In order to meet strong public demand, the Department of
Energy has plans to offer 48 public tours to Hanford’s
B Reactor this year, double the number in 2007. The season’s first two-thousand seats were
made available at midnight on Monday, March 17, and by 6:00 PM, every one of
those seats was filled. The public once demonstrated its keen interest in
atomic history.
Visitors in 2008 will not only be able to marvel at the engineering of the B Reactor, they will also be able to take advantage of new interpretative exhibits. With grant funds from the M. J. Murdock Charitable Foundation and the Department of Energy, the Atomic Heritage Foundation enlisted the help of Lockheed Martin and MEIER Enterprises, Inc., and significant input from the B Reactor Museum Association and other local partners, to develop these exhibits. With first-hand accounts by Roger Rohrbacher, Steve Buckingham and other veterans, the exhibits explain how the B Reactor worked and provide a window into the lives of the people who built it as part of the Manhattan Project in World War II.
This year’s tours will take place in April, July, August and September. Anyone wishing to go on a tour, but who was unable to book a place, can hope for cancellations up until the date of the tour. Openings will be posted on DOE’s Hanford website, www.hanford.gov. If you can’t make one of the tours check out some of the exhibit vignettes available through our website.