Inside DuPont’s Secret War Plants: The Factory Network That Fueled America’s War Machine
December 1942: Colonel Franklin Matthias and 2 DuPont engineers inspected sites for full-scale plutonium production. January 1943: Hanford, Washington selected—586 square miles, near Columbia River (75,000 gallons/minute cooling), Grand Coulee/Bonneville Dam power. 1,500 residents evicted (30-90 days notice). Wanapum tribe displaced from ancestral fishing grounds. DuPont hired for $1 fee (Cost Plus Fixed Fee contract—avoid "merchants of death" reputation from WWI). Construction 1943-1945: 45,000 workers peak, 554 buildings, 3 reactors (B, D, F at 250 megawatts each), 3 separation plants. September 1944: B Reactor achieved criticality (first full-scale plutonium production reactor). February 1945: first plutonium shipped to Los Alamos. July 16, 1945: Trinity test (Hanford plutonium). August 9, 1945: Fat Man bomb destroyed Nagasaki (74,000 killed instantly). Cold War: 9 total reactors, 60,000+ weapons produced. Waste: 177 underground tanks (1M gallons each), 53M gallons radioactive waste, 1/3 leaked into groundwater. 1949: Green Run experiment—deliberate radioactive iodine release. 1987-1990: reactors shut down. Cleanup costs: $300-640B estimated, continues until 2060+. 10,000+ workers currently employed. Legacy: technetium-99 (211,000-year half-life), iodine-129 (15.7M-year half-life). SOURCES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford... https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hanf... https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/loc... https://www.nwcouncil.org/history/Han... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford... https://www.historylink.org/file/21101 If Manhattan Project history and nuclear legacy fascinate you, subscribe and comment. #HanfordSite #DuPont #ManhattanProject #Plutonium #BReactor Hanford Site plutonium production, DuPont Manhattan Project contract, B Reactor Washington, Fat Man Nagasaki bomb, radioactive waste cleanup, Columbia River contamination, Wanapum tribe displacement, Cold War nuclear weapons, Green Run experiment 1949, Superfund environmental remediation
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