The Hanford Engineer Works (HEW) was a nuclear production complex in Benton County, Washington, established by the United States federal government in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. It built and operated the B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor. Plutonium manufactured at the HEW was used in the atomic bomb detonated in the Trinity test in July 1945, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945. The plant continued producing plutonium for nuclear weapons until 1971. The HEW was commanded by Colonel Franklin T. Matthias until January 1946, and then by Colonel Frederick J. Clarke.
The director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr., engaged DuPont as the prime contractor for the design, construction and operation of the HEW. DuPont recommended that it be located far from densely populated areas, and a site on the Columbia River, codenamed Site W, was chosen. The federal government acquired the land under its war powers authority and relocated some 1,500 nearby residents. The acquisition was one of the largest in US history. Disputes arose with farmers over the value of the land and compensation for crops that had already been planted. The acquisition was not completed before the Manhattan Project ended in December 1946.
Construction commenced in March 1943 on a massive and technically challenging project. Most of the construction workforce, which reached a peak of nearly 45,000 in June 1944, lived in a temporary construction camp near the old Hanford townsite. Administrators, engineers and operating personnel lived in the government town established at Richland, which had a wartime peak population of 17,000. The HEW erected 554 buildings, including three graphite-moderated and water-cooled reactors (B, D and F) that operated at 250 megawatts. Natural uranium sealed in aluminum cans (known as "slugs") was fed into them.
B Reactor went critical in September 1944 and, after overcoming neutron poisoning, produced its first plutonium in November. Irradiated slugs were processed in two huge, remotely operated chemical separation plants (T and B) where the plutonium was extracted using the bismuth-phosphate process. Radioactive wastes were stored in underground tanks. The first batch of plutonium was processed in the T plant between December 1944 and February 1945 and delivered to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory. The identical D and F reactors came online in December 1944 and February 1945, respectively. The HEW suffered an outage on 10 March 1945 when a Japanese balloon bomb struck a high-tension power line. The total cost of the HEW up to December 1946 was over $348million (equivalent to $billion in ).
The Manhattan Project ended on 31 December 1946 and control of the HEW passed from the Manhattan District to the Atomic Energy Commission.
Contractor selection During World War II, the S-1 Section of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) sponsored a research project on plutonium by scientists at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley. Plutonium, a synthetic element only recently produced in laboratories, was theorized to be fissile and therefore usable in an atomic bomb. Metallurgical Laboratory physicists in Chicago designed nuclear reactors ("piles") that could transmute uranium into plutonium, while its chemists investigated ways to separate the plutonium from untransmuted uranium and fission products. Approximately four tonnes of uranium was required to produce one kilogram of plutonium. The plutonium program became known as the X-10 project.
On 23 September 1942, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves Jr. became the director of the Manhattan Project. Stone & Webster had been engaged to carry out the construction of the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but Groves considered the task of designing, building, and operating the Manhattan Project's facilities to be beyond the resources of a single firm. At the same time, he wanted to keep the number of major contractors down for security reasons.
Groves was attracted to DuPont, a firm he had worked with in the past, because it designed and built its own plants, suggesting it had the expertise to act as prime contractor for the plutonium production complex. This had the added benefit of not requiring the Manhattan District (the military component of the Manhattan Project) to coordinate the work of contractors on the project, thereby reducing Groves's workload. Groves briefed DuPont vice president Willis F. Harrington and chemist Charles Stine on the Manhattan Project on 31 October. They both protested that the company "had no experience or knowledge of physics and that they were incompetent to render any opinion except that the entire project seemed beyond human capability."
On 4 November, DuPont chemists and engineersincluding Stine, Elmer Bolton, Roger Williams, Thomas H. Chilton and Crawford Greenewaltvisited the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. On 10 November, Groves, Colonel Kenneth Nichols (the deputy chief engineer of the Manhattan District who was responsible for the HEW, the Clinton Engineer Works, and other production sites), Arthur H. Compton (the director of the Metallurgical Laboratory) and Norman Hilberry (Compton's deputy) met with DuPont's executive committee at the company headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. Groves assured DuPont's president, Walter S. Carpenter Jr., that the Manhattan Project was considered of the greatest importance by President Franklin Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and the Chief of Staff of the United States Army George C. Marshall.
Mindful of having been denounced as a merchant of death after World War I, DuPont initially refused payment, but for legal reasons a cost-plus contract was agreed upon, with the fee of one dollar. At Carpenter's request, OSRD Director Vannevar Bush had Roosevelt initial a letter noting that the government assumed all responsibility for all hazards involved in the project.
Site selection
It had originally been intended that the reactors be built at the Oak Ridge site, but Carpenter expressed reservations about this, because Oak Ridge was only from Knoxville. Physicists at the Metallurgical Laboratory were more sanguine about the safety of nuclear reactors; Eugene Wigner claimed they could be built on the Potomac River near Washington, DC. A major accident might result in loss of life and severe health effects, and Groves was concerned that even a minor one could disrupt vital war productionparticularly of aluminumor require evacuation of the Manhattan Project's isotope separation plants. But spreading the Oak Ridge facilities over a larger area would involve the purchase of more land. In December 1942, the number of reactors that needed to be built was still uncertain; for planning purposes it was intended to build six reactors and four chemical separation plants.
The ideal site was described by eight criteria: A clean and abundant water supply (at least ) A large electric power supply (about 100,000 kW) A "hazardous manufacturing area" of at least Space for laboratory facilities at least from the nearest reactor or separations plant The employees' village no less than upwind of the plant No towns of more than a thousand people closer than from the hazardous manufacturing area No main highway, railway, or employee village closer than from the hazardous manufacturing area Ground that could bear heavy loads.
The most important of these criteria was the availability of electric power. The needs of war industries had created power shortages in many parts of the country, and using the Tennessee Valley Authority was ruled out because the Clinton Engineer Works was expected to absorb its excess generating capacity. Between 18 and 31 December 1942 (just twelve days after the Metallurgical Laboratory team led by Enrico Fermi started up Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor) a survey party consisting of Lieutenant Colonel Franklin T. Matthias and DuPont engineers A. E. S. Hall and Gilbert P. Church inspected several alternative sites.
They looked at sites near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; Hanford, Washington; Mansfield, Washington; the Deschutes River and John Day River Valleys in Oregon; the Pit River in California; Blythe, California; and Needles, California (the last two being on the Colorado River). On 1 January 1943, Matthias called Groves from Portland, Oregon, and reported that the Hanford Site was "far more favorable in virtually all respects than any other". The survey party noted an abundance of aggregate, which could be used to make concrete, and that the ground appeared firm enough to support massive structures. They noted that a high-voltage power line connecting Grand Coulee Dam to Bonneville Dam traversed the site. Groves visited it on 16 January 1943, and approved the selection. It was officially designated the Hanford Engineer Works (HEW), and codenamed "Site W".
Matthias had worked with Groves on their previous project, the construction of the Pentagon. Groves intended for Matthias to become his deputy, but on the advice of the chief engineer of the Manhattan District, Colonel James C. Marshall, Matthias became the Hanford Site area engineer. Gilbert Church became the field project manager of DuPont's construction team. Part of the reason for sending them together on the survey party was to verify that they were compatible as coworkers. As area engineer, Matthias had an unusual degree of autonomy. Hanford's isolated location meant that communications were limited, so day-to-day reporting back to Manhattan District headquarters in Oak Ridge was impractical. The project enjoyed the War Production Board's AAA rating, giving it the highest priority for procurement of raw materials and supplies.
DuPont created a division within E. B. Yancey's explosives department under Roger Williams known as TNX. Williams divided it into two subdivisions: a Technical Division, headed by Greenewalt, to work with the Metallurgical Laboratory on design; and a Manufacturing Division under R. Monte Evans to supervise plant operations. Construction was the responsibility of DuPont's Engineering Department, whose head, E. G. Ackart, assigned responsibility for the plutonium project to his deputy Granville M. Read. Eventually, 90 percent of DuPont's engineering personnel and resources were devoted to the Manhattan Project.
Land acquisition Secretary Stimson authorized the acquisition of the land on 8 February 1943. A Manhattan District project office opened in Prosser, Washington, on 22 February. Federal judge Lewis B. Schwellenbach issued an order of possession under the Second War Powers Act the following day, and the first tract was acquired on 10 March. Notices went out in March to residents of White Bluffs, Hanford and Richland, about 1,500 people in all. The army dug up 177 graves at the White Bluffs Cemetery, and moved them to Prosser, on the other side of Rattlesnake Mountain.
The land was divided into five areas. Area A, at the center of the site, was the location of the project facilities; it was acquired outright, and for safety and security reasons all non-project personnel would be removed. Surrounding Area A was a safety zone, Area B; this land was leased, with its occupants subject to eviction at short notice. Area C was earmarked for the workers' village and was leased or purchased. Area D was earmarked for production plants and was purchased. Finally there were two parcels of land designated as Area E, that were to be acquired only if necessary. Ultimately, of Area E was acquired by lease, fee or transfer. In all, 4,218 tracts totaling were to be acquired, making it one of the largest land acquisition projects in American history.