A factory that produced two-thirds of the nation’s Cold War-era plutonium for nuclear weapons has finally been completely demolished.
After 40 years of operations and 20 years of often-dangerous cleanup work, crews recently finished demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant’s main processing facility at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
The news was announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The main processing facility, nicknamed “Z-Plant,” operated from 1949 to 1989 and workers created hockey puck-sized plutonium “buttons” for shipment to nuclear weapons-manufacturing facilities.