Register for Hanford tours starting Monday

Registration opens Monday for 14,000 seats on this year’s tours of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park at Hanford.

An expanded number of bus tours will be offered Monday through Saturday from April 18 through Nov. 19 during what will be the first year of tours since the national park was established in November.

Visitors can pick from tours of historic B Reactor, the world’s first production-scale nuclear reactor, or a tour covering the history of the Hanford area before homeowners and tribes were evicted in 1943 to make way for the Manhattan Project.

Workers at Hanford raced to develop a nuclear weapon during World War II, fearing that Nazi Germany also was developing a nuclear weapon. Plutonium produced at Hanford was used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping end WWII.

Registration for both tours starts at 8 a.m. Monday. Visitors may register for up to six tour seats at once to tour B Reactor at manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov.

Register for the pre-war historic site tours at tours.hanford.gov/historicTours.

They also may register for either tour or inquire about tours for large groups by calling 509-376-1647.

The B Reactor Museum Association has released a new set of locally produced videos on the science behind the development of B Reactor. Those videos, along with “A is for Atom,” are posted at www.atomicheritage.org/tours under “Know Before You Go.”