The successful test of the "Trinity device" on July 16, 1945 signaled the beginning of the Atomic Age. Immediately after the war, however, the future of the wartime complex with production plants, laboratories, and administrative offices scattered in thirteen states across the continent was unclear. Employment levels dropped precipitously at Hanford. Many officials believed that the hastily constructed plants would be shut down at the end of the war, their missions accomplished. Amidst this uncertainty, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was passed creating a five person Atomic Energy Commission responsible for managing the former Manhattan Project operations. The Act also called for the development of atomic energy toward "improving the public welfare, increasing the standard of living, strengthening free competition in private enterprise, and promoting world peace." In the spring of 1949, the Atomic Energy Commission chose the former U.S. Navy's ordnance plant and testing site near Pocatello, Idaho for the National Reactor Test Station in March 1949. At this 890-square mile site in eastern Idaho, 52 nuclear reactors, most of them first of a kind facilities, were developed and tested during the early Cold War years. The Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I) was the first of these reactors built and the first to produce usable electrical power from the atom in 1951. The Experimental Breeder Reactor-I and its history are being restored under a Save America's Treasures grant with contributions from Argonne National Laboratory, Bechtel BWXT Idaho, Bechtel National, BNFL, Exelon, Florida Power & Light, the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust, and other donors. For more information on the EBR-I and its preservation, click here on Experimental Breeder Reactor-I or the above link. The Atomic Energy Commission intended the national laboratories to be the backbone of its research program. The initial laboratories included Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, both created during the war. Brookhaven National Laboratory was begun in 1946 as a regional research center for universities in the Northeast. During the war, the Radiation Laboratory was founded by Ernest O. Lawrence with support from private funds and the University of California, Berkeley; later it became Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque was established as a separate entity in 1949. In the two years immediately after the war, there was a lull in the pace of research activities at Los Alamos and great uncertainty at Hanford and Oak Ridge. The quiet ended abruptly with the victory of Communist forces in China and the Sino-Soviet mutual assistance pact. By summer 1947, the new Atomic Energy Commission was charged with ensuring a steady flow of fissionable material from Hanford and Oak Ridge and stepping up weapons research at Los Alamos. In August 1949, the Soviet Union had tested its first nuclear weapon and was suspected of developing a hydrogen bomb. The Soviet's detonation of "Little Joe" sparked a renewed sense of national urgency that was reinforced in 1950 by the outbreak of the Korean War. In January 1950, President Truman made the controversial decision to continue and intensify research and production of thermonuclear weapons. Soon, the country would be engaged in the largest construction project in peacetime history, vastly expanding the facilities for producing special nuclear materials and weapons. The build up consisted of a new plutonium production plant at Savannah River in South Carolina, gaseous diffusion plants at Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio, a plant to produce uranium fuel rods at Fernald, Ohio, a plant to make plutonium pits at Rocky Flats, Colorado, and an assembly plant for nuclear weapons at Pantex near Amarillo, Texas. The Nevada Test Site was set aside for testing in 1951 and a second nuclear weapons laboratory, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, was opened in 1952. In August 1953, the Soviets announced they had developed the thermonuclear bomb. "Joe 4," as Americans called the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, represented a massive increase in the Soviet's destructive capacity. Partly in response to this development, President Eisenhower addressed the United Nations General Assembly with his now famous "Atoms for Peace" speech on December 8, 1953. Concerned about the escalating nuclear arms race, the President urged that nuclear nations begin making joint contributions of nuclear material to an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to be established under the United Nations. By the time he left office, the IAEA was a reality, established to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and promote the broadest use of nuclear electric power. The "Atoms for Peace" speech also gave new impetus to research for peaceful applications of atomic energy. The Cold War was becoming as much a competition of scientific prowess as an arms race. Under the leadership of Chairman Lewis S. Strauss, the Atomic Energy Commission emphasized the importance of staying ahead of the Soviets in the field of high energy physics. In addition to the Berkeley Bevatron and the Brookhaven Cosmotron, the Commission approved the construction of the much more powerful Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven, the zero-gradient machine at Argonne, as well as other high energy physics research equipment. Some of these Cold War facilities, reactors, and laboratories are still in use, others have been decommissioned. Over the next few years, the Atomic Heritage Foundation will be working with the Department of Energy, Woodrow Wilson International Center's Cold War History Project, and others to explore how to best preserve this important chapter of American and world history.
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