Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project | Keeping the secret
In Part Two of a three-part series, WVLT News looks at the City of Oak Ridge’s involvement in the Manhattan Project, and how the project changed East Tennessee.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (WVLT) - You might be getting ready to see “Oppenheimer” this weekend, the movie about how the atomic bomb was developed.
In Part Two of WVLT News’ three-part series, we examine how the secret was kept inside of Oak Ridge.
The United States started the Manhattan Project in 1942. The goal was simple: develop an atomic bomb faster than Nazi Germany.
The government opened four sites in Oak Ridge to work on the project; Y-12, K-25, S-50, and the X-10 Graphite Reactor, which later became the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
“Oak Ridge was a secret city. It was guarded. You needed a badge to get in and out,” David Keim said, Communications Director for Oak Ridge National Lab.
Keim said the area expanded quickly, with about 22,000 people working at Y-12, and about 1,500 people working at the graphite reactor.
The original graphite reactor is still on display inside Oak Ridge Lab. It’s a big grid with graphite in it. Scientists would put uranium inside the reactor to create plutonium. It proved that you could create plutonium through a reactor.
“Once demonstrated, they produced it at scale for the bomb out at the Hanford works in Washington,” Keim said.
It was important work being done at the graphite reactor, but it had to be kept a secret. Keim said very few people knew what it was being used for.
“The authorized approved access to that information was exceedingly small,” he said.
Keim said the work was compartmentalized. Everyone had a small job to do at the graphite reactor, and it was kept quiet.
“You weren’t allowed to say the word ‘uranium.’ If you did, you were asked to leave,” Keim said.
Keim said Y-12 supplied the uranium, the site in Hanford, Washington, provided the Plutonium, and the site at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where Robert Oppenheimer ran the headquarters, built the bombs.
“It was really an amazing story of the scientific community, and academia, and the government, and the military and private industry all coming together to do something that couldn’t have been done anywhere else in the world,” Keim said.
Keim said the government spent $2 billion on the Manhattan Project. Money that resulted in the first nuclear weapons used in the history of war.
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