cambat readiness. Concurrently the Commission agreed to transfer nonnuclear components to "an advance base in the Pacific, "2° The Korean war also stimulated a dramatic expansion of the plants which produced uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons. On August 8, 1950, President Truman ordered the Commission and the Department of Defense to study requirements "to increase the output of fissionable "material in the immediate future." The Commission and the Department formed a joint working group which recommended that the Commission build a new gaseous diffusion plant complex Kentucky) (later erected at Paducah, and add three more reactors to the Savannah River plant. Total capital expenditure for the expansion came to $1.4 billion - the cost of all the facilities erected by the Manhattan Engineer District during World War II. President Truman approved the plan on October 9, 1950.24 | After initial reverses, American soldiers stopped the North Korean advance, then counterattacked, and largely destroyed the North Korean army. As President Truman ordered the 1950 expansion program, American soldiers launched their victorious pursuit into North Korea. Within a month, however, Communist China sent her armies into the war, overrunning some American units and inflicting a bloody defeat on others. | Outnumbered by the Chinese and surprised by their sudden assault, the Americans retreated from North Korea. became an undeclared war. The Korean police action had Grimly, the President declared a national emergency on December 16, 1950. The national emergency justified testing nuclear weapons within the continental United States. Weapon development had now became so sophis- ticated that it became possible to plan tests to resolve specific design