U.S. Offers Glimpse at Manhattan Project Facility

jonerik writes "According to this article from the Associated Press, the US government is this week permitting the public a rare glimpse of its high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant as part of Oak Ridge, Tennessee's annual Secret City Festival, which is being held this coming weekend. Although the plant is still associated with ongoing nuclear weapons work, members of the public will be permitted to see parts of the facility associated with its work on the Manhattan Project's 'Little Boy' bomb, which was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The facility produced the uranium-235 which was used in the device using 1,152 massive calutrons across nine separate buildings in 1944 and 1945. 'Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the world was going on out here,' Department of Energy guide Ray Smith said on Monday. 'All this material was coming in, truckload after truckload, and nothing ever left.'"