Revealing the Manhattan Project! Uranium Separation Plants! Nuclear Reactors! Design and Manufacturing Laboratories!

The Manhattan Project had succeeded so quickly not because it had encountered no research and development difficulties.

On the contrary, Oppenheimer and the others had run into many technical problems.

But when the U.S. government started throwing money around like mad, increasing the budget from $400 million to $2 billion, those problems no longer seemed so difficult.

"Anything money can solve isn't a problem!"

"Try out any idea the moment you have it!"

Given unlimited resources, scientists could indeed unleash terrifying power.

A single diagram was enough to show just how complex and vast the Manhattan Project was.

In September 1942, after Groves took office, he first purchased the first plot of land in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States⑤.

One of the Manhattan Project's core plants was built there: a Uranium-235 separation plant.

For weapons-grade uranium, purity had to reach over 90%, or it would be impossible to produce a chain reaction.

Yet in naturally occurring uranium, Uranium-235 accounted for only 0.7%.

From 0.7% to 90%—what a terrifying degree of enrichment!

At the time, scientists proposed a total of three separation and enrichment methods.

The first was the "gaseous diffusion method" proposed by Urey, Lewis's student:

First, uranium metal, containing all three isotopes, was converted into uranium fluoride gas. The gas was then made to pass through plates filled with tiny pores.

According to thermodynamics, when uranium fluoride gas passed through those pores, the lighter Uranium-235 molecules diffused slightly faster than the heavier Uranium-238 molecules.

As a result, the Uranium-235 content on one side of the porous plate increased.

Using this method, if the gas molecules were passed continuously through 5,000 such plates, the purity of Uranium-235 could be greatly increased.

This method was highly efficient and could separate large quantities of uranium at once.

But its drawback was equally