The Manhattan Project at Hanford Site describes the top-secret effort undertaken during World War II to develop a weapon never imagined at "Site W" or "Hanford Engineer Works," one of three sites selected in the United States (plus Los Alamos and Oak Ridge) to research and produce weapons that were ultimately used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki and end World War II.

It was a research and engineering feat of unimaginable proportion, and the total project cost for all three sites was $2.1 billion--an unthinkable amount for a country that was coming out of the Great Depression. It is a...