Hanford: Breaking Scientific Boundaries

Hanford’s B Reactor, the world’s first industrial-scale plutonium reactor, 1944.

US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

 

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The Manhattan Project brought scientists and engineers from all around the nation to work at its plutonium production facility at the Hanford Site in the 1940s. The science that followed included many “firsts.” The facility contained the first full-scale nuclear production reactor and industrial plutonium separations facilities in the world. In 1960, direct descendants of the site’s reactors powered the world’s first submarine journey around the world that was fully underwater. Those “firsts” and more are still fueling scientific discoveries today.