Hanford B Reactor Tour

Hanford B Reactor is one of three sites that are part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. The National Park is located near Richland, Washington along with sites in Los Alamos, NM and Oak Ridge, TN. All three were important related to the development of nuclear weapons and the B Reactor was used to convert uranium to plutonium.

Only accessible by tour, the site feels frozen in time from the day it shut down. In reality, the site sat empty for some years after it was shut down and finally instead of being cocooned like the other reactors at Hanford, it was rehabilitated and turned into a tourist attraction. The tour starts at a pretty low key visitor’s center in Richland, WA followed by a 45 minute bus ride to the site.

A knowledgeable group of volunteers lead the tours, after arriving at the site, we started with an introduction in what seems like the main room and is called the Front Face. We were then given about 2 hours to wander in a self-guided at own pace format with a couple presentations in specific areas.

The site is completely safe to visit, or at least that’s what they told us, but there are areas that are closed off for safety reasons.

Much of what we could see was related to pumping water in and out for cooling. The reactor was built close to the Columbia River for water access and its cooling power.

At the beginning of the tour, I was thinking that 2 hours seemed like a long time to spend at the reactor, but we used it all and I probably could have spent more time there.