Hanford tour tickets sold out in 12 hours

HANFORD NUCLEAR RESERVATION — A spot on one of the bus tours of the Hanford nuclear reservation remains a hot ticket in the Tri-Cities.

Registration for the 2,544 seats on tours throughout this year started at midnight Sunday. Within five minutes, night owls had claimed the first 350 seats. By 7:20 a.m., almost half the seats were gone.

The last seats were taken by 11:30 a.m., less than 12 hours after registration opened.

However, there's still hope for people who missed out. As cancellations are received between now and the start of each tour, registration for newly available seats will be posted without notice at www.hanford.gov. Look under "site tours" on the left side of the page.

The Department of Energy (DOE) increased the number of tours from the 2,000 offered last year to allow more people to attend. It has opened B Reactor for occasional Saturday tours this year in addition to the sitewide tours, which are held on weekdays to allow participants to see the nuclear reservation while work is under way.

The first Saturday tour of B Reactor was last week, giving 75 people a look at the historic reactor.

Unlike the sitewide tours, the 75 visitors on the B Reactor tour were allowed to carry cameras and cellphones. The group included a citizen of the United Kingdom. The sitewide tours are restricted to U.S. citizens.

Participants on Saturday's tour of B Reactor ranged in age from their 20s to their 80s. Dee McCullough, who was working at B Reactor on the day it started up in 1944, also attended on behalf of the B Reactor Museum Association, according to DOE contractor Fluor Hanford.

Information on registration for more Saturday B Reactor tours will be announced in April. The next tour is planned for April 25, with 16 more tours planned through September. Participants must be at least 18 years old.

The sitewide tours are scheduled for April 21-22; May 6, 7, 19 and 20; June 3, 4, 16 and 17; July 15, 16, 28 and 29; Aug. 12, 13, 25 and 26; and Sept. 15-16. Buses will leave at 7:30, 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. each day from the HAMMER training center on Horn Rapids Road north of Richland.

The sitewide tours, which last about five hours, include a look at cleanup work across the nuclear reservation and at historic areas, including a walking tour of B Reactor.

B Reactor, which was named a National Historic Landmark in August, was the nation's first full-scale production reactor.

It was built in 13 months during World War II as the nation raced to develop the technology for an atomic bomb.