Post by whitehorse on Dec 7, 2019 8:58:15 GMT
We invented a new industry. Not a weapon, or a bomb, or a lab to build a bomb. We built a whole new industrial infrastructure. Going into the details would be an article in an of itself, but allow me to give a couple examples.
Above is the K-25 Facility at Oak Ridge Tennessee. At the time of its completion it was the largest building in the world (at 1.64 million square feet of floor space, and 97.5 million cubic feet of volume) beating out the newly completed Pentagon in Washington DC (also built during the war). It’s entire purpose was to leverage the processes of gaseous diffusion to enrich uranium hexafluoride and separate out precious U235 from U238 for the use in nuclear weapons. Construction of the plant began before proper gaseous diffusion barriers were even designed and proven out, because we wanted to go as quickly as possible. At peak it employed 25,000 construction workers (just to build, not operate the plant). The site was chosen in July of 1943. A new bridge had to be constructed to get the massive amounts of building materials to the new site. A dedicated power plant was also built. First steel beams were laid in place in January of 1944, it began operations in February of 1945. Just over a year to build the largest building in the world, with all the vacuum pumps, plumbing and power to put in place a whole new industrial processes never before done anywhere. What is gaseous diffusion you might ask? Well it is a processes were by differences in pressure a porous barrier is used to separate out heavier portions of a gaseous mixture from lighter ones. Using this processes to purify uranium hexafluoride provides a mere fraction of a fraction of a percent concentration per stage. The solution…. was to build literally THOUSANDS of stages of diffusion in this monster of a plant. And that is exactly what we did.
There were a ton of technical and industrial challenges to scaling up this processes, so luckily we were developing 3 separate enrichment processes all at once.
This is a device called an Calutron. It is basically a giant mass spectrometer.
This is the Y-12 “Electromagnetic Isotope Separation Plant”. Construction began on this in February 1943 and it began operating in November of the same year.
These fine woman here are operating the huge number of Calutrons that were built to enrich uranium at the plant.
Here is the “Alpha Race Track” inside Y-12. You can see all the Alpha Calutrons arranged around the race track.
Now the thing about Calutrons is…. they require massive electromagnets to function. Copper was pretty scarce during WW2, so a suitable substitute was needed for the construction of Y-12 and its precious Calutrons. Luckily there was a suitable substitute on hand….. We pulled 14,700 tons of silver from the US Treasury to build these electromagnets. The Treasury made the Manhattan project sign for 395 million troy ounces, because they could not accept tracking the silver by the ton.
This here is S-50, a liquid thermal diffusion plant also constructed for the purpose of Uranium enrichment.
Last example before I go off on too large a tangent, this is Los Alamos. Actually this is just the tech area. It was not just a “Lab” but literally its own town, built for the express purpose of developing and constructing nuclear weapons. It was originally envisioned to be a facility of about 50 scientists and 50 technicians. Construction began in December of 1942. By the end of 1945 8,200 people lived and worked there. You could (and people have) write an entire book on just the monumental effort made in constructing this place, and the diverse and impressive research, engineering, and industrial capabilities that were built there. But just imagine building an entire town, from nothing and in the middle of nowhere, with all the most advanced, state of the art, industrial and technological capabilities of the day.
So when I say we invented an entire new industry on top of everything else. I really mean exactly that. The Manhattan project cost $28 Billion in 2018 dollars, and 90% of that cost was sunk in building industrial capacity. Factories and plants like the ones above, which subsequently employed over 130,000 people. And that was all done ON THE SIDE of building the rifles, tanks, planes, and boots to fight the war.
There were a ton of technical and industrial challenges to scaling up this processes, so luckily we were developing 3 separate enrichment processes all at once.
Now the thing about Calutrons is…. they require massive electromagnets to function. Copper was pretty scarce during WW2, so a suitable substitute was needed for the construction of Y-12 and its precious Calutrons. Luckily there was a suitable substitute on hand….. We pulled 14,700 tons of silver from the US Treasury to build these electromagnets. The Treasury made the Manhattan project sign for 395 million troy ounces, because they could not accept tracking the silver by the ton.
So when I say we invented an entire new industry on top of everything else. I really mean exactly that. The Manhattan project cost $28 Billion in 2018 dollars, and 90% of that cost was sunk in building industrial capacity. Factories and plants like the ones above, which subsequently employed over 130,000 people. And that was all done ON THE SIDE of building the rifles, tanks, planes, and boots to fight the war.