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The Feed Materials Program of the Manhattan Project: A Foundational Component of the Nuclear Weapons Complex

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Abstract

The feed materials program of the Manhattan Project was responsible for procuring uranium-bearing ores and materials and processing them into forms suitable for use as source materials for the Project’s uranium-enrichment factories and plutonium-producing reactors. This aspect of the Manhattan Project has tended to be overlooked in comparison with the Project’s more dramatic accomplishments, but was absolutely vital to the success of those endeavors: without appropriate raw materials and the means to process them, nuclear weapons and much of the subsequent cold war would never have come to pass. Drawing from information available in Manhattan Engineer District Documents, this paper examines the sources and processing of uranium-bearing materials used in making the first nuclear weapons and how the feed materials program became a central foundational component of the postwar nuclear weapons complex.

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Notes

  1. When weights in this paper are quoted in tons, the meaning is the customary United States short ton: 1 short ton = 2,000 pounds = 907 kg.

References

  1. Vincent C. Jones, United States Army in World War II. Special Studies. Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1988), Chapter XIV.

  2. Enrico Fermi, “Experimental Production of a Divergent Chain Reaction,” American Journal of Physics 20 (1952), 536–558.

  3. B. Cameron Reed, The History and Science of the Manhattan Project (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2014), Section 5.2.

  4. Alvin M. Weinberg, “Eugene Wigner, Nuclear Engineer,” Physics Today 55 (10) (2002), 42–46.

  5. Reed, History and Science (ref. 3), Chapter 6.

  6. Henry D. Smyth, A General Account of the Development of Methods of Using Atomic Energy for Military Purposes Under the Auspices of the United States Government 1940–1945 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945), §4.41, 6.10–6.19.

  7. Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Vol. I. The New World, 1939/1946 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), Chapter 9.

  8. The Manhattan District History (MDH) is available online from the United States Department of Energy at https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan_district.jsp. Information on the feed materials program can be found in Book VII: Feed Materials, Special Procurement, and Geographical Exploration.

  9. Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 427.

  10. Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Da Capo Press, 1962), Chapter 3.

  11. H. A. Wilhelm, “A History of Uranium Metal Production in America,” United States Atomic Energy Commission Ames Laboratory Research and Development Report ISC-1076, second printing, 1960.

  12. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 1.6–1.7.

  13. Groves, Now It Can be Told (ref. 10), 34. See also Norris, Racing for the Bomb (ref. 16), 326.

  14. Groves, Now It Can Be Told (ref. 10), 178.

  15. Hewlett and Anderson, New World (ref. 7), 291.

  16. See Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2002). Marshall’s diary is discussed in note 19 on 609.

  17. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 2.5; Hewlett and Anderson, New World (ref. 7), 291.

  18. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 3.1–3.2.

  19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Hope,_Ontario#Major_employers.

  20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameco.

  21. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 3.1; Hewlett and Anderson, New World (ref. 7), 291.

  22. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, S7-S8, 4.1.

  23. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 4.1–4.2.

  24. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitro_Corporation.

  25. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 7.8–7.13.

  26. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uravan,_Colorado.

  27. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 7.13.

  28. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, S8, F4.

  29. Norris, Racing for the Bomb (ref. 16), 296–308.

  30. Samuel Goudsmit, Alsos (New York: Henry Schuman, 1947).

  31. Boris T. Pash, The Alsos Mission (New York: Award Books, 1970).

  32. Jones, United States Army (ref. 1), 314–315.

  33. Material for this section adopted from MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, S9–S13, and 7.5; Jones, United States Army (ref. 1), 314-317; Hewlett and Anderson, New World (ref. 7), 292–294. See also references indicated in table 4.

  34. B. Cameron Reed, “Liquid Thermal Diffusion during the Manhattan Project,” Physics in Perspective 13 (2) (2011), 161–188.

  35. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 8.8.

  36. Wilhelm, Uranium Metal Production (ref. 11), 36.

  37. MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 1.11–1.12, 10.5-10.6; Hewlett and Anderson, New World (ref. 7), 87–88, 293-294; Jones, United States Army (ref. 1), 27, 64, 193, 316–317; Wilhelm, Uranium Metal Production (ref. 11), 36–37, 48.

  38. Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (ref. 6), §6.12; Lyman J. Briggs, NBS War Research: The National Bureau of Standards in World War II (Washington: United States Department of Commerce, 1949); Lyman J., Briggs, “The Atomic Bomb,” United States Atomic Energy Commission report AECD-2423, http://www.governmentattic.org/5docs/TheAtomicBomb_1945.pdf; Clement J. Rodden, Analytical Chemistry of the Manhattan Project. National Nuclear Energy Series Division VIII, Volume 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950); Frank A. Settle, “Analytical Chemistry and the Manhattan Project,” Analytical Chemistry 74 (1) (2002), 36A–43A.

  39. Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Global nuclear weapons inventories, 1945–2013,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2013), 69 (5), 75–91.

  40. Jones, United States Army (ref. 1), 581.

  41. Jones, United States Army (ref. 1), 315; MDH (ref. 8), Vol. VII, 8.4.

  42. http://www.lm.doe.gov/Weldon/Interpretive_Center/Online_Tour/Tribute_to_the_Mallinckrodt_Uranium_Workers.pdf.

  43. Wilhelm, Uranium Metal Production (ref. 11), 50; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernald_Feed_Materials_Production_Center.

  44. Reed, History and Science (ref. 3), 253; http://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/pu50yc.html; http://fissilematerials.org/library/gfmr13.pdf.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Stan Norris for providing me a copy of Colonel James Marshall’s diary and permission to reproduce the photo in figure 4, and to Becky Jordan of the University of Iowa library for supplying me with a copy of Ref. 11. I thank Peter Pesic and Robert Crease for a number of suggestions that substantially improved this paper.

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  1. Department of Physics, Alma College, Alma, MI, 48801, USA

    B. Cameron Reed

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Correspondence to B. Cameron Reed.

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Cameron Reed is Professor of Physics at Alma College in Alma, Michigan. His research interests include the physics and history of the Manhattan Project.

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Reed, B.C. The Feed Materials Program of the Manhattan Project: A Foundational Component of the Nuclear Weapons Complex. Phys. Perspect. 16, 461–479 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-014-0146-4

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