early 1954 the Paducah gaseous diffusion plants were producing enriched
uranium and by September the Portsmouth plants were in operation.
two large Hanford reactors went into operation in 1955.
The
Thereafter, the
Commission consistently exceeded goals for the production of fissionable
materials.7?
As the Commission produced more enriched uranium and plutonium it
‘built additional plants to assemble weapons.
The Commission erected
plants for manufacturing weapon parts in Rocky Flats, Colorado (1952).,
Kansas City, Missouri (1952), Burlington, Iowa (1952), Miamisburg, Ohio
(1955), and Pinellas, Florida (1957), and also opened a weapon assembly
plant in Amarillo, Texas in 1952.
Weapon engineering for the Livermore
Laboratory was concentrated in a Livermore branch of Sandia laboratories
in 1958.74
The production and assembly plants produced a large weapon stockpile.
By 1953 assenbled weapons were being tumed over to the military
and by 1956 most of the stockpile was in the physical, if not the
formal, control of the Defense Department.
The Canmission, however,
continued to exercise its statutory responsibility to maintain safe, but
reliable weapons.
As the stockpile grew, the number of nuclear weapons
being transported and stored around the coumtry increased.
To prepare
for the remte possibility that a transit or storage accident might
Getonate the conventional explosive in a weapon, the Commission incorporated safety considerations into weapon design, drew up policies for
safely transporting and storing weapons, and established special teams
19
i
trained and equipped to handle a weapon accident.”