am
=56
which is confirmed by the public statements of sone scientists.°+
General Groves
has revealed that abdout one-fourth of the entire capital investment in the atoriic
bomb went into the plutonium production project at Hanford 22
As fuller informa-
tion seeps out even to the public, as it inevitably will despite security regulations, the signs pointing out to other nations the more fruitful avenues of
endeavor will become more abundant.
they cannot as a body be nade to lie,
Scientists may be effectively silenced, but
And so long as they talk at all, the
-
.
hiatuses in their specch may be as cloquont—+e.the informed listener as the
fs
I
4b wtp,
speech itsclf,
.
. ens
D1. Dr. J. R. Dunning, Director of Columbia University's Division of War Research
and a leading figure in the research which led to the atomic bomb declared be-~
fore the American Institute of Electrical Ingineers that improvements in the
plutonium producing process "have already made the extensive plants at Oal: Ridge
technically obsolete."
New York Times, January 24, 1946, p. 7.
The large Oak
Ridge plants are devotec almost exclusively to the isotope separation processes,
726 The Hanford, Washington plutonium plant is listed as costing “350,000,000,
and housing for workers at nearby Richland cost an additional $8,000,000. This
out of a total country-wide capital investment, including housing, of
$1,595,000,000, The monthly operating cost of the Hanford plant is estimated at
$3,500,000, as compared with the {6,000,000 per month for the diffusion plant at
Oak Ridge and $12,000,000 for the electro-magnetic plant, also at Oak Ridge.
These figures have, of course, little meanins without some lmowledge of the
respective yields at the several plants, but it may be significant that in the.
projection of future opcrating costs, nothing is said about Hanford. According
to General Groves the operating costs of the electro~magnetic plant will diminish,
while those of the gaseous diffusion plant will increase only as a result of
completion of plant enlargement. Of course, tne degree to which less efficient
processes were cut back and more efficient ones expanded would depend on con.Siderations of existing capital investment and of the desired rate of current
production.
Lf