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THE
MANHATTAN ENGINEER DISTRICT
(1945-1946)
Events >
Postscript -- The Nuclear
Age, 1945-Present
- 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
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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