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THE NAVY AND THERMAL DIFFUSION (Oak Ridge: Clinton, 1944)
Events
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The Uranium Path to the Bomb, 1942-1944
As problems with both Y-12 and
K-25 reached crisis proportions in spring
and summer 1944, the Manhattan Project received help from
an unexpected source: the United States Navy.
President Roosevelt had
instructed that the atomic bomb effort be an Army program
and that the Navy be excluded from deliberations.
Navy research on atomic power, conducted primarily for
submarines, received no direct aid from
Leslie Groves, who, in fact, was not
up-to-date on the state of Navy efforts when he received a
letter on the subject from
Robert Oppenheimer late in April 1944.
Oppenheimer informed Groves that the
thermal diffusion experiments of Philip
Abelson (left) at the Philadelphia Naval Yard deserved a
closer look. Abelson was building a plant to produce
enriched uranium to be completed in early July 1944.
It might be possible, Oppenheimer thought, to help Abelson
complete and expand his plant and use its slightly
enriched product as feed for Y-12 until problems with K-25
could be resolved.
The liquid thermal diffusion process had been
evaluated in 1940 by the Uranium Committee
when Abelson was conducting experiments at the National
Bureau of Standards. In 1941, he moved to the Naval
Research Laboratory, where there was more support for his
work. During summer 1942,
Vannevar Bush and
James Conant received reports about
Abelson's research but concluded that it would take too
long for the thermal diffusion process to make a major
contribution to the bomb effort, especially since the
electromagnetic and
pile projects were making satisfactory
progress. After a visit with Abelson in January
1943, Bush encouraged the Navy to increase its support of
thermal diffusion. A thorough review of Abelson's
project early in 1943, however, concluded that thermal
diffusion work should be expanded but should not be
considered as a replacement for gaseous diffusion, which
was better understood theoretically. Abelson
continued his work independently of the Manhattan
Project. He obtained authorization to build a new
plant at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, where construction
began in January 1944.
Groves immediately saw the value of Oppenheimer's
suggestion and sent a group to Philadelphia to visit
Abelson's plant. A quick analysis demonstrated that
a thermal diffusion plant could be built at Oak Ridge and
placed in operation by early 1945. The steam needed
in the convection columns was already at hand in the form
of the almost completed K-25 power plant. It would
be a relatively simple matter to provide steam to the
thermal diffusion plant and produce enriched uranium,
while providing electricity for the K-25 plant when it was
finished. Groves gave the contractor, H. K. Ferguson
Company of Cleveland, just ninety days from September 27
to bring a 2,142-column plant on line (Abelson's plant
contained 100 columns). There was no time to waste
as "Happy Valley" braced itself for a new influx
of workers sent to build the
S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant (right).
Even with an operational S-50, however, it was still
not
possible to say for sure whether enough enriched uranium
could be produced in time to create a bomb before the end
of the war.
To view the next "event" of the Manhattan Project, proceed to
"1942-1944: The Plutonium Path to the
Bomb.
Previous
Sources and notes for this page.
The text for this page was adapted from, and portions
were taken directly from the
Office of History and Heritage Resources
publication:
F. G. Gosling,
The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb
(DOE/MA-0001; Washington: History Division, Department
of Energy, January 1999), 26. The photograph of the
diffusion columns at
S-50 is courtesy the
National Archives;
it was taken by
Ed Westcott
and is reprinted in Rachel Fermi and Esther Samra,
Picturing the Bomb: Photographs from the Secret World
of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1995),
92. The photograph of Philip Abelson is courtesy
the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The diagram illustrating the liquid thermal
diffusion method is reproduced from the
Department of Energy
report
Linking Legacies: Connecting the Cold War Nuclear
Weapons Production Processes to their Environmental
Consequences
(Washington: Center for Environmental Management
Information, Department of Energy, January 1997), 138. The map of Oak Ridge is
reproduced from Vincent C. Jones,
Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb, United
States Army in World War II (Washington: Center of
Military History, United States Army, 1988), 131.
The aerial photograph showing S-50, the power plant for
K-25, and the Clinch River, is
reproduced in the History Office publication: Richard G.
Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr.,
The New World, 1939-1946: Volume I,
A History of the United States
Atomic Energy Commission
(Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1972),
between pages 296 and 297.
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