The Department of Energy is working toward opening Hanford's historic B Reactor to the public on Saturdays starting this spring.

Plans still are tentative and more information will be available next month, but the reactor could open to the public as soon as March 28.

In addition, DOE is working to transfer the contract covering the reactor from Washington Closure Hanford to Fluor Hanford.

"This really does signal that DOE is thinking about it differently," said DOE spokeswoman Colleen French.

Washington Closure is a cleanup contractor and is working to tear down Hanford's other plutonium production reactors to little more than their radioactive core and then seal them up. Fluor Hanford provides ongoing services across the nuclear reservation.

Staffing tours of the reactor now will become part of its duties.

Under DOE's tentative plans, people would drive out to the Vernita Rest Stop near the Columbia River northwest of Richland. There they could catch a Fluor Hanford van to ride a few miles to reach B Reactor on the secure portion of the Hanford nuclear reservation.

People will be asked to register for the tour to make sure anyone who drives out to the Vernita area can be accommodated and to help with processing security badges for people who are entering the secure portion of Hanford, which includes B Reactor.

B Reactor, the most recently named a National Historic Landmark, was the nation's first full-scale production reactor. It was built in 13 months during World War II as the nation raced to develop the technology for an atomic bomb.

B Reactor produced plutonium for the first atomic explosion in the New Mexico desert, the Trinity Test, and produced plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping end World War II and ushering in the atomic age.

Today it looks much as it did during World War II with the addition of displays, including videos that allow visitors to hear about the reactor from those who worked there during World War II and the Cold War.

Although there has been discussion of allowing children to see the reactor, community groups that have worked to save the reactor have urged caution, French said.

The reactor would need many modifications to make it safe for children. Hazards range from exposed electrical panels to areas closed off only with ropes.

DOE is working closely with the National Park Service to make sure any safety improvements are consistent with the historical nature of the reactor, French said.

B Reactor only has been open to the public a few days each year as part of tours of the Hanford site and those bus tours have been so popular that getting a seat can be difficult.

Last year DOE increased its tours to allow 2,000 people to take them, but all seats filled the day registration opened.

In addition to opening B Reactor, DOE also will add 500 seats to tours this year to allow 2,500 people to see Hanford, said Dave Brockman, manager of the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office. The schedule and information about registration for 2009 tours will be announced this spring.

"The tours are very gratifying," Brockman said. Over and over participants say they didn't realize how big Hanford was or how complex it is, he said.

The sitewide tours are offered on weekdays so visitors can see Hanford when work is being done. But by opening B Reactor on Saturdays, people who cannot visit the site on a weekday still can see the reactor.

In addition to a look inside B Reactor, the bus tours include a drive through the Hanford and White Bluffs town sites where residents were ordered to leave their land during World War II to make way for the nuclear reservation.

Visitors also learn about the massive effort to clean up contamination left from the past production of plutonium and see the $12.2 billion vitrification plant being built to treat radioactive waste for disposal.