S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant

S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant. The Longshot in a Three-Way Race to Enrich Uranium. The S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant was the third of three competing technologies pursued by the Manhattan Project in an effort to speed up production of enriched uranium for use in Little Boy, the world's first atomic bomb. Manhattan Project administrators first built the Y-12 Electromagnetic Isotope Separation Plant and the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant. S-50 was the last-built and shortest-lived plant. All three plants operated in unison. Uranium would be slightly enriched at S-50 before being enriched further at K-25 and then receive its final enrichment at Y-12. S-50 began enrichment on September 16, 1944, only 69 days after construction began, but at a high cost. It also suffered a higher accident rate than the other plants, possibly due to S-50 beginning operation while most of the plant was still under construction, with both construction and operational crews often working in the same areas. No accidents were fatal., With the end of World War II, the high cost and inability to compete with the enrichment method of K25, S-50 was put into standby. On September 9, 1945, less than a year after the first column came online, S-50 shutdown. The enrichment columns were quickly removed and from May 1, 1946, through December 31, 1951, S-50 housed the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft Project. S-50 would be demolished when the project moved to Oak Ridge National Laboratory., [Caption]: , View of building renovation for the S-50 Plant, 1947