What is the Hanford nuclear reservation? Where is it? Here’s what you need to know

The 580-square-mile Hanford site is the nation’s largest nuclear waste cleanup project after producing two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium for its nuclear weapons program.

The site in Eastern Washington was created as part of the Manhattan Project, and produced the plutonium that fueled the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, at the end of World War II.

Then as the Cold War started, it ramped up production again, producing plutonium through 1987.

Hanford made more than 20 million pieces of uranium metal fuel that were irradiated to produce plutonium at nine nuclear reactors along the Columbia River.

Massive plants in the center of the Hanford Site processed 110,000 tons of fuel to chemically separate out plutonium.

The processing left 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste that remain stored in underground tanks, many of them prone to leaking.

As the Cold War drew to a close, so did production at the site. The final reactor stopped production in 1987.

Then two years later the U.S. Department of Energy started an environmental clean up effort that is expected to continue for decades to come. The remaining weapons grade plutonium has been shipped off site.

Currently, about $2.5 billion a year is spent on maintaining the site and cleanup work.

The site is located north and west of Richland, and covers an area that is about half the size of Rhode Island. Most of it is located in Benton County.

The workforce numbers 11,000 people, most of those working for contractors under the federal agency. It is the largest employer in the Tri-Cities, and has its own security and fire departments.

The Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant, the Columbia Generating Station, operates on leased land at the nuclear reservation but is unrelated to the weapons work and cleanup at the site.

This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 12:36 PM with the headline "What is the Hanford nuclear reservation? Where is it? Here’s what you need to know."