Los Alamos Project

On the morning of Tuesday, August 7, 1945, Linus Pauling stopped at a Pasadena drugstore to buy a newspaper. He would remember the next few moments for the rest of his life. The newspaper headline read, Tokyo Admits Atomic Havoc. A new type of American bomb had just been dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. An enormous fireball had killed or injured tens of thousands of Japanese. Much of the city, the report said, was destroyed in an instant. J. Robert Oppenheimer s experiment, the Los Alamos project he had tried to talk Pauling into joining, had been a success. Science had created the atomic bomb. 

A. C. Graves, D. K. Froman (Eds.), Miscellaneous Physical and Chemical Techniques of the Los Alamos Project, National Nuclear Energy Series, Div.V., Vol. 3, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1952... 

As a curiosity we shall here describe a set of five lectures given by Serber (1943) during the first two weeks of April 1943 as an introduction course in connection with the starting of Los Alamos project. The notes were written by E.U. Condon. 

Hawkins, David. 1947. Manhattan District History, Project Y, The Los Alamos Project, V. L Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. 

Trumbull, Robert. 1957. Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki. E. P. Dutton. Truslow, Edith C., and Ralph Carlisle Smith. 1946-47. The Los Alamos Project, v. II. 

Personnel shortages, particularly of physidsts, and supply problems complicated Oppenheimer s task. The procurement system, designed to protect the secrecy of the Los Alamos project, led to frustrating delays and, when combined with persistent late war shortages, proved a constant headache. The lack of contact between the remote laboratory and its supply sources exacerbated the problem, as did the relative lack of experience the academic scientists had with logistical matters. 

R. W. Dodson, A. C. Graves, L. Helmhoia, D. L. Hufford, R. M. Potter, J. G. Povelltes, "Miscellaneous Physical Chemical Techniques of the Los Alamos Project," NNES(1952), Division V, Volume 3, Chapter 1. 

Ground breaking for the Clinton Laboratories, what Oak Ridge was originally called, occurred in Eebruai y 1943. Whereas the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos served as the center of weapons design,... 

Oppenheimer. Like the Chicago-based scientists before him, Oppenheimer and his researchers often clashed with Groves and the project engineers, who preferred to compartmentalize and control information about the project rather than exchange it freely among the scientists. At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer s approach prevailed. 

Large-scale plutonium recovery/processing facilities originated at Los Alamos and Hanford as part of the Manhattan Project in 1943. Hanford Operations separated plutonium from irradiated reactor fuel, whereas Los Alamos purified plutonium, as well as recovered the plutonium from scrap and residues. In the 1950 s, similar processing facilities were constructed at Rocky Flats and Savannah River. 

He is a recognized expert in solid state and materials chemistry and environmental chemistry. He has active programs in solid state f-element chemistry and nanomaterials science. His current research interests include heavy metal detection and remediation in aqueous environments, ferroelectric nanomaterials, actinide and rare-earth metal sohd slate chemistry, and nuclear non-proliferation. He currently maintains a collaboration in nuclear materials with Los Alamos National Laboratory and a collaboration in peaceful materials science development with the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF, Sarov, Russia, U.S. State Department projects. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and reviews, while presenting over 130 international and national invited lectures on his area of chemistry. Dr. Dorhout currently serves as Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Assistant Vice President for research. He has also served as the Interim Executive Director for the Office of International Programs and as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education for the College of Natural Sciences at Colorado State University. 

Chemical Physics Preprint Database. This database [81] is a fully automated electronic archive and distribution server intended to provide a means for rapid and efficient preprint distribution within the international theoretical chemical physics community. A preprint is a copy of a paper that has been submitted for publication. This database has been designed to be a useful and freely available tool for education and research. It allows investigators to submit and retrieve electronic copies of preprints via the Internet. Access for retrieval and listing of papers in the database is possible through WWW servers, anonymous ftp, or e-mail. Currently research papers are submitted to the databases via e-mail. This project is a joint effort by the Department of Chemistry at Brown University and the Theoretical Chemistry and Molecular Physics Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The homepage of Chemical Physics Preprint Database is http // www.chem.brown.edu/chem-ph.html. (For a more... 

At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico the Analytical Chemistry Group (C-AAC) supports the Pu-238 Heat Source Project that fabricates heat sources for use in the space industry. These heat sources have been used on NASA s deep-space probes and on instruments exploring the surface of Mars. The chemical and isotopic purity of the heat sources are critically controlled to ensure dependable service. The Radiochemistry Task Area performs analyses of the heat source material for four radioisotopes americium-241, plutonium-238, neptunium-237, and uranium-235. 

U.S. one the Manhattan Project. Bohr was made a scientific adviser to Tube Alloys and an adviser to the American project also. He left London on November 28, bound for the United States, where he spent eight months at Los Alamos. 

According to the Federal Research in Progress Database, Perry and Tsao at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory are studying the chemical species and transport of thorium in soil. In other on-going projects, Krey et al. at Environmental Measurements Laboratory in New York are studying the daily intake of thorium, and Mclnroy et al. at Los Alamos National Laboratory are studying the tissue levels of thorium in the general population and occupationally exposed individuals. 

During World War II, the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico conducted a highly secret and successful operation to build the world s first atomic bomb. The bomb ended the war, and politicians as well as scientists began to appreciate the benefits of establishing scientific laboratories and conducting research. The national laboratory at Los Alamos continued its work on atomic physics and other projects after the war, and in the early 1950s, the physicists Ernest Lawrence (1901-58) at the University of California, Berkeley, and Edward Teller (1908-2003), then at Los Alamos, urged the establishment of another laboratory. Under the supervision of the University of California, a new national laboratory was set up in Livermore, California, in 1952, with Herbert York (1921-2009), a former student of Lawrence, as its first director. 

I wish to acknowledge the many people from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, the U. S. Geological Survey, and the Desert Research Institute who have contributed to the studies which have been briefly reviewed here. R. W. Newman, NV, is Project Manager, and J. E. Sattizahn (LASL), R. H. Ide (LLL), L. D. Ramspott (LLL), and D. C. Hoffman (LASL) have served as Technical Directors. 

The derivatives of the other new class—the alkoxide halides, MCORj HaU which are more reactive than the alkoxides themselves—were first described by Meerwein and Schmidt for magnesium and aluminium [1103, 1098]. An important input into the development of synthetic and physicochemical methods in the investigation of metal alkoxides was made by an outstanding meta-lorganic chemist H. Gilman [855, 856], who studied the derivatives of uranium in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. 

Kimberly W. Thomas, Los Alamos National Laboratory You said one of the keys to success is an environment that is very open to risk taking. How do you reward and encourage the risk taking for your individuals I think you gave us just one idea celebrating the death of a project. 

Workers with James Jett at Los Alamos have been developing cytometers that are able to detect the fluorescence from single molecules and have been applying this capability to the problem of DNA sequencing. The proposed technique involves the synthesis of a complementary strand of DNA with fluorescently tagged precursors (each base of a different color). The labeled (fluorescent) duplex DNA molecule is then attached to a microsphere and the microsphere suspended in a flow stream where it can be sequentially cleaved with an exonuclease. The cleaved fluorescent bases from the molecule would then be identified by their color as they pass through the laser beam, and the sequence in which the colors appear will reflect the base sequence in the DNA. It is projected that between 100 and 1000 bases per second could be sequenced, although there are still obstacles to be surmounted before this technique becomes a practical reality. 

DB and GDS are funded by the University of Utah Center for the Simulation of Accidental Fires and Explosions (C-SAFE), funded by the Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, under subcontract B341493. TDS is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under the auspices of the Los Alamos ASCI High Explosives Project. 

Nancy B. Jackson, Sandia National Laboratory I work in the Defense program s laboratories, and if you think it is hard to get women into the chemical sciences, you should try nuclear weapons. We have an outstanding woman who just became our executive vice president, which is a real treat for all of us. One of the first projects she took on addressed the difficulty at Sandia of attracting and retaining women in the first line of management, and she began a study in this area. She sent a team out to look at other places—Motorola, Los Alamos, and a number of other places that have different sorts of records with women—and she held several internal workshops. 

Not only Los Alamos, the Manhattan Project, Durrenmatt s play The Physicists have changed the (self-) conception of serious science or represent symbols for this change of mind-set. Science is responsible for what it realizes, discovers, and invents. It is responsible for the effects it has, for how it is used, and for what consequences it has for humankind. Science must leave the ivory tower of unprejudiced but responsibility free (if not irresponsible) knowledge. Earth has reached a point where science must assume responsibility for its further existence, where it must intervene. It is not just a question of not being allowed to do all we are able to do (contrary to the viewpoint of the American Christian Right, which claims that God has created the world in such a wonderful way that humankind will not be able to destroy it is disproved daily), but it is also a question of science, primarily natural science, making greater efforts than ever to explain what has been researched. Science must intervene - but those who want to intervene successfully must want to be understood. 

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