Registration for popular site-wide Hanford tours focusing on environmental cleanup opens at 9 a.m. April 5 at www.hanford.gov. This year only 15 tours are being offered, after a stop at B Reactor was removed from the tour now that the reactor is part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Separate tours of the reactor will continue to be offered, but registration for those has yet to be announced. The Department of Energy will assess the popularity of site-wide tours and could add more. In previous years as many as 60 site-wide tours have been offered, and tours have filled shortly after the start of online registration.
The route for this year’s tours has not been set, but possible stops include a final look at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. The plant, scheduled for demolition before next year’s tours, produced nearly two-thirds of the nation’s supply of plutonium during the Cold War. The Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility, a 107-acre landfill for low-level radioactive and hazardous chemical waste, is expected to be on the tour. Visitors also will likely see the Waste Treatment Plant. Construction has been underway there since 2002 to build a plant to turn up to 56 million gallons of radioactive waste into a stable glass form for disposal. It could start treating some waste in 2022.
Tour participants must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. Government-issued photo identification is required and visitors from Washington and some other states without Real ID-compliant driver’s licenses may be required to show two forms of ID The tours will be offered starting at 8 a.m. selected weekdays from May 3 to July 27 and will last about four hours. They begin and end at the HAMMER Federal Training Center, 2890 Horn Rapids Road in Richland.
