LOS ALAMOS: THE LABORATORY

Places

The Manhattan Project facility that finally brought all of the pieces of the puzzle together was the bomb laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, also known as Project Y. In early 1942, fast-neutron research, looking toward bomb development, was dispersed at a half-dozen universities. J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the program, concluded that a special laboratory was the only way to achieve a coordinated effort. General Leslie Groves, who assumed command of the Manhattan Engineer District in September 1942, agreed. After a brief search, Groves selected an isolated site on the east slopes of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico. Acquisition of the 54,000-acre site began immediately. Most of the land was already federally owned, with the most significant privately held parcel being the Los Alamos Ranch School for Boys.

The Army moved swiftly in early 1943 to make the new weapon laboratory a reality, setting up laboratories, bringing in equipment, building housing, and providing a minimum level of the accoutrements of civilization that were necessary to attract and sustain the scientists who would design, develop, and build the atomic bomb. Groves named Oppenheimer director. The research center of Los Alamos was the Main Technical Area, consisting of several dozen nondescript structures housing administrative buildings, laboratories, warehouses, and various shops and auxiliary structures behind a high chain link fence. By 1944, the transition from research to large scale development, testing, and operation involved a constant growth of personnel and a constant expansion of facilities. A fire at the C Shop in January 1945 prompted the relocation, for safety reasons, of all plutonium and polonium operations to the DP Site about two miles east of the Main Technical Area. Two dozen additional satellite areas were set up away from the main area. Reactors, critical assembly experiments, high explosives research and manufacture, gun testing, assembly of devices, and other hazardous operations were located at these isolated sites.

Security needs defined both the work and the life at Los Alamos. At the most secure of all the Manhattan Project sites, Groves' intent was to maintain as much control as he could over the scientists. Initially, he planned to make Los Alamos a military laboratory, with the scientists in uniform as military officers, but strong opposition to the militarization of the laboratory from many of the scientists Oppenheimer was attempting to recruit forced him to back down. The town site itself nonetheless became a military post and the security between the civilian lab and the outside world was no less intense. On-site accommodations and community services were provided for all military personnel and civilian scientists and technicians, as well as for their families in many cases. Life at Los Alamos, in almost every respect, was abnormal. Work and what little non-work time existed was strictly controlled. Los Alamos was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence and armed guards. Mail was censored. Scientists were not allowed personal contact with relatives nor permitted to travel more than 100 miles from Los Alamos.

After the war, the future of the laboratory remained in some doubt, but Groves felt that more and better bombs were needed, and the lab should maintain the nucleus of its weapon staff. 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.

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Sources and notes for this page

The text for this page is original to the Department of Energy's Office of History and Heritage Resources. Major sources consulted include the following: 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); Lillian Hoddeson, et. al., Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); 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); David Hawkins, Manhattan District History: Project Y, The Los Alamos Project, Volume I, Inception Until August 1945 (Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, LAMS-2352 [Vol. I], 1961); Edith C. Truslow and Ralph Carlisle Smith, Manhattan District History: Project Y, The Los Alamos Project, Volume II, August 1945 through December 1946 (Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, LAMS-2352 [Vol. II], 1961); Edith C. Truslow, with Kasha V. Thayer, ed., Manhattan District History: Nonscientific Aspects of Los Alamos Project Y, 1942 through 1946 (Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, LAMS-5200, March 1973); Manhattan District History, Book VIII - Los Alamos Project (Y), Volume 1 through 3. The photograph of the neutron cross section experiment is courtesy of LANL, 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), 99. The sketches of the gun-type and implosion approaches to bomb design are reproduced from Robert Serber's April 1943 "Los Alamos Primer," 21-22.