The Secret City that began the Atomic Age

Oak Ridge Tennessee, the Secret City  that began the Atomic Age. 

By Victor K. Ray
Proofs by Doorene Durant

This week, I visited the American Museum of Science and Energy, a Smithsonian Affiliate in Oak Ridge. The American Museum of Science and Energy (AMSE) was originally named the American Museum of Atomic Energy. AMSE has been considered one of the top tourist attractions in the Knoxville area, and it attracts about 65,000 visitors per year. It has a lot of information about the Manhattan Project and the development of nuclear energy. 

While Tennessee has long been known for its Blue Ridge Mountains, Blue Grass, country singers, and famous politicians, American’s secret city in Oak Ridge was one of the sites of the most critical and significant events in history. In Oak Ridge, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park now preserves the history of the development of the atomic bomb. Oakridge is just a short distance east of Knoxville. 

             Thirty secret project sites worked on this secret project, called the “Manhattan Project.” This project was designed to end the conflict with Germany and Japan during World War II. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers. 

Major General Leslie Groves

  The University of Chicago and Oak Ridge worked on a type of uranium called U-235, and the California Institute of Technology worked on plutonium. Los Alamos, NM developed and tested the atomic bomb. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. Hanford, Washington, on the beautiful Columbia River, was the site selected for the full-scale plutonium production plant, the B Reactor.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR, declared war on Japan. In the meantime, Germany was developing its own nuclear weapons. So, a race was on. Many of the scientists, especially the Jewish ones, including Albert Einstein, left Germany to escape the Nazis. Many settled in Canada and the US and got involved in the Manhattan Project. Ultimately, a couple of atomic bombs were dropped on Japan resulting in their unconditional surrender. 

             What makes the discovery of nuclear energy one of the most critical and significant events in history is  not only did it help bring an end to World War II, but  the world now uses nuclear energy in medicine, energy plants, submarines  and many other things. Many call it the Nuclear Age.    

  As noted in Wikipedia, “The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939 but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion (about $23 billion in 2018 dollars). Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Two types of atomic bombs were developed concurrently during the war: a relatively simple gun type-fission weapon and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon. The Thin Man gun-type design proved impractical to use with plutonium, and therefore a simpler gun-type called Little Boy was developed that used uranium 235-an isotope that makes up only 0.7 percent of natural uranium, chemically identical to the most common isotope, uranium 238, and with almost the same mass, it proved difficult to separate the two. Three methods were employed for uranium enrichment: electromagnetic, gaseous, and thermal. Most of this work was performed at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. (1)

Workers leaving the Y-12 Plant

Footnotes:

1. Wikipedia