Video: 'Kennedy at Hanford, 1963'

(Thursday, September 26, 1963, JFK began speaking at 3:26 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time; during the Cold War) — President John F. Kennedy waved a magic wand over a boiling plateau of dust today at the Hanford Site in eastern Washington state as he presided over the groundbreaking of a nuclear reactor that would generate commercial and residential electricity while creating plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.

The President noted that the $100 million project under construction symbolized the nation’s peaceful intentions with the nuclear genie.

“A nation dedicated to living in peace is forging not a sword but a plowshare,” Kennedy told an estimated 37,000 sun-baked persons crowding around the ground-breaking site.

It was a dedication as space-age as the reactor it conceived.

After delivering his speech the President took a uranium-tipped pointer in his hand and gingerly waved it in the direction of a radiation counter contraption.

The uranium increased the electrical output to a part that closed a relay and set a huge clam-digger crane in motion several hundred yards away.

As the crane automatically dropped its giant scoop to the ground with a crash, Kennedy turned away and gave the wand to a bystander. He seemed at a loss for the moment but quipped, “I’m assured that this is strictly on the level that no one hiding in that machine to operate.”

Kennedy’s appearance was part of a 10,000-mile, 11-state, five-day journey through the West.