Manhattan Project feed materials program: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:35, 23 April 2025

Revision as of 11:00, 24 April 2025

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Beyond their immediate wartime needs, the American and British governments attempted to control as much of the world's uranium deposits as possible. They created the [[Combined Development Trust]] in June 1944, with the director of the Manhattan Project, [[Major General (United States)|Major General]] [[Leslie R. Groves Jr.]] as its chairman. The Combined Development Trust procured uranium and [[thorium#Occurrence|thorium ores]] on international markets. A special account not subject to the usual auditing and controls was used to hold Trust monies. Between 1944 and his resignation from the Trust in 1947, Groves deposited a total of $37.5 million (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US|37.5|1944|r=2}} million in {{Inflation/year|US}}). In 1944, the Combined Development Trust purchased {{convert|3440000|lb|kg}} of uranium oxide ore from the Belgian Congo.

The raw ore was dissolved in [[nitric acid]] to produce [[uranyl nitrate]], which was reduced to highly pure [[uranium dioxide]]. By July 1942, [[Mallinckrodt]] was producing a ton of highly pure oxide a day, but turning this into uranium metal initially proved more difficult. A branch of the [[Metallurgical Laboratory]] was established at [[Iowa State College]] in [[Ames, Iowa]], under [[Frank Spedding]] to investigate alternatives. This became known as the [[Ames Project]], and the [[Ames process]] it developed to produce uranium metal became available in 1943. Uranium metal was used to fuel the nuclear reactors. [[Uranium tetrachloride]] was produced as feed for the [[calutron]]s used in the Y-12 electromagnetic isotope separation process, and [[uranium hexafluoride]] as feed infor the K-25 [[gaseous diffusion]] process.

== Background ==