Icon of plutonium production felled in environmental clean-up.
The historic Hanford guard tower that stood above the Columbia River for a half-century has been pulled to the ground.
“It’s really an iconic symbol of Hanford plutonium production,” said Gary Snow, director of deactivation and demolition for Department of Energy contractor Washington Closure Hanford, as work to clean up the rubble that remained from the tower began Thursday.
Taking it down is part of environmental cleanup of the area around Hanford’s ninth plutonium-production reactor, N Reactor, which is legally required to be completed at the end of the year.
The 62-foot tower was bolted to the deck of a water-intake structure on the Columbia River that housed seven pumps, most of them used to provide cooling water from the river for N Reactor.
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