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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.'"
"Nothing to see here, move along."
Scary in relevance to this.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Sounds like it will be a bomb!
-Sj53
-20 lame, i know... someone had to say it though
Will the festival include a barbeque?
If some half-wit accidentally walks into a restricted area and gets hungry, they might accidently push the button marked "lunch."
Man, I have quite a few paid leave days to spend and this would have been a great geek opportunity to spend part of them...being a science/history geek, this would have been a nice thing to visit.
It's not like we find any reason to visit Tennessee these days...
I highly doubt that they're going to give out plans on building your own nuke...you can find that stuff on the internet, anyways. And congrats on being another one of the million Americans that think 9/11 should restrict everything we do. "OH NO, THERE ARE TERRORISTS EVERYWHERE! I'm staying in my house for the rest of my life."
I thought they'd been doing tours round this plant for many years.
A few years ago I went on a 'bizzare places' tour round the states and this was one of the places on the agenda.
Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to go on the tour round Y-12, but they were doing daily trips from the science & technology museum in nearby oakridge.
Finding out how to refine nuclear material and build a nuclear bomb in the modern world hardly requires the kind of intelligence that you're describing.
Now, the intelligence to run by the library and pick up a good book, that you might need.
It's obsolete technology, along with the gas diffusion plant. If someone wants to enrich uranium, there are more efficient methods, like gas centrifuges.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Is it not a bit awry that we are allowing tours through the building where a bomb that killed thousands of people was built? I mean, it isn't exactly a tour of an art museum, or a place like the White House. It's just kind of odd.
- we all know the U235 came from the German sub U-234, originally destined for Japan. If it had made it there, the japs would have had the bomb first.
- atomic-program
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Japanese
"And you are dying so slowly, you believe to be living" - Bertrand Besigye
It's a UN thing. Only the founding members of the UN (US, Russia, France, China, UK) are permitted to develop nukes, ostensibly for peacekeeping purposes.
Anyone wanting to join the UN has to agree to this and not develop nuclear weapons. In return they get access to nuclear theory and technology to make (for example) nuclear energy reactors.
If you're a country and you want to develop nukes, then you're in for some serious trouble. If you're a member of the UN then you're breaking the rules, so everyone gets pissed off at you. If you're not a member of the UN then you're considered to be the bad guys, so everyone gets pissed off at you.
The problem is that as a country you can't really afford to have everyone pissed off at you because you face things like international pressure, political sanctions and pre-emptive strikes. In today's globalised interdependent economy, these things really matter.
And congrats on being another one of the million Americans that think 9/11 should restrict everything we do.
When I was growing up, here in the UK, we had terrorist attacks from the IRA every so often (bombings, shootings, etc. mainly in London). The thing that the politicians always said was "If the terrorists change they way we live our lives and restrict what we can do then they have won" (or words to that effect). Then a bunch of people flew a plane into a building in the US and it seems the terrorists have won since everything is now being restricted to prevent terrorism... how times change.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Unless you're Israel, then you get away with it because you've got a lot of friends in Washington.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Looks like they're still trying to draw attention aways from the real issues like Roswell and The Kennedy Assassination. However I must be brief even as I type people are homing in on me, the only thing stopping them from finding me is my Aluminum headware.
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
Pu is not so great fuel. To make Mixed Oxide Fuel, from free separated Pu and free DU or natural U actualy costs more than mining, extracting and enriching Uranium to the 5% level (or whatever is used in the plant) . Apart from hazzards of Pu, the economy is not there with MOX.
Pu is a toxic waste from energy production perspective and should be burried, not re-made into nuclear fuel.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
"The US is not the only country to suffer from terrorism, the UK has had it for decades
"I don't want to end up in that boat. Stamp it out now. Don't give them opportunities to do more harm."
Hell no, I *refuse* to let the American public have any say at all in the Northern Ireland issue.
Marching in guns blazing will not be a solution with NI. Terrorism in the UK was dealt with slowly, carefully and for the most part effectively. It is now primarily only within Ireland and N. Ireland that bombings still occur, and they are on a decrease.
Tip for the US - Recognise the cause.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
History Channel's Modern Marvels: The Manhattan Project
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
(I grew up in Oak Ridge and can vouch that this is actually a very on-topic post). For those not in the know, Big Ed's Pizza is probably the biggest attraction in Oak Ridge outside of the Oak Ridge National Labs and Y-12/K-25 complexes. Many of my friends have been walking around various cities around the world while wearing a Big Ed's t-shirt and had people come up to them asking if they were from Oak Ridge and then relating their own stories of eating at Big Ed's. I was driving through Alabama a few years ago and met someone who was in the Marines with Big Ed. (Big Ed was, quite appropriately, a World War II veteran. He was also quite large of heart, supporting the local Boys' and Girls' Club, various clubs at Oak Ridge High School, and providing employment for many teenagers in Oak Ridge.) Big Ed's Pizza is indeed still there. Big Ed himself, unfortunately, is not (he passed away in 1998). But there are still massive crowds there most of the time, especially after football games at Blankenship Field. I usually have dinner or lunch there with some of my high school friends when I'm in town.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has a great view of early Soviet nuclear work at Mayak starting in the late 1940's9 9larin
9 9larin
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so
"expensive apparatuses were more valuable than the people who operated them"
"it was common to clean up spills of radioactive solutions by hand. It seems strange now, but the possibility of spills was not anticipated, and there was no way to collect spilled solution safely. We had only wash cloths, buckets, and sometimes, rubber gloves. We collected the spilled solution and poured it into big glass bottles--it was a very expensive compound and we were expected to recover every drop."
"leaks happened there they sometimes lost as much as three tons of highly radioactive product. To collect those spills with wash cloths was impossible."
"several hundred kilograms of freshly irradiated nuclear fuel got stuck--men from everywhere in the plant were called out, and one after another they used long steel rods to push the elements into the apparatus. The only protection they had was cotton overalls and gloves"
Enjoy
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so
It's a UN thing. Only the founding members of the UN (US, Russia, France, China, UK) are permitted to develop nukes, ostensibly for peacekeeping purposes.
I think you meant to say permanent members of the Security Council...
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
So many people seem obsessed with comparing Bush with Saddam/Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot whoever. My reply is: Grow Up. If you truly cant see the difference between Bush and Saddam, then I truly feel sorry for you.
Nomatter who you're talking about, I don't see what gives the right for one country who has weapons of mass destruction (and has used them in the past) to tell another country that they can't develop their own. If the US decomissioned it's weapons of mass destruction then it would be in more of a position to make that point. Like it or not, the US is _not_ the most morally superior and trustworthy country in the world.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
One thing that you don't realize is that while the initial purpose of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project was to end World War II, almost everything that has come after that has been devoted to peace and the betterment of mankind. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a major institute for the advancement of dozens of areas of science including cleaner sources of energy, biology, environmental cleanup, particle physics, material science, mathematics, and more.
And, having grown up in Oak Ridge, I can tell you that no one forgets what the bombs did. No one in Oak Ridge ever tries to cover up what happened. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed that you are so willing to dismiss a city and project that has had an immeasurable impact on history. Should we celebrate the death of more than one hundred thousand civilians? Certainly not. But neither should we ignore the contribution that the workers, engineers, and scientists of Oak Ridge made toward the ending of the most horrible war that we have ever seen. Many of the workers from Oak Ridge made tremendous sacrifices to serve their country in the way that they could, and the honor in those sacrifices should be respected, regardless of the end result, especially since most of the workers were unaware of the nature of the project.
I live about half a mile from the Y-12 facility. Some guys from work and I got together to tour their place a few weeks ago to view their network infrastructure. They've got a HUGE room full of Crays. It was pretty loud in there, as to be expected. One of the less polite of the guys I was with had the nerve to ask one of their network admins what he made.. 37 grand and no benefits, because very few of them actually work for Y-12. That was a surprise. From what I saw, most everything there is AMD and Nvidia. Their preferred Linux is SuSE for some reason.. to each their own I suppose. For anyone who may want to make the trip, drop me a line and I'll let you know of some other interesting things to do around here. For anyone bringing their family, there's a park (Commerce Park, I think it's called) right next to Y-12 with a nice little picnic/fishing area. I'm rambling.
the parent writes: 'Keep in mind this is the japanese we are talking about not the french, they will die before they surrender. They are still finding japanese soldiers who refused to surrender.'
to extrapolate from individual characteristics (even culturally shared ones) to political/military outcomes, or even aggregate behaviour, is a fallacy.
this is like the old story of people saying that we have wars because it's 'human nature', when in fact while 'human nature' may give us the capacity to be soldiers (as well as to not be), it is ultimately *politicians* who start wars, not average people--average people just participate in them (and can escalate them through their participation).
equally, while you may say that because of some shared cultural characteristic japanese soldiers were less likely to give up the fight once they were involved in it, this does not imply that the japanese political/military elite would have had incentives to continue fighting no matter what. you cannot treat all japanese as if they had the same incentive structure.
the average japanese soldier was motivated by a belief in the emperor, the japanese nation, following orders and carrying out his duty. but what was the emperor motivated by? what were the generals motivated by? and when you put them all together, what is the systematic behaviour? it's not the same thing.
japan did in fact realise that it was losing, and while it is true that the average soldier probably would have fought to the death (just as many people would fight to the death defending their country, or what they see as their country's right), this does not imply that people making decisions would have taken them on the basis of 'death before defeat'. clearly this was shown not to be the case by the japanese surrender. there is absolutely nothing in the history that indicates that they would not have surrendered had it not been for the atomic bomb being dropped. what makes the atomic bomb somehow override japanese people's supposed character of wanting to fight to the death, where other means do not?
there were still IRA bombings up to the late 90s, no cold war then either. and the bombs did seem pretty bad because they killed and injured a lot of people.
the difference is that they were not exploited in order to create a climate of fear completely disproportional to the actual events. incidentally that is exactly the point of terrorist tactics--but we see today that those tactics can be effectively turned around and made more useful for the (supposed) target of the attacks than for the attackers...
as a country you can't really afford to have everyone pissed off at you because you face things like international pressure, political sanctions and pre-emptive strikes
Tell me about it. I did a nuclear strike in Persia in Civ III, and suddenly everybody went bananas on me.
This is the coolest place to go visit - would have been a seat of government for the uk during a nuclear war scenario. Lots of cool stuff to see.
...
Hack Green
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Not quite on the scale of this one but I thought someone here might find this of use.
Nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Some of the people on here are so liberal that they're offended by the realities of everyday life. There's nothing wrong with having pride in your country and admiring its war machines.
I'm surprised that these people aren't ashamed of being human or living in the country they do, because after all, humans fought their way to the top of the food chain and their ancestors surely took the country they live in by force from someone else. Fighting, natural selection- it's all part of nature. No matter how evolved people think they are, they still cannot break free of the most simple rules of mother nature.
- This may bell be just a PR campaign to make the place look better. Lots of things you won't hear on the tour:
- The calutrons were basically a FAILURE-- they only put out about 10% of the expected U235-- the rest they smeared all over the place, and not in the collection bucket. Once the gas diffusion plant got running the calutrons were relegated to secondary status. Being extremely expensive and inefficient to boot, they were shut down ASAP after the war.
- They were built mostly due to Lawrence's reputation in building the cyclotron, not on any technical merit.
- Ask about when the building had most of the world's mercury flowing through its pipes. And how much got lost. A DOE report says: "A 1983 study by USDOE estimates that 733,000 pounds of elemental mercury were released to the environment in the 1950s and 1960s around the Y-12 Plant. Most of the contamination around Y-12 is confined to the upper 10 feet of soils and fill. Additional studies revealed that some 170,000 pounds of mercury are contained in the sediments and floodplain of about a 15-mile length of East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC), which has its headwaters at Y-12, and that some 500 pounds of mercury annually leave this watershed." ( i.e.: don't smoke the grass)
- Ask about the nearby sites where they dumped tons of radioactive waste right into the creeks and hollers.
Just MHO but his would be one of the LAST places on Earth I'd care to visit.Rape of Nanking
"Troubling" he says...
Even more relevant:
"America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization." -- John O'Hara
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Israel is not a signatory of NNPT. For that matter, neither are India or Pakistan. I do not know where the GP got that weird idea that it is a UN thing, because it is not. Countries may choose to sign or not freely - well, unless they happen to be declared "rogue states" by the US, in which case any and all treaties are just ink on the paper anyway.
This isn't an issue about "rights" (well, you can make it one, but that's not very helpful) - it's an issue of who you trust.
If you are fine with our friend Kim Yong Il and the nice Mullahs of Theran getting the bomb, so be it. Still, that really tells the rest of us all we need to know about you and your alliegances.
Arguments about "rights" are useful in communities where there is some level of mutual trust and reciprocity - they aren't very useful when dealing with entities such as those mentioned above.
As a Canadian, and a retired Canadian soldier at that, thanks for noticing our contribution at Normandy - and I say that without irony; the fact that Canada had a Normandy beach all to itself, and was in fact the only country to reach its D-Day objectives, is sadly often overlooked.
:) But please don't assume we're an American puppet state, militarily - we are not.
But your comment "I don't think Canada would have had that level of involvement without US cooperation" is well off the mark.
Historically, Canadians don't give a fig about what the US does when it comes to going to war. We are our own independant country, and we make our own decisions.
We joined WW1 and WW2 within a couple of days of both wars starting, and in both cases Canadians were busy fighting and dying well in advance of any American involvement.
Even in the case of war material Canadians have gone it their own if they had to. In WW1 we brought the Canadian made Ross rifle (sadly, a steaming hunk of shit and a political boondoggle) and we started WW2 with our own tank, the Ram (design elements of which eventually made it into the vastly superior Sherman) When US material, usually much cheaper to obtain rather than building it ourselves, became availble we'd use it, but having access to US equipment was never a precondition to Canada going to war.
In fact, it's interesting to see which wars Canada has chose to get involved in, and which ones it chose to avoid. I think we have a pretty good batting average when it comes to finding the just ones:
WW1, WW2, Korea, Gulf War 1, and Afganistan we all get into immediately. Vietnam and Gulf War 2 we purposely pass on.
And then there's all those UN peacekeeping missions: Cyprus, the Golan Heights, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti....
Anyway, thanks for noticing our proud military heritage. We think we've done OK over the years.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
One of the things I've always thought the Americans got right, and could be justifiably proud of, was how they rebuilt both Germany and Japan after WW2.
While not _completely_ innocent of a Machiavelllian scheming (what is, in politics?) the effort to NOT seek revenge by punishing the enemy, and instead to do everything possible to rebuild their economies and get them back on their own, *independant* feet, I think was one of the wisest political decisions made in human history. The contribution to the stability and well-being of the world since is incaluable.
The sad thing is that it appears that the lesson learned there has been forgotten. Can you imagine what the world would be like today, if the US had, instead of invading Iraq, chosen to bring the Marshall Plan to Afganistan?
Not only would the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people been improved (an absolute good in of itself) an America that chose to treat Afganistan benevolently, that rebuilt industry and infrastructure and got the country cleaned up and back on its feet, would have torn the heart out of the support base for the people who attacked the US in the first place. It's hard to get people to hate the guy whose making your life better....
Ah well.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I do remember in the early 1960's that the Atomic Engergy Museum in Oak Ridge had a Californium 252 http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele098.html / source in a tank of water, with a chute that would direct a quarter to the source, hold it for a few seconds, then let it roll on out. Cf252 is a stong neutron source, which activated the silver to a very short-lived isotope. We had fun running quarters through as fast as posible to see how hot we could get them. But, they had to shut it down in 1964, because the copper isotopes (US Treasury changed the quarter to a silver sandwich of copper) lasted much, much longer.
cabg x3 is a life changing event...
During WWII, my grandfather was teaching physics to Navy cadets at Murray State College in western Kentucky, as part of the War Department's "90-Day Wonder" program. They'd take cadets out of basic training who'd had some college experience, and give them technical training before putting them in charge of engineering battallions, or other technical posts.
Grandfather (a civilian) actually wanted to enlist in the regular military, but was always told by the temporary military commander of this civilian school, "Uncle Sam needs you right here, teaching these cadets." Finally he gave up, decided they were right, and resigned himself to what he was best at, being a small-town physics teacher.
Immediately he starts getting draft notices in the mail. In frustration he showed the notices to the commander, who telephoned his own superiors and according to my grandfather, "Just started cussing." After five minutes, he hangs up.
The next thing my grandfather knows, he receives another notice, no return address, telling him to take a train from Murray to a town he'd never heard of near Knoxville, and not to tell anybody where he was going.
Grandfather arrived at Oak Ridge, which in his telling was hardly a town, with knee-deep mud in the streets. He asked where the town hall was (this is where he was supposed to meet his contact) but no one would say a word to him. Finally he joined in a boy's game of marbles, and found out from the children where the place was.
From the town hall, he was whisked into the nascent Oak Ridge plant, and interviewed for some hours about his background, and his knowledge of physics (which I remember was heavy on practical knowledge, but medium on sophisticated theory.)
After the meeting was over, they wouldn't let him leave the plant for several more hours, as his paperwork had gone missing during the interview.
Grandfather decided that Oak Ridge was no place to raise my three year-old father, took the train back to Murray, and went straight back to teaching those Navy cadets (and then the GI Bill veterans, after the war, and then their children.)
He died in 1996, without ever knowing the job description for which he'd been so meticulously interviewed.
Now the story about the class of graduating cadets "replacing" his entire set of "civilian" demonstration apparatus by standing at attention and presenting him with a chalkboard eraser tied to a piece of string will have to wait for another Offtopic post....
RIP, Granddaddy.