The B Reactor of the facility produced the plutonium used for Trinity and Fat Man, and then for many more thousand bombs during the Cold War. More precisely, this was done at
Located in Washington, in a dry place the middle of the mountainous areas of the Western United States, where basically no one lives. The Columbia river is however nearby, that river is quite large, and provided the water needed by their activities, notably for cooling the nuclear reactors. It is worth it having look on Google Maps to get a feel for the region.
Unlike many other such laboratories, this one did not become a United States Department of Energy national laboratories. It was likely just too polluted.
Bibliography:
Aerial image of the Hanford site in 1960
. Source. This was the first full scale nuclear reactor in the world, and was brought up slowly to test it out.
Hanford B Reactor tour by Studio McGraw
. Source. 2016.- youtu.be/8rlVHEY7BF0?t=335 good description of the fuel element. It uses uranium metal, not Uranium dioxide
- youtu.be/8rlVHEY7BF0?t=652 N Reactor and F Reactor were identical, and came up 2 months later, but much faster because of what they learned on the B
