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LOS ALAMOSNATIONAL LABORATORY:

A PROUD PAST,AN EXCITING FUTURE

HISTORIC NEW MEXICO TEST

USHERS IN A NEW AGE

AND A NEW LABORATORY

O n July 16, 1945, the atomic genie burst from its vessel and lit up the desert sky with a flash of blinding

brilliance. The explosion equaled 20,000 tons of TNT. Thescientists who observed the world’s first nuclear blast reactedwith a mixture of awe, relief, solemnity, pride, and later, formany, the realization that their “gadget” might change theworld forever — it did.

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LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY, AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION / EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER, IS OPERATED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA FOR THE U.S. DEPARTMENT

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LOS ALAMOS, NM 87545

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EDITORDiane Banegas

MANAGING EDITORMeredith Coonley

(505) 665-3982 • suki@lanl.gov

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSRoger Meade • Julie Anne Overton

Langdon Toland

WRITERSKathy Haq • Theresa Salazar • John Webster

ILLUSTRATOREdwin Vigil

PHOTOGRAPHYLos Alamos National Laboratory Archives

PRINTING COORDINATORG.D. Archuleta

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORYPUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE, MS P355

LOS ALAMOS, NM 87545

This July marks the 50th anniversary of the Trinity test nearAlamogordo, N.M. No one knows for sure why J. RobertOppenheimer, the first director of Los Alamos, chose the name“Trinity” for the test, which successfully capped two years, threemonths, and 16 days of scientific research and preparation. But thename signifies the dawn of the atomic age and the first of manyscientific achievements for what ultimately became known asLos Alamos National Laboratory.

This issue of

Dateline: Los Alamos departs from the publication’straditional content to look back at that time in our nation’s historywhen imminent danger threatened the United States and the world.This issue is a tribute to the men and women who worked onProject Y — the Laboratory’s wartime code name — and to thosewho followed and added their contributions during the next 50 years.

What began as a crash effort to develop the world’s firstnuclear weapon to end World War II grew into a world-classlaboratory whose great science, flexibility, and resilience continueto respond effectively to needs brought about by changingnational requirements.

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In the years following Trinity, Los Alamos contributed mightily todefense research and ultimately helped bring about the end of theCold War. The Atomic Energy Commission, established by an actof Congress in 1946, succeeded the Manhattan Engineer District ofthe U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which managed the wartimeefforts at Los Alamos and elsewhere to produce an atomic bomb.The AEC was charged by President Harry S. Truman to control thedevelopment and production of nuclear weapons and to directresearch and development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

In 1974, Congress disbanded the AEC and transferred its functionsto two new agencies, the Energy Research and DevelopmentAdministration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 1n 1977,President Jimmy Carter established the U.S. Department of Energyto provide the framework for a comprehensive, balanced nationalenergy policy. Los Alamos, which is funded by the DOE, has beenoperated by the University of California since its inception.

Although nuclear weapons research and development alwaysremained its central mission, Los Alamos’ program portfoliochanged frequently during its first 50 years, often in response tounpredictable external events. The promise of civilian nuclearpower and fusion ushered in a civilian program component in thelate 1940s and early 1950s. Sputnik in 1957 opened up an intenseinterest in space and nuclear propulsion. The 1973 oil embargolaunched a substantial diversification to energy programs to thepoint where by 1980 the Laboratory’s funding was approximatelyhalf defense and half energy.

Defense buildup under President Ronald Reagan re-establishedpriorities so that by 1987 the Laboratory was almost 80 percentdefense-oriented. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise ofinternational economic competition resulted in a swing toward agreater civilian portfolio in the early 1990s.

One of the most profound external changes was the court decision atOak Ridge, Tenn., in the mid-1980s that brought independent envi-ronmental oversight inside the previously sheltered DOE complex.Less than 10 years later the budget for environmental restoration andwaste management at Los Alamos climbed from a few million dollarsto $240 million — exceeding the budget for nuclear weaponsresearch, development, and testing for the first time.

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Today, scientists from Los Alamos and the former Soviet Union worktogether on peaceful pursuits that will benefit both countries and pro-mote global stability. Ironically, the half-century-long arms racebetween the United States and the former Soviet Union secured theworld for 50 years against another global conflict. Without the ColdWar, the danger of weapons of mass destruction proliferating in unsta-ble and unfriendly countries is very real but much harder to identify.As one scientist remarked, “The bear is out of the woods, but thejungle is full of snakes.” The Laboratory’s mission has changed accord-ingly to meet the challenges presented by a new and uncertain world.

Los Alamos is poised to play a leadership role in its core mission ofreducing the global nuclear danger. This mission includes stewardshipof the existing nuclear weapons stockpile, managing nuclear materials,stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and clean-ing up the legacy of 50 years of nuclear weapons production.In addition to its core mission, Los Alamos conducts research in non-nuclear defense programs and a broad array of nondefense programs,including research in energy, biomedical science, computationalscience, environmental science, and materials science. Technologiesdeveloped at Los Alamos frequently spin off into the private sector.

Two U.S. presidents have visited Los Alamos. In 1962, John F.Kennedy told Laboratory employees, “There is no group of peoplein this country whose record over the last 20 years has been morepre-eminent in the service of their country than all of you here inthis small community in New Mexico.”

Two decades later, Bill Clinton visited Los Alamos and reaffirmedthe Laboratory’s contribution to national defense. “From the Berlincrisis of 1948 to the Berlin celebration in 1989, when the Wall camedown, the work of this laboratory helped to ensure America’smight, America’s security, and in the end a total triumph for democ-racy and freedom and free-market economics.”

Great science has been the hallmark of Los Alamos since its incep-tion and this Dateline issue highlights many of the Laboratory’shistoric achievements. Los Alamos’ strength in basic research andability to solve complex problems of national importance has servedthe nation well for more than 50 years, from the countdown toTrinity to the Laboratory’s new compelling central mission ofreducing the global nuclear danger.

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COUNTDOWNTO TRINITY

WORLD’S FIRST ATOMIC BLAST

CULMINATES MONTHS OF INTENSE

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DESIGN

F or most observers of the world’s first atomic explosion, the immediate reaction was elation, then relief. “When

the bomb first went off I had the same feelings that anyoneelse would have who had worked for months to prepare thistest, a feeling of exhilaration that the thing had actuallyworked,” said Kenneth Bainbridge, an experimentalphysicist from Harvard University who was the director ofthe Trinity test on July 16, 1945. “This was followed byanother quick reaction — a sort of feeling of relief that Iwould not have to go to the bomb and find out why thething didn’t work,” Bainbridge added.

The Trinity test in the desert of south central New Mexico culminated aperiod of intense scientific research and design that had begun 27 monthsearlier on a remote mesa 200 miles north of the test site. By any measure,the project was enormously successful. Even today, 50 years later, politi-cians and policy-makers often employ the term “Manhattan Project” as afavorable description of a proposed scientific crash program.

The Manhattan Project was launched at a time when the geopoliticalrealities of World War II intersected the scientific reali-ties of nuclear physics. Developing a new weapon basedon the energy of the atom was not only believed to bepossible, it was thought to be advisable: Germany andJapan were advancing militarily; much of the early workon uranium fission had been conducted by Germanresearchers; and U.S. leaders feared that Germany coulddevelop an atomic weapon first.

Nuclear fission was discovered in Germany in 1938. Fouryears later, the summer after the United States entered the war, Universityof California physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer organized a conference atwhich leading theorists concluded that a fission bomb was feasible anddeveloped the theoretical basis for the design of such a weapon.

By that time, a number of research programs were under way across theUnited States to explore various scientific and engineering problems ofnuclear energy. Collecting and comparing technical data and informa-tion was difficult because the research sites were scattered and securityrestrictions hampered long-distance communication.

John Manley, a physicist from the University of Chicago who was assist-ing Oppenheimer, traveled around the country to different project sitesto acquire information. “It didn’ttake very long to realize that youjust couldn’t run a railroad in thisfashion,” Manley said, recallinghow the need for a single researchfacility became apparent.

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THE SEARCHFOR A SITEGen. Les l ieGroves, whoheaded thenat ionwideManhattanEngineerDistr ict , wantediso lat ion, andthat ’s what hegot. The s i techosen for thenew laboratorywas s i tuated onan iso latedmesa populatedby only a fewhomesteadersand theinhabitants ofthe Los A lamosRanch Schoolfor Boys. Fromthe top: theboys’ ranchschoolbui ld ingsc lusteredaround AshleyPond; Groves;the roadleading to Los Alamos; aranchinghomestead onthe Pa jar i toPlateauphotographedbefore thefounding of theboys’ school .

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In the fall of 1942, the decision was made to build a new labo-ratory to centralize the research and design programs, andGen. Leslie Groves, who had been named to head the weaponsproject a few months earlier, selected Oppenheimer as thedirector. The search for a site began immediately.

Groves wanted the new labora-tory to be located in a remotearea that was sparsely popu-lated and at least 200 milesfrom a coastline or internation-al boundary for safety fromattack. The site should have room forexplosives testing, good enough weatherfor construction to proceed year-round,

and enough housing to accommodate the first group of scientists.

Maj. John Dudley of the Manhattan District staff scouted the Southwestfor a site, eventually recommending Jemez Springs, N.M. That site, how-ever, was rejected by Oppenheimer. Groves asked him if hehad a better idea, and Oppenheimer suggested Los Alamos,the site of a boys’ school that he had visited while staying athis family’s summer home in northern New Mexico.

The site, a high mesa slashed by deep canyons on the east-ern slopes of the Jemez Mountains, met the criteria for thenew laboratory. It was remote and sparsely populated,security could be established andmaintained relatively easily, housingexisted at the school, and there waslots of room for testing.

Dudley, who earlier visited and reject-ed Los Alamos as a possible site,escorted Groves, Oppenheimer, andEdwin McMillan of the University ofCalifornia Radiation Laboratory tothe site on Nov. 16, 1942. When thegroup arrived, Groves took one look,“and said, in effect, ‘This is the place,’ ”McMillan recalled.

On Nov. 25, the acquisition wasapproved by the War Department, and

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SCHOOL DAYSAshley Pondand Edward

Ful ler openedthe Los A lamos

Ranch Schoolfor Boys in1918. Their

names are st i l lprominent in

da i ly l i fe in LosAlamos: a smal l

body of waterin downtownLos Alamos isca l led Ashley

Pond (or shouldit be Ashley

Pond Pond?) ,and Ful ler

Lodge, one ofthe or ig ina l

ranch schoollog bui ld ings,

serves as agather ing p lacefor many of the

town’s soc ia levents . From

the top:students gather

for lunch onthe porch of

Ful ler Lodge; acorner of thedin ing ha l l in

the lodge;ranch school

graduat ionceremonies;students in

front of the“Big House,”

where theboys s lept

year-round inunheatedporches;

students p layhockey on

Ashley Pond.(The B ig House

is no longerstanding: I t wastorn down after

being dec lareda f i re hazard. )

on Dec. 7, exactly one year after theJapanese attack on Pearl Harbor, theschool received notification fromSecretary of War Henry Stimson that thesite was needed for military purposes.

Groves convinced the University ofCalifornia to operate the site under acontract with the government, an asso-ciation that continues today, whileOppenheimer and Manley began anintensive effort to recruit a staff. Theylooked for top-notch scientists andengineers who would agree to live inrelatively primitive conditions in aremote location under absolute secrecyfor an unspecified length of time whileworking on a difficult project with anuncertain chance of success.

Despite those obstacles, they succeed-ed spectacularly. The staff at LosAlamos, plus its advisers, comprisedsome of the nation’s best scientifictalent. In addition to Oppenheimerand McMillan, Emilio Segre , HansBethe, Enrico Fermi, EdwardTeller, I.I. Rabi, Luis Alvarez,Victor Wiesskopf, RichardFeynman, Robert Bacher, JohnVon Neumann, Robert Wilson,George Kistiakowsky, Seth

Neddermeyer, and dozens of other talented researchers partici-pated in the Los Alamos Project. Another two dozen scientistsfrom Great Britain joined the project in the spring of 1943.

The theoretical basis for nuclear weapons was reason-ably well understood when the Laboratory wasfounded, but most details were unknown and the engi-neering problems had to be tackled. A nuclear bombshould detonate when all its components are completelyassembled; obviously, this must occur only at the target.The Los Alamos staff had to figure out how to make fis-

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A NATIONALEFFORT

The crashwartime

program tobuild an atomicbomb involved

sites across thecountry. From

the top: one ofeight plutonium-

producingreactors at

Hanford Worksin Richland,

Wash.; the Y-12Plant in Oak

Ridge, Tenn.,where enriched

uranium wasproduced; a

section of theelectromagnetic

processequipment at

Y-12; acyclotron loaned

by HarvardUniversity;

Enrico Fermi(front row, left)

and hisassociates at the

University ofChicago, where

the firstsustained

nuclear chainreaction was

achieved inDecember 1942

in asquash court

underneath theuniversity’s

football stadium(Harold Agnew,

who became LosAlamos’ thirddirector, is in

the second rowat left, behind

Fermi); anartist’s

conception ofFermi‘s historic

experiment atStagg Field.

Fermi photo courtesy

of Argonne National

Laboratory

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sionable material, either uranium-235 or pluto-nium-239, release its energy efficiently and at theright time, and how to do it in a bomb casing thatwas small enough to be carried on an airplane.

On the arrival of the first group of scientists,Robert Serber, an assistant to Oppenheimer, pre-pared a series of lectures about the state of

nuclear physics at the time.“The immediate experimentalprogram is largely concernedwith measuring the neutronproperties of various materialand with the ordnance prob-lem,” said Serber, whose

lectures became known in the physics community as “TheLos Alamos Primer.”

Research projects under way in early 1943 includedmeasurements of the neutron flux and energy range duringfission, the time between fission and neutron emission,and the probability that a certain reaction would occur in agiven target area; development of new techniques to

conduct the measurements;radiochemical studies of neu-tron sources needed toinitiate a chain reaction;studies of the chemistry andmetallurgy of plutonium anduranium; studies of high

explosives to trigger the fission process; and experiments for thedevelopment of a fusion, or thermonuclear, bomb.

Two bomb designs were eventually employed. One, called the“gun-type” method, involved the “firing” of a mass of fissionable

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THE PROJECTFrom the topand left to right:Life as you knewit ended at theLos AlamosProject MainGate, where youridentity wasexchanged for anumber andyour addressbecame “Box1663, Santa Fe,New Mexico”(even the birthcertificates ofbabies bornduring theProject listedtheir place ofbirth as Box1663); guardsstationed at theentrance to thecommunitychecked cars andtheir occupantsfor officialpasses; tech areapersonnel wentthrough anotherset of gates tothe Laboratory;two views of thetechnical area,the lower photoshows buildingsclustered aroundAshley Pond;pullingradioactiveequipment froma storagebuilding; theworld’s firstenricheduranium reactor,the “waterboiler,” underconstruction;the stonebuilding used bythe boys’ ranchschool to storeice was used byProject Y staff tostore the nuclearcomponents ofthe firstatomic bomb.

material at another mass of the material so that whenthe two came together, they formed a critical mass.The other design was the “implosion” type, in whicha slightly subcritical mass was surrounded by explo-sives; when the explosives detonated, the shockcompressed the fissionable material, increasing itsdensity and causing it to go critical.

Experiments showed that the gun-typedesign would not work with pluto-nium, so work proceeded on thatassembly method using uranium-235 asthe fissionable material. Questions con-tinued concerning the implosion designusing plutonium, and in the spring of

1944, thedec i s i onwas madethat a testf i r i n g

would have to be conducted,launching another site search.

The test site would have to beflat, have generally goodweather, be largely uninhabit-ed, and be relatively near LosAlamos. Sites were considered

in California, New Mexico, Texas, and Coloradobefore the decision was made in September 1944 toselect what was then part of the AlamogordoBombing Range in south central New Mexico.

The test became a top priority project in March 1945and Bainbridge, a group leader in the ExplosivesDivision, was selected as the test director. One of hisfirst jobs was to prepare for a trial run in which 100tons of conventional explosives would be detonatedin a dress rehearsal that would provide informationabout taking measurements.

The trial test on May 7 was extremely successful andprovided the impetus for the real thing in July.

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TRINITY SITEFrom the topand left toright: TrinityBase Camp wasbuilt by theArmy in thewinter of 1944and occupied bya detachment ofmilitary police —by the summerof 1945, it washome to morethan 200scientists,technicians andsoldiers; a tripto the BaseCamp mess hall,where antelopesteak made afrequentappearance onthe menu; theMcDonald ranchhouse was usedfor the finalassembly of theatomic device;crates of highexplosives arestacked on a20-foot highwooden towerfor the trial run,May 7, 1945;fission productsfrom Hanfordare prepared forinsertion in thehigh explosiveto simulate, at alow level, theradioactiveproductsdispersed fromthe nuclearexplosion; the100 tons of TNTare stacked andready for the test.Carpenters,returning to thesite after thetest, wereappalled to findthe structurecompletelyobliterated.

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The objectives ofthe test were tocharacterize thenature of the implo-sion, measure therelease of nuclearenergy, and assessthe damage. Thescientists reviewedall they knew aboutthe bomb shortly

before the test and came away dis-mayed. “It seemed as though we didn’tknow anything,” recalled physicistFrederick Reines.

Shortly before dawn on July 16, they learned that they knewmore than they thought. Thelight that illuminated thecountryside “with (an) inten-sity many times that of themidday sun” was followed bya blast of air pressure and a

susta ined,loud roar,recalled oneo b s e r v e r ,Brig. Gen.T h o m a sFarrell. Thesuccess ofthe test wasimmediatelyapparent, so

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A THINGCALLED JUMBO

Plutonium wasin short supply

in 1944, soscientists

designed a214-ton steel

vessel,nicknamed

“Jumbo,” tocontain the

blast and al lowthem to recover

the activematerial if the

test wereunsuccessful.

Jumbo wasnever used; By

the t ime theTrinity testtook place,plutonium

production wasup and

scientists hadmore faith in

the success ofthe implosiondevice. There

also wereconcernsthat the

containmentvessel would

affect testmeasurements.Jumbo, erectedon a tower 800

feet fromGround Zero,survived the

blast unscathed,but the tower

was demolished.

FINALPREPARATIONSFrom the topand left tor ight: Jumbo ishoisted onto i tstower; a spec ia l64-wheel tra i lercarr ies Jumboacross thedesert toTr in i ty S i te ;act ive mater ia lfor the Tr in i tydev ice isremoved fromthe car thatbrought i t tothe ranch;in i t iators forthe dev ice arebrought intothe McDonaldranch house ina shock-proofcase; onJuly 14, thedevice,completeexcept for i tsdetonators , wasra ised to thetop of the100-foot tower;Oppenheimer,in h is fami l iarpork-pie hat ,oversees f ina lpreparat ions;Norr isBradbury, whowould becomethe Lab’sseconddirector , withthe “gadget” ;the dev ice s i tsin a stee lshelter at thetop of thetower, wait ingfor thecountdownto begin.

apparent that Groves had a coded messagerelayed to War Secretary Stimson at thePotsdam Conference the same day reportingthat the “results seem satisfactory and alreadyexceeding expectations.”

The initial feelings of relief and elation werequickly superseded by a sense of awe and,for some observers, second thoughts and mis-

givings. None of themcould fail to recognizethat they hadchanged the world.

♦ ♦ ♦

Epilogue: Shortly after the Trinity test, the nuclear com-ponents for two bombs were transported to TinianIsland in the Pacific for combat operations. On themorning of Aug. 6, the gun gadget, known as LittleBoy, exploded 1,750 feet overHiroshima. Three days later, onAug. 9, the implosion gadget,known as Fat Man, exploded overNagasaki. The Japanese begannegotiating for a cessation of hos-tilities on Aug. 10, and EmperorHirohito ordered his governmentto officially accept the Allied termsof surrender on Aug. 14. Formalsurrender ceremonies took placeon the Battleship Missouri inTokyo Harbor on Sept. 2.

Sources for this article include "Los Alamos 1943-1945: TheBeginning of an Era," a brochure published byLos Alamos National Laboratory; a series ofarticles in the Los Alamos Newsbulletin in1992 and 1993 by science historian RobertSeidel; “Project Y: The Los Alamos Story” byDavid Hawkins; and “The Making of theAtomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes.

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HOW TOVISIT

TRINITYSITE

Trinity Site, where theworld’s first atomic bombwas exploded in 1945, istraditionally open to the

public the firstSaturday in Apriland the first Sat-urday in October.This year, the sitealso will be openon July 16, the50th anniversary

of the Trinity test. TheTrinity Site is between theNew Mexico towns ofCarrizozo and Socorro, onthe northern end of the3,200-square-mile WhiteSands Missile Range.

A small monument nowmarks the site where theatomic bomb was placedon a 100-foot steel towerand exploded. Visitorsalso can see theMcDonald ranch housewhere scientists assem-bled the plutonium core.

For more information,call the White SandsMissile Range PublicAffairs Office at (505)678-1134.

AFTER THEBLAST

From the top:The b last left a

huge scar inthe desert atGround Zero;

“Fermi ’s tank”— this spec ia l

lead- l ined tankwas used to

obta in so i lsamples from

the cratershort ly after

the test ;J . Robert

Oppenheimerand Gen. Les l ie

Groves atGround Zero

about twomonths after

the test ;after the war

Los A lamosreceived the

Army-NavyAward of

Excel lence —Groves

presented theaward to

Oppenheimer ina spec ia l

ceremony atFul ler Lodge.

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PHOTOGRAPHER‘SPELLBOUND’

BY TRINITY BLASTMOTION-PICTURE PHOTOGRAPHER OF RECORD

IS DETERMINED TO CATCH

THE EVENT ON FILM

In the predawn hours of July 16, 1945, Berlyn Brixner positioned himself in a concrete bunker just 6 miles from

Ground Zero, site of the world’s first nuclear explosion.The 34-year-old journeyman photographer had spent monthspreparing for this moment, never quite knowing what to expect.Some said the force of the blast might destroy Earth, but othersthought that “the gadget” — an implosion device designed toexploit the power of atomic fission — could prove to be a dud.Whatever the outcome, Brixner was determined to catch the eventon film. Earlier that year, he had been selected to be the motion-picture photographer of record for the so-called Trinity test.

Brixner, a Laboratory retiree, said his selection as official photogra-pher had more to do with luck than experience. “I was in the rightplace at the right time with enough experience to run 37 motion-picture cameras.” The facts would indicate more than luck wasinvolved. During his 35-year tenure at the Laboratory, Brixner spe-

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Ber lyn Br ixner(with dr i l l )

insta l led theframework to

hold a machinegun turret that

was used as acamera mountdur ing f i lming

of theTr in i ty test .

cialized in the design and operation of motion-picture and high-speed cameras used in explosive phenomena research. Some of hiscameras were the fastest in the world at the time they were built.

His first camera designs, after World War II, werechronograph cameras for precise measurement of timesin explosions. In 1952, he designed a high-speed framecamera that recorded at the rate of 3.5 million imagesper second and was more than three times faster thansimilar cameras in existence at the time. It was used todocument the Mike Shot, which demonstrated that alarge thermonuclear explosion was possible.

Brixner, a self-taught engineer who excelled in his chosen line ofwork, says his job with the Laboratory gave him opportunities hesimply wouldn’t have had anywhere else. It all began when a boy-hood friend recommended him for a technical photographer’sposition at the Laboratory in 1943. His photographic experiencebefore the war included three years as an apprentice and eightyears as a regional photographer for the Soil Conservation Servicein Albuquerque.

Unlike others involved in the Trinity test, Brixner was given specialpermission to look directly at the initial blast through a welding glassfilter. Others had been instructed to wait a few seconds and then peerthrough similar material. Brixner was initially blinded, but a few sec-onds after detonation, he looked at the nearby Oscura Mountains

that were lighted as if by the noonday sun.

“I was spellbound and immediately realized thatthe bomb had worked beyond expectations,”Brixner said. He suddenly had to re-orient himselfto the task at hand — recording the behavior of theawesome fireball created by the explosion.Recovering from his momentary distraction, hequickly jerked the camera to follow the rising ballof fire — an awkward transition that remains part

of the historic record today. Luckily, he said, all the cameras wereautomatically set to begin filming just before the explosion.

The first still images of the event, made by automated Fastax cam-eras positioned just 800 yards away from Ground Zero, show thenow-familiar rapidly expanding ball of fire as it reaches the groundabout 0.0006 of a second after detonation.

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Berlyn Br ixnersat in an

observat ionbunker behind

the 35mmMitchel l cameraand four 16mm

Kodak Cine Ecameras

mounted onthe pivota l

turret shown inthe top photo;

the lower photoshows 13 of the

37 motion-picture cameras

used to f i lmthe test.

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Brixner said original plans for the closest bunkers were abandonedafter new studies indicated that the large amount of radiation pro-duced by the explosion would penetrate them and completelyblacken the film. As a result, he designed two new bunkers of steeland lead, with very thick lead glass windows. The cameras weremounted on a sled and aimed upward, through the windows,toward a corresponding number of 45-degree adjustable mirrorsaimed at the 100-foot tower built to support the explosive device.

“The new bunkers worked well enough so that the films were notdamaged beyond use, although they did get considerable fog fromthe radiation produced,” he explained. Brixner’s series of 21 slidesdetailed the development of the fireball and its effect on the atmo-sphere and surrounding terrain. The brilliance of the explosioncaused image reversal due to the overexposure in early frames of acamera with a large aperture lens.

Months of frantic work ended almost literally in a flash. Withinabout a minute, the fireball evolved into a huge column of smoke,crowned by an expanding dome, and rose to a height estimated at30,000 feet. The smoke hung stationary for a moment before thewind began to disperse it. Inside the bunkers, everyone startedtalking at once. Brixner said he shared in the enormous sense ofpride and accomplishment felt at that moment. Now, years later,he describes his involvement in an animated yet matter-of-factway: “The war was on and we had a job to do. We did it. A monthlater, the war ended.”

In the days immediately following the test, Brixner delivered hisfilm to a military base in Wendover, Utah, to be developed. Beforethe bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, he was personally dis-patched to Washington, D.C., to deliver his 35mm motion-picturenegative films to Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the ManhattanDistrict, expressly for use in newsreels. It wasn’t long before theAmerican public saw firsthand the successful outcome of theTrinity test.

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The format ionof the f i reba l l .

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LIVING ATLOS ALAMOS

THE MUD, THE MESA, THE MEMORIES

T he absence of grass and the absence of strangers were what physicist Edward Teller said he recalled most

about living at Los Alamos. In the early years of theLaboratory, Los Alamos appeared to newcomers as half Armypost, half mining camp. It was actually a tight-knitcommunity of scientists, spouses, children, and militarypersonnel, nearly all of whom were transplants fromsomewhere else. Throughout the spring and summer of1943, hundreds of bewildered families converged on NewMexico to begin an unforgettable adventure. Recruitingwasn’t easy for the managers of Project Y, the Laboratory’swartime code name. Scientific personnel were told about thenature of the work that awaited them but they wereinstructed to tell their families nothing. Most administrativeand technical personnel knew only that they were moving toan unknown place for an unknown purpose for anunknown length of time.

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The first stop for new arrivals — civilian andmilitary alike — was a Santa Fe office at 109East Palace Ave. During the first months ofmigration to Los Alamos, office managerDorothy McKibbin each day dispatched 65people, two vans of furniture, and one truck offreight to “the Hill.” For security reasons noone associated with Project Y referred to LosAlamos by its name. In addition, McKibbinhandled daily more than 100 telephone callsand issued dozens of passes. Despite the

volume of activity and the stresses placedon her, McKibbin’s hospitality and gra-ciousness endeared her to new residents.

For some recruits, just finding the EastPalace Ave. office was a leveling experi-ence. Nick Metropolis, a young physicistfrom Chicago, recalled being handed apacket containing instructions on howto get to Santa Fe and then to a smallunmarked office in the Bishop Building.For security reasons, the Palace Ave.office was not noted in his instruc-tions. To his dismay, Metropolisfound that the train did not stop inSanta Fe, but rather at Lamy, asmall village 15 miles from Santa

Fe. After catch-ing a bus intoSanta Fe, hesearched for the Bishop address given him.

When he reached that address, a voice from behind thedoor told him to go to 109 East Palace Ave. While

searching for the Palace Ave. office, he noticed aman who seemed to be following him but when-ever he turned to see who it was, the mandisappeared. Later, Metropolis learned that hismysterious shadow was Berkeley chemist RenePrestwood, who had simply been trying to avoidMetropolis while searching for the same office.

17

THE FRONTDOOR TO LOS ALAMOSNewcomers tothe Projectwere instructedto report to 109East PalaceAve., wherethey wereissuedtemporarypasses andgiven directionson how to getto the Hi l l ,45 miles away.When DorothyMcKibbin, whoran the officefor 20 years,was hired, sheasked what herduties wouldbe. She was toldnever to askquestions andnever ask for aname to berepeated, andthat was that.You could neversay the word“physicist” inthe office, andthe words “LosAlamos” werecompletelyforbidden.Thirteen war-time weddingswere celebratedin McKibbin’shouse, andsecrecy prevailedat those, too, asshe recal led:“ I couldn’t tel lthe judge orminister the ful lnames of thecouples,although thesewere enteredon thecertif icates. Theofficiat ingperson wouldjust say, ‘Doyou, Prisci l la,take Robert …’

GETTING THEREWASN’T HALF

THE FUNFrom the top: The

entrance to 109East Palace Ave. as

it appeared afterthe war; Santa Fe

in summer andwinter; a driverinspects passes

before passengersboard the bus that

ran between LosAlamos and SantaFe (early resident

Jane Wilsonthought the bus

drivers must havebeen selected fortheir social skills.

“As the bus ploweddown the hairpin

turns of our mesainto the New

Mexico desert,I found it

disconcerting tohave the driver

swivel around for alittle chat with a

passenger.”);the old bridge at

Otowi crossingover the Rio

Grande; horsebackriders on the

tortuous, windingdirt road that led

to the secretcommunity.

Unlike Metropolis, former resident BerniceBrode and her two boys found their way to109 East Palace Ave. without difficulty andwhat she saw there amused her: “A big sol-dier was good-naturedly loading his bus withawkward household purchases such asbrooms, mops, mirrors, potted plants, andkiddie cars. He was taking orders from pertlittle housewives with toddlers in tow. ... Thiswas the daily bus, going to Los Alamos.”

After processing at the Santa Fe office, newresidents boarded the bus or drove them-selves up the tortuous, winding dirt road toLos Alamos. Another early resident,Eleanor Jette, who drove her family to thesite, described the nerve-wracking trip inwhich she narrowly avoided sliding into the Rio Grande at Otowi crossing. Her first impression, once she was admitted through the LosAlamos main gate, was soot covering new-fallen snow. Jette thought the

apartment buildings “looked like hell” andas soon as she parked her car, it sank hub-deep into the mud.

Before 1942, Los Alamos existed primarilyas the site of an exclusive boys school anda few homesteads. The Ranch School prop-

erty included 27 houses, dormitoriesand other living quarters, and 27 mis-cellaneous buildings all sitting atop thePajarito Plateau — a high desert mesacut by deep canyons into long finger-like extensions. After the U.S. Armyacquired the Ranch School propertyand about 54,000 surrounding acres

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

18

THE BUILDINGS“LOOKED

LIKE HELL”New arr ivals to

the Project wereimpressed by

the ugl iness ofthe housing.

The bui ldingswere often

constructed ofgreen lumber,and residents

l ived in fear ofbeing turned

into kindl ing bythe overlarge,

overheatedfurnaces, which

gave off somuch heat they

cast an eerie glow in the

winter night.Apartments were

suppl ied withmodern electr ic

refr igerators,but had

antiquatedstoves,

nicknamed“Black Beauties.”Cooking on one

of these hugewood- and coal-burning ranges

was an acquiredski l l . Many

residents gaveup trying to

learn how tohandle the

infamousbeauties and didtheir cooking onhot plates. “Thiswas diff icult butnot impossible,”

rememberedJane Wi lson,

“except whenthe power was

shut off. Therewere periods

whenthis happened

frequently,sometimes for

hours ata t ime.”

From the top:Hous ing rangedfrom eight-plexes toQuonset hutsto expandabletra i lers ; theinter ior of aSundtapartmentshows how theowner’sbelongingscould br ing al i t t le charm tothe apartment;the mi l i tarypersonnel faredmuch worse,however, asth is barracksphoto shows.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

owned primarily by the Forest Service, Los Alamos went up likea boomtown.

The school’s handsome stone and log buildings, which served as Project Yheadquarters and general meeting areas, were quickly obscured by mush-rooming construction. Hurriedly built green Laboratory buildings, rowsof barracks, apartments, Quonset huts, government trailers, and prefab-ricated units created an unsightly assortment of accommodations that

lined row upon row of nameless, unpaved streets.New Mexico soft coal fueled the town’s furnacesand soot and dust from the streets fell in endlesslayers on every surface. Winter snows and summerrains left streets and yards mired in mud.

As a community in the early 1940s,Los Alamos was atypical. The popula-tion was homogenous; most peoplewere in their 20s or 30s, healthy andmiddle-class. Unemployment did notexist. Despite the informality of theplace, it was not, as former residentRuth Marshak remembered, a caste-

less society. Employees’ ranking in the Laboratory dictated their socialstanding as well as the quality of their assigned housing. This fact cameas a surprise to at least one Navy captain who saw one of his senior offi-cers slighted in housing by a junior officer with the proper scientificcredentials named Norris Bradbury. Senior Laboratory officials occupied“Bathtub Row” homes previously used by schoolmasters and the onlydomiciles in Los Alamos with bathtubs. The name has stuck to this day.

Water, or the lack of it, was a constant problem. Soldiers hand-deliveredto Los Alamos residents bulletins with precise instructions on water use:“Leaking faucets should be reported immediately. Watering of lawns andgardens is forbidden. Toilet bowls should not be flushed in play. And

19

BATHTUB ROWEar ly res identRuth Marshakreca l led thateven thoughhouses onBathtub Rowwere rat-r iddenand in manypart icu lars lessconvenientthan thegovernment-bui l t hous ing,there was soc ia lprest ige inl iv ing there.“More than oneacr imoniousbatt le wasfought todetermine whomight move tothe Row.”Anotherres ident,Jean Bacher,rememberedthat l iv ing onthe Row hadanother perk:“Baby s i tterswere eterna l lyscarce and onSundays werea lmostnonexistent,unless onel ived onBathtub Rowand couldoffer a tub asba it . ” Therestaurantat Ful lerLodge wasincons istent atbest , accordingto Marshak. “ ( I t ) wouldserve sp lendidfood for a fewmonths andthen s lumpback to i tsusual standardof mediocrecooking.”

From the top:One of the

coveted BathtubRow houses

that wereparceled out to

high-rankingProject

personnel; avictory garden in

front of theoriginal boys’

ranch bui ldings,Ful ler Lodge is at

the left, the BigHouse is on the

right, and theBathtub Row

houses are inbetween; themain room at

Ful ler Lodgeserved as a dining

room for ProjectY famil ies, just

as it had forthe boys at the

ranch school.

bodies should be soaped before entering theshower,” a ceremony, resident Jane Wilsonnoted, “which could be disastrous if the waterdidn’t come on.”

For ordinary civilians, military security tooksome getting used to. Laboratory memberswere not allowed personal contact with rela-tives or permitted to travel more than100 miles from Los Alamos. A chanceencounter with a friend outside the Project

had to be reported in detail to the security force.Security personnel censored outgoing mail and moni-tored long-distance calls. Incoming mail was addressedsimply to “P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico.” Birthcertificates of infants born at Los Alamos during thewar even listed P.O. Box 1663 as their place of birth. Ahigh barbed wire fence surrounded the community andmounted guards patrolled the rugged outer boundaries

of the site until Los Alamos became anopen city in 1957.

Recalled one early resident, “I couldn’t goto Santa Fe without being aware of hiddeneyes upon me, watching, waiting to pounceon that inevitable misstep. It wasn’t a pleas-ant feeling.”

The homogeneity of the com-munity led to some interestingproblems. Because so many sci-entists brought spouses andyoung children to the site, theneed for a school ranked inimportance with the need for a

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

20

DAILY LIFEJane Wi lson

rememberedthe hardships

of l iv ing at LosAlamos: “Our

e lectr ic powerwas uncerta in.

Our watersupply ran out.

Cr is issucceeded

cr is is .Everything

went wrong.We had few

of theconveniences

which most ofus had taken

for granted inthe past . Nomai lman, nomi lkman, no

laundryman, nopaper boy

knocked at ourdoors.” But in

spite of thehardships and

iso lat ionendured byLos A lamos

res idents , RuthMarshak noted,

“there wassome

compensat ionin the fact that

to manysc ient ists , LosAlamos stoodfor the samesort of th ing

that Hol lywoodrepresents to

an aspir ingstar let . Most of

the great menof phys ics and

chemistry werethere at one

t ime oranother.”

From the top andleft to right:shopping at thecommissary —groceries couldbe bought at costplus 10 per cent;a commissarycheckout line; thecommunitylaundry was abusy place —washers were 30cents an hour,mangles (irons)40 cents; theprecious waterpipeline, whichwas the cause ofmajor headaches;checking aresident’s pass;the mud was aproblem formilitary personnelas well ascivilians.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

new physics laboratory. The relative youth ofthe inhabitants also led to a baby boom. In thefirst year of the project, 80 babies were born;by 1945 Los Alamos had more than 330infants. The housing demand quickly exceed-ed the housing supply, and by mid-1944 theGoverning Board of the Laboratory gave seri-ous thought to limiting future hiring to singles.

Los Alamos also was atypical in that it was theonly army post in the United States thathoused civilians on a permanent basis. Andunlike any other Army base, this one was pre-dominantly civilian.

To partially overcome some of the tensionsbetween the Army and the civilians, residentscreated a Town Council. Early council memberAlice Kimball Smith recalled: “According to itsbylaws, the Town Council had magnificentpowers embodied in a kind of general welfareclause for the mesa, but its efforts were always

circumscribed by the hard fact that we lived on anArmy post.”

Smith remembers that the council handled anassortment of topics, including snapping dogs,inadequate restaurant facilities, requests for a shoe-repair service on the Hill, changes in movieschedules, and overcrowding in public laundries.

Los Alamos had two movie theaters. One showed movies every night; theother showed movies three nights a week. The latter doubled as a chapelon Sunday mornings and members of the congregation found themselvessweeping up popcorn and other litter before the services began.

Enrico Fermi’s wife, Laura, reminisced that “we had no telephones andwe ran arounda lot. We gavelarge parties,cooking onrudimentarya p p l i a n c e s .We rushed to

21

LIFE ON ANARMY POSTAccording toBernice Brode,the civi l ianpopulationfound l iv ing inan Army postunique and “I ’msure the Armyregarded us …as equal lystrange.” At LosAlamos thingsdid not work(the Army’s)way at al l , sheremembered.Gen. Lesl ieGroves, who didnot l ive at LosAlamos andrepresented asort ofabsenteelandlord to thecivi l ianresidents, gotblamed foreverything thatwent wrong.There were,however, manysmall benefits,courtesy of theArmy. Soldierscut and stackedwood, col lectedgarbage andtrash, and f ixedplumbing oranything else.At Christmasthey cut treesof every size forthe residents tochoose from.“We becameaccustomed toadministratorsand doctors inuniform; WACssel l ing sodasand checkinggroceries,sel l ing postagestamps andcashing checks;and mil itarypol ice withguns …”

From the top:military

inspection;choosing a

Christmas tree;the soda

fountain at thePX; mounted

guards patrolledthe perimeter ofLos Alamos until1957, when LosAlamos became

an open city;WACs on parade.

Santa Fe for anything that was not food or thelittle else that the Army could sell.” One tele-phone line installed by the Forest Serviceserved the community until 1943; only threelines existed until 1945.

“Whenever things went wrong, and that wasoften,” another resident said, “we always hadour mountains — the Jemez on one side, theSangre de Cristos on the other.” A lot of resi-dents kept horses and rode therugged countryside.

One resident recalled that “the Hilldwellers were amateur everything:hikers, riders, photographers, ethno-graphers, mineralogists, musicians,and artists-craftsmen in all assortedfields. Saturday nights they partied and square danced. Sundaysthey fished or exploited their hobbies.”

The parties were frequent and well attended. Resident Jean Bacherrecalled that “Saturday nights, the mesa rocked ... fenced in as wewere, our social life was a pipeline through which we let off steam.”

In the memories of many early residents, two parties stand outfrom all the rest. On a cold December night in 1945, the San IldefonsoPueblo, a tribe of Native Americans living next to Los Alamos, invited a

group of Los Alamos square dancers to their pueblofor an evening of fun and entertainment. The twocommunities had seen a lot of each other during thewar as men and women from the pueblo commuteddaily to work at Los Alamos. The association pro-duced a cross fertilization of cultures.

Bernice Brode wrote: “Some of us had more Indiancrafts in our Army apartments than the Indians had in

their homes, (and) modern American conveniencessuch as refrigerators and linoleum began cropping up inthe pueblo.” At the dance, the Indians performed for thesquare dancers and the square dancers performed for theIndians. After the demonstrations, members from thetwo groups began dancing with each other. CharlieMasters, a teacher at the Los Alamos school, wrote:

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

22

PUEBLO PARTYSan I ldefonso

Pueblo inv itedthe Los Alamossquare dancersfor an evening

of fun. Thesquare dancers

took cookies,soft dr inks, and

sandwicheswith them. San

I ldefonsianssuppl ied

coffee, tamales,and lusc ious

l i tt le dr ied fruitpies. E leanorJette wrote:“Dur ing the

f irst part of theprogram our

group didexhibit ion

square dances.Afterward,

people fromthe pueblo took

the f loor. Theydanced ‘fundances’ very

different fromthe r i tual ized

rel ig ious danceswe saw when

we v is i ted thepueblo on its

feast day.”Bernice Brode

wrote: “OurIndian fr iends

were a l i tt lehurt becauseour feet gave

out. Theyalways danced

unti l sunr ise.We went

home aboutthree o’c lock.”

This page: theSan I ldefonsoPueblo party ,December 1945.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

“This fiesta-hoedown I like to remember asthe climax of our relations with the natives.”

A lot of foreigners lived on the mesa, includ-ing Poles, Canadians, Germans, Swiss, andAustrians. The British Mission, a group oftop-flight British scientists sent by PrimeMinister Winston Churchill to aid American

scientists, arrived in the summer of 1944.Members of the British Mission hosted a hugebash to celebrate the success of the Trinity test.Jean Bacher recalled that the British governmenthad given them $500 with which to celebrate.

They did all of the work themselves in order to stretch the money over agiant guest list. The evening’s entertainment included a well-received pan-

tomime of living in Los Alamos as it had seemed to foreign eyes.

In spite of the military rule, the isolation, and the mud, mostearly residents have fond memories of Los Alamos. KathleenMark wrote: “When one considers that we lived ... closelypacked together — aware of every detail of our neighbors’ lives— even what they were having for dinner every night — onecan’t help but marvel that we enjoyed each other so much.”

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Laboratory’s first director, summed upwhat most residents felt when he reported, “Almost everyone knew that

this job, if it wereachieved, would be partof history. This sense ofexcitement, of devotion,and of patriotism in theend prevailed.”

Sources for this articleinclude "Standing by andMaking Do: Women of

Wartime Los Alamos," a book edited by Jane S. Wilson and CharlotteSerber; "Inside Box 1663," a book by Eleanor Jette; "Reminiscences ofLos Alamos, 1943-1945," a book edited by Lawrence Badash, Joseph O.Hirschfelder, and Herbert P. Broida; "Los Alamos 1943-1945: The Beginningof an Era," a brochure published by Los Alamos National Laboratory;and “The Atom” May/June 1980, a magazine published by Los AlamosNational Laboratory.

23

THEBRITISHMISSION“We frequent lys ipped mul ledwine whi le(phys ic ist ) OttoFr isch rec itedl imer ickslearned fromyears of r id ingthe LondonTubes orsketched ourpictures incar icature,”E leanor Jettewrote of theBr i t i sh Miss ionpart ies . “WhenFr isch f in ishedhis car icatureof you, youwanted to cutoff your head.”Fr isch was evenmore popularfor h is p ianoplay ing, Jettereca l led. Hecould coax“heavenlymelodies fromthe mosti l l - tunedinstrument.”Jean Bacherrememberedone of theEngl ishmenwho “arr ived inth is countrywith only onepair of shoesand somebedroomsl ippers (and)fe l t he couldnot r isk theshoes so hewould turn upin h is lusty redcarpet s l ippersand last theeveningcomfortably .”

This page:scenes from the

British Missionparty. “Our social

life reachedsome sort of

peak when it wasofficially

recognized bythe British

government,”rememberedJean Bacher.

“And there onthat singular

mesa inNew Mexico, we

raised ourglasses of

burgundy totoast the King.”

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

24

LOS ALAMOS TIMELINESIGNIFICANT EVENTS

AND 50 YEARS OF RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

L os Alamos National Laboratory is a scientific research institution. While its primary mission has been the

design and development of nuclear weapons, Los Alamosscientists and engineers also have conducted basic andapplied research in many fields. During the Laboratory’s firsthalf century, its researchers achieved numerous technicaland scientific breakthroughs. From the development of thefirst atomic weapons to the creation of space power sourcesto the testing of the first modern supercomputers to theestablishment of a national AIDS databank, the Laboratoryhas been at the forefront of scientific achievement. Thefollowing timeline highlights scientific accomplishmentsacross a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines as well assignificant events in the Laboratory’s history.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

1943 — Los Alamos laboratorywas created by the ManhattanEngineer District under thedirection of J. RobertOppenheimer and known by itswartime code name: Project Y.

1943 — The Bethe-Feynmanformula, a simple method forcalculating the yield of a fissionbomb, was derived.

1944 — The world’s first nucle-ar reactor using enricheduranium — known as the “waterboiler” to Lab employees —achieved criticality. A plu-tonium-fuel equivalent called“Clementine” achieved criticalityin 1946. Neither one of thesehistoric reactors areoperational today.

1945 — Final mea-surements obtainedof the critical mass ofuranium and plutoni-um. These measure-ments were vital to thedesign of the first fis-sion weapons.

1945 — Development of the high-explosive lens system.Los Alamos scientists developed the high-explosive lenssystem for producing a spherical symmetric means of deto-nating the main explosive charge. An explosive lens is not an opticallens, although it functions similarly: the explosive lens bends the explo-sion wave going through the explosive. This achievement was a keymilestone in the development sequence of the implosion concept toatomic weapons during the Manhattan Project. In addition, explodingbridge wire technology was concurrently developed to detonate the lenssystem. These pioneering works also were the basis for subsequentimprovements in implosion systems that were central to the perfor-mance, safety, and reliability of the early stockpile.

25

J. Robert Oppenheimer1943 to 1945Oppenheimer was a theoreticalphysicist at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, when hewas selected to head Project Y,part of the secret nationwide

research and development program known as theManhattan Engineer District of the WarDepartment. He was instrumental in selecting LosAlamos as the site for its mission to research,develop, and produce a nuclear weapon. Heearned a doctorate in physics from the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, Germany. Afterthe war, Oppenheimer became a key adviser tothe government on U.S. atomic policy. In 1954Oppenheimer was the subject of a security hear-ing and was stripped of his security clearance bythe Atomic Energy Commission. He was directorof the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton,N.J., a research facility for postdoctoral fellows,until his retirement in 1966. In 1963 PresidentLyndon Johnson presented Oppenheimer with theAtomic Energy Commission’s $50,000 EnricoFermi Award, the highest honor the AEC couldbestow. He died in 1967.

The p lutonium-fueled reactorClement ine gother namebecause, l ikethe song ofthe same name,she was in acanyon.

1945 — Successful test of the firstatomic weapons. On July 16, 1945, theTrinity test in southern New Mexicodemonstrated that the Laboratory hadsucceeded in its wartime mission toinvestigate the possibility of buildingand using nuclear weapons in WorldWar II. The type of bomb tested in theNew Mexico desert (“Fatman”) andanother type of nuclear weapon

(“Little Boy”) weredropped on Japanwithin a month ofthe Trinity test; Japan surrendered five days later.

1945 — First integrated hydrodynamics and neu-tronic calculation. This integration, known as theSerber-Wilson model, estimated the performance andyield of both the implosion and gun-assembled

“gadgets.” It provided the genesis for the subsequent application of inte-grated physics models and computational tools to the design anddevelopment process of complex engineering systems. Models for thetransport of neutral and charged particles were recognized as a keyingredient to be developed for future understanding and improvements.

1945 — ENIAC computer solves weaponsdesign problems. ENIAC (electronicnumerical integrator and calculator), theworld’s first large-scale electronic computer,was built at the University of Pennsylvaniato solve ballistics problems for the Army AirCorps. As its construction neared comple-tion, researchers proposed that it also beused in the “Los Alamos problem,” a calcu-lation needed for the design ofthermonuclear weapons. The resultsdemonstrated the ability of electronic computers to solve weapons designproblems, and high-speed computing and weapons design have beenlinked ever since.

1945 — Norris Bradbury became the second director ofthe Laboratory.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

26

ENIAC, the f i rstlarge-sca lee lectroniccomputer ,prov ided aca lcu lat ionneeded for the“Los A lamosproblem.”

“Fatman” in thePac if ic .

The Tr in i ty test ,Ju ly 16, 1945.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

1947 — Monte Carlo computa-tional techniques developed.Computational techniquesknown as Monte Carlo methods,which use random processes todiscover precise details, were ini-tially developed to simulate thepaths of neutral particles in aweapon or a reactor. Monte Carlotechniques, a name suggesting anassociation with games ofchance, have been widely usedfor studies in such areas as radia-tion safety, nuclear safeguardsprograms, reactor design, fusionengineering, medical radiationtherapy, and diagnostics. Theyare also used to study basic phys-ical processes, biological systems,and quantum mechanics.

1947 — First U.S. criticalassembly facility becomes oper-ational. Experiments with criticalassemblies, the minimum mass offissile material of a given shapeand isotopic composition that isneeded to sustain a chain reaction, are vital for nuclear weapons designand valuable in such areas as nuclear reactor safety. The nation’s firstcritical assembly facility went into operation at the Laboratory’s PajaritoSite (TA-18) in April 1947. Critical assemblies were placed in concreteand steel kivas and operated remotely from a control room. Thousands

of criticality experiments have beenconducted safely at the site since itbecame operational.

1948 — First liquefaction ofhelium-3. Helium-3 is a rare isotopewhose ability to be liquefied was partof a controversy among theoreticalphysicists about its properties. LosAlamos researchers first liquefied it,

27

Norris E. Bradbury1945 to 1970Bradbury came to Los Alamos in1944 as an officer in the U.S.Naval Reserve, where he was putin charge of the implosion field-test program and later headed the

assembly of all non-nuclear components of theimplosion device. After the war, he was asked byJ. Robert Oppenheimer to take on the directorshipof the Laboratory. Bradbury said he’d do it for “ashort period.” That short period lasted 25 years.He holds a doctorate in physics and math fromthe University of California at Berkeley. Bradburyis a recipient of the 1968 Atomic EnergyCommission Citation — the highest award givenby the AEC to individuals who have made espe-cially meritorious contributions to the nuclearenergy program. Other honors Bradbury hasreceived include the Navy’s Legion of Merit, theDepartment of Defense Distinguished PublicService Medal, and the New Mexico Academy ofScience Achievement Award. Bradbury is retiredand lives in Los Alamos.

The cr i t ica lassembly

F lattop wasnamed after

the Dick Tracycartoon

characterbecause i t sat

on a f lat-topped table.

then conducted measurements of its physical and thermal properties. Theeffort made the Laboratory prominent in the emerging field of low-tem-perature physics, an area of importance for the nuclear weapons program.

1951 — Lady Godiva nuclear reactor is put in operation. Areplica of the portable device that first brought the fast-neu-tron fission chain and all of its varied behavior into theLaboratory is now on display at the National Atomic Museumin Albuquerque. The Godiva is recognized as a nuclear his-toric landmark by the American Nuclear Society.

1951 — Successful demonstration of “boosting.” Boosting isthe enhancement of fission weapon performance by exploit-ing neutrons released in thermonuclear reactions producedwithin the core. The successful demonstration of boostingestablished the feasibility of the design path for the successivedevelopment of smaller nuclear designs and is the genesis of

all primary designs in the stockpile today. The design, development, andengineering of high-pressure storage and transfer systems marked keymilestones in the weaponization of boosted primary designs forthe stockpile.

1951 — First thermonuclear reactions produced: the George shot.The George nuclear test proved the feasibility of radiation implosionof a secondary stage and demonstrated the successful ignition ofthermonuclear fuel. This test provided the physicsbasis for the design principles of subsequentthermonuclear weapons.

1952 — First thermonuclear test: the Mike shot.The first thermonuclear explosion occurred in theMike shot of the Ivy test series in the Pacific; it pro-duced a yield of 10 megatons (equivalent to 20 billionpounds of TNT). The elements plutonium-244, plu-tonium-246, americium-246, einsteinium-253, andfermium-256 were discovered in the debris of theMike shot, and the extensive cryogenic equipmentneeded to liquefy the deuterium fuel gave rise to themodern cryogenics industry.

1952 — MANIAC became operational. The MANIAC (mathematicalanalyzer, numerical integrator, and computer) was built at Los Alamosto solve large-scale hydrodynamic problems. It has also been used forproblems related to nonlinear phenomena, particle physics, DNA

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

28

The Mike shotwas the wor ld’sf i rst thermo-nuclearexplos ion.

Lady Godiva —so named

because heruranium core

was unclad, aswas the woman

in the legend.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

sequencing, and chess. The name was coined by NickMetropolis, who said at the time he hoped to halt the rash ofsuch acronyms to name machines. It appears, instead, thathe may have only stimulated their continued use.

1953 — Los Alamos moved from its original site aroundAshley Pond to its present site on the other side of LosAlamos Canyon.

1954 — Successful demonstration of the feasibility of dry,solid thermonuclear fuel for thermonuclear weapons. Thisdevelopment greatly simplified the weaponization and engi-neering of all subsequent generations of thermonuclearweapons. The first thermonuclear bomb containing solidfusion fuel was demonstrated in the Castle-Bravo shot.

1955 — Rover rocket program launched. Project Rover, acollaboration between the Laboratory and NASA, was initiated to launchlarge payloads into deep space. The basic technology involved passinghydrogen through a very high temperature nuclear reactor, where itexpanded and blasted out of the reactor at high velocity. Project Roverwas active for 17 years and at its peak was the Laboratory’s secondlargest program. It was phased out in 1972after concerns were raised about the cost ofthe nation’s space program.

1956 — First definitive detection of theneutrino. Los Alamos researchers usingsuper-sensitive detectors discovered the existence of the free neutrino,

a subatomic particle that has nocharge and little or no mass. The existence of the elusive particle had been postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930. A year later Enrico Fermi provided the theoretical basis for the neutrino’s existence. The Los Alamos detectors were set up underground near a production reactor at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina. An earlier

detector located near the Hanford reactor in the state of Washington had given the scientists hints of successful detection. The neutrinodetectors later evolved into the whole-body radiation counters pioneered at Los Alamos. Whole-body counters provided much of the

29

Top: She’s aMANIAC — the

computerthat i s .

MANIAC wasbui l t to so lve

large-sca lehydrodynamic

problems.Above: The name

MANIAC wascoined by Nick

Metropol is( r ight ) who

played chesswith Paul Ste in

and thecomputer .

Freder ickReines ( left )and C lydeCowandiscovered theexistence ofthe freeneutr ino. Theyare p icturedheremonitor ingrecordingequipment atHanford in an ear lyexper imentthat gave h intsof successfu ldetect ion.Photo courtesy of

Hanford Works

Above: ThePhoebus IA

reactor at theNevada Test

S i te was used inProject Rover .

fundamental data for diagnosis with radioactive tracers and for thedevelopment of radiation protection standards.

1956 — Improvements to the primary stage of a nuclear weaponbegan. A remarkable set of improvements occurred from 1952 to 1956in the physics, design, and engineering of the primary stage of a nuclearweapon. The diameter of the primary stage decreased by more than afactor of three and weight decreased by more than a factor of 30.Collectively, these improvements allowed the nation to rapidly expandthe flexibility and utility of its nuclear stockpile. The improved stock-pile made possible multiple delivery platforms, including ballisticmissiles and tactical applications, and facilitated the shift of nationalpolicy from massive retaliation and targeting of cities and populousareas to a flexible response strategy designed to deter and counter Sovietwar-fighting capabilities.

1956 — The first use of plastic-bonded explosives in a nuclear explo-sion. This development allowed the shift from precision machined castexplosives to formulations containing high concentrations of high-energy density compounds with reduced sensitivity, more uniformity,and better mechanical characteristics. Pressed, plastic-bonded explosivesare the key energetic materials in today’s enduring stockpile.

1957 — The security gates come down, opening Los Alamos tothe world.

1957 — Los Alamos achieves first controlledthermonuclear plasma. The Scylla theta pinchdevice used a rapidly rising axial magnetic fieldto heat plasma through a combination of shockand compression heating. Los Alamos contrib-uted to the development of controlledthermonuclear research by taking part in ProjectSherwood, a national program to achieve mag-netic fusion energy involving several laboratories.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

30

The secur i tygates came

down inFebruary 1957,

opening LosAlamos to the

wor ld.

Loca l legendsays thePerhapsatrongot i ts namebecause“perhaps i twould work andperhaps i twouldn’t . ”

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

Work at Los Alamos began in 1952 involving a toroidal Z-pinch called thePerhapsatron in which an induced toroidal current in the plasma pro-duced a self-magnetic field that pinched the plasma column.

1959 — Nonproliferation technology started at Los Alamos.Technology to halt the spread of nuclear weapons began this year fol-lowing recommendations to use satellites to monitor compliance withthe nonproliferation treaty.

1961 — The Stretch computer is developed in collaboration with IBM.The ideas incorporated in this early supercomputer heavily influenced

IBM operating systems for the next 20 years.

1962 — PHERMEX facility completed. The world’shighest intensity X-ray facility, known as PHERMEX(pulsed high-energy radiographic machine emittingX-rays), was built as a diagnostic tool to study theprocess of implosion. PHERMEX sends X-raysthrough an imploding mockup of a weapons assem-bly and provides researchers with detailed snapshotsof the locations and configurations of implosion sys-

tems. This technology resulted in more efficient use of subsequentnuclear tests. The PHERMEX facility has also been used to study fluiddynamics and the behavior of matter under extreme conditions. The pro-posed DARHT (dual-axis radiographic hydrodynamic test) facility isintended to replace PHERMEX when it is completed.

1963 — Invention of the heat pipe. A heat pipe is a pas-sive heat transfer device that rechannels waste heat backinto the production cycle of a system. It consists of a tubecontaining a fluid that circulates between heated andcooled areas. The fluid is vaporized as it absorbs heat andflows to the cooler area, where it condenses back intoliquid. Heat pipes were invented at Los Alamos for use inspace power systems, but they have found applications in other areas rang-

ing from permafrost control on the Alaska pipeline toheat-transfer devices in solar collection systems.

1963 — Vela satellite sensors developed to detectnuclear explosions. The Limited Test Ban Treaty wassigned by the nuclear powers in 1963, and twomonths later a pair of satellites with sensors designedin part at Los Alamos were fired into orbit to monitorcompliance with the treaty. The satellites, named Vela,

31

A dynamic testat the PHERMEX

fac i l i ty of aweapon des ign

us ingconvent ional

explos ives butmockup f iss i le

mater ia l .Another

PHERMEX test i sp ictured on

Page 24.

A researcherdemonstratesthe f lex ib i l i tyof a bendableheat p ipe.

Vela sate l l i tesensors weredeveloped to

monitorcompl iance

with thenonprol iferation

treaty.

and four additional pairs of similar satellites acted as international “eyesin the sky” to detect nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and in space.

1964 — The world’s highest-voltage Van de Graaff accel-erator is completed. This was a key experimental facilityin the measurement of neutron and charged particle crosssections for the weapons and nuclear energy program atLos Alamos.

1966 — Nuclear safeguards program begins. The nation’sfirst research and development program in nuclear safe-guards began at Los Alamos. Its purpose was to developnondestructive techniques and instruments to investigateand evaluate nuclear facilities to ensure their compliancewith increasingly stringent international requirements. Bythe end of the 1970s, instruments and techniques devel-oped at the Laboratory were being used around the world.In addition, hundreds of people, including allInternational Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, have received their ini-tial training at Los Alamos.

1966 — Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory is designated a RegisteredNational Historic Landmark.

1967 — The side-coupled cavity is developed for the future Los AlamosMeson Physics Facility (LAMPF) linear accelerator. Every radiologymachine in the United States today uses this design for the production ofX-rays, benefitting thousands of patients each year.

1969 — RTG research and development began. RTGs, or radioisotopethermoelectric generators, are plutonium-powered devices that provideelectrical energy to NASA spacecraft. The Laboratory-developed unitscontain plutonium to provide a continuous supply of thermal energy anda thermoelectric converter to convert the thermal energy into electrical

power. The plutoniumcores also supply heat tokeep a satellite’s instru-ments functioning indeep space. They havebeen used successfullyfor numerous space mis-sions, including theVoyager, Galileo, andUlysses spacecraft.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

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A vert ica lVan de Graaffaccelerator .

Dwarfed by apenny, th isp lutonium-

oxide pel let wasdeveloped as aheat source to

provide acontrol led

temperaturefor del icateinstruments

aboard theGal i leo space

probe.

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

1970 — Harold M. Agnewbecame third director ofthe Laboratory.

1971 — Underground test con-tainment program began. TheContainment Program at LosAlamos was founded in 1971.During the next 20 years, morethan 150 underground nucleartests were conducted by LosAlamos without a single instanceof an unplanned radioactiverelease. These tests, conducted atthe Nevada Test Site, spanned a wide range ofexplosive yields, from near zero to near thethreshold value of 150 kilotons of TNT. The

tests were conducted in avariety of geologic settingsthat ranged from porous,dry alluvium to highly frac-tured, welded rocks. In the1980s, Los Alamos also tested concepts relevant tonuclear driven X-ray lasers at the Nevada Test Site.The results obtained made significant contributions tothe understanding of the physics and performance ofsuch laser schemes.

33

Harold M. Agnew1970 to 1979Agnew was a member of the smallworking group headed byEnrico Fermi that achieved thefirst fission chain reaction atthe University of Chicago in

December 1942. He came to the Laboratory as astaff member in 1943. Agnew flew with the509th bombardment group as a scientificmember in its nuclear weapon strike againstHiroshima in August 1945. Before becomingLaboratory director, he served as a scientificadviser to NATO in the 1960s, headed LosAlamos’ Weapons Division, and was a member ofthe General Advisory Committee to the ArmsControl and Disarmament Agency. He holds adoctorate in physics from the University ofChicago and is a recipient of the Enrico FermiAward, the highest scientific award of theDepartment of Energy. He was also the first statesenator for Los Alamos County and served twoterms. Agnew left Los Alamos to become presi-dent of GA Technologies Inc. in San Diego. He hassince retired.

At r ight above:The surface of

the Nevada TestS i te resemblesa moonscape.

At r ight : anundergroundtunnel at the

NTS that leadsto a test

area atthe tunnel ’s

terminus. The tube serves

as a conduit for h igh-energy

photons andpart ic les sent

to data-col lect ion

areas. Be low:The b irth of

a crater .

1972 — Clinton P. Anderson Meson Physics Facility completed.Four years after its groundbreaking, construction of the world’s mostpowerful medium-energy research accelerator was completed. Knowncolloquially as LAMPF (Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility), thehalf-mile-long linear accelerator achieved its design goal of 800 million

electron-volts the same year. The accelerator fires protonsat nearly the speed of light into targets to produce sub-atomic particles called pi mesons that are used to studythe structure of atomic nuclei and nuclear interactions.LAMPF has been used by researchers from around theworld. The facility was renamed for U.S. Sen. Clinton P.Anderson because of the late New Mexico senator’slong-time support of the Laboratory.

1973 — Discovery of cosmic gamma-ray bursts.Laboratory-designed sensors carried aboard Vela satellitesto monitor international compliance with provisions of

the Limited Test Ban Treaty first detected the mysterious naturalphenomena called cosmic gamma-ray bursts. These blasts ofextremely high energy, which seem to originate from all parts ofthe universe, are still poorly understood, but their discoveryshowed astrophysicists that the cosmos is more chaotic andtransient than they had previously believed.

1974 — First radioisotope produced at LAMPF for medicalresearch shipped. A small bottle of strontium-82 for medicalresearch was shipped from Los Alamos to the VeteransAdministration Hospital in Denver. It was the first shipment as

part of a program to produce radioactive isotopesfor medical facilities throughout the world to usefor diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. It was pro-duced by irradiating a molybdenum target at theLos Alamos Meson Physics Facility.

1974 — National Stable Isotope Resource estab-lished. This national resource advanced biomedicalapplications of the stable isotopes carbon-13, nitro-

gen-15, oxygen-18, and selenium-77 by developing new efficient routesfor synthesizing isotopically labeled compounds and distributing toaccredited researchers labeled compounds that are not readily availablefrom commercial sources. The ready availability of stable isotopes andstable isotopically labeled compounds has led to significant advances in

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

34

At left andfrom the top:An aer ia l v iewof LAMPF, thehalf-mi le- longl inearaccelerator ; aCockcroft-Waltongenerator ,where protonsin the pr imarybeam starttheir f l ight ; thedr i ft-tubesect ion ofLAMPF, wherepart ic les areaccelerated tomi l l ions ofe lectron volts .

structural molecular biology, particularly using nuclear magnetic reso-nance and vibrational spectroscopies, as well as neutron scattering.

1974 — Insensitive high explosives for use in nuclear weapons aredeveloped. The first nuclear test using an insensitive high explosive asthe main explosive charge was successful. This test demonstrated thefeasibility of using shock-resistant explosive com-pounds in nuclear weapons. Insensitive highexplosives were subsequently incorporated into newand existing weapons systems.

1974 — Weapon performance milestone achieved. Ina nuclear test, a yield-per-weapon-weight milestone thatphysicists had long aspired to was achieved. Thisachievement provided options for reducing the size andweight of the warhead for strategic delivery systemswhile maintaining militarily significant yields.

1974 — Los Alamos acquired the first vector supercomputerfrom Cray Research Corp. Los Alamos worked with Cray Researchin developing operating systems and compilers for this earlyinnovative supercomputer.

1975 — First separation of isotopes by a laser. Specific forms, or iso-topes, of an element are valuable in many areas — tracers, medicalresearch, nuclear reactor fuel, and so on — but isolating them from

other isotopes is difficult. The first laser separa-tion by Los Alamos researchers was of sulfurisotopes. A similar demonstration by Russianresearchers was also published in 1975. Withinthe year, Los Alamos scientists reported separa-tion of isotopes of boron, carbon, silicon, andmolybdenum. The technique relied on the vari-ation of molecular vibrational frequenciesaccording to isotopic mass. Researchers irradi-

ated a molecular sample with a laser tuned to a specific vibrationalfrequency. This induced the molecules containing the selected isotopeto absorb many infrared photons and to dissociate. This phenomenon ofinfrared multiple-photon absorption was a revolutionary discovery inmolecular physics.

1975 — Technology transfer office established at Los Alamos. LosAlamos has aggressively sought out industrial partnerships that improvethe scientific and technical capabilities required to fulfill its mission of

35

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

35

In 1974, Labresearchersreported abreakthroughin ident i fy ingexplos ivemater ia ls thatare effect ive,but safe tohandle andtransport . Th isp icture wastaken through amicroscope andshows a t inys l ice from aninsens it ivehigh-explos ivecrysta l . Thecrysta l i tse l f i ssmal ler than agra in of sugar .

With th is s impleoff-the-shelf

carbon diox idelaser , sc ient ists

were able toseparate, for

the f i rst t ime,va luable

isotopes ofthree e lementsin exper imentsthat were part

of a laserisotope

separat ionprogram ca l led

JUMPer.

supporting national security. The Industrial Partnership Office at LosAlamos currently oversees partnerships with more than 200 companies.The partnerships have a total value of approximately $400 million.Although not an official Laboratory program until 1975, informal inter-actions with industry had gone on long beforethe technology transfer office was formed.

1976 — Los Alamos is designated as a NationalEnvironmental Research Park by theU.S. government.

1977 — Weapons Neutron Research Facilityproduced first neutrons. The Weapons NeutronResearch Facility uses neutrons produced at theLos Alamos Meson Physics Facility for researchin high-energy density physics, the study of the behavior of matterunder extreme temperatures and densities. Researchers use the facilityfor experiments in radiation effects, obtaining nuclear data for weaponsdesign, improved radiochemical diagnostics, and basic nuclear physics.

1977 — Fusion neutrons aredetected in a plasma confinedby radiation from a carbon-dioxide laser.

1978 — Plutonium processingfacility became operational. Thefacility was built to conduct chem-ical and metallurgical research onplutonium and other specialnuclear materials. It remains themost capable of the nation’s pluto-nium-handling facilities.

1978 — First class ofInternational Atomic EnergyAgency Inspectors trained atLos Alamos.

1979 — Donald M. Kerr becamethe fourth director of theLaboratory.

1980 — IGPP branch estab-lished at LANL. The University

36

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

A workerhandles spec ia lnuc learmater ia ls in a g love box at theLaboratory’sp lutoniumprocess ingfac i l i ty .

Donald M. Kerr1979 to 1985Kerr joined the Laboratory in1966 as a staff member in theHigh-Altitude PhenomenologyGroup. He conducted and ledresearch in high-altitude weapons

effects, nuclear test detection, weapons diagnos-tics, ionospheric physics, and alternative energyprograms. Before becoming director, he was actingassistant secretary for energy technology at theDepartment of Energy in Washington, D.C. Heholds a doctorate in plasma physics andmicrowave electronics from Cornell University.He has earned several awards including theNational Merit Scholarship, the Ford FoundationFellowship, and the Department of Energy’sOutstanding Service Award. Kerr is now corporateexecutive vice president and a director of ScienceApplications International Corp. in San Diego.

of California established a branch of its Institute of Geophysics andPlanetary Physics (IGPP) at Los Alamos. The IGPP was created by UC in1946 to be a center for research into various Earth and space sciences.The Los Alamos branch is aimed at developing closer research tiesbetween the Laboratory and the UC campuses. It supports broadly basedresearch in geology, geochemistry, geophysics, space science,atmospheric sciences, and astrophysics.

1980 — Radio Frequency Quadrupole firstsuccessfully tested. The RFQ is a smalllinear accelerator that uses electric fields tofocus as well as accelerate a beam ofatomic ions. It is a compact and efficientmeans of starting the beam on its way and isnow used in the front end of most ion beamparticle accelerators.

1980 — CNLS established. The Center forNonlinear Studies conducts research into the growing field of nonlinearproblems, including chaos theory. Many of the Laboratory’s energy anddefense programs have involved complex nonlinear phenomena,making the development of analytical methods in this area important inseveral lines of research. The center also promotes interdisciplinaryresearch and collaborations with researchers at other institutions.

1980 — Hot Dry Rock Project produces electricity. The Hot Dry Rockprogram started in the early 1970s when Laboratory researchersdecided to investigate the applicability oftechniques developed during a rock-melting earthpenetrator program (Subterrene) to drilling ingeothermal fields. A patent was granted and drillingbegan at the Fenton Hill site (located in theJemez Mountains a few miles west of Los Alamos)in 1974, and electricity was generated during exper-iments in 1980. The project, conducted inconjunction with agencies of the governments ofWest Germany and Japan, has demonstrated the fea-sibility of producing electricity by fracturing andflooding naturally heated rock. Commercial viabilityis evidenced by the growing number of companiesproposing to invest in a cost-shared prototypegenerating plant.

37

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

Sc ient istEd Knapp with

a cutawaymodel of

the RadioFrequency

Quadrupole.

A researcherfr ies a T-bonesteak with theheat producedat the FentonHi l l s i te of theHot Dry RockProject .

3838

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

1981 — CMS established. The Center for Materials Science was estab-lished to focus materials research activities and foster interactions withthe national materials science community. The center supports work-shops and collaborations to promote a better understanding of thebehavior and suitability of various materials.

1981 — Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory gets a name change; it’s nowLos Alamos National Laboratory.

1982 — GenBank established. GenBank, an electronic database thatserves as a national repository for genetic sequence information, was estab-lished at Los Alamos because of the Laboratory’s expertise in genetics andcomputer science. It houses data about the sequence of the four organicmolecules that combine to form human DNA, and it is used routinely by

50,000 researchers around the world. In1993, the name was changed to theGenome Sequence Data Base, while thename “GenBank” reverted to an agency ofthe National Institutes of Health.

1982 — National Flow CytometryResource established at LANL. The firstflow cytometers, which can analyze andsort individual cells and chromosomes ata rate of thousands per second, werebuilt at Los Alamos in the 1960s. Theywere developed because biologists

needed to analyze and sort cells and chromosomes rapidly and accurate-ly according to specific characteristics. Cells are stained to identify aspecific property, such as the amount of DNA, put into suspension in aconducting medium that is forced through a chamber, and illuminatedby laser light of a particular frequency. Flow cytometry is valuable forbasic research, as well as tumor cell identification, disease diagnosis, andstudies of the effects of drugs and radiation therapy on cells.

1982 — Yucca Mountain selected. The NuclearWaste Policy Act was passed and studies of YuccaMountain, a candidate site for a geologic reposi-tory for high-level nuclear waste, gainedmomentum. Los Alamos was assigned responsi-bility for assessing subsurface processes expectedto affect radionuclide transport. Los Alamos alsowas responsible for on-site coordination and

The proposedYucca Mounta inundergroundstorage s i te forhigh- leve lnuclear waste islocated InsouthwestNevada, about100 mi les fromLas Vegas.

Developed atLos A lamosmore than

two decadesago, f low

cytometerspermit

h igh-speedanalys is ,sort ing,

count ing, andmeasur ing of

s ingle ce l l s ,chromosomes,and molecules .

39

volcanology studies on the efficacy of the Yucca Mountain subsurface asa natural barrier to the migration of radioactive waste over the next10,000 years.

1983 — Antares laser fusion facility achieved goal. The Antares laserfusion facility was designed and built between 1975 and 1983. The pur-pose was to investigate whether a carbon dioxide laser with awavelength of 10.6 micrometers could be used to initiate inertially con-fined fusion. Antares, the most powerful carbon dioxide fusion laser inthe world, succeeded in delivering an energy of 37 kiloJoules in onenanosecond on a fusiontarget. This was a majorachievement in laseroptics technology. Neverbefore had so much laserenergy been focused onsuch a tiny spot at a dis-tance of 200 feet. Theexperimental work wasterminated in 1984 whenit became clear thatfusion “breakeven” — aterm used when thepower produced is equalto the power consumed — could not be easily achieved with a carbon-dioxide laser. Even though the experiment was terminated, thetechnology developed was spun off into several industrial and institu-tional uses, such as the high-precision diamond turning technology usedin the machining of high-precision parts.

1984 — National Laboratory Gene Library Project initiated. TheNational Laboratory Gene Library Project produces and distributesselections of DNA fragments to geneticists and other scientists aroundthe world. The fragments come from of one of 24 “libraries” that eachcontain DNA specific to one of the 24 types of human chromosomes.The project was established at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermorenational laboratories and is funded by the Department of Energy as acontribution to biomedical research.

1984 — Solid storage system of boost gas successfully demonstrated.Solid storage systems allow more predictable weapon performance over along lifetime. Longer periods between the exchange of limited-life com-ponents enhance a weapon’s military robustness and readiness.

39

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

This 10-foot-diameteropt ica l spoolexpanded andre layed beamsfrom Antares, a carbon-diox ide lasersystem bui l t to invest igatewhether sucha systemcould in i t iateinert ia l lyconf inedfus ion.

1986 — Siegfried S. Hecker became the fifth director ofthe Laboratory.

1986 — AIDS database estab-lished. The AIDS database wascreated at the Laboratory andfunded by the National Instituteof Allergy and Infectious Diseasesto compile nucleotide sequencedata from researchers aroundthe world and help them keepup with developments. A quar-terly publication containinginformation about the database,known formally as the HIV(human immunodeficiency virus)Sequence Database and AnalysisProject, is distributed to investi-gators free of charge. The staffnot only compiles and publishessequence data, it analyzessequences and includes its resultsin the database.

1987 — HIPPI developed. HIPPI(high-performance parallel inter-face) is a high-speed channel that

allows supercomputers to talk to each other at a rate as fast as800 million bits of data per second. It was developed by a team ofresearchers to handle the vast amount of data needed for full-motionimaging, or “movies,” of complex problems, such as the flow of a fluidinto another medium. Its other applications became apparent in a shorttime, and it was adopted by the American National Standards Institutein 1991.

1988 — Center for Human Genome Studies established. The presenceat Los Alamos of GenBank, the National Laboratory Gene LibraryProject, and related individual research projects all contributed to itsselection as a center for human genome research when the first suchcenters were designated by the DOE in 1988. The goal of the CHGS is tohelp locate and understand the chemical structure of parts of the humangenetic sequence, or genome, and develop ways to apply such knowl-edge in the study of medicine and treatment of disease.

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S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

40

Siegfried S. Hecker1986 to PresentHecker joined the Laboratory as astaff member in the PhysicalMetallurgy Group in 1973 andserved as chairman of the Centerfor Materials Science and leader of

the Materials Science and Technology Division.Before becoming a staff member, Hecker servedtwo years as a postdoctoral appointee at LosAlamos and then began his career as a seniorresearch metallurgist with the General MotorsResearch Laboratories. He holds a doctorate inmetallurgy from Case Western Reserve University.Hecker is a recipient of several distinguishedawards including the Department of Energy’s E.O.Lawrence Award for Materials Science, the 1990AIME James O. Douglas Gold Medal Award, andthe Wesley P. Sykes Outstanding MetallurgistAward from the Case Institute of Technology.

1988 — Advanced Computing Laboratory established. The AdvancedComputing Laboratory was established to promote research into newcomputer techniques, technologies, and applications, and to serve as agateway for interactions with industry, academia, and government. It isdesigned to team computer scientists and mathematicians with physi-cists, chemists, biologists, and other researchers. The facility is theinterface for the Laboratory’s designation as a National ScienceFoundation Center for Research into Parallel Computation.

1988 — U.S. and Soviet joint verification experiment. CORRTEX, atechnology developed at Los Alamos for measuring the yields of under-ground nuclear explosions, was adopted as the system the United Statesproposed to use for verification of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. Toaddress concerns raised during the negotiations of the TTBT, a U.S.-Soviet Joint Verification Experiment was agreed to and planned by thenegotiators in Geneva. These plans called for a team, led by Los Alamosscientists, to use CORRTEX to measure the yield of the SHAGAN explo-sion at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in the U.S.S.R. A team of Sovietscientists came to the Nevada Test Site and used a similar tech-nology to measure the yield of the KEARSARGE explosion.Following the successful conclusion of the JVE, the TTBT negoti-ations were completed and the treaty was ratified.

1988 — Discovery of the human telomere. The human telomereis the DNA sequence that defines the end of each chromosome.This sequence of DNA base pairs is one of the most fundamentallandmarks in our genetic material since it tells the molecularreplication machinery of the cells where to stop and start.

1989 — BEAR Project successful. On July 13, 1989, an Ariesrocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range in southcentral New Mexico carried the first, and so far only, particlebeam accelerator into space. During the “Beam ExperimentAboard Rocket,” the accelerator system delivered a neutral particle beamfor nearly 5 minutes in a successful demonstration of the feasibility ofthe technology. Neutral particle beam technology, which had been stud-ied at the Laboratory since the 1970s, envisioned the use of the beam asa counter-measure against nuclear weapons deployed in space.

1989 — LANSCE dedicated. The Los Alamos Neutron Scattering Center(LANSCE) was dedicated as the Manuel Lujan Jr. Neutron ScatteringCenter after the completion of a new experiment hall and support build-ing. LANSCE is an international user facility that provides state-of-the-artresources for research into the basic structure of materials. Short bursts of

41

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

A researcherchecks theradio-frequencypowerampl i f iers ofthe BeamExper imentAboard aRocket , orBEAR, whichwas the f i rstU.S . test of aneutra l part ic lebeam in space.

neutrons are fired into samples being studied, and the neutronsare deflected in well-defined patterns that provide informationabout the structure of the material down to the atomic level.LANSCE uses the beam from the Los Alamos Meson PhysicsFacility’s linear accelerator to produce the neutrons.

1989 — Los Alamos acquired the CM-2, a Thinking MachinesCorp. massively parallel computer.

1990 — Los Alamos became a charter member of the newNational High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

1990 — Concept of ATW developed. The AcceleratorTransmutation of Waste concept takes advantage of Laboratory exper-tise in accelerator technology to deal with a persistent, difficult nationalproblem — the disposal of radioactive waste. Laboratory researchershave proposed bombarding waste materials with neutrons from a parti-cle accelerator and thereby transmuting the waste into different formsthat are stable or more easily disposed of. In the process, the excessenergy produced during the transmutation would be converted intousable electricity.

1990 — A diagnostic test for the early detection of lung cancer wasdeveloped. A quick, accurate method of detecting early lung cancer in asample of sputum proves effective in diagnosing individuals in the earli-est stages of lung cancer.

1991 — Los Alamos and Oak Ridge national laboratories were chosenas sites for the DOE’s high-performance computing research centers.

1991 — LIDAR environmental monitoring tech-nology used in Mexico City. A portablelaser-driven detection system developed at LosAlamos makes it possible to determine the sourcesof air pollution in major metropolitan areas such asMexico City. Data gathered with LIDAR helpsresearchers develop computer models that definethe factors contributing to an air pollution prob-lem. Ultimately, the data can result in cost-effective strategies forreducing air pollution. LIDAR was developed for Operation DesertStorm to detect biological warfare agents at great distances.

1992 — U.S. nuclear testing moratorium announced by President BillClinton. Maintaining a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear weapons stock-pile without the benefit of underground testing is one of the biggest

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

42

Nondestruct ivetest ing on a

wide var iety ofproducts i sposs ib le atLANSCE. A

researcherprepares asample for

test ing.

L IDAR — l ightdetect ion andranging — wasdeveloped forthe Gulf War. I ti s now used ina i r pol lut ionstudies .

S P E C I A L I S S U E 1 9 9 5

challenges facing Los Alamos today. Meeting this challenge requires thatscientists use data from past nuclear tests in combination with non-nuclear testing and the aggressive application of computer andexperimental models.

1993 — Launch of ALEXIS satellite. ALEXIS (array of low-energyX-ray imaging sensors) is a mini-satellite built at and operated from theLaboratory to track a broad range of radio frequencies and image cosmicX-rays. It was launched from an Air Force B-52 on April 25, 1993, butone of its solar panels apparently came loose during the launch, pre-venting contact with the satellite for several weeks. In late June contactwas finally achieved, and the Laboratory team nursed it back to lifewhile compensating for the damage. ALEXIS has been providingresearchers with valuable data since that time.

1993 — A team of Los Alamos scientists visits the closed Russian cityof Arzamas-16. The visit marked the beginning of a new era in Russian-U.S. relations and opened the door for scientific collaborations betweenthe two nations.

1994 — Chromosome 16 mapped. The Center for Human GenomeStudies announced the completion of an integrated, high-resolutionphysical map of human chromosome 16. DNA, or deoxyribonucleicacid, makes up the chromosomes that carry the genetic informationfound in all living organisms. A gene is a section of DNA that triggerscells to perform a variety of functions, or in some cases malfunctions.Chromosome 16 is the largest human chromosome to be mapped com-pletely at a high level of detail and is an important milestone in theproject to sequence the entire human genome.

1994 — Historic U.S.-Russian fusion experiment at Los Alamos. Acollaborative experiment between scientists from Los Alamos and theAll Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics atArzamas-16 provided American scientists with a good look at a relative-ly untried approach to controlled fusion energy, now known in theUnited States as Magnetized Target Fusion.

1994 — Isotopic signatures assist in environmental monitoring andhelp counter the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The isotopic signa-tures technique makes it possible for scientists to identify the source aswell as the amount of radioactive contamination found in an environ-mental or biological sample. The technique, which combines the powerof state-of-the-art mass spectrometry equipment with advanced chemi-cal separation procedures, was adopted by the International Atomic

43

These photosof the U.S .-Russ ianfus ionexper imentshow theexper imenta lp latformbefore, dur ing,and after thedetonat ion ofhigh explos ives.

Energy Agency to help inspectors verify that a country’s nuclear activityis consistent with its declared activity. At home, the technique is used inenvironmental monitoring and was once used by litigators to establishthe source of a worker’s radiation exposure.

1995 — Evidence found for neutrino mass. A team of researchers fromseveral divisions found indirect evidence that neutrinos, elusive sub-atomic particles that were first detected at the Laboratory (see 1956),have mass. The evidence involved the detection of a particular type ofneutrino in a tank holding 180 tons of baby oil that was bombarded byprotons from the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility accelerator. If con-firmed in subsequent experiments, the finding could mean that neutrinoscomprise a large part of the so-called “missing mass” of the universe.

1995 — Numerical simulation of Earth’s magnetic field. Los Alamosproduced the first three-dimensional, time-dependent, self-consistentnumerical solution of the magnetohydrodynamic equations thatdescribe thermal convection and magnetic field generation in a rapidlyrotating spherical fluid shell with a solid conducting inner core — ananalogue for Earth’s geodynamo. This simulation, representing roughly40,000 years, creates a self-sustaining supercritical dynamo that has

maintained a magnetic field for three magnetic diffusiontimes. The most exciting feature, which has never been simu-lated before, is a reversal of the dipolar part of the magneticfield that occurs near the end of the simulation.

1995 — Superconductivity breakthrough achieved. LosAlamos researchers developed a thick-film superconductorthat delivers world-record levels of electric current at relativelyhigh temperatures. The achievement could potentially benefiteverything from medical diagnosis to mass transportation. The

flexible superconducting tape has a current density of more than1 million amperes per square centimeter at liquid nitrogen temperatures— a current density nearly 100 times greater than other tapes in its class.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Laboratory began its second half-century facing many uncertainties.International geopolitics, budgetary constraints, and the changingnature of scientific research in the United States combined to make thefuture hard to predict. One thing remains certain: Los Alamos will con-tinue to be a world-class laboratory solving complex problems ofnational importance where science makes a difference.

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A shortsegment of a th ick-f i lm

super-conduct ingtape f lexed

around a spool .The tape

del iveredrecord current

leve ls atre lat ive ly h ightemperatures.

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REDUCING THE GLOBALNUCLEAR DANGER

LOS ALAMOS ACCEPTS

COMPELLING NEW MISSION

BY DIRECTOR SIG HECKER

F or 52 years, nuclear weapons research and development provided a compelling mission for

Los Alamos. Fulfilling that mission required theLaboratory to be good in virtually all areas of scienceand engineering — and to be the best in some.Today, with the Cold War cycle of nuclear weaponsdevelopment and deployment over, Los Alamos’ newcentral mission reflects the global events of the pastsix years. Los Alamos, together with the U.S.Department of Energy, defines its new mission ashelping to reduce the global nuclear danger.

Stockpile Stewardship

Reducing the nuclear danger still calls for stewardship of theexisting nuclear weapons stockpile: keeping those weaponsthat the nation needs safe, secure, and reliable. Stewardship ismore challenging in a world with no nuclear testing and onein which nuclear weapons will remain in the stockpile longbeyond their originally designed lifetimes. Los Alamos isdeveloping a science-based stockpile stewardship program,which provides the science and technology for evaluation andjudgments on the efficacy of the enduring stockpile. Stockpilestewardship also requires that the nation retains the capabilityto respond to a variety of uncertain futures.

Stockpile Support

Reducing the nuclear danger requires stockpile support.Los Alamos must have the capability to dismantle nuclearweapons and reconstitute manufacturing in case weaponsneed to be replaced in the future. Stockpile supportrequires much more attention from the defense laboratoriesbecause the production complex is currently only partially

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operational and scheduled to be downsized dramatically dueto budget reductions.

Nuclear Materials Management

Reducing the nuclear danger means managing the availabilityand disposition of plutonium, highly enriched uranium, and tri-tium. Scientists predict a new supply of tritium will be neededafter the turn of the century. No need for new plutonium or ura-nium is anticipated in the near future. The nation’s principalconcern is one of safe disposition. Currently, many hundreds oftons of these materials exist not only in returned warheads, butalso as production scrap, residues, or nuclear waste. The dispo-sition of these weapons-grade materials in the former SovietUnion represents a significant proliferation danger.

Threat of Proliferation

Reducing the nuclear danger requires that Los Alamos helpkeep nuclear weapons, nuclear materials, and nuclearweapons knowledge out of the wrong hands. The proliferationthreat poses the most significant risk to our national securitytoday. Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia nationallaboratories have the technical competencies to develop tech-nologies for nonproliferation.

Environmental Cleanup

Reducing the nuclear danger requires Los Alamos to helpclean up the legacy of 50 years of weapons production. As theglobal military threat recedes, it is critical to Los Alamos andother defense laboratories to turn their attention and technicaltalents to remediating environmental problems in the defensecomplexes of the United States and the former Soviet Union.

Civilian Missions

Over the past 50 years, the Laboratory has taken on a varietyof national challenges outside its nuclear weapons mission. Ithas been able to do so because of the technical competenciesand capabilities required for the nuclear programs. The end ofthe Cold War makes these other national challenges moreimportant to the Laboratory. These challenges will help pre-serve some of the technical competencies required for thenuclear weapons program and help maintain an environment

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of intellectual excitement that attracts and retains the nation’sbest scientists and engineers.

In turn, as the nation can afford to devote its attention increas-ingly toward civilian and commercial problems, Los Alamoscan offer its special talents to provide new solutions to vexingnational or international problems.

There is no shortage of such challenging societal problems.Sustainable growth without adverse environmental impact isa significant global issue as the developing countries requirevastly greater energy supplies to industrialize and improvetheir standard of living. The decaying national infrastructurefor transportation and waste management represents a monu-mental problem for the United States. The explosive growth ofinformation technologies provides grand opportunities for thenation to develop an effective national information network.

The nation also has become more sensitive to the mountingcost of health care, which represents one of the biggest imped-iments to increased quality of life and standard of living. TheLaboratory is setting the stage for improved personalizedhealth care with life sciences research in areas such as theHuman Genome project, structural biology, and medical appli-cations of lasers.

Los Alamos will continue to spin off into the private sectorpromising technologies developed in defense research. Los Alamoscurrently has partnerships with more than 200 companies. Thepartnerships have a total value of approximately $400 million.

In Conclusion ...

For more than half a century, the name “Los Alamos” has beensynonymous with great science. From 1943 through the endof the Cold War, the science and technology developed at LosAlamos provided a defense umbrella for the United States andits allies. Los Alamos will continue to help keep Americasecure by reducing the global nuclear danger and boosting theeconomic competitiveness of U.S. industry. In 1993, RichardRhodes, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of “The Making of theAtomic Bomb,” told the Manhattan Project pioneers duringthe Laboratory’s 50th anniversary reunion, “You saved civiliza-tion.” For the next 50 years, we will settle for nothing less.

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A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF THEPUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE OF

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage Paid

Los Alamos, NM Permit No.107

A MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF THEPUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE OF

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage Paid

Los Alamos, NM Permit No.107

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IN THIS ISSUE:

INTRODUCTIONP A G E 1

COUNTDOWN TO TRINITYP A G E 5

PHOTOGRAPHER

‘SPELLBOUND’BY TRINITY BLAST

P A G E 1 3

LIVING AT LOS ALAMOS

THE MUD, THE MESA,THE MEMORIES

P A G E 1 6

LOS ALAMOS TIMELINE

50 YEARS OF RESEARCHP A G E 2 4

REDUCING THE GLOBAL

NUCLEAR DANGERP A G E 4 5

LALP-95-2-6&7

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THE END OF AN ERAApr i l 13, 1993: Dur ingceremonies observ ingthe 50th anniversaryof the Laboratory’sfounding, ProfessorYevgenly Avror in(r ight ) , ch ief sc ient istof the Russ ian nuclearweapons laboratory atChelyabinsk 70,presented to LosAlamos Director S igHecker part of athermonuclearwarhead from adismant led Sov ietmiss i le that had beenaimed at the UnitedStates. The p iece wasinscr ibed, “FromRuss ia With Love.”