
How the Manhattan Project’s Nuclear Suburb Stayed Secret - Petiver
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-build-secret-nuclear-city
======
tomkinstinch
If you're interested in atomic history and the Manhattan Project, a great book
is Richard Rhodes' _The making of the atomic bomb_ (ISBN: 1451677618). It's
~900 pages of history, from the personalities of the scientists involved, to
the sites of Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Hanford, and the first uses. I enjoyed
reading it while interning at ORNL and Sandia in the summers during undergrad.

The weapons are horrifying in their destructive power, but the Project is a
testament to what we can accomplish in science and engineering if we apply
virtually unlimited resources toward R&D to solve a problem. Beyond the
obvious product of the Project, it led to the creation of the DOE national
laboratory system, which has since served as a means of maintaining an able
technical workforce in the US, with physicists, mathematicians, chemists,
biologists, and computer scientists, among others, all working in the public
interest (and on things beyond weapons). Investing in science can pay
dividends well into the future.

For some perspective, the cost of the Manhattan Project was on the same order
of magnitude as the Apollo Program in terms of inflation-adjusted cost, about
$22-26 billion in 2016 dollars. Of course that amount does not include the
environmental cost still being felt in Hanford and elsewhere, or the human
cost.

Knowing the cost of those two programs really makes you question some other
efforts, like the program to develop the F-35 aircraft, estimated to cost $380
billion before even considering the additional $1.1 trillion in operational
cost. For comparison there, the Interstate Highway system cost about $500
billion to construct.

~~~
dba7dba
I read somewhere that the Manhattan Project was at one point consuming 1/7 of
ALL electricity generated in USA. And this is when all factories (and many
newly built ones) were running at full capacity. Truly mind boggling.

~~~
chiph
The other mind-boggling info about the project is that they needed copper for
the Y-12 electromagnetic separation magnets. But because there was a war on,
they couldn't get it. So they went to the US Treasury and borrowed 14,700 tons
of silver.

Daniel Bell, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, supposedly said:

"Young man, you may think of silver in tons, but the Treasury will always
think of silver in Troy Ounces"

(turned out to be 400 million Troy Ounces)

[https://phys.org/news/2010-01-silver-crucial-
wwii.html](https://phys.org/news/2010-01-silver-crucial-wwii.html)

------
lisper
I grew up in Oak Ridge (ORHS class of '82). It's an interesting little town.
It's in the deep south, but at the time, it had the highest concentration of
Ph.D.'s anywhere in the country (or so we were told growing up, I never
actually verified this. But it seems plausible.)

If you ever visit there, be sure to go to the graphite reactor. It's the
closest you will ever come to the business end of a real (though now
decommissioned) nuclear reactor. The Museum of Science and Energy (originally
called the Museum of Nuclear Energy, but that was changed because political
correctness) is also worth visiting. (I got my very first programming job
there in 1980, writing code in BASIC for exhibits running on Commodore PETs.
One of my duties was to go around the museum and re-load the software on all
the exhibits from cassette tapes. Ah, those were the days!)

~~~
MrEldritch
>political correctness

Huh? How in the hell is that politically incorrect? It's not like the Museum
of Nuclear Science in Albuquerque changed its name.

~~~
lisper
In the late 1970s, nuclear energy was very much out of favor. It's no
coincidence that The China Syndrome was made in 1979.

------
Xcelerate
Oak Ridge is a pretty awesome little city (very beautiful too). I live nearby
in Knoxville and did a lot of work on the Titan supercomputer and spallation
neutron source at ORNL while in grad school. Interestingly, Oak Ridge was
rated the safest city in the U.S. in 2017
([https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.realtor.com/news/trends/saf...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.realtor.com/news/trends/safest-
and-most-dangerous-us-cities.amp/)).

~~~
wink
> One of its major summer events is the Secret City Festival—a weekend of
> parades, concerts, and tours of the federal facilities. “It’s the only time
> during the year that the public can gain access,” Smith says.

From the article. This sounds like it's not publicly accessible 51 weeks of
the year. Shouldn't that explain it? :)

------
8bitsrule
I especially liked how the article looked closely at the architected, pre-fab
housing and showed how easy that problem is to solve when there's a will to do
it.

Houses like that could solve a lot of today's problems. In the same way, in
the span of a few months, with ownership perpetually limited to low-income
families.

~~~
erentz
Where would you put them? E.g. in the bay area, where you're not allowed to
build regular housing and regular apartments to meet the demand, why would
they let you build tiny prefab houses?

The problem isn't an inability to construct housing, it's the regulatory
capture in the form of bad zoning by home and land owners that prevents the
increase of housing supply. We desperately need to fix that, sadly we probably
won't until things get much much worse.

~~~
8bitsrule
Sadly, I think you're right. NIMBY is an asinine reality. 'We got ours. Get
outta here.'

And it's spreading. In today's news:
[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-small-
ci...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-small-cities-
boise_us_5ae878f7e4b055fd7fcfcee0)

There's a lot of empty land in the US ... so, like Oak Ridge and Hanford,
there'd have to be new communities, capable of attracting small businesses ...
enough to employ the new residents. Some of the first low-cost pre-fabs could
be preferentially doled out to people who have have, or want to start a new,
small business.

Also ... and I'm thinking of Olympia, WA for example ... government business
seems to be fairly stable, and seems to resist recessions quite well. Nice
quiet place, for people into that sort of thing.

Nineteenth-century railroads were built in the space of months, if there was a
billion feet of wood to be 'harvested'. They didn't cost $10M per mile either.
Replace the wood with access to a city 15 or 20 miles away.

It was doable before, and it's just that much more doable.

~~~
erentz
Even places like Olympia have gotten much much more expensive over the past
decade. But we should definitely be doing more to spread the load. As you say
railroads are key - Olympia to Seattle on a modern train would be a one hour
commute, perfectly within the realm for many people especially those that
don’t have to be in the office every day.

But railroads in the US are my biggest pet peeve, we just can’t do them right
here. If I had my druthers I’d essentially nationalize the railroads and then
hire the Swiss to run them.

~~~
8bitsrule
That one Oly to Seattle Amtrak that went too fast around the corner makes me
sure you're right about our RRs.

Looking back (I'm not much of a rail historian, but) from what I do know, the
US rail system was built-out to serve resource exploitation (including
populating the mid-continent), not passengers. So personal autos got a leg up
on them, in the mid-20s, before they could afford better passenger routes
(outside of major inter-city corridors).

I'd guess that if it wasn't for WW2, US passenger rail would have croaked much
sooner than it did. The Interstate system didn't help either. AND THEN they
were allowed to rip up the old tracks. Ay yay. So clearly some interests were
aligned against the RR's. And our atmosphere has and is paying the price.

------
extralego
This is where my grandparents met. My grandfather was a chemist. My great
grandfather was a machine operator for one of the construction companies
commissioned to build the town. He brought his daughter along with him and she
ran away with a scientist (my grandfather). They are passed away now but their
stories of Oak Ridge were so fascinating.

My grandfather always maintained some secrecy as to what his responsibilities
at Oak Ridge were, but his expertise in uranium was well-known. He gave many
talks at universities, etc. on the topic. He continued working for the Nuclear
Energy Commission for the rest of his career. His next job was working at a
facility in Waverly, OH which was disguised as a Goodyear plant. My mother and
her siblings thought their father worked at a tire factor for most of their
childhood. They insist this secret went more or less unquestioned.

------
dmix
> the government approached the families that lived there—some of whom had
> owned their farmsteads for generations—and “summarily evicted” them. [..
> They described the project as a “demolition range,” so any possible holdouts
> could be scared off with the threat of near-constant explosions.

I'm curious how this was done legally in the US, given the strong property
rights there and especially given it was the south? Sounds like a very soviet
style beginning.

But I guess they bought some land or had some existing public property, then
scared the other nearby landowners away by saying it would be used for
'demolitions'... with offers of money for their property?

Or was it a straight up legal order / eviction that the federal government has
some ultimate power to do?

~~~
boomboomsubban
Federal and state government have the right of eminent domain, though it does
not sound like it was used here. Just sounds like they offered to buy the
land, and told any potential hold outs that their land would lose value if
they refused.

Though, in 1943 the "ultimate power" of the military and Federal government
was virtually limitless.

~~~
tanderson92
The article did not say that owners were compensated. The wikipedia page (if
you trust it) for Oak Ridge makes mention of the fact that not everyone was
compensated:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee#History)

~~~
rdl
"Forced out before receiving compensation" just means it was done quickly; it
doesn't necessarily (or even likely) mean they weren't paid. Not paying would
lead to far higher risk of security compromise for the site (from legal
challenges, etc.), so it seems unlikely they wouldn't pay.

------
UncleSlacky
Minor claim to fame here - my great-grandfather was one of the engineers who
initially surveyed and selected the Oak Ridge site. Sadly he died when I was
about 6 months old, so I was never able to ask him about it.

------
interfixus
I have read about all this, of course. Am currently re-reading the Rhodes book
after many years. But I hadn't seen _pictures_ before. That plant was truly
_massive_.

Also (and yes, I know they're probably poster shots), take a look at the
better of those houses. Then look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn't give
your right arm to live in them.

------
Endama
Wow, I find this fascinating, the government effectively used a large-scale
project to seed a town/city. There was another HN post a few weeks back that
was asking about if governments should create more cities. This story provides
an interesting case study on the efficacy of the federal government to do so.

~~~
maxerickson
There's lots of towns that grew up around military bases.

Washington DC is a federally planned city.

A less drastic measure than trying to start new cities is to move services to
existing cities that have lots of housing (or a clear path to expanding
housing).

------
walrus01
I'm not sure how much new housing was built specifically for Hanford, since
the existing tri-cities (Richland, Pasco, Kennewick) were nearby and within
commuting range.

~~~
pc2g4d
Plenty --- Richland is still filled with "alphabet houses" built by the
government. The Tri-Cities really weren't very developed when the feds first
came to town.

"Richland was a small farm town until the US Army purchased 1660 km² (640 sq
mi) along the Columbia River for the war effort, evicting the 300 residents of
Richland as well as those of the now vanished towns of White Bluffs and
Hanford just upriver. The army turned it into a bedroom community for the
workers on its Manhattan Project facility at the nearby Hanford Engineering
Works (now the Hanford site). The population increased from 300 in July and
August 1943 to 25,000 by the end of World War II in August 1945. Richland
became a closed city (federally controlled Atomic Energy community), with
access restricted to residents and others authorized by the U.S. Army. All
land and buildings were owned by the government. Housing was assigned to
residents and token rent was collected; families were assigned to houses or
duplexes; single people were placed in apartments or barracks.

"Much of the city was planned by Spokane architect Albin Pherson in
conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers.[2] While there were dormitories
and barracks built at the time, prefabricated duplexes and single family homes
are all that survive today. Because homes were allocated based on family size
and need, there were a number of floorplans available. These were each
identified by a letter of the alphabet, and so came to be known as alphabet
houses."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast_Historic_District_(...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Coast_Historic_District_\(Richland,_Washington\))

------
s_m_t
It didn't?

The only potential adversary that mattered, the soviet union, knew what was
going on the entire time and essentially had full access to the oak ridge
facility

