The Y-12 National Security Complex is a
United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the
Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was built as part of the
Manhattan Project for the purpose of enriching uranium for the first atomic bombs. It is considered the birthplace of the
atomic bomb
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. In the years after World War II, it has been operated as a manufacturing facility for nuclear weapons components and related defense purposes.
Y-12 is managed and operated under contract by
Consolidated Nuclear Security
Consolidated Nuclear Security is an American federal contractor. They are one of the 100 largest federal contractors in the United States.
Overview
Consolidated Nuclear Security manages the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Pantex plant.
Con ...
, LLC (CNS), which is composed of member companies
Bechtel National Inc.,
Leidos
Leidos, formerly known as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), is an American defense, aviation, information technology (Lockheed Martin IS&GS), and biomedical research company headquartered in Reston, Virginia, that provides s ...
Inc.,
Orbital ATK
Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS) was a sector (business segment) of Northrop Grumman from 2018 through 2019. It was formed from Orbital ATK Inc. a company which resulted from the merger of Orbital Sciences Corporation and parts of Alli ...
, Inc, and
SOC LLC, with
Booz Allen Hamilton
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation (informally Booz Allen) is the parent of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., an American management and information technology consulting firm, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in Greater Washington, D.C., with 8 ...
Inc. as a teaming subcontractor.
CNS also operates
Pantex Plant
Pantex is the primary United States nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility that aims to maintain the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. The facility is located in the Panhandle of Texas on a site ...
in Texas.
History
Y-12 is the
World War II code name for the
electromagnet
An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in the ...
ic
isotope separation plant producing
enriched uranium at the
Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as part of the
Manhattan Project. Construction began in February 1943 under the management of
Stone and Webster. Because of a wartime shortage of
copper, the massive electromagnetic coils were made with 14,700 tons of coinage
silver from U.S. government vaults at West Point. Colonel
Kenneth D. Nichols met with the Under Secretary of the Treasury,
Daniel W. Bell, and requested between five and ten thousand tons of silver. Bell's stunned reply was, "Colonel, in the Treasury we do not speak of tons of silver; our unit is the
troy ounce." Thus the Manhattan Engineer District requested and was loaned 395 million troy ounces of silver (13,540
short tons, 12,300
tonnes) from the West Point Depository for the duration of the Manhattan Project. Special guards and accountants were assigned to the silver, and their responsible caretaking meant that at the end of the war, less than 0.036% out of more than $300 million worth of silver was lost to the process, with the remainder returned to the Treasury.
The Y-12 facility began operating in November 1943, separating
uranium-235 from
natural uranium, which is 99.3%
uranium-238, by using
calutrons to perform electromagnetic
isotope separation. Y-12 separated the uranium-235 for
Little Boy, the
nuclear weapon that was
dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.
K-25, another facility in Oak Ridge, produced enriched uranium using
gaseous diffusion. However, K-25 did not begin operating until March 1945 and fed slightly enriched uranium to Y-12's Beta Calutrons as the push to obtain enough uranium 235 for Little Boy came in the early summer of 1945. The
S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant at the K-25 site also provided feed material for Y-12's Beta Calutrons.
Tennessee Eastman
Eastman Chemical Company is an American company primarily involved in the chemical industry. Once a subsidiary of Kodak, today it is an independent global specialty materials company that produces a broad range of advanced materials, chemicals and ...
was hired by the
Army Corps of Engineers to manage Y-12 during the Manhattan Project. The company transferred scientists from
Kingsport, Tennessee to Y-12 and operated the plant from 1943 to May 1947. The Y-12 electromagnetic plant units 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 physicist
Ernest Lawrence that the young "hillbilly" girl operators were outproducing his doctorate-holding scientists. 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". The young women that worked in this capacity came to be known as "
Calutron Girls."
[{{cite web , title=A Book Review of The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan , url=https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/book-review-girls-atomic-city-denise-kiernan , website=nationalww2museum.org , publisher=National World War II Museum , access-date=2021-09-09]
The
Union Carbide corporation succeeded Tennessee Eastman as the operating contractor in 1947, remaining until 1984, when Union Carbide relinquished the contract for operating DOE's Oak Ridge facilities, and the
Martin Marietta corporation (later
Lockheed Martin) won the contract to take over the operation. BWXT Y-12 (name later changed to B&W Y-12) succeeded Lockheed Martin as the Y-12 operator in November 2000.
A chemical explosion injured several workers at the Y-12 facility on December 8, 1999, when
NaK was cleaned up after an accidental spill, inappropriately treated with mineral oil, and inadvertently ignited when the surface coating of
potassium superoxide was scratched by a metal tool.
1958 criticality incident
At 11 p.m. on June 16, 1958, a
criticality accident
A criticality accident is an accidental uncontrolled nuclear fission chain reaction. It is sometimes referred to as a critical excursion, critical power excursion, or divergent chain reaction. Any such event involves the unintended accumulation ...
occurred in the C-1 Wing of Building 9212 at the facility, then operating under the management of
Union Carbide. In the incident, a solution of highly enriched uranium was mistakenly diverted into a steel drum, causing a fission reaction of 15–20 minutes duration. Eight workers were hospitalized for moderate to severe
radiation sickness or exposure, but all eventually returned to work. In June 1960 the eight workers, Bill Wilburn, O. C. Collins, Travis Rogers, R. D. Jones, Howard Wagner, T. W. Stinnett, Paul McCurry, and Bill Clark filed suit against the
Atomic Energy Commission. The suit was settled out-of-court. Wilburn, who had received the highest radiation dose, was awarded $18,000 (approximately $185,000 in 2022 dollars). Clark received $9,000 (worth approximately $92,500 in 2022).
[{{Cite web, first=Frank, last=Munger, url=http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2014/06/14/nuclear-survivor-bill-clark-recalls-1958-criticality-accident-life-since/, title=Nuclear survivor: Bill Clark recalls 1958 criticality accident and his up-and-down life since then, date=2014-06-14, website=Atomic City Underground also published in '']Knoxville News Sentinel
The ''Knoxville News Sentinel, also known as Knox News,'' is a daily newspaper in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States, owned by the Gannett Company.
History
The newspaper was formed in 1926 from the merger of two competing newspapers: ''The K ...
'' and '' Stars and Stripes''.
Under the
Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, the eight later received additional compensation from the government; Clark collected multiple payments totaling about $250,000. Most, if not all, of the eight victims were diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lives.{{Citation needed, date=May 2022 As of June 2014, Clark was the only surviving member of the eight.
Facilities and missions
Y-12's primary missions since the end of the
Cold War have been to support defense needs through
stockpile stewardship, assist on issues of nuclear non-proliferation, support the Naval Reactors program, and provide expertise to other federal agencies. Y-12 is also responsible for the maintenance and production of all uranium parts and "secondary" mechanisms for every nuclear weapon in the United States arsenal.
Y-12 has a history of providing secure storage of nuclear material for both the United States and other governments. Early efforts focused on securing material from the former Soviet Union; recent activities have included recovery of highly enriched uranium from Chile.
Environmental cleanup has been an ongoing issue for the Department of Energy in Oak Ridge. The Y-12 plant was listed as an
EPA Superfund site in the 1990s for groundwater and soil contamination. Today, the Y-12 plant is listed on the DOE's Cleanup Criteria/Decision Document Database (or C2D2 database).
An influx of funding from the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
benefited cleanup efforts by funding demolition and decontamination of aging facilities. These efforts work to further the long-term reduction in the size of the Y-12 facility.
CNS Y-12 currently{{when, date=May 2013 employs approximately 4,700 people. About 1,500 additional personnel work onsite as employees of organizations that include
UT-Battelle,
Science Applications International Corporation
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Inc. is an American technology company headquartered in Reston, Virginia that provides government services and information technology support.
History
The original SAIC was created in 196 ...
, UCOR, and WSI Oak Ridge (an American-controlled unit of
G4S Secure Solutions
G4S Secure Solutions (USA) is an American / British-based security services company, and a subsidiary of G4S plc. It was founded as The Wackenhut Corporation in 1954, in Coral Gables, Florida, by George Wackenhut and three partners (all are f ...
), which holds the security contract for the site. Workers at the site were represented by the
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW).
[{{cite encyclopedia , last=Bischak , first=Greg , editor-last1=Dumas , editor-first1=Lloyd J. , editor-last2=Thee , editor-first2=Marek , encyclopedia=Making Peace Possible: The Promise of Economic Conversion , title=Facing the Second Generation of the Nuclear Weapons Complex: Renewal of the Nuclear Production Base or Economic Conversion? , url=https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Making_Peace_Possible/brijBQAAQBAJ , access-date=2022-03-20 , year=1989 , publisher=Pergamon Press , series=Peace Research Monograph , volume=19 , isbn=0-08-037252X , page=115]
Anti-nuclear protests
Since 1988, Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance has organized non-violent direct action protests at the Y-12 Complex, in an effort to close down the weapons plant. Sister Mary Dennis Lentsch, a Catholic nun, has been arrested many times for protesting at the Oak Ridge facility. She has said, "I believe the continuing weapons production at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is in direct violation of the treaty obligations of the United States and consequently, is a violation of Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution".
In 2011, the Rev.
William J. Bichsel, an 84-year-old priest, received a prison sentence of three months for trespassing on federal property at the Y-12 complex. In 2012, there have been protests about the proposed new Uranium Processing Facility, which is expected to cost $7.5 billion.
In July 2012,
Megan Rice
Megan Gillespie Rice S.H.C.J. (Society of the Holy Child Jesus) (January 31, 1930 – October 10, 2021) was an American nuclear disarmament activist, Catholic nun, and former missionary.William J. Broad"Behind Nuclear Breach, a Nun's Bold Fervo ...
, an 82-year-old Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, and two military veterans who now worked for peace, Gregory Boertje-Obed, and Michael Walli, entered the Y-12 complex. They were all
Plowshares activists, and they chose Y-12 because of its crucial role in the production of nuclear weapons. They spray-painted anti-war slogans on the exterior of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, a structure for storing weapons-grade uranium. The
anti-nuclear
The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, nationa ...
activists, who got past fences and disabled security sensors before dawn on July 28, spent several hours in the complex, spray-painted peace messages, and prayed and sang before they were stopped by a guard, who was later joined by another. The security breach prompted private experts to criticize the Department of Energy's safeguarding of nuclear materials. The agency is to reappraise security measures across its nuclear weapons program. The
DOE-OIG found that all of the defenses for the plant were insufficient and that the security response had "troubling displays of ineptitude." On May 9, 2013, the three were convicted of sabotage. In her testimony Rice said "I regret I didn't do this 70 years ago."
(Rice quote)
See also
* Anti-nuclear protests in the United States
The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, nationa ...
* COLEX process (isotopic separation) The COLEX process (or COLEX separation) is a chemical method of isotopic separation of lithium-6 and lithium-7, based on the use of mercury. COLEX stands for column exchange.
Since the beginning of the atomic era, a variety of lithium enrichme ...
* Fogbank
Fogbank is a code name given to a material used in the W76, W78 and W88 nuclear warheads that are part of the United States nuclear arsenal.
Fogbank's precise nature is classified; in the words of former Oak Ridge general manager Dennis Rudd ...
* K-25
* Oak Ridge National Laboratory
* S-50
* Vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack
The vulnerability of nuclear plants to deliberate attack is of concern in the area of nuclear safety and security. Nuclear power plants, civilian research reactors, certain naval fuel facilities, uranium enrichment plants, fuel fabrication plants, ...
References
{{Reflist, 30em
External links
* {{Official website
United States Department of Energy
National Nuclear Security Administration
A map of Oak Ridge, Tennessee during the time of the Manhattan Project
{{Manhattan Project
{{U.S. anti-nuclear
{{Authority control
{{Coord, 35, 59, 18, N, 84, 15, 17, W, display=title
Nuclear weapons infrastructure of the United States
United States Department of Energy facilities
Buildings and structures in Anderson County, Tennessee
Industrial buildings and structures in Tennessee
Isotope separation facilities
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Manhattan Project sites
Isotope separation facilities of the Manhattan Project
Military history of Tennessee
Military research of the United States
1943 establishments in Tennessee
Anti-nuclear protests in the United States
Nuclear accidents and incidents in the United States
Superfund sites in Tennessee