Weapons-grade plutonium first created - November 6, 1944

On this day in 1944, weapons-grade plutonium was created in B Reactor at the Hanford Site in the state of Washington.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello everyone, I'm Eves. Welcome to this Day
in History class, where we take a tiny bite of
history every day. Today is November six. The day was

(00:26):
November six, nineteen. Weapons gray plutonium was created for the
first time at the Hanford Site, a nuclear production complex
in the state of Washington. The Manhattan Project was a
US government research and development project to produce the first
atomic weapons. One of the missions of the Manhattan Project
was the development of weapons gray plutonium. Plutonium was first

(00:50):
produced in isolated in December of nineteen forty by scientists
at the University of California, Berkeley. The team sent an
article describing the discovery to a scientific journal for publication,
but the paper was withdrawn when it was found that
the element could be used in atomic bombs. The discovery
wasn't published until after World War Two ended. Hanford, Washington,

(01:14):
was chosen as an ideal location for a full scale
plutonium facility because it was relatively remote, had hydro electric
power from the Grand Coolie and Bonneville Dams, and the flat,
rocky terrain was good for supporting the production buildings. The
Handford Engineer Works code named SITEW was built by the
DuPont Company. Residents in Hanford, White Bluffs and Richland, including

(01:39):
Native American people's, were evacuated from the area with short notice.
The thousands of employees at the site knew they were
doing war work, but few were aware that they were
working on nuclear weapons. Three nuclear reactors or piles were
built at Hanford. Their purpose was to produce plutonium from uranium.

(02:00):
The B reactor was the first production scale nuclear reactor.
Its design was based on physicists in Rico Fermi's experimental
reactor at the Chicago met Lab Chicago Pile one and
the X Tan and Graphite reactor in oak Ridge, Tennessee,
that began producing plutonium in late nineteen forty three. B
reactor went online in September of nineteen forty four, and

(02:21):
it produced its first plutonium on November six. D reactor
went online in December, and F reactor went online in
February of nineteen. Each of the three reactors needed at
least one ton of uranium to produce just two grams
of plutonium. Un irradiated fuel elements were irradiated in reactors,

(02:42):
then a radiated fuel was cooled and sent by rail
to chemical separation plants known as canyons or Queen Mary's.
After the separation and concentration process, plutonium nitrate pace was
stored and then shipped to Last Alamos, New Mexico, where
a secret lab for the Manhattan Project was low caated.
In February of nineteen forty five, the first shipment of

(03:04):
plutonium was sent to Los Alamos, where the plutonium nitrate
was converted to metallic plutonium. Plutonium from the B reactor
was used in the Trinity Test, the first detonation of
a nuclear device, which was conducted at the Alama Gorda
Bombing and gunnery Range. Plutonium from the B reactor was
also used in fat Man, the bomb dropped over Nagasaki.

(03:26):
By December of nineteen forty six, employment at the site
was down to around five thousand people. After World War
Two was over and the Cold War ramped up, more
reactors and plutonium processing complexes were added at Hamford. The
site produced most of the plutonium used in US nuclear weapons.
Most of the nuclear reactors at Hamford shut down between

(03:47):
nineteen sixty four and nineteen seventy one, but one reactor
remained in use until nineteen eighty seven. This last reactor
and reactor was a power reactor for electricity and a
plutonium production and reactor for nuclear weapons. The U. S
Department of Energy has controlled the Hanford site since nineteen
seventy seven. In nineteen eighty nine, the Department of Energy,

(04:09):
Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington Department of Ecology entered
into an agreement for a cleanup at Hanford, which produced
a lot of nuclear waste. There is still controversy surrounding
leaks and contaminated waste at the site. I'm Eve Stepcote
and hopefully you know a little more about history today
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(04:33):
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(05:02):
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