Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken

during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United
States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada.

From 1942 to 1946, the project was directed by Major General Leslie Groves of the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the
director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army program
was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan;
the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute
Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart,
Tube Alloys, and subsumed the program from the American civilian Office of
Scientific Research and Development.

The project pursued both highly enriched uranium and plutonium as fuel for nuclear
weapons. Over 80 percent of project cost was for building and operating the fissile
material production plants. Enriched uranium was produced at Clinton Engineer
Works in Tennessee. Plutonium was produced in the world's first industrial-scale
nuclear reactors at the Hanford Engineer Works in Washington. Each of these sites
was supported by dozens of other facilities across the US, the UK, and Canada.
Initially, it was assumed that both fuels could be used in a relatively simple atomic
bomb design known as the gun-type design. When it was discovered that this design
was incompatible for use with plutonium, an intense development program led to the
invention of the implosion design. The work on weapons design was performed at
the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, and resulted in two weapons designs
that were used during the war: Little Boy (enriched uranium gun-type) and Fat
Man (plutonium implosion).

The Manhattan Project employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly
US$2 billion (equivalent to about $27 billion in 2023).

The project was also charged with gathering intelligence on the German nuclear
weapon project. Through Operation Alsos, Manhattan Project personnel served in
Europe, sometimes behind enemy lines, where they gathered nuclear materials and
documents and rounded up German scientists. Despite the Manhattan Project's own
emphasis on security, Soviet atomic spies penetrated the program.
 About the Nuclear Weapons

The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb during the
Trinity test, conducted at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico on 16 July
1945. The project also was responsible for developing the specific means of
delivering the weapons onto military targets, and were responsible for the use of the
Little Boy and Fat Man bombs in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945.

Bomb design concepts

Arthur Compton asked theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer of the University

of California to take over research into fast neutron calculations—key to calculations
of critical mass and weapon detonation—from Gregory Breit, who had quit on 18
May 1942 because of concerns over lax operational security. John H. Manley, a
physicist at the Metallurgical Laboratory, was assigned to assist Oppenheimer by
coordinating experimental physics groups scattered across the country.
Oppenheimer and Robert Serber of the University of Illinois examined the problems
of neutron diffusion—how neutrons moved in a nuclear chain reaction—and
hydrodynamics—how the explosion produced by a chain reaction might behave.

To review this work and the general theory of fission reactions, Oppenheimer and
Fermi convened meetings at the University of Chicago in June and at the University
of California in July 1942 with theoretical physicists Hans Bethe, John Van Vleck,
Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, Robert Serber, Stan Frankel, and Eldred C. (Carlyle)
Nelson, and experimental physicists Emilio Segrè, Felix Bloch, Franco Rasetti,
Manley, and Edwin McMillan. They tentatively confirmed that a fission bomb was
theoretically possible.
 Different fission bomb assembly methods explored during the July 1942 conference
(sketches created in 1943 by Robert Serber)

The properties of pure uranium-235 were relatively unknown, as were those of

plutonium, which had only been isolated by Glenn Seaborg and his team in February
1941. The scientists at the July 1942 conference envisioned creating plutonium in
nuclear reactors where uranium-238 atoms absorbed neutrons that had been
emitted from fissioning uranium-235. At this point no reactor had been built, and only
tiny quantities of plutonium were available from cyclotrons. Even by December 1943,
only two milligrams had been produced. There were many ways of arranging the
fissile material into a critical mass. The simplest was shooting a "cylindrical plug" into
a sphere of "active material" with a "tamper"—dense material to focus neutrons
inward and keep the reacting mass together to increase its efficiency. They also
explored designs involving spheroids, a primitive form of "implosion" suggested by
Richard C. Tolman, and the possibility of autocatalytic methods to increase the
efficiency of the bomb as it exploded.

As the idea of the fission bomb was theoretically settled—at least until more
experimental data was available—Edward Teller pushed for discussion of a more
powerful bomb: the "super", now usually referred to as a "hydrogen bomb", which
would use the force of a detonating fission bomb to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction in
deuterium and tritium. Teller proposed scheme after scheme, but Bethe refused each
one. The fusion idea was put aside to concentrate on producing fission bombs. Teller
raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere
because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei. Bethe calculated that it
was "extremely unlikely". A postwar report co-authored by Teller concluded that
"whatever the temperature to which a section of the atmosphere may be heated, no
self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started." In Serber's
account, Oppenheimer mentioned the possibility of this scenario to Arthur Compton,
who "didn't have enough sense to shut up about it. It somehow got into a document
that went to Washington" and was "never laid to rest".

Project sites
 J. Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer; April 22, 1904 –
February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director
of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often
called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in overseeing the development of
the first nuclear weapons.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Born in New York City, Oppenheimer obtained a degree in chemistry from Harvard
University in 1925 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Göttingen in
Germany in 1927, studying under Max Born. After research at other institutions, he
joined the physics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was
made a full professor in 1936.

Oppenheimer made significant contributions to physics in the fields of quantum

mechanics and nuclear physics, including the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for
molecular wave functions; work on the theory of positrons, quantum
electrodynamics, and quantum field theory; and the Oppenheimer–Phillips process in
nuclear fusion. With his students, he also made major contributions to astrophysics,
including the theory of cosmic ray showers, and the theory of neutron stars and black
holes.
In 1942, Oppenheimer was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, and in 1943
was appointed director of the project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico,
tasked with developing the first nuclear weapons. His leadership and scientific
expertise were instrumental in the project's success, and on July 16, 1945, he was
present at the first test of the atomic bomb, Trinity. In August 1945, the weapons
were used on Japan in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to date the
only uses of nuclear weapons in conflict.

In 1947, Oppenheimer was appointed director of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey, and chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the new
United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He lobbied for international control
of nuclear power and weapons in order to avert an arms race with the Soviet Union,
and later opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, partly on ethical grounds.
During the Second Red Scare, his stances, together with his past associations with
the Communist Party USA, led to an AEC security hearing in 1954 and the
revocation of his security clearance. He continued to lecture, write, and work in
physics, and in 1963 received the Enrico Fermi Award for contributions to theoretical
physics. The 1954 decision was vacated in 2022.

Trinity

Main article: Trinity (nuclear test)

The Trinity test was the first detonation of a nuclear device.

In the early morning hours of July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the work
at Los Alamos culminated in the test of the world's first nuclear weapon.
Oppenheimer had code-named the site "Trinity" in mid-1944, saying later that the
name came from John Donne's Holy Sonnets; he had been introduced to Donne's
work in the 1930s by Jean Tatlock, who killed herself in January 1944.

Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, who was present in the control bunker with
Oppenheimer, recalled:

Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last
seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed. He held on to a post to steady himself. For
the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead and then when the announcer
shouted "Now!" and there came this tremendous burst of light followed shortly
thereafter by the deep growling roar of the explosion, his face relaxed into an
expression of tremendous relief.

Oppenheimer's brother Frank recalled Oppenheimer's first words as "I guess it

worked."

According to a 1949 magazine profile, while witnessing the explosion Oppenheimer

thought of verses from the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were
to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one ... Now
I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." In 1965 he recalled the moment this
way:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people
cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the
Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty
and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become
Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

Rabi described seeing Oppenheimer somewhat later: "I'll never forget his walk ... like
High Noon ... this kind of strut. He had done it." Despite many scientists' opposition
to using the bomb on Japan, Compton, Fermi, and Oppenheimer believed that a test
explosion would not convince Japan to surrender. At an August 6 assembly at Los
Alamos, the evening of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Oppenheimer took to the
stage and clasped his hands together "like a prize-winning boxer" while the crowd
cheered. He expressed regret that the weapon was ready too late for use against
Nazi Germany.

On August 17, however, Oppenheimer traveled to Washington to hand-deliver a

letter to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson expressing his revulsion and his wish to
see nuclear weapons banned. In October he met with President Harry S. Truman,
who dismissed Oppenheimer's concern about an arms race with the Soviet Union
and belief that atomic energy should be under international control. Truman became
infuriated when Oppenheimer said, "Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands",
responding that he (Truman) bore sole responsibility for the decision to use atomic
weapons against Japan, and later said, "I don't want to see that son of a bitch in this
office ever again."

For his services as director of Los Alamos, Oppenheimer was awarded the Medal for
Merit by Truman in 1946.