The testing process, called “hot commissioning,” will introduce radioactive waste to the plant for the first time and verify ...

Hanford's plutonium was used in the Trinity test, the first detonated nuclear bomb. The Trinity Test, the first ever detonation of a nuclear device at Alamogordo, New Mexico in 1945.

Hanford was created during World War II to be the home of one Manhattan Project factory. Starting in 1944, plutonium production started there and continued until the late 1980s.

A group of Hanford workers have come up positive for internal radioactive contamination. (Photo: KING) Author: Susannah Frame Published: 2:19 AM EDT August 3, 2017 Updated: 8:19 AM EDT August 3, 2017 ...

The 586-square-mile Hanford site adjacent to Richland was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

A two-month study at Hanford’s Waste Treatment Plant is testing emission controls on a new stack, using chemical simulants to ensure safety and compliance before treating radioactive waste. The ...

Hanford, which is roughly half the size of Rhode Island, spent decades making plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. KING 5 Investigative Reporter Susannah Frame is covering this story.

Environmental cleanup is underway at the 580-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation. The underground radioactive waste storage tanks and the vitrification plant are in the center of the site.

During its operational years, Hanford supplied plutonium for the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki in World War 2 and accounted for 65 percent of the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The plant now employees 580 workers, but Framatome is proposing an expansion to the plant, which has operated in Richland since it was opened by Jersey Nuclear Co. in 1969.

Fat Man, the nuclear bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945, also contained Hanford's plutonium. The bomb killed an estimated 50,000 people in Nagasaki, The BBC reported.