HANFORD, Wash. (Kyodo) For Shirley Olinger, managing the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear site — where the plutonium was generated for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 — is personal.
Nagasaki is her mother's hometown.
Established in 1943, the government-run Hanford Nuclear Reservation is in south-central Washington state along the Columbia River. Water from the river was used to cool the plutonium-producing nuclear reactors.