A little catch up-Who's heard of Oak Ridge, TN?

I'm enjoying a little bit of down time in Bluewater Key.  This gives me a little time to catch up.  When we were in Pigeon Forge TN we had the opportunity to visit the birthplace of the Atomic Bomb.  If anyone has watched the cable series Manhattan, you may have taken note of the little trip to Tennessee the New Mexico scientists took.

A little background-

Oak Ridge was built in secrecy during WWII.  The US knew it needed a secret spot to work on the bomb that would end the war.  Oak Ridge was created in 1942 as a major site of the "Manhattan Project", a massive wartime effort that produced the world's first atomic weapons.  It consisted of 59,000 acres and at the time the area was populated by only 3,000 people.  These residents were bought out by the US government.  The site was chosen as it was near highways and railroads, but still isolated between valleys.  The further you go into the site, the farther from the real world, the deeper into secrecy you go.

The gate to get in

Even the roads don't exist

Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt expressing the views of several leading scientists and explaining the potential of such a weapon.  When we visited the Roosevelt Library in Upstate New York in October, we viewed the original letter on display.

This trip is like a woven tapestry of events as one place leads to another.  It has given me a greater appreciation of our nations history and timelines.

While the scientists in New Mexico were busy trying to build the weapon and how it would detonate, the scientists in Oak Ridge were busy separating the uranium 235 isotope from natural uranium in sufficient quantity and quality to produce the fissionable material for atomic weapons.  The X-10 is where the original graphite-moderated reactor was constructed as a pilot facility for the larger plutonium production complex in Hanford, WA.  The X-10 facility was closed in 1963 and is today a National Historic Site.  We were lucky to visit this site on our little tour.

Two other huge buildings were instrumental to the building of the bomb-the Y-12 plant and the K-25 plant.  both plants were built to separate the uranium 235.  The Y-12 plant borrowed $300 million worth of silver from the US Treasury.  The silver was used as a substitute for cooper in the fabrication of equipment for the plant.  The silver was all returned to the US Treasury in 1947.  Today Y-12 is still used to manufacture, process, and storage of special materials that are vital to our national security and continues to contribute to the prevention of the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The K-25 plant was one of the largest scale-ups of laboratory equipment in history and involved process systems of unprecedented vacuum tightness and cleanliness.  The original K-25 plant covered more than 1,500 acres.  The site is currently undergoing massive site clean-up and environmental restoration.  We were unable to visit Y-12 and K-25 for obvious reasons.

The fascinating part for me is how they were able to maintain the secrecy required to do this vital work.  The population of the area grew to 75,000, the amount of electricity used was huge and yet only the President and the people working on the gadget knew about it.  With today's instant information and satellites we could never pull it off again.

A typical housing for a small family 

quaint little house. 

What do they do in Oak Ridge now?  The site is an amazing collection of brainiacs and scientists.  They have scientists from all over the world come to work on their experiments.  Oak Ridge is home to the second fastest super computer in the world - Titan.  Scientists earn time on the computer and we listened to one who is studying what happens when a star explodes and what is the effect on the Earth's atmosphere and the Sun's rays.  ORNL operates the Spallation Neutron Source, one of the world's foremost facilities for the study of materials.  An intense beam of neutrons is delivered to 25 instruments, providing much more detailed information about smaller samples of physical and biological materials than ever before.

Did I enjoy our visit? You bet!  I loved every minute of it, although most was over my head and I struggled to keep up.  I was fascinated by the idea of a secret city located in the hills of Tennessee that functioned entirely in secrecy for so many years.  After this I put White Sands NM on my bucket list of places to visit.  After growing up in the shadow of the Nevada Test Site, I guess this stuff just gets in your blood and bones.