8/30/18 - Tri-Cities, WA

Today we took a tour of the Manhattan Project National Historic Park – Hanford Unit.  The other units are in Oakridge, Tennessee and Los Alamos, New Mexico.  We boarded a bus which took us to B Reactor.  Built in 1944, it was the first large scale nuclear reactor ever built.  It produced plutonium-239 by irradiating uranium-238 with neutrons generated by nuclear chain reaction.  The plutonium for the first nuclear bomb used in the Trinity test in New Mexico and the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan was created in this reactor.  It continued to produce plutonium until 1968.  Our tour guide today was Larry Haler.  He is the Washington state representative from this area.  He also had worked at the Hanford Unit.

On the way to the National Park visitor center we stopped at Spudnut.  They make donuts out of potatoes.  The National Park visitor center shares a building with Shrub Steppe Brewing and Bombing Range Brewing on either side of it.  After the tour we went back to both of them. We wanted to eat BBQ at Shrub Steppe but since they are closing they were not preparing brisket and they were out of other items. We talked to a couple that live here but used to live in Texas.  They gave us some good information about camping and hiking in this part of Washington.  They also told us about a good BBQ place so for dinner we went to Porter’s BBQ.