The Manhattan Project: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Al Cimino

Author:Al Cimino [Cimino, Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Military, Nuclear Warfare, weapons, World War II, Asia, Japan
ISBN: 9781784281120
Google: cQgxCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcturus Publishing
Published: 2015-07-14T23:29:36.828800+00:00

Hanford takes shape

Colonel Matthias had returned to Hanford to set up a temporary office on 22 February 1943. His orders were to purchase 500,000 acres in and around the Hanford-Pasco-White Bluffs area. It was a sparsely populated region where shepherding and farming were the main activities. Many of the area’s landowners rejected initial offers for their land and tried to take the army to court, but Matthias usually settled out of court as time meant more than money to the Manhattan Project.

Once the land had been bought, the three water-cooled piles, designated B, D and F, would be built about 6 miles apart along the south bank of the Columbia River. The four chemical separation plants, built in pairs, would be constructed nearly 10 miles south of the piles, while a facility to produce slugs and perform tests would be built around 20 miles southeast of the separation plants, near the town of Richland. Temporary quarters for construction workers would be put up in Hanford, which was converted into a construction camp, while permanent facilities for other personnel would be located down the road in Richland, a safe distance from the production and separation plants.

During summer 1943, Hanford became the Manhattan Project’s newest atomic boomtown. Thousands of workers poured in. But while well situated from a logistical point of view, Hanford was a sea of tents and wooden barracks where there was little to do and nowhere to go.

DuPont and the army co-ordinated efforts to recruit labourers from all over the country, but even with a relative labour surplus in the Pacific Northwest, shortages of manpower plagued the project. Conditions improved during the second half of the year, with the addition of recreational facilities. Workers’ pay increased and services improved for Hanford’s population, which reached 50,000 by the summer of 1944. Hanford still resembled a frontier mining town, but the rate of worker turnover dropped substantially.

Ground-breaking for the water-cooling plant for the 100-B pile, the westernmost of the three, took place on 27 August, less than two weeks before Italy’s surrender to the Allies on 8 September. On 10 October, work gangs began laying the first of 390 tons of structural steel, 17,400 cubic yards of concrete, 50,000 concrete blocks and 71,000 concrete bricks. That was just to make the 40 foot windowless building the pile sat in.

Work on the pile itself began in February 1944, with the base and shield being completed by mid-May. It took another month to put the graphite pile in place and install the top shield, and two more months to wire and pipe the pile and connect it to the various monitoring and control devices.

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