Created By: Enrique Contreras, and Claudia Cantu
The Manhattan Project was a project by the United States, with the united kingdom and Canada to make the first atomic bomb during world war 2. The project lasted from 1939 to 1946. It grew to employ more than 13,000 people and cost $2 billion dollars 90% was from building factories and producing the material for the weapons. The production and research took place in 30 different sites, some where secrets across the United States, United Kingdom and Canada They were producing two types of bombs. One was made of uranium-235 and the other one was made of uranium-238. These are isotopes of uranium, but they both are very radioactive and very powerful. Uranium is a natural element so that means we can tolerate a little bit of its radiation. The uranium is then later taken to reactors were it is made into plutonium. This element is the most dangerous one, because it is man made which means we have no tolerance against it's radiation, it can be sudden death. Plutonium has a metal type color, but it is so strong that if you tried to chip off a piece, the blade would brake instead, not to mention you would die if you tried this without proper clothes that protect you from the radiation. Plutonium was made in Hanford Washington. The plant was named Z-plant was the most guarded secret plant. It produced about 2/3 of all the plutonium ever made. Uranium rods would leave from Hanford to a reactor were it would be radiated into plutonium. Then, they would be shipped to a processing plant were they would be processed into liquid plutonium nitrate and then sent to a plutonium finishing plant where hundreds of workers wearing layers and layers of protection would turn it into plutonium metal or plutonium oxide metal. That plutonium was then stored in a weapons manufacturing facility until it was needed.
After the first bomb was created and tested, the news spread all over the country. Newspapers, radio programs, it was spreading fast. Everybody now knew about this new weapon, a weapon that can change the world, that can end a war. People heard the news and they told themselves,''why do we need this kind of power, this kind of weapon''. News also spread across the world. Countries were asking, does this kind of power really exist? After the attack in pearl harbor, the U.S. told japan to surrender if not they will drop a bomb. Of course they said never so they ended up dropping two atomic bombs. They saw the power of what an atomic bomb can do, everyone else did too. Everybody now wanted to own one. Cuba later was discovered that they were building bomb sites trying to build huge bombs 50 times bigger than the first one ever made, which then began the Cuban missile crisis and almost ended in a nuclear warfare. The Tsar bomba was the biggest bomb ever made by the the Soviets. All these bombs were being made because the U.S. invented the first one. The invention of the Atomic Bomb really changed the world.