Manhattan project sites may become national parks

Most of the thousands who worked in a remote cluster of wooden buildings and metal shacks in the New Mexico desert in the 1940s had no idea they were part of the Manhattan project. The buildings in which they researched and tested the nuclear bomb could get a new lease of life.

Stripped of their classified laboratory equipment, many of the buildings at Los Alamos in New Mexico, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Hanford in Washington are rusting and face being condemned. But the US Congress drafted bills in June to turn them into national parks.

Archaeologists and historians have begun preserving some of the most important buildings and artefacts. The reactors at Hanford and Oak Ridge, which produced plutonium and enriched uranium, are among those that have been designated signature facilities to be restored and preserved. The house of Manhattan project director J. Robert Oppenheimer is likely to be an attraction at Los Alamos.

If the bills pass, only US citizens will be allowed to visit the sites and cellphones and cameras will be prohibited.

The Department of Energy has determined that although the three sites are still contaminated by nuclear waste today, lingering radiation will not harm visitors as tours would avoid contaminated areas.

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