government’s permanent war economy,” writes Frank. “Hanford has become the epitome of the U.S. Department of Energy has sunk $677 billion into the project so far. It is also home to the most expensive environmental cleanup job the world has ever seen. But though production ceased more than 30 years ago, the 586-square-mile site remains one of the most toxic places in the world. Likewise, plutonium manufactured at Hanford was used in the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively.įollowing World War II, Hanford continued to churn out most of the radioactive fuel needed for the nation’s nuclear arsenal, which had grown to include an incredible 21,393 warheads by the time plutonium production at the site ended in 1987. Material produced at Hanford was used to build Gadget, the first-ever atomic bomb, which the United States Army tested in the Jornada del Muerto Desert in New Mexico in July 1945. The Hanford Site opened in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, created to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Luckily, a new book, Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, by the award-winning investigative journalist Joshua Frank, has everything you didn’t know you needed to know about this radioactive minefield nestled in the rugged scablands of the Pacific Northwest. If you’ve never heard of it before, you’re not alone not too many people seem to know, or care, about the Benton County, Washington, site, despite its historical significance and the modern-day threat it poses. Welcome to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, home to an estimated 53 million gallons of radioactive waste, 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater, and 25 million cubic feet of spent nuclear fuel and leftover plutonium. Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in AmericaĪbout three hours west of the Idaho border, on an unassuming patch of gray-green hills and scrubland near the confluence of the Columbia and Yakima rivers, dozens of tanks sit, packed to the gills with bubbling radioactive sludge.
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