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The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km 2) – roughly equivalent to half the total area of Rhode Island – within Benton County, Washington. [1] [2] It is a desert environment receiving less than ten inches (250 mm) of annual precipitation, covered mostly by shrub-steppe vegetation.
Hanford's plutonium was used in the Trinity test, the first detonated nuclear bomb. The Trinity Test, the first ever detonation of a nuclear device at Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945.
Chemically separating plutonium from uranium fuel irradiated in Hanford reactors, has left 56 million gallons of radioactive and other chemical waste stored in Hanford underground tanks.
The Plutonium Finishing Plant, also known as "Z Plant", was part of the Hanford Site plutonium production complex in Washington state. During World War II , Hanford produced plutonium nitrate ( Pu(NO 3 ) 2 ), which shipped to the Manhattan Project 's Los Alamos Laboratory , where it was turned into metallic plutonium and made into pits for ...
The Hanford Site is currently storing 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in aging underground tanks, legacy waste from plutonium production efforts during World War II and the Cold War. The majority of the waste in the tanks is low-activity waste liquids. [4]
The 580-square-mile Hanford site in Eastern Washington adjacent to Richland was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear ...
During the Cold War, the Hanford Site facilities were expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes that produced plutonium for most of the more than 60,000 weapons built for the US nuclear arsenal. After sufficient plutonium had been produced, the production reactors were shut down between 1964 and 1971.
The 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear site in Eastern Washington was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.