when the Manhattan Project national
park was established in three locations
at Oakridge Los Alamos and Hanford it
established a new plane for interpretive
complexity the history of these three
separate locations was very different
and at the Hanford unit part of its
history was underrepresented in the
written record namely the contribution
of the contractor the DuPont company
whose foundational characteristics were
so pivotal in the success of the Hanford
project I mean of the Manhattan Project
at Hanford you guests that come out to
be reactor are well introduced into the
what and why of the facilities out there
but the how and the who we say very
little about how was Hanford built in
such a short period of time it’s very
difficult to understand the timeliness
of Hanford unless the how and the who is
added to the narrative it’s a
fascinating story the April 16th issue
in 1951 of the Time magazine gives us a
glimpse of how DuPont was looked upon
after the manhattan project was
completed their feature story was of the
Wizards of Wilmington the history of the
DuPont company and started out telling
about DuPont building the Savannah River
project which was located to make
materials for the hydrogen bomb they had
taken that project reluctantly a
generation before they had been branded
merchants of death when a committee from
the US Congress had looked at profit
prophet Ison during World War one and
they would do anything to avoid that
Bree brand rebranding but now the
government was saying DuPont was the
only company that could bill the
Savannah River project one expert in
atomic energy said to give that job to
any other corporation when you could get
DuPont would be like accepting a rookie
when you had the opportunity to get Babe
Ruth in the prime of his career the
story continued with events of nine
years earlier and explained why DuPont
was held in such high esteem at that
time DuPont had taken on the
construction of the plutonium
manufacturing facilities at Hanford as
part of the Manhattan Project that was a
far bigger project than the Savannah
River project and it was probably the
biggest contract ever led to one
contracting agent in the history of our
country and it was also a much riskier
project so little was known about the
materials and the processes involved
there was so much fear that we were
behind the Germans in the development of
the atomic bomb and so much secrecy but
wait this talk is not an infomercial for
the DuPont company as a matter of fact
in our efforts to see whether we were
well shall we say exaggerating we tried
to get in touch with them they don’t
want to even discuss the Manhattan
Project but the real reason for the talk
is it’s an extra it’s a reaction that
while most of the popular histories of
the Manhattan Project treat the
contractor as a secondary citizen
only they’re in the service of their
contracting agent those sources that
looked at Hanford concluded things were
very very different at Hanford they’re
probably there was no time in our
history when we as a country were more
dependent upon the performance of a
single commercial identity how was
DuPont selected for that job well a
little history in the fall of 1941 and
42 I’m sorry
the Manhattan Project was established
with the Corps of Engineers under the
direction of Brigadier General Leslie
groves the initial objective of this
huge secret project was to produce the
alternative ingredients for a bomb first
approach
separate out the scarce isotope u-235 it
was president only in less than 1% from
the rest of uranium the second approach
produce an entirely new element that
theoretically had the same
characteristics as u-235 the intent was
that both of these materials would be
produced at Oak Ridge Tennessee because
there was a vast amount of power in that
location and toward that end some seven
different corporations were under
contract to build and produce u-235 via
two different approaches for isotope
separation but to make an entirely new
element now there was a job that was
more like alchemy than chemistry it
involved the ingenious arrangement of
natural uranium in what was called a
pile such that it would undergo a
nuclear reaction and produce yes
an entirely new element plutonium that
had never existed on earth and we are
not going to try to go into the details
of that reaction but we have to state
one very important factor it let loose a
tremendous amount of heat and you just
its safety was not adequate if you could
not get rid of that heat
remember the Chernobyl accident
aha furthermore plutonium was produced
in very low concentrations within the
uranium one part in 4000 so you had to
dissolve all this uranium put it through
a lot of chemistry and it had to be done
totally remotely because by now the
uranium was very radioactive very few
micrograms of plutonium had ever been
produced anywhere in the world and so in
March of 1942 an entirely new
organization called them metallurgical
adore the Met lab was set up at the
University of Chicago some 2,000
scientists were studying all aspects of
plutonium and its production but as for
the general he was of the firm opinion
that to take their data and make it into
an industrial operation to produce
kilograms of plutonium
there was only one corporation in the
country that could do that the DuPont
company why well they were relatively
successful at all very successful
chemical company most of the materials
came right out of their own research
labs they built their own plants and
they had a track record of being able to
say grand ideas and commercialize them
very rapidly think nylon also they had a
fixation on safety because they had a
broad experience who is explosives
the DuPont people couldn’t be less
interested in having anything to do with
plutonium production and they told the
general that my name mainly because they
were really scared of getting rebranded
merchants of death what they had heard
from the general about how you produce
plutonium had again convinced him that
it oh boy it was a wild scheme with not
too much chance of success they really
sounded more like something from a comic
books and from a textbook and lastly
because there was so much urgency to get
ahead of the Germans a commercial
operation was simply going to be a scale
up by a factor of 1 million or more of
the experience in the met lab that is
that is asking for trouble
well the general persisted saying the
nation needed them and finally DuPont
said ok we’ll take it on but we’ve got
some conditions and their conditions
made that contract vastly different from
what those other ones at Oakridge were
first they would be totally responsible
for the production of plutonium yeah
they would get from the metallurgical
lab all of the parameters for this
wonderful pile but what got designed and
built would be a dupont decision
furthermore attached to the contract
would be what they called a memorandum
of understanding and this one was a
document signed by all parties that said
this is what we know about producing
plutonium and this is what we don’t know
and this is the risk of trying to do it
in one step you shouldn’t do it thirdly
the President had to ask them to do it
and their profit from this would be $1
now of course they’d get paid for all
the activities but their profit was $1
fourths there would not be it would not
be built at Oak Ridge and so
consequently eventually well the
decision for that was it just wasn’t
safe they didn’t know enough about the
safety of that step so eventually it was
built at Hanford of course it was
important that the proximity of the
Columbia River and of the electricity
that was available from the Grand Coulee
Dam was very important but the contract
was basically a turnkey from soup to
nuts and involved in listing some a
hundred and twenty thousand people to
come to work in this vast wilderness so
to speak of Hanford and to produce a
place for forty five thousand of them to
live temporarily and also to build a
city of fifteen thousand for those who
would operate the plant well all of this
doesn’t respond to the question how did
they do it how did DuPont turn this
barren desert into a giant industrial
complex in less than 20 months well of
course there was the national situation
their concern over survival then there
was the organization of the Manhattan
Project was the single point of contact
with an open checkbook highest priority
and an iron-fisted boss but far more
important were the foundational
characteristics of DuPont many of these
had been developed over the years and
later were accepted during the next 20
years
in the overall construction industry but
when as practiced by DuPont these are
something that were almost part of their
DNA rather than something they learned
from a textbook and so I would suggest
that you go to the B reactor org and
click on lost in the telling for the
details but I’ll hit on four of these
one is their propensity for
characterizing I mean visualizing and
organizing the whole project into a
series of small tasks thousands of them
with known input and output etc and this
allowed them to compress the schedule
for design and construction far beyond
what was normally assumed to be ACC a
safe schedule for a wartime emergency
situation
comparing the two DuPont versus wartime
emergency the wartime emergency said
that should have taken two and a half
years longer part of their experience
also told them each one of these tasks
has to be such that they can instruct
the worker which meant a tremendous
amount of writing of organizational of
skills as to what was required and this
they did for example at the B reactor
some three thousand pages of procedures
were written before a spate of Earth was
even turned at building the reactor
itself then they prioritized their
uncertainties and improve and increase
the conservatism of the design where
they knew less about the subject the
most famous is depicted in this slide
where DuPont insisted on 30% more of the
tubes within this pile the physicists
said ridiculous as it turned out
absolutely necessary
and save some 10 months of getting
plutonium down to Los Alamos anybody
want to predict what would have happened
if he had 10 more months of World War 2
and lastly there being completely
focused on safety asking themselves what
if what if what if and as a result they
had absolutely no problems with the
cooling contrast that to Fukushima and
and and Chernobyl where much more
experienced designers didn’t ask the
right what-if questions well moving on
why is it that if DuPont was so highly
regarded right after the Manhattan
Project that so little is written about
it in the history well there’s two weeks
explanations that are closely related
one is that historians look for good
sources if there’s been a time delay
between the events and the writing of
the history they love diary there were
no Diaries allowed at DuPont furthermore
the contribution there was basically for
a devotion to details details and the
very substantive application of these
details produced no Diaries and not very
interesting reading particularly when
you compare it to the many biographies
of the scientists the second reason is
there was tension between the scientists
at the Met Lab and the engineers the
former thought DuPont had stolen their
project and so when they were approached
with what happened at DuPont think where
the emphasis was as a matter of fact
Crawford Greenwald who was the director
of the DuPont effort said that he later
became president another company said
that
his opinion hanford was the the best
multidisciplinary project that had ever
been raised but unfortunately the size
of the physicists like to pull all the
covers over onto their side of the bed
well what is the take off away from this
very brief narrative one is will never
see anything like it again but it is
very important that we remember what was
accomplished through the DuPont effort
there because you can’t understand what
the full impact was of the success at
Hanford without that how and the whose
story and there’s also something for you
come visit us out at B reactor and ask
about the how and the who story and it
may become a very key factor to
improving Hanford’s position in that
critical category of encouraging
visitors to come out to be reactor
because they have developed a
fascination for Hanford
it sure has worked with me thank you
[Applause]
park was established in three locations
at Oakridge Los Alamos and Hanford it
established a new plane for interpretive
complexity the history of these three
separate locations was very different
and at the Hanford unit part of its
history was underrepresented in the
written record namely the contribution
of the contractor the DuPont company
whose foundational characteristics were
so pivotal in the success of the Hanford
project I mean of the Manhattan Project
at Hanford you guests that come out to
be reactor are well introduced into the
what and why of the facilities out there
but the how and the who we say very
little about how was Hanford built in
such a short period of time it’s very
difficult to understand the timeliness
of Hanford unless the how and the who is
added to the narrative it’s a
fascinating story the April 16th issue
in 1951 of the Time magazine gives us a
glimpse of how DuPont was looked upon
after the manhattan project was
completed their feature story was of the
Wizards of Wilmington the history of the
DuPont company and started out telling
about DuPont building the Savannah River
project which was located to make
materials for the hydrogen bomb they had
taken that project reluctantly a
generation before they had been branded
merchants of death when a committee from
the US Congress had looked at profit
prophet Ison during World War one and
they would do anything to avoid that
Bree brand rebranding but now the
government was saying DuPont was the
only company that could bill the
Savannah River project one expert in
atomic energy said to give that job to
any other corporation when you could get
DuPont would be like accepting a rookie
when you had the opportunity to get Babe
Ruth in the prime of his career the
story continued with events of nine
years earlier and explained why DuPont
was held in such high esteem at that
time DuPont had taken on the
construction of the plutonium
manufacturing facilities at Hanford as
part of the Manhattan Project that was a
far bigger project than the Savannah
River project and it was probably the
biggest contract ever led to one
contracting agent in the history of our
country and it was also a much riskier
project so little was known about the
materials and the processes involved
there was so much fear that we were
behind the Germans in the development of
the atomic bomb and so much secrecy but
wait this talk is not an infomercial for
the DuPont company as a matter of fact
in our efforts to see whether we were
well shall we say exaggerating we tried
to get in touch with them they don’t
want to even discuss the Manhattan
Project but the real reason for the talk
is it’s an extra it’s a reaction that
while most of the popular histories of
the Manhattan Project treat the
contractor as a secondary citizen
only they’re in the service of their
contracting agent those sources that
looked at Hanford concluded things were
very very different at Hanford they’re
probably there was no time in our
history when we as a country were more
dependent upon the performance of a
single commercial identity how was
DuPont selected for that job well a
little history in the fall of 1941 and
42 I’m sorry
the Manhattan Project was established
with the Corps of Engineers under the
direction of Brigadier General Leslie
groves the initial objective of this
huge secret project was to produce the
alternative ingredients for a bomb first
approach
separate out the scarce isotope u-235 it
was president only in less than 1% from
the rest of uranium the second approach
produce an entirely new element that
theoretically had the same
characteristics as u-235 the intent was
that both of these materials would be
produced at Oak Ridge Tennessee because
there was a vast amount of power in that
location and toward that end some seven
different corporations were under
contract to build and produce u-235 via
two different approaches for isotope
separation but to make an entirely new
element now there was a job that was
more like alchemy than chemistry it
involved the ingenious arrangement of
natural uranium in what was called a
pile such that it would undergo a
nuclear reaction and produce yes
an entirely new element plutonium that
had never existed on earth and we are
not going to try to go into the details
of that reaction but we have to state
one very important factor it let loose a
tremendous amount of heat and you just
its safety was not adequate if you could
not get rid of that heat
remember the Chernobyl accident
aha furthermore plutonium was produced
in very low concentrations within the
uranium one part in 4000 so you had to
dissolve all this uranium put it through
a lot of chemistry and it had to be done
totally remotely because by now the
uranium was very radioactive very few
micrograms of plutonium had ever been
produced anywhere in the world and so in
March of 1942 an entirely new
organization called them metallurgical
adore the Met lab was set up at the
University of Chicago some 2,000
scientists were studying all aspects of
plutonium and its production but as for
the general he was of the firm opinion
that to take their data and make it into
an industrial operation to produce
kilograms of plutonium
there was only one corporation in the
country that could do that the DuPont
company why well they were relatively
successful at all very successful
chemical company most of the materials
came right out of their own research
labs they built their own plants and
they had a track record of being able to
say grand ideas and commercialize them
very rapidly think nylon also they had a
fixation on safety because they had a
broad experience who is explosives
the DuPont people couldn’t be less
interested in having anything to do with
plutonium production and they told the
general that my name mainly because they
were really scared of getting rebranded
merchants of death what they had heard
from the general about how you produce
plutonium had again convinced him that
it oh boy it was a wild scheme with not
too much chance of success they really
sounded more like something from a comic
books and from a textbook and lastly
because there was so much urgency to get
ahead of the Germans a commercial
operation was simply going to be a scale
up by a factor of 1 million or more of
the experience in the met lab that is
that is asking for trouble
well the general persisted saying the
nation needed them and finally DuPont
said ok we’ll take it on but we’ve got
some conditions and their conditions
made that contract vastly different from
what those other ones at Oakridge were
first they would be totally responsible
for the production of plutonium yeah
they would get from the metallurgical
lab all of the parameters for this
wonderful pile but what got designed and
built would be a dupont decision
furthermore attached to the contract
would be what they called a memorandum
of understanding and this one was a
document signed by all parties that said
this is what we know about producing
plutonium and this is what we don’t know
and this is the risk of trying to do it
in one step you shouldn’t do it thirdly
the President had to ask them to do it
and their profit from this would be $1
now of course they’d get paid for all
the activities but their profit was $1
fourths there would not be it would not
be built at Oak Ridge and so
consequently eventually well the
decision for that was it just wasn’t
safe they didn’t know enough about the
safety of that step so eventually it was
built at Hanford of course it was
important that the proximity of the
Columbia River and of the electricity
that was available from the Grand Coulee
Dam was very important but the contract
was basically a turnkey from soup to
nuts and involved in listing some a
hundred and twenty thousand people to
come to work in this vast wilderness so
to speak of Hanford and to produce a
place for forty five thousand of them to
live temporarily and also to build a
city of fifteen thousand for those who
would operate the plant well all of this
doesn’t respond to the question how did
they do it how did DuPont turn this
barren desert into a giant industrial
complex in less than 20 months well of
course there was the national situation
their concern over survival then there
was the organization of the Manhattan
Project was the single point of contact
with an open checkbook highest priority
and an iron-fisted boss but far more
important were the foundational
characteristics of DuPont many of these
had been developed over the years and
later were accepted during the next 20
years
in the overall construction industry but
when as practiced by DuPont these are
something that were almost part of their
DNA rather than something they learned
from a textbook and so I would suggest
that you go to the B reactor org and
click on lost in the telling for the
details but I’ll hit on four of these
one is their propensity for
characterizing I mean visualizing and
organizing the whole project into a
series of small tasks thousands of them
with known input and output etc and this
allowed them to compress the schedule
for design and construction far beyond
what was normally assumed to be ACC a
safe schedule for a wartime emergency
situation
comparing the two DuPont versus wartime
emergency the wartime emergency said
that should have taken two and a half
years longer part of their experience
also told them each one of these tasks
has to be such that they can instruct
the worker which meant a tremendous
amount of writing of organizational of
skills as to what was required and this
they did for example at the B reactor
some three thousand pages of procedures
were written before a spate of Earth was
even turned at building the reactor
itself then they prioritized their
uncertainties and improve and increase
the conservatism of the design where
they knew less about the subject the
most famous is depicted in this slide
where DuPont insisted on 30% more of the
tubes within this pile the physicists
said ridiculous as it turned out
absolutely necessary
and save some 10 months of getting
plutonium down to Los Alamos anybody
want to predict what would have happened
if he had 10 more months of World War 2
and lastly there being completely
focused on safety asking themselves what
if what if what if and as a result they
had absolutely no problems with the
cooling contrast that to Fukushima and
and and Chernobyl where much more
experienced designers didn’t ask the
right what-if questions well moving on
why is it that if DuPont was so highly
regarded right after the Manhattan
Project that so little is written about
it in the history well there’s two weeks
explanations that are closely related
one is that historians look for good
sources if there’s been a time delay
between the events and the writing of
the history they love diary there were
no Diaries allowed at DuPont furthermore
the contribution there was basically for
a devotion to details details and the
very substantive application of these
details produced no Diaries and not very
interesting reading particularly when
you compare it to the many biographies
of the scientists the second reason is
there was tension between the scientists
at the Met Lab and the engineers the
former thought DuPont had stolen their
project and so when they were approached
with what happened at DuPont think where
the emphasis was as a matter of fact
Crawford Greenwald who was the director
of the DuPont effort said that he later
became president another company said
that
his opinion hanford was the the best
multidisciplinary project that had ever
been raised but unfortunately the size
of the physicists like to pull all the
covers over onto their side of the bed
well what is the take off away from this
very brief narrative one is will never
see anything like it again but it is
very important that we remember what was
accomplished through the DuPont effort
there because you can’t understand what
the full impact was of the success at
Hanford without that how and the whose
story and there’s also something for you
come visit us out at B reactor and ask
about the how and the who story and it
may become a very key factor to
improving Hanford’s position in that
critical category of encouraging
visitors to come out to be reactor
because they have developed a
fascination for Hanford
it sure has worked with me thank you
[Applause]
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