The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project

Nuclear research all started when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered into World War II. When the United States realized that Germany attempted to build an atomic bomb, Americans began to concentrate on their research about creating an atomic bomb more heavily. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Manhattan Project, which included a group of top scientists, under General Leslie R. Groves, who worked around the clock to try to develop an atomic bomb within three years (Bondi 493). The Americans and the British combined their efforts to research the development of the bomb and created plants and factories to work in (“The Atomic Bomb…” 257). They created plants for three separate processes: electromagnetic, gaseous diffusion, and thermal diffusion. These plants helped create the plutonium and uranium 235 needed to manufacture the atomic bomb (Gerdes 142). The secrecy of the Manhattan Project was essential in order to develop the atomic bombs to end World War II.

The United States and Great Britain kept the development of the atomic bomb a secret (Bondi 493). In order to keep the secret, Groves spread the work out between laboratories so that the people working on the bomb could not figure out they were manufacturing. The members of the Manhattan Project asked the scientists questions about the bomb, and they gave answers back, but they did not know what the responses were for. The project consisted of so many restrictions for the employees in order to keep the secrecy of the project. They could not hold private conversations about the material they were working on because after awhile, people might have been able to put it together and determine that they were creating a bomb. Employees worked on tasks that had nothing to do with what the others around them were doing. Even the officials on the War Production Board remained unaware of the bomb (“The Atomic Bomb…” 258).

As with everything, problems occurred during the development process. The plutonium needed for the bombs was only in microscopic sizes, which was very difficult to handle. Plutonium’s properties were unknown, and scientists knew very little about uranium 235. The plants needed to be run by machinery because the materials were “radioactive, poisonous, violently corrosive, or all three” (Gerdes 143).

After scientists studied and became familiar with plutonium and uranium 235, they were able to begin the manufacturing process (Gerdes 91).