Hanford nuclear tours fill up in one day

KENNEWICK, Benton County — Twice as many tours of Hanford in the coming year evidently aren't enough to satisfy the public's curiosity about the closed nuclear reservation and historic B Reactor.

All 2,000 seats on the free tours had been filled by Monday evening through online registration that began at 12:01 a.m. Monday. The Department of Energy had increased the number of tours this year after registration filled within minutes in previous years.

This year, 48 tours are being offered, which is double the number offered last year and more than were offered in 2004, 2005 and 2006 combined after security concerns had closed the nuclear reservation to visitors since Sept. 11.

There still is hope for people looking for a seat on the 2008 tours. As cancellations are received, newly available seats will be posted without notice until shortly before each tour. All registration is on the Internet at www.hanford.gov.

Interest in the tours was worldwide. DOE recorded people from 13 countries visiting the site by noon. While visitors from Canada were the most common outside the United States, the site also drew interest from Norway, Italy, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, Australia, Israel, Jamaica and Saudi Arabia. Those visitors may have been disappointed. Only U.S. citizens may take the tour (for security reasons).

In the United States, people from 33 states logged onto the site. "Hanford pride is nationwide," said Rich Buel, DOE spokesman.

The tours, which include a look inside Hanford's historic B Reactor, have been scheduled for April, July, August and September. The late spring break in the schedule is for work to repair B Reactor's roof. All tours are on weekdays because that's when participants can see work being done at the site and also because of the high cost of bringing in workers to conduct tours, open B Reactor and provide security on their days off.

The tours include plenty of history, starting with a drive through the Hanford and White Bluffs town sites where residents were ordered to leave their land during World War II.

Visitors also will learn about the massive effort to clean up contamination left from the past production of plutonium and see the $12.2 billion vitrification plant being built to treat radioactive waste for disposal.

The highlight of the tour is an hour spent inside B Reactor, which produced plutonium for the first atomic explosion in the New Mexico desert and the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.