virtually all of which were conducted at one site by one contractor. By this time DuPont had ceased to be Hanford’s prime contractor and General Electric had acquired the managing and operating contract and assurned reaponsthilityfor producing nintonium. As well as overseeing site phuonium production activities, the operations office had io ensure 4 smooth transition from DuPont to General Rlectric. in this periad, facilities, euch as the Hantord Laboratories, which conducted research on the ological effects of radinactive material, were also established at the site. Cne laboratory cussion was the study of the effects of radioiodine, which was emitted ag 2 waste product from the chemical separations clams. : Hanford production facilities expanded fom 1947 te 1933 to meet Cold and Korean War demamis for more nuclear weapons, During this period five additional production reactors were built at Hanford Thus, the Hantord Operations Office haul to overses 4 large construction program while it supervised increasingly efficient phuoniun production activities, By 1249 approximately 63,000people lived in the Richland ares, end most of them were employed in the plant or at the operstions office. At that time the Hanford plants emploved more than one-fourth ofall contractor personne! engaged in operating atomic energy plants and two-thirds of all construction workers engaged im bullding atomic enerey glants. By the mid 1950s the operations office was overseeing the operation of eight production reactors at Hanford. The resctors were run aroundthe clockand immrovements to the three reactors built during the war allowed them to be run at higher than desmmed powerlevels. In the 1960s, one additional reactor, called the Mew Production Reactor, went ime operstion at Hanford. Kk was dual purpose reactor, designed to oreduce phionium and electric power. Like the other Hantord reactors, it was graphite maderaied and water cooled. By the mui 1960s the AEC had met all Depariment of Defbnse requirements for nuclear weapons production and had created 2 huge arsenal of nuclear weapons. Accordiuly, President Lyndon %. Johnson decided to reduce nuclear materials orowhuction and presented it as a disarrnament measure in his 1964 State of the Union address. As 4 resull, over the next seven years, the AEC shut down all Banfhrd production reactors, save for the New Production Reactor. Ag this ime the Hanford ares was 2 one uulustry town. Agoroumately 8200 people worked either in site plants or m the operations office. Virtually all were dependent directly or indirectly on plutonienproduction activiies. The AEC, accordingly, tock steps to keep the area economically viable by undertaking ite Hanford diversification program, aiming to tring new industry and contractors nie the aren. The operations office’s maior task curing the remainder of the decade was to oversee the Hanford diversification program for the ABC. hee The AEC moved quickly to implement the diversification program. In 1964 the AEC committed to the use ofmultiple comractors at the sive and selected Battelle Memorial Institute of Cohunbus, Chic as one of the first of them. In 1965 Battelle contracted to run the Hanford Laboratories, newly designated as Pacific Northwest Laboratory. The AECthen decided to bulld the Fast Plax