Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech are you. It's time for a tech
Speaker 1: Stuff Classic episode. We are actually going to continue the
Speaker 1: conversation that was begun in last week's classic episode. Last
Speaker 1: week was The Manhattan Project Part one. This week it's
Speaker 1: tech Stuff takes Manhattan Project. Ben Boland joins us yet
Speaker 1: again to chat about the Manhattan Project, and I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy. So I'd like to say all listeners, if
Speaker 1: you have not heard part one of this product, of
Speaker 1: this podcast or this series, then I implore you. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe that's too strong a word. I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: I think implore is a good word because otherwise they're
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of play. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: like watching uh season four losting. It'll be like it'll
Speaker 1: be like if you if you've heard, hey, that Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones show is supposed to be really good, let
Speaker 1: me just watch this one episode. You won't know who
Speaker 1: any of the people are or why they're doing what
Speaker 1: they're doing. Uh. So, here's a quick previously on tech stuff.
Speaker 1: We ended up covering the physics that led up to
Speaker 1: the discovery of fission. We also covered the political landscape,
Speaker 1: the fact that World War two was well, first it
Speaker 1: was building, you know, the world was building up to
Speaker 1: World War two, and then World War two breaks out,
Speaker 1: and how that ended up creating a fast track in
Speaker 1: the United States for research into fission, specifically in the
Speaker 1: weaponization of fission, using using atomic science to create a weapon,
Speaker 1: because there was the very real threat that the Nazis
Speaker 1: were working on their own program for such a thing,
Speaker 1: and even before the United States was pulled into the war, UH,
Speaker 1: there was this this need. Einstein himself had expressed concern.
Speaker 1: And we also talked about sort of the the players
Speaker 1: that we're all doing various lines of research into the
Speaker 1: separate separation of of ions of uranium, because, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, you two thirty five is really what you
Speaker 1: want if you're trying to achieve nuclear fission, especially a
Speaker 1: sustainable chain reaction, but you two thirty eight is overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: the more abundant version of uranium that's found in nature,
Speaker 1: and separating the two is not an easy task. So
Speaker 1: we have multiple areas of research looking into ways to
Speaker 1: do that and also a need to find a way
Speaker 1: to weaponize it. We concluded Part one this is just
Speaker 1: of set US upper parts. We concluded Part one talking
Speaker 1: about how there was Army corp of engineers have become
Speaker 1: involved and there was a fellow named James C. Marshall
Speaker 1: who was initially in charge. James C. Marshall's headquarters were
Speaker 1: located in Manhattan and specifically was the Manhattan Energy District.
Speaker 1: Was the code name for it, and the secret project,
Speaker 1: super secret project to develop atomic weapons became known as
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, even after those headquarters were no longer
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. Yeah, you know, if you find a name
Speaker 1: that works, you stick. You stick with the name. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those it's one of those common misconceptions
Speaker 1: because as as we've mentioned on the previous episode, this
Speaker 1: uh Manhattan Project did not occur. Not only did not
Speaker 1: occur in just Manhattan or just in Mexico, but it
Speaker 1: occurred in areas across the across the US. There's some
Speaker 1: really cool stuff that's going to happen. There are towns
Speaker 1: that only exist because of the Manhattan Project. They would
Speaker 1: not have otherwise grown up where they are. And to
Speaker 1: really get into this. At this stage, the very early
Speaker 1: days of the Manhattan Project as an official thing, there
Speaker 1: were some tensions that were already building up between the
Speaker 1: scientific community, the various research centers that were looking into this,
Speaker 1: and the Army that was more or less kind of
Speaker 1: facilitating it, you know, sort of in charge. But also
Speaker 1: mainly their purpose was to make sure that the scientists
Speaker 1: were going to have the facilities and resources that they
Speaker 1: would need in order to do what they needed to do,
Speaker 1: and also the ones to crack the whip on the timeline. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and as it turns out, the Army moves at a
Speaker 1: certain pace that the scientists didn't find particularly helpful. That,
Speaker 1: you know, the essentially bureaucracy got in the way things,
Speaker 1: Things slowed down, and the scientists were not entirely happy
Speaker 1: with the way Marshall was running things. So in September
Speaker 1: nineteen forty to the Army decides to replace Marshall with
Speaker 1: Colonel Leslie R. Groves, who, after six days after becoming
Speaker 1: the head of the Manhattan Project was promoted to brigadier general.
Speaker 1: So calling him colonel Groves is misleading, since he was
Speaker 1: almost immediately a brigadier general. Gross was instrumental in bringing
Speaker 1: the Pentagon or building the Pentagon. He was he was
Speaker 1: one of the people very much in charge of that project.
Speaker 1: And he also had a background as an engineer, so
Speaker 1: he understood the needs of building facilities, you know what,
Speaker 1: what actually is required to do this, and he knew
Speaker 1: how to work on this in a very uh aggressive timeline,
Speaker 1: I guess is the best way to put it. So
Speaker 1: Groves moves in and then there were all these different
Speaker 1: sites that the scientists had identified as being potentially ideal
Speaker 1: for the Manhattan Project, and Marshall had been very slowly
Speaker 1: invest gating them. Groves, on the other hand, said all right,
Speaker 1: let's do it, and I'd like to get them. Let's
Speaker 1: get her done. Uh So Groves really look at the
Speaker 1: at the headquarters from Manhattan to d C. But of
Speaker 1: course it was already known as the Manhattan Project. It
Speaker 1: was not going to be called the d C Project.
Speaker 1: It got stuck that way, and he made Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols,
Speaker 1: who was jame C. Marshall's deputy, into his chief aid
Speaker 1: on the project. Marshall himself became a district engineer within
Speaker 1: the program, and that's where he really excelled. Within the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project because his his talents were considerable. It's just
Speaker 1: they were better suited for a different a different job
Speaker 1: than overseeing the entire project. I see what you're saying. Yeah, because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, you know, you want someone who's
Speaker 1: aggressive so that things can get started, but you also
Speaker 1: want people who observe the need for caution when you're
Speaker 1: handling nuclear materials. It's important to Marshall was not fired. No,
Speaker 1: he was just simply reassigned. It was one of those
Speaker 1: things where the need for this project was clear, but
Speaker 1: how to organize it was something that was kind of
Speaker 1: up in the air for a little bit. Is the
Speaker 1: first time anybody was doing something like this as far
Speaker 1: as exactly you know, the ancient Egyptians. No, Uh So
Speaker 1: at the same time that this is going on, Vanavar Bush.
Speaker 1: If you don't know who that is, you need to
Speaker 1: listen to our last episode. Yeah, I think that's just
Speaker 1: gonna get more difficult from this point forward. Uh set
Speaker 1: up the Military Policy Committee, which would be made up
Speaker 1: of a representative from the Army, a representative from the Navy,
Speaker 1: and one from the Office of Scientific Research and Development.
Speaker 1: If you recall, Bush himself was the head of the
Speaker 1: Office of Scientific Research and Development, but was constantly moving
Speaker 1: up because his considerable talents and also getting things done.
Speaker 1: Bush I think was probably one of the best at
Speaker 1: figuring out who would be ideal to run certain parts
Speaker 1: of this project. Like he was really good at matching
Speaker 1: the people with the parts of the project that needed them.
Speaker 1: Um very visionary kind of guy. Also very very effective
Speaker 1: at being a liaison between the big the big machine
Speaker 1: and then these brilliant scientists. Uh yeah. He seemed to
Speaker 1: know how to handle people no matter what background they
Speaker 1: came from, and those folks are invaluable. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can find people who are really smart and really talented,
Speaker 1: but if they don't know how to how to interact
Speaker 1: with other people, they don't go very far. Bush, however,
Speaker 1: was not one of those guys. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: more of this classic episode of tech stuff after this
Speaker 1: quick break. Groves himself made it clear that the pursuit
Speaker 1: of multiple lines of research for that isotopes separation that
Speaker 1: was something that could not go on forever. That really
Speaker 1: what needed to happen was the project needed to settle
Speaker 1: on the you know, one, one line or maybe two
Speaker 1: lines of inquiry to really concentrate their efforts. Even if
Speaker 1: it turned out those were not the most uh efficient,
Speaker 1: it would mean that they could at least concentrate their
Speaker 1: their you know, their workforce, because at the time these
Speaker 1: scientists have their pet projects, which some of them have,
Speaker 1: even if they some of them already kind of indicate
Speaker 1: that this will be enormously expensive unless there's some breakthrough.
Speaker 1: And and you had groups that had very different views
Speaker 1: on the efficacy of the various methodologies. For example, the
Speaker 1: British loved the idea of gaseous diffusion for isotope separation. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you have Oppenheimer who was demonstrating that the electro magnetic
Speaker 1: version of isotope separation could be incredibly effective. It's just
Speaker 1: that he was working on a smaller scale, right, But
Speaker 1: the scale that he was working on, if he could
Speaker 1: scale up, he was pretty sure this methodology would be
Speaker 1: incredibly fruitful. So he was arguing quite strongly for that.
Speaker 1: So you had all these different camps coming in and
Speaker 1: then you had other versions as well, but we're just
Speaker 1: two of them. And that's what GROLs was saying. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: really by the end of this year, by the end
Speaker 1: of two let's really settle on a specific one so
Speaker 1: that we can actually make a weapon that will make
Speaker 1: a difference in this war, because at the rate we're going,
Speaker 1: by the time we create a weapon, piece will have
Speaker 1: broken out and then we'll just feel like jackasses, or
Speaker 1: it would be a situation where if we don't get there,
Speaker 1: someone is going to because the paranoid at that time
Speaker 1: was so very high. Right even first of all, there
Speaker 1: was not really any There was no way of knowing
Speaker 1: what was going on in the Nazi camps, so it
Speaker 1: could very well be that Nazi scientists were much closer there.
Speaker 1: That was the legitimate fear. But beyond that, there were
Speaker 1: already tensions between the United States and other nations, specifically
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, and so there was also a real
Speaker 1: fear that Soviet Union could be investigating this as well.
Speaker 1: And so even if the weapon weren't used in World
Speaker 1: War Two, it would be really important for the United
Speaker 1: States interests for there to be such a weapon period.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's going to play a part when we
Speaker 1: get to the point of actually deploying said weapon. But anyway,
Speaker 1: November Uh, there was one of the methods of isotope
Speaker 1: separation that just did not pan out and that was
Speaker 1: using CENTRICU centrifuges. And it's because the centrifuge machines were
Speaker 1: not dependable. They would break down too frequently. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't that the methodology was bad, it was that the
Speaker 1: machinery itself was not dependable. Yeah. So, um, I mean
Speaker 1: if you were remember the stucks net story, you know,
Speaker 1: those were centrifuges that were set to spend at the
Speaker 1: wrong speed which ended up causing uh, some pretty big issues. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's something that we've known about
Speaker 1: for since the nineteen forties, is that if you don't
Speaker 1: get the machinery to work correctly, then you're not going
Speaker 1: to be producing the you two that you need. So
Speaker 1: electromagnetic separation was the big winner so far with you
Speaker 1: to guest, iffusion was promising enough to still be in
Speaker 1: the running for consideration and the Brits. The Brits were
Speaker 1: still very much behind that. Plutonium, which was a completely
Speaker 1: separate line of inquiry. Remember most of this was focused
Speaker 1: on uranium. Plutonium was ended up getting a big boost
Speaker 1: as well. The Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, which had just
Speaker 1: recently brought Enrico Fermi on. He had been working at
Speaker 1: Columbia and he had moved over or two the Metallurgical
Speaker 1: Laboratory in Chicago. They produced a small amount of pure plutonium.
Speaker 1: They had uranium piles and plutonium was a byproduct of
Speaker 1: the process they were using, and so they were saying, well,
Speaker 1: plutonium is a better Uh. It's it's more apt to
Speaker 1: undergo fission than you is. The problem is making enough
Speaker 1: plutonium for that to be effective. So it was promising.
Speaker 1: But when we're talking small amount of pure plutonium, it's microscopic,
Speaker 1: that's how small. So not useful for any sort of
Speaker 1: practical Yeah. Nothing, nothing at all except for the fact
Speaker 1: that's saying we've proven that it works, so so if
Speaker 1: we can, if we can scale this up, then it
Speaker 1: could be a promising means of generating plutonium. And it
Speaker 1: was Glenn Seaboards team if you don't know who seaboard as,
Speaker 1: you need to listen to the last episode. Uh, figured
Speaker 1: out how to separate the plutonium from a radiated uranium. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you had the theoretical physicists, So these are
Speaker 1: the guys who you know, You had the the experimental
Speaker 1: ones who are actually making theory. You know, putting theory
Speaker 1: too to the test. But the theoretical physicists who are
Speaker 1: led by Oppenheimer, we're refining their calculations to figure out
Speaker 1: exactly how much fission herble material would be needed to
Speaker 1: create a working bomb. Now, the Brits had come forward
Speaker 1: and said probably between five to ten k UM. After
Speaker 1: their after they work with Oppenheimer and the other theorists,
Speaker 1: they said, yeah, we think that might be an underestimation.
Speaker 1: You might need twice as much. By the way, they
Speaker 1: would change this again later on, and each time the
Speaker 1: goal posts will moved further out that we need to
Speaker 1: we need we're going to need more material based on
Speaker 1: our calculations to make a truly UH reactive system where
Speaker 1: there is a sustainable chain reaction. So Oppenheimer was recommending
Speaker 1: search into a fusion bomb, not just fission. Fusion bomb
Speaker 1: would actually be triggered by initially a fission reaction, So
Speaker 1: you have to have fissionable material first, and then you
Speaker 1: would the energy from that. That interaction would provide the
Speaker 1: necessary energy to facilitate a fusion reaction which could be
Speaker 1: much more powerful. This would be the super bomb. Hydrogen
Speaker 1: bomb was one of those things that was bandied about
Speaker 1: quite a bit in these early days. But frankly, everyone's like,
Speaker 1: let's let's crack fission first breakfast. Yeah exactly, But but
Speaker 1: s one, the Office of Science and Research authorize some
Speaker 1: research into light materials, deuterium being the main one to
Speaker 1: look into the possibility of a fusion bomb, So they
Speaker 1: didn't want to discount it or dismiss it. But they
Speaker 1: also didn't want to put all the eggs in the
Speaker 1: fusion basket. Right. Well, it's you know, if you consider
Speaker 1: just what what outlines earlier, it's at it's complicating a
Speaker 1: process that we have yet to successfully do you know,
Speaker 1: are complete. Right, And so then Groves can't decides, okay,
Speaker 1: since peagures out, that's not gonna work. It's it's it
Speaker 1: will take us too long to refine the process for
Speaker 1: it to be practical. Let's focus right now on the
Speaker 1: pile research that's what generates plutonium, the electromagnetic research, and
Speaker 1: the gaseous diffusion research, and we're gonna skip the pilot
Speaker 1: plant stage go straight to full scale production. In other words,
Speaker 1: normally you would create a slightly larger pilot plant to
Speaker 1: make certain that the things you had tested in the
Speaker 1: laboratory still work at the plant stage, but if they
Speaker 1: don't work, then you can tweak things because the pilot
Speaker 1: plant isn't so large or so the infrastructure is not
Speaker 1: so rigid that you can't shift things around. So idea
Speaker 1: being that you find the ideal operating conditions at the
Speaker 1: pilot plant stage, then you scale up to full scale.
Speaker 1: They're skipping pilot plant and saying we don't have time
Speaker 1: for it, which is a dangerous yeah, literally and figuratively right,
Speaker 1: because figuratively you could say, well, we built this facility
Speaker 1: based upon our best estimation and it turns out that
Speaker 1: was off, and now we're stuck with it and we
Speaker 1: have to use an unideal situation to do whatever it
Speaker 1: is we need to do. Literally, you're dealing with radioactive
Speaker 1: material and if it gets out of control, that would
Speaker 1: be devastating. December second, ninety two, Enrico Fermi and his
Speaker 1: team demonstrating in front of a group of dignitaries a
Speaker 1: nuclear chain reaction which lasted for twenty eight minutes until
Speaker 1: firm ME shut it down. So that was this is
Speaker 1: where we get one of the most famous exchanges from
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, and it was when Compton who called Conant.
Speaker 1: Those names will be familiar, you know. Yeah. So Compton
Speaker 1: called Conan and they had the following exchange, up, who
Speaker 1: do you want to be? Do you want to be
Speaker 1: Compton or Conan? I will you know what, I'll be
Speaker 1: Compion and I go ahead, ring ring, Hello. The Italian
Speaker 1: navigator has landed in the New World. How were the
Speaker 1: natives very friendly? And that was that was the way
Speaker 1: of describing Not only was the the experiment of success,
Speaker 1: but it it impressed the dignitaries who were there to
Speaker 1: see it. So that was that was there coded some
Speaker 1: semi coded, like improvised way of of saying what had
Speaker 1: happened without you know, squeezing or or or or or
Speaker 1: dropping information that might be you know, pretty sensitive over
Speaker 1: a telephone line. You did a bang up job with these,
Speaker 1: with these notes. And uh when I saw when I
Speaker 1: first saw this, it made me want to go into
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole of finding all of the recorded UH
Speaker 1: code word conversations of this time, because it must sound
Speaker 1: so bizarre because people are saying it with gravity, but
Speaker 1: they're saying stuff like, um, they're saying stuff like the
Speaker 1: rabbit has left the hutch. The rabbit has left the hutch,
Speaker 1: and then the person on the other line is like green,
Speaker 1: and someone goes blue and hangs up, you know, right,
Speaker 1: and you're like, does there any record of what this
Speaker 1: actually meant? I mean, the probably the most famous quote
Speaker 1: out of all of the Manhattan Project, I would argue,
Speaker 1: comes from Oppenheimer, absolutely and spawned so many, um, so
Speaker 1: many things, ranging from uh out and out conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: to uh just fascinating biographies to to spoil it because
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll forget about the time we get around
Speaker 1: to the part when the bomb is being tested. Oppenheimer's
Speaker 1: famous quote, you've probably heard it before as I am
Speaker 1: become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Yeah, and he um.
Speaker 1: He has a quotation where he explains that because that's
Speaker 1: some ominous stuff, that's like a nick cave with a
Speaker 1: bad seed song. Sure it, sure is. It were there
Speaker 1: with red right hand, if I were, if I were
Speaker 1: just hanging out, if you and I were hanging out
Speaker 1: when when the bomb dropped and someone said that they
Speaker 1: would immediately become a dangerous person, I would seriously wonder like,
Speaker 1: should we have you around? Yeah, for a moment, I
Speaker 1: thought you were going to say, like if we were
Speaker 1: out and I just turned to you and said, hey, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I am become deaf to the straight of worlds. I
Speaker 1: would take that as something to really mull over and
Speaker 1: possibly start to look for the nearest exite, especially if
Speaker 1: we were if we were just going down the street
Speaker 1: to a food truck or something. Right, Yeah, we're just
Speaker 1: heading out to the one over in the parking lot
Speaker 1: talking about tune your own horn. But there is a
Speaker 1: context of this, so yeah, and we can said that
Speaker 1: we'll get there a little bit later. We've got more
Speaker 1: to say in this classic episode of tech stuff. After
Speaker 1: these quick messages, in December two, the US government allocated
Speaker 1: half a billion dollars, which would eventually grow to more
Speaker 1: than two billion dollars dollars to fund further development. By
Speaker 1: the way, those costs, that's just the official numbers. There
Speaker 1: could be tons and tons that are tied into it
Speaker 1: in one way or another. Uh and and not to
Speaker 1: mention funds that didn't come directly from the United States government,
Speaker 1: right right, And that's that's a huge part of this.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter is that we probably will
Speaker 1: never know for sure, but we do know that two billion,
Speaker 1: although it may be the sticker price was not was
Speaker 1: not the the entirety of it. Yeah. And in fact,
Speaker 1: when we say we may never know, no one may
Speaker 1: might know. It's it's it's such a huge undertaking that
Speaker 1: it's very unlikely there's a document anywhere that has the
Speaker 1: full tally. It's just it's it's just too big. It's
Speaker 1: too big. Yeah, So it's not it's not like a
Speaker 1: conspiracy as much as it is a tremendously difficult calculation. Exactly,
Speaker 1: I've got the I've got the inflation number two there,
Speaker 1: what's that? And so we said two billion in nineteen Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's let just just do some math here. Let
Speaker 1: me get my advocates out two billion. Uh oh, you
Speaker 1: have to use smaller values. I was on a calculator.
Speaker 1: It says you have to use smaller values. So just
Speaker 1: a lot of money will leave it. Okay, Yes, a
Speaker 1: significant amount of cash. So the money went on to
Speaker 1: establish full scale gaseous fusion plants, full scale plutonium plants,
Speaker 1: and smaller electro magnetic plants, power plants, you know, like
Speaker 1: the manufacturing facilities, not not like biological plants. That doesn't
Speaker 1: come along until much later. Yes, and Vanavar Bush said
Speaker 1: the earliest of them could be expected would be early
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, and he was actually trying to be
Speaker 1: a little conservative because the earlier reports that suggested that
Speaker 1: if things worked out, there might be a weapon ready
Speaker 1: as early as ninety four. But Bush was thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pad that a little bit. And as it
Speaker 1: turns out, even that was optimistic early a little optimistic.
Speaker 1: Plutonium was looking promising, but people were worried that the
Speaker 1: radioactive pile approach, which is what fer Me was using,
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be scalable. That they'd be able to
Speaker 1: produce plutonium, but would be at such small amounts that
Speaker 1: it would take way too long to have enough for
Speaker 1: it to be a weapon, especially considering that they want
Speaker 1: to build more of the one because they have to
Speaker 1: test it, and they're still not absolutely sure how much
Speaker 1: they need per weapon. Right, And Uh, the demonstrations for
Speaker 1: ME had shown revealed that there could be a chain reaction,
Speaker 1: but the reaction was at too slow a rate for
Speaker 1: it to be used potentially as a weapon. Uh. The
Speaker 1: idea being that, yeah, you could do this to to
Speaker 1: generate energy, like it could be a nuclear power plant.
Speaker 1: The chain reaction would allow you to to harness in
Speaker 1: that respect, but it wouldn't be so fast to create
Speaker 1: an explosive event, so it would not be useful as
Speaker 1: a weapon. Um. However, more research would go into that also.
Speaker 1: Form Me's approach was at such a slow rate of
Speaker 1: of energy release that they did not need any sort
Speaker 1: of cooling system, so um, there was no need for
Speaker 1: the very advanced cooling systems that you will find in
Speaker 1: nuclear power plants these days, which was kind of interest
Speaker 1: to me. And there were three different competing designs for
Speaker 1: nuclear piles. One was water a water cooled model which
Speaker 1: was developed by Kale Young and Eugene Wigner. One was
Speaker 1: a liquid metal cooled approach headed by our good friend
Speaker 1: Leo listened to the last, and the last was a
Speaker 1: helium cooled pile which was headed by Thomas V. Moore,
Speaker 1: who was an engineer. Was pretty interesting. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a great nickname is called may West, um, presumably because
Speaker 1: the design included spherical segments in the outer shell of
Speaker 1: the facility and May West was built. I don't mean
Speaker 1: the actress. I mean I do mean the Actress, but
Speaker 1: I really mean the the actual facility name nicknamed may West.
Speaker 1: That was its official name by the way. Scale Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So Groves demanded that the Metallurgical Lab come up with
Speaker 1: a unified approach. Uh not not. You know, he wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna say, all right, look, let's have all three of
Speaker 1: these progress at the same time, because he was already
Speaker 1: dealing with a branch further up right. He was saying,
Speaker 1: plutonium is just one of the legs of research they're
Speaker 1: already funding, the other two being electromagnetic and gaseous diffusion.
Speaker 1: So he didn't want plutonium research to then split into
Speaker 1: three separate groups as well. That would just become unmanageable.
Speaker 1: So uh, a small facility would be headed by FERMI
Speaker 1: and shut down in nineteen forty three, so firm's research
Speaker 1: could end up informing the next stage. UM. They would
Speaker 1: then be able to decide if that was in fact
Speaker 1: the way they wanted to go. Plus they could take
Speaker 1: all the plutonium that was made by that that's part
Speaker 1: of the research, and set that aside. May West would
Speaker 1: be built and ready for operation by March nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: and its design would allow it to produce a hundred
Speaker 1: grams of plutonium per day, which was significantly more than
Speaker 1: firm's approach UM, and good old Leo was allowed to
Speaker 1: continue research on liquid metal cooling systems kind of on
Speaker 1: his own. So because it wasn't as big of a priority, right, yea,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It didn't look as promising too, Grows, and
Speaker 1: so even the Grows was like, look, you have to
Speaker 1: settle on one. Technically, all three continued UM Again, they
Speaker 1: didn't want to draw any conclusions too early on, and
Speaker 1: it turned out that they backed the wrong horse men. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Glee Glenn Seaboard's work and plutonium extraction made it possible
Speaker 1: to separate plutonium from a radiated uranium, which was an
Speaker 1: important step because both plutonium and a radiated uranium were
Speaker 1: byproducts of this pile research, and you have to separate
Speaker 1: the two if you want to get the fissionable material
Speaker 1: necessary to create the chain reactions. UM. So as one
Speaker 1: felt that the plutonium experiments could potentially be dangerous. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so they were there's thinking maybe we should, um,
Speaker 1: maybe we should start separating out some of these facilities,
Speaker 1: Like maybe we shouldn't co locate the ISID, the the
Speaker 1: plutonium separation facility with the nuclear pile facility. Let's they
Speaker 1: go back to your basket phrase. Let's know, why do
Speaker 1: we need to keep all our disasters in one basket? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then and then this also, you know, needs to
Speaker 1: be in an unpopulated area. Yes, because if you recall
Speaker 1: from the first episode, the nuclear pile research was largely
Speaker 1: taking place in an old racket court underneath the grand
Speaker 1: stand at the University of Chicago. UM, so not you
Speaker 1: know there there the facility or the department actually was saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind of wish you had come to us before
Speaker 1: you decided to use that area because this is kind
Speaker 1: of scary. Um. So they started looking around for potential
Speaker 1: partners to help build the facility and it uh, there
Speaker 1: was one specifically that they looked at, and they required
Speaker 1: a lot of um oh, corsion is the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but convincing for them to take part in it. It
Speaker 1: was DuPont Um and DuPont was not super keen on
Speaker 1: doing this. It actually did take quite a few conversations
Speaker 1: before they came on board, but they would ultimately build
Speaker 1: the facility. UM. And also in two Oppenheimer suggested the
Speaker 1: location of Los Alamos, New Mexico, as one of the
Speaker 1: three sites the Manhattan Project would use. To pursue the
Speaker 1: effort of building an atomic bomb very remote location. Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: himself owned a ranch that was neighboring Los Alamos, so
Speaker 1: he thought of it as being remote enough for it
Speaker 1: to be a useful test site and development site. Also,
Speaker 1: there were very few people who were there uh, and
Speaker 1: the ones who were there could be convinced to move
Speaker 1: by offering them a decent amount of money for their
Speaker 1: their land, especially considering that the value of the land
Speaker 1: at the time was pretty low because like what's out
Speaker 1: there very little. Yeah, there was a boys school that
Speaker 1: was out there, but Gross went up in offered to
Speaker 1: buy it from from the schools. I'll offered to buy
Speaker 1: the land, and they said, all right, we'll relocate and
Speaker 1: they left. Um. So in nineteen forty three, in eastern Tennessee,
Speaker 1: work was well underway on several facilities. There was the
Speaker 1: plutonium plant that was designated X ten. That was the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic facility which was Y twelve, and a ghasiut diffusion
Speaker 1: plant which was called K twent five UH. And this
Speaker 1: was a site that was located west of Knoxville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: It was nineties square miles or fifty nine thousand acres,
Speaker 1: and it became a military reservation with the official name
Speaker 1: of Clinton Engineer Works UM. By the summer nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project headquarters would move from Washington to this
Speaker 1: site in Tennessee, and eventually that that military site grew
Speaker 1: into a full fledged town that today is called oak Ridge.
Speaker 1: Got a little tangent for you here, what's that? So
Speaker 1: my my family, my extended family, is from the Tri
Speaker 1: Cities area, which is uh in the very very tip
Speaker 1: of Tennessee, up in the mountains, and for a time,
Speaker 1: members of my family lived and worked around the area
Speaker 1: that would be known as oak Ridge. And it was
Speaker 1: sort of an open secret that something was going on,
Speaker 1: but people really didn't have any any idea that UM,
Speaker 1: any idea how big Oak Ridge would actually become, to
Speaker 1: the point where I think at some point it was
Speaker 1: power providing like power to uh one seven of the
Speaker 1: power it was actually drawing one So drawing and drawing
Speaker 1: the power. Yeah, that one some of the power of
Speaker 1: the entire country, not of Tennessee, of the entire United States.
Speaker 1: One seventh of the power being generated in the United
Speaker 1: States was dedicated to powering the facilities at what would
Speaker 1: become oak Ridge, that it was never called oak Ridge
Speaker 1: during the duration of the Manhattan project that come later,
Speaker 1: But eventually it did grow into a full fledged town
Speaker 1: because they these projects were enormous and needed a huge
Speaker 1: variety of workers to make things run, everything from administrative
Speaker 1: staff to the people who actually operated the machinery and
Speaker 1: the controls, the people who were transporting materials. That there
Speaker 1: was support staff to support all of that. It just
Speaker 1: it quickly grew into and a full fledged town. Um.
Speaker 1: And so this was and a lot of people didn't
Speaker 1: know what they were working on beyond like their actual
Speaker 1: day to day jobs. They didn't know what the end
Speaker 1: goal was, right, And it's something that happens today even
Speaker 1: in other large scale projects. That it's the compartmentalization of
Speaker 1: information and one of the you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an ugly truth that gets sensationalized a lot, but I
Speaker 1: think we'll we'll explore it later on in the show. Uh.
Speaker 1: The primary reason for this at this time was the complete,
Speaker 1: can completely consuming paranoia on the part of the military
Speaker 1: of spine and espionage and not. You know, this wasn't
Speaker 1: some um hair brained fantastical thing. This was a valid concern.
Speaker 1: YEA as it turns out, it was so valid that
Speaker 1: it ended up not being paranoid enough. In Washington State
Speaker 1: we have the third of the three sites. The project
Speaker 1: set up headquarters in Hanford, and they created another boom town,
Speaker 1: another town that was specifically meant to help push the
Speaker 1: the goals of the Manhattan Project. Uh Hanford would become
Speaker 1: home to the water cooling pile facilities and the chemical
Speaker 1: separation plants, which were called the Queen Mary's And that
Speaker 1: only really makes sense if you see a picture of them,
Speaker 1: because it looks almost like the shape of the stuff
Speaker 1: that's above ground looks like it's in the shape of
Speaker 1: an old ocean liner, as if you had taken Queen
Speaker 1: Mary ocean liner and buried it in the ground, so
Speaker 1: only the very top is visible. That's why they were
Speaker 1: called that um so in the In the spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, Oppenheimer had another lab set up in
Speaker 1: Los Alamos, New Mexico. He began to suspect that it
Speaker 1: might take three times as much material, not two times
Speaker 1: as much as they had previously estimated to make a
Speaker 1: working bomb. By the way, part of the reason why
Speaker 1: the atomic bombs ended up being so incredibly devastating is
Speaker 1: because they kept on thinking that they were going to
Speaker 1: need more and more visionable material, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that some of the earlier estimations might have been a
Speaker 1: little more on the dot than they had worried about.
Speaker 1: Both the Y twelve, which was that electromagnetic plant, and
Speaker 1: the K twenty five, that's the gasiest diffusion plant experienced problems. UH.
Speaker 1: They were having issues all the way from and project
Speaker 1: scientists decided to take a look at another method of
Speaker 1: isotope separation called thermal diffusion, which had previously been under
Speaker 1: consideration but kind of dismissed as being two slow and
Speaker 1: too poorly understood to rely upon as a reliable means
Speaker 1: of getting a weapon UH built, because you know, they
Speaker 1: they might pan out in the long run, but in
Speaker 1: wartime consideration, it's not practical. At this point, they started
Speaker 1: to revisit it UH, and with both of those facilities
Speaker 1: having issues, there was a lot of incentive to look
Speaker 1: at it again because if either the other two didn't
Speaker 1: pan out because of technical difficulties, because because of skipping
Speaker 1: that pilot plant step, they needed to have a fallback plan.
Speaker 1: So Oppenheimer suggested to Grows that they build a thermal
Speaker 1: diffusion plant at oak Ridge and Grows agreed and co
Speaker 1: located it with the power plant for the K twenty
Speaker 1: five um, which the reason for that was the K
Speaker 1: The power plant would create steam, which would turn turbines
Speaker 1: that generates electricity, basic power plant design. So they decided, well,
Speaker 1: that steam is really hot. We can then use that
Speaker 1: as part of the thermal diffusion process to provide the heat,
Speaker 1: the thermal meaning heat. Uh. This would be the best
Speaker 1: way of doing it. We wouldn't have to build another
Speaker 1: facility to generate steam. We could just co locate it
Speaker 1: with this other one. So we've got all the science
Speaker 1: about the fissionable materials, but there's a whole other section
Speaker 1: we got to talk about two, the actual development of
Speaker 1: the bomb itself. Oh yes, that is that is going
Speaker 1: to be an important part of this story, isn't it.
Speaker 1: So so you've got you've got the science going on
Speaker 1: about how do we create this chain reaction? But then
Speaker 1: you think, well, what about the actual device that's going
Speaker 1: to hold this material and initiate that chain reaction? Uh?
Speaker 1: And there were some different approaches for that too. So
Speaker 1: they started working on the ordinance aspects. That's essentially the
Speaker 1: physical manifestation of this bomb, like the physical parts. They
Speaker 1: called it the gadget. Um. So, in order to do this, uh,
Speaker 1: they were looking at multiple methods. One was that this
Speaker 1: creating two subcritical masses of sable material that would come
Speaker 1: together so that you know, when they're separated, everything's kosher.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about it blowing up relatively
Speaker 1: for our purposes, and then bringing them together that's what
Speaker 1: would allow the very rapid fission process to occur, releasing
Speaker 1: enormous amounts of energy in the process. Thus you get
Speaker 1: the big boom. Uh. So they started looking into ways
Speaker 1: they could do this, and they had to figure out
Speaker 1: how to do it precisely at a high speed, and
Speaker 1: they had to make sure that whatever they did would
Speaker 1: not cause a predetonation, because that would be bad. You
Speaker 1: don't want your bomb going off before you you planned
Speaker 1: on it going off. Um. So, one of the things
Speaker 1: they were looking at was the gun method, which was
Speaker 1: essentially firing a plug of fissionable material into a subcritical mass,
Speaker 1: turning it into critical. Um. So, think of it as
Speaker 1: it's a bomb that has within it and actual gun.
Speaker 1: There's a barrel, it's got a plug of this stuff.
Speaker 1: When the trigger is pulled, essentially it fires that plug
Speaker 1: into the subcritical mass and then starts the chain reaction.
Speaker 1: All this happens in a second. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: incredible how fast it happens. But there are some things
Speaker 1: that can go wrong. Yes, there are things that can
Speaker 1: go wrong, and one of those things is it maybe
Speaker 1: that it doesn't start the reaction fast enough. So that
Speaker 1: was one of the deals. They wanted to test this theory,
Speaker 1: both with you tout and with plutonium approaches. And there
Speaker 1: was another approach that was looked at as well, not
Speaker 1: just using the gun, but what if you were to
Speaker 1: create an implosion. Uh. So an implosion would be too
Speaker 1: You would create shock waves that would then uh end
Speaker 1: up instigating this this chain reaction. Um. And the person
Speaker 1: who started looking at implosion tests first really was Seth
Speaker 1: h nedder Meyer uh and he was kind of left
Speaker 1: to his own devices to look into this, and um
Speaker 1: he uh ended up looking at it along with John
Speaker 1: von Neumann, who was Hungarian refugee who visited Los Alumos late.
Speaker 1: He was looking at various ways to create a reliable
Speaker 1: bomb as well. So you've got the nuclear physicists all
Speaker 1: working on the fuel and uh, fissionable material side, and
Speaker 1: then you have the other like mechanical engineers looking at well,
Speaker 1: how can we make this a practical weapon? So so
Speaker 1: sort of like two parallel versions of research. Also, there
Speaker 1: was some friction between Neddermeyer and Navy captain named william S.
Speaker 1: Dieck Parsons. He was actually in charge of ordinance. So
Speaker 1: when you've got a guy who's working on one of
Speaker 1: the methods, the implosion method and the guy who's in
Speaker 1: charge of it not getting along, that was is an issue. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so you had to have kind of liaisons with
Speaker 1: that as well, so that you did have some ego
Speaker 1: battles going on, um people who thought that things needed
Speaker 1: to go a certain way and other folks who felt
Speaker 1: very strongly that that was not the appropriate direction. So
Speaker 1: a lot of drama going on behind the scenes as well,
Speaker 1: not just with the technology and the science, but with personalities,
Speaker 1: which is always kind of interesting. Uh. Then you had
Speaker 1: the Army Air Force involved there. You've got like so
Speaker 1: many different departments that there's departmental issues as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: Parsons group was developing two bomb models by March nine,
Speaker 1: and to test he wanted to test these with B
Speaker 1: twenty nines. These are essentially the methodology without the actual
Speaker 1: bomb materials um and they named them thin Man, which
Speaker 1: was named after President Roosevelt. That used the plutonium gun design,
Speaker 1: so firing a plug of plutonium into fissionable material. Yes.
Speaker 1: And then you had fat Man, which was named after
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill. That was an implosion prototype, so you had
Speaker 1: the implosion one needed a larger form factor, thus fat Man,
Speaker 1: and then you had thin Man. Uh. You also had
Speaker 1: a smaller uranium gadget called Little Boy, which was using
Speaker 1: a uranium gun, So so you had the plutonium gun
Speaker 1: and the uranium gun. Ah. The plutonium gun eventually was
Speaker 1: abandoned because it turned out that plutonium to thirty nine
Speaker 1: could pick up a neutron and become plutonium to forty
Speaker 1: and increase the chances of predetonation, which we have already
Speaker 1: established is a bad thing. So they said, well, if
Speaker 1: we're going to use plutonium, we can't use the gun method.
Speaker 1: It would only really work with the implosion method. So
Speaker 1: the thin Man variation on these bombs that was abandoned.
Speaker 1: So you had a fat Man and Little Boy versions,
Speaker 1: and that was it because otherwise it was too dangerous.
Speaker 1: But this this also meant that the approaches were requiring
Speaker 1: the the timeline to extend a bit. They were not
Speaker 1: going to make that early nine deadline of a working bomb.
Speaker 1: And at this point in the war, the the tide
Speaker 1: is turning yes, yeah, And in fact, on the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of engineer side you had Groves and Marshall meeting
Speaker 1: together and discussing what's happening, and their estimation was that
Speaker 1: by the time a bomb would be ready, they were
Speaker 1: being quoted that on August first would be the earliest
Speaker 1: that a bomb would be available. They were pretty sure
Speaker 1: that by then Germany was going to have surrendered. The
Speaker 1: tides were turning enough where it looked like it was
Speaker 1: just Germany was on borrowed time, however, and the Pacific
Speaker 1: theater Japan would likely fight to the very end. The
Speaker 1: Japanese culture was such that there was very little chance
Speaker 1: of Japan's government reconciling, at least in a way that
Speaker 1: the West found um acceptable. Because the West was going
Speaker 1: to demand that Japan dismantle its empirical system, and that
Speaker 1: was so deeply ingrained in Japanese culture. It was unlikely
Speaker 1: to happen until just catastrophic losses were experienced on Japan's side. Also,
Speaker 1: the economies of well, the economies of all all the
Speaker 1: countries involved at some point shifted greatly, as they do
Speaker 1: during times of war. But the Japanese economy at the
Speaker 1: time was a war powered economy, like it was necessary
Speaker 1: to keep the cycle going. Yeah, so pretty grim, uh,
Speaker 1: And but it became more and more apparent to the
Speaker 1: Army Corps of Engineers that, in fact, if they were
Speaker 1: able to produce a working bomb, the target was not
Speaker 1: going to be Germany. It was going to be Japan.
Speaker 1: They knew this in early ninety five, they were pretty sure.
Speaker 1: Um by mid expenditures were around a hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: per month, And in late nineteen early ninety five, progress
Speaker 1: at oak Ridge meant that the August first deadline actually
Speaker 1: started to look realistic. It didn't, you know, at first
Speaker 1: they were they were worried that even August first might
Speaker 1: be too aggressive. But the early problems that have been
Speaker 1: plaguing the facilities had largely been worked out, and now
Speaker 1: all the different lines of research were starting to be fruitful.
Speaker 1: So at this point they weren't even saying which version
Speaker 1: is going to work. They were. They were pretty sure
Speaker 1: there was going to be at least two. The plutonium
Speaker 1: implosion bomb like it was very promising, and the uranium
Speaker 1: gadget bomb the gun method look like it was very promising.
Speaker 1: So then they started looking into how they were going
Speaker 1: to to actually build these. Meanwhile, Hanford up in Washington,
Speaker 1: their bluetooning facilities had some problems. Early. There was an
Speaker 1: issue with what was called xenon poisoning, which was not
Speaker 1: for the employees there. This was the this was the
Speaker 1: nuclear fuel. Yeah, the xenon m The process was producing xenon,
Speaker 1: and the problem was that the way the chain reaction works,
Speaker 1: if you remember from our our previous episode, AH, these
Speaker 1: radioactive elements when they decay, give off fast moving neutrons
Speaker 1: which can then trigger another another particle to to undergo fission.
Speaker 1: And thus it ends up reducing fast moving neutrons. And
Speaker 1: as long as it's reduced, it's as long as it's
Speaker 1: producing more than one of those fast moving neutrons, this
Speaker 1: becomes an expanding chain reaction. Right. It's like you know,
Speaker 1: you tell two friends and they tell two friends and
Speaker 1: they that sort of thing. Perfect. Um. So the problem
Speaker 1: was that xenon, which was being produced by this Uh,
Speaker 1: this process could accept neutron so readily that it would
Speaker 1: end up preventing a chain reaction from happening. Essentially, he's like,
Speaker 1: come on over here, boys were good. And then because
Speaker 1: the neutrons were being accepted by Zenon, they were not
Speaker 1: triggering further fission. And so once they figured that out,
Speaker 1: they were able to take advantage of something DuPont had
Speaker 1: absolutely insisted upon when it agreed to build the facilities.
Speaker 1: They had designed the facility to allow for operation at
Speaker 1: greater power levels, which originally the scientists were saying we
Speaker 1: don't or actually it is really the Army Corps of
Speaker 1: Engineer saying we don't want this. It's too expensive, it's
Speaker 1: it's not necessary. We've been told that it should work
Speaker 1: at these lower power levels, and DuPont said, no, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to insist, and as it turns out, that
Speaker 1: was the right decision. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion
Speaker 1: of this Tex Stuff classic episode right after we take
Speaker 1: this break. So, by operating at the greater power levels,
Speaker 1: that overwhelmed the xenon. So, in other words, it was
Speaker 1: generating neutrons at a rate so fast that the Xenon
Speaker 1: was not going to be able to accept them at
Speaker 1: the rate they were coming out, so it was allowing
Speaker 1: that chain reaction to occur after all. So the Hanford
Speaker 1: facility began producing plutonium and significant amounts and sent the
Speaker 1: first shipment to Los Alamos in February. So the plutonium
Speaker 1: gun method obomb design did not work. The only way
Speaker 1: the plutonium was going to be useful is if they
Speaker 1: could prove the implosion method would work. So that's where
Speaker 1: the focus shifted. At that point, they knew the gun
Speaker 1: design was a bust, so they started looking significantly into implosion.
Speaker 1: So by late they were pretty sure that the uranium
Speaker 1: gun method was viable. So that was gonna be the
Speaker 1: little boy version of the bomb. Uh. They froze that design,
Speaker 1: meaning they said, all right, this is definitely what we
Speaker 1: are going to build. They froze it in February. Plutonium. Uh,
Speaker 1: their work with that was obviously taking a little longer.
Speaker 1: They knew the gun design wasn't going to work, but
Speaker 1: once they figured out the implosion design, that got approved
Speaker 1: in March, and they scheduled a test for the fourth
Speaker 1: of July because the fireworks you'd ever see. However, they
Speaker 1: actually moved it back to July because of weather actually,
Speaker 1: and they named it the Trinity Test and it happened
Speaker 1: at five thirty in the morning. So interesting thing. They
Speaker 1: the uranium gun method was so certain they didn't test it.
Speaker 1: They never, they never, they never tested the bomb before
Speaker 1: they used it. But the plutonium method, they weren't sure.
Speaker 1: So they build this plutonium bomb, the implosion based bomb.
Speaker 1: At five thirty in the morning on July, they fire it.
Speaker 1: They used a firing tower to hold the bomb and
Speaker 1: to to kind of approximate where the bomb would be
Speaker 1: before it detonated, because the bombs detonate before they hit
Speaker 1: the ground. Yeah, yeah, it's not like there's a tip
Speaker 1: on the bomb that hits the ground. Their their program
Speaker 1: to get to a certain elevation, built to get to
Speaker 1: a certain elevation and then explode above the ground because
Speaker 1: it maximizes the damage. Yeah. This is where this, by
Speaker 1: the way, is also where our conversation it's gonna get
Speaker 1: pretty heavy because we're now talking about actual physical damage
Speaker 1: and the loss of human life. So while we were
Speaker 1: maybe a little cavalier, I don't know even if cavaliers
Speaker 1: the word, but we were playful at points This is
Speaker 1: where this show is really going to get serious, because
Speaker 1: we're talking about real human being inks. So this test
Speaker 1: was phenomenally impressive and successful from a weaponization point of view.
Speaker 1: It vaporized the firing tower, It turned asphalt into sand,
Speaker 1: and it turned sand into glass. Uh. The explosion knocked
Speaker 1: over a two hundred tons steel container that was a
Speaker 1: half mile from ground zero. The steel container had been
Speaker 1: built and designed and put down as part of the test,
Speaker 1: but they didn't intend to actually use it on the
Speaker 1: July sixteenth test. It was literally just standing where they
Speaker 1: had left it and it knocked it over. Um. The
Speaker 1: explosion was bright enough to cause temporary blindness and observers,
Speaker 1: even those who were wearing goggles with smoke glass lenses,
Speaker 1: they knew it was going to be bright, they had
Speaker 1: no idea how bright it was going to be, and
Speaker 1: some of them lost their vision for a while. Glass
Speaker 1: would shatter in houses a hundred twenty five miles from
Speaker 1: the explosion point, and it was a quick went to
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand to twenty thousand tons of T and T
Speaker 1: they had estimated it would be about equivalent to five
Speaker 1: thousand tons. And this goes back to the earlier statements
Speaker 1: with this. Also, by the way, the day that Oppenheimer
Speaker 1: creeps out everyone but uh and and there we say whoops.
Speaker 1: Instead of whoops, he says, I become Death, Death, destroyer
Speaker 1: of world. Yeah, and just just briefly on that the
Speaker 1: the reason that he said that. There's a great quotation
Speaker 1: from him here says we knew the world would not
Speaker 1: be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried,
Speaker 1: most people were silent. I remember the line from the
Speaker 1: Hindu scripture the Bahaga bad Ghita. Vishnu is trying to
Speaker 1: persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and
Speaker 1: to impress him, takes on his multi armed form and says, now,
Speaker 1: I've become Death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we
Speaker 1: all thought that one way or another. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. I'm not sure if they did. But this,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, in this in this day, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to think about how how you would feel
Speaker 1: a d miles away. This thing blows up and the
Speaker 1: I don't know blame is the right word. But because
Speaker 1: they kept up in the amount they thought they needed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what happened. And those people who witnessed the detonation
Speaker 1: and participated in it were very lucky to survive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and you think about this, like, you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't have a full understanding of what the long term
Speaker 1: effects were going to be of this, not just you know,
Speaker 1: the initial effects are devastating enough, but the long term
Speaker 1: effects continue to end up, you know, causing damage and
Speaker 1: killing years after the initial explosion. We'll get into some
Speaker 1: figures a little bit. So, uh. I think this is
Speaker 1: also one of those points where there's that moment of
Speaker 1: realization that the thing you've been working so hard, the
Speaker 1: thing that previously had just been theory that you had
Speaker 1: based it upon observations of the inner g that was
Speaker 1: released in these nuclear reactions, something that you knew was
Speaker 1: possible but had not actually seen for yourself, now is reality.
Speaker 1: It is no longer abstract thought, is no longer the
Speaker 1: realm of calculations on a sheet of paper. Now it's real.
Speaker 1: And that's got to be a heavy, heavy moment, especially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider what the intended purposes. On the April,
Speaker 1: President Roosevelt dies and Vice President Harry S. Truman is
Speaker 1: sworn in as president. Here's how secret the Manhattan Project was,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it employed around a hundred thirty
Speaker 1: thousand people at one time or another. Truman didn't know
Speaker 1: about it. Detonated a nuclear weapon, and the vice president
Speaker 1: didn't know about it. He didn't know about No. At
Speaker 1: this point in April, they hadn't quite so. But in
Speaker 1: April they hadn't happened yet. But Truman, they were well
Speaker 1: on their way to the test. Truman had no idea.
Speaker 1: He was briefed on it as part of becoming president
Speaker 1: during war, which is, you know, a pretty tough gig,
Speaker 1: no matter how you look at it. But Truman understood
Speaker 1: the relevance of the project and he supported it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, Plus it's pretty late in the game. They
Speaker 1: had built the thing pretty much there, just needed to
Speaker 1: tested at that point. Um. So, on the political side,
Speaker 1: Germany had surrendered and it was clear that Japan was
Speaker 1: going to lose the conflict, but it was probably going
Speaker 1: to fight until the very end. So it was going
Speaker 1: to require a massive invasion of Japan using you know,
Speaker 1: a coordinated effort with the Allied forces in order to
Speaker 1: make it happen. No telling how many people would die
Speaker 1: on both sides of that, uh, and it was going
Speaker 1: to be it was going to to extend the war
Speaker 1: even further, and so there was a very serious discussion
Speaker 1: about what do we do. Do we go forward with
Speaker 1: invasion plans or do we actually use this weapon? We
Speaker 1: have this we have designed now. The US informed Churchill
Speaker 1: of the success of the the test, and Churchill was
Speaker 1: all for it until he found out it was nicknamed
Speaker 1: fat Boy fat Man. Yeah, yeah, fat Man named after him. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: uh yeah he I don't know if he ever, I
Speaker 1: don't know when he get the memo on that part,
Speaker 1: but he was totally on board. Truman told Stalin, Uh,
Speaker 1: he had been told by his his advisors, Hey, don't
Speaker 1: tell Stalin. Stalin's kind of a bad guy. You don't
Speaker 1: want to. You don't want to let him know about
Speaker 1: this ahead of time. But Truman felt that it was
Speaker 1: necessary to preserve the uneasy piece between the United States
Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union, So he told Stalin of the
Speaker 1: development of the weapon and told told Song without the
Speaker 1: presence of an interpreter, it's just Truman and Stalin, and
Speaker 1: Stalin was very composed. And it turns out the reason
Speaker 1: he was composed was because he already I knew about it. Um,
Speaker 1: he already knew about it, because despite the paranoia, there
Speaker 1: was a Soviet spy amongst the Brits who were working
Speaker 1: alongside the Americans on the Manhattan Project. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit about him in a second.
Speaker 1: But the US wanted unconditional surrender of Japan, the dismantling
Speaker 1: of the imperial system, and Japan I wanted to surrender
Speaker 1: based on intercepted messages between Tokyo and Moscow, but not
Speaker 1: under the conditions that the Americans were demanding. Japan, I
Speaker 1: believe still wanted to maintain some of the territory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to abandon the empire approach of
Speaker 1: their government like that was that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: And the United States like, no, your empire, the imperial
Speaker 1: method has to go. It can we want democracy, we
Speaker 1: want a different system of government. Yeah, So it was,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a tall order and Japan was
Speaker 1: not like the Japanese government was not in a position
Speaker 1: that could easily capitulate to those demands. So things are
Speaker 1: moving out ahead. And on August six, the and Nola
Speaker 1: gay a B twenty nine bomber, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbots,
Speaker 1: released a nine thousand seven hundred pound uranium gun bomb
Speaker 1: called Little Boy. This remember this is the one that
Speaker 1: had never been tested. They knew they were confident it
Speaker 1: would work, but they had never actually tested this bomb.
Speaker 1: And it was released at approximately eight fifteen am, thirty
Speaker 1: one thousand feet above Hiroshima, Japan, and forty three seconds
Speaker 1: later it detonated. At that point, it was at an
Speaker 1: altitude of nineteen feet above the city, and the initial
Speaker 1: explosion killed seventy thousand people, more or less instantly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh where this is where you hear about people's shadows
Speaker 1: being burned into the walls behind them because of the
Speaker 1: intense energy that was released by this bomb. By n
Speaker 1: fifty the death count would be closer to two hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: So that seventy thousand those that was initial where again instantaneous,
Speaker 1: not even a moment to think it's just over. But
Speaker 1: another hundred thirty thousand would die due to radiation sickness,
Speaker 1: So an agonizing fate for so many. Nearly all the
Speaker 1: buildings in a five square mile radius were either leveled
Speaker 1: completely or just severely damaged to the point where there
Speaker 1: was no chance of using them again. They would need
Speaker 1: to be taken down Truman announced the Hiroshima raid that
Speaker 1: evening to the American public, which was the first time
Speaker 1: that the United States revealed to the general public that
Speaker 1: they had been working on an atomic weapon. This was
Speaker 1: the first time the Manhattan Project had been unveiled in
Speaker 1: a sense that it existed, right. They didn't go into
Speaker 1: any details about how much work had gone into it
Speaker 1: and what had happened, but that this was the first time,
Speaker 1: so again, a hundred people had worked on it. Many
Speaker 1: of those people this was the first time they found
Speaker 1: out what their work was, what the result was like,
Speaker 1: they didn't know necessarily, there were very few of that
Speaker 1: hundred thirty thod who actually knew what the purpose of
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project really was, which is phenomenal. It's hard
Speaker 1: in hindsight, It's hard for us to imagine that. I'm
Speaker 1: sure at the time it was a job, you know,
Speaker 1: you were working on science. Yeah, And and the U
Speaker 1: and communication worked differently because this pre internet. Yeah. So um.
Speaker 1: The United States and in the wake of this, calls
Speaker 1: for Japan's surrender according to the earlier terms. Japan did
Speaker 1: not immediately respond, which then led to the August ninth
Speaker 1: bombing of Nagasaki. Uh This was the plutonium implosion method.
Speaker 1: This was the one that they had tested previously. This
Speaker 1: was called Man and it was carried by a plane
Speaker 1: named box Box Car b O C K not b
Speaker 1: O X, and Nagasaki was actually the secondary target. The
Speaker 1: primary target was the Kokura Arsenal, which would have been
Speaker 1: more of a military target than Nagasaki was, but weather
Speaker 1: prevented the pilot, Charles Sweeney, from flying over it. He
Speaker 1: felt that there was too low of a chance that
Speaker 1: he would be able to drop the bomb on the
Speaker 1: intended target, so he swapped swapped out to his secondary target,
Speaker 1: which was Nagasaki. I was dropped at an altitude of
Speaker 1: twenty nine thousand feet and detonated one thousand, six hundred
Speaker 1: fifty feet above Nagasaki at eleven oh one am and
Speaker 1: exploded with a force of twenty one thousand tons of TNT.
Speaker 1: Now it killed forty thousand people and injured another sixty
Speaker 1: thousand on that initial explosion, and the eventual death toll
Speaker 1: was calculated at around a hundred forty thousand, largely because
Speaker 1: Nagasaki did not have the same population density as Hiroshima.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that it wasn't that this was a less devastating bomb.
Speaker 1: It was that due to the geography, it affected fewer people.
Speaker 1: So in the space of just a few days, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Japan lost three. Ultimately would lose three. The initial would
Speaker 1: be closer to a hundred ten thousand Yeah, in two bombings. UH, devastating,
Speaker 1: absolutely devastating. UM. The Manhattan Project itself would continue because
Speaker 1: while it had built these bombs specifically for the purpose
Speaker 1: of bringing World War two to an end. Uh, the
Speaker 1: research was going to continue on and it would end
Speaker 1: officially in and hand over the research into atomic weaponry
Speaker 1: to a new group, the Atomic Energy Commission, which we
Speaker 1: talked about extensively when we took cover at Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: Atomic Energy Commission was important during the the establishment of
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, So I mentioned that there had been
Speaker 1: a spy who reported to the Soviet Union. That would
Speaker 1: be Klaus Fuchs, who was part of the British contention
Speaker 1: of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. It was
Speaker 1: not discovered until nineteen nine that he was actually a
Speaker 1: Soviet agent. So throughout the entirety of the Manhattan Project,
Speaker 1: all the way to the point where it was over,
Speaker 1: he was feeding information to the Soviet Union. He was
Speaker 1: caught and convicted of espionage and was eventually released in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine. He then moved to what was then
Speaker 1: East Germany. Kids, if you don't know that there was
Speaker 1: an East Germany, there was for a while. Uh, you
Speaker 1: need to look that up. He was eventually Um. He
Speaker 1: eventually rather provided information that helped China develop its first
Speaker 1: atomic bomb. Yeah. So you may have heard stories recently
Speaker 1: in the past few years about a scientist named A. Q.
Speaker 1: Kahn continually linked to other countries acquiring nuclear weaponry or
Speaker 1: knowledge of the atomic process. Uh. This is um Claus
Speaker 1: food Fukes is like the original version of that, and
Speaker 1: did quite a bit to propagate this technology. Also, Um,
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, on balance is fairly lucky that he's
Speaker 1: the kind of spy. He was a spy sent to
Speaker 1: feed information rather than to stymy the progress. It made
Speaker 1: a contribution. The goal of ending World War two was
Speaker 1: shared obviously by both Stalin and uh the United States. Um.
Speaker 1: But obviously Stalin also had a very strong interest in
Speaker 1: gaining that information for on behalf of Soviet Union, so
Speaker 1: that the United States would not have the upper hand
Speaker 1: for very long in what would then become the Cold War.
Speaker 1: Another important person that we didn't really mention. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many, there are times there's there's just the
Speaker 1: list of names connected to the Manhattan Project as incredibly long,
Speaker 1: hundred thirty thousand as it turns out. Um. But another
Speaker 1: important person on the physics side was Edward Teller, a
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist. He was the one who was really pushing
Speaker 1: for the development of the hydrogen bomb. In fact, he
Speaker 1: has been referred to as the father of the hydrogen bomb,
Speaker 1: a name he did not like. Um. They called it
Speaker 1: the super bomb during the Manhattan Project, and eventually it
Speaker 1: would be developed, uh, not really not used, but but
Speaker 1: developed and tested. So that is the story of the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project, from the beginning all the way to the
Speaker 1: development and deployment of the two atomic bombs that were
Speaker 1: dropped on Japan. Yeah, and we touched on a lot
Speaker 1: of things that are stories in themselves, the U S
Speaker 1: SRS program. I think Stalin learned of the US program
Speaker 1: or the US intentions in which and then there's this
Speaker 1: there's this story that I think you mentioned in part
Speaker 1: one about what happens to um, the scientists who are
Speaker 1: held consentially or not in the German program, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know operation paper clip, what you get more rocketry.
Speaker 1: That's more rocketry on the U S side. But the
Speaker 1: USS are forcibly abducted some scientists from the German program.
Speaker 1: Very strange times. There's there's tons of stuff we can
Speaker 1: talk about, and in fact, I'm sure stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. US covered quite a bit of
Speaker 1: this materiality one or two. Yeah, so I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you go check out that show just in general, but
Speaker 1: especially if you want to learn more about, you know,
Speaker 1: the tactics that were employed. This was I mean, there
Speaker 1: are no games higher stakes than this, right, this is
Speaker 1: this is incredibly grim stuff when you boil it down
Speaker 1: to what's actually the end goal and what is happening.
Speaker 1: And as a result, uh, there are nations and people
Speaker 1: who will you know, there's no there's no limit to
Speaker 1: what they will know the tactics they will employ to
Speaker 1: achieve the goal because the goal the stakes are so high.
Speaker 1: And uh, sometimes that leads to stories of heroism, which
Speaker 1: is amazing. Sometimes it leads to stories of that is dirty,
Speaker 1: underhanded stuff, you know that uprooting people whether they are
Speaker 1: quote unquote on the wrong side or not, and forcing
Speaker 1: them to work on your behalf. In some cases, there
Speaker 1: were people who were more than willing to do that
Speaker 1: because to them, the science was what was important. They
Speaker 1: were that their ultimate moral compass. Can I work on
Speaker 1: the science? Yeah, And it wasn't so much who who
Speaker 1: is the person like, I'm not the one who decides
Speaker 1: who this gets used on. I'm the one who figures
Speaker 1: out whether or not it works. Um. It's just an
Speaker 1: odd story, and there's so many of them. But on
Speaker 1: all sides, So could I ask you, um and tell
Speaker 1: me if this is to tell me if this is
Speaker 1: too much of a heavier speculative thing. What's that? Do
Speaker 1: you think the world is a better place with this technology? Oh? Boy,
Speaker 1: I quarrel with it myself. I think I think nuclear
Speaker 1: power certainly has some very important applications, uh, some of
Speaker 1: which are incredibly beneficial to humanity, even with the problematic
Speaker 1: nuclear fuel and nuclear waste issues. Um. So on that side,
Speaker 1: I think that it was incredibly important and beneficial. From
Speaker 1: a weaponry side, I think it just caused enormous amounts
Speaker 1: of harm beyond the obvious of the people who lost
Speaker 1: their lives as a result of the bombs being dropped.
Speaker 1: There are stories of people who who uh may have
Speaker 1: developed cancer just from working on the projects. Whether or
Speaker 1: not that's actually the cause, it's impossible to say because
Speaker 1: they're just too many vectors to take into account, but
Speaker 1: it seems like it's a likely source at least for
Speaker 1: some of the cases, if not many of them. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Cold War was awful. I mean it
Speaker 1: led to the space race, which was awesome, and a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the world changing or civilization
Speaker 1: changing technology that we have today comes from times of conflict. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. I mean, we would not be where we
Speaker 1: are today without that conflict. But I don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: that's put us in a great place. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: certainly there are current conflicts in the world Cold and
Speaker 1: otherwise that uh, the presence of nuclear weapons have made
Speaker 1: far more complex and higher stakes than would otherwise exist.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a big fan of that. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, I do believe that the Allied Powers would
Speaker 1: have won World War Two without the use of atomic weapons.
Speaker 1: You know, it would have happened. The question is how
Speaker 1: long would it have taken and how much more would Japan?
Speaker 1: Would Japan have suffered more due to the nature of
Speaker 1: the war, than it did from the bombs. That's a
Speaker 1: question that's impossible to answer because there's no way of
Speaker 1: knowing how it would have turned out otherwise. Um And
Speaker 1: ultimately you start to wonder if perhaps the bombing of
Speaker 1: Japan was not only to force Japan to capitulate to
Speaker 1: the United States demands and the Allied demands of surrender,
Speaker 1: but also perhaps a demonstration of the United States is
Speaker 1: superiority and weaponry to say, hey, everybody in the world,
Speaker 1: pay attention, because this is what we can do now.
Speaker 1: And I would like to think that that was if
Speaker 1: apart the smallest of parts, but something deep inside me
Speaker 1: worries about that. And that wraps up Part two of
Speaker 1: our discussion about the Manhattan Project. Tech Stuff Takes Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Ben Boland for joining the show way back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fifteen. You're a real minch or
Speaker 1: at least you were seven years ago. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: still are. I mean, we're arch nemesses now because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm his alter ego villain character Quister on Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I have to have him back on the
Speaker 1: show so that he can get his licks in since
Speaker 1: I'm always on his shows. Giving him grief. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics we should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, please reach out the best way to
Speaker 1: do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again,
Speaker 1: Really Sick. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
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