Nuclear waste site tours

Nation & World News

Photos of popular new tours at the Hanford nuclear reservation, which includes the world's first full-scale nuclear reactor . The federal government created the Richland, Wash. site in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, and it is now the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.

In the 1940s, the federal government created the Hanford nuclear reservation as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Today, more than two decades after it stopped producing plutonium, Hanford is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. It has also become a popular tourist destination after the U.S. Department of Energy opened it up for tours.

Historian Burt Pierard talks to visitors on a public tour of the nuclear reservation about the site's famous "B" reactor. The reactor produced the plutonium for the Trinity Test and for the Fat Man bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki just three days after Hiroshima.

Guests on a bus tour of view the site's "B" reactor. Tours often fill up minutes after dates are posted online. Only U.S. citizens are permitted on the tour.

Workers wearing protective suits bury contaminated debris in a landfill. Tourists aren't allowed close enough to the cleanup operations to be in danger.

Burt Pierard wears an earing in the shape of a nuclear bomb as he talks to visitors on a public tour of the Hanford nuclear reservation.

New barrels that will be used to hold radioactive materials in less sturdy containers dug up on the Hanford nuclear reservation sit near a tour bus. About 53 million gallons of toxic radioactive waste -- enough to cover 123 football fields, including end zones, a foot deep -- sit stewing in 177 aging underground tanks.

The sun shines on signs that warn of hazards beyond the fenceline of a landfill used to bury hazardous materials.

Hanford historian Michele Gerber, left, and U.S. Dept. of Energy employee Candi Massey, right, talk to visitors as they conduct a public bus tour of the Hanford nuclear reservation. The sprawling site is about half the size of Rhode Island.

The control room of the "B" reactor. The Richland, Wash. nuclear reservation is expected to draw 2,000 tourists this year.

A sticker warns of critical radiation alarms in the control room for the "B" reactor.

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In the 1940s, the federal government created the Hanford nuclear reservation as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. Today, more than two decades after it stopped producing plutonium, Hanford is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. It has also become a popular tourist destination after the U.S. Department of Energy opened it up for tours.

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