published in

On this day 9th October

On this day: October 09, Posted 2018 09:37:24 AM

#wathupondearne

On this day in 1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves an
atomic program which was the beginning of the 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Manhattan gradually superseded the official codename,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 $22 billion in
2016[1] 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.

Two types of atomic bombs were developed concurrently during the war: a
relatively simple gun-type fission weapon and a more complex
implosion-type nuclear weapon.

The Thin Man gun-type design proved impractical to use with plutonium,
and therefore a simpler gun-type called Little Boy was developed that
used uranium-235, an isotope that makes up only 0.7 percent of natural
uranium.

Chemically identical to the most common isotope, uranium-238, and with
almost the same mass, it proved difficult to separate the two. Three
methods were employed for uranium enrichment: electromagnetic, gaseous
and thermal. Most of this work was performed at the Clinton Engineer
Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Read more….. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

===================

See our yorkshire photography:
https://wath-on-dearne.com/wathondearne/around-the-dearne-valley/

[status draft]