[Milsurplus] Atomic John

[Marty Reynolds]

Mike, Gene, et al.

there's a fb paperback called 'secret that exploded' that outlined
how nuke weapons program was running in 60s.  IE

   Paducah for ore separation

   Fernald, OH for further refinement

   Oak Ridge for U235 sep'n - mag & gaseous diffusion separators

    "   "  for physics packag o-haul (note early Po-Be neutron
           initiators wud half-life down in strg)  Same for
           tritium-laden H-things

   St. Pete for GE "dial-a-yield" accelerator version of Po-Be
   Hanford for Pu prod'n

   Savannah River for Tritium & more Pu.  Came up in '52

   usw

Museum @ Oak Ridge has one of orig mag seperators called calutron.
It's bigger than all get out & took all of TVA to run 'em.
Were wound w. silver fm Ft. Knox

Then there's Savannah River.  Huge dc 'green firm' managing & their
sentiment is to return it to nature.  GFL.

Bunch 'o retirees actively seeking to save 1 (of 5) d2o reactor
systems plus a d2o fractionation factory for history.

Book avail on Amazon & when I read it in '86, it wasn't given a
isbn # & was quietly handed fm reader to reader

Last, NY'er author sure wrongly names ring-projectiles/target
as uranium, not Pu.  But Mr. Costen predicted that!  Hi

Since Alomogordo/trinity was a fat-man imploding U235 sphere thing,
I've wrongly thot that was Hiroshima's present.  That Hanford had made
enuf Pu239 for a bomb by 7/45 just plain amazing.

What a giant secret all this stuff was - helped by construction
folks just working in limited zones doing color/number-coded
wiring jobs.  Not knowing WTF.  Usw.

More stories abound

   Marty aka aa4rm