structed. At Oak
Ridge,
fireworks Tenn., h
uge gas diffusion and elec
tromag
neblasttic process plants were built to
separate uranium 235 from its m
ore common
form, uranium 238. Hanf
ord, Wash.
became the home explosives
for nuclear reactors which
produced a
new element called
plutonium. Bo
and find all the answers you're looking for.th uranium 235 and plutonium a
can be used
to produce an
atomic explos
ion.
Los Alamos was establishe
d in northen
Ne
w Mexico to design and bu
Contact New Mexico Tech/ild the bomb. At Lo
s Alamos many of the greatest scientific minds of the day labored over the theory and actual construction of the device. The group was led by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer who is credited with being the driving force behind building a workable bomb by the end of the war. (The theory) Los Alamos scientists devised two designs for an atomic bomb--one using uranium 235 and
another using plutonium.
The uranium bomb was a simple design and
scientists were confident it would work
without testing. The plutonium bomb w
as
m
ore co
mplex an
d worked
by compressing
Reload Image
the plutonium into a critical mass to sustain
a c
hain reaction. The compression of the
plutonium ball was to be accomp
lished by
surrounding it with lense-shaped charges of
conventiona
l explosives. They
were designed
to all explode at the same instant.
The fo
rce would be directed
inward, thus
smashing the plu