WEBVTT - What Happened at America's Secret Atomic City? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.120 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff. 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:11.480 Laurin Vogel bomb here. In September of nine two, US 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:14.960 Army Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhattan Project, 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:17.880 the secret US crash effort to develop the atomic bomb, 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.040 faced a critical decision. The project needed to produce uranium 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.720 two thirty five, an isotope of uranium whose unstable nucleus 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.400 could be easily split to trigger a fission chain reaction 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.920 and release an enormous amount of destructive energy. But that 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:36.120 would require a massive, complex manufacturing process involving tens of 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:38.760 thousands of workers, which needed to be kept secret to 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:43.080 thwart interference from spies and sabotaurs. But the question was 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.320 where could those facilities possibly be hidden. The U S 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:50.360 officials had already identified potential sites in several parts of 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.640 the country, but all of them had drawbacks. Shasta Dam 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:56.640 in California, for example, was too close to the Pacific coast, 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.880 and this vulnerable to air attack. In several locations in 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.920 Washington State would have required construction of long power lines 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:05.640 to provide the massive amounts of electricity needed for the work. 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.640 A site in Illinois, near Chicago was also out officials 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:11.839 didn't want to be close to a big population center, 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:14.520 since the potential health risks of the work were not clear, 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:17.080 and it would have been easier for enemy agents to 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:22.000 blend in around a city. So instead, Groves quickly settled 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.000 upon a fifty two tho acre that's twenty one hector 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:30.000 site in rural eastern Tennessee, later expanded slightly. Not only 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:32.640 would it be inconspicuous to anyone outside of the sparsely 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.880 populated area, but it was also close to hydroelectric plans 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:38.959 operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which could supply the 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:42.399 enormous amounts of electricity that the plants would require. It 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.119 was the perfect place to build both the Clinton Engineer Works, 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.120 which would be the atomic complex, and a secret city 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.000 to house the workers. The government decided to call the 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.640 secret city oak Ridge because it sounded quote sufficiently bucolic 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:57.440 and general, according to an article in a nineteen sixty 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.520 nine government review of the project. Not long after choosing 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.360 the area, the U. S Government quietly started moving small 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.360 farmers who had land on the site, paying them compensation 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:10.919 but not telling them why. Then came trainloads full of 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:15.000 construction equipment and building materials. Construction crews quickly erected the 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.680 buildings that would comprise the nondescriptly named campus, as well 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.880 as thousands of houses for scientists and workers. Many of 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:24.600 the homes were B one flat tops, a design fashion 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:27.840 from pre fabricated panels and roofing to save construction time. 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.440 Building the secret industrial facilities and housing for workers cost 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.000 around one point three two billion dollars that's about eighteen 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.239 point five billion in today's money. That amounted to sixty 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.280 percent of the Manhattan Project's total budget. Over the next 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.040 few years, Oakridge grew into a community of seventy five 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:49.520 thousand people. We spoke with d Ray Smith, a retired 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:52.919 historian for the Y twelve National Security Complex who also 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.200 is the historian for the city of oak Ridge and 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:59.080 a calumnist for the oak Ridger, a local newspaper. Smith 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:02.239 explained people came from all over the world. Many of 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:04.800 the scientists were Hungarians, a lot came out of Germany 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:08.160 and Great Britain. He explains that others were recruited for 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:11.079 the Clinton engineering works by big US companies working on 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:14.320 the Manhattan Project, who scoured campuses of US colleges and 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.560 universities for bright students with needed scigence and technical skills. 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.320 For example, a young chemist named Bill Wilcox, who was 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.400 approached by an Eastman Kodak recruiter in three later recalled 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:27.160 that he was only told that the job was some 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.359 sort of secret war work. He said, I asked where 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:32.920 I'd be working, He wouldn't say it was secret. I 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:35.120 asked what sort of work I'd be doing. He wouldn't 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.680 say it was secret. Wilcox eventually ended up at the 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:42.040 Clinton Engineer Works. According to Smith, those who turned down 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:44.920 jobs might end up being drafted into a special engineering 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:48.600 detachment of the U. S. Army and sent to Tennessee. Anyway, 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:51.920 those atomic workers arrived at a place shrouded in secrecy. 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:54.839 Locals knew something mysterious was going on at the site, 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:56.800 but only those who were part of the mission were 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:00.119 allowed inside, passed the guarded gates on the access roads. 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.000 The atomic facilities themselves were surrounded by additional security. The 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:07.360 work itself was highly compartmentalized, so that most people knew 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:09.440 only about the small portion of the effort that they 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.280 themselves were working on, and only a select few knew 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.080 that the overarching mission was to help make the atomic bomb. 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:17.560 Access to buildings other than the one you were working 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:21.440 in was highly restricted to keep information from getting out, 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.320 oak Ridge became a self contained community with most everything 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.920 that its workers needed. The secret city had stores, movie houses, 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:31.040 a high school, a bank, a three bed hospital, tennis 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:33.479 and handball courts, and even in its own symphony orchestra 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:37.279 led by a Manhattan Project scientist. People who lived their 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.359 tended victory gardens, raised families, and led what was pretty 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.320 much in normal American existence, that is, except for the 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:47.200 secrecy that surrounded them and their work. A billboard reminded workers, 0:04:47.320 --> 0:04:50.240 let's keep our trap shut. They knew they had to 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:52.760 be cautious not to say anything about their jobs to anyone, 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.240 even their own spouses. A young scientist told one of 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:58.479 the first reporters to write about the subject, when Louis 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:01.640 Felstein would sit around the dinner table, and the strain 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:05.760 was terrible, but it was all in the difficult effort 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.640 of producing uranium two thirty five. There's only a tiny 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.800 amount of the stuff zero point seven percent in uranium, 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.760 or most of which is uranium two thirty eight, which 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.159 doesn't fission, is easily and a bomb such as Little Boy, 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:22.159 the one dropped on Hiroshima required one d and forty 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:26.279 one pounds. That's sixty of uranium two thirty five. You 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:28.400 have to separate a lot of material to get that 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:32.000 much two thirty five. To solve that problem, the Clinton 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.560 Engineer Works Y twelve plant used special devices called calutrons, 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.520 which utilized the electromagnetic separation process developed by Nobel winning 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.280 physicist ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Berkeley. 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:46.520 The calutrons used heat and powerful magnets to separate the 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.560 two isotopes and then to collect just the uranium two 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.200 thirty five isotope because it's so much lighter in weight. 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.520 To gather enough uranium two thirty five for the project's purposes, 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.760 the Y twelve facility employed twenty two thousand workers to 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.000 run one thousand, one hundred and fifty two calcutrons literally 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:05.920 around the clock. Meanwhile, another part of the works, the 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.520 X ten graphite reactor, used neutrons committed from uranium two 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:12.480 thirty five to convert uranium two thirty eight into an 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.839 isotope of a different element, plutonium two thirty nine, another 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:20.760 easily fissionable material suitable for making atomic bombs. As Smith explains, 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.800 after X ten demonstrated that the process could work, the 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:26.760 actual plutonium used to make Fatman the bomb dropped in 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.839 Nangasaki was produced in the B reactor at the Hanford 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:36.120 Engineer Works near Richmond, Washington. Finally, on August six, the 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.520 world witnessed to the results of the secret City's labors 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:41.360 when the United States dropped an atomic bomb containing uranium 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.039 two thirty five produced there on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:48.960 The Knoxville, Tennessee New Sentinels front page headline proudly proclaimed 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:53.080 atomic super bomb made at oak Ridge strikes Japan. That 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.320 wasn't completely correct. Though the uranium two thirty five came 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:58.520 from Tennessee, parts of the bomb were made at three 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.599 different plants, so that none of the would have the 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:05.080 complete design. The destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was horrific, 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:08.080 and it was a or perhaps the turning point of 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:11.960 the war. After the war, the various parts of the 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.960 once secret Tennessee atomic complex were split up. Part eventually 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:18.880 was reborn as the oak Ridge National Laboratory, which helped 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.920 pioneer the field of nuclear medicine, producing ice topes for 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:25.160 use in treating cancer. And as diagnostic tools, in addition 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.119 to doing cutting edge research in areas ranging from nanotechnology 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:32.040 to wireless charging of electric vehicles. Another portion became the 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.600 Y twelve National Security Complex, which produced components for tens 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.400 of thousands of thermonuclear weapons in the U s Arsenal 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.440 during the Cold War and later helped disassemble US and 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.760 former Soviet nuclear weapons. A third part is now the 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.480 site of the East Tennessee Technology Park. Though there's no 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:51.440 evidence that German or Japanese spies ever managed to infiltrate 0:07:51.480 --> 0:07:54.560 the Clinton Engineer Works, a Soviet spy named George Coval 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:57.080 did manage to get a job there and apparently passed 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.120 along information about the atomic work to the Soviets. In 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.920 two thousand seven, he was honored posthumously with a Hero 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:05.960 of the Russian Federation Medal, the nation's highest honor, by 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:14.160 Russian President Vladimir Putin. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:16.880 Kaiger and produced by Tyler CLAYG. Brain Stuff is a 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.240 production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:21.680 on this and lots of other historical topics, including lots 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:23.760 of further reading on Oak City and the atomic age, 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.800 visit our home Planet, how Stuff works dot com and 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:29.320 for more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.079 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:32.760 favorite shows.