Clinton Engineer Works

The Clinton Engineer Works (CEW) was the production installation of the Manhattan Project that during World War II produced the enriched uranium used in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, as well as the first examples of reactor-produced plutonium. It consisted of production facilities arranged at three major sites, various utilities including a power plant, and the town of Oak Ridge. It was in East Tennessee, about west of Knoxville, and was named after the town of Clinton, to the north. The production facilities were mainly in Roane County, and the northern part of the site was in Anderson County. The Manhattan District Engineer, Kenneth Nichols, moved the Manhattan District headquarters from Manhattan to Oak Ridge in August 1943. During the war, Clinton's advanced research was managed for the government by the University of Chicago.

Construction workers were housed in a community known as Happy Valley. Built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1943, this temporary community housed 15,000 people. The township of Oak Ridge was established to house the production staff. The operating force peaked at 50,000 workers just after the end of the war. The construction labor force peaked at 75,000 and the combined employment peak was 80,000. The town was developed by the federal government as a segregated community; black residents lived only in an area known as Gamble Valley, in government-built "hutments" (one-room shacks) on the south side of what is now Tuskegee Drive.

Site selection

In 1942, the Manhattan Project was attempting to construct the first atomic bombs. This would require production facilities, and by June 1942 the project had reached the stage where their construction could be contemplated. On 25 June, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) S-1 Executive Committee deliberated on where they should be located. Brigadier General Wilhelm D. Styer recommended that the different manufacturing facilities be built at the same site in order to simplify security and construction. Such a site would require a substantial tract of land to accommodate both the facilities and housing for the thousands of workers. The plutonium processing plant needed to be from the site boundary and any other installation, in case radioactive fission products escaped. While security and safety concerns suggested a remote site, it still needed to be near sources of labor, and accessible by road and rail transportation. A mild climate that allowed construction to proceed throughout the year was desirable. Terrain separated by ridges would reduce the impact of accidental explosions, but they could not be so steep as to complicate construction. The substratum needed to be firm enough to provide good foundations, but not so rocky that it would hinder excavation work. It was estimated that the proposed plants would need access to 150,000 kW of electrical power and of water per minute. A War Department policy held that, as a rule, munitions facilities should not be located west of the Sierra or Cascade Ranges, east of the Appalachian Mountains, or within of the Canadian or Mexican borders.

Several sites were considered in the Tennessee Valley, two in the Chicago area, one near the Shasta Dam in California, and some in Washington state, where the Hanford site was eventually established. An OSRD team had selected the Knoxville area in April 1942, and in May Arthur Compton, the director of the Metallurgical Laboratory, had met with Gordon R. Clapp, the General Manager of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The Chief Engineer of the Manhattan District (MED), Colonel James C. Marshall, asked Colonel Leslie R. Groves Jr. to undertake a study within the Army's Office of the Chief of Engineers. After receiving assurances that the TVA could supply the required quantity of electric power if given priority for procuring some needed equipment, Groves also concluded that the Knoxville area was suitable. The only voice of dissent at the 25 June meeting was Ernest O. Lawrence, who wanted the electromagnetic separation plant located much nearer to his Radiation Laboratory in California. The Shasta Dam area remained under consideration for the electromagnetic plant until September, by which time Lawrence had dropped his objection.

On 1 July, Marshall and his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Nichols, surveyed sites in the Knoxville area with representatives of the TVA and Stone & Webster, the designated construction contractor. No perfectly suitable site was found, and Marshall even ordered another survey of the Spokane, Washington area. At the time, the proposed nuclear reactor, gas centrifuge and gaseous diffusion technologies were still in the research stage, and the design of the plant was a long way off. The schedules, which called for construction work on the nuclear reactor to commence by 1 October 1942, the electromagnetic plant by 1 November, the centrifugal plant by 1 January 1943 and the gaseous diffusion plant by 1 March, were unrealistic. While work could not commence on the plants, a start could be made on the housing and administrative buildings. Stone & Webster therefore drew up a detailed report on the most promising site, about west of Knoxville. Stephane Groueff later wrote:

The site was located in Roane County and Anderson County, and lay roughly halfway between the two county seats of Kingston and Clinton. Its greatest drawback was that a major road, Tennessee State Route 61, ran through it. Stone & Webster considered the possibility of re-routing the road. The Ohio River Division (ORD) of the Corps of Engineers estimated that it would cost $4.25 million (equivalent to $ in ) to purchase the entire site.

Groves became the director of the Manhattan Project on 23 September, with the rank of brigadier general. That afternoon, he took a train to Knoxville, where he met with Marshall. After touring the site, Groves concluded that the site "was an even better choice than I had anticipated". He called Colonel John J. O'Brien of the Corps of Engineers' Real Estate Branch, and told him to proceed with acquiring the land. The site was initially known as the Kingston Demolition Range; it officially became the Clinton Engineer Works (CEW) in January 1943, and was given the codename Site X. After the township was established in mid-1943, the name Oak Ridge was chosen from employee suggestions. It met with the Manhattan District's approval because "its rural connotation held outside curiosity to a minimum". Oak Ridge then became the site's postal address, but the site itself was not officially renamed Oak Ridge until 1947.

Land acquisition

Although War Department policy maintained that land should be acquired by direct purchase, as time was short it was decided to proceed immediately with condemnation. This allowed access to the site for construction crews, provided faster compensation to the owners, and expedited the handling of property with defective titles. On 28 September 1942, the ORD Real Estate Branch opened a project office in Harriman with a staff of 54 surveyors, appraisers, lawyers and office workers. The ORD Real Estate Branch was quite busy at this time, as it was also acquiring land for the Dale Hollow Reservoir, so some staff were borrowed from the Federal Land Bank and the TVA. The next day, Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson authorized the acquisition of at an estimated cost of $3.5 million (equivalent to $ in ). At the request of the ORD Real Estate Branch attorneys, the District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee issued an order of possession on 6 October, effective the next day. Recognizing the hardship that it would cause to the landowners, it restricted immediate exclusive possession to properties "essential to full and complete development of the project".

Over 1,000 families lived on the site on farms or in the hamlets of Elza, Robertsville, and Scarboro. The first that most heard about the acquisition was when a representative from the ORD visited to inform them that their land was being acquired. Some returned home from work one day to find an eviction notice nailed to their door or to a tree in the yard. Most were given six weeks to leave, but some were given just two. The government took possession of 13 tracts for immediate construction work on 20 November 1942. By May 1943, 742 declarations had been filed covering . Most residents were told to prepare to leave between 1 December and 15 January. In cases where this would cause undue hardship, the MED allowed residents to stay beyond this date. For some it was the third time that they had been evicted by the government, having previously been evicted for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1920s and the TVA's Norris Dam in the 1930s. Many expected that, like the TVA, the Army would provide assistance to help them relocate; but unlike the TVA, the Army had no mission to improve the area or the lot of the local people, and no funds for the purpose. Tires were in short supply in wartime America, and moving vehicles were hard to find. Some residents had to leave behind possessions that they were unable to take with them.

A delegation of landowners presented the ORD Real Estate Branch with a petition protesting the acquisition of their property on 23 November 1942, and that night over 200 landowners held a meeting at which they agreed to hire lawyers and appraisers to challenge the Federal government. Local newspapers and politicians were sympathetic to their cause. By the end of May 1943, agreements were reached covering 416 tracts totaling , but some landowners rejected the government's offers. The ORD Real Estate Branch invoked a procedure under Tennessee law that allowed for a jury of five citizens appointed by the Federal District Court to review the compensation offered. They handled five cases in which they proposed higher values than those of the ORD appraisers, but the landowners rejected them as well, so the Army discontinued the use of this method. In response to rising public criticism, O'Brien commissioned a review by the Department of Agriculture. It found that the appraisals had been fair and just, and that farmers had overestimated the size and productivity of their land.

The landowners turned to their local Congressman, John Jennings, Jr., On 1 February 1943, Jennings introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for a committee to investigate the values offered to the landowners. He also complained to Patterson about how buildings and facilities were being demolished by the MED. On 9 July, Andrew J. May, the chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, appointed an investigating subcommittee chaired by Tennessee Representative Clifford Davis, who selected Dewey Short of Missouri and John Sparkman of Alabama as its other members. Public hearings were held in Clinton on 11 August, and in Kingston the following day. The Committee report, presented in December 1943, made a number of specific recommendations concerning the Corps of Engineers' land acquisition process, but neither Congress nor the War Department moved to provide any additional compensation for the landowners.

In July 1943, Groves prepared to issue Public Proclamation No. 2, declaring the site a military exclusion area. He asked Marshall to present it to the Governor of Tennessee, Prentice Cooper. Marshall, in turn, delegated the task to the area engineer, Major Thomas T. Crenshaw, who sent a junior officer, Captain George B. Leonard. Cooper was unimpressed; he told Leonard that he had not been informed about the purpose of the CEW, and that the Army had kicked the farmers off their land and had not compensated the counties for the roads and bridges, which would now be closed. In his opinion it was "an experiment in socialism", a New Deal project being undertaken in the name of the war effort. Instead of reading the proclamation, he tore it up and threw it in a waste paper basket. Marshall went to Nashville to apologize to Cooper, who refused to talk to him. Nichols, who succeeded Marshall as chief engineer of the Manhattan District, met Cooper on 31 July, and offered compensation in the form of Federal financing for road improvements. Cooper accepted an offer from Nichols to visit the CEW, which he did on 3 November.

Nichols and Cooper came to an agreement about the Solway Bridge. Although it was in Knox County, Anderson County had contributed $27,000 towards its construction. It was still paying off the bonds, but now the bridge was usable only by CEW workers. Nichols negotiated a deal in which Knox County was paid $25,000 annually for the bridge, of which $6,000 was to be used to maintain the access road. Judge Thomas L. Seeber then threatened to close the Edgemoor Bridge unless Anderson County was similarly compensated. An agreement was reached under which Anderson County received $10,000 for the bridge and $200 per month. Knox County did not keep its side of the bargain to maintain the road, which was damaged by heavy traffic and became impassable after torrential rains in 1944. The Army was forced to spend $5,000 per month on road works in Knox County.

Additional parcels of land were acquired during 1943 and 1944 for access roads, a railway spur, and for security purposes, bringing the total to about . The Harriman office closed on 10 June 1944, but reopened on 1 September to deal with the additional parcels. The last acquisition was not complete until 1 March 1945. The final cost of the land acquired was around $2.6 million (equivalent to $ in ), about $47 an acre.

Facilities

X-10 graphite reactor

On 2 February 1943, DuPont began construction of the plutonium semiworks, on an isolated site in the Bethel Valley about southwest of Oak Ridge. Intended as a pilot plant for the larger production facilities at the Hanford Site, it included the air-cooled graphite-moderated X-10 Graphite Reactor. There was also a chemical separation plant, research laboratories, waste storage area, training facility for Hanford staff, and administrative and support facilities that included a laundry, cafeteria, first aid center and fire station. Because of the subsequent decision to construct water-cooled reactors at Hanford, only the chemical separation plant operated as a true pilot. The facility was known as the Clinton Laboratories, and was operated by the University of Chicago as part of the Metallurgical Laboratory project.

The X-10 Graphite Reactor was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor after Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile-1, and was the first reactor designed and built for continuous operation. It consisted of a block, long on each side, of nuclear graphite cubes, weighing around , surrounded by of high-density concrete as a radiation shield. There were 36 horizontal rows of 35 holes. Behind each was a metal channel into which uranium fuel slugs could be inserted. The cooling system was driven by three large electric fans.

Construction work on the reactor had to wait until DuPont had completed the design. Excavation commenced on 27 April 1943, but a large pocket of soft clay was soon discovered, necessitating additional foundations. Further delays occurred due to wartime difficulties in procuring building materials. There was also an acute shortage of common and skilled labor: the contractor had only three-quarters of the required workforce, and less after high turnover and absenteeism, mainly the result of poor accommodations and difficulties in commuting. The township of Oak Ridge was still under construction, and barracks were built to house workers. Special arrangements with individual workers increased their morale and reduced turnover. Finally, there was unusually heavy rainfall, with falling in July 1943, more than twice the average of .

of graphite blocks were purchased from National Carbon, and the construction crews began stacking it in September 1943. Cast uranium billets came from Metal Hydrides, Mallinckrodt and other suppliers. These were extruded into cylindrical slugs, and canned by Alcoa, which started production on 14 June 1943. General Electric and the Metallurgical Laboratory developed a new welding technique; the new equipment was installed in the production line at Alcoa in October 1943. Supervised by Compton, Martin D. Whitaker and Fermi, the reactor went critical on 4 November with about of uranium. A week later the load was increased to , raising its power generation to 500 kW, and by the end of the month the first 500 mg of plutonium was created. Modifications over time raised the power to 4,000 kW in July 1944.

Construction commenced on the pilot separation plant before a chemical process for separating plutonium from uranium had been selected. In May 1943, DuPont managers decided to use the bismuth-phosphate process. The plant consisted of six cells, separated from each other and the control room by thick concrete walls. The equipment was operated remotely from the control room. Construction work was completed on 26 November, but the plant could not operate until the reactor started producing irradiated uranium slugs. The first batch was received on 20 December, allowing the first plutonium to be produced in early 1944. By February, the reactor was irradiating a ton of uranium every three days. Over the next five months, the efficiency of the separation process was improved, with the percentage of plutonium recovered increasing from 40 to 90 percent. X-10 operated as a plutonium production plant until January 1945, when it was turned over to research activities. By this time, 299 batches of irradiated slugs had been processed.

In September 1942, Compton asked Whitaker to form a skeleton operating staff for X-10. Whitaker became director of the Clinton Laboratories, and the first permanent operating staff arrived at X-10 from the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago in April 1944, by which time DuPont began transferring its technicians to the site. They were augmented by one hundred technicians in uniform from the Army's Special Engineer Detachment. By March 1944, there were 1,500 people working at X-10.

A radioisotope building, a steam plant, and other structures were added in April 1946 to support the laboratory's peacetime educational and research missions. All work was completed by December, adding another $1,009,000 (equivalent to $ in ) to the cost of construction at X-10, and bringing the total cost to $13,041,000 (equivalent to $ in ). Operational costs added another $22,250,000 (equivalent to $ in ).

Y-12 electromagnetic separation plant

Electromagnetic isotope separation was developed by Lawrence at the University of California Radiation Laboratory. This method employed devices known as calutrons, a hybrid of the standard laboratory mass spectrometer and cyclotron. The name was derived from the words "California", "university" and "cyclotron". In the electromagnetic separation process, a magnetic field deflected charged uranium particles according to mass. The process was neither scientifically elegant nor industrially efficient. Compared with a gaseous diffusion plant or a nuclear reactor, an electromagnetic separation plant would consume more scarce materials, require more manpower to operate, and cost more to build. The process was approved because it was based on proven technology and therefore represented less risk. It could be built in stages, and rapidly reach industrial capacity.

Responsibility for the design and construction of the electromagnetic separation plant, which came to be called Y-12, was assigned to Stone & Webster by the S-1 Committee in June 1942. The design called for five first-stage processing units, known as Alpha racetracks, and two units for final processing, known as Beta racetracks. In September, Groves authorized construction of four more racetracks, known as Alpha II. Construction began in February 1943.

When the plant was started up for testing on schedule in November, the 14-ton vacuum tanks crept out of alignment because of the power of the magnets and had to be fastened more securely. A more serious problem arose when the magnetic coils started shorting out. In December, Groves ordered a magnet broken open, and handfuls of rust were found inside. Groves then ordered the racetracks to be torn down and the magnets sent back to the factory to be cleaned. A pickling plant was established on-site to clean the pipes and fittings. The second Alpha I was not operational until the end of January 1944; the first Beta and first and third Alpha I's came online in March, and the fourth Alpha I became operational in April. The four Alpha II racetracks were completed between July and October 1944.

Tennessee Eastman was hired to manage Y-12 on the usual cost plus fixed fee basis, with a fee of $22,500 per month plus $7,500 per racetrack for the first seven racetracks and $4,000 per additional racetrack. The calutrons were initially operated by scientists from Berkeley to remove bugs and achieve a reasonable operating rate. They were then turned over to trained Tennessee Eastman operators who had only a high school education. Nichols compared unit production data, and pointed out to Lawrence that the young "hillbilly" girl operators, known as Calutron Girls, were outperforming his PhDs. They agreed to a production race and Lawrence lost, a morale boost for the Tennessee Eastman workers and supervisors. The girls were "trained like soldiers not to reason why", while "the scientists could not refrain from time-consuming investigation of the cause of even minor fluctuations of the dials".

Y-12 initially enriched the uranium-235 content to between 13 and 15 percent, and shipped the first few hundred grams of this to the Manhattan Project's weapons design laboratory, the Los Alamos Laboratory, in March 1944. Only 1 part in 5,825 of the uranium feed emerged as final product; much of the rest was splattered over equipment in the process. Strenuous recovery efforts helped raise production to 10 percent of the uranium-235 feed by January 1945. In February the Alpha racetracks began receiving slightly enriched (1.4 percent) feed from the new S-50 thermal diffusion plant, and the next month it received enhanced (5 percent) feed from the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant. By August K-25 was producing uranium sufficiently enriched to feed directly into the Beta tracks.

The Alpha tracks began to suspend operations on 4 September 1945, and ceased operation completely on 22 September. The last two Beta tracks went into full operation in November and December, processing feed from K-25 and the new K-27. By May 1946, studies suggested that the gaseous plants could fully enrich the uranium by themselves without accidentally creating a critical mass. After a trial showed this was the case, Groves ordered all but one Beta track at Y-12 shut down in December 1946. Y-12 remained in use for nuclear weapons processing and materials storage. A production facility for the hydrogen bomb used in Operation Castle in 1954 was hastily installed in 1952.

K-25 gaseous diffusion plant

The most promising but also the most challenging method of isotope separation was gaseous diffusion. Graham's law states that the rate of effusion of a gas is inversely proportional to the square root of its molecular mass, so in a box containing a semi-permeable membrane and a mixture of two gases, the lighter molecules will pass out of the container more rapidly than the heavier molecules. The gas leaving the container is somewhat enriched in the lighter molecules, while the residual gas is somewhat depleted. The idea was that such boxes could be formed into a cascade of pumps and membranes, with each successive stage containing a slightly more enriched mixture. Research into the process was carried out at Columbia University by a group that included Harold Urey, Karl P. Cohen and John R. Dunning.

In November 1942 the Military Policy Committee approved the construction of a 600-stage gaseous diffusion plant. On 14 December, M. W. Kellogg accepted an offer to construct the plant, which was codenamed K-25. A cost plus fixed fee contract was negotiated, eventually totaling $2.5 million (equivalent to $ in ). A separate corporate entity called Kellex was created for the project, headed by Percival C. Keith, one of Kellogg's vice presidents. The process faced formidable technical difficulties. The highly corrosive gas uranium hexafluoride had to be used, as no substitute could be found, and the motors and pumps would have to be vacuum tight and enclosed in inert gas. The biggest problem was the design of the barrier, which would have to be strong, porous and resistant to corrosion by uranium hexafluoride. The best choice for this seemed to be nickel, and Edward Adler and Edward Norris created a mesh barrier from electroplated nickel. A six-stage pilot plant was built at Columbia to test the process, but the Norris-Adler prototype proved to be too brittle. A rival barrier was developed from powdered nickel by Kellex, the Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Bakelite Corporation. In January 1944, Groves ordered the Kellex barrier into production.

Kellex's design for K-25 called for a four-story U-shaped structure long containing 54 contiguous buildings. These were divided into nine sections. Within these were cells of six stages. The cells could be operated independently, or consecutively within a section. Similarly, the sections could be operated separately or as part of a single cascade. A survey party began construction by marking out the site in May 1943. Work on the main building began in October, and the six-stage pilot plant was ready for operation on 17 April 1944. In 1945 Groves canceled the upper stages of the plant, directing Kellex to instead design and build a 540-stage side feed unit, which became known as K-27. Kellex transferred the last unit to the operating contractor, Union Carbide and Carbon, on 11 September 1945. The total cost, including the K-27 plant completed after the war, came to $480 million (equivalent to $ in ).

The production plant commenced operation in February 1945, and as cascade after cascade came online, the quality of the product increased. By April, K-25 had attained a 1.1 percent enrichment and the output of the S-50 thermal diffusion plant began being used as feed. Some product produced the next month reached nearly 7 percent enrichment. In August, the last of the 2,892 stages commenced operation. K-25 and K-27 achieved their full potential in the early postwar period, when they eclipsed the other production plants and became the prototypes for a new generation of plants. Uranium was enriched by the K-25 gaseous diffusion process until 1985; the plants were then decommissioned and decontaminated. A 235 MW coal-fired power station was included for reliability and to provide variable frequency, although most electric power came from the TVA.

S-50 liquid thermal diffusion plant

The thermal diffusion process was based on Sydney Chapman and David Enskog's theory, which explained that when a mixed gas passes through a temperature gradient, the heavier one tends to concentrate at the cold end and the lighter one at the warm end. Since hot gases tend to rise and cool ones tend to fall, this can be used as a means of isotope separation. This process was first demonstrated by Klaus Clusius and Gerhard Dickel in Germany in 1938. It was developed by US Navy scientists, but was not one of the enrichment technologies initially selected for use in the Manhattan Project. This was primarily due to doubts about its technical feasibility, but the inter-service rivalry between the Army and Navy also played a part.

The Naval Research Laboratory continued the research under Philip Abelson's direction, but there was little contact with the Manhattan Project until April 1944, when Captain William S. Parsons, the naval officer who was in charge of ordnance development at Los Alamos, brought Robert Oppenheimer, the director there, news of encouraging progress in the Navy's experiments on thermal diffusion. Oppenheimer wrote to Groves suggesting that the output of a thermal diffusion plant could be fed into Y-12. Groves set up a committee consisting of Warren K. Lewis, Eger Murphree and Richard Tolman to investigate the idea, and they estimated that a thermal diffusion plant costing $3.5 million (equivalent to $ in ) could enrich of uranium per week to nearly 0.9 percent uranium-235. Groves approved its construction on 24 June 1944.

Groves contracted with the H. K. Ferguson Company of Cleveland to build the thermal diffusion plant, which was designated S-50. Groves' advisers, Karl Cohen and W. I. Thompson from Standard Oil, estimated that it would take six months to build; Groves gave Ferguson just four. Plans called for the installation of 2,142 diffusion columns arranged in 21 racks. Inside each column were three concentric tubes. Steam, obtained from the nearby K-25 powerhouse at a pressure of and temperature of , flowed downward through the innermost nickel pipe, while water at flowed upward through the outermost iron pipe. Isotope separation occurred in the uranium hexafluoride gas between the nickel and copper pipes.

Work commenced on 9 July 1944, and S-50 began partial operation in September. Ferguson operated the plant through a subsidiary known as Fercleve. The plant produced just of 0.852 percent uranium-235 in October. Leaks limited production and forced shutdowns over the next few months, but in June 1945 it produced . By March 1945, all 21 production racks were operating. Initially the output of S-50 was fed into Y-12, but starting in March all three enrichment processes were run in series. S-50 became the first stage, enriching from 0.71 percent to 0.89 percent. This material was fed into the gaseous diffusion process in the K-25 plant, which produced a product enriched to about 23 percent. This was, in turn, fed into Y-12.

In early September Nichols appointed a production control committee, headed by Major A.V. (Pete) Peterson. Peterson's staff tried various combinations, using mechanical calculating machines, and decided that the S-50 production should be fed to K-25 rather than Y-12, which was done in April 1945. The charts also showed that the proposed top stages for K-25 should be abandoned, as should Lawrence's recommendation to add more alpha stages to the Y-12 plant. Groves accepted their proposal to add more base units to the K-27 gaseous-diffusion plant and one more Beta stage track for Y-12. These additions were estimated to cost $100 million (equivalent to $ in ), with completion in February 1946. Soon after Japan surrendered in August 1945, Peterson recommended that S-50 be shut down. The Manhattan District ordered this on 4 September. The last uranium hexafluoride was sent to K-25, and the plant had ceased operation by 9 September. S-50 was completely demolished in 1946.

Electric power

Despite protests from TVA that it was unnecessary, the Manhattan District built a coal-fired power plant at K-25 with eight 25,000 KW generators. Steam generated from the K-25 power plant was subsequently used by S-50. Additional power lines were laid from the TVA hydroelectric plants at Norris Dam and Watts Bar Dam, and the Clinton Engineer Works was given its own electrical substations at K-25 and K-27. By 1945, power sources were capable of supplying Oak Ridge with up to 310,000 KW, of which 200,000 KW was earmarked for Y-12, 80,000 KW for K-25, 23,000 KW for the township, 6,000 KW for S-50 and 1,000 KW for X-10. Peak demand occurred in August 1945, when all the facilities were running. The peak load was 298,800 KW on 1 September. The 235,000 KVA steam plant was required for reliability; in 1953-55 a rat shorting out a transformer at CEW resulted in a complete loss of load and of several weeks of production. The plant could supply up to five different frequencies, although it was found that variable frequency was not necessary. J. A. Jones built the plant and the gaseous diffusion plant. The site was cleared in June 1943, steam was available from one boiler in March 1944 and in April 15,000 KVA was available from the first turbine generator. The plant was the largest single block of steam power built at one time, and with completion in January 1945 in record time.

Township

Planning for a "Government village" to house the workers at the Clinton Engineer Works began in June 1942. Because the site was remote, it was believed more convenient and secure for the workers to live on the site. The gentle slopes of Black Oak Ridge, from which the new town of Oak Ridge got its name, were selected as a suitable location. Brigadier General Lucius D. Clay, the deputy chief of staff of the Army Services of Supply, reminded Marshall of a wartime limit of $7,500 per capita for individual quarters. Groves argued for "economy" with small and simple houses; but Marshall, who had argued for an exemption from the limit, saw no prospect that the kind of workers they needed would be willing to live with their family in substandard accommodation (and du Pont at HEW agreed). The houses at CEW and HEW were basic but of a higher standard (as specified by Marshall and Nichols) than the houses at Los Alamos (as specified by Groves; and the quality of housing there suffered).

The first plan, submitted by Stone & Webster on 26 October 1942, was for a residential community of 13,000 people. As Stone & Webster began work on the production facilities, it became clear that building the township as well would be beyond its capacity. The Army therefore engaged the architectural and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to design and build the township. The John B. Pierce Foundation were brought in as a consultant. In turn, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill brought in numerous subcontractors. This first phase of construction became known as the East Town. It included some 3,000 family dwellings, an administrative center, three shopping centers, three grade schools for 500 children each and a high school for 500, recreation buildings, men's and women's dormitories, cafeterias, a medical services building and a 50-bed hospital. The emphasis was on speed of construction and getting around wartime shortages of materials. Where possible, fiberboard and gypsum board were used instead of wood, and foundations were made from concrete blocks rather than poured concrete. The work was completed in early 1944.

In addition to the East Town, a self-contained community known as the East Village, with 50 family units, its own church, dormitories and a cafeteria, was built near the Elza gate. This was intended as a segregated community for Black people, but by the time it was completed, it was required by white people. Black people were instead housed in "hutments" (one-room shacks) in segregated areas, some in "family hutments" created by joining two regular hutments together.

The Army presence at Oak Ridge increased in August 1943 when Nichols replaced Marshall as head of the Manhattan Engineer District. One of his first tasks was to move the district headquarters to Oak Ridge, although the name of the district did not change. In September 1943 the administration of community facilities was outsourced to Turner Construction Company through a subsidiary, the Roane-Anderson Company. The company was paid a fee of $25,000 per month on a cost-plus contract

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases