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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
Hanford Engineer Works (Hanford, WA)
Site "W"
Chemical Concentration and Isolation of Plutonium
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Construction of the chemical concentration buildings (224-T, U, & B) was a less daunting task because relatively little radioactivity was involved, and the work was not started until very late 1944. The 200-West units were finished in early October, the East unit in February 1945. In the Queen Mary's, bismuth phosphate carried the plutonium through the long succession of process pools. The concentration stage was designed to separate the two chemicals. The normal relationship between pilot plant and production plant was realized when the Oak Ridge pilot plant reported that bismuth phosphate was not suitable for the concentration process but that Glenn Seaborg's original choice, lanthanum fluoride, worked quite well. Hanford, accordingly, incorporated this suggestion into the concentration facilities. The final step in plutonium extraction was isolation, performed in a more typical laboratory setting with little radiation present. Here Perlman's earlier research on the peroxide method paid off and was applied to produce pure plutonium nitrate. The nitrate solution was then transported to Los Alamos where it was converted to metal.
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