Trinity Atomic Web Site
Nuclear Weapons: History, Technology, and Consequences in Historic Documents, Photos, and Videos
Trinity Site: 1945-1995
A National Historic Landmark
White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico
Contents:
- Radiation at Trinity Site
- How to Get to Trinity Site
- Trinity Site National Historic Landmark
- The Manhattan Project
- The Theory
- Building a test site
- Jumbo
- Bomb Assembly
- The test
- After the explosion
- It's the Schmidt house
- Afterwards
- White Sands Missile Range
- Reading List
"The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun."Brig. Gen. Thomas Farrell
The Manhattan Project
The story of Trinity Site begins with the formation of the Manhattan Project in June 1942. The project was given overall responsibility of designing and building an atomic bomb. At the time it was a race to beat the Germans who, according to intelligence reports, were building their own atomic bomb.
Under the Manhattan Project three large facilities were constructed. At Oak Ridge, Tenn., huge gas diffusion and electromagnetic process plants were built to separate uranium 235 from its more common form, uranium 238. Hanford, Wash. became the home for nuclear reactors which produced a new element called plutonium. Both uranium 235 and plutonium are fissionable and can be used to produce an atomic explosion.
Los Alamos was established in northern New Mexico to design and build the bomb. At Los Alamos many of the greatest scientific minds of the day labored over the theory and actual construction of the device. The group was led by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer who is credited with being the driving force behind building a workable bomb by the end of the war.
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