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"The destroyer of words." Well you sure murdered those words Simon.

My mom grew up near Hanford and she is the only one in the family that never worked there. My great-grandfather was an electrician that worked on the initial construction, my grandfather was a heavy equipment operator, my aunt was an administrative assistant, and my grandmother was a secretary. My grandmother had top-secret security clearance, so my mom has told me about how when she was younger she thought it was normal for the FBI to come visit your house to interview everyone.

My mother started working at Hanford when it was being built. She was a nurse in the hospital there. She, and everyone else working there, were told that they would be able to tell their grandchildren that they helped win the war. Of course every defense plant told their workers the same thing. But after a few months she was convinced that, while she didn't know exactly what was being done, it was bigger than any other project she'd seen in size and scope. She hated the weather, 'hotter than hell in the summer and colder than hell in the winter and always wind blowing dust everywhere'. Once a fellow nurse told her that she had heard of a similar project in New Mexico and while neither of them knew anything about New Mexico they figured it had to be better than Hanford. So they went to personnel and asked for transfer papers to 'The New Mexico Project'. One day later they were escorted to a building and grilled by the FBI about what they knew about "The New Mexico Project'. Who told them? Who had they told? What did they think was being done in both Hanford and New Mexico? Finally both broke down into tears and they were let go but warned to not speak of any of this particularly the New Mexico angle. 'To be honest they pretty much convinced me that there wasn't even a state of New Mexico'. She left before Hiroshima and was in Oregon when the bomb was dropped. As soon as she heard of the powerful bomb she knew that she had worked on some part of that bomb. I've often wondered if the FBI still has any files of this encounter. She passed away in 1995 of a congenital heart problem. She always wondered if she'd contract some form of cancer.

My mother worked at Hanford beginning around 1975. She started off doing non-destructive testing of welds for the pipes in one of the reactors which was being built at the time. She said nothing would piss a man off more than having a woman tell them their weld was bad. Sometime in the '80s she was passing through one of the radiation detectors while leaving work and set it off. The people on site who dealt with such matters wanted her to completely strip so she could be scrubbed down, just like in the movie Silkwood. My mother very firmly told them no, she would take her overalls off first then go through the detector again. That is what she did, and it turned out the contamination was limited to some alpha particles on the outside of those overalls. My mother worked for a variety of contractors through the years doing a variety of jobs. She was a project planner, assisting with one of the many ongoing clean-up projects, when she retired in 2015. As a kid growing up in the area surrounding Hanford, my friends and I all know the importance and history of the Hanford site. We are also very much aware of the legacy of contamination which has been left behind.

In 1972 the tv show 60 Minutes had a segment about Hanford. They had gotten waterfowl (ducks) that had come through the area on their southern migration from Canada. These ducks ate corn from fields that had been harvested in the area, then they flew back to the Columbia river to rest or whatever. They found that these ducks had a high-concentration of radioactivity probably from sitting on the river. My family used to hunt ducks both on the river and in the corn fields. We ate 100s of ducks and geese from 1965 to 1971 from that area. It was legal to hunt on the Hanford side of the river until about 71 then Hanford guards would make you leave. In 70 guards landed a helicopter by our hunting site, decoys and all that, they thought we had come in from the Hanford side of the river which would have entailed about 25 miles of carrying our boat across the desert, haha, they weren't the brightest bunch, we put our boat in at Ringold Springs area. We quit hunting their in 71, my mother and father lived to be in their late 90s so I guess the waterfowl meat didnt effect us. Have a nice day.

For decades the high schools in the Hanford area posted the highest test scores in the entire country. Directly due to the huge number of scientists who lived there with their families.

Is it just me, or did it sound like Simon said, "I have become death, the destroyer of words."? lol

OMG you're finally covering Hanford. I grew up across the river from there. That's where I got this nice healthy glow.

I grew up near Hanford. One of my clearest memories as a child was being able to see the steam plumes on the horizon. My grandmother worked there her whole adult life (which is likely what lead to her small cell lung and liver cancer that eventually claimed her life). The town of white bluff was not bulldozed until the late 90’s if memory serves. My grandmother took us there once as I was growing up. I couldn’t fathom the implications at the time. My sons aunt has worked there on the cleanup crew most of her adult life and will likely work there until she retires. It truly is mind boggling.

Finally someone acknowledges that Washington has desert!

I grew up just across the river from Hanford. Even attended Hanford High School. It seemed normal to grow up next to all this happening.

I visited and toured the Hanford site 2 years ago. It was very well done and I learned quite a bit. I highly recommend for those interested and it's free.

I worked there when HLW, LAW, and the Lab for the vitrification project were just holes in the ground. The people working on this project are committed to getting the project running, but it cannot be rushed as frustrating as it is, the results of an accident are still too great. Meanwhile, decay of the tanks marches on while efforts to encapsulate them continues. There isn’t only the remnants of the Manhattan Project there, but also the reactor sections of decommissioned nuclear submarines out in the open for satellite confirmation and scheduled inspections as well. Access to the Hanford site is restricted so the area remains mostly sealed from the public. For the time I lived there, I enjoyed it very much, the weather was superb and the rivers, wineries and tourism opportunities were plentiful, but you have to remember that a lot of things are hours away by car. I’m proud of the bit I did to help the vitrification project and I’m still in contact with some of my colleagues to this day.

"Now I am become Simon, the Destroyer Of Words..." 😉

I live literally 12 miles from the Hanford site. The work that still goes on there has turned what was a small farming community (which my dad grew up in) to a modern, quickly growing, well funded group of cities where I live today. We have our issues like most of WA, but the growth the Hanford site and workers has provided to our local economy is truly staggering.

The book “The Apocalypse Factory” goes into great detail about the Hanford site.

Nuclear stuff is "nuclide". "Nucleotide" is a DNA thing.

I live near this site and have worked there as a off-site contractor.At the end of this video I am actually operating one of the concrete pumps seen placing concrete.The slab is storage casks which I pumped the concrete for them off-site

The decommissioned submarine reactors that are in Hanford are amazing. They represent decades of sailors and their amazing disappearing machines. Today’s boats would be impossible without nuclear power.

I'm in my 30th year of employment for the clean-up of Hanford. This is one of the better vids I've seen about its history.

i lived near the hanford site. the old neighborhoods around the area were old military barracks converted now for civilian use. Some of the streets built for the workers had names like Proton, Neutron, etc. Pretty cool place, loved the people of Tri-Cities.

Around 2008 I was studying for my history undergrad in Walla Walla and my class got to tour the B reactor on a field trip. We learned about the clean-up plans and all that. I'll never forget the sheer size of everything. It is staggering. Thank you for this video.

There was also a Military Reactor accident at Hanford. The Three operators were killed and a Nurse and an Ambulance Driver died later from exposure to radiation. The three operators are buried on site due to high levels of radiation ....... their graves are NEVER snow covered !

I worked there for five years. Was into most labs in 100 and 200 area. Worked the Fast Flux Test Facility security along with site security. Knew lots of people who were there from the early days Carrying a dosimeter all day was a reminder of the seriousness of the job. Knew the ceramicist who cut open the first fuel rod from the 100 series reactors. Lots of scary stories.

A shout out to Glenn T. Seaborg, Nobel Laureate, discoverer of Plutonium, Berkeley Prof, and first director of Hanford during the Manhattan Project.

Great! I'm surprised you did this! Hanford site has a very interesting history. From creating the nuclear material required for bombs, during a time where segregation between races was still a thing. To a massive clean up effort to keep the Columbia river safe, and the people that live in the Tri-Cities. Thank you for this! Sincerely, Hanford Site Mechanical Engineer.

I worked at Hanford's "N" reactor from 1978 to 1986. Some of the older guys I worked with were around during the Manhattan Project. The government had changed the names of certain things, probably to prevent spies from getting information. A radiation zone was called a "danger zone," dosimeters were called "pencils," anti-contamination clothing was called "SWPs" because it was used for "Special Work Permits" (entry into contaminated areas), and the main radiation survey meter was called a "Cutie Pie" because its geometry was Q=2 * pi. There are many stories that came from the site...not all interesting maybe...

Down river and down wind from Hanford is a high school with the mascot “Bombers”

I actually live in Washington and just two miles from the Colombia River. The area that Hanford is in IS most definitely a desert.

My dad worked later at N reactor as a reactor tech, now does nuclear engineering. But I've grown up with hanford in my backyard, lots of friends work out there. Definitely lots of cleanup to do. I still love when I head to the valley for work and get to see the old reactors and power plants on my drive.

Anyone who lives in the Inland Northwest, as I do, has known about the Hanford site for years. It's been a feature of local politics.

There's another big reason they chose eastern Washington for the site. Easy access to massive amounts of hydroelectric power provided by the recently completed Grand Coulee Dam and several other hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River. The cooling pumps to cool the Plutonium reactors along with the rest of the massive complex at Hanford uses huge amounts of electricity. The three Uranium reactors at the site did not produce electricity at all but were instead dedicated to making the U-238 needed for Plutonium production.

I think things have changed since, but when I was in high school the nearby city of Richland used a mushroom cloud as it's mascot.

I'm a historian and docent of the Hanford site, I work for DOE and Washington State University, and although you got some details wrong overall this really isn't bad and pretty informative for under 20 minutes. We have a national park here, come take a tour sometime (there is more than just the Hanford High School left from the Pre-Manhattan days btw).

Live about 30 minutes from Hanford and I still remember decades back if you got to close to the site armed guards would stop you asking what your doing so close and make you leave. The workers had to ride a bus to work everyday.

I really enjoyed this video. My grand father was plant operator at the site from the late 40s to the late 70s, and my dad was an industrial engineer out there from the late 70s unto the 90s. I grew up just south in Richland. Where our high-school mascot is the bombers represented by the Mushroom cloud and "A Days Pay" a B 17 Bomber that everyone working at the site gave up a days pay to finance. So much history out there. And the site is still making history with L.I.G.O. and other projects.

My old man is a chemical engineer. Worked at Handford over twenty years. Works at Idaho Falls now. Crazy seeing all the history i grew up around.

I love farm lands. But one thing I love about the Hanford site is driving across it makes me feel like a pioneer. Its what the rest if Eastern Washington must have looked like before it was irrigated and turned into farmland. It's one of my favorite places to drive! My wife grew up there, my dad and father-in-law both worked there. I enjoy that part of the world.

The state record smallmouth bass was caught just downriver in the Hanford reach. Just saying

Hanford was the predecessor to the Savannah River Site facility in South Carolina that opened in 1950. I grew up near there and they are going through the same clean up process after years of plutonium production in multiple reactors. Decades of work remain there as well.

My grandfather and father worked there my dad was actually the control room supervisor of reactor B

This is my hometown!! So cool. My Kids are 4th generation Richland High students. And while publicly the mascot has been changed to “The Days Pay” aircraft. The real mascot is a mushroom cloud, and it’s very common to see “Proud of the Cloud” t-shirts at the grocery store. Love it here!!

Im a nuclear chemical operator at the 105 KW reactor. Just about a mile away from the B reactor. We were also a plutonium producing reactor. We are in the historic end stages of fully deconstructing the last reactor of its kinds and I can say without a doubt this kind of work takes a lot of time, skill, and caution. For the most part we are dealing with the storage facility within the reactor that held spent fuel rods and other equipment/ materials used that have been contaminated or radiated. These materials are stored in a 1.5 million gallon, 20 ft deep pool of water that we are now currently in the processes of draining and grouting for further deconstruction of the facility; ultimately leading to cocooning the skeleton of the reactor left behind to decay. I walk by that huge wall of fuel cells every day and the thought always hits me “I am standing in the birth place of the monsters that will destroy the world”

The Hanford Site cleanup one of many similar projects across the US. Thank you for telling Hanford’s story, including its mission, people, closure, and impact.

The reactor tour was cool. The genius plan for disposing of the waste, less so.

My dad was a Chemical Operator at Hanford during the 80s, he then went to get his batchlors at the University of Washington and returned as a Criticality Safety Engineer through most of the 90s. We then met my mom, who was a contract secretary working in the same building. After they got married they drove here to New York so he could get a PHD at Cornell (sadly didn't), then I came along.

12:09... Is that a Kitchenaid mixer?... I've always wanted one of those.

I love seeing all the comments about the Tricities area. Born and raised here!

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of words." Simon's slip made this so much better. 😂

I lived for seven years in the Tri-Cities (the metro area next to Hanford). I used the word "boondoggle" to describe the cleanup to a friend, and though she never had heard the term, when I defined it she said that the Hanford site needed to be in the dictionary under "boondoggle". Then I moved to Wyoming, and when I say I moved from Washington they ask if I'm used to the dryness, and I get to tell them that Kennewick gets less than half the precipitation than Cheyenne. And then they don't believe me.

When I was a Junior in college studying Chemical Engineering, Bechtel came recruiting, and one of the cutting edge projects they were working on was the vitrification of the waste at Hanford.

I live in tri-Cities WA, the gateway to Hanford. It’s amazing to talk to the workers out there and the stuff they are constantly exposed to.

Even for someone who spent most of their life in the PNW, this place is very under the radar. I wasn't even aware of it until I took a wrong turn and drove to it. The vast majority of us are unaware of it's significance.

Nowadays one of the LIGO Observatory labs is located next to the Hanford nuclear facilities.

I lived just over the hills from the Hanford Nuclear Range. I lived in Sunnyside WA. There was a high cancer rate among the workers and valley residents in the Yakima Valley. The neighbor behind us was an engineer at Hanford and died of cancer. My Grandfather worked on the site and died of cancer.

I’m so glad Simon did a video about Hanford. Most of the videos and credit for the success of the manhattan project goes to Oak Ridge or los Alamos. Hanford gets a side note in history even tho it produced the uranium for the bomb on Nagasaki

Harold McClusky, living the Fallout ghoul life

I have lived for 56 years with the Hanford reactor in my back yard. What my parents told me and what I told my kids might shock you. If the reactor goes don’t worry about hiding under your desk. Go outside and watch the show. It’s better to die instantly than it is to die from radiation poisoning. I’ve never been afraid of it. In fact we joke that we glow in the dark. I own one of the military alphabet houses. Our history is interesting. How smaller towns merged to become the greater Tri-Cities area.

I worked as a welders helper at a facility in New Mexico that built some of the structures and vessels for the cleanup of Hanford.

Hanford is in my back yard. I've done the B reactor tour and it's amazing to see what was constructed in such a short amount of time.

Depending on if it is open the B reactor tour was amazing. People from all over the world were on it. It is amazing learning how many people who live here in the tri cities have never been on it.

I live nearby, and this place has always mystified me. Thanks for going into it. Considering the Geographics Video on the Seattle Underground was what got me to subscribe to your channels, this is a treat!

This crap is scary enough without names like "Bone Seeker," yet the name STILL doesn't fully convey the danger present.

Oak Ridge was still used to enrich the Uranium to a higher concentration of U235, while the Hanford site was used to produce the Plutonium. Uranium enrichment does not require nuclear reactions, so it was relatively safe to continue the process at Oak Ridge before sending material to Hanford to be converted.

Around 2008 I was working in the valve industry. We had to design and build special, high reliability valves for this decontamination project (or customer was Bechtel). Aside from x-raying each valve to ensure no internal faults (expensive, as Cobalt 60 had to be used for this), they had to be designed such that should the internal seals had to be changed, it could all be done by robots. No one is stepping foot on those grounds for decades once vitrification starts.

Yes, Hanford is bad. But what scares me more is this, what about Soviet production facilities?

Nothing is as smooth as Simon's transition to sponsor's plug - only his head, thanks to Dollar Shave Club!

Given this episode I can’t imagine what some of the nuclear development sites in Russia or Communist China look like.

As a child of a World War II combat veteran I met a LOT of WW II combat and non-combat veterans. Never once did I hear one regret building those bombs or using those bombs on Japan! “Good” and “bad” are about perspective. The live lobsters in a lobster tank on the Titanic would look upon that fateful evening as a miracle!

The video is pretty accurate. I didn't hear anything about purex, PFP, K-basin and FFTF or the underground railway they have out at Hanford. They also have tunnels with the ambulances that took the atomic man to the hospital. Those tunnels are locked and barricaded off underground. I've worked out there for many years. The post office still stands as well at Hanford. Overall 👍🏼👍🏼 keep up the great videos!

My family never worked on the Hanford site itself, but I grew up in the area. Thank you for covering something that's not only incredibly important to the history of World War II, but also my home town. The Tri-Cities would not exist if it weren't for the Hanford Site, and is still home to an incredible nuclear research industry as a result of it. Over 230,000 people live here.

"Re-settle" a deadly euphemism

Live about an hour to the South East of the Hanford Site and have worked all over out there. It's interesting to say the least.

Thank you Simon I appreciate the fact that you make all these videos and that you have multiple channels so I can always have something interesting that I want to watch even if I'm not interested in some of the content there's always something in the slew of videos that you release every day that I'm wanting to watch I hope this doesn't sound creepy but sometimes when I'm watching your videos at night because you have such a soothing voice I fall asleep to your videos so thank you Simon for the good night's rest

Always love the videos, Keep up the good work Simon!!

I assume there is a Soviet version of Hanford. Would be interested in that Megaproject too. One thing to note, the cost to clean Hanford up pales in comparison to the perceived economic benefit it provided. All of those nuclear weapons guaranteed a form of peace, which allowed our economy to develop and grow. Our economy has generated hundreds of trillions of dollars since the end of WW2. So spending a few hundred billion to clean up the mess is worth it. Maybe. Nonetheless, it's expected that you clean up any messes you make.

I actually go by Hanford all the time... it pretty much put the Tri Cities area on the map

I live near there, The Tri-Cities and especially Richland is proud of its atomic heritage. There are also limited tours that people can get of the Handford cleanup. You can also get a Tour of the B reactor, it's a pretty sweet tour and a lot of fun. You can also get tour of Pre-Hanford which gives tours of White Bluffs and old Hanford. Hanford does still have an active Nuclear reactor on it, it is for power generation though. There are also now plans to build two new next-gen Nuclear plants on the site as well.

Between my studies of The Manhattan Project and America's early nuclear program, as well as having spent much of my summers growing up in the shadow of the Hanford Site, this video was fascinating and right up my alley.

FINALLY I’VE ASKED FOR THIS FOREVER THANK YOU SIMON! I’ve lived by this my entire life and I needed that Simon spin

"building nuclear weapons is bad" I think there are several million US servicemen and their descendants who would disagree.

VERY informative and interesting! Keep up the good work!

Thanks Simon, excellent!

i’m sad you didn’t talk about the Green Run or the tests they did on animals and incarcerated people there!!! definitely an important part of Hanford history

I mention the Hanford site in the comments section of other videos . I don't know if you did this because of my suggestion but Thanks .

Simon mentions the occupants of Hanford and White Bluffs being moved; but did you know that the *cemetery* was moved, too? The caskets and bodies were exhumed and moved to a new cemetery in nearby Prosser, WA.

I really enjoy these videos. I listen to them in the background at work.

"...transforming the original nucleotide..." I am only a lowly cellular biologist who minored in physics but I think a nucleotide are the individual ATGC from DNA (AUGC for RNA).

My friends grandmother use to tell us stories about what it was like to grow up at the site, her father was a nuclear engineer at the time.

Awesome video as usual

Nice vid! I work there rn its pretty awesome learning about it

The project needed a place to house workers, so the government repossessed the nearby village of Richland using Eminent Domain, and built a city. Richland went from only about 200 people to over 40,000. The government owned all the land, and built all the houses. The houses were built in tracts and neighborhoods with only a limited number of plans. In typical official style, these plans were labeled A, B, C, and so on. These original houses are still there, and are locally known as 'alphabet houses'. It wasn't until decades later that the DoE relented and people were allowed to purchase land in Richland.

My father was in the clean up crew at Nagasaki. He said it looked at like every other city in Japan. The death and destruction was no different. He talked with a mayor of a major city, I forget which, who said the nuclear bomb gave Japan the excuse to surrender. Tojo did not agree to the surrender and it was only the Emperor going on the radio that ended the war. The bombing killed one million people in Tokyo in one night.

Thank you for your work

Shout out to the Hobart mixer at 07:46!! Those things are total workhorses in every industry

I think you should have said "nucleide" instead of nucleotides, which are a component of DNA!

So adjusted for inflation, the federal government could have built that facility over 500 times for the cost of the 2.3 trillion stimulus?

I grew up next to Hanford and my dad has worked out there on the clean up for the last 20 years.

I'm honestly learning so much stuff from you then I ever did in school