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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. 1 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 2 (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 3 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. 4