Warning President Truman that the United States' supply of atomic weapons was not adequate Commission went to work. © to meet the security requirements, the In the next few years the Commission con- verted an obsolete Oak Ridge plant to the production of weapons parts; solved operating problems plaguing Hanford reactors; put plutonium produczion on an efficient basis; and decided to build two more reactors . at Hanford. The Commission also stepped up the production of enriched _ uranium from the Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plants and moved weapon ordnance work from Los Alamos to the Sandia laboratory in Albumercue, New Mexico, alicowing Los Alamos to concentrate on weapon research. Finally, the Commission established a proving grounds at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific, scheciling its first test series, called Sandstone, for the spring of 1948. T>e Sandstone series was a technical success and enabled the Commission ts double the small stockpile of borbs.7 response to the Soviet thrzat, In the Commission had taken weapon pro- duction out of the laboratory end had put it on an assembly-line basis. After the Berlin crisis the Commission decided to add a third gaseous diffusion plant to the Oak Ridge camlex. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, determined in May i949 that the Defense Depar=cment needed far more bombs than Commission plants could then produce. The Joint Chiefs's requirements meant that the Commission would have to build a fourth gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge and redesign one cf the new reactors at Hanford. The news that Russia had set off an atomic explosion on August 29 shocked the nation and “<ouched off a dendate within the govermment over whether to develop a hySrogen bomb. After both the Commission and the National Security Council fad considerec =e