The Hanford story began early in 1943 when residents of a sparsely populated area of Eastern Washington were evacuated and the Manhattan Project moved in. Its mission: to produce plutonium for a new weapon that promised to bring a swift end to World War II.

The Hanford Site was chosen for its remote location, the Columbia River’s abundant flow for cooling nuclear reactors, and ample electricity from the recently completed Grand Coulee Dam. By September 1944, the first nuclear reactor was running at Hanford. The world’s first atomic blast, the Trinity Test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945, used Hanford plutonium. A few weeks later, another plutonium bomb was exploded over Nagasaki, Japan, ending World War II.

Hanford then played a key role in the Cold War. By 1964, Nine reactors were operating at Hanford. Plutonium production wound down in the late 1960s and 1970s as the U.S. pursued détente with the Soviet Union. It underwent a resurgence during the Reagan Administration and then halted with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. But the un-precedented job of cleaning up the nuclear waste from nearly 50 years of weapons production remains.

For more about the history on the Hanford site click here.