Physicist Philip Abelson first worked on the liquid thermal diffusion process for the Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. The Navy was interested in nuclear energy to power its submarines.
Narrator: Philip Abelson recalls how he first developed the liquid thermal diffusion process for the Navy’s Ross Gunn, who foresaw the use of nuclear energy to power submarines.
Philip Abelson: I decided that I’d better start looking into the matter of isotope separation.
I was working during the day on ordering parts for the cyclotron, but in the evening and on Saturdays and Sundays, I was looking into the matter of isotope separation. I would go to the Library of Congress and read their materials. I found that some Germans had done a liquid thermal diffusion separation.
Well, I tried a uranium soluble salt and that just made a dirty mess. So I knew I had to get a compound of uranium that was not going to react with water or anything else. I looked in the various books and I found UF6, uranium hexaflouride. Pretty soon, I began to assemble some columns with a hot wall of nickel and a cooler wall of copper.
Ross Gunn had decided that the future of submarines lay in getting nuclear propulsion. When he heard that I had had a small separation, he was for having me go to the Naval Research Laboratory where he had better, bigger steam facilities. That ultimately led to a decision by the Bureau of Ships to build a 300-column plant at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Narrator: In 1944, Abelson informed J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos laboratory, of the progress he had made developing liquid thermal diffusion. Abelson recalls what happened next.
Philip Abelson: I got word one day that I was to go to the Warner Theatre that evening, and at eight o’clock I was to go to the balcony. At eight o’clock I would be approached by a man who would identify himself. I was to have a summary of the status of the liquid thermal diffusion project and what it was doing. It was [William] “Deak” Parsons that I met. Deak Parsons went out to Los Alamos and very shortly thereafter, General Groves and some advisors appeared at the Naval Research Laboratory.
That, in turn, ultimately led to the building of a 2,100-column plant at Oak Ridge, so-called S-50 Plant.