Ulrika Andersson

West Mountain Exposure #1

These are images from a Thanksgiving spent in an austere and mountainous Idaho. They are taken near the facilities of the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, the biggest employer in the area.

West Mountain Exposure #2

Number Hill: the numbers written on the hillside near Arco, Idaho were placed there by young people who marked the cliff with the year of their high school graduation. Arco is the first town in the world to be lit by nuclear power. In 2010 the population was 995.

West Mountain Exposure #3

This led-lined train engine stands near the Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR1) in the desert, about 18 miles southeast of Arco, Idaho. It was designed to tow nuclear-powered airplanes into their hangars.

West Mountain Exposure #4

The Big Southern Butte is a land formation produced by volcanic activity some 300 000 years ago. Here it it seen through the fence near the EBR1 reactor near Arco, Idaho.

West Mountain Exposure #5

These horses are grazing near Highway 26 east of Idaho Falls. In 2006 The Idaho Horse Council estimated the horse population of Idaho to be over 200 000. About half are American Quarterhorses.

West Mountain Exposure #6

These aspen trees are growing on the hillside just east of Idaho Falls. At sunset friendly, smiling men go up in these hills to shoot their guns.

West Mountain Exposure #7

This horse is grazing in a corral near Idaho Falls. His mane is dotted with bundles of vegetation that are gradually turning into fibrous dreadlocks.

West Mountain Exposure #8

West Mountain Exposure #9

This piece of the USS Hawkbill (SSN-666), a Sturgeon-class nuclear submarine, is located in Arco, Idaho. It is adjacent to a makeshift memorial devoted to the vessel, with laminated leaflets arguing the relative benefits of a nuclear-armed society to one limited to conventional defense. Due to the her hull number of 666 the submarine was sometimes called the "The Devil Boat" or the "Devilfish".

West Mountain Exposure #10

The Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 (EBR1) can be seen in this image near the bottom right. Behind it is the Big Southern Butte, the largest and youngest of three rhyolitic domes formed over a million years near the center of the Eastern Snake River Plain in Idaho. It rises 2500 feet above the lava plain in southern Butte County, east of Craters of the Moon National Monument.