CII
August 11th, 2005, 11:50 PM
Some of you have waited a year for this little story. I keep blabbing on about my town and how important it is to the history of the US, now, here's the meat that goes inside all that fluff.
Now, first note, this ain't a political thread, so don't start any trouble about it. This is a thread about an important piece of history of our nation, but even more so, told from an insider rather than an outsider. What my town did was important and it had a purpose. And I'll not regret for having a family that was a part of that history. I suppose, I should start out with this little image right here.
Now everyone thinks their town is special. New York, Los Angeles, yeah, the name towns, yeah, they're special. But one of the huge changes to our history did not happen in these famous towns, it happened in a small town in Eastern Tennessee, just 15 miles west of Knoxville.
Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce you to the Atomic Capital of the World, my little town with the August 6th, 1945 front page reprint.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/front_page_1945.jpg
The picture on the front page is the picture of the K-33 in the building, the Gaseous Difusion Plant, K-25 plant. It's a U-nique building. Pun intended. My stepfather was in charge of its decomissioning in 1995. Before it was torn down, I actually had the chance of walking around inside of it, and hearing of the stories that one could roast a chicken breast in the dead of winter on the rooftop. I saw the enormous generators that seperated U-235, from 238 by ways of porus filiments, instead of electromagnetism. While Y-12 was the famous plant, K-25 was the main workhorse of the uranium bomb construction.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/K_25.jpg
A better look at the K-33 building. Look at the size of it! Godzilla could fit inside, and yes, he would want to. There's enough radiation there for him to feast upon. My stepfather told me how he had to walk a literal mile and a half up and down stairs just to get to his truck in the back parking lot. And I had the thrill of walking with him one time at 'Daughter's Day At Work' in March 1994. It was the only time that I had ever gone inside of K-25. Y-12 is the more of a tourist attraction than K-25 is.
When the A-bomb was dropped, Oak Ridge was revealed. Everyone knew what it was now. But during its making, no one, not even the residents knew why this town was being created. Oak Ridge was nicknamed the 'Secret City'. One of America's best kept secrets...and in some cases, still is.
My grandmother told me all sorts of stories of this city's secret past. I mean, while other people's grandmothers told stories of how hard life was during WWII America, during the Depression, how no one had no job, my grandmother spoke of things I never thought a little old lady of 80 years could talk about. She spoke about 'F-rays', atomic particles, electromagnetism and how if one got up against the cyclotron, one's hair pens would get stuck to the glass from the charge. She talked about secretcy, and armed guards doing body checks every time she wanted to leave Oak Ridge to go to Knoxville just to shop. She talked about having to have a badge on her every hour of the day when she was even going to the general store down on the Oak Ridge Turnpike--which was nothing more than a dirt road at the time. And the signs, oh, the signs...billboards everywhere warning about keeping your mouth shut about what one sees in Oak Ridge. Little catch phrases like 'What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, stays here.' and the like. Now that's a story!
Sure, I'd love to say there's nothing special about my family, but that's not true. It seems that no other history in my family happened prior to 1942 when my grandmother and grandfather came here to Oak Ridge.
Now, 60 years have gone by and my little town in the middle of nowhere is on the front page again. Well, it always is this time of year, mostly because of one of Green Peace's favorite protest place is the Y-12 Security Complex, the birthplace of Little Boy. They lost X-10 and the National Laboratory because Bethel Valley Road was blocked off since 9-11.
My grandmother would also tell of funny little stories about how some of the outsiders from Knoxville would take to seeing those from the 'Clinton Engineer Works' walking through their nice stores. You see, we were in such a hurry to build the bomb, that we couldn't waste time on building streets, so we had dirt and mud and board planks for sidewalks. Oak Ridge was a town that was built in a matter of days, rather than decades. My grandmother would tell me of stories of truckers who were hauling lumber for some contractor and how they were stopped by secret service men with badges, saying that their load was confescated by the government and the Clinton Engineer Works Company. Even trucks hauling steel and iron to other parts of the country found that their loads would never get to their destinations. Instead, they were being bypassed and brought to build Oak Ridge.
So, famous cities like Atlanta never got their building supplies on time. Why? My little town got in the way.
And I laughed when I heard about when my grandmother saw the actual plasma rays in the cyclotron. She called them 'F-rays', and how her bobby pens would get stuck to the glass when she was allowed to see what she was creating.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/graphite_reactor.jpg
The Graphite Reactor, the oldest nuclear reactor in the world. Beat that! And it is a national, historical monument. The X-10 Graphite Reactor supplied the Los Alamos lab with the first significant amounts of plutonium.
Y-12 was where my grandmother worked. The security complex was the first of the two factory buildings that created the components necessary to build the uranium bomb Little Boy.
While the men are away at war, the women worked on the first atomic bomb.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/bomb-female.jpg
This is where my grandmother worked. And yes, mostly women worked there. These stations are still at Y-12 and are being referbished for full production again. Like my grandmother who worked at those stations, 3rd generation Oak Ridgers will now be working long ours again to create Enriched Uranium.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/y-12_ladies.jpg
At least all of the work force employed at Y-12 were female. Beat that, guys. They worked long hours, doing 13-16 hour shifts. My grandmother worked on the Owl Shift, as in the night shift, staring at knobs and buttons and blinking lights and gages telling what to push, what not to push, and what to do when that little blue light went on. These machines the women operated were the very machines that controlled the cyclotrons, or 'Race Tracks' as they were also called--mile long coils of silver where U-235 was seperated from U-238 electromagnetically.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/Y-12.gif
Would you believe this facility is only a two minute drive from where I live? It is. I drive by it everyday when I go to work in Knoxville. If you like to know what Y-12 does now, I can tell you. Y-12's cyclotrons are still in service and are now the nation's only factory for creating Enriched Uranium. They create Enriched Uranium to fuel the US Naval subs' neclear reactors. Yup, submarines are fueled by 'Tennessean grown' Enriched Uranium.
Funny thing about this city, it was also the place where my grandmother met my grandfather. In a little story called the 'Bullpen', my grandmother talked about how she came to Oak Ridge, and how she met my grandfather. It was printed in the Knoxville New Sentinel.
The Bullpen were a groupd of stone buildings lining the DOE building in the center of Oak Ridge.
In the Bullpen
Written by Frank Munger, Senior Writer
Gladys Wimberly (now Gladys Evens) was having a soft drink at the U Like It Cafe in Sweetwater when she got her first inkling of Oak Ridge.
A bunch of guys with muddy boots were eating at the counter, and the impetuous 20-year-old moved to a stool nearby so she could listen to their conversation. (This is my grandmother here! LOL! The snoot.)
"I heard them say the words 'Black Oak Ridge'," Evans recalled, although at the time she had no idea where that was. "I figured that's where they were working."
At the time, she was a clerk at Wright Hardware. Among her duties were keeping up with pictures of hometown soldier boys in the storefront window. She also had the difficult job of returning those who had lost their loved ones.
"That became quite traumatic," she said. "I wanted to do more for the war effort."
When she later learned about hiring in Oak Ridge, she applied. That was the spring of 1944. She met her future husband of 53 years, George Evans, while at the training center.
"They called it the bullpen," she said of the place where the workers went while waiting on their security clearances to come through.
Gladys Wimberly and George Evans both worked at the Y-12 plant during the war, and later George Evans became the plant's security director until his retirement in 1987.
It was a cute story. I was hoping she would tell more stories about the time inside the plant, but there wasn't any room.
Funny thing, grandma's maiden name became my middle name.
Hope you liked this little story.
To answer some of your questions, there were three official sites..secret sites that created the two bombs.
The production of the Uranium bomb was done only in Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge held four sites, Y-12 and the electromagnitism race tracks. K-25 and the Gaseous Difusion Plant. The experimental Graphite Reactor in X-10, which was the forefront of the larger production in Hanford, Washington, and the thermal difusion plant at Union Carbide. At the height of production Oak Ridge was consuming 14 percent of the total energy being used in the United States. To supply K-25 the power it needed for Gaseous Difusion seperation, the word's largest steam powered plant was built adjacent to it. And it's still standing and functioning.
Oak Ridge shipped 132 pounds of Enriched Uranium to Los Alamos to be used in Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
Fat Man's componants were also going to be fully produced in Oak RIdge, but because of hazardous risks of explosion or meltdown of the reactors to the population of Knoxville, production of the plutonium bomb was moved to Harford.
Oak Ridge 50s and Beyond.
K-25 continued to supply civilian nuclear reactors with Enriched Uranium until 1985, and that production was moved to Peducha, KY. Now, the facility that was K-25, is now busy studying the hazard effects of radiation, better ways of disposing of hazardous radioactive materials, and aiding the nation's Nuclear Regulatory Commission on waste management. The historic K-33 building only lives on in photographs. A shame. A road side, maintained overlook of K-25 is open for anyone who wants to stop by heading towards I40W to Crossville. I don't know who maintains it, but it stands. Not many people visit it though. I have. Its a nice place to stop for a rest. And, it's air conditioned in the summer. Push a button, and a DVD player will tell you of the history of K-25. And it also has bathrooms. So, anyone traveling towards Oak Ridge that needs a pitstop, stop at the K-25 overlook. You'll be happy you did.
Y-12 is still in production of Enriched Uranium, and is the country's sole provider of the stuff used in reactors of Naval subs. They even boast it on their website. No joke! And also, it's a prime target for peaceful hippies with anti nuke signs. They were there last Sunday...as they are there every year around August 6th. And they still haven't gotten the Security Chief's grandaughter to join them yet.
X-10, now the Oak Ridge National Laboritory still lies in secrecy of what it's doing. Since 9-11, Bethel Valley RD has been closed and uncleared traffic is turned away. But, you know Kiryuu? If anyone's gonna produce a fully sentient AI system, something tells me it won't come out of Silicon Valley--it's gonna come out of Oak Ridge. Currently, from what the website says, X-10 is busy building nano technology. Oh, and mirrors--for hospitals? Yeah. And the Graphite Reactor is now a tourist attraction, decomissioned.
The old guard houses are still up, and are being refurbished for tours. And some of the old barbwire fence still surrounds the city of Oak Ridge, with signs saying "NO!".
Fun facts about Oak Ridge.
Did you know that when copper was not availible, Oak Ridge had to tap the mint reserves on silver to build the two cyclotrons at Y-12? It's true. We borrowed 14,700 tons of silver from the US Treasury to create the plates used in electromagnetic seperation of the Uranium isotope.
Oak Ridge also contains more people with Ph Ds per square mile than any other city in the country. We were also the first in abolishing segregation in the classes back during the 50s. And any Oak Ridger can tell you the difference between a boiling water plant and a nuclear weapons plant...even the kiddies. I did a report on how to split the atom back in Junior High. I equated it like playing pool with atomic particals. The teacher got a kick out of it.
So, I guess, the real history is out about the construction of the A-bomb. As a joke, I thought Godzilla would find a perfect home here. See why?
Now, first note, this ain't a political thread, so don't start any trouble about it. This is a thread about an important piece of history of our nation, but even more so, told from an insider rather than an outsider. What my town did was important and it had a purpose. And I'll not regret for having a family that was a part of that history. I suppose, I should start out with this little image right here.
Now everyone thinks their town is special. New York, Los Angeles, yeah, the name towns, yeah, they're special. But one of the huge changes to our history did not happen in these famous towns, it happened in a small town in Eastern Tennessee, just 15 miles west of Knoxville.
Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce you to the Atomic Capital of the World, my little town with the August 6th, 1945 front page reprint.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/front_page_1945.jpg
The picture on the front page is the picture of the K-33 in the building, the Gaseous Difusion Plant, K-25 plant. It's a U-nique building. Pun intended. My stepfather was in charge of its decomissioning in 1995. Before it was torn down, I actually had the chance of walking around inside of it, and hearing of the stories that one could roast a chicken breast in the dead of winter on the rooftop. I saw the enormous generators that seperated U-235, from 238 by ways of porus filiments, instead of electromagnetism. While Y-12 was the famous plant, K-25 was the main workhorse of the uranium bomb construction.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/K_25.jpg
A better look at the K-33 building. Look at the size of it! Godzilla could fit inside, and yes, he would want to. There's enough radiation there for him to feast upon. My stepfather told me how he had to walk a literal mile and a half up and down stairs just to get to his truck in the back parking lot. And I had the thrill of walking with him one time at 'Daughter's Day At Work' in March 1994. It was the only time that I had ever gone inside of K-25. Y-12 is the more of a tourist attraction than K-25 is.
When the A-bomb was dropped, Oak Ridge was revealed. Everyone knew what it was now. But during its making, no one, not even the residents knew why this town was being created. Oak Ridge was nicknamed the 'Secret City'. One of America's best kept secrets...and in some cases, still is.
My grandmother told me all sorts of stories of this city's secret past. I mean, while other people's grandmothers told stories of how hard life was during WWII America, during the Depression, how no one had no job, my grandmother spoke of things I never thought a little old lady of 80 years could talk about. She spoke about 'F-rays', atomic particles, electromagnetism and how if one got up against the cyclotron, one's hair pens would get stuck to the glass from the charge. She talked about secretcy, and armed guards doing body checks every time she wanted to leave Oak Ridge to go to Knoxville just to shop. She talked about having to have a badge on her every hour of the day when she was even going to the general store down on the Oak Ridge Turnpike--which was nothing more than a dirt road at the time. And the signs, oh, the signs...billboards everywhere warning about keeping your mouth shut about what one sees in Oak Ridge. Little catch phrases like 'What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, stays here.' and the like. Now that's a story!
Sure, I'd love to say there's nothing special about my family, but that's not true. It seems that no other history in my family happened prior to 1942 when my grandmother and grandfather came here to Oak Ridge.
Now, 60 years have gone by and my little town in the middle of nowhere is on the front page again. Well, it always is this time of year, mostly because of one of Green Peace's favorite protest place is the Y-12 Security Complex, the birthplace of Little Boy. They lost X-10 and the National Laboratory because Bethel Valley Road was blocked off since 9-11.
My grandmother would also tell of funny little stories about how some of the outsiders from Knoxville would take to seeing those from the 'Clinton Engineer Works' walking through their nice stores. You see, we were in such a hurry to build the bomb, that we couldn't waste time on building streets, so we had dirt and mud and board planks for sidewalks. Oak Ridge was a town that was built in a matter of days, rather than decades. My grandmother would tell me of stories of truckers who were hauling lumber for some contractor and how they were stopped by secret service men with badges, saying that their load was confescated by the government and the Clinton Engineer Works Company. Even trucks hauling steel and iron to other parts of the country found that their loads would never get to their destinations. Instead, they were being bypassed and brought to build Oak Ridge.
So, famous cities like Atlanta never got their building supplies on time. Why? My little town got in the way.
And I laughed when I heard about when my grandmother saw the actual plasma rays in the cyclotron. She called them 'F-rays', and how her bobby pens would get stuck to the glass when she was allowed to see what she was creating.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/graphite_reactor.jpg
The Graphite Reactor, the oldest nuclear reactor in the world. Beat that! And it is a national, historical monument. The X-10 Graphite Reactor supplied the Los Alamos lab with the first significant amounts of plutonium.
Y-12 was where my grandmother worked. The security complex was the first of the two factory buildings that created the components necessary to build the uranium bomb Little Boy.
While the men are away at war, the women worked on the first atomic bomb.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/bomb-female.jpg
This is where my grandmother worked. And yes, mostly women worked there. These stations are still at Y-12 and are being referbished for full production again. Like my grandmother who worked at those stations, 3rd generation Oak Ridgers will now be working long ours again to create Enriched Uranium.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/y-12_ladies.jpg
At least all of the work force employed at Y-12 were female. Beat that, guys. They worked long hours, doing 13-16 hour shifts. My grandmother worked on the Owl Shift, as in the night shift, staring at knobs and buttons and blinking lights and gages telling what to push, what not to push, and what to do when that little blue light went on. These machines the women operated were the very machines that controlled the cyclotrons, or 'Race Tracks' as they were also called--mile long coils of silver where U-235 was seperated from U-238 electromagnetically.
http://monsters4u.com/kedzuel/Y-12.gif
Would you believe this facility is only a two minute drive from where I live? It is. I drive by it everyday when I go to work in Knoxville. If you like to know what Y-12 does now, I can tell you. Y-12's cyclotrons are still in service and are now the nation's only factory for creating Enriched Uranium. They create Enriched Uranium to fuel the US Naval subs' neclear reactors. Yup, submarines are fueled by 'Tennessean grown' Enriched Uranium.
Funny thing about this city, it was also the place where my grandmother met my grandfather. In a little story called the 'Bullpen', my grandmother talked about how she came to Oak Ridge, and how she met my grandfather. It was printed in the Knoxville New Sentinel.
The Bullpen were a groupd of stone buildings lining the DOE building in the center of Oak Ridge.
In the Bullpen
Written by Frank Munger, Senior Writer
Gladys Wimberly (now Gladys Evens) was having a soft drink at the U Like It Cafe in Sweetwater when she got her first inkling of Oak Ridge.
A bunch of guys with muddy boots were eating at the counter, and the impetuous 20-year-old moved to a stool nearby so she could listen to their conversation. (This is my grandmother here! LOL! The snoot.)
"I heard them say the words 'Black Oak Ridge'," Evans recalled, although at the time she had no idea where that was. "I figured that's where they were working."
At the time, she was a clerk at Wright Hardware. Among her duties were keeping up with pictures of hometown soldier boys in the storefront window. She also had the difficult job of returning those who had lost their loved ones.
"That became quite traumatic," she said. "I wanted to do more for the war effort."
When she later learned about hiring in Oak Ridge, she applied. That was the spring of 1944. She met her future husband of 53 years, George Evans, while at the training center.
"They called it the bullpen," she said of the place where the workers went while waiting on their security clearances to come through.
Gladys Wimberly and George Evans both worked at the Y-12 plant during the war, and later George Evans became the plant's security director until his retirement in 1987.
It was a cute story. I was hoping she would tell more stories about the time inside the plant, but there wasn't any room.
Funny thing, grandma's maiden name became my middle name.
Hope you liked this little story.
To answer some of your questions, there were three official sites..secret sites that created the two bombs.
The production of the Uranium bomb was done only in Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge held four sites, Y-12 and the electromagnitism race tracks. K-25 and the Gaseous Difusion Plant. The experimental Graphite Reactor in X-10, which was the forefront of the larger production in Hanford, Washington, and the thermal difusion plant at Union Carbide. At the height of production Oak Ridge was consuming 14 percent of the total energy being used in the United States. To supply K-25 the power it needed for Gaseous Difusion seperation, the word's largest steam powered plant was built adjacent to it. And it's still standing and functioning.
Oak Ridge shipped 132 pounds of Enriched Uranium to Los Alamos to be used in Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
Fat Man's componants were also going to be fully produced in Oak RIdge, but because of hazardous risks of explosion or meltdown of the reactors to the population of Knoxville, production of the plutonium bomb was moved to Harford.
Oak Ridge 50s and Beyond.
K-25 continued to supply civilian nuclear reactors with Enriched Uranium until 1985, and that production was moved to Peducha, KY. Now, the facility that was K-25, is now busy studying the hazard effects of radiation, better ways of disposing of hazardous radioactive materials, and aiding the nation's Nuclear Regulatory Commission on waste management. The historic K-33 building only lives on in photographs. A shame. A road side, maintained overlook of K-25 is open for anyone who wants to stop by heading towards I40W to Crossville. I don't know who maintains it, but it stands. Not many people visit it though. I have. Its a nice place to stop for a rest. And, it's air conditioned in the summer. Push a button, and a DVD player will tell you of the history of K-25. And it also has bathrooms. So, anyone traveling towards Oak Ridge that needs a pitstop, stop at the K-25 overlook. You'll be happy you did.
Y-12 is still in production of Enriched Uranium, and is the country's sole provider of the stuff used in reactors of Naval subs. They even boast it on their website. No joke! And also, it's a prime target for peaceful hippies with anti nuke signs. They were there last Sunday...as they are there every year around August 6th. And they still haven't gotten the Security Chief's grandaughter to join them yet.
X-10, now the Oak Ridge National Laboritory still lies in secrecy of what it's doing. Since 9-11, Bethel Valley RD has been closed and uncleared traffic is turned away. But, you know Kiryuu? If anyone's gonna produce a fully sentient AI system, something tells me it won't come out of Silicon Valley--it's gonna come out of Oak Ridge. Currently, from what the website says, X-10 is busy building nano technology. Oh, and mirrors--for hospitals? Yeah. And the Graphite Reactor is now a tourist attraction, decomissioned.
The old guard houses are still up, and are being refurbished for tours. And some of the old barbwire fence still surrounds the city of Oak Ridge, with signs saying "NO!".
Fun facts about Oak Ridge.
Did you know that when copper was not availible, Oak Ridge had to tap the mint reserves on silver to build the two cyclotrons at Y-12? It's true. We borrowed 14,700 tons of silver from the US Treasury to create the plates used in electromagnetic seperation of the Uranium isotope.
Oak Ridge also contains more people with Ph Ds per square mile than any other city in the country. We were also the first in abolishing segregation in the classes back during the 50s. And any Oak Ridger can tell you the difference between a boiling water plant and a nuclear weapons plant...even the kiddies. I did a report on how to split the atom back in Junior High. I equated it like playing pool with atomic particals. The teacher got a kick out of it.
So, I guess, the real history is out about the construction of the A-bomb. As a joke, I thought Godzilla would find a perfect home here. See why?