with the Band TPlants' 1.5 tons per day. It also had the advantage of consolidating the separation activities in one building. Unlike the bismuth phosphate process, it produced uranium as a byproduct. The low flash point of hexone meant that special precautions had to be taken against the possibility of an explosion. The hexone could not be reused as it was highly water-soluble and was unstable in nitric acid. Removing the uranium meant that the waste products were highly radioactive. The facility operated until 1967 and processed approximately 22,400 metric tons of uranium fuel rods. The U Plant was modified to use the REDOX process to recover uranium from the wastes left over from the bismuth phosphate process, but with a different solvent, tributyl phosphate. Because of the plant's layout, it could not use the tall columns and gravity flow that characterized the REDOX plant, so pulsed columns were used instead. The plutonium uranium reduction extraction (PUREX) process was developed at GE's Knolls Laboratory. The PUREX Plant, known as APlant or Building 202A, commenced operation in 1955. Like the UPlant it used pulsed columns and tributyl phosphate as a solvent. The plant was long, high and wide. The processing canyon contained eleven processing areas. It operated from 1956 to 1972, and again from 1983 to 1988, when it reprocessed spent fuel rods from the reactors, and processed approximately 66,400 metric tons of uranium fuel rods. The Band T Plants were shut down after it became operational in 1956, having processed 8,100 metric tons of fuel rods. During the 1940s, the Hanford Site dumped into the Columbia River each day. This rose to per day between 1951 and 1953, and peaked at per day in 1959. N Reactor The reactors had all been built for plutonium production, but with the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Eisenhower administration began shifting resources to nuclear power generation. By the late 1950s the reactors built during the war were approaching retirement age, and in 1957 GE commenced planning to build a new reactor that would be clean, safe and efficient, and able to generate electric power as well as produce plutonium. Construction commenced in 1959, but the electric power features were not authorized until 1962, so while it was producing plutonium in 1964, electric power did not follow until 1966. Experts debated whether nuclear power would be economically competitive with hydroelectric power, and Congress