Michelle Molina: From Quito to Cleaning Up Hanford’s Nuclear Waste

Many families in Washington's Tri-Cities have stories of migration, family, hard work and service to their community, and Latino families are no exception. The Hanford Latinx Experiences oral histories, collected for Manhattan Project National Historical Park, record a few of the many Latinas and Latinos who have brought their skills to the Manhattan Project, to Hanford and to the Tri-Cities. Michelle Molina told her story to Drew Gamboa on October 18, 2024.

Growing up in Quito

Molina grew up in Quito, Ecuador, in a close, social neighborhood where people prayed together and turned out for every event, from small parties to holiday celebrations where everyone dressed up or brought food. Her grandparents had friends all over the neighborhood and threw parties on the stone patio behind their house, sometimes with a DJ. By six or seven she was dancing salsa, bachata and cumbia. She remembers Ecuador as warm, welcoming and fun, a place where people were always up for doing something together, and where a passing remark always got a response.

A hard move

Her stepfather needed to work in the United States, and he did work at Hanford. The family's visa took about four years, during which they lived in Ecuador, then a year in Argentina, then back in Ecuador. In October 2009, at 14, Molina arrived in the Tri-Cities, well after the school year had started.

She calls it one of the hardest times of her life. She had left behind six close girlfriends. She had long dreamed of living in the United States — she had improved her English memorizing Jonas Brothers lyrics — but pictured somewhere like California. Instead she moved from Ecuador's big capital city to a small town with no mountains and no trees, a different culture and a new language. She and her mother, already close, leaned on each other as the only two who understood what they were going through.

Finding her people

By her third or fourth year, she understood the social rules better and had found safe spaces and steady friends. Much of that came through the International Club at Hanford High School; each fall she looked forward to meeting new students from abroad. Her first friends were mostly international students, and her two longtime local friends had roots in Korea and Afghanistan. By her last two years of high school she was making American friends too, though she still finds the dry, sarcastic local humor hard.

College was easier. At Whitworth University in Spokane, the first two women she met in her dorm were from Mexico and Venezuela, and she felt she had people who understood her. Everyone was starting from scratch as freshmen — and this time she already knew American culture.

Becoming an engineer

Family members told her engineering paid well and suited her math skills, so she took calculus, computer science, chemistry and every science class she could. She chose Whitworth's 3-2 program: three years there studying chemistry, then two at an engineering school — for her, Washington University in St. Louis. It looked daunting, but an adviser reassured her she would still have chemistry if engineering didn't work out, and professors and classmates kept her going.

She struggled with impostor syndrome, especially as classmates landed jobs and internships while she had only summer research with a professor. She decided to finish school first and job-hunt afterward, and her mother wanted her home anyway. She graduated without a job, moved back to the Tri-Cities in summer 2018, and after two months of applications was hired at Hanford.

Turning waste into glass

Her first job, from 2018 to 2022, was as a plant engineer with the Waste Treatment and Completion Company at the vitrification plant, acting as a link between the laboratory and engineering. The plant's mission is to turn radioactive tank waste into glass, a safer way to dispose of it. When waste arrives from the tank farms, it has to be sampled to confirm it matches what was sent, then analyzed to decide which chemicals to add so it can be vitrified. She supported the lab, which was to move from Pasco to the Hanford Site, prepared forms for receiving waste, and worked on the plant's data quality objectives — how every piece of data from arrival to finished glass is qualified and used. She now works for Washington River Protection Solutions.

Latinos at Hanford

The first Latino colleague she met at the plant was from Bolivia, with a wife from Colombia; they carpooled, and after meeting at Molina's birthday party, her mother and his wife became close friends. In her current job she knows a few colleagues with Latino heritage, including her boss and a close friend from Mexico. She has met few Latinos in engineering, but Hanford is huge, and she is sure there are many she hasn't met.

Her advice

Molina's advice to young people like her: persevere, stay positive and ask for help. As a Latina woman in engineering, she says, it is easy to be boxed in as not good enough, and she often told herself that, which made asking for help harder. Being a minority pushed her to prove herself. All her moves have made her comfortable with change, and she values Women in Engineering, a professional group promoting women in engineering and STEM, as a community where she can talk through the hard parts.

Sources

Based on "Latinx Experiences at Hanford: Michelle Molina," Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which presents Drew Gamboa's October 18, 2024, oral history interview with Michelle Molina, published by the National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words.