The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project. Hanford and the City of Richland. , The historic event depicted in this bas-relief sculpture is of Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Arthur Compton, and Eugene Wigner producing the first self-sustaining nuclear fission chain-reaction in Chicago Pile Number 1 on December 2, 1942. The original artist’s conception of the CP-1 experiment is from a lithograph drawing made using the actual graphite from CP-1. These men, except for Compton, were among many renowned scientists who were driven from their European homelands by Hitler’s anti-Semitism movement in 1939. Szilard and Wigner persuaded Albert Einstein to send his famous letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1939, warning him that Nazi Germany was developing a nuclear weapon. This letter was the genesis of the Manhattan Project., The Manhattan Project began in June 1942 with the prospect of developing atomic bombs from uranium-235 and plutonium-239. The separation of uranium-235 from uranium-238 was carried out at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and production of plutonium was developed at Hanford, Washington. In February 1943, the small towns of Richland, Hanford, and White Bluffs were acquired by the government for the purpose of building a community at Hanford to support a population of 51,000 workers and a ‘new’ Richland to house 17,500 persons. Richland was entirely government-owned and controlled, including operation of municipal facilities. A similar government acquisition and building effort took place in Oak Ridge., Construction of Hanford’s 100-B Reactor, based on the Fermi team’s design, began in October 1943 and the reactor went critical in September 1944, less than a year from start to finish. The work was top secret and construction workers had no idea what they were building until the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. The second bomb, using plutonium produced from B-Reactor, was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, forcing the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. B-Reactor had also supplied the plutonium for the world’s first atomic explosion, the Trinity test detonated near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. B-Reactor was designated a national historical monument by the Department of Interior in August 2003., In 1955, President Eisenhower signed a bill for the disposal of the government-owned communities of Richland and Oak Ridge. A 1961 issue of Look magazine named Richland an “All-American City” for its transition from government ownership to private ownership of homes and municipal functions. B-Reactor continued to operate along with two more reactors of like design. Six more plutonium-production reactors were completed to support the nuclear weapons buildup during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War, these reactors were shut down with the last one terminated in 1988., The Tri-Cities Nuclear Industrial Council was formed in 1963 to diversify Hanford’s defense mission to create less dependency on defense federal payroll for the Tri-Cities. In 1967, responding to the Council’s initiatives, the Atomic Energy Commission chose Hanford as the site for the Fast Flux Test Facility, a materials and fuel test reactor for the commercial breeder reactor program. The idea of establishing Hanford as the nation’s first nuclear energy park was a dream encouraged by the success of the FFTF project as well as the startup of Exxon’s commercial fuel fabrication facility and the major commercial reactor program of the Washington Public Power Supply System in 1972. Unfortunately, this dream ended along with the first nuclear era when the breeder reactor program was terminated by President Carter, accidents occurred at Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl power plants, and two of the three WPPSS reactors to be built at Hanford were cancelled. The cleanup of nuclear waste generated at Hanford from the production of plutonium is the only major federally funded program remaining at Hanford in 2008, with completion projected to be 2052 or later., The preservation of this nuclear history is dedicated to the men and women who devoted their careers to the development of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy as envisioned by Fermi and his team in 1942. This sculpture was donated by Robert L. Ferguson who worked at B-Reactor in his early career and later managed and directed the FFTF project and the construction of WPPSS’s WNP-2, now known as the Columbia Generating Station., On December 2, 1942 man achieved the first self-sustaining controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago Pile number 1 (CP-1) at the University of Chicago. Artwork for this plaque adapted by Paula Turnbull, S.N.J.M. from original lithograph by Leo Vartanian., Leo Szilard . Arthur H. Compton . Enrico Fermi . Eugene P. Wigner