Project, Metallurgical

Experiments were conducted during the Metallurgical Project, centered at the University of Chicago, and led by Enrico Fermi. Subcritical assembhes of uranium and graphite were built to learn about neutron multiphcation. In these exponential piles the neutron number density decreased exponentially from a neutron source along the length of a column of materials. There was excellent agreement between theory and experiment. 

This overall problem of element 94 isolation will occupy most of our attention for some time to come. The work of my group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, during the period August 1940 to the present, has produced much of the background information which is the basis of the Metallurgical Project. (This is the code name for the project whose mission is to produce fissionable element 94 in sufficient quantity for use in a nuclear weapon, and the project is centered at the University of Chicago.)... 

This day marks my 30th birthday and a transition point in my life, for tomorrow I will take on the added responsibility of the 94 chemistry group at the Metallurgical Laboratory on the University of Chicago campus, the central component of the Metallurgical Project. 

Seaborg, G.T., 1944. Metallurgical Project Report CK-1968 (A-2845) Quly 17). Metallurgical Laboratory Memorandum, MUC-GTS-858. 

Compton thought that the issue of Wilson s meeting was whether the plutonium production should be undertaken by large-scale industry or should be carried out by the scientists of the Metallurgical Project, keeping control in their hands. Instead, it seemed to me that the primary issue was to get rid of Stone Webster. 

We will... war quoted in Compton, Operation of the Metallurgical Project, memorandum, July 28, 1944. Bush-Conant File, f. 20a. 

Professor of Physics, University of Chicago, and Head of Metallurgical Project... 

Zachariasen, W.H., 1944a, Metallurgical Project Report CK-1518 (March) p. 3. 

The work on the Plutonium Project in early 1942 was centralized in the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago. The following extract from my journal describes my arrival in Chicago with my colleague Isadore Perlman ... 

Although a number of solid compounds of plutonium were synthesized by ultramicrochemical techniques during our first year and a half at the Metallurgical Laboratory, it was not until November, 1943 that a positive identification of a crystal structure was made. W. H. Zachariasen joined the project in the fall of 1943 and very soon began to make definitive identifi-... 

Figure 25. Evolution of commercial consumption of contained REMs in iron and steel starting in 1967 and projecting tentatively through 1985. Other metallurgical uses of mischmetal and RES are not included but amount to no more than 15% of the totals of the graphs.

After replicating the German fusion of the uranium atom in early 1939, Fermi was recruited to join the secret U.S. atomic bomb project, the Manhattan Project. He initially worked at the project s metallurgical laboratory at the University of Chicago, where he was chief designer of an atomic pile that achieved a sustained nuclear reaction on December 2, 1942. Throughout the war he worked on reactor design and fissionable fuel production at several project facilities. 

---