To complicate matters further, though MDA B was located on an isolated mesa in the 1940's, the landfill has since been surrounded by a Los Alamos commercial district. Also, historical reports of MDA B spontaneously combusting on three occasions -with 50-foot flames and pink smoke spewing across the mesa during the last incident in 1948-indicated that hazardous materials were likely present in MDA B. An extensive review of historical documents and interviews with early laboratory personnel resulted in a list of hundreds of hazardous chemicals that could have been buried in MDA B.
The secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project meant that no records were kept of radiological more » materials and chemicals disposed or of the landfill design. Several factors combined to create significant challenges to remediating the landfill known in the 1940's as the 'contaminated dump'.
Recognized as one of the most challenging environmental remediation projects at Los Alamos, the excavation of MDA B received $110 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to accelerate this complex remediation work. Operated from 1944-48, MDA B was the disposal facility for the Manhattan Project. Material Disposal Area B (MDA B) is the oldest radioactive waste disposal facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Setting the record straight, it establishes that all Los Alamos scientists knew about the nature of their work and that American scientists were involved in the decision to use the weapon against Japan. Describing the historical events leading to the Trinity bomb test and to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, City of Fire corrects many misconceptions about the greatest news story of the twentieth century. After the war, scientists were divided between those who favored development of larger, more powerful weapons and those who felt that existing weapons were enough. The author recreates the unique life and work at Los Alamos and tells how problems in the bomb's creation were overcome by vast expenditures of money and almost around-the-clock labor of nearly 7,000 men and women working in secrecy on the isolated New Mexico mesa. New insights are also shed on the roles played by such major world figures as Roosevelt, Truman, and Churchill in an undertaking that provided for the unprecedented interaction of science and politics. Groves, the Director of the Manhattan Project, this book reveals the scientific squabbles that developed, as well more » as the unusual degree of cooperation Oppenheimer generated among his colleagues and between the scientific community and the military establishment. Casting new light on Oppenheimer's pervasive contributions to the Laboratory and on his relationship with General Leslie R. Led by Robert Oppenheimer, the Los Alamos Laboratory drew to its ranks the scientific giants of the age: Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, and dozens more. With the initial test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age had begun in earnest. Army built prototype atomic bombs during World War II. After a synopsis of the prehistory of the bomb project, from the discovery of nuclear fission to the more » start of the Manhattan Engineer District, and an overview of the early materials program, the book examines the establishment of the Los Alamos Laboratory, the implosion and gun assembly programs, nuclear physics research, chemistry and metallurgy, explosives, uranium and plutonium development, confirmation of spontaneous fission in pile-produced plutonium, the thermonuclear bomb, critical assemblies, the Trinity test, and delivery of the combat weapons. The book opens with an introduction laying out major themes. The research was characterized by strong mission orientation, multidisciplinary teamwork, expansion of the scientists` traditional methodology with engineering techniques, and a trail-and-error methodology responding to wartime deadlines.
The authors explore how the ``critical assembly`` of scientists, engineers, and military Personnel at Los Alamos collaborated during World War II, blending their traditions to create a new approach to large-scale research. This volume treats the technical research that led to the first atomic bombs.
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