![]() ![]() Metallurgical Laboratory physicists in Chicago designed nuclear reactors ("piles") that could transmute uranium it into plutonium, while chemists investigated ways to separate them. Plutonium, a synthetic element only recently produced in laboratories, was theorized to be fissile and therefore usable in an atomic bomb. ![]() Conant, Leslie Groves and Franklin Matthias at Hanford in June 1945ĭuring World War II, the S-1 Section of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) sponsored a research project on plutonium, conducted by scientists at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley. The total cost up to December 1946 was over $348 million (equivalent to $3.7 billion in 2022).Ĭontractor selection Vannevar Bush, James B. More than 780,000 cubic yards (600,000 m 3) of concrete and 40,000 short tons (36,000 t) of structural steel went into its construction. The HEW built 386 miles (621 km) of roads, 158 miles (254 km) of railway, and four electrical substations. The site suffered an outage on 10 March 1945 when a Japanese balloon bomb struck a high-tension power line. The identical D and F reactors came online in December 1944 and February 1945, respectively. The first batch of plutonium was processed in the T plant between December 1944 and February 1945 and delivered to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory. Radioactive wastes were stored in underground tanks. Irradiated fuel slugs were transported to two huge 820-foot (250 m) long, remotely operated chemical separation plants (T and B) where plutonium was extracted using the bismuth-phosphate process. Cooling water drawn from the Columbia River was pumped through the tubes at the rate of 30,000 US gallons per minute (1,900 L/s).ī Reactor went critical in September 1944 and after overcoming neutron poisoning, produced its first plutonium in November. Natural uranium sealed in aluminum cans (known as "slugs") was fed into them. The Hanford Engineer Works erected 554 buildings, including three graphite- moderated and water-cooled nuclear reactors (B, D and F) that operated at 250 megawatts. ![]() Administrators, engineers and operating personnel lived in the government town established at Richland, which had a wartime peak population of 17,000. Most of the construction workforce, which reached a peak of nearly 45,000 in June 1944, lived in a temporary construction camp near the old Hanford townsite. The land acquisition process dragged on and was not completed before the end of the Manhattan Project in December 1946.Ĭonstruction commenced in March 1943 on a massive and technically challenging construction project. Where schedules allowed, the Army allowed the crops to be harvested. Disputes arose with farmers over the value of the land and compensation for crops that had already been planted. The acquisition of 4,218 tracts of land totaling 428,203.95 acres (173,287.99 ha) was one of the largest in US history. The federal government acquired the land under its war powers authority and relocated some 1,500 nearby residents. DuPont recommended that it be located far away from densely populated areas, and a site on the Columbia River, codenamed Site W, was chosen. Groves Jr., engaged DuPont as the prime contractor for the design, construction and operation of the plutonium production complex. The director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Matthias until January 1946, and then by Colonel Frederick J. Plutonium manufactured at the HEW was used in the first atomic bomb in the Trinity test, and then in the Fat Man bomb that was used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. Plutonium was a synthetic element that had only recently been isolated in the laboratory, but it was theorized that it could be produced by the irradiation of uranium in a nuclear reactor. Located at the Hanford Site on the Columbia River in Benton County, Washington state, it was home to the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor. The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) was a nuclear production complex established by the United States federal government in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. Main articles: Manhattan Project and Hanford Siteī Reactor and water treatment area in 1944 ![]()
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