Oregon Public Broadcasting

Starting Thursday the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is offering tours for the first time of its historic B-Reactor. Hanford tours usually sell out very quickly.

This facility was recently declared a National Historic Landmark. Richland correspondent Anna King reports.

Public access to Hanford is rare enough that tours are highly coveted.

The B-Reactor is the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor. It was used to create plutonium for atomic bombs during World War II through part of the Cold War. It ran from 1944 to 1968.

Plutonium from the B-reactor was used in the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

Tours of the facility will run on certain Saturdays from April to September. To get a tour people must sign up online.  Visitors will spend about two hours inside the B Reactor, and watch a 20-minute video on their 45-minute drive out to the site.

Hanford tourists will be able to see the control area with its industrial mint-green paint and brass dials. And visitors will see where uranium fuel rods were loaded into the reactor.

Online:

Sign up for a tour