ARCHIVED DEC 2018 

Hanford Site Website

The United States Department of Energy’s Hanford Site sits on 586-square-miles in the desert of southeastern Washington State.  The area is home to nine former nuclear reactors and their associated processing facilities that were built beginning in 1943.  The reactors were used to produce plutonium, a man-made, radioactive, chemical element which was needed for atomic weapons associated with America’s defense program during World War II and throughout the Cold War. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the Fat Man bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in August of 1945 and helped to end World War II.