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How the Atomic Bomb Got Built (Part 2 of 4)
Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.
The Beginnings of the Manhattan Project
Until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, harnessing the incredible latent power of nuclear technology was never seriously pursued.
The beginnings of the Manhattan Project can be traced to early science and technology research into uranium-238 conducted at the University of California, Berkeley. U-238 is the most common radioactive element, making up about 99 percent of the Earth’s supply of uranium.
Uranium-238 does not sustain a fission chain reaction, however, and must be modified into an isotope that can. It can be bombarded in a nuclear reactor to make U-235, the fuel used for the Hiroshima bomb. That isotope was made and separated at labs in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
In 1941, a University of California chemist named Glenn Seaborg created an element with an even greater potential for explosive power. Since the previously discovered uranium had taken its name from Uranus and neptunium from Neptune, Seaborg named his discovery plutonium after the planet Pluto and, coincidentally, the Greek god of the dead.
Not knowing which fuel successfully could be manufactured or incorporated into a bomb, the United States decided to pursue both. A secret site near the remote eastern Washington hamlet of Hanford was chosen to make plutonium.
Enter PM Leslie Groves
Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves was …
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