Hanford Reach is the site of the top-secret Hanford Nuclear Reservation where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was manufactured. Visiting the mysterious site used to require a security clearance, but since it became part of the Manhattan Project National Historic Site in 2015, any U.S. citizen can sign up for a free tour of the historic reactor B, the first large-scale nuclear reactor ever built. The surrounding area was initially set apart from development not for conservation, but as a security buffer zone. After the end of the Cold War, the decommissioning of the Hanford Site's nuclear reactors was followed by a cleanup that continues to this day, the largest such effort in the country, and to the establishment, in the year 2000, of a vast nature preserve that became Hanford Reach National Monument.
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