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The Manhattan Project Heritage Preservation Association, Inc. "Preserving, Exhibiting, Interpreting and Teaching the History of the Manhattan Project" |
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Manhattan Project History
Manhattan Engineer District - The Beginning
Du Pont Enters the Fray
| "Under the best of circumstances, plutonium could be produced by 1945; however, the chances of this happening are low" - Official Appraisal from DuPont; Fall 1942 |
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Final input for the November meetings of the Military Policy Committee and the S-1 Executive Committee came from DuPont. One of the first things Groves did when he took over in September was to begin courting DuPont, hoping that the giant chemical company would undertake construction and operation of the plutonium separation plant to be built in Tennessee. (Note: At this time it was still assumed that all plutonium production AND separation facilities would be built at Oak Ridge; of course this was later changed to the Hanford site) Groves appealed to patriotism, informing the company that the bomb project had high priority with the President and maintaining that a successful effort could affect the outcome of the war. DuPont managers resisted but did not refuse the task, and in the process they provided an objective appraisal of the pile project. Webmaster's Note: Not only did DuPont accept the task, but the company is largely credited with successfully orchestrating one of the largest construction projects in world history, certainly of that period. We have on file a very enlightening post-war "congratulatory letter" from the president of DuPont, to all its employees thanking them for their contribution. The Military Policy Committee met on November 12, 1942, and its decisions were ratified by the S-1 Executive Committee two days later. The Military Policy Committee, acting on Grove's and Conant's recommendations, cancelled the centrifuge project. Gaseous diffusion, the pile, and the electromagnetic method were to proceed immediately to full-scale, by-passing the semi-works (pilot plant) stage. The S-1 Executive Committee approved these recommendations and agreed that the gaseous diffusion facility was of lower priority than either the pile or the electromagnetic plant but ahead of the second pile at Chicago (CP-2). The scientific committee also asked DuPont to look into methods for increasing American supplies of heavy water in case it was needed to serve as a moderator for one of the new piles. Anxious as he was to get moving, Groves decided to make one final quality control check before acting on the decisions of November 12 and 14. This decision seemed imperative after a brief scare surfaced surrounding the pile project. While Fermi's calculations provided reasonable assurance against such a possibility, the vision of a chain reaction running wild in heavily populated Chicago arose when the S-1 Executive Committee discovered that Compton was building the experimental pile (CP-1) at Stagg Field, a decision he had made without informing either Groves or the committee. In addition, information from British scientists raised serious questions about the feasibility of deriving plutonium from the pile. It took several days for Groves and a committee of scientists including Lawrence and Oppenheimer to satisfy themselves that the pile experiment posed little danger, was justified by sound theory, and would in all probability produce plutonium as predicted. |
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