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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
Clinton Engineer Works (Oak Ridge)
X-10 Graphite Reactor
Plutonium Production (Semi-Works)
Operator: E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Company
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Webmaster's Note: The X-10 Graphite Reactor was a semi-works (pilot plant) facility based on design and engineering information developed at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Based on Fermi's pile (CP-1), the X-10 Reactor and associated chemical extraction facility, produced the world's first plutonium outside the laboratory. Technology developed at Oak Ridge formed the foundation upon which the giant plutonium producing facilities at Hanford were based. For further information, check out Met Lab , Hanford and DuPont. |
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DuPont broke ground for the X-10 complex at Oak Ridge in February
1943. The site would include an air-cooled experimental pile
reactor, a pilot chemical separation plant, and various support
facilities. Cooper produced blueprints for the chemical separation
plants in time for construction to begin in March. A series of
huge underground concrete cells, the first of which sat under the pile,
extended to one story above ground. Aluminum cans containing
uranium slugs would drop into the first cell of the chemical separation
facility and dissolve and then begin the extraction process.
The pile building itself went up during the spring and summer of 1943, a huge concrete shell seven feet thick with hundreds of holes for uranium slug placement. Slugs were to plutonium piles what barrier was to gaseous diffusion; that is, an obstacle that could shut down the entire process. ALCOA (Aluminum Company of America) was the only firm left working on a process to enclose uranium 235 within aluminum sheaths, and it was still having problems. Initial production provided mixed results, with many cans failing vacuum tests because of faulty seams. The moment everyone had been waiting for came in late October 1943 when DuPont completed construction and tests of the X-10 pile. After thousands of uranium slugs were loaded, the pile went critical in the early morning of November 4th and produced its first plutonium by the end of the month. Criticality was achieved with only half of the channels filled with uranium. During the next several months, Compton gradually raised the power level of the pile and increased plutonium yield. Chemical separation techniques using the bismuth phosphate process were so successful that Los Alamos received its first plutonium samples beginning in the spring of 1944. Fission studies of these samples at Los Alamos during the summer heavily influenced bomb design.
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