Atomites at Work

Most U.S. weapons plants were closed or reconverted. Not so the atomic bomb industry. The most warlike of them all was still almost in full production.

At Richland, Wash., the plutonium piles, strangest, most ominous factories on earth, cooked their uranium rods in fires of darting neutrons. A full crew of 5,000 workers operated the piles and refineries. Sentries still paced their beats at the City of Pluto; patrols still scoured the surrounding desert. Army airplanes patrolled overhead, trying to avoid radioactive gases from the stacks. What happened to the product--the man-made element plutonium--was an Army secret.

The other great atom-bomb center, Oak Ridge, Tenn., was busy too, though its employes had decreased from a peak of about 79,000 to 36,788. The smallest of its three plants for separating uranium isotopes--the thermal diffusion process--was shut down and held as a standby. The gaseous diffusion process and the more efficient phase of the electromagnetic process were working steadily on the usual eight-hour shifts. What was being done with their product--uranium 235--was another Army secret.

The scientific staff at Oak Ridge had decreased, both in numbers and quality, but experimental projects were still going forward. One of these was the only sign so far of atomic reconversion: an experimental plant for producing electrical energy. Presumably, it would be a pile like those at Richland, but working at a higher temperature, to generate steam for conventional turbines. One optimist, Dr. Leonard I. Katzin, writing in Army Ordnance, thought practical results might show in about two years.

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