Hanford, Washington

Hanford, Washington, would resemble any other quaint little American town if you were to look at vintage photographs of the location. In 1943, when the Manhattan Project began to occupy the area, the war department informed the locals that they would need to go.

During the Second World War, the United States produced plutonium at Hanford for use in its nuclear weapons program. To meet the demands of the Cold War, the program gained momentum in 1947. It ran continuously until 1987, when the reactor was eventually shut down.

The landscape around Hanford was transformed into a sort of nuclear wasteland as a result of the processing and refinement of nuclear materials on the site. The region, especially the Columbia River, was polluted by both solid and liquid garbage.