Manhattan Project feed materials program

Uranium was discovered in 1789 by the German chemist and pharmacist Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who also established its useful commercial properties, such as its colouring effect on molten glass.

[7] In Britain, in June 1939, Frisch and Rudolf Peierls investigated the critical mass of uranium-235,[8] and found that it was small enough to be carried by contemporary bombers, making an atomic bomb possible.

[17] Crenshaw became the officer in charge of operations at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in July 1943, and was succeeded as head of the Materials Section by Ruhoff, who was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

[18][19] Nichols, who succeeded Marshall as district engineer on 13 August 1943,[20] felt that this was a better location for it, as it was close to the ports of entry and warehouses for the ores and the headquarters of several of the firms supplying feed materials.

[22][23] The Foreign Office had contacted Union Minière and discovered that the company had 59 tonnes (65 short tons) of uranium ore on hand in the UK, and the going price was 6/4 per pound, or £19,000 (equivalent to $1,310,000 in 2023) for the lot.

[24][25] In August 1940, Sengier, fearing a German takeover of the Belgian Congo, ordered some of the stockpile of uranium ore there to be shipped to the United States though Union Minière's subsidiary African Metals Corporation.

He met with Thomas K. Finletter and Herbert Feis, but found them interested only in cobalt and not uranium; the State Department would not be informed of the Manhattan Project until the Yalta Conference in February 1945.

[30] At its 9 July meeting, S-1 Executive Committee of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which was in charge of the American atomic project, saw no immediate need for additional quantities of uranium ore beyond 60 short tons (54 t) it had ordered from the Eldorado Gold Mines Company in Canada.

On 15 September, Ruhoff secured Sengier's approval for the release of 100 short tons (91 t) or ore, which was shipped to Eldorado's refinery at Port Hope, Ontario, for testing of the oxide content.

[38] In August 1943, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt negotiated the Quebec Agreement, which merged the British and American atomic bomb projects,[39][40] and established the Combined Policy Committee to coordinate their efforts.

[50] The entire output of Shinkolobwe was contracted to the Combined Development Trust until 1956, but in March 1946 there were (unrealised) fears that the mine might be exhausted in 1947, resulting in a severe uranium shortage.

[51] After some negotiation, Groves and James Chadwick, the head of the British Mission to the Manhattan Project, agreed on a division of uranium ore production, with everything up to March 1946 going to the United States, and supplies being shared equally thereafter.

[50] Britain was therefore able to secure the uranium it needed for High Explosive Research, its own nuclear weapons program, without having to outbid the United States, and paid for it in sterling.

To run it, LaBine hired Marcel Pochon, a French chemist who had learned how to refine radium under Pierre Curie, who was working at the recently closed South Terras mine in Cornwall.

A subsequent meeting was arranged that same day at which the trio met with C. D. Howe, the Minister for Munitions and Supply and C. J. Mackenzie, the president of the National Research Council Canada.

The British had noticed how uranium prices had been rising and feared that Pregel would attempt to corner the market, and they urged that Eldorado be brought under government control.

[73] Complex negotiations followed between the Americans, British and Canadians regarding patent rights, export controls, and the exchange of scientific information, but the purchase was approved when Churchill and Roosevelt met at the Second Washington Conference in June 1942.

[78] The British now became alarmed: they had allowed 18 tonnes (20 short tons) of oxide earmarked for them to be diverted to the Americans, whose need was more pressing, but were now faced with being shut out entirely, with no uranium for the Montreal Laboratory's reactor.

Vanadium was important to the war effort as a hardening agent in steel alloys, and the Metals Reserve Company offered loans and subsidies to increase production.

The Manhattan District also contracted with USV to construct and run government-owned mills at Durango, Uravan and Grand Junction, Colorado, which would process tailings.

[94][95][96] In Haigerloch, they uncovered a German experimental nuclear reactor,[97] along with three drums of heavy water and 1.4 tonnes (1.5 short tons) of uranium metal ingots that were found buried in a field.

Among its captured cargo was 560 kilograms (1,230 lb) of (unenriched) uranium oxide, separated into ten containers made out of lead and lined with gold (probably to avoid a threat from its potential pyrophoricity).

The Manhattan District contracted the Linde Air Products Company to build and operate a plant for refining and processing African and American ores.

[118][117] The production process involved adding black oxide to 3,800-litre (1,000 US gal) stainless steel tanks of hot concentrated nitric acid to produce a solution of uranyl nitrate.

Before the Manhattan District assumed responsibility over procurement, OSRD had made arrangements with DuPont and Harshaw for the development of new processes to produce green salt and for the production of small quantities.

Some months would pass before Clement J. Rodden from the National Bureau of Standards and Union Carbide found a means to produce sufficiently pure calcium hydride.

By September, bombs were being prepared in 10-centimetre (4 in) steel pipes 38 centimetres (15 in) long, lined with lime to prevent corrosion, and containing up to 3 kilograms (6.6 lb) of uranium tetrafluoride.

[152] The Electro-Metallurgical Company in Niagara Falls, New York, built an Ames Process uranium metal plant on its property under a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract at a cost of $234,300 (equivalent to $4,257,501 in 2024).

The plant encountered various difficulties in operation and only produced 210 tonnes (232 short tons) of metal at an average cost of $1.72 per pound before the Manhattan Project decided to close it down in August 1944.

[156] The Ames Project began working on a production process in December 1943, reducing beryllium fluoride (BeF2) in a bomb with metallic magnesium and a sulphur booster.