Hanford reactor may join historical site list

YAKIMA –The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a bill requiring the federal government to study the possible addition of historic Manhattan Project sites, including a reactor at the Hanford nuclear site, to the national park system.

Former nuclear workers and concerned residents for years have been trying to preserve the world’s first full-scale plutonium production nuclear reactor – Hanford’s B Reactor – as a museum.

It was built as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.

Just yards from the Columbia River, B Reactor produced the plutonium for the first man-made nuclear blast, the Trinity test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. The reactor also produced the plutonium for the bomb that was dropped that August on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II.

Bill sponsor Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said the sites also include Los Alamos, where the world’s first atomic bombs were designed and built; and Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the first uranium enrichment facilities and pilot-scale nuclear reactor were built.

Hanford B is a scientific battlefield that must be preserved for future generations to study a difficult time in American history while recognizing the accomplishments of Cold War veterans, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said in a news release.

Construction began June 7, 1943, just six months after physicist Enrico Fermi turned the theory of nuclear power into the reality of the Atomic Age.

B Reactor was shut down in 1968 and decommissioned. The reactor has been open for limited historical tours since the mid-1980s, but those were slowed by the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The federal Energy Department still allows tours for groups interested in historic preservation.

The Energy Department manages cleanup at the Hanford nuclear reservation in southcentral Washington. It is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup costs expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, and work to be finished by 2035.

The reactor has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, but its future has remained in doubt as cleanup progresses.

The bill approved by the Senate would direct the secretary of the interior to study the potential for developing B Reactor and other key Manhattan Project facilities as historical sites.

The House version of the bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, still requires approval of the full House before going to the president.

The other eight Hanford reactors are expected to be cocooned, which involves removing extra buildings around the reactors and demolishing all but the shield walls surrounding the reactor cores and sealing them in concrete.

A decision on the future of B Reactor isn’t due until 2006.