Hanford Engineer Works

rdf:langString Hanford Engineer Works

rdf:langString The Hanford Engineer Works was a nuclear production complex established by the United States federal government in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The site, located at the Hanford Site on the Columbia River in Benton County, Washington, was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb in the Trinity test, and in the Fat Man bomb that was used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. It was commanded by Colonel Franklin T. Matthias until January 1946, and then by Colonel Frederick J. Clarke. Plutonium was a rare element that had only recently been isolated in the laboratory, but it was theorized that it could be produced by the irradiation of uranium in a nuclear reactor and used in an atomic bomb. The director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr., engaged DuPont to be the prime contractor for the design, construction and operation of the plutonium production complex. DuPont recommended that it be located far away from densely populated areas, and a site, codenamed Site W, was chosen on the Columbia River in the US state of Washington. The federal government acquired the land under its war powers authority and relocated some 1,500 nearby residents. The acquisition of 4,218 tracts of land totaling 428,203.95 acres (173,287.99 ha) was one of the largest in US history. Disputes arose with farmers over the value of the land and compensation for crops that had already been planted. Where schedules allowed, the Army allowed the crops to be harvested. The land acquisition process dragged on and was not completed before the end of the Manhattan Project in December 1946. Construction commenced in March 1943 and immediately launched a massive and technically challenging construction project. Most of the construction workforce, which reached a peak of nearly 45,000 in June 1944, lived in a temporary construction camp near the old Hanford townsite. Administrators, engineers and operating personnel lived in the government town established at Richland, which had a wartime peak population of 17,000. The Hanford Engineer Works erected 554 buildings, including three nuclear reactors (B, D and F). The reactors were graphite moderated and water cooled, and operated at 250 megawatts. They were penetrated horizontally by 2,004 tubes. Natural uranium sealed in aluminum cans (known as "slugs") was fed into them. Cooling water drawn from the Columbia River was pumped through the tubes at the rate of 30,000 US gallons per minute (1,900 L/s). B Reactor went critical in September 1944 and after overcoming neutron poisoning produced its first plutonium in November. Irradiated fuel slugs were transported by rail to two huge 820-foot (250 m) long, remotely operated chemical separation plants (T and B) 10 miles (16 km) away where plutonium was extracted from the irradiated slugs using the bismuth-phosphate process. Radioactive wastes from the chemical separations process were stored in underground tanks. The first batch of plutonium was processed in the T plant between December 1944 and February 1945 and was delivered to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory. The identical D and F reactors came online in December 1944 and February 1945, respectively. The site suffered an outage on 10 March 1945 when a Japanese balloon bomb struck a high-tension power line. The Hanford Engineer Works built 386 miles (621 km) of roads, 158 miles (254 km) of railway, and four electrical substations. More than 780,000 cubic yards (600,000 m3) of concrete and 40,000 short tons (36,000 t) of structural steel went into its construction. The total cost up to December 1946 was over $348 million (equivalent to $4.84 billion in 2021).