Exploring the Atom, 1919-1932
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WINTER 2013 - Volume 60, Number 4 the Air Force Historical Foundation Founded on May 27, 1953 by Gen Carl A
WINTER 2013 - Volume 60, Number 4 WWW.AFHISTORICALFOUNDATION.ORG The Air Force Historical Foundation Founded on May 27, 1953 by Gen Carl A. “Tooey” Spaatz MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS and other air power pioneers, the Air Force Historical All members receive our exciting and informative Foundation (AFHF) is a nonprofi t tax exempt organization. Air Power History Journal, either electronically or It is dedicated to the preservation, perpetuation and on paper, covering: all aspects of aerospace history appropriate publication of the history and traditions of American aviation, with emphasis on the U.S. Air Force, its • Chronicles the great campaigns and predecessor organizations, and the men and women whose the great leaders lives and dreams were devoted to fl ight. The Foundation • Eyewitness accounts and historical articles serves all components of the United States Air Force— Active, Reserve and Air National Guard. • In depth resources to museums and activities, to keep members connected to the latest and AFHF strives to make available to the public and greatest events. today’s government planners and decision makers information that is relevant and informative about Preserve the legacy, stay connected: all aspects of air and space power. By doing so, the • Membership helps preserve the legacy of current Foundation hopes to assure the nation profi ts from past and future US air force personnel. experiences as it helps keep the U.S. Air Force the most modern and effective military force in the world. • Provides reliable and accurate accounts of historical events. The Foundation’s four primary activities include a quarterly journal Air Power History, a book program, a • Establish connections between generations. -
Building 9731 – Secret City Festival’S Y-12 Public Tour Or: Building 9731 to Be Featured in Secret City Festival's Public Tour (Title Provided by the Oak Ridger)
Building 9731 – Secret City Festival’s Y-12 public tour Or: Building 9731 to be featured in Secret City Festival's public tour (title provided by The Oak Ridger) In March 1943 the very first structure to be completed at the newly emerging Y-12 Electromagnetic Separation Plant was Building 9731. It was only a little over a month earlier that ground had been broken for the first of nine major buildings designed to hold cautrons (CALifornia University Cyclotron). But the real push had been to complete the construction of a smaller building, one with a high bay and especially designed to house four very special units of newly designed equipment using huge magnets. The Alpha Calutron magnets stand well over 20 feet tall and are still standing there today―the only ones in the world! For the first time ever, the public will have a chance to see these huge magnets and will also be able to tour inside historic Building 9731. This historic event is a part of the Secret City Festival this year. On Saturday, June 19, 2010, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM, a major part of the Y-12 public tour will include Building 9731. The public will be allowed to see inside the historic structure and view the magnets of both the two Alpha and two Beta calutrons. These calutron magnets have been designated as Manhattan Project Signature Artifacts by the Depart- ment of Energy’s Federal Preservation Officer in the DOE Office of History and Heritage Resources. The building is being submitted for Historical Landmark status on the National Register of Historic Places. -
Kimmo Mäkilä Tuhoa, Tehoa Ja Tuhlausta
JYVÄSKYLÄ STUDIES IN HUMANITIES 84 Kimmo Mäkilä Tuhoa, tehoa ja tuhlausta Helsingin Sanomien ja New York Timesin ydinaseuutisoinnin tarkastelua diskurssianalyyttisesta näkökulmasta 1945–1998 Esitetään Jyväskylän yliopiston humanistisen tiedekunnan suostumuksella julkisesti tarkastettavaksi yliopiston Villa Ranan Paulaharjun salissa joulukuun 15. päivänä 2007 kello 12. JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO JYVÄSKYLÄ 2007 Tuhoa, tehoa ja tuhlausta Helsingin Sanomien ja New York Timesin ydinaseuutisoinnin tarkastelua diskurssianalyyttisesta näkökulmasta 1945–1998 JYVÄSKYLÄ STUDIES IN HUMANITIES 84 Kimmo Mäkilä Tuhoa, tehoa ja tuhlausta Helsingin Sanomien ja New York Timesin ydinaseuutisoinnin tarkastelua diskurssianalyyttisesta näkökulmasta 1945–1998 JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO JYVÄSKYLÄ 2007 Editors Raimo Salokangas Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä Pekka Olsbo, Marja-Leena Tynkkynen Publishing Unit, University Library of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä Studies in Humanities Editorial Board Editor in Chief Heikki Hanka, Department of Art and Culture Studies, University of Jyväskylä Petri Karonen, Department of History and Ethnology, University of Jyväskylä Matti Rahkonen, Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä Petri Toiviainen, Department of Music, University of Jyväskylä Minna-Riitta Luukka, Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä Raimo Salokangas, Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä Cover Picture by Janne Ikonen ISBN 978-951-39-2988-6 ISSN 1459-4323 Copyright ©2007 , by University of Jyväskylä Jyväskylä -
Advocate Newsletter
A publication of the Oak Ridge Site Specific Advisory Board – a federally appointed citizens panel providing independent recommendations and advice to DOE’s Environmental Management Program DOE Launches K-25 Virtual Museum Issue 61• January 2016 Th e Department of Energy (DOE) Park, commemorating the work done to Oak Ridge Offi ce of Environmental develop the fi rst atomic weapon. IN THIS ISSUE Management (OREM) launched Th e K-25 Virtual Museum is the K-25 Virtual Museum in accessible at http://www.k-25virtual- Reservation Update. .3 November, one of the stipulations museum.org/. “Th e website is an ORSSAB 20th Anniversary .. 4-5 impressive product that PermaFix Conference Report . .6 will serve to inform an international audience Recent Recommendations. .7 about the incredible ORSSAB to Host Spring EM SSAB work that happened at Chairs’ Meeting . .8 K-25, beginning with the Manhattan Project and continuing through to the cleanup mission we are executing today,” said OREM Manager Sue Cange. “Th e online museum includes a comprehensive of a memorandum of history of Oak Ridge, photographs, agreement for historic interviews with site interpretation at East former workers, a Tennessee Technology Park 3D model of the (ETTP). K-25 Building Th e debut of the and Happy Valley Th ese images online museum coincided with the are of some hutment, among November 10 signing of an agreement of the main other items of between the Departments of Energy pages of the interest.” and the Interior establishing the K-25 Virtual Th e Virtual Manhattan Project National Historical Museum. Museum has (Continued on page 2) Manhattan Project National Historical Park Established On November 10 Energy Secretary Little Boy and Fat Man. -
Secrets Jeremy Bernstein
INFERENCE / Vol. 6, No. 1 Secrets Jeremy Bernstein Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the decided to found a rival weapons laboratory. Even if Teller United States had offered me a job, I doubt that I would have accepted.3 by Alex Wellerstein After obtaining my degree, I was offered a job that University of Chicago Press, 528 pp., $35.00. would keep me in Cambridge for at least another year. One year became two and at the end of my second year I was uclear weapons have been shrouded in secrecy accepted at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. from the very beginning. After plutonium was It was around this time that the chairman of the physics discovered at the University of California in department at Harvard, Kenneth Bainbridge, came to me NDecember 1940, researchers led by Glenn Seaborg submit- with an offer. Bainbridge had been an important figure at ted a pair of letters to the Physical Review. The details of Los Alamos during the war. Robert Oppenheimer had put their discovery were withheld from publication until after him in charge of the site in New Mexico where the Trinity the war.1 Once the project to make a nuclear weapon got test had taken place.4 Bainbridge told me that the labora- underway, secrecy became a very serious matter indeed. tory was offering summer jobs to young PhDs and asked The story of these efforts and how they evolved after the if I was interested. I was very interested. Los Alamos had war is the subject of Alex Wellerstein’s Restricted Data: an almost mystical significance for me due to its history The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States. -
“Dropping the A-Bomb on Cities Was Mistake”—Father of Health Physics (As Published in the Oak Ridger’S Historically Speaking Column the Week of June 29, 2020)
“Dropping the A-bomb on cities was mistake”—Father of Health Physics (As published in The Oak Ridger’s Historically Speaking column the week of June 29, 2020) A friend and fellow historian, Alex Wellerstein, has just written in his blog, Restricted Data, The Nuclear Secrecy Blog, an entry entitled, What journalists should know about the atomic bombings. In this blog entry he notes that as we approach the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we will surely see increased emphasis in the news regarding the atomic bombs. This is understandable and especially so in Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Hanford. While my focus on Oak Ridge history in Historically Speaking may vary from time to time, the atomic bombs and what has resulted from the nuclear age over the years is never far from my mind. In these articles researched and written by Carolyn Krause, I am attempting to bring Historically Speaking readers perspectives that might well not normally be expressed. Not that I intend to alter your thinking regarding the use of the atomic bombs, as generally each of us have made our decision already. However, seeing the issue from different perspectives is worthwhile. For example, this particular article features comments and perspectives of Karl Z. Morgan. Some of you may even have known him. If that is the case, you likely already know his opinions. If you are being introduced to him for the first time reading this, it will be good for you to appreciate his perspective, even if you disagree with his conclusions. -
The Development of Military Nuclear Strategy And
The Development of Military Nuclear Strategy and Anglo-American Relations, 1939 – 1958 Submitted by: Geoffrey Charles Mallett Skinner to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History, July 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. (Signature) ……………………………………………………………………………… 1 Abstract There was no special governmental partnership between Britain and America during the Second World War in atomic affairs. A recalibration is required that updates and amends the existing historiography in this respect. The wartime atomic relations of those countries were cooperative at the level of science and resources, but rarely that of the state. As soon as it became apparent that fission weaponry would be the main basis of future military power, America decided to gain exclusive control over the weapon. Britain could not replicate American resources and no assistance was offered to it by its conventional ally. America then created its own, closed, nuclear system and well before the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, the event which is typically seen by historians as the explanation of the fracturing of wartime atomic relations. Immediately after 1945 there was insufficient systemic force to create change in the consistent American policy of atomic monopoly. As fusion bombs introduced a new magnitude of risk, and as the nuclear world expanded and deepened, the systemic pressures grew. -
Annual Report 2013.Pdf
ATOMIC HERITAGE FOUNDATION Preserving & Interpreting Manhattan Project History & Legacy preserving history ANNUAL REPORT 2013 WHY WE SHOULD PRESERVE THE MANHATTAN PROJECT “The factories and bombs that Manhattan Project scientists, engineers, and workers built were physical objects that depended for their operation on physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and other nat- ural sciences, but their social reality - their meaning, if you will - was human, social, political....We preserve what we value of the physical past because it specifically embodies our social past....When we lose parts of our physical past, we lose parts of our common social past as well.” “The new knowledge of nuclear energy has undoubtedly limited national sovereignty and scaled down the destructiveness of war. If that’s not a good enough reason to work for and contribute to the Manhattan Project’s historic preservation, what would be? It’s certainly good enough for me.” ~Richard Rhodes, “Why We Should Preserve the Manhattan Project,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2006 Photographs clockwise from top: J. Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie R. Groves pinning an award on Enrico Fermi, Leona Woods Marshall, the Alpha Racetrack at the Y-12 Plant, and the Bethe House on Bathtub Row. Front cover: A Bruggeman Ranch property. Back cover: Bronze statues by Susanne Vertel of J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves at Los Alamos. Table of Contents BOARD MEMBERS & ADVISORY COMMITTEE........3 Cindy Kelly, Dorothy and Clay Per- Letter from the President..........................................4 -
Cold War Requisitions, Scientific Manpower, and the Production of American Physicists After World War II
DAVID KAISER* Cold War requisitions, scientific manpower, and the production of American physicists after World War II 1. RAYMOND BIRGE’S “MAIN OBJECTIVE” “THE MAIN OBJECTIVE of this department of physics,” Raymond Birge wrote in late May 1955, “is to train Ph.D.’s in physics.” Birge— iconic, somber, a displaced Yankee who traced his New England ancestry nine generations back—had been chair of Berkeley’s physics department for twenty-two years; by the mid-1950s, it was the nation’s largest. At the time he explained his department’s “main objec- tive,” Birge was the retiring president of the American Physical Society (APS). Birge and his colleagues in Berkeley’s physics department had emphasized the importance of its graduate program many times before in annual budget requests to the university administration and in funding reports to private industries; it would be easy to read such remarks as thinly-veiled requests for more funding, since training physics Ph.D.s became expensive after World War II. This time, however, Birge articulated his department’s mission in a letter to a local citizen, far outside of the university bureaucracy, who had no funds to offer and who had requested no such pronouncement. 1 *Program in Science, Technology, and Society, and Department of Physics, Building E51- 185, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139; [email protected]. My thanks to Shane Hamilton for his research assistance, and to Alexis De Greiff, Kenji Ito, John Krige, Elizabeth Paris, and John Rudolph for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. The following abbreviations are used: AIP-EMD, American Institute of Physics, Edu- cation and Manpower Division Records, Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD; BAS, Bulletin of the atomic scientists; BDP , University of California, Berkeley, Department of Physics Records, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, CA; HDP, Harvard University Department of Physics Records, Pusey Library, Cambridge, MA; PDP, Princeton University Department of Physics Records, Seeley G. -
Bob Farquhar
1 2 Created by Bob Farquhar For and dedicated to my grandchildren, their children, and all humanity. This is Copyright material 3 Table of Contents Preface 4 Conclusions 6 Gadget 8 Making Bombs Tick 15 ‘Little Boy’ 25 ‘Fat Man’ 40 Effectiveness 49 Death By Radiation 52 Crossroads 55 Atomic Bomb Targets 66 Acheson–Lilienthal Report & Baruch Plan 68 The Tests 71 Guinea Pigs 92 Atomic Animals 96 Downwinders 100 The H-Bomb 109 Nukes in Space 119 Going Underground 124 Leaks and Vents 132 Turning Swords Into Plowshares 135 Nuclear Detonations by Other Countries 147 Cessation of Testing 159 Building Bombs 161 Delivering Bombs 178 Strategic Bombers 181 Nuclear Capable Tactical Aircraft 188 Missiles and MIRV’s 193 Naval Delivery 211 Stand-Off & Cruise Missiles 219 U.S. Nuclear Arsenal 229 Enduring Stockpile 246 Nuclear Treaties 251 Duck and Cover 255 Let’s Nuke Des Moines! 265 Conclusion 270 Lest We Forget 274 The Beginning or The End? 280 Update: 7/1/12 Copyright © 2012 rbf 4 Preface 5 Hey there, I’m Ralph. That’s my dog Spot over there. Welcome to the not-so-wonderful world of nuclear weaponry. This book is a journey from 1945 when the first atomic bomb was detonated in the New Mexico desert to where we are today. It’s an interesting and sometimes bizarre journey. It can also be horribly frightening. Today, there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the civilized world several times over. Over 23,000. “Enough to make the rubble bounce,” Winston Churchill said. The United States alone has over 10,000 warheads in what’s called the ‘enduring stockpile.’ In my time, we took care of things Mano-a-Mano. -
A Secrecy Primer
A Secrecy Primer As more countries acquire the scientific knowledge to build nuclear weapons, the U.S. response should not be heightened secrecy but a renewed commitment to strengthening political safeguards. David Hafemeister Secrecy is in the air. Last July, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, still recovering from the Wen Ho Lee “Chinese espionage” controversy, shut down classified work for 10 weeks after two computer disks containing sensitive material were reported missing. Some 12,000 personnel remained idle during a lengthy investigation that in the end revealed the two computer disks hadn't even existed–bar codes for the disks had been created and inventoried, but never used. Alternatively, anyone with a credit card and a casual interest in the secrets of bomb-making could have visited Amazon.com and purchased for $34.95 (plus shipping) The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb. The curious history of the Los Alamos Primer–a history in which I played a very small part–in itself offers a worthwhile primer on the evolving nature of secrecy in the nuclear age and on the need to develop political instruments to cope with the inevitable dissemination of knowledge and technology. In April 1943, Robert Serber, a protegé of J. Robert Oppenheimer, gave a series of five lectures on atomic physics to the new hires at Los Alamos. “The object,” declared the young physicist, “is to produce a practical military weapon in the form of a bomb in which the energy is released by a fast neutrino chain reaction in one or more of the materials known to show nuclear fission.” Topics ranged from fast neutron reactions to the probability of predetonation. -
Alfred O. C. Nier
CHEMICAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION ALFRED O. C. NIER Transcript of Interviews Conducted by Michael A. Grayson and Thomas Krick at University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota on 7, 8, 9, and 10 April 1989 (With Subsequent Corrections and Additions) ACKNOWLEDGMENT This oral history is one in a series initiated by the Chemical Heritage Foundation on behalf of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. The series documents the personal perspectives of individuals related to the advancement of mass spectrometric instrumentation, and records the human dimensions of the growth of mass spectrometry in academic, industrial, and governmental laboratories during the twentieth century. This project is made possible through the generous support of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry Upon Alfred O.C. Nier’s death in 1994, this oral history was designated Free Access. Please note: Users citing this interview for purposes of publication are obliged under the terms of the Chemical Heritage Foundation Oral History Program to credit CHF using the format below: Alfred O.C. Nier, interview by Michael A. Grayson and Thomas Krick at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 7-10 April 1989 (Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, Oral History Transcript # 0112). Chemical Heritage Foundation Oral History Program 315 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106 The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) serves the community of the chemical and molecular sciences, and the wider public, by treasuring the past, educating the present, and inspiring the future. CHF maintains a world-class collection of materials that document the history and heritage of the chemical and molecular sciences, technologies, and industries; encourages research in CHF collections; and carries out a program of outreach and interpretation in order to advance an understanding of the role of the chemical and molecular sciences, technologies, and industries in shaping society.