Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions - S. 1687

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
By Mr. BINGAMAN (for himself, Ms. Cantwell, and Mrs. Murray):

S. 1687. A bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a study on the preservation and interpretation of the historic sites of the Manhattan Project for potential inclusion in the National Park System; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today as a cosponsor, along with my colleagues, Senators BINGAMAN and MURRAY of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Study Act.

This bill authorizes a special resource study to determine the suitability and feasibility of developing a national park site at one or more of the facilities that playing a major role in the Manhattan Project—the Federal Government's top-secret effort during World War II to develop nuclear weapons before its opponents, an initiative that changed the course of world history. I believe it is tremendously important for the citizens of our Nation to learn about the important functions the various Manhattan Project sites served in defending our Nation, from World War II through the cold war, and to recognize and understand the complicated and weighty issues arising from the production and use of nuclear weapons, their impact on world history as well as their human and environmental costs.

In January of 1943, Hanford, WA was selected by the War Department to serve as a part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Manhattan Project plan. The site was selected for several reasons: It was remotely located from population centers, which fostered security and safety; the Columbia River provided plenty of water to cool the reactors; and cheap and abundant electricity was available from nearby Federal dams.

The history of this era is a complicated one—as farmers and tribes were displaced, given 30 days to move from their homes in central Washington. By March 1943, construction had started on the site, which covers about 625 square miles. At the time, the priority facility on the Hanford Reservation was the B reactor. Built in just 11 months as American scientists and their allies engaged in what was then perceived as a race with the Germans to develop nuclear capability, B reactor was the world's first large-scale plutonium production reactor.

The need for labor for the project turned Hanford into an atomic boomtown, with the population reaching 50,000 by the summer of 1944. Workers at the sprawling Hanford complex were not even sure of what they were producing, and tales of German rockets used during battles led many workers to believe they were producing rocket fuel. In fact, this secrecy continued even after the atomic bombs were dropped. One worker recalled that many children who lived in the area didn't even know what their parent who worked at Hanford did on the job.

Clearly, the B reactor at Hanford made significant contributions to U.S. defense policies during its production run, from 1944 through 1968. Plutonium from the B reactor was used in the world's first nuclear explosion, called the Trinity Test, in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. B reactor plutonium was also used in the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945. The blast devastated more than two square miles of the city, effectively ending World War II. The B reactor also produced plutonium for the cold war efforts until 1968.

The B reactor is simply a stunning feat of engineering. Built in less than a year, the reactor consisted of a 1,200-ton graphite cylinder lying on its side, which was penetrated through its entire length horizontally by over 2,000 aluminum tubes. Two hundred tons of uranium slugs the size of rolls of quarters went into the tubes. Cooling water from the Columbia River, which first had to be treated, was pumped through the aluminum tubes at 75,000 gallons per minute. Water consumption approached that of a city with a population of 300,000. The B reactor was one of three reactors that had its own auxiliary facilities that included a river pump house, large storage and settling basins, a filtration plant, huge motor-driven pumps for delivering the water, and facilities for emergency cooling in case of a power failure. It was the first of an eventual nine nuclear reactors that remain on the banks of the Columbia River—a potent reminder of both the war effort and the environmental burden with which we must contend.

The people of Washington State, and especially the residents of the tri-cities, are proud of their contributions to the World War II and cold war efforts. We are left with these irreplaceable relics of the Manhattan Project—such as the B reactor—which are incredibly important in understanding the engineering achievements that propelled this country into the nuclear age, with all of the complicated moral issues it poses for the possessors of such technology. As the Department of Energy continues its work to clean up the Hanford site, the country's most contaminated nuclear reservation, it is important that we also honor the achievements of the important work done here, as well as commemorate the tremendous sacrifices made by workers, displaced families and tribes, and this era's environmental legacy.

There is already strong support in the communities that surround Hanford for preserving the history of the Manhattan Project, and I would like to commend the B reactor Museum Association and Bechtel Hanford, Inc. for all this work to date. In recent years, they have worked hard to decontaminate, clean, inventory, and spruce up B reactor's interior so that people can walk in to see three chambers. But more work needs to be done if we want to preserve the reactor for future generations, which must learn about the Manhattan Project and its impact on world history.

One such way to do that is to look into the possibility of adding the B reactor as well as Manhattan Project sites in other parts of the country as a new National Park unit.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure passage of this bill, as the study it authorizes is a much-needed first step in determining the best options for preserving this important piece of American history.