STAGGERING CLEANUP COSTS: NUCLEAR ARMS RACE'S LINGERING IMPACT

Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” has focused new attention on the legacies of the Manhattan Project – the World War II programme to develop nuclear weapons.

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As the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945, approach, it’s a timely moment to look further at dilemmas wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb.

It also led to widespread public health and environmental damage from nuclear weapons production and testing.Hanford is less well known than Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists designed the first atomic weapons, but it was also crucial to the Manhattan Project. There, an enormous, secret industrial facility produced the plutonium fuel for the Trinity test on July 16, 1945. Later, workers at Hanford made most of the plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War.