Chemistry students visit Hanford Reactor

This week Walla Walla High School students in Mary Burt’s College Prep Chemistry class took a field trip to the Hanford B Reactor. Nineteen students toured the facility with nuclear scientists who explained the chemistry and the history of the reactor. The B Reactor at the Hanford Site, near Richland, Washington, was the first large-scale nuclear reactor ever built. The project was commissioned to produce plutonium as part of the Manhattan Project, the United States nuclear weapons development program during World War II. It has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark since 2008.