A Biography of Dr. John M. Googin - Y-12 National Security ...

FYI
The major control instrument for all of this was
the p(H) meter reading a grab sample. There were
thermocouple reading controllers on the kilns. The
levels in vessels and tanks could be taken with a dip
stick.
After all this education on security and process,
the first day came to an end with a walking trip to
the warehouse, at the same location as the present
9720-6, with Ed to get the first batch of needed
clothes. The walk was along the railroad siding that
brought tank cars of chemicals to 9202.
There had been considerable discussion along the
way about the immediate objectives of the laboratory
assigned to the Bulk Treatment operation. The
plant needed to produce more and more as the new
production buildings came on line. There was an
expansion of Bulk Treatment underway, but it would
be six months or more before we could finish it and
the need was to make the present plant much more
productive in the mean time.
All of these discussions of the day had led to a
conviction in the new recruit.
On the way back from the warehouse with the
clothes, the conversation turned to the near future
and the new recruit told his new supervision that all
of the evidence on hand to that time indicated to the
new recruit that the immediate goals could be met. It
was suggested that the recruit would be supervising
his present supervisor within the next three months.
FYI 38
Chapter 3: A Y-12 Junior Chemist’s 1944 Production
Year. In the early weeks of 1944, Alpha-1 (9201-
1) in Y-12, was being put on line as the first uranium
isotope separation production process in the world.
It did not really go too well. What had been a field by
a stream in a poor valley a year and half before was
now the center of a major industrial empire. The first
of the buildings using a process, that many were
saying would never work, was being placed in operation
with great difficulty. The crew finally had to
admit that the plant in its “as built” shape would not
work because of electrical problems. It soon became
apparent that much of the equipment connected to
the cooling system for the units and the magnets
would have to be disconnected, and the whole
system systematically cleaned. The contamination in
the systems would not allow the needed high voltages
and stable currents. This was completed in
another month and the building was restarted to
continue in operation successfully until it was shut
down in September 1945, after Hiroshima.
When the author arrived in May 1944, the trauma
of the start-up of the first building was over, and the
subsequent buildings were rapidly coming on line.
For the author, as a process development chemist in
the Bulk Treatment Department in 9202, a problem
that would continue was the processing of the flood
of wash solutions from the Alpha buildings. We had
to use the equipment at hand to recover the uranium
as the pure oxide, and supply it to the Liquid
Phase Department for the formation of the uranium
pentachloride by reaction under pressure with
carbon tetrachloride at elevated temperatures. The
pentachloride went to Sublimation where it was
decomposed and vaporized as the pure tetrachloride
feed for the Calutrons.