Picture Courtesy of Washington Department of Transportation

In early 1943 during World War II. the United States Army hurriedly acquired over 600 Square miles of land around the farming villages of White Bluff's and Hanford. Former residents, including Native Americans whose ancestors had traditionally fished and hunted here, were barred from entering the site. Complete secrecy surrounded the newly established Hanford Engineer Works.

In the months that followed, nearly 60,000 workers built a complex of facilities that included the world's first large-scale nuclear reactor--the B Reactor. the Hanford Engineer Works was part of the top-secret Manhattan Project, a vast effort to design and manufacture the world's first atomic bomb.

The B Reactor produced plutonium used for the first atomic explosion on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and for the bomb dropped the next month on Nagasaki. The Second World War ended day's later, with Japan's surrender.

I n 1968, the B Reactor ceased operation. Now. the U.S. Department of Energy is managing an extensive cleanup and disposal effort air the radioactive by-products at the Hanford Site.

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