Throughout the years preceding World War II, a small group of widely separated researchers successfully demonstrated the possibility of deriving energy from the atomic lattices of various materials. This development was the result of methodic investigations in photoelectric and photonuclear processes, conducted by Dr. Gustav Le Bon in Belgium (1897). The next appearance of this thought regime came when Dr. Andre Helbronner in France (1920), and
Dr. Fritz Paneth and Dr. Kurt Peters in Germany (1926) each independendy began studying electrical discharge processes in pxtre hydrogen gas, a dangerous experimental line to pursue even in university laboratories. Each researcher discovered that “extra energy”, in exceedingly great supphes, could be obtained for hours from their experimental apparatus. Long after an initial high voltage electrical discharge had been made to pass across tungsten or palladium arc electrodes, and then withdrawn, their strange and continued red glowing heat was observed. Here was the clearest suggestion that an unknown energy process had been accidentally tapped.
In varieties of these experiments, the properties of uranium and other heavy isotopes were found to release similar, though limited energetic streams. Some utilized uranium, radium, and thorium electrodes in other gaseous atmospheres, obtaining electrical outputs as well as heat Tubes in this regcud were built and used by Ainsworth (1915), Winkelmaxm (1923), Metzger (1925), McElrath (1936), The use of purified uranium in small laboratory experiments by Fermi proved to be the more inferior of all the methods, ultimately requiring highly privatized and expensive systems for the production of “fuel”. Here was a new technology which could be made inaccessible to civilian privateers by virtue of its excessive industrial support structures. The purification of uranium required gigantic facilities requiring great financied expenditures. Here was the perfect opportunity to institute a new monopoly at the ground floor!
But this experimental pursuit, while remaining a laboratory secret, also had its malignant side. Besides being a deadly radioactive poison, uranium had another potential utility. These researches released one of the most terrifying secrets in all of Nature. Both regulators, their servant minions, and the rest of society came face to face with the dread power of the insignificant. What was once perceived as weak, became the horrid strength. And not one of the controlling factions could have foreseen the nightmcue which was releeised. And then, just as sudden, the regulatory commissions found themselves staring into an abyss of horror in which every Old World method had found its new world end.
Warring Houses stimulate international wars for the acquisition of land, resource, and populations. Warring Houses therefore depend on the superiority of their military forces to turn the tide of victory in their favor. Science, that infant-terrible from the lower classes, proved to have merit in mUitary apphca-tions. So long as miUtary force was controllable, limited, regulated, even wars could be tolerated among Houses. Blasting, destroying, devastating, and killing were all part of he strivings of power. Wars were very controlled events. But, as scientific research was making its progress into the very wheelworks of Nature, an imexpected developed emerged. The science and technology, whose ghost could not be contained, spavmed a conundrum. Science found itself beholding, in deep recesses of matter, a natural power capable of annihilating all earthly power. And very suddenly, all natural and social powers bent down
Toward the infinitesimal, toward the atom and its hideous energies.
In the conflict of World War II, threats that the Nazi regime had developed an atomic weapon were more than conceivable. Lingering rumours teach that Nazi physicists had already tested small atomic weapons. Having found the repercussions of these weapons inefficient from the conqueror’s standpoint, their later development of neutron-emitting weapons has been more than a matter of speculation. Wrenched toward the headlong development of an atomic arsenal, the real power once again refocused without permission or delegation. Predicated on the inescapable demands of war, oligarchs were again force to watch the power leave their centers of control, as power was being spontaneously generated in working class laboratories. Moreover, the threat wcis such that the rulership had to expend capital in order to insure that they would first acquire their version of the “Atomic Bomb”. In this incredible turn, atomic energy research neutralized the repressive tide of decrees with which rulership had punished the working class. But those of the working class who labored on the new “device” were not prepared for the path into which they would soon find themselves walking. It was at this very point in history that the initial and wonderful visionary potential of atomic energy was to be twisted into a thing completely devastating for humanity.
The result of decades’ dreaming and experimental research produced, not the intended glory of an endless and safe energy source, but an absolute livid horror. The envisioned goal was never to use the heavy metals at all, but to employ light metals, and the solar energies of which Tesla and Le Bon spoke. The real atomic energy was a natural release of energetic streams, a direct process of conversion which produced pure electrical currents, not radioactive debris. But with the hot body-permeating green-white flash of the Alamogordo experiment, all those dreams were exploded away in a thousand thunders. Indeed those once confident regulators, who so pushed for the “bigger Bomb” were scrambling for assistance and explanation. Here was an unreckoned force, an unknown whose repercussions were far more horrific than the thunderous blast which reminded many of eternal judgement.
Atomic weaponry best expressed the power of consciousness and its embodiment in technology. For those whose policies sought the eradication of visioncuy science, here was a true horror. The Atomic Bomb was a destroying power unlike all others, released through a simple application of theoretical analysis. A simple mental application by a working class consortium. Here was the earthly equalizer. The untamed and irrepressible world annihilator. The Bomb was impersonal, ultimate, and unregulated. Fear was the force inherent in this natural energy. Fear and respect for those who wielded The Weapon.
The oligarchy viewed Atomic Bombs as destroying weapons from whose aftermath there could be no hope of resource acquisition. These were absolute weapons of threat, weapons used to do permanent and final damage to hostile Houses. Such damage could be inflicted, so it was commonly thought, with absolute impunity. No repercussions. To destroy an opposing House with finality would be the threat which balanced the often expressed ambitions. Houses would be forced to speak one with the other through diplomatic channels at the very highest intelligence levels. These weapons could effect the total destruction of an enemy House region and its territories, a subsequent total takeover being then possible. Many controlling agencies in the bureaucracy comforted themselves in this notion, somehow imagining that the atomic weapon under construction was but a larger version of any conventional chemical explosive. Most thought the Atomic Bomb to be a larger blockbuster type bomb, with no major difference but blast size. Typical was the self-indulgent response of the rulership, which anticipated no real distinction between chemical and atomic weaponry.
The race to produce a working atomic prototype is a tale told in madness, a device the result of madness. Forged in the fear that hostile others would, at some indistinct future produce just such a terror weapon, NAO research teams were literally pushed against all reason into the atomic fires. The totality of an American working force misapplied its intellect and labors, permanently stained by the mere touch of their new and pernicious acquaintance, Uranium. Ironically, uranium was discovered by Martin Klaproth, a German apothecary. During this time, uranium found use only as a ceramic glaze, producing yellow, orange, brown, and black enamels, and in glass. Used to make in vacuum capacitors, uranium glass gave a pearly yellow color with a strange green fluorescence. These radioactive components produced an extraordinarily stable high capacitance per unit volume, and were used in hlghpower Naval UHF and RADAR transmitters. The Westinghouse Lamp Division briefly experimented with uranium-doped tungsten filaments, a means by which indefinite lamp life had been demonstrated.
Elxperimenters and researchers, once fascinated with the phenomenon of radioactivity, turned their minds only on deriving benefit from the strange natural variety of radioactive minerals. Not one of the early experimenters required the purification of uranium for the powerful effects which they had discovered. Indeed, it had been found that natural uranium ores were sufficient for the production of electrical currents and other such exoenergetic effects (Le Bon, Tesla, Moray, Ainsworth, Winkelmann, Metzger, Moray, McElrath). The mad rush toward the development of atomic weaponry provoked an unmetered lunge into an oblivion, one in which the wonderful dreams were for a time forgotten. The atomic threat was a hideous and macabre shadow, standing at the very edge of awareness. Fear of this figure momentarily covered all of the dreams which the previous Century had succeeded in delivering to humanity. Atomic fear was a vacuum, drawing out the life of dreamers and other children. But for the old patents of radioactive tubes, special medical beam energies, and other such devices, the old knowledge comprising the mysterious atomic dream was nearly lost.
Careful study of the radioactive attributes of uranium convinced Leo Szilard that highly purified uranium isotopes could function in a chain reaction of unmentionable power. Neutrons, the primary peuticulate radiation of the metal, and the neutron-absorptive resonant qualities of the heavy uranium nucleus, would combine to produce explosive chain reactions. Urcuiium was the element of choice. Toward these ends, uranium was sought in huge quantities now, an unnatural condition. Nature did not concentrate uranium in such vast quantities. Researchers were now prepared to defy Nature and all natural law. Pushing the limits of blind scientific will, science committees now demanded uranium supplies. Injune 1940,1200 tons of high-grade urcUiium ore was shipped to New York Harbor, and stored in an isolate warehouse on Staten Island. While 20 other such shipments made their way to Tennessee and Washington State, this first shipment was “forgotten”.
Sitting in the warehouse for two full years, the Staten Island northshore site became fully contaminated. The uranium cache was finally sold by Belgian importer Edgar Sengiere, to Colonel Kenneth Nichols of the US Army for $1.35 per pound (September 1942). This uranium ore was reduced to sofid metal in Bloomfield, New Jersey; a process which exposed uranyl nitrate to sunlight in opened rooftop evaporating tanks. MetaUic uranium powder was obtained by electrolyzing the resulting green salts. Pressed into briquettes and melted in vacuum into 1 inch-diameter wafers, the discs were priced at $2000 each. The factory produced a little more than 1 pound uranium metal per month. In upscaled production, the sunlight process produced 65 tons of uranium metal at the original New Jersey site.
On Boston’s northshore, industrial chemists melted a mixture of uranium ore with calcium compounds. Hundreds of pounds uranium powder were produced by this method. The highly reactive metal powder, capable of bursting into flames in air, was packed around with crushed dry ice. These were each shipped in one gallon dry ice covered containers to MIT for vacuum melting. This method was much improved by the mixing of uranium tetrafluo-ride salt with pure calcium. The resultant product produced 6 parts pure uranium metal for every 10 parts tetrafluoride salt. Vacuum melted, these castings measured 2 inches in diameter and 5 inches long. Each casting weighed 11 pounds. Later magnesium was mixed with uranium tetrafluoride and melted, a process which produced 100 pounds pure uranium metal weekly. Malhnckrodt, in St. Louis, developed an ether purification process which produced one daily ton of uranium metal. Every vessel, every accoutrement, every bit of ground, or laboratory table, shipping room floor, or workmen’s aprons...everything was contaminated with the radioactive poison. The dust lingered for years in locations which merely shipped the dust Hapless machinists, mere cogs in the radioactive machine, were later given highly purified uranium castings for tooling. The flakes which fell fi-om lathes, yet hopelessly contaminated with the poisoning, exploded into smoky flames. Now what of those innocent souls who held castings and tools together, breathing radioactive smoke, and who stooped to pick up each burning flake?
The developmental problem was not now one which lacked for high grade uranium metal, but for high grade fissile uranium. .Now the problem was to obtain the highly purified U-235 isotope, a natural rarity, and produce it in large quantities. Only the nuclei of neutron-emittirg U-235 atoms could be made to ring like a bell and split into neat fi-agmenis. This was “bomb material”. This would only happen when the nuclei were made to absorb more neutrons. But U-235 percentages in metallic uranium were low, a weak 0.7 percent of the supply. Furthermore, the separation of fissile U-235 fi-om natural U-238 was problematic on several engineering levels. The other possible material was plutonium, another fissile element altogether. Theory taught that smaller amounts of plutonium would produce more violent fissile energies than the now-precious uranium-235.
Thermal diffusion, directed by Philip Abelson at the NRL, was pioneered in Nazi Germany. Thermal diffusion separated isotopes by placing thermal gradients across isotope rich solutions, mass differences separating the isotopes. A thermal diffusion pilot plant was managed by Naval Authority in Philadelphia. Gaseous diffusion, directed by John Dunning of Columbia University, required greatest care, an engineering nightmare. Heated until it became a caustic radioactive gas, uranium isotopic mixtures were pressured through an extensive baffle of filters. Diffusion separated the relatively fight U-238 nuclei fi-om those slightly heavier U-235 nuclei. Both of these processes were time consuming and dangerous, a chemical engineering nightmare. The gaseous diffusion method was the most hazardous method, provoking a great deal of concern. There would be no permissible accidental oversights. The nature of these unnaturally concentrated elements was found not to be a forgiving one. Elnrico Fermi successfully designed a workable atomic “reactor” (December 2, 1942). Chain reactor conversion, pioneered by Dr. Fermi, irradiated uranium slugs with neutrons, gradually building plutonium over a period of months. Magnetic separation, a method proposed by Nobel Laureate, Dr. Ernest Lawrence, seemed to be the quickest means for separating uranium isotopes. His miniature models at Berkeley successfully produced milligrams of 30 percent pure U-235. Larger systems would separate and purify isotopes with speed and in quantity.
Government authority stepped into highest gear now, allocating funds and lands which dwarfed all the previous expenditures. Two work sites were chosen, each for their remoteness and proximity to hydroelectric energy sources. One site was constructed in Hanford, Washington. Hanford was built around three Chain Reactors, B, D, and F, for the production of plutonium, and a large adjacent separation plant The other site, in Clinton, Tennessee, became popularly known as Oeikridge. This was the site of several different isotope separation systems. The 2 Megawatt Chain Reactor (X-10), gaseous diffusion
Plant (the “gasworks”, Project K-25), thermal diffusion plant (the “fox farm”, Project S50), and the magnetic separator (the “racetrack”. Project Y-12). It is quite obvious that government bureaucracy was given full authority to engage all possible means for producing fissile materials at any cost. So great was the fear that hostile others would appropriate the knowledge and loose the terror first. Save in the D-Day Invasive Force, where lives and machines flooded the seas, never before in history had such unlimited funding been expended.
The first plant to begin production was the Y-12 of Dr. Lawrence. The device required to rapidly manufacture this material had to be many times more powerful than any cyclotron in existence. Calculated at 12,000 times the combined acceleration and volume transport of any existing cyclotron, twelve of these huge magnetic separation systems (CALUTRONS) were constructed. Each such system required tons of iron core material and equivalent tonnages of silver magnet wire. Nearly 400 million dollars worth of pure silver was convoyed from West Point to Bayway, Newjersey, where it was formed by Phelps Dodge. This wire was then trucked in convoy to Milwaukee, where the thick silver ribbon was wrapped around massive iron cores. These gigantic magnet sections were shipped to Clinton on opened flatbed trucks, a total of 14 thousand tons of silver ribbon (see figure).
The Y-12 system utilized 9 oval (YA-I2), and three linear (YB-12) shaped hard vacuum “race tracks”. The CALUTRON System combined an accelerative potential with enormous transportative volume, an incredible isotopic nucleonic flux. Highly charged input nucleons were fired into the systems. Each CALUTRON was equipped with 96 separate “receivers”, targets into which
The light U-235 nuclei were absorbed. Dr. Lawrence and his team studied 71 input systems and 115 receivers. Each of the racetracks could be set into operation independent of the others. These “batch operations” could be set into action around the clock. Enriched matericJ from any one CALUTRON could be fed back into any other, further enrichment thus being achieved. Not only capable of isotopic mass separation, redesigned forms could produce new fissile elements from existing ones. The Y-12 System could operate as an enormously powerful transmuter of elements. One could bombard target receivers with literally any kind of nucleons. Y-12 produced the fissile uranium for the Hiroshima Bomb.
By February 1945, Hanford had produced plutonium. The gold covered slugs were literedly “hot” to the touch with radiative emanations. This fissile
Material was sent under radio contact convoy to Alamogordo to make the “test Bomb”. Now theoreticians faced an essential problem in approach. Theory was always derived from some previous knowledge. Theories were perfected “a posteriori”, after sufficient knowledge had been gathered. Theories relied on such funds of gradually acquired knowledge, from which to make statements and compose descriptions. But now there were no guidelines, no pathways. Bringing together sufficient quantities of fissile matter could be disastrous. Even manufacturing it could have had disastrous effects. Were the critical mass ever reached in one of the Y-12 units, the reaction would have destroyed the entire site in one brief flash. But how much?
Determining the “critical mass” of U-235 could not be an empirical process. An accident would wrreak havoc with those whose wished use of the phenomenon on their enemies. There were those experiments, frightening accounts known as “Tickling the Dragon’s Tail”. In these extremely hazardous experiments, fissile matter was arranged in various symmetries and briefly brought together. Whether tapped together with a long screwdriver, rolled on ramps, or allowed to fall through tubes past static fissile matter, this empirical process represented the first attempt at gauging relative critical mass values for A-Bomb production. These empirical experiments were required for each of the fissile elements, U-235 and Plutonium. After countless castings and recastings, after many strangely shaped geometries of the fissile matter, the hideous device was complete. Technicians and engineers assembled and hoisted “the device”.
World History
