Hanford Nuclear Reservation

History

The area along the Columbia River has been home to several, typically nomadic Native American tribes, including the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Wanapum, and Yakama. In the mid-1800s, pioneers and settlers began to arrive, eventually forming the town of White Bluffs, home to approximately 900 people by the 1940s, and the small community of Hanford. In 1943, under eminent domain, residents of White Bluffs and Hanford were given 30 days and a small payment to evacuate for the purposes of “important war work.” The war department needed a remote area with access to cold water and electricity (to be provided by the recently completed Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam) to develop atomic weapons.

After the residents of White Bluffs and Hanford had been evacuated, the war department began recruiting workers to build the nuclear reactors and processing facilities required to produce plutonium for atomic weapons. Ultimately, a 51,000-person workforce was formed, creating the fourth-largest city in Washington at the time, with few of the workers having knowledge of what was being built or what the completed facilities would do.

Three areas were formed: the “100 Area” for transforming uranium into plutonium, the “200 Area” for plutonium processing and waste storage, and the “300 Area” for manufacturing work and experiments. Workers began building the first three of what would ultimately be nine plutonium production nuclear reactors at Hanford, the first of their kind in the world. Within 13 months, work was completed on the B Reactor, the world's first nuclear reactor, as well as the T Plant, the world's first facility to extract plutonium from irradiated fuel rods. In [Page 338]August 1945, plutonium from the B Reactor and the T Plant was used in the Fat Man bomb detonated over Nagasaki, Japan.

In 1959, construction began on the ninth Han-ford reactor, the N Reactor, with the dual purpose of producing plutonium for atomic weapons and steam for generating electricity. N was the only dual-purpose reactor in the United States. For two years, from 1963 to 1965, all nine reactors were producing plutonium for the U.S. defense program. By the mid-1960s, some of the older reactors began to be shut down, with B, C, D, DR, F, and H Reactors being deactivated by 1970. The K-East Reactor ceased production in 1970, followed by the K-West Reactor in 1971. The N Reactor continued producing both plutonium and electricity until 1987, when the Department of Energy placed N in a standby status and it has not been reactivated.

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