LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - AUGUST 20, 2023 by Lynne Belluscio I recently saw the movie “Oppenheimer.” I realize that it is a story based on his rather unusual life and the Manhattan Project. The story line is difficult to follow, and I was lucky that I had watched a PBS documentary on him earlier. I know that if I see the movie again, I will pay more attention to the three scenes with Albert Einstein. The story of the Manhattan Project surprisingly has a connection to LeRoy and Lapp Insulator Company. I discovered this several years ago when I put together an exhibit about Lapp Insulator. Midst all the porcelain insulators, big and small, there was an empty space which I had hoped would have a piece of square extruded, clay hollow tubing. It was manufactured by Lapp to make “heavy water” which was essential in the development of the atomic bomb. Lapp was awarded the ArmyNavy E for its work during World War II and the company proudly flew the Army-Navy flag outside the main entrance. Lapp Insulator’s award was for the production of the square tubing. They did not produce heavy water. They manufactured the coils which were used to process the heavy water. In the collection of the Historical Society are newspaper clippings and a program from the dinner when the award was presented. Small pins were given to employees. An interesting sidenote, by the middle of 1943, the government, in order to cut down on expenses, eliminated the lavish dinners. Inorder tomanufacture anatomic bomb, it was necessary to collect tons of heavy water. On the eve of WW II, scientists in both Germany and Great Britain knew that heavy water could be used to make nuclear weapons. In 1934, the Norsk Hydro plant in Norway, began producing heavy water. It was the first country with a commercial heavywater plant. When the Nazis invaded Norway in 1940, they immediately took control of the Norsk Hydro plant. In the United States, the government was aware of what was going on in Norway and they were afraid of what the Nazis were doing, so they set up the Manhattan Project, (so named because the first work was done in New York City). It began in 1939, in an attempt to beat the Germans to an atomic bomb. Robert Oppenheimer was put in charge of the program in Las Alamos, New Mexico. Eventually, in the United States, 130,000 people were employed to develop an atomic bomb. Critical to the development of the early bomb, was the production of heavy water. Ordinary water, H2O, has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Heavy water, D2O called deuterium, has one atom of oxygen and an atom of a hydrogen isotope with double the mass of ordinary hydrogen. In the 1940s, the production of an atomic bomb required tons of heavy water. The production of heavy water required special coils. Several companies, including Lapp, were contracted to make these coils, but Lapp was the only company that could manufacture the coils on time. When I first wrote about the heavy water coils, Mack Booten, who worked at Lapp, remembered taking the clay coils from the extruding machine and wrapping them inside a barrel. He said that the broken ones were thrown outside, along the creek. That area was cleaned up, and as far as I know, there are no pieces of the coils around. So, there were no coils in the exhibit. The Manhattan Project needed tons of heavy water and heavy water constitutes only 1 part in 4,500. The Lapp coils were used in this process. By 1944, the Manhattan project had 20 tons of heavy water. In its natural state, common uranium (U-238) can’t generate a destructive nuclear explosion. It has to be enriched. Heavy water is used to make weapon-grade Plutonium (Pu-239). In a heavy water nuclear reactor, neutrons bombard U-238. The U-238 atoms absorb an additional neutron and are transformed into Pu-239. And this was what Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists were doing in Los Alamos working on the Manhattan Project. Initially they were trying to beat the Nazis and there was concern that the Russians would discover the Nazi research. But then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 and their concern changed direction again. If you go to see Oppenheimer, it helps to have a timeline in your head. The history is probably more important that the science, but it is the science that scares you into knowing how important it is to continue peace talks. Heavy Water
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