Choice and Location of Plant Site

The precautions which are being taken to cope with perils such as the explosion or burning of a pile, and the burning of metal during transport or storage, and the radiation within piles, recovery units and storages, complicate and delay design, construction and operation, and greatly increase cost. No precautions will guarantee safety, particularly because the incomplete development of the process presents the possibility of unforeseen dangers. Therefore, it is necessary to limit the effect of possible disasters by locating the Plant on a very large, isolated site, and to spread the Plant units widely over that site, which adversely affects design and construction speed and operating facility, and markedly increases cost. The isolation of the site makes it difficult to secure the necessary construction force for rapid construction of high quality; the extreme hazards in operation of the Plant may make it difficult to secure and hold a sufficient, and sufficiently trustworthy and capable, operating force. Operation of the Plant will require considerable amounts of electric power and coal, very large amounts of pure cold water, a moderately large force of operators, a large number of supervisory personnel including an unusual proportion of technically trained men, and continual medical watch over personnel necessarily exposed to some radiation. Therefore, the extreme isolation desired for the Plant site must be compromised in choice of site in order that hydroelectric power, a suitable large river and adequate railroad facilities may be available nearby; and rather extensive living quarters for personnel, laboratory provisions for technical work and medical facilities for conducting elaborate routine examinations of operators, must be provided. The site selected by the Government is not ideal, but no better site for the purpose is known.

The site of the Plant, to be called the Hanford Engineer Works, has been designated by the Government as a tract of land in Benton, Grant and Franklin Counties, in the State of Washington, where about 195 square miles are being purchased by the Government for use as an operating area, and about 400 square miles surrounding the operating area are being leased by the Government to prevent occupancy except under Government control, and about 25 square miles at a distance of about 15 miles from the nearest edge of the operating area are being purchased by the Government for construction of shops, laboratories and test units, an administration area, and a village to house Plant personnel. The operating area is bounded by the Columbia River, by protecting ranges of hills and by the controlled area extending to the village location. The Columbia River will furnish the needed large pure and cold water supply for the plant. Power in the required considerable amounts will be secured from the Bonneville-Grand Coulee installations. Three railroads pass near the site and a branch line of one of them enters it. Meteorological conditions affecting the air transport of radioactive gases and radioactive dusts and smoke to areas in the neighborhood of the site, were investigated in the course of selecting the site.

The site was chosen with the specifications that no main railroad line or main public highway should be within ten miles of any pile or recovery unit in the operating area, and that no town of population greater than 1,000 should be within twenty miles of the operating area. The nearest large cities, Spokane and Seattle-Tacoma and Portland, are about 125 and 135 and 150 miles away, respectively. The nearest communities of appreciable size, Yakima and Pasco, are about 36 and 33 miles from the nearest pile, respectively. The Plant village will be about 26 miles from the nearest pile and 22 miles from the nearest recovery unit. On the site, the three piles and two recovery areas are being laid out so that the distance between piles will be 6 to 7 miles, the distance between recovery areas will be about 4 miles, and the shortest distance between any pile and a recovery area will be over 3 miles. The site layout provides for five more piles and one more recovery area and expansion of each of the first two recovery areas, should such additions prove to be desirable.

In selecting and laying out the site, and in designing and constructing the Plant, it has been necessary to take into account the possibility of sabotage and other enemy action. Stringent security measures have governed and will govern all research, design, procurement, construction and operation procedure, in order that the utmost secrecy may be maintained. Relatively few individuals engaged in the work have full knowledge regarding it. Other personnel is divided into groups each possessing only such information as is necessary for its own use in connection with its own part of the work. Engineers and supervisors are told what must be done but not why. Draftsmen and construction workers have, and operators will have, no information regarding the purpose of their work, much less its urgent importance. Extreme secrecy has adversely affected speed, quality and assurance of performance, and will continue to do so.