Category Archives: Cold War

Download April 2025 Atomic Tourism Calendar

This month’s featured image looks southeast across the Columbia River to the B Reactor on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Hanford Reach.

The Hanford Reach is a free-flowing section of the Columbia River which is the only section that is not tidal nor part of a reservoir. Most of this flows through the Hanford Site. The Reach was created as a National Monument in 2000 encompassing the original security buffer surrounding the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

The image was taken from a pullout on northbound WA-24 on the north side of the Columbia River, just east of the Vernita Bridge. From this vantage point, visitors can see nearly all of the remaining buildings, processing plants, and reactors of the Hanford Site.

Also this month, you’ll find some interesting atomic events that occured in April over the years as well as 88 atomic shots that occured organized by day.

If you visit the Hanford Reach, be sure to visit the REACH museum in Richland which provides geographical, biological, and historical displays of the area from Ancestral land usage, through early settlements, to the Manhattan Project, and current communities and wildlife.

AtomicTourism April 2025 Download

Download March 2025 Atomic Tourism Calendar

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Featuring the M65 Atomic Cannon (“Atomic Annie”) across from Fort Riley in Junction City, Kansas.

March’s calendar features the M65 Atomic Cannon (“Atomic Annie”) which is right off I-70 outside Junction City, Kansas. This view shows Fort Riley in the distance. The calendar also features some interesting March Atomic Events as well as a complete listing of all atomic shots during March from 1955 through 1984.

This Atomic Annie is located in Freedom Park near Junction City, Kansas, at exit 301 on I-70. The trail to the top of the hill with the cannon has recently been improved and was reopened for visitors.

Atomic Annie Kansas — M65 Atomic Cannon (“Atomic Annie”) atop a hill in Freedom Park, Junction City, Kansas

The M65 Atomic Cannon was built by the United States and capable of firing a nuclear device. It was developed in the 1950s during the Cold War and fielded between April 1955 to December 1962 in West Germany, South Korea, and on Okinawa.

On May 25, 1953, the Atomic Annie was tested at the Nevada Test Site as part of the Upshot-Knothole series of nuclear tests. Codenamed “Grable,” it resulted in the detonation of a 15kt shell at a range of 7 miles. This was the first and only nuclear shell to be fired from the cannon.

Of the 20 M65s produced, seven are on display. Only two have their original prime movers:

United States Army Field Artillery Museum, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. This is the original cannon fired with the live nuclear shot. Restored in 2010, original prime movers were restored and added.
The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in their Heritage Park, Albuquerque, New Mexico
United States Army Ordnance Training and Heritage Center, Petersburg, Virginia

Atomic Annie in Albuquerque — Atomic Annie at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, Albuquerque, NM

You can visit any of these Atomic Annie cannons. However, if you’d like to visit the one featured, and you’re traveling through Kansas, be sure to stop and take the hike to the top of the hill.

Download your calendar for March:

AtomicTourism March 2025 Download

The Apocalypse Factory

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Steve Olson at the Graham Pierce County Library

Steve Olson presented a talk and question & answer session about his newest book, The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age, at the Graham Pierce County Library on Saturday, February 11, 2023.

The Apocalypse Factory tells the story of plutonium from it’s discovery by Glenn Seaborg at the birth of nuclear fission, the technology of using and testing plutonium as a weapon, the development of Hanford and the reactor complexes, and the Cold War aftermath and reliance on the manufacturing of plutonium.

Much has been written about uranium, the Manhattan Project, and the development of the first atomic bomb used on the citizens of Hiroshima. Mr. Olson’s book looks at the second atomic bomb, using implosion and plutonium, which was used on the citizens of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. More importantly, plutonium pits became the standard for the U.S. stockpile of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, creating the Cold War and the arms race.

As Glenn Seaborg noted on his discovery of plutonium:

I was a 28-year old kid and didn’t stop to ruminate about it… I didn’t think, “My God, we’ve changed the history of the world.”
(as cited in Olson, 2020, The Apocalypse Factory, p. 31)

Steve Olson is the author of Eruption: The Untold Story of Mount St. Helens (winner of a Washington State Book Award), Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes (a finalist for the National Book Award), and other books. He has written for the Atlantic, Science, Smithsonian, and more. He lives in Seattle, Washington.