The Manhattan Project: In 1939, the Army Corps of Engineers established the Manhattan Project at Los

Alamos, New Mexico, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. Under the direction of physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer, the three research facilities initiated a coordinated accelerated research into purifying natural Uranium238 into weapons grade

Uranium 235 and irradiating Uranium 238 to produce Plutonium239 for use in two different types of fission weapons (Rennie 2003). The other major component of the project was research dedicated to designing a mechanism for reliably detonating a sufficient quantity of fissionable purified uranium and plutonium to produce an instantaneous chain reaction for use as a weapon. The Manhattan Project culminated in the first nuclear detonations in 1944 tests in New Mexico, and by the detonation of a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb over Imperial Japan to end World War II in August of 1945.

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