The Girls of Atomic City (43 page)

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In the months and years that followed the war, the ebullient mood of victory became tempered by the emerging reality that international relations would never be the same and neither would Oak Ridge. With the revelation of the technology that had created the bomb, the
worlds both within and beyond CEW’s still-standing fences oscillated between fear of atomic war and the anticipation of new scientific frontiers.

Oak Ridge was a city in flux. By the end of 1946, its population had dropped to 42,465 from a peak of nearly 75,000 in 1945. Dorm services were reduced and rents increased. Employment dropped to 28,737 from 82,000. Much of this was due to the shutdown by the end of 1946 of all of Y-12’s calutrons except for the pilot units and those in the Beta-3 building. This alone left roughly 20,000 people with no jobs. S-50, the thermal diffusion plant, was shut down on September 9, just one month after the bombing of Nagasaki. The vacated plant was used initially to research the possibility of nuclear-powered aircraft.

As the nuclear arms race ramped up, K-25 became the primary uranium enrichment facility and would continue to produce weapons-grade uranium until 1964, when the large U-shaped icon of Oak Ridge was finally shut down and smaller facilities such as K-27 focused on enriching uranium to only around 3 to 5 percent, enough for nuclear power reactors. This uranium fueled reactors in a number of countries, among them Japan.

The X-10 plant (which became known as the Oak Ridge National Lab in 1948) began to grow its role in scientific research, notably in the field of radioisotopes. On August 2, 1946, a ceremony was held at Oak Ridge’s graphite reactor in honor of a shipment of one millicurie of Carbon-14 from Oak Ridge bound for the Barnard Free Skin and Cancer Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. It was the first-ever shipment of a radioisotope for medical purposes.

One day earlier, August 1, 1946, President Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act, which outlined the development and regulation of military
and
civilian use of nuclear matter and provided for government control of fissionable material. “It is reasonable to anticipate, however,” it stated, “that tapping this new source of energy will cause profound changes in our present way of life.” This act also meant that a new civilian commission was taking over from the Manhattan Engineer District, a change that officially went into effect January 1, 1947.

Oak Ridge continued experiencing growing pains, as the people who lived there worked to build a future never anticipated by the Project.

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Three years after the AEC came to be, smoke billowed and a miniature mushroom cloud hovered above Elza Gate at the Clinton Engineer Works. The throng surged en masse toward the gate where the ceremonial ribbon—flammable magnesium tape—had just been ignited. Everyone wanted to be among the first to walk through Elza Gate freely: no inspection, badge-free.

It was March 19, 1949. Crowds had gathered for a street-busting parade that marched down Tennessee Avenue near Jackson Square, through Townsite, along the heart of the outpost-cum-town. President Truman did not attend, but Alben Barkley, his Kentucky-bred vice president, did, alongside congressional representatives, military brass, and Hollywood starlets.

Opening the gates and eliminating the badges and the guards elicited mixed reactions. Security checks that had once seemed a nuisance had for many become a comfort. Many residents had grown to like the idea that anyone who did not
belong
in Oak Ridge was not permitted to enter. In a sense, the gates lent a feeling of belonging and exclusivity, the kind gated communities of the future would purport to offer. Inside the gates there were rules. There were jobs. Opening them meant Oak Ridge might become like any other town.

Opening the gates was the first step the AEC took toward transforming Oak Ridge into a self-governing municipality. This effort began in 1948 and was not initially popular. In 1953, after the gates had been down roughly four years, a town meeting vote regarding incorporation was roundly rejected by a margin of nearly four to one. Nevertheless, Oak Ridge was entering a new phase, moving toward a future few had planned for.

“Oak Ridge is a city without a past not destined for a future,” District Engineer Kenneth Nichols had written. The Manhattan District’s plans never included a blueprint for the post-Gadget Oak Ridge. But even if the plan in 1942 had been to close up shop, it would likely have been abandoned in the face of the Cold War. Now the great transition had begun.

The postwar housing plan for Oak Ridge had fallen again to the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, as it had when CEW first began. The firm anticipated the need for many new neighborhoods once some of the hastily constructed housing was torn down or simply ceased to be usable any longer.

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In 1954, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 had been amended to include a greater focus on nuclear power and allowed for the private ownership and management of nuclear power plants.

But President Eisenhower soon passed another act, one that did not garner the same attention but that directly affected Oak Ridge. The Atomic Energy Community Act of 1955 provided for the self-governing of Oak Ridge and private ownership of homes and land. Control of the town of Oak Ridge began to more fully leave the hands of the military.

Residents began purchasing land and building homes or simply buying the ones they had been renting from the government. The A, B, C, and D houses that lined the streets began to take on individual style: garden beds, sun porches, a touch of masonry flesh adhered to prefab bones. But the challenges of living under military supervision were replaced by the challenges of living without it: the possibility of unemployment, the need for police, jails, more schools, public transportation, and local elections. As the mantle passed, yet another vision of the city had to be born. The pioneer spirit that had carried residents through the war now had to evolve into an entrepreneurial one.

Frustrations with the “new” Oak Ridge were played out in private, in the press, and even onstage. On March 20, 1957, Oak Ridge took another step toward independence when Governor Frank Clement signed the Oak Ridge Law into effect, providing for the town’s incorporation. Then finally, on May 5, 1959, Oak Ridgers elected to incorporate. The vote was 5,552 for, 395 against. The military and the AEC reduced its role in administration of the community, and by June of 1960, Oak Ridge was a fully independent, “normal” town.

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“The Atom Bomb! Is it a blessing, or will it smash humanity? . . . Can Enemies Strike America? . . . Slave—or Destroyer? . . . Magic of Uranium . . . Atom Power in Your Home! . . .”

With the advent of the Atomic Age came both trepidation and fascination, as evidenced on this cover of one of Jane’s 25-cent serial magazines. And as the cloud of mystery lifted—or at least dissipated a bit—from the Manhattan Project, a new darkness fell. Dread of “the bomb” combined with the promise of the power of the atom in your kitchen or garage. Uranium mining by private companies with government contracts took off. The AEC set uranium prices, and hungry prospectors, speculators, and mine workers came out of the woodwork, swarming to places like Moab, Utah.

Schools in Oak Ridge—and across the country—grew accustomed to disaster drills as the Cold War descended upon the country like a blackout curtain. Information about the US Atomic program had made its way to the Soviet Union via Klaus Fuchs; David Greenglass, a.k.a. “Kalibr”; and George Koval among others. Greenglass and Koval had both spent time in Oak Ridge during the war, Koval for nearly a year. Greenglass was the brother of Ethel Rosenberg and passed information to her and Julius Rosenberg with the help of his wife, Ruth. When his role was uncovered in 1950, Greenglass’s eventual testimony resulted in the death penalty for the Rosenbergs and no charges for Ruth. He served a 15-year sentence. The Soviet Union had detonated its first nuclear bomb on August 29, 1949, in Semipalatinsk, Kazakh. It was an implosion-type bomb, like Fat Man, sketches of which Greenglass had provided the Soviets.

In 1950, the Federal Civil Defense Administration gave us “Bert the Turtle,” who taught folks how to “Duck and Cover.” The atomic bomb inspired everything from Pernod-infused cocktails—first served at the Washington Press Club within hours of the announcement of the bombing of Hiroshima—to music and movies, air-raid drills to luxury fallout shelters.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
had landed in movie theaters in 1953, kicking off an age of movie monster madness and featuring as a major plot point the “only isotope of its kind this
side of Oak Ridge,” humanity’s only hope of killing the beast. Oak Ridge had gone from secret to the center stage of a new world, which both enthralled and frightened people. Fear of the newer, far more powerful hydrogen bomb coexisted with the warm, fuzzy Walt Disney production “Our Friend the Atom.” There was an edge to existence in this new age that the end of World War II was unable to soften.

By the time Oak Ridge earned its independence in 1960, J. Robert Oppenheimer, lead scientist of the Manhattan Project, had been deemed a security risk and stripped of his clearance. The Korean War had come and gone, and with it the threat of another atomic bombing, this time under the leadership of President Eisenhower. Shortly after the end of that Cold War conflict, President Eisenhower addressed the United Nations, saying:

But let no one think that the expenditure of vast sums for weapons and systems of defense can guarantee absolute safety for the cities and citizens of any nation. The awful arithmetic of the atomic bomb does not permit of any such easy solution. . . .

In 1961, the Soviets detonated the largest nuclear weapon in history over the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. It was a 58-megaton explosion, 4,000 times as powerful as the bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Almost 18 years to the day after the first wartime use of an atomic bomb, August 5, 1963, representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting nuclear tests and explosions under water, in the atmosphere, or in outer space. Underground testing was still permitted. President John F. Kennedy ratified the treaty on October 7, 1963, shortly before his assassination on November 22.

Oak Ridge, a city born of a secrecy now long revealed, a reservation once under military control and now fully independent, had played a role in altering the course of history, warfare, power, and technology. The Cold War would prevail for a time and eventually pass into memory as Oak Ridge’s place on the atomic landscape evolved further still, history and public opinion perpetually shifting beneath it.

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Change came also for the Girls of Atomic City.

Jane
had married Jim Puckett, the man who had carried her suitcase up the stairs of the Guest House that very first day she arrived in Oak Ridge. She had found other work at Y-12 and continued to work there as a statistician. Uranium was still being enriched, weapons stockpiled, and an entirely new industry in Oak Ridge was growing as scientists sought to put the tiny atom to big use beyond nuclear material for the bomb it had helped create.

Physics. Chemistry. Biology. The kind of research that was once relegated to underfunded university labs benefitted now from monies directed toward the burgeoning military industrial complex. The first light ever generated by atomic power. Advances in plutonium reactors. Submarine propulsion, pressurized water reactors, production of radioactive and stable isotopes, neutron diffraction, thermonuclear fusion, heavy ion nuclear research, investigations into bone marrow transplants and medical isotope scanning, and more found a home in the laboratories of Oak Ridge, along with the continued focus on research into the effects of ionizing radiation on human and other living beings. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, bullet fragments and paraffin casts were sent to Oak Ridge National Lab for neutron activation analysis.

At work, Jane noticed many things were still under wraps. Although the Secret may have been out, others had taken its place. Though the greater purpose of Oak Ridge was now known, revealing details about one’s job was still forbidden. Not too long after the war, Jane had watched as a young couple who worked near her in Y-12 was quietly escorted out one day. Jane soon learned that they had been paying closer attention to what was going on at Y-12 than she had realized, and sharing what they had learned with people outside the fences. Jane did not know whom. She did not ask. You still did not ask.

Soon babies came. Jim took a job in Tullahoma, Tennessee, home of Arnold Engineering Development Center, the University of Tennessee’s Space Institute, and Dickel Whisky. Jane left the lab behind,
where Marchant and Monroe calculators and her “human computers” had been replaced by advancements such as the Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine (ORACLE) which, when it was created in 1953, was the most advanced computer in the world.

Virginia
continued working at Y-12 as well. One of her lab projects involved new developments from the Dow Chemical Company. Discussing uranium openly hadn’t made extracting and purifying it any easier. Tiny little pellets were supposed to absorb different forms of the now-freely-mentioned element, making recovery simpler. Virginia found the results murky at first, but results improved.

A new man had arrived in the lab: Charles Coleman, a physical chemist with a PhD from Purdue, who specialized in separation chemistry. Virginia found him to be brilliant, his problem-solving ability eminently creative. The two soon went from coworkers to friends. Charles was a real match, someone who valued Virginia’s mind as well as her potential as a partner in life. The career chemist married at 29. She continued working but transferred to a different lab in an effort to keep her personal and professional lives separate. Babies followed soon after, along with Charlie’s many patents.

Kattie
and Willie decided to stay in Oak Ridge, though once the war ended many people they knew were moving on. They were finally able to bring their children from Alabama to Tennessee to live with them, where the couple had secured new jobs for the foreseeable future.