Deception at Los Alamos: The Race for the Atomic Bomb 1940-1945

By A. L. Provost

At the beginning of World War II, Germany and America were in a race to develop the atomic bomb. The clear prize was European domination.
For reasons of security, at the end of 1942, the Americans moved their nuclear weapons research and development program to a barren, rocky New Mexico plateau called Los Alamos. Suddenly, Adolf Hitler realized he was going to come in second place in a race that had no second place.
With the Fuhrers back against an atomic wall, in desperation, he sent his top spy to New Mexico. His mission: To steal Americas atomic bomb secrets.
This is the story of Gunter Fleiss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 29, 2006
• ISBN: 9781465331113

A. L. Provost

The author, an attorney and optometrist, resides outside Atlanta with his wife Evelyn, an attorney, their four talented children having gone on to careers in Optometry, real estate and teaching. In May 1961 the author received an undergraduate degree in Physics-Mathematics from Berry College, and in July of that year enlisted in the U. S. Army. He served two tours of duty in South Korea, the last with U. S. Army Intelligence as a Korean linguist and prisoner interrogator. In 1972 Dr. Provost was awarded the degree of Doctor of Optometry from the University of Houston, and in 1980 earned a Juris Doctor degree from Nova Southeastern University College of Law. Dr. Provost is the author of the best-selling memoir, Reflections in an Orphan’s Eye, The Puppeteer, a mystery novel of the wartime South, and thirteen other mystery novels.

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Prologue

In January 1939, the reknowned Danish scientist Neils Bohr visited the United States, bringing with him a scientific discovery of earthshaking proportions. Literally.

In the 1930s, the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi performed a series of experiments in which he exposed many elements to low-velocity neutrons. When he exposed thorium and uranium, however, the unexpected result was the production of chemically different radioactive materials, indicating that entirely new elements had been formed, and not merely isotopes of the original elements.

Bombardment of uranium with low-velocity neutrons causes the heavy uranium nucleus to first absorb a neutron, after which it splits into two smaller pieces, or fragments, of nearly equal mass.

This process is called fission, and an enormous amount of energy is released simultaneously, as are several neutrons. This released energy is in the form of radiation.

These released neutrons may in turn strike other heavy nuclei, and cause them to undergo the same fission process. The continuous recurrence of this process results in a chain reaction, in which many billions of nuclei may fission within a small fraction of a second.

Carrying this process to its ultimate conclusion, reasoned these brilliant minds, under the right conditions, these released, or free neutrons, might create a chain reaction, and furthermore, a very rapid chain reaction might produce a tremendous release of energy. Could an atomic bomb be a possibility?

The fear that Nazi Germany might be the first to develop such an atomic weapon, thereby holding the free world hostage, led to intense efforts into chain reaction research.

What interested, surprised and thoroughly impressed researchers, was the staggering amount of radiation energy produced during the fission process, that was on the order of two million electron volts, that is eighty million times higher than the energy possessed by atoms in ordinary matter. This discovery led to many experiments.

Natural uranium is found in relative abundance in rock formations. In nature, 99.27 percent of uranium consists of U-238, with the remainder consisting of U-235 (0.72 percent), and U-234 (0.006 percent). In natural uranium, U-238 outnumbers U-235 by about 140 to 1.

An isotope is one of two or more atoms having the same atomic number, but different mass numbers. The only material occurring in nature that is readily fissile and able to sustain a chain reaction, is the uranium isotope U-235.

Neils Bohr and Princeton University’s John Wheeler believed that the uranium isotope U-235 was the one undergoing fission, and that the other isotope formed in the reaction, called U-238, merely absorbed the neutrons but did not produce energy in the process.

Experiments performed at Columbia University were successful, and in March 1940 scientists confirmed that the isotope uranium-235 was indeed responsible for the low-velocity neutron fission in uranium.

The daunting goal of producing a deliverable bomb hinged on solving the problem, this being how to separate the precious uranium-235 isotope from the much more abundant uranium-238.

In addition, scientists discovered that the plentiful U-238, upon absorbing a neutron, forms U-239, and this isotope eventually decays into plutonium-239, a fissile material. Much of the research into plutonium chemistry was performed during the first half of 1940, by Edwin McMillan and Philip Abelson of the University of California at Berkeley.

Scientists had a lot of work ahead of them. At the beginning of 1942, plutonium chemistry research was practically nonexistent. Researchers did not even know whether plutonium emitted neutrons during fission, and if so, how many.

However, determined researchers with a goal in mind worked wonders, and in a period of six months, by July 1942, experiments proved that plutonium did give off neutrons in fission, even more then did the scarce U-235, and the neutrons were emitted in a short time compared to the time needed to bring the weapon materials into a supercritical assembly.

At the same time that scientists were discovering all the benefits of plutonium, their estimates of the critical mass for U-235 had risen threefold, to something between fifty and one hundred pounds!

The Americans decided to fund research into, and production of, both U-235 and plutonium-239. Smart move, as it turned out.

Germany’s Approach to Nuclear Fission

From the outset, Germany intended to be at the forefront in the race to build an atomic bomb.

By the time World War II began, on September 1, 1939, the German government had already opened a special office dealing with the military application of nuclear fission.

Chain reaction experiments had been planned using uranium and carbon, and German physicists were studying methods for separating the uranium isotopes.

Early measurements by German scientists on carbon, indicated that graphite would be a poor choice for a moderator in the fission chain reaction. These results led the physicist Werner Heisenberg to recommend that deuterium oxide, or heavy water, be used instead, as the moderator.

It was later shown that these calculations on carbon were in error, and that graphite was indeed an effective moderator. However, the Germans continued to rely on the difficult to produce heavy water, and this scarcity meant there was not enough heavy water for experimental purposes.

In addition, German isotope separation studies were aimed toward low enrichments for the chain reaction experiments, further hindering German efforts in nuclear fission research and atomic bomb development.

Thus when the race to build an atomic bomb finally began, Germany was still searching for the starting blocks.

The United States government had been alerted about Germany’s interest in nuclear research from several sources. Because of America’s policy of not wanting to get involved in Europe’s problems, at the beginning of the war, the United States did not have a reliable intelligence network in place in Germany, thus was not fully aware of the organization of Germany’s efforts.

However, British intelligence agencies learned early on, that Germany’s top scientists had already progressed to the stage of studying ways of separating the uranium isotopes, and the Brits were quick to notify their cousins across the pond of these early German research successes.

Nuclear fission had been discovered first in Germany. As war erupted in 1939, many top German physicists fled to the United States, France and England, and these refugee scientists warned that Nazi Germany might be the first to develop such a theoretical weapon.

Therefore, France, England and the United States began research, with the goal in mind of developing an atomic bomb.

This nuclear research was more advanced in the United States, where in a late-1939 letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the reknowned scientist warned of Nazi Germany’s plans to produce a nuclear weapon.

After the fall of France to Germany in 1940, French scientists escaped to England, and after the United States entered the war in December 1941, the major part of the research into nuclear fission moved to the safety of the United States.

Following Albert Einstein’s letter to President Roosevelt, warning that Nazi Germany might be the first nation to develop an atomic bomb, Roosevelt appointed an Advisory Committee on Uranium, that reported that chain reaction in uranium was possible, though this had not been proved.

Chapter 1

The Manhattan Project

Once United States government officials realized that if the Allies were going to win The Race, the Americans would be required to foot the bill, the American government kicked it into high gear, and nuclear fission research and development segued quickly from desperate to panic. History shows that of the 3.85 trillion dollars the United States spent on research and development during the war, more than half of this total, or 2 trillion dollars, was spent directly on the research and production of the atomic bomb.

In 1940, the U.S. government made funds available for research that led to the Manhattan Project, a super-secret attempt to procure uranium-235 in high concentrations, and to enhance reactor development. Scientists not only had to investigate how the chain reaction could be put into the design of a compact bomb, capable of being delivered by a bomber aircraft; they had to develop a method of producing this new element plutonium, that physicists believed to be fissile, and that could be isolated from uranium chemically.

The reactor development project was placed under the overall supervision of Enrico Fermi, recognized as the leading experimental nuclear physicist of the time. Fermi’s project was begun at Columbia University, and utilized the efficient design of a graphite-moderated reactor. The reactor was first demonstrated at the University of Chicago.

The Research and Development Triangle

The Manhattan Project was separated into three main sections. Headquarters for the operation was located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and production of uranium-235 was begun at that site.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed, from scratch, an entire community in the dense forests near Knoxville, and the instant city, that reached a population of 75,000 inhabitants by the end of the war, was encircled in its entirety by a security fence, patrolled by military policemen and guard dogs. This fence was not removed until 1949.

The second leg of this atomic bomb research and development triangle, was the production of heavy water. This operation was continued at the United States heavy water production facility in the mountains of Canada, as this was a secure site and the plant was already in operation.

The production of graphite was continued at a site near Provo, Utah.

The long hypotenuse of the nuclear triangle, was the design, construction and testing of a deliverable atomic bomb, that could be produced in sufficient quantities as to cause Hitler to surrender his armies, and failing this, to vaporize German cities one at a time until the Fuhrer listened to reason, or was himself vaporized. Thus the sole purpose of producing an atomic bomb was to deter or destroy. Hitler could choose his poison.

Moreover, Houdini’s atomic trick was to coordinate the three legs of this trigonometry figure such that, timewise, the three legs locked together simultaneously. What a can of worms!

And what was even more disturbing, the government and the scientific community realized, was that 1) Nazi Germany was hard at work trying to pull off the impossible before we could, and 2) the Nazis would do everything in their power to steal our atomic bomb secrets.

So, The Race was on. Sufficient moderator material had to be ready when sufficient uranium-235 was ready. And they both had to be ready when it came time to test the device that, by the way, was simply a theory floating around in the minds of some weird scientists like so many lightweight badminton balls caught up in a hurricane.

And, by the way, what’s a moderator?

The Role of Moderators

Early experiments showed that the ultra high energy neutrons, produced in the nuclear fission process, dissipate much too rapidly to effectively induce fission in an atomic reaction.

Scientists had to find a material that would slow down these high-energy neutrons enough to allow the fission chain reaction 1) to initiate itself before the whole process either exploded prematurely or fizzled out completely, and 2) to sustain the process in a controlled atmosphere.

Thus, a moderator is utilized in the nuclear fission process to help initiate and sustain a fission chain reaction. Research following the early graphite-moderated reactors showed that deuterium oxide, also called heavy water, was actually a more efficient reactor moderator than graphite, and because Canada already possessed heavy water production facilities, this part of the project had been assigned to the Canadian team.

The Discovery of Heavy Water

In 1931, U.S. chemist Harold C. Urey and two collaborators detected deuterium by its atomic spectrum in the residue of a distillation of liquid hydrogen.

When water is electrolyzed, the gas produced at the cathode is mostly hydrogen; thus the residual water is enriched in deuterium content.

Repeated electrolysis of hundreds of gallons of water, until only a few ounces remain, yields nearly pure deuterium oxide.

This residue, composed of deuterium, the hydrogen isotope with a mass double that of ordinary hydrogen, and oxygen, was given the name heavy water.

Heavy water has a molecular weight of about 20 (the sum of twice the atomic weight of deuterium, which is 2, plus the atomic weight of oxygen, which is 16), whereas ordinary water has an atomic weight of about 18.

Neutrons lose energy quicker by colliding with light atoms such as carbon (mass 12), beryllium (mass 9), and deuterium (mass 2). Therefore, materials that contain these atoms, that is, graphite, beryllium metal and oxide, and deuterium (heavy water), respectively, are incorporated into the reactor itself, and are called moderators.

What caused the production of heavy water to be so expensive and time-consuming, was the fact that ordinary spring or mountain water contains about one deuterium atom for every 6,760 ordinary hydrogen atoms. And until 1943, this laborious electrolysis process was the only large-scale method used to produce heavy water.

Graphite vs. Heavy Water-

Pros and Cons

Both graphite and heavy water have their benefits and their drawbacks. Heavy water is useful as a moderator for the following reason.

Because it is a liquid, deuterium oxide slows down the fast-emitted neutrons appreciably, to speeds at which these neutrons are more likely to induce fission, while at the same time not capturing (absorbing) an inordinate amount of these precious emitted high energy neutrons.

In order for an atomic weapon, in the form of a deliverable bomb, to be constructed in such a manner as to make it past the experimental stage and into production, this moderator material must be capable of being produced quickly and in sufficient quantities.

It stands to reason then, that the most desirable materials would be those found in abundance in nature. Conversely, the least desirable materials would be those that require an expensive, time-consuming and elaborate production system in order to produce small amounts of moderator material.

And therein lay the crux of the problem with using heavy water as a moderator. Literally hundreds of gallons of water are required to produce just a few ounces of the precious deuterium oxide. Time-consuming. Time that neither Germany nor America could afford to waste.

Thus the Heavy Water Report Card:

1. More efficient as a moderator, but

2. Time consuming as the dickens to produce.

The property of graphite that made it an effective moderator in the process of nuclear fission, i.e., its ability to slow down the high-speed neutrons, was the same property that caused the Americans to question its use as an effective moderator in the production of the atomic bomb.

Graphite is the crystalline form of carbon. It is used as a lubricant, and as the basis, along with clay, of the lead in pencils. During the war, Germany’s graphite was mined in Austria.

American and British scientists discovered that in the neutron irradiation process, an inordinate amount of structural damage resulted in the rapid swelling of the graphite.

This swelling was caused by localized heating, that resulted from the displacement of the relatively heavy carbon atoms. The solid graphite did not recover spontaneously from this radiation damage, leading this group of scientists to conclude that graphite was a poor choice for use as a moderator in the nuclear fission process.

It is this documented instability of the crystalline form of carbon, that caused researchers at Los Alamos to lean toward the use of heavy water as a moderator in the nuclear fission process.

Graphite certainly had its place in the nuclear fission process. It’s just that, when compared with heavy water, graphite became second choice.

Thus the Graphite Report Card:

1. Relatively plentiful and easy to produce (when compared to heavy water), but

2. Prone to rapid burnout, leading to inefficiency as a moderator.

And this is the point at which American scientists and German scientists diverged in logic and policy.

As we shall soon see.

Just as in the case of the weapon materials U-235 vs. plutonium-239, the Americans continued to research and produce both graphite and heavy water. The reason: You never know what you’re going to run into on down the nuclear fission path.

Chapter 2

The Road to Los Alamos

In addition to their problems of determining the most effective moderator material for use in the nuclear fission chain reaction, the Americans began to realize that the entire project would be time-consuming. And this was itself an understatement.

In May 1941, a U.S. government committee reported that it would take another eighteen months to produce a chain reaction in natural uranium; it would take another year after that to produce enough plutonium to make a bomb, and more than three years to separate enough uranium-235. The committee concluded that a nuclear explosion probably could not be realized before 1945. Indeed, scientists had many miles to go before they could sleep.

Using this timetable to work with, in May 1942, the U.S. government launched an all-out effort across a broad front in the mission to construct a deliverable atomic bomb before the Nazis could accomplish the feat.

To this end, on September 17, 1942, Colonel (later Brigadier General) Leslie Groves, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was appointed to head the Manhattan Engineer District, with headquarters in New York City.

Almost immediately, General Groves announced contracts for a gaseous diffusion separation plant, a plutonium production facility, and a calutron pilot plant.

Chapter 3

The First Chain Reaction

On December 1, 1942, General Groves awarded the construction contract for the plutonium production reactor facility, and the following historic day, December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi’s brilliant mind and dedication won the day, when he reported that his team had produced the first self-sustaining chain reaction at the University of Chicago. This timetable was pretty much on the mark of the U.S. government’s prediction in May 1941, that the feat would take about eighteen months to accomplish. Which it did.

This first nuclear reactor was called Chicago Pile No. 1 (CP-1), and was made of pure graphite, in which uranium metal slugs were loaded toward the center, with uranium oxide lumps positioned around the edges. This reactor was intended to be only experimental, made to prove that scientists could take the theory past a dream and a hope.

The almost unexpected success of the CP-1 experiment quickly led scientists to work on the first actual production reactors, known as Hanford reactors, that were graphite-moderated, natural uranium-fueled, water-cooled devices.

The massive plutonium production Hanford reactors were built on an isolated 1,000-square mile tract on the Columbia River north of Pasco Washington, at the Hanford Engineer Works.

Thus in a mind-boggling short span of time, the Americans had constructed production reactors, weapons production and chemical reprocessing facilities, and research reactors.

And much of this progress had been made as a result of basic on-the-job training and one-on-one discussions among scientists from many different engineering backgrounds.

The ultimate, and only, goal of the U.S. Army and the Manhattan Project was to organize British and American scientists to harness this nuclear energy for military purposes.

Their work of genius is recognized as the greatest engineering achievement in history.

The ultimate goal of the atomic bomb was to deter, and as an instrument of national defense, it accomplished its purpose magnificently.

Chapter 4

Enter the Genius-J. Robert Oppenheimer

In October 1942, the reknowned theoretical physicist, thirty-eight-year-old J. Robert Oppenheimer, was selected as the director of Project Y, the team that was to design the actual weapon.

On November 16, 1942, General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer visited the former Los Alamos Ranch School, located about sixty miles north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Oppenheimer had spent part of his childhood in boarding school, and on November 25, 1942, General Groves approved it as the site for the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

The research site, in north-central New Mexico, thirty-five miles northwest of Santa Fe, was selected because of its natural facilities and comparative isolation. The mild climate of the American Southwest, and the sparse population, enabled the U.S. government to build, from the ground up, its housing and research facilities, and not run out of space in the process. For this purpose the location was ideal.

And isolation for another reason, just as important if not more. The fact that German spies were well aware of the general successes of Enrico Fermi’s team of physicists, in their breakthrough nuclear fission work, had been confirmed in 1942, by the arrest of seven Nazi spies in New York and Chicago. However, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was confident the Germans had not penetrated the Manhattan Project, and he was relieved that the project had been moved to the wide open spaces of New Mexico.

In point of fact, four of the seven arrests of Nazi spies had been effected simply by FBI agents following these four (two men and two women), who had been detected carrying out close surveillance on Enrico Fermi and his colleagues.

Therefore, top priority at Los Alamos had gone to security, and the reason for this concern could be traced to Berlin in 1941. When the Manhattan Project was relocated to the American Southwest in 1942, Hitler and his generals faced a painful reality, that being, if the Americans were allowed time to build and test an atomic bomb, the war surely would be lost.

Oppenheimer’s first task upon becoming director of the Manhattan Project, was to begin the research for a process for the separation of uranium-235 from natural uranium, and to determine the critical mass of uranium required to make an atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer’s role as an organizer and director, was crucial to the success of Project Y. In addition to small group and one-on-one discussions, cross-training was mandated