r designing and building
an atom Alan Perryman
ic bom b. At the time it was a
race to beat the
Germans who, acc
Overview
ording to intelligence reports, were building their own atomic bomb. Under the Manhattan Project three large facilities were constructed. At Oak Ridge, Tenn., huge gas diffusion and elec tromagnetic process plants were built to separate uranium 235 from its more common form, uranium 238. Hanford, Wash. became the home for nuclear reactors which produced a new element called plutonium. Both uranium 235 and plutonium are fissionable and can be used to produce an atomic explosion. Los Alamos was established in northen New Mexico to design and build the bomb. At Los Alamos many of th
e greatest scientific minds of the day labored over the theory and actual
