UNA-SANA COLLEGE

Project Manhattan

Physics Department

Student: Škrgić Mirzet

Project Manhattan Mirzet Škrgić

Project Manhattan

1. Abstract
 „Project Manhattan“ was a secret project during World War II with on
purpose: to create a nuclear bomb.
 This project was launched in 1941 by American government.

2. Introduction
2.1 History
The discovery of nuclear fission made a creation of nuclear bomb
theoretically possible. Two German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz
Strassmann discovered nuclear fission(nuclear reaction in which the
nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts). Launching the „Project
Manhattan“ was based on fear that Nazi German atomic bomb project
will would develope first atomic bomb.

Figure 1: Otto Hahn Figure 2: Fritz Strassmann

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Project Manhattan Mirzet Škrgić

2.2 What is atomic bomb?

Atomic bomb is very destructive bomb that releases large amount of
energy. Its source is nuclear reaction: fission or comibation of fission and
fussion.There are two types: fission weapons and fusion weapons.

Fission weapons gets most of their energy from nuclear fission

reactions,while fusion weapons use fission reactions to begin nuclear
fusion reactions in order to produce a large amount of energy.

In fission weapons, fissile materials are forced into supercriticality with

shooting piece of sub-critical material into another or with compression
sub-critical mass with chemical explosives in which case neutrons are
injected and process begins.

The amount of energy that is created by one fission bomb is equivalent

of 500 kilotons of TNT.Uranium-235 and plutonium-239 are commonly
used fissile materials for nuclear weapons. Uranium-233 is less
commonly used.

Figure 3: Fission weapon

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Project Manhattan Mirzet Škrgić

3. Project Manhattan
3.1 Beginning
In idyllic city landscape of Los Alamos in New Mexico, Robert
Oppenheimer was leading the team of the best scientist who were
brought there to develope the first nuclear weapon. This undertake had
a secret name „Project Manhattan“ and was launched by Franklin D.
Roosvelt. „Project Manhattan“ got name from New York's center –
Manhattan. For this project was working around 6 thousands scientist
with their families,but later the number of people working on it
expanded to 125,000.

Figure 4: Los Alamos Figure 5: Robert Oppenheimer

3.2 Organization
Los Alamost was not the only city where „Project Manhattan“ took place.
There were several places in United States of America and Canada whick
took part in „Project Manhattan“.

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Project Manhattan Mirzet Škrgić

Figure 6: „Project Manhattan“ – important cities

 Oak Ridge
Oak Ridge was the place where CEW (Clinton Engineer Works) was
installed. CEW was production plant that during WW2 produced the
uranium and first examples of reactor-produced plutonium.

 Los Alamos
„Project Y“ or Los Alamos Lab was a hidden laboratory in Los
Almos,very important part of „Project Manhattan“. It was controlled
by the University of California. Designing and constructing the nuclear
bomb was its purpose.

 Chicago
At the University of Chicago was established the Metallurgical
Laboratory. Met Lab was working on the discovered element
plutonium. Met Lab alo designed first nuclear reactors and in
1942,Lab produces first nuclear chain reaction that could be
controlled.

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Project Manhattan Mirzet Škrgić

 Hanford
Home of the B-Reactor was Hanford from 1943. B Reactor was the
first plutonium production reactor in the world.

 P-9 Project
P-9 Project was a name for the Manhattan Project's heavy
water(D2O) production program. This project included three cities:
Morgantown,Wabash and Alabama.

 Montreal
The Montreal Laboratory in Canada was established to undertake
nuclear research with the United Kingdom. Later, Montreal
Laboratory was part of “Project Manhattan” to design and built some
od the first nuclear reactors.

3.3 Materials

 Uranium
The most importan material for this project was uranium. Uranium
was used as fuel for the nuclear reactors. Also,uranium was
tranformed into plutoniom. But,there were some problems. As we
said,most common material for nuclear fission is uranium-235 but
natural uranium consists only around 1% of uranium-235. So, they
used some methodes to enrich the uranium, like
centrifuge,electromagnetic separation,gaseous diffusion and other.

 Plutionium
The second element used in this project was plutonium. The main
problem was that small amounts of plutionim exists in nature. They
found way how to obtain large amount of plutonium – by bombarding
natural uranium with neutrons in nuclear reactor.

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Project Manhattan Mirzet Škrgić

3.4 Trinity
The first detonation of a nuclear weapon was called Trinity. First
nuclear bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945. It was detonated in
the Jornada, desert in New Mexico. Detonated bombs was about
20 kilotons of TNT. Detonation was felt over 160 kilometers,and
the mushroom cloud reached 12km in height.

Figure 7: The Trinity explosion,16ms after detonation.

3.5 Bombings
After five years,project comes to an end. It is time to use it for real
purpose. During all this work,scientists thought that this work was
going to be used to improve our lifes. But, this project killed
around 220,000 people. During the project, three bombs were
created: “The Gadget” , “Fat Man” and “Little boy”.
The Gadget was used as a test bomb.

Unfortunately,the rest two bombs were used against people.

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Project Manhattan Mirzet Škrgić

On Augus 6, Japan was bombarded. American troops dropped the

atomic bomb called “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.. This atomic bomb
killed around 140,000 people.

Figure 8: Hiroshima after explosion

Three days later, on August 9, second bomb “Fat Man” was

dropped on another city – Nagasaki. This bomb killed around
80,000 people.

Figure 9: Nagasaki

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4. References
 History - http://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/fission/
 Atomic bomb - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon
 Project Manhattan –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-9_Project
http://www.history.com/topics/the-manhattan-project
 Materials - http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-
library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/introduction/what-is-uranium-how-does-it-
work.aspx
 Trinity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity
 Bombings -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_
Nagasaki#Hiroshima

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5. Table of contents
1. Abstract.........................................................................1
2. Introduction...................................................................1
2.1 History...................................................................1
2.2 What is atomic bomb?...........................................2
3. Project Manhattan.........................................................3
3.1 Beginning...............................................................3
3.2 Organization..........................................................3
3.3 Materials...............................................................5
3.4 Trinity...................................................................6
3.5 Bombings..............................................................6
4. References.....................................................................8
5. Table of contents...........................................................9