Stephen Schwartz

We did eventually make five more complete “Little Boy” bombs by 1950 (as a precaution in case there were problems with the plutonium pipeline at Hanford), but all were retired by that November. @wellerstein.bsky.social may know more.

That’s news to me. “Little Boy” was a one-off weapon. It was simple and reliable (it was never tested prior to its use on Hiroshima) but also extremely inefficient (in terms of HEU) and therefore very expensive to manufacture. We built only one during WWII.

That’s the Trinity test, 5:29 AM on a 100-foot tower, 24.8 ± 2 kilotons.

YouTube video by markdcatlin Radioactive Contaminated Turtles 1991 Savannah River DOE Site

A little more about those radioactive turtles (from the 1991 documentary "Building Bombs"): www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFhE...

Hard to know without further study. But there have been radioactive turtles at the Savannah River Site for decades (according to this 2011 report, "well over" 10,000 had been identified and caught by that time). Some have even wandered outside the facility's boundaries. Also, alligators.

This, combined with decades of excessive and counterproductive government secrecy, is why it will take more than 100 years and cost at least $855 billion to $1.1 trillion to "clean up" nuclear weapons production and testing facilities across the United States. bsky.app/profile/atom...

Clearly you're unfamiliar with the standard operating procedure of the Atomic Energy Commission (1947-1974), the Energy Research and Development Administration (1974-77), and the Department of Energy (1977-present), which was/is to prioritize production over everything else, incl. safety and health.

Of potential interest: Normally, when Trump visits Bedminster, Air Force One flies into Morristown Municipal Airport in New Jersey, about 14 miles from Bedminster. A runway rehabilitation project at Morristown appears to be the reason for the change.

After arriving at Lehigh Valley International Airport north of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Friday evening, the Navy aide carrying the Presidential Emergency Satchel could be seen boarding Marine One through the rear ramp for the short flight to Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey.

The INF Treaty, 1987-2019 Washington D.C., August 2, 2019 – The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty negotiated by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 not only eliminated an entire clas...

For more on the negotiating history of the INF Treaty, including its unprecedented and remarkable on-site verification system, see the @nsarchive.bsky.social’s extensive collection of declassified documents in this 2019 electronic briefing book, published on the day the withdrawal took effect:

A color graphic titled “Missile Deployments Eliminated by the INF Treaty,” showing how many intermediate-range nuclear weapons were retired and removed from the countries where they were deployed and verifiably destroyed under the INF Treaty. An additional 430 US missiles and 979 Soviet missiles in storage or otherwise not deployed were also destroyed.

A color photograph of male inspector from the Soviet Union leaning over and carefully examining the nose section of a partially-dismantled US ground-launched cruise missile, whose deployment was banned by the 1988 INF Treaty.

A color photograph ofUS Foreign Service Officer Eileen Malloy in Kazakhstan in 1990 to observe the destruction of missiles banned by the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Malloy is wearing a blue parka and standing alone in front of five Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles laying horizontally on the ground. Numerous Soviet and US officials stand behind the missiles in the background. The nose cones (which would hold nuclear warheads) have been cut away from the rest of the missiles. The green-painted missile immediately behind Malloy is decorated with graffiti in Cyrillic and drawings of the US and Soviet flags, and includes dates which in context may indicate when the missiles on display were retired under the treaty: August 1, 1988-October 27, 1989.

Today in 2019, the Trump administration—as advocated by NSA John Bolton—unilaterally and formally withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first and only treaty to verifiably eliminate an entire class of weaponry (2,692 nuclear-armed missiles in just three years).

YouTube video by Christie's Einstein-Szilard letter is one of the most influential letters of the 20th century | Christie's

Christie’s expected it to sell for $4-6 million. Bidding began at $2.5 million and it sold for $3.2 million ($3,922,000, including the substantial buyer’s premium and sales tax) to an unidentified bidder.

Meanwhile, the version sent to Roosevelt remains at his library and museum in Hyde Park, NY.

A screenshot of the Christie's webpage for the 2002 auction of the 1939 Einstein letter, showing images of the two page letter and a description of its contents, history, and provenance.

This time, the letter sold for $2,096,000, becoming the first 20th century historical document to sell for more than $1 million. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was the winning bidder. Allen died in 2018. On September 10, 2024, his estate auctioned it off again. www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-3...

Forbes died in 1990. In March 2002, 210 historical documents from his collection were auctioned off at Christie’s. These included a logbook kept by Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, which sold for $350,000—and the unsent version of the 1939 Einstein letter to President Roosevelt.

“The publisher, who was walking over to a TV interviewer, merely smiled at the extraordinary request. The underbidder would say only that he once worked for Szilard, a key member of the Manhattan Project.”

From the 1986 Washington Post article linked above: “As he exited the auction room, Forbes was approached by the underbidder in the sale, who asked him to donate the just-purchased letter to an institution the unidentified bidder was representing.”

Einstein Letter Sold To Forbes

Szilard kept the unsent version of the letter, which his wife Gertrud (Trude) inherited after his death in 1964. It passed to her heir in 1981, who eventually sold it at auction at Christie’s in December 1986 for $220,000. The winning bidder was millionaire publisher and collector Malcolm Forbes.

A photograph of Einstein's handwritten letter to Szilard that accompanied the two signed copies of the letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Einstein signed both versions and mailed them back to Szilard with a handwritten letter (in German), saying, in part, “I have just signed both letters but would give preference to the more detailed one.” Honoring Einstein’s wishes, Szilard mailed the longer version to Alexander Sachs.

But back Einstein’s letter—Leo Szilard actually typed out two versions based on Einstein’s dictated words, one 25 lines long, the other 45 lines long. Szilard mailed both versions to Einstein for his approval, letting him choose which one he preferred.

A color horizontal bar graph showing total expenditures in 1945 dollars for the Manhattan Project broken down by major facilities (Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos) and function (special operating materials, research and development, government overhead, and heavy water plants).

A striking 63% of that money was spent at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, producing highly enriched uranium (uranium-235), with 21% at Hanford, Washington, making plutonium-239, 5% for special operating materials, 4% at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to design and test the first atomic bombs, and 4% for other R&D.

A copy of an official Manhattan Project bar chart showing actual monthly expenditures from 1943 through 1946 (in millions of dollars). Peak spending was in July 1944 at approximately $111 million (then-year dollars). A note at the bottom says, "Total expenditure as of 31 Dec. 1942 was 16 millions."

The Manhattan Project cost nearly $1.9 billion in 1945 dollars through the end of 1945 (it continued building and testing atomic bombs for another year before the new civilian Atomic Energy Commission took over in January 1947). In inflation-adjusted 2025 dollars, that's more than $40 billion.

A map of the continental United States (along with parts of Canada and Mexico) showing the locations and names of all the US and Canadian facilities that contributed to the Manhattan Project.

Nevertheless, it remains remarkable the Manhattan Project needed only 35 months (August 1942 to July 1945) _during_ a world war to build from scratch all the huge facilities and acquire and manufacture all the materials to successfully design, test, assemble, and use multiple atomic bombs.

A black and white photograph of the members of the Office of Scientific Research and Development posing in front of a large stone fireplace during a meeting at the Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, California, in September 1942. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was not a member but was advising the OSRD’s S-1 Executive Committee, is second from the left.

The Office of Scientific Research and Development was established in June 1941 to remedy that (subsuming the Uranium Committee and the NDRC in the process). The Manhattan Engineer District was only established in August 1942, and site selection (at Oak Ridge, Tennessee) began the following month.

A black and white photograph showing (left to right) Dana Mitchell, Enrico Fermi, and John Dunning standing in front of the cyclotron at Columbia University in New York City.

The first research into nuclear fission and a nuclear reactor—by Enrico Fermi at Columbia University—was funded in February 1940. The National Defense Research Committee was established in June 1940, but its budget was restricted because its work was not considered a top priority.

That evening, the Advisory Committee on Uranium, led by Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, Director of the US Bureau of Standards, was established at the National Research Council. It met for the first time on October 21, and issued a report on November 1, 1939, recommending the US purchase uranium oxide for R&D.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Roosevelt appeared distracted and Sachs had difficulty conveying the urgency of Einstein’s message. But at another meeting the following morning he was more successful, and Roosevelt directed his secretary, Brigadier General Edwin M. Watson, to take action.

Then, on September 1, Hitler invaded Poland and Roosevelt became preoccupied with the war in Europe. Sachs finally met with Roosevelt on October 11, bringing along not only the two-page typed letter but scientific reports and papers provided by Szilard.

On August 15, Szilard mailed the letter to prominent economist Alexander Sachs, who had formerly worked for Roosevelt, after trying and failing (at Sach’s suggestion) to get Charles Lindbergh to personally deliver the letter to the president. But Sachs did not immediately reach out to Roosevelt.

A bomb without Einstein? How important was Albert Einstein's work or personal intervention to the making of the atomic bomb? Not as important as most people think.

Einstein’s letter did not lead the immediate creation of the Manhattan Project. In fact, it didn’t reach President Roosevelt for more than two months.

In 2014, @wellerstein.bsky.social thoughtfully explored how we discuss and frame Einstein’s very modest role in the creation of the atomic bomb.

A photograph of the cover of the March 10, 1947, issue of Newsweek, featuring a large color photograph of Einstein sitting in a striped upholstered armchair in front of a filled bookcase in his office while holding a pipe, with the caption, “Einstein: Godfather of the Atomic Age.”

A photograph of the first two pages of the Einstein cover story, featuring four small black and white photographs of Einstein at various stages in his life.

In early 1947—looking back on this period and his actions—Einstein told Newsweek, “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing for the bomb.” In fact, Einstein never worked in any capacity for the Manhattan Project—or on any nuclear weapons.