What Happened at America's Secret Atomic City?

and release an enormous amount of destructive energy. But that would require a massive, complex manufacturing process involving tens of thousands of workers, which needed to be kept secret to thwart interference from spies and sabotaurs. But the question was where could those facilities possibly be hidden. The U S officials had already identified potential sites in several parts of

the country, but all of them had drawbacks. Shasta Dam in California, for example, was too close to the Pacific coast, and this vulnerable to air attack. In several locations in Washington State would have required construction of long power lines to provide the massive amounts of electricity needed for the work.

A site in Illinois, near Chicago was also out officials didn't want to be close to a big population center, since the potential health risks of the work were not clear, and it would have been easier for enemy agents to blend in around a city. So instead, Groves quickly settled upon a fifty two tho acre that's twenty one hector

site in rural eastern Tennessee, later expanded slightly. Not only would it be inconspicuous to anyone outside of the sparsely populated area, but it was also close to hydroelectric plans operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which could supply the enormous amounts of electricity that the plants would require. It was the perfect place to build both the Clinton Engineer Works, which would be the atomic complex, and a secret city

to house the workers. The government decided to call the secret city oak Ridge because it sounded quote sufficiently bucolic and general, according to an article in a nineteen sixty nine government review of the project. Not long after choosing the area, the U. S Government quietly started moving small farmers who had land on the site, paying them compensation but not telling them why. Then came trainloads full of

construction equipment and building materials. Construction crews quickly erected the buildings that would comprise the nondescriptly named campus, as well as thousands of houses for scientists and workers. Many of the homes were B one flat tops, a design fashion from pre fabricated panels and roofing to save construction time. Building the secret industrial facilities and housing for workers cost around one point three two billion dollars that's about eighteen

point five billion in today's money. That amounted to sixty percent of the Manhattan Project's total budget. Over the next few years, Oakridge grew into a community of seventy five thousand people. We spoke with d Ray Smith, a retired historian for the Y twelve National Security Complex who also is the historian for the city of oak Ridge and a calumnist for the oak Ridger, a local newspaper. Smith

explained people came from all over the world. Many of the scientists were Hungarians, a lot came out of Germany and Great Britain. He explains that others were recruited for the Clinton engineering works by big US companies working on the Manhattan Project, who scoured campuses of US colleges and universities for bright students with needed scigence and technical skills.

For example, a young chemist named Bill Wilcox, who was approached by an Eastman Kodak recruiter in three later recalled that he was only told that the job was some sort of secret war work. He said, I asked where I'd be working, He wouldn't say it was secret. I asked what sort of work I'd be doing. He wouldn't say it was secret. Wilcox eventually ended up at the Clinton Engineer Works. According to Smith, those who turned down jobs might end up being drafted into a special engineering

detachment of the U. S. Army and sent to Tennessee. Anyway, those atomic workers arrived at a place shrouded in secrecy. Locals knew something mysterious was going on at the site, but only those who were part of the mission were allowed inside, passed the guarded gates on the access roads.

The atomic facilities themselves were surrounded by additional security. The work itself was highly compartmentalized, so that most people knew only about the small portion of the effort that they themselves were working on, and only a select few knew that the overarching mission was to help make the atomic bomb. Access to buildings other than the one you were working in was highly restricted to keep information from getting out, oak Ridge became a self contained community with most everything

that its workers needed. The secret city had stores, movie houses, a high school, a bank, a three bed hospital, tennis and handball courts, and even in its own symphony orchestra led by a Manhattan Project scientist. People who lived their tended victory gardens, raised families, and led what was pretty much in normal American existence, that is, except for the secrecy that surrounded them and their work. A billboard reminded workers,

let's keep our trap shut. They knew they had to be cautious not to say anything about their jobs to anyone, even their own spouses. A young scientist told one of the first reporters to write about the subject, when Louis Felstein would sit around the dinner table, and the strain was terrible, but it was all in the difficult effort

of producing uranium two thirty five. There's only a tiny amount of the stuff zero point seven percent in uranium, or most of which is uranium two thirty eight, which doesn't fission, is easily and a bomb such as Little Boy, the one dropped on Hiroshima required one d and forty one pounds. That's sixty of uranium two thirty five. You have to separate a lot of material to get that

much two thirty five. To solve that problem, the Clinton Engineer Works Y twelve plant used special devices called calutrons, which utilized the electromagnetic separation process developed by Nobel winning physicist ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley. The calutrons used heat and powerful magnets to separate the two isotopes and then to collect just the uranium two thirty five isotope because it's so much lighter in weight.

To gather enough uranium two thirty five for the project's purposes, the Y twelve facility employed twenty two thousand workers to run one thousand, one hundred and fifty two calcutrons literally around the clock. Meanwhile, another part of the works, the X ten graphite reactor, used neutrons committed from uranium two thirty five to convert uranium two thirty eight into an isotope of a different element, plutonium two thirty nine, another

easily fissionable material suitable for making atomic bombs. As Smith explains, after X ten demonstrated that the process could work, the actual plutonium used to make Fatman the bomb dropped in Nangasaki was produced in the B reactor at the Hanford

Engineer Works near Richmond, Washington. Finally, on August six, the world witnessed to the results of the secret City's labors when the United States dropped an atomic bomb containing uranium two thirty five produced there on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Knoxville, Tennessee New Sentinels front page headline proudly proclaimed atomic super bomb made at oak Ridge strikes Japan. That

wasn't completely correct. Though the uranium two thirty five came from Tennessee, parts of the bomb were made at three different plants, so that none of the would have the complete design. The destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was horrific, and it was a or perhaps the turning point of the war. After the war, the various parts of the

once secret Tennessee atomic complex were split up. Part eventually was reborn as the oak Ridge National Laboratory, which helped pioneer the field of nuclear medicine, producing ice topes for use in treating cancer. And as diagnostic tools, in addition to doing cutting edge research in areas ranging from nanotechnology

to wireless charging of electric vehicles. Another portion became the Y twelve National Security Complex, which produced components for tens of thousands of thermonuclear weapons in the U s Arsenal during the Cold War and later helped disassemble US and former Soviet nuclear weapons. A third part is now the

site of the East Tennessee Technology Park. Though there's no evidence that German or Japanese spies ever managed to infiltrate the Clinton Engineer Works, a Soviet spy named George Coval did manage to get a job there and apparently passed along information about the atomic work to the Soviets. In two thousand seven, he was honored posthumously with a Hero of the Russian Federation Medal, the nation's highest honor, by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Today's episode was written by Patrick J.

Kaiger and produced by Tyler CLAYG. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other historical topics, including lots of further reading on Oak City and the atomic age, visit our home Planet, how Stuff works dot com and for more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.