RICHLAND — Speaker after speaker at public hearings Thursday in Richland had the same message for the National Park Service: Make Hanford’s historic B Reactor part of a new Manhattan Project Historical Park.

It’s an option the National Park Service considered, but concluded was not feasible by the time it released a draft study that looked at options for the future of B Reactor and other Manhattan Project sites at Los Alamos, N.M., and Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Managing a park that included all three sites could be unreasonably expensive, it said. Visitor access could be limited by safety concerns, and the park service has liability concerns.

But those concerns are exaggerated and could be overcome, said Maynard Plahuta, president of the B Reactor Museum Association, and many who spoke at the meetings agreed. About 130 people attended the two sessions.

B Reactor needs to be included in a national park to best tell the story of the birth of the Atomic Age, they said.

The park service made several proposals that would let it play a limited role in local preservation of B Reactor.

But “this is not a local issue but a national issue,” and even an international issue, said Gene Weisskopf of Richland. “It’s a milestone in human history.”

B Reactor was the nation’s first production-scale nuclear reactor and produced the plutonium for the world’s first atomic explosion and for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping to end World War II. It continued to produce plutonium for the Cold War and was the model on which later reactors were designed.

“The full story of the Manhattan Project cannot be completely and comprehensively told without B Reactor,” said Del Ballard, a retired engineer and member of the B Reactor Museum Association.

Teresa Andre of Kennewick agreed that managing a national park that had portions in three states would be challenging. But the Manhattan Project race to build an atomic bomb was spread among sites in three states, she said.

Public tours of B Reactor are already offered, with 5,000 people from more than 30 states visiting the reactor last year. The tours sometimes fill within minutes of the opening of registration.

Under one option that the National Park Service is considering, part of Los Alamos would be included in a new national park as representative of the Manhattan Project.

But adding Hanford and Oak Ridge also would add very little cost to the park service, said a letter signed by many Tri-Cities agencies.

The park service is needed as a partner with the Department of Energy, which would continue to own B Reactor, said Richland historian Mich-ele Gerber.

Congress will make the final decision.