RICHLAND, Wash. - Seventy-five years ago, a Hanford worker supporting the site’s plutonium enrichment effort was apparently reading the latest from the European Theater of World War II and left a Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper behind. Recently, workers with EM Richland Operations Office contractor CH2M HILL Plateau Remediation Company found that paper from Jan. 27, 1945 while preparing an old building for eventual demolition. The worker reading the newspaper on that date likely understood the importance of the work at Hanford, but knew few details of the plutonium production effort until August 1945, when atomic weapons used in Japan led to the end of the war, and Hanford's mission was revealed.
Source: U.S. Dept. of Energy, Office of Environmental Management
