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United States Technology

U.S. Offers Glimpse at Manhattan Project Facility 488

Posted by samzenpus from the see-and-feel-the-radiation dept.
jonerik writes "According to this article from the Associated Press, the US government is this week permitting the public a rare glimpse of its high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant as part of Oak Ridge, Tennessee's annual Secret City Festival, which is being held this coming weekend. Although the plant is still associated with ongoing nuclear weapons work, members of the public will be permitted to see parts of the facility associated with its work on the Manhattan Project's 'Little Boy' bomb, which was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The facility produced the uranium-235 which was used in the device using 1,152 massive calutrons across nine separate buildings in 1944 and 1945. 'Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the world was going on out here,' Department of Energy guide Ray Smith said on Monday. 'All this material was coming in, truckload after truckload, and nothing ever left.'"
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U.S. Offers Glimpse at Manhattan Project Facility More

U.S. Offers Glimpse at Manhattan Project Facility

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  • First thing I saw... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tuxedo Jack ( 648130 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @01:21AM (#12830290) Homepage
    "Nothing to see here, move along."

    Scary in relevance to this.

  • Secret City Festival? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16, 2005 @01:22AM (#12830295)
    Sounds like it will be a bomb!

    -Sj53

  • OMG SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16, 2005 @01:27AM (#12830307)
    -20 lame, i know... someone had to say it though

  • Mmm... yummy... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Will the festival include a barbeque?

    • Re:Mmm... yummy... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by js7a ( 579872 ) <james @ b o v i k .org> on Thursday June 16, 2005 @01:55AM (#12830391) Homepage Journal
      Will the festival include a barbeque?
      You had better well hope not: [radlab.nl]
      I've been told they used to hold BBQ's with contaminated wood out in the contaminated areas at YPG in the 'old' days, YES TIMES HAVE CHANGED. What about the miners and fabricators of DU munitions and all the incidents that have occured there
      Please comment on my petition [slashdot.org] to prevent birth defects from uranium contamination.

    • Re:Mmm... yummy... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What the *FUCK* is wrong with you? Do you realize that over 100,000 [wikipedia.org] people instantly died from those bombs? Not to mention that thousands more that died really, really horrible deaths as a result of radiation poisoning [wikipedia.org].

      I'm sorry if this is a flame. It's just that those kinds of statements basically kill whatever shred of hope I had left in humanity.

      Oh, and to stave off the "We *did* it for the sake of humanity" comments, we very well may have. But it we did it at the cost of humanity, and I'm not just

      • Re:Mmm... yummy... (Score:5, Informative)

        by PakProtector ( 115173 ) <[cevkiv] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday June 16, 2005 @09:16AM (#12832019) Journal

        Just because I'm blessed and cursed with a pedantic bent and a masochistic one, respectively, I'm going to futilely attempt to enlighten you, Anonymous Coward.

        I direct your attention to Operation Downfall [wikipedia.org], the proposed plan for the United States' invasion of Japan. The estimated casualties for United States forces alone were estimated to be nearly one million men to take the island.

        When you consider at the time that Japanese soldiers and even civilians who had been forced to retreat to caves refused to surrender, fought to the death, and had to be flame-throwered in the caves because they would have done everything in their power to kill American Soldiers, combined with the fact that virtually everyone in Japan who would have been able to wield any form of weapon would have made resistance, you are looking at not only the deaths of 1 Million US Service personnel, but practically the total elimination of the Japanese Population.

        So, in short, yes, I think 100,000 lives were worth it. I happen to like Japan, and am glad that we dropped the bombs on them, because if we hadn't I doubt very much Japan would be around today.

        • Re:Mmm... yummy... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Chris Burke ( 6130 )
          This is the classic false dichotomy that everyone pulls out to support the bombing: It was either invade and take the entire island by force, or use the A-bomb. With that pair of choices, it seems pretty foolish to even question the use of the bomb.

          Now, it turns out that there were actually more than just two options, and these were options seriously considered by Truman.

          The first option was conditional surrender. The Japanese actually requested conditional surrender, with the main concession they want

  • I don't think that's such a good idea. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16, 2005 @01:32AM (#12830322)
    If some half-wit accidentally walks into a restricted area and gets hungry, they might accidently push the button marked "lunch."

  • Not so timely news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by helioquake ( 841463 ) * on Thursday June 16, 2005 @01:33AM (#12830324) Journal
    Man, I have quite a few paid leave days to spend and this would have been a great geek opportunity to spend part of them...being a science/history geek, this would have been a nice thing to visit.

    It's not like we find any reason to visit Tennessee these days...

    • Re:Not so timely news (Score:4, Informative)

      by Strontium-90 ( 799337 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @04:01AM (#12830679)
      I believe that there are other tours in other sections that you can go to. Although, things may have changed since 2001. They've really beefed up security since then. There's also the American Museum of Science and Energy that out-of-towners sometimes find interesting.

      However, I can tell you that Oak Ridge is a wonderful city. Those of us who grew up there find it a little bit boring, but in all honesty, I miss it a whole lot.

      If you end up visiting, I'd suggest stopping at Big Ed's for dinner. And if you like BBQ, check out Buddy's BBQ anywhere in Tennessee. It's insulting what passes for barbecue out here in California.

  • Huh? Is this new? (Score:2, Informative)

    by jonoton ( 804262 )
    I thought they'd been doing tours round this plant for many years.

    A few years ago I went on a 'bizzare places' tour round the states and this was one of the places on the agenda.

    Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to go on the tour round Y-12, but they were doing daily trips from the science & technology museum in nearby oakridge.

    • What I would like to see is the plutonium extraction and reprocessing plant that was used to extract Pu239 from used reactor fuel rods. When the fuel rods are removed from the reactor, they are thermally hot from decay heat and very radioactive. From what I've read, they built a very large and complex plant that was completely operated by remote control, using 1940s technology. Once it began operation, nobody could enter the plant due to the high radiation levels. All repairs and maintenance had to be done

      • Re:Huh? Is this new? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Muhammar ( 659468 )
        In the opposite part of US. Try "Hanford Nuclear Reservation"

        The reason why they chose Washington state for plutonium work was a low density of population, with no major towns downwind. Also plenty of water for cooling and a cheap hydro. During war, the graphite reactor design went from the initial Chicago pile through one mid-size prototype to several large reactors (built at the same time as the prototype). Since the possibility of a catastrophic event was rather high, they considered a reactor fire/expl
    • if by tours you mean "try to run past the armed guards and if you make it more than 50ft, we'll call it a tour" then i'm sure they have.

      good luck getting in without a badge any time other than this event ;)

  • This sounds dumb...but (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ROFLMAObot ( 891386 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @01:58AM (#12830394)
    Is it not a bit awry that we are allowing tours through the building where a bomb that killed thousands of people was built? I mean, it isn't exactly a tour of an art museum, or a place like the White House. It's just kind of odd.

    • Re:This sounds dumb...but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HermanAB ( 661181 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @03:59AM (#12830674)
      Not dumb - troll...

      The war in the Pacific Rim was not just between the USA and Japan. That is a horrible, horrible simplification. Japan invaded all its neighbours!

      By bombing Japan, the US avoided having to clean up hundreds (if not thousands) of islands and hundreds of cities, over an immense area.

      Ask any Chinese or Korean person to explain the history to you and whether they think ending the war quickly was a good idea or not.

      Japan had a bunch of religious nutcases in control and the bombs shocked everyone back to reality.

      • Re:This sounds dumb...but (Score:3, Interesting)

        by m50d ( 797211 )
        The reason they shocked is they were an atrocity. Eating a thousand Japanese babies would have had the same impact.

        • Re:This sounds dumb...but (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ifwm ( 687373 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @07:44AM (#12831401) Journal
          "The reason they shocked is they were an atrocity"

          You men like at Nanking? Forget that, or are you just incredibly ignorant?

          • Re:This sounds dumb...but (Score:3, Interesting)

            by m50d ( 797211 )
            Oh yes, because once one side has committed an atrocity they're no longer human, and anything is justified. That's the kind of logic that keeps bitter ethnic conflicts going for 30 years, children living their whole lives knowing nothing but getting them because of what they did to us, and then they'll get us because of what we just did to them. An atrocity is an atrocity is an atrocity, no matter what the other side did.
      • By bombing Japan, the US avoided having to clean up hundreds (if not thousands) of islands and hundreds of cities, over an immense area.

        That all sounds wonderfully simple -- until you remember that before the bombing, the Japanese were working through multiple other countries to surrender.

        As for the Japanese armies in China and on mainland Asia, they were already defeated by both the Chinese communists and by Russia's Red Army.

        Remember, before we nuked Japan, the US could park battleships only a couple
    • And having a festival is really weird.

      Why not have parties in honour of the inventions of mustard gas, sarin or suicide bombings as well?
    • Yea, we should just try and forget our history. That way, we will never have to worry about repeating it. Right?

  • propaganda (Score:3, Funny)

    by RichLooker ( 556121 ) <<richard> <at> <disputable.org>> on Thursday June 16, 2005 @02:26AM (#12830459)
    - we all know the U235 came from the German sub U-234, originally destined for Japan. If it had made it there, the japs would have had the bomb first.

    http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Japanese- atomic-program [nationmaster.com]

  • Still Trying (Score:5, Funny)

    by Elitist_Phoenix ( 808424 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @02:59AM (#12830537)
    Looks like they're still trying to draw attention aways from the real issues like Roswell and The Kennedy Assassination. However I must be brief even as I type people are homing in on me, the only thing stopping them from finding me is my Aluminum headware.

  • Yes, a torrent. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @03:33AM (#12830605)
    History Channel's Modern Marvels: The Manhattan Project [mininova.org]

  • Early Soviet nuclear work at Mayak (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16, 2005 @03:36AM (#12830615)
    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a great view of early Soviet nuclear work at Mayak starting in the late 1940's
    http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so9 9larin [thebulletin.org]

    "expensive apparatuses were more valuable than the people who operated them"
    "it was common to clean up spills of radioactive solutions by hand. It seems strange now, but the possibility of spills was not anticipated, and there was no way to collect spilled solution safely. We had only wash cloths, buckets, and sometimes, rubber gloves. We collected the spilled solution and poured it into big glass bottles--it was a very expensive compound and we were expected to recover every drop."

    "leaks happened there they sometimes lost as much as three tons of highly radioactive product. To collect those spills with wash cloths was impossible."

    "several hundred kilograms of freshly irradiated nuclear fuel got stuck--men from everywhere in the plant were called out, and one after another they used long steel rods to push the elements into the apparatus. The only protection they had was cotton overalls and gloves"

    Enjoy

    http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so9 9larin [thebulletin.org]

  • Should be interesting (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tourney3p0 ( 772619 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @03:57AM (#12830663)
    I live about half a mile from the Y-12 facility. Some guys from work and I got together to tour their place a few weeks ago to view their network infrastructure. They've got a HUGE room full of Crays. It was pretty loud in there, as to be expected. One of the less polite of the guys I was with had the nerve to ask one of their network admins what he made.. 37 grand and no benefits, because very few of them actually work for Y-12. That was a surprise. From what I saw, most everything there is AMD and Nvidia. Their preferred Linux is SuSE for some reason.. to each their own I suppose. For anyone who may want to make the trip, drop me a line and I'll let you know of some other interesting things to do around here. For anyone bringing their family, there's a park (Commerce Park, I think it's called) right next to Y-12 with a nice little picnic/fishing area. I'm rambling.

  • For those of you in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @06:14AM (#12831005) Homepage Journal
    This is the coolest place to go visit - would have been a seat of government for the uk during a nuclear war scenario. Lots of cool stuff to see.

    Hack Green [aeroflight.co.uk]

    Home page [hackgreen.co.uk]

    Not quite on the scale of this one but I thought someone here might find this of use.

    Nick ...

  • Grow a thicker skin, people. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by i41Overlord ( 829913 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @06:19AM (#12831017)
    Some of the people on here are so liberal that they're offended by the realities of everyday life. There's nothing wrong with having pride in your country and admiring its war machines.

    I'm surprised that these people aren't ashamed of being human or living in the country they do, because after all, humans fought their way to the top of the food chain and their ancestors surely took the country they live in by force from someone else. Fighting, natural selection- it's all part of nature. No matter how evolved people think they are, they still cannot break free of the most simple rules of mother nature.

  • Mostly BS and PR-- the real story: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @06:36AM (#12831074)
    I hate to be a party pooper, but:
    • This may bell be just a PR campaign to make the place look better. Lots of things you won't hear on the tour:
    • The calutrons were basically a FAILURE-- they only put out about 10% of the expected U235-- the rest they smeared all over the place, and not in the collection bucket. Once the gas diffusion plant got running the calutrons were relegated to secondary status. Being extremely expensive and inefficient to boot, they were shut down ASAP after the war.
    • They were built mostly due to Lawrence's reputation in building the cyclotron, not on any technical merit.
    • Ask about when the building had most of the world's mercury flowing through its pipes. And how much got lost. A DOE report says: "A 1983 study by USDOE estimates that 733,000 pounds of elemental mercury were released to the environment in the 1950s and 1960s around the Y-12 Plant. Most of the contamination around Y-12 is confined to the upper 10 feet of soils and fill. Additional studies revealed that some 170,000 pounds of mercury are contained in the sediments and floodplain of about a 15-mile length of East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC), which has its headwaters at Y-12, and that some 500 pounds of mercury annually leave this watershed." ( i.e.: don't smoke the grass)
    • Ask about the nearby sites where they dumped tons of radioactive waste right into the creeks and hollers.
    Just MHO but his would be one of the LAST places on Earth I'd care to visit.
    • The calutrons were basically a FAILURE ...

      Unlike most ChemE, where research leads to pilot plant which leads to production plant (step 4, profit), the Manhattan Project often skipped the pilot plant stage and went directly from research to production facility. Small pilot plants allow you to determine which of several alternatives might be the most economically feasible. The Manhattan Project did not have the time to figure out which way was best, so they simply built all of the alternatives as full

  • My (grandfather's) Oak Ridge story. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LouisvilleDebugger ( 414168 ) on Thursday June 16, 2005 @12:42PM (#12833860) Journal
    During WWII, my grandfather was teaching physics to Navy cadets at Murray State College in western Kentucky, as part of the War Department's "90-Day Wonder" program. They'd take cadets out of basic training who'd had some college experience, and give them technical training before putting them in charge of engineering battallions, or other technical posts.

    Grandfather (a civilian) actually wanted to enlist in the regular military, but was always told by the temporary military commander of this civilian school, "Uncle Sam needs you right here, teaching these cadets." Finally he gave up, decided they were right, and resigned himself to what he was best at, being a small-town physics teacher.

    Immediately he starts getting draft notices in the mail. In frustration he showed the notices to the commander, who telephoned his own superiors and according to my grandfather, "Just started cussing." After five minutes, he hangs up.

    The next thing my grandfather knows, he receives another notice, no return address, telling him to take a train from Murray to a town he'd never heard of near Knoxville, and not to tell anybody where he was going.

    Grandfather arrived at Oak Ridge, which in his telling was hardly a town, with knee-deep mud in the streets. He asked where the town hall was (this is where he was supposed to meet his contact) but no one would say a word to him. Finally he joined in a boy's game of marbles, and found out from the children where the place was.

    From the town hall, he was whisked into the nascent Oak Ridge plant, and interviewed for some hours about his background, and his knowledge of physics (which I remember was heavy on practical knowledge, but medium on sophisticated theory.)

    After the meeting was over, they wouldn't let him leave the plant for several more hours, as his paperwork had gone missing during the interview.

    Grandfather decided that Oak Ridge was no place to raise my three year-old father, took the train back to Murray, and went straight back to teaching those Navy cadets (and then the GI Bill veterans, after the war, and then their children.)

    He died in 1996, without ever knowing the job description for which he'd been so meticulously interviewed.

    Now the story about the class of graduating cadets "replacing" his entire set of "civilian" demonstration apparatus by standing at attention and presenting him with a chalkboard eraser tied to a piece of string will have to wait for another Offtopic post....

    RIP, Granddaddy.

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