‘Very impressive.’ Here’s what WA Gov. Inslee did during a visit to Tri-Cities Friday

Gov. Jay Inslee got his first look inside the Hanford site’s historic B Reactor on Friday, and came away impressed not only with the advanced physics achievement but the craftsmanship he saw.

During a visit to the Tri-Cities, he toured the reactor, met with home-schooled students and discussed the nuclear reservation’s environmental cleanup, including a proposed new plan for radioactive tank waste cleanup, with Washington state Department of Ecology staff.

He got a chance to sit at the controls of the world’s first production scale reactor — an opportunity open to all visitor to the reactor. And he heard the story of the startup of the reactor.

Construction of B Reactor began in October 1943 as the United States and its Allies raced to produce an atomic bomb during World War II, fearing that Nazi Germany would beat them to it.

Tour guides told Inslee the story of the night the reactor was powered up on Sept. 13, 1944. But after a promising start the scientists and operators gathered in the control room watched the reaction fail.

Leona Woods Marshall, one of the few female scientists on the Manhattan Project, helped trace the problem to xenon 135, which was absorbing too many neutrons, poisoning the reaction.

Because the reactor core had been built with space for more fuel rods that were expected to be needed, the problem was quickly overcome by adding extra fuel.

“The prowess and ambition of people in those days was just so remarkable,” Inslee said.

The construction of the reactor also was an epic story of craftsmen who knew how to work with their hands, a legacy of skill that continues at Hanford, he said.

During WWII highly experienced workers were recruited to machine graphite blocks to exacting measurements to form the 36-by-36-by-28 foot, 2,200-ton core of B Reactor.

“Very impressive,” the governor said. “I’m glad it is part of the National Park system.”

The plutonium produced at B Reactor powered the first man-made atomic explosion, the Trinity test, in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 and weeks later the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping end World War II.

Hanford site cleanup

Inslee’s visit to Hanford comes as a plan is being considered for the next 20 years of environmental cleanup of the radioactive waste left from chemically processing uranium fuel irradiated at B Reactor and eight other Hanford reactors from WW II through the Cold War.

The initial public comments received show the proposed plan is “going in the right direction,” but with some legitimate questions raised, he said.

The plan, commonly called the “holistic agreement,” was developed over four years of negotiations between the U.S. Department of Energy, the Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

It holds firm on a 2025 deadline for starting to glassify radioactive waste at the Hanford vitrification plant, allowing some of the waste into concrete-like grout to be disposed of out of state and setting deadlines for emptying more of the leak-prone underground tanks that hold millions of gallons of waste.

Inslee met with Laura Watson, Ecology director; Stephanie Schleif, Ecology’s nuclear waste manager; and other Ecology staff to discuss the holistic agreement and other Hanford environmental cleanup work.

His visit came shortly after DOE had successes to report.

Hanford workers finished emptying radioactive waste from the second of 12 underground tank groupings, or “ tank farms,” with a combined total of 149 of Hanford’s oldest tanks. And it started draining contaminated water from the last reactor basin that posed a risk to the Columbia River a quarter mile away.

His stop in the Tri-Cities also included a chance to talk about one of his favorite topics, clean energy, including efforts to extract clean electricity from nuclear fusion , with students from the Tri-Cities Homeschool Co-Op.

Registration is open for free tours of B Reactor through October, when the reactor is expected to close to the public for at least two years for maintenance and repairs. To register, go to manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov .

Comments on the holistic agreement for tank waste cleanup and treatment may be made at bit.ly/HolisticAgreementComment .