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Manhattan District The Trinity test of the Manhattan Project on 16 July 1945 was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. Active 1942–1946 Disbanded 15 August 1947 Country United States United Kingdom Canada Branch U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Garrison/HQ Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S. Anniversaries 13 August 1942 Engagements Allied invasion of Italy Allied invasion of France Allied invasion of ...
In February 1940, Glenn Seaborg and Edwin McMillan produced plutonium-239 by bombarding uranium with deuterons. This produced neptunium, element 93, which underwent beta-decay to form a new element, plutonium, with 94 protons. [4] Kennedy built a series of detectors and counters to verify the presence of plutonium.
Russell worked on the Manhattan Project from 1942 to 1946 at the University of Chicago's Met Lab, researching the isolation and extraction of plutonium-239 from uranium. [3] In 1947 to 1953, Edwin served as chairman of the Division of Science at Allen University in Columbia, SC.
Los Alamos had discovered that reactor-bred plutonium contained an unacceptably high amount of the plutonium-240 isotope, which had a far higher spontaneous fission rate than plutonium-239. A gun could not fire a plutonium bullet fast enough to avoid predetonation, and prospects for separating the isotopes seemed dim. [157]
The project was a key part of the Manhattan Project, the United States nuclear weapons development program during World War II. Its purpose was to convert natural (not isotopically enriched) uranium metal into plutonium-239 by neutron activation, for use in nuclear weapons. This was done because it is simpler to chemically separate plutonium ...
The impracticability of a gun-type bomb using plutonium was agreed at a meeting held on 17 July 1944. All gun-type work in the Manhattan Project was directed at the Little Boy enriched uranium gun design, and almost all of the research at the Los Alamos Laboratory was re-oriented around the problems of implosion for the Fat Man bomb. [25] [26]
The 1945 photo shows Manhattan Project physicist Harold Agnew holding the heart of one of the most devastating weapons in the world.
Plutonium was handled extensively by chemists, technicians, and physicists taking part in the Manhattan Project, but the effects of plutonium exposure on the human body were largely unknown. [2] A few mishaps in 1944 had caused certain alarm amongst project leaders, and contamination was becoming a major problem in and outside the laboratories. [2]