Park status for Hanford: Whole story needs telling

Wednesday, Americans commemorated the service of millions of military veterans. Sandwiched around that day were four other events that will bring greater recognition to the thousands of civilian scientists and workers whose efforts at three nuclear installations helped end World War II.

Theirs is a remarkable story well worth telling for what they achieved, and because we live with its consequences today in our nuclear arsenals, and the mammoth effort to deal with the nasty environmental aftermath.

Tuesday, the secretaries of Energy and Interior signed a memorandum defining their department roles in the management of the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which Congress created last year after 11 years of advocacy by local, state and federal officials, notably Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and retired Rep. Doc Hastings.

The memorandum signing was followed by a ceremony Thursday dedicating the B Reactor and other structures on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Similar events were held at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the park’s other two components.

The development of the three facilities during WWII has been compared to creating the automobile industry of that time from scratch. The B Reactor, where plutonium was processed for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, was completed in just 11 months.

The reactor, after a brief postwar shutdown, continued operating until 1968. Although its demolition was discussed for years afterward, Hanford’s historical significance led to a prolonged campaign for its preservation that culminated Thursday.

That just begins the work, and there isn’t much money to start with: the National Park Service has just $180,00 to spend on the park in its first year. Making Hanford and the other facilities showpieces will take some time.

The short-term payoff is an estimated 10 times the 10,000 visitors attracted to Hanford last year. National Park status will automatically stimulate more interest in a site.

The Park Service should make sure those visitors hear the full story of Hanford; not just its near instantaneous creation and the terrible fruition of its work, but the mess left behind over the next 20 years and the difficulty and cost of cleaning it up.

And there are the lingering health issues among those who worked at the plant when it was operational, those involved in the cleanup, and the “downwinders” deliberately exposed to radiation.

The B Reactor was the first of several built at Hanford, and the Tri-Cities has thrived in the decades since its construction as a research hub, notably at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The Manhattan Project National Historical Park will be unique, and Hanford’s story will be all the richer if visitors are exposed to every facet of its history.