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THE MANHATTAN ENGINEER DISTRICT (1945-1946)
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Postscript -- The Nuclear Age, 1945-Present
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Informing the Public, August 1945
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The Manhattan Engineer District, 1945-1946
-
First Steps toward International Control,
1944-1945
-
Search for a Policy on International Control,
1945
-
Negotiating International Control,
1945-1946
-
Civilian Control of Atomic Energy,
1945-1946
-
Operation Crossroads, July 1946
-
The VENONA Intercepts, 1946-1980
-
The Cold War, 1945-1990
-
Nuclear Proliferation, 1949-present
With the end of the Second World War, American
policymakers anticipated that the Manhattan
Project's infrastructure would be turned over to and
managed by a largely civilian commission.
General Leslie Groves initially thought
this would happen soon after the ending of
hostilities. His strategy for interim management of
the complex was thus one of "hold the line," where he
sought to maintain the essential soundness of the physical
plant and the personnel that ran it, complete ongoing
construction, and promote efficiency and economy.
One of his first decisions was to close down marginal
operations such as the
S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant in the K-25
area and the Alpha racetracks of the
Y-12 electromagnetic separations plant at
Oak Ridge. His most serious short-term problem was
in retaining personnel, particularly at
Los Alamos where many scientists and
technicians were eager to return to civilian pursuits.
By early 1946, Groves realized that the Manhattan Engineer
District's trusteeship of the complex might last for
an extended period of time. He decided to abandon
the hold-the-line policy and begin making longer range
plans for the complex, even though this might restrict the
freedom of action for any future commission.
Expiring operating contracts at major sites demanded his
immediate attention. He negotiated extensions
through mid-1947 for all of the contracts except for at
Hanford, where the DuPont Corporation was
determined to withdraw. Groves turned to the General
Electric Company, which agreed to replace DuPont. As
part of the new contract to operate Hanford, General
Electric would also construct and operate a
government-owned laboratory at Knolls, a site five miles
from the company's home plant at Schenectady, New
York. The laboratory would allow General Electric to
pursue the development of atomic power.
With morale and personnel loss continuing to be problems
at Los Alamos, Groves upgraded living conditions at the
site with major improvements in utilities, housing, and
community facilities. He also sought to focus the
laboratory more on weapons development by relocating
various weapons production and assembly activities away
from Los Alamos. Already at the close of the war,
the engineering group of the laboratory's ordnance
division began consolidating weapons assembly functions at
Sandia Base on the old Albuquerque, New Mexico,
airport. Groves now added a special Army battalion
at Sandia to take charge of surveillance, field tests, and
weapons assembly. In addition, he negotiated an
agreement with Monsanto for the development and
manufacture at its plant in Dayton, Ohio, of weapons
components previously fabricated at Los Alamos.
Groves also attempted to prevent the disintegration of the
nationwide nuclear research organization that had been
built up during the war. Upon the advice of the
Advisory Committee on Research and Development that he set
up, Groves initiated the national laboratories system that
would conduct unclassified fundamental research requiring
equipment too expensive for the academic or private sector
laboratories to afford. In April 1946, the
University of Chicago agreed to operate the new Argonne
National Laboratory formed from the existing Metallurgical
and Argonne laboratories. In July, nine northeastern
universities banded together to operate the Brookhaven
National Laboratory located at an old Army camp on Long
Island, New York.
Problems in the weapons complex nonetheless continued to
mount. At Hanford, the
three production reactors began to show
signs of wear. Sustained operation had caused
expansion of the graphite core of each reactor, resulting
in distortion of the aluminum tubes containing the uranium
slugs and through which the cooling water flowed.
With limited operating experience, scientists and
engineers feared the graphite expansion would continue and
render all three reactors inoperable. Potential loss
of polonium production was the most immediate
concern. Polonium was used as a neutron source for
initiating the chain reaction in the plutonium device,
and, given polonium's half-life of only 138 days,
production stoppage could make existing weapons useless in
a matter of months. As a result, the Army in March
1946 placed B reactor in standby and significantly
curtailed power levels on D and F reactors in an effort to
conserve their useful lives.
Loss of plutonium production was perhaps less critical
due to ongoing problems at the Los Alamos
laboratory. With low morale and lack of direction
causing many scientists experienced in weapons fabrication
to leave the laboratory, the Army concluded that Los
Alamos had lost, at least temporarily, the capability to
keep the more complex implosion weapon, which used
plutonium, in a ready state for use in the event of
war. As an interim measure, the Army authorized
concentrated production on the gun-type weapon used at
Hiroshima. The gun method was highly wasteful of
uranium-235, but this drawback was somewhat offset by
advances in the gaseous diffusion isotope separations
process. The Oak Ridge
gaseous diffusion plants, with the new
K-27 plant being tied into K-25 in February 1946 to form
one continuous operation, over time had achieved stable
production rates at very high efficiencies.
Despite Groves's best efforts, the Manhattan Project
complex suffered in the aftermath of the war. By early
1947, the nation's atomic energy establishment
amounted to little more than the remnants of the military
organization and facilities that had produced the
world's first atomic weapons.
-
Informing the Public, August 1945
-
The Manhattan Engineer District, 1945-1946
-
First Steps toward International Control,
1944-1945
-
Search for a Policy on International Control,
1945
-
Negotiating International Control,
1945-1946
-
Civilian Control of Atomic Energy,
1945-1946
-
Operation Crossroads, July 1946
-
The VENONA Intercepts, 1946-1980
-
The Cold War, 1945-1990
-
Nuclear Proliferation, 1949-present
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Sources and notes for this page.
The text for this page was adapted in part from, and
portions were taken directly from the
Office of History and Heritage Resources
publications:
F. G. Gosling,
The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb
(DOE/MA-0001; Washington: History Division, Department
of Energy, January 1999), 55; and 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),
301-302, 624-637, 646, and Hewlett and Francis Duncan,
Atomic Shield, 1947-1952, Volume II,
A History of the United States Atomic Energy
Commission
(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1969), p. xiii. Also used were 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),
579-596; Rodney P. Carlisle with Joan M. Zenzen,
Supplying the Nuclear Arsenal: American Production
Reactors, 1942-1992
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996),
55-56, and AEC Staff Paper 1140, History of Expansion
of AEC Production Facilities, August 16, 1963, box
1435, folder I&P 14, History, 1958-1966
Secretariat files, DOE Historical Research
Center. The (unofficial) MED emblem is ca.
1946; it is reprinted in Jones, Manhattan,
89. The photograph of the Sandia security gate
is courtesy the
Sandia National Laboratories. Click
here for information on the aerial photograph of
Hanford. The photograph of Little Boy is courtesy the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (via the
National Archives).
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