I went on the hunt for uranium

Los Alamos was the birthplace of nuclear weapons

By Chelsea Whyte

It was a blisteringly hot morning when I reported to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for nuclear inspector school. The lab is the old home of the Manhattan Project, the secret effort to develop the first nuclear weapons. It sits atop a mesa north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, isolated by geography and security checkpoints.

Credentials checked, I was driven down “Plutonium Corridor,” a main road that passes a building encased in five layers of barbed fencing. It is where they design and maintain nuclear …