Isegoria

In addition to his other work, General Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, Arthur Compton had been assigned over-all responsibility for the physics of bomb development:

As a first step in June, 1942, he had appointed Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer to take charge of this particular phase of the project. Oppenheimer was then at the University of California at Berkeley. He began work on the problem with a small group of theoretical physicists.

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Adding to my cause for doubt, no one with whom I talked showed any great enthusiasm about Oppenheimer as a possible director of the project.

My own feeling was that he was well qualified to handle the theoretical aspects of the work, but how he would do on the practical experimentation, or how he would handle the administrative responsibilities, I had no idea.

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Of the men within our organization I had no doubt that Ernest Lawrence could handle it. He was an outstanding experimental physicist, and this was a job for an experimental physicist. However, he could not be spared from his work on the electromagnetic process; in fact, without him we would have had to drop it, for it was far too difficult and complex for anyone else. I knew of no one then and I know of no one now, besides Ernest Lawrence, who could unquestionably have carried that development through to a successful conclusion.

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Oppenheimer had two major disadvantages — he had had almost no administrative experience of any kind, and he was not a Nobel Prize winner. Because of the latter lack, he did not then have the prestige among his fellow scientists that I would have liked the project leader to possess. The heads of our three major laboratories — Lawrence at Berkeley, Urey at Columbia, and Compton at Chicago — were all Nobel Prize winners, and Compton had several Nobel Prize winners working under him. There was a strong feeling among most of the scientific people with whom I discussed this matter that the head of Project Y should also be one.

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His background included much that was not to our liking by any means. The security organization, which was not yet under my complete control, was unwilling to clear him because of certain of his associations, particularly in the past. I was thoroughly familiar with everything that had been reported about Oppenheimer. As always in security matters of such importance, I had read all the available original evidence; I did not depend upon the conclusions of the security officers.

Finally, because I felt that his potential value outweighed any security risk, and to remove the matter from further discussion, I personally wrote and signed the following instructions to the District Engineer on July 20, 1943:

In accordance with my verbal directions of July 15, it is desired that clearance be issued for the employment of Julius Robert Oppenheimer without delay, irrespective of the information which you have concerning Mr. Oppenheimer. He is absolutely essential to the project.

It was understood that all du Pont’s work would be based on technical information to be furnished by the Metallurgical Laboratory, General Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, and that the government assumed all responsibility for the results of the endeavor, as well as for any damages that might be incurred in the course of the work:

This last provision was necessary because of the nature of the entirely unpredictable and unprecedented hazards involved.

Normal insurance coverage was impossible because of the need to maintain security. While we could have disclosed the normal risks involved to a single insurance representative, there would have been little point in it, for reinsurance on large risks requires that adequate knowledge be in the hands of many groups, which would seriously have endangered our security. Moreover, the unusual hazards were such that no group of insurance companies could possibly have written the coverage, even after complete disclosure. First, no one had any reasonable idea of what the hazards might be or the likelihood of their occurring. Second, no one could predict the duration of the effects of the hazard, or, in many instances, even when the effects might first appear. Third, no one could possibly predict the extent of the damage if a major catastrophe occurred.

For all these hazards the government assumed full responsibility. To facilitate the handling of claims not resulting from a major catastrophe a special fund was established. This fund was placed under the control of du Pont so that it could continue to be available for many years. All claims were to be approved by the government before payment.

Ever-present in our thinking was the sad example of the luminous watch-dial painters of World War I. Here the effects did not become apparent for many years. The delayed reaction to excessive radiation also hit many of the original researchers and users of X-rays. How could we be certain that radiation exposure in our installations might not have similar effects despite all our efforts to prevent them?

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Mr. Carpenter said that du Pont did not want any fee or profit of any kind for this work, and wanted furthermore to be certain that the company would receive no patent rights. A new letter of intent incorporating provisions to this effect was prepared and was immediately accepted.

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At du Pont’s request, Dr. Bush forwarded a letter to the President outlining the circumstances surrounding the assumption by the United States of all responsibility for the unusual hazards involved in this work. Mr. Roosevelt initialed his approval on the letter and a photostatic copy of it was given du Pont.

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We encountered one other snag in making sure that, though du Pont was doing the job without profit, it would not be subject to any direct financial losses. For purely legal reasons, provision was made for a fee of one dollar.

Although the expected duration of the contract was stated, as is usual, soon after V-J Day du Pont was paid the entire fee of one dollar. This resulted in a disallowance by government auditors, since the entire time of the contract had not run out. Consequently, du Pont was asked to return thirty-three cents to the United States. Fortunately, the officers of du Pont had retained their sense of humor throughout their many years of association with the government, and were able to derive considerable amusement from this ruling.

The original plan for the first experimental test pile had been to place it in the Argonne Forest, General Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, some fifteen miles out of Chicago, where special facilities were being built to accommodate the pile and its accompanying laboratories:

The already insufficient time available for this construction was cut even further by some labor difficulties which, while not particularly serious, led to delays.

In the meantime, work had begun on a small pile under the West Stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. This pile was to be used to perform exponential experiments to determine the feasibility of the larger test pile. An exponential experiment, as its name indicates, is one from which, using measurements of the results obtained under varying conditions, the results to be expected under vastly different conditions can be calculated. When the supply of pure graphite necessary for the construction of a self-sustaining pile became available somewhat sooner than had been anticipated, Compton raised the question: “Why wait for Argonne?”

There was no reason to wait, except for our uncertainty about whether the planned experiment might not prove hazardous to the surrounding community. If the pile should explode, no one knew just how far the danger would extend. Stagg Field lies in the heart of a populous area, while the Argonne site was well isolated. Because of this, I had serious misgivings about the wisdom of Compton’s suggestion. I went over the situation with him, and told him of my feelings, but I did not interfere with his plans, nor did I display outwardly my concern by being present during the initial test. I learned then that nothing is harder for the man carrying the ultimate responsibility, in this case myself, than to sit back and appear calm and confident while all his hopes can easily be destroyed in a moment by some unexpected event over which he has no direct control.

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Although the committee was in the Chicago laboratories on December 2, 1942, when the Fermi experimental atomic pile was first placed in operation, the only committee member to witness the actual demonstration was Greenewalt. He was invited by Compton on the ground that he was the youngest and would be able to talk about it for the most years.

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“The Italian navigator [Fermi] has just landed in the new world. The natives are friendly.”

The December 2 test proved that a controlled chain reaction could be achieved, but it gave no assurance that it could be used to produce plutonium on a large scale. Neither did it give us any assurance that a bomb using plutonium or U-235 would explode. In the reactor the chain reaction was based on slow neutrons, i.e., ones slowed down by graphite or other means. In the bomb, the neutrons would be fast, for because of technical limitations there could be no moderators. Nevertheless, the committee, basing its opinion on what it had seen and heard during its inspections, reported favorably on the plutonium process.

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In his letter, Compton was quite positive. He stated that the production of plutonium following the procedure then in hand was feasible; that there was a 99 per cent probability that it would be successful; that the probability of a successful bomb was 90 per cent; and that the time schedule, assuming continued full support, would see delivery of the first bomb in 1944 and a production rate of one bomb per month in 1945. This was by far the most optimistic estimate that I ever received prior to the explosion of the first bomb some thirty months later; and it was not at all justified by the existing knowledge.

After he had studied all the possibilities, General Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, he concluded that only one firm was capable of handling all three phases of the plutonium effort, and that firm was du Pont:

When I broached the subject to Arthur Compton, he agreed at once, saying that he knew Stone and Webster were overburdened and were way out of their field of experience, and that it would be a great relief to have du Pont in the picture. However, he warned me that we would encounter opposition, some of it quite strong and quite influential, from some of the people in his laboratory.

He told me that in the previous June he had assembled his staff and proposed bringing in an industrial firm to take over responsibility for the production phase of the plutonium project. The suggestion had resulted in a near rebellion, particularly among those whose entire experience had been in academic institutions. They simply did not comprehend the immensity of the engineering, construction and operating problems that had to be overcome. Whenever attempts were made to explain them, they brushed them aside as inconsequential. After the furor had subsided, Compton announced that he expected to go ahead with his idea.

He said that while his position had been accepted then, he had no doubt that there would be many objections, voiced and unvoiced, and that the selection of du Pont — the very symbol of large industry — would be particularly opposed. He went on to assure me that personally he was very much in favor of my proposal and, moreover, that he felt that du Pont was by far the best choice that could be made.

On the other hand, a number of his scientific people, particularly those who had been trained in Europe, where scientific and engineering education were more closely linked than in this country, had the idea that all design and engineering for the project should be accomplished under their personal direction. Some even went so far as to say that they could also supervise the construction.

When I visited the laboratory on October 5 and again on October 15, I was told by several different persons that if I would provide them with from fifty to one hundred junior engineers and draftsmen, they would then themselves design and construct the plutonium plant, rapidly and without delay. They added that the plant could then be turned over to a private company for operation, or possibly be run under the Civil Service.

The absurdity of such a proposal is apparent when it is remembered that this was the plant where our construction forces reached a peak of forty-five thousand and was so difficult an undertaking as to strain even the great resources of du Pont, with the full power of, and considerable aid from, the government and much of America’s industry behind it.

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The urgency of the project did not allow time for us to conduct any detailed security checks in advance of negotiations; instead, we relied upon the discretion and patriotism of American industry. We considered this a good risk and we were never disappointed.

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I said that there were three basic military considerations involved in our work. First, the Axis Powers could very easily soon be in a position to produce either plutonium or U-235, or both. There was no evidence to indicate that they were not striving to do so; therefore we had to assume that they were. To have concluded otherwise would have been foolhardy. Second, there was no known defense against the military use of nuclear weapons except the fear of their counter-employment. Third, if we were successful in time, we would shorten the war and thus save tens of thousands of American casualties. (I have always believed it was for these reasons, and particularly the last, that Carpenter and his colleagues on the du Pont Executive Committee agreed to undertake the work in spite of all the hazards it entailed for their company.)

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They pointed out that even in one of their own fields of specialization they would not attempt to design a large-scale plant without the necessary data that could be accumulated only by a long period of laboratory research, followed by semi-works operation: for example, it had taken them many years to get nylon into mass production; yet the nylon process was simple compared to what we were asking of them.

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I should make it clear that reactor theory at this time did not overlook the possibility that once a chain reaction was started, it could, under some conditions, get out of control and increase progressively to the point where the reactor would explode. If highly radioactive materials were blown into the atmosphere and spread by winds over a wide area, the results could be catastrophic. We knew, too, that in the separation of the plutonium we might release into the atmosphere radioactive and other highly toxic fumes which would constitute a distinct hazard for operating personnel. It was not surprising, therefore, that du Pont should entertain grave doubts about the desirability of joining us in our work.

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As the directors entered the room at their next Board meeting, they were asked not to look at the faced-down papers on the table in front of them. Carpenter explained that the Executive Committee was recommending that du Pont accept a contract from the government for a project in a previously unexplored field so large and so difficult that it would strain the capacity of the company to the utmost. He added that there were elements of hazard in it that under certain conditions could very well seriously damage if not well-nigh destroy du Pont. He said that the highest officials in the government, as well as those who knew the most about it, considered it to be of the highest military importance. Even its purpose was held in extreme secrecy, although if any Board member wished to he was free to read the faced-down papers before voting. Not a single man, and they were all heavy stockholders, turned them over before voting approval — or afterwards — a true display of real patriotism.

On October 5, 1942, General Groves paid his first visit to the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, as he explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, where he met with Arthur Compton and “about fifteen of his senior men”:

Among them were two other Nobel Prize winners, Enrico Fermi and James Franck, together with the brilliant Hungarian physicists Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard, and Dr. Norman Hilberry, Compton’s assistant.

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With respect to the amount of fissionable material needed for each bomb, how accurate did they think their estimate was? I expected a reply of “within twenty-five or fifty per cent,” and would not have been greatly surprised at an even greater percentage, but I was horrified when they quite blandly replied that they thought it was correct within a factor of ten.

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My position could well be compared with that of a caterer who is told he must be prepared to serve anywhere between ten and a thousand guests. But after extensive discussion of this point, I concluded that it simply was not possible then to arrive at a more precise answer.

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This uncertainty surrounding the amount of material needed for a bomb plagued us continuously until shortly before the explosion of the Alamogordo test bomb on July 16, 1945. Even after that we could not be sure that Uranium-235 (used in the Hiroshima bomb) would have the same characteristics as plutonium (used in the test and later against Nagasaki), although we knew of no reason why it should be greatly different.

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After the meeting, Compton and I resumed a discussion we had begun earlier with Szilard on how to reduce the number of approaches which were being explored for cooling the pile. Four methods—using helium, air, water and heavy water—were under active study. It was essential that we concentrate on the most promising and more or less abandon work on the others. By the end of the afternoon we settled on helium cooling. But within three months this decision was changed. The design problems early encountered in the comparatively small air-cooled reactor at Clinton indicated that the handling of any gaseous coolant in the much larger Hanford reactors would be very difficult. And as the operation of the Fermi test pite in December had proved that in a properly designed uranium pile water could be used as a coolant, it was adopted for the plutonium reactors we built at Hanford.

I left Chicago feeling that the plutonium process seemed to offer us the greatest chances for success in producing bomb material. Every other process then under consideration depended upon the physical separation of materials having almost infinitesimal differences in their physical properties. Under such circumstances, the design and operation of any industrial processes to accomplish this separation would involve unprecedented difficulties. It was true that the transmutation of uranium by spontaneous chain reaction into usable quantities of plutonium fell entirely outside of existing technical knowledge; yet the rest of the process—the chemical separation of the plutonium from the rest of the material—while extremely difficult and completely unprecedented, did not seem to be impossible.

Up until this time, only infinitesimal quantities of plutonium had been produced, and these by means of the cyclotron, a laboratory method not suitable for production in quantity. And by quantity production of plutonium, I do not mean tons per hour, but rather a few thimblefuls per day. Even by December, 1943, only two milligrams had been produced.

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This was in accord with the general philosophy I had followed throughout the military construction program and to which we adhered consistently in this project; namely, that nothing would be more fatal to success than to try to arrive at a perfect plan before taking any important step.

It is sobering to realize, General Groves explains in Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, that but for a chance meeting between a Belgian and an Englishman a few months before the outbreak of the war, the Allies might not have been first with the atomic bomb:

For the most important source of uranium ore during the war years was the Shinkolobwe Mine in the Belgian Congo and the most important man concerned with its operation was M. Edgar Sengier, the managing director of Union Miniere du Haut Katanga or, as it is usually called, Union Miniere.

In May of 1939, Sengier happened to be in England, in the office of Lord Stonehaven, a fellow director on the Union Miniere Board, when Stonehaven asked him to receive an important scientist. This turned out to be Sir Henry Tizard, the director of the Imperial College of Science and Technology. He asked Sengier to grant the British Government an option on every bit of radium-uranium ore that would be extracted from the Shinkolobwe Mine. Naturally, Sengier refused. As he was leaving, Sir Henry took him by the arm and said most impressively: “Be careful, and never forget that you have in your hands something which may mean a catastrophe to your country and mine if this material were to fall in the hands of a possible enemy.” This remark, coming as it did from a renowned scientist, made a lasting impression on Sengier.

A few days later, he discussed the future possibilities of uranium fission with several French scientists, including Joliot-Curie, a Nobel Prize winner. They proposed a joint effort to attempt the fission of uranium in a bomb to be constructed in the Sahara Desert. Sengier accepted their proposal in principle and agreed to furnish the raw material and to assist in the work. The outbreak of World War II in September, 1939, brought this project to a halt even before it began.

Tizard’s warning and the obvious interest of the French scientists emphasized to Sengier the strategic value of the Katanga ores, which were of exceptional richness, far surpassing in that respect any others that have ever been discovered.

Sengier left Brussels in October of 1939 for New York, where he remained for the rest of the war. From there, he managed the operations of his company, both inside and outside the Belgian Congo, and after the invasion of Belgium in 1940 had to do so without the benefit of any advice from his fellow directors who were in Belgium behind the German lines.

Before his departure from Brussels, he had ordered shipped to the United States and to Great Britain all available radium, about 120 grams, then valued at some $1.8 million. He had also ordered that all uranium ores in stock at the Union Miniere-controlled refining plant in Oolen, Belgium, be sent to the United States. Unfortunately, this order was not complied with promptly; later, owing to the German advance into Belgium, it became impossible to carry it out.

Toward the end of 1940, fearing a possible German invasion of the Belgian Congo, Sengier directed his representatives in Africa to ship discreetly to New York, under whatever ruse was practicable, the very large supply of previously mined uranium ore, then in storage at the Shinkolobwe Mine. All work at the mine had stopped with the outbreak of the war and the equipment had been transferred to vitally important copper and cobalt mining operations for the Allied war effort. In accordance with Sengier’s instructions, over 1,250 tons of uranium ore were shipped by way of the nearest port, Lobito, in Portuguese Angola, during September and October of 1940, and on arrival were stored in a warehouse on Staten Island.