Registration Begins Next Week for 2015 Tours
WC Monitor
3/6/2015
Registration will begin at 9 a.m. March 9 for Hanford tours this year, with a choice of two tours offered initially. Visitors can choose between a tour focused on Hanford cleanup, which includes a look inside B Reactor, or a more in depth tour of B Reactor, which will include a drive past pre-World War II sites at Hanford. In April, registration will start for a third tour to be offered for the first time this year. It will focus on the sites where settlers lived before they were forced to give up their farms, homes and businesses for the Manhattan Project during World War II. The tours announced to date will last four to five hours and will begin at the B Reactor Tour Headquarters at 2000 Logston Blvd., Richland.
The cleanup tour will include stops at the Cold Test Facility, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, the central Hanford groundwater pump-and-treat plant and the Waste Treatment Plant. Participants must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. A Washington state or Oregon driver’s license is adequate identification for the tours, but visitors from some other states may be required to show a second form of government-issued identification. All tour slots are filled on a first-come, first-served basis through the online registration system at www.hanford.gov. Seats on the cleanup tours are usually snapped up quickly. The tours will be offered on 20 weekdays from April 21 through Aug. 27.
The tours of B Reactor are available by registering at http://manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov/ or calling 509-376-1647. Citizens of any country who are at least 12 years old may take the B Reactor tours, which are offered on many weekdays and Saturdays from April 7 through Sept. 30. Since DOE began its B Reactor public access program in 2009, about 50,000 visitors from all 50 states and more than 70 countries have visited the reactor. The third set of tours, with registration details yet to be announced, are expected to include stops at the Hanford High School, the White Bluffs bank, the Bruggemann warehouse, the Allard farmstead and the White Bluffs ferry crossing.
