09.30.03

Cantwell, Hastings Join Forces On Hanford's Historic B Reactor

Legislation Calls for National Park Service Study

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell and Congressman Doc Hastings joined forces today to propose legislation directing the National Park Service to study the feasibility of making Hanford's historic B Reactor into a museum.

"The B Reactor at Hanford made significant contributions to the United States' defense policy from World War II through the Cold War," said Cantwell. "I believe it is tremendously important that future generations know the history and impact of the B Reactor as well as the other various Manhattan Project sites. It is critical that our nation reflect on both the Manhattan Project's unprecedented engineering achievements, such as B Reactor, as well as the human and environmental costs of this initiative, which changed the course of world history."

"I've toured B Reactor and seen first-hand that it is an amazing feat of engineering and a site of national historical significance," said Congressman Doc Hastings. "It's preservation would help tell the story of the Manhattan Project and serve as a useful educational tool - especially for those generations who didn't live through World War II or the Cold War. The local community deserves a great deal of credit for keeping momentum for this project moving forward."

Cantwell and Hastings introduced legislation directing the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a study on the potential for developing and utilizing B Reactor and other key Manhattan Project facilities as historical sites.

The Manhattan Project was the World War II effort to develop and construct the first atomic bomb.

In 1943, only months after Enrico Fermi first demonstrated that controlled nuclear reaction was possible, ground was broken on the B Reactor - which became the world's first full-scale plutonium production reactor. B Reactor produced the plutonium for the first ever manmade nuclear explosion - the Trinity test in New Mexico, and for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki that helped win World War II. Plutonium production at B Reactor continued until it's decommission in 1968.

Organizations that support development of a B Reactor museum include: the B Reactor Museum Association, the Tri-Cities Visitor and Convention Bureau and the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

Contacts:

Del Ballard, B Reactor Museum Association, 509-946-6401 Kris Kelly Watkins, Executive Director of the Tri-Cities Visitor and Convention Bureau, 509-735-8486