Who was the director of the lab that designed bombs for the project that used mass spectrometers to separate isotopes of uranium?
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History of mass spectrometry The history of mass spectrometry has its roots in physical and chemical studies regarding the nature of matter. The study of gas discharges in the mid 19th century led to the discovery of anode and cathode rays, which turned out to be positive ions and electrons. Improved capabilities in the separation of these positive ions enabled the discovery of stable isotopes of the elements. The first such discovery was with the element neon, which was shown by mass spectrometry to have at least two stable isotopes: Ne (neon with 10 protons and 10 neutrons) and Ne (neon with 10 protons and 12 neutrons). Mass spectrometers were used in the Manhattan Project for the separation of isotopes of uranium necessary to create the atomic bomb.
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Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the actual bombs. The Army component of the project was designated the Manhattan District; "Manhattan" gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. Along the way, the project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys. The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939, but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US $2 billion (about $ in 2016 dollars). Over 90% of the cost was for building factories and to produce fissile material, with less than 10% for development and production of the weapons. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
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S-50 (Manhattan Project) The S-50 Project was the Manhattan Project's effort to produce enriched uranium by liquid thermal diffusion during World War II. It was one of three technologies for uranium enrichment pursued by the Manhattan Project.
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Salted bomb A salted bomb is a nuclear weapon designed to function as a radiological weapon, producing enhanced quantities of radioactive fallout, rendering a large area uninhabitable. The term is derived both from the means of their manufacture, which involves the incorporation of additional elements to a standard atomic weapon, and from the expression "to salt the earth", meaning to render an area uninhabitable for generations. The idea originated with Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard, in February 1950. His intent was not to propose that such a weapon be built, but to show that nuclear weapon technology would soon reach the point where it could end human life on Earth. No intentionally salted bomb has ever been atmospherically tested, however the UK tested a 1 kiloton bomb incorporating a small amount of cobalt as an experimental radiochemical tracer at their Tadje testing site in Maralinga range, Australia, on September 14, 1957. Furthermore the triple "taiga" nuclear salvo test, as part of the preliminary March 1971 Pechora–Kama Canal project, produced substantial amounts of Co-60, with this fusion generated neutron activation product being responsible for about half of the gamma dose now (2011) at the test site.
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Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies The Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies is a U.S.-based policy research and advocacy organization. Their website describes them as ""a nonprofit center where we study global military policies, arms holdings, production and trade, arms control and peace-building efforts; and run educational programs on current and alternative policies."" IDDS was founded in 1980 by Director Dr. Randall Forsberg and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the founding members of the board was former Manhattan Project physicist Philip Morrison.
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Percy White (nuclear scientist) Percival Albert Frederick White OBE (16 July 1916 – 8 January 2013) was a British chemist, metallurgist and nuclear scientist who was involved in the creation and testing of Britain's first nuclear weapon during Operation Hurricane in 1952. He also made significant contributions to the advancement of explosives manufacturing, chemical engineering and civilian nuclear technology, and authored numerous books on engineering.
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Cyril Stanley Smith Cyril Stanley Smith (4 October 1903 – 25 August 1992) was a British metallurgist and historian of science. He is most famous for his work on the Manhattan Project where he was responsible for the production of fissionable metals. A graduate of the University of Birmingham and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Smith worked for many years as a research metallurgist at the American Brass Company. During World War II he worked in the Chemical-Metallurgical Division of the Los Alamos Laboratory, where he purified, cast and shaped uranium-235 and plutonium, a metal hitherto available only in microgram amounts, and whose properties were largely unknown. After the war he served on the Atomic Energy Commission's influential General Advisory Committee, and the President's Science Advisory Committee.
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Frederic de Hoffmann Frederic de Hoffmann (b. Vienna, July 8, 1924 – d. La Jolla, October 4, 1989) was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He came to the United States of America in 1941 and graduated from Harvard in 1944. Upon graduating, de Hoffmann was sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory where he assisted Edward Teller in the development of the Hydrogen bomb. Frederic de Hoffmann was an advocate of peaceful atomic energy.
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W. Kenneth Davis W. Kenneth Davis (1918–2005) was an American chemist, a leader of the World Energy Council, former vice president of the National Academy of Engineering, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy, director of reactor development in the Atomic Energy Commission.
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Project-706 Project-706, also known as Project-726 was a codename of a project to develop Pakistan's first atomic bomb using uranium. At the same time, Pakistani nuclear technology scientists and engineers gained expertise in the use of reactor-grade plutonium and successfully produced weapons grade plutonium by the early 1980s.
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Alexander Langsdorf Jr. Alexander Langsdorf Jr. (May 30, 1912 – May 24, 1996) was an American physicist on the team that developed the atomic bomb and several devices related to nuclear physics. He was a vocal opponent of the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons.
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Harry Diamond Laboratories The Harry Diamond Laboratories (HDL) was a research facility of the Ordnance Development Division of the National Bureau of Standards and later the US Army, most notable for its work on proximity fuzes in World War II. The organization was founded in 1940, but was not named after its first director Harry Diamond until 1962. HDL was one of seven Army laboratories merged to form the new Army Research Lab in 1992.
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Justus Mühlenpfordt Justus Mühlenpfordt (22 April 1911 in Lübeck – 2 October 2000) was a German nuclear physicist. He received his doctorate from the "Technische Hochschule Carolo-Wilhelmina zu Braunschweig", in 1936. He then worked in Gustav Hertz’s laboratory at Siemens. In 1945, he was sent to Institute G, near Sukhumi and under the directorship of Hertz, to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Released from Russia, Mühlenpfordt arrived in East Germany in 1955. He was appointed director of the "Institut für physikalische Stofftrennung" of the Academy of Sciences, in Leipzig. From 1969 until his retirement in 1974, Mühlenpfordt was director of the "Forschungsbereiches Kern- und Istopentechnik der Akademie".
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Isotope separation Isotope separation is the process of concentrating specific isotopes of a chemical element by removing other isotopes. The use of the nuclides produced is various. The largest variety is used in research (e.g. in chemistry where atoms of "marker" nuclide are used to figure out reaction mechanisms). By tonnage, separating natural uranium into enriched uranium and depleted uranium is the largest application. In the following text, mainly the uranium enrichment is considered. This process is a crucial one in the manufacture of uranium fuel for nuclear power stations, and is also required for the creation of uranium based nuclear weapons. Plutonium-based weapons use plutonium produced in a nuclear reactor, which must be operated in such a way as to produce plutonium already of suitable isotopic mix or "grade".
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Nikolay Dollezhal Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal (Russian: Николай Антонович Доллежа́ль ; 27 October [O.S. 15 October] 1899 – 20 November 2000) was a Soviet mechanical engineer, a key figure in Soviet atomic bomb project and chief designer of nuclear reactors from the first plutonium production reactor to the RBMK.
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Philip Morrison Philip Morrison (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005) was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and for his later work in quantum physics, nuclear physics and high energy astrophysics.
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Project Excalibur Project Excalibur was a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) research program to develop an x-ray laser as a ballistic missile defense (BMD). The concept involved packing large numbers of expendable x-ray lasers around a nuclear device. When the device detonated, the x-rays released by the bomb would be focused by the lasers, each of which would be aimed at a target missile. In space, the lack of atmosphere to block the x-rays allowed for attacks over thousands of kilometers. Attacking missiles would be identified by infrared cameras tracking the rocket exhaust; an Excalibur device would be triggered near the end of the missile's boost phase, before the warheads separated from the missile.
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Ernest J. Sternglass Ernest Joachim Sternglass (September 24, 1923 – February 12, 2015) was a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. He is an American physicist and author, best known for his controversial research on the health risks of low-level radiation from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and from nuclear power plants.
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George Kistiakowsky George Bogdanovich Kistiakowsky (November 18, 1900 – December 7, 1982) (Ukrainian: Георгій Богданович Кістяківський , Russian: Георгий Богданович Кистяковский ) was a Ukrainian-American physical chemistry professor at Harvard who participated in the Manhattan Project and later served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Science Advisor.
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Nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or from a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb). Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first test of a fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to 20,000 tonTNT . The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released energy approximately equal to 10 e6tonTNT . A thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2400 lb can release energy equal to more than 1.2 e6tonTNT . A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation. Since they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy.
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Pure fusion weapon A pure fusion weapon is a hypothetical hydrogen bomb design that does not need a fission "primary" explosive to ignite the fusion of deuterium and tritium, two heavy isotopes of hydrogen (see thermonuclear weapon for more information about fission-fusion weapons). Such a weapon would require no fissile material and would therefore be much easier to build in secret than existing weapons. The necessity of separating high-quality fissile material requires a substantial industrial investment, and blocking the sale and transfer of the needed machinery has been the primary mechanism to control nuclear proliferation to date.
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Omar Hurricane Omar Hurricane is a Physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in the thermonuclear and inertial confinement fusion design division.