Customer Reviews

Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an edited version of the 1989 edition, with additional essays, and an afterword on the Hanford Dose Reconstruction Project--a continuing epidemiological study on past and recent radioactive contamination of the south-central region of Washington State. There is also a new detailed index. All of the many interviews (done in 1986) readily convey the drama of the early 1940s top secret project of building the world's first plutonium plant, as well as the sense of adventure and total commitment on everyone's part to achieve production at all costs. Of interest to anyone concerned with this region's history, nuclear reactor design, chemical engineering and the role of the DuPont Company in WWII, early atomic physics relating to bombs, the Los Alamos (N.M.) Project, and radioactive contamination of nuclear reactors.

Now the story can be told........

For anybody who has an interest in the Manhattan Project, or the precursor to the DoE, the AEC, this is a great read. Not many people actually know the role of all the plants around the US, and this book pulls back the drapes on the 'canyons' that comprises Hanford.

This book is a good addition to the library of any peron with an interest in the field.

One of the things that the Manhattan project did in World War II was to build three new towns: Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford Washington. In January of 1943 General Groves ordered the commandeering of 670 square miles of Washington State land as "necessary to the public interest." On it he built the Hanford plant to produce plutonium.

Everything was done one a rush basis, and by 1945 something like 30 pounds of plutonium had been produced. No one knew if a bomb produced using plutonium would even work. About thirteen and a half pounds of it were used on July 16, 1945 at Trinity site. It worked. A duplicate of that device, with some streamlining and tail fins added was dropped over Nagasaki. It worked there too.

This book is an oral history, a series of discussions with dozens of people who were working at or in conjunction with Hanford. It's a unique side to the story.

This is an excellent perspective on the Manhattan Project from the perspective of working class people working at or around the Hanford site. It is very different from the books focusing on a small set of brilliant physicists at Los Alamos. As someone who worked at PNNL and grew up in Washington State, it was a wonderful window into history for me.