Oppenheimer designed the 1st atomic bomb. A secret site in Eastern Washington fueled it

Without a secret site in Eastern Washington, there would be no “Oppenheimer” movie nor a start to the atomic age as the world knows it.

The biographical thriller opening Friday focuses on theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work at Los Alamos, N.M., that led to the first detonation of an atomic bomb and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, shortly after that test.

As Oppenheimer was racing to develop an atomic bomb before the Nazis during World War II, workers in the Richland, Wash., area were working long hours to build and then operate the world’s first full-scale reactor to produce plutonium to fuel those bombs.

Before September 1944 when Hanford’s now historic B Reactor was started up, controlled chain reactions had been much smaller.

Those gathered at B Reactor knew they might have miscalculated on building a reactor so large — that a runaway chain reaction might blow the plant up.

As the first atomic bomb, fueled with Hanford plutonium, was detonated in the New Mexico desert 10 months later, leaders feared there was a chance that the chain reaction could destroy the world.

Central to work at both sites was Gen. Leslie Groves, played in the movie by Matt Damon.

He was appointed head of the Manhattan Engineer District, leading work by 100,000 workers and scientists in a race to develop an atomic weapon ahead of the Nazis.

The National Park Service describes Oppenheimer and Groves as opposites.

Groves, who occasionally visited Richland and Hanford, including to boost morale, was “a dominant, controlling personality (and) “a practical-minded military engineer — brusque, egotistical and confident.”

He would later tell associates, ‘If I can’t do it, no one can.’”

Oppenheimer was charismatic, had little administration experience and family members who were suspected of being communist sympathizers, according to the park service.

“Despite all that, Groves personally issued his security clearance in July 1942 over the objection of the FBI,” according to the park service. “The two formed a special relationship, understanding that the bomb might be the route to future fame for them both.”

Groves also was instrumental in picking a site just north of the then-tiny farming community of Richland for the secret project to produce plutonium.

Hanford site desolate

In January 1943 he approved the Eastern Washington location as the site for plutonium production, which would continue through the Cold War. Nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program was produced at Hanford from World War II through the Cold War.

Like Los Alamos, Hanford was a remote and desolate location.

There the Army Corps contracted with DuPont to construct what would be the fourth-largest city in Washington to house and feed workers at Hanford, code named “Site W.”

Then they built B Reactor in 11 months, constructed based on a design that relied on slide rules rather than computers.

Unlike Oppenheimer and Groves, few in the workforce that swelled to 50,000 knew what they were building.

They were recruited from across the nation to come to Eastern Washington to work 50-hour weeks with just one day off.

Just as now, the weather usually was too hot or too cold. But in 1944 workers also had to contend with the “termination winds.”

Desert winds regularly whipped up dirt and sand from the site’s many bare-dirt construction sites, causing discouraged workers to line up for what would be their final paycheck after each dust storm.

Groves was in the New Mexico desert near Los Alamos with Oppenheimer and others for the Trinity Test.

As they waited for the weather to clear to detonate the bomb, physicist Enrico Fermi, whose team designed the B Reactor at Hanford, offered wagers on “whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world,” according to a Department of Energy account.

Oppenheimer bet $10 against the month’s wages of a Manhattan Project scientist that the bomb would not work at all.

Oppenheimer would say years after the Trinity Test that as he watched the mushroom cloud rise over the desert, he thought of the line from the Hindu scripture, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Less than a month later on Aug. 9, 1945, plutonium produced at Hanford was used in a bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Three years and one day after the creation of the Manhattan Project, World War II ended.

Groves’s stamp on Richland, WA

Key to Groves’s approval of Eastern Washington as the site for plutonium production, was the Columbia River.

Eight more plutonium-production reactors would join B Reactor along the river.

“The river provided the cold water needed to cool the reactors and produced massive amounts of electricity from the recently completed Grand Coulee Dam needed to run the reactors and other production facilities,” according to the park service.

Today, the 149-acre Leslie Groves Park stretching along the Columbia River in Richland remains named in Groves’ honor.

Lesser known is the role Groves played in shaping Richland, including its current traffic issues.

As a federally built and owned town was constructed during WWII to house workers, Groves called for homes to be kept to “the bare essentials,” according to John M. Findlay and Bruce Hevley, writing in “Atomic Frontier Days — Hanford and the American West.”

He was concerned about accounting to Congress for money spent if the atomic bomb program was not successful.

“As a result of Groves’ efforts at economy and efficiency, the town wound up with inadequate number of sidewalks, garages, stores and shopping areas, no civic center, roads too narrow for much auto traffic … ,” according to “Atomic Frontier Days.”

Hanford site today

Plutonium production at Hanford through the Cold War left what is now a 580-square-mile site, down from the original 670 square miles under Groves, with contamination from radioactive and hazardous chemical waste.

The nation is spending more than $2.5 billion a year on environmental cleanup of parts of the Hanford nuclear reservation where plutonium was produced or contamination spread. Work is expected to continue for decades to come.

Parts of Los Alamos and Hanford now are part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, along with Oak Ridge, Tenn., where uranium was enriched for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, three days before the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

At Hanford, the park service provides tours of B Reactor and also tours that tell the story of the people who were displaced from their homes and farms, including native Americans, to make way for plutonium production in WWII.

Go to manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov or call the park visitor center in Richland at 509-376-1647 for more information.