Download The Cold War in East Tennessee

The Cold War in East Tennessee:
Oak Ridge, “The Atomic City”
Toward the end of World War II, the state of Tennessee became the site of a major
national scientific and military research laboratory used to create nuclear weapons for use in
WWII and the Cold War. A top secret facility, the laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee would
eventually become known as “the Secret City,” and “the Atomic City.”
The Manhattan Project was initiated to develop the first nuclear weapon during World
War II by the United States. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), it
refers specifically to the period of the project from 1941–1946, when the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers controlled the project. The scientific research was directed by American physicist J.
Robert Oppenheimer.
The project succeeded in developing and detonating three nuclear weapons in 1945: a test
detonation of a plutonium implosion bomb on July 16 (the Trinity test) near Alamogordo, New
Mexico; an enriched uranium bomb code-named “Little Boy” on August 6 over Hiroshima,
Japan; and a second plutonium bomb, code-named “Fat Man” on August 9 over Nagasaki, Japan.
The project’s roots lay in scientists’ fears since the 1930s that Nazi Germany was experimenting
with the development of nuclear weapons of their own. Born out of a small research program in
1939, the Manhattan Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $2
billion USD ($23 billion in 2007 dollars based on CPI). It resulted in the creation of multiple
production and research sites that operated secretly throughout the nation.
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The three primary research and production sites of the project were the plutoniumproduction facility at what is now the Hanford Site in south-central Washington, the uraniumenrichment facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the weapons research and design laboratory
at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Project research took place at over thirty different sites
across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The MED maintained control over
U.S. weapons production until the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.
In 1942 the federal government chose Oak Ridge as a site for developing materials for
the Manhattan Project. Maj. Gen. Groves liked the area for several reasons: its relatively low
population made acquisition affordable, yet the area was accessible by highway and rail; both
water and electricity were readily available; Tennessee had no Union rules to deal with; and
finally, the area was situated within a 17-mile long valley that was linear and partitioned by
several ridges, providing natural protection against disasters between the four major industrial
plants.
The location and small population also helped keep the “atomic city” a secret. Despite the
population growth of the settlement from about 3,000 in 1942 to about 75,000 in 1945, and
despite the fact that the K-25 uranium-separating facility by itself covered 44 acres and was the
largest building in the world at that time, Oak Ridge was kept an official government secret. It
did not appear on maps, and it wasn't even named until 1949. Instead, it was referred to as the
Clinton Engineering Works (CEW). All workers wore badges and the town was surrounded by
guard towers and a fence with seven gates. All Oak Ridge employees were sworn to secrecy
when they were hired.
Beginning in late 1942 the United States Army Corps of Engineers began acquiring more
than 60,000 acres for the CEW under authority of the Corps' Manhattan Engineer District
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(MED). The K-25, S-50, and Y-12 plants were each built in Oak Ridge to separate the fissile
isotope uranium-235 from natural uranium, which consists almost entirely of the isotope
uranium-238. During construction of the magnets which were required for the process that would
separate the uranium at the Y-12 site, a shortage of copper forced the MED to borrow 15,000
tons of silver bullion from the United States Treasury to fabricate into wire for the electromagnet
coils as a substitute. The X-10 site, now the location of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was
established as a pilot plant for the production of plutonium.
Because of the large number of workers recruited to the area for the Manhattan Project,
the Army planned a town for project workers at the eastern end of the valley. The architecture
firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill was contracted to provide a layout for the town and house
designs. Prefabricated modular homes, apartments, and dormitories were quickly erected to
accommodate the town’s new inhabitants. Construction personnel swelled the wartime
population of Oak Ridge to as much as 70,000. That dramatic population increase, in addition to
the secret nature of the project, meant chronic shortages of housing and supplies during the war
years.
The news of the use of the first atomic bomb against Japan on August 6, 1945 revealed to
the people at Oak Ridge the serious nature of what they had been working on.
Two years after World War II ended, Oak Ridge was shifted to civilian control, under the
authority of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). In 1959, the town was incorporated
and the community adopted a city manager and City Council. Three of the four major facilities
created for the wartime bomb production are still standing today: K-25, where uranium was
enriched by the gaseous diffusion process until 1985, is now being decommissioned and
decontaminated; Y-12, originally used for electromagnetic separation of uranium, is still in use
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for nuclear weapons processing and materials storage; and X-10, the site of a test graphite
reactor, is now the official site of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
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