News Archive

December 12th, 2025 The tenth anniversary of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park was on November 15, 2025. The creation of the park benefited from a great collaboration of organizations and government officials. Above, Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz shakes hands with Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell. This issue provides an update on the Manhattan Project […]

December 1, 2022 Newsletter This issue recognizes the 80th anniversary of the Chicago Pile-I. Built in a squash court at the University of Chicago, this experimental “pile” was used to demonstrate the world’s first controlled nuclear reaction on December 2, 1942. Thanks to our many generous donors, the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF) and the National Museum […]

July 16, 2021 Seventy-six years ago on Monday, July 16, 1945, the efforts of the Manhattan Project dramatically came to fruition. The world’s first nuclear device, the “Gadget,” was successfully detonated in the New Mexico desert. With the “light of a thousand suns,” the nuclear era began. This issue will explore the unknown risks posed by […]

Plans for building the K-25 History Center are moving forward. In December 2013, the Department of Energy completed its demolition of the historic K-25 gaseous diffusion plant, once the largest roofed building in the world.  In an August 2012 “memorandum of agreement” with preservationists and other parties, DOE promised to “mitigate” the demolition of the […]

On July 13, the East Tennessee Preservation Alliance (ETPA), the Department of Energy (DOE) in Oak Ridge, and Dover Development received the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation Chairman’s Award for Achievement in Historic Preservation for their efforts to preserve and restore the historic Alexander Inn in Oak Ridge.  Built to accommodate visiting dignitaries during the […]

Artist Jim Sanborn spent ten years investigating the Manhattan Project and collecting artifacts from the Black Hole in Los Alamos and many other sources to create a magnificent exhibit called “Atomic Time.” The exhibition opened in 2003 in Washington, DC at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. As the catalogue noted, the exhibition is “pure science, […]

Good news from Oak Ridge: the Alexander Guest House has been restored to its former glory. During the Manhattan Project, leaders such as General Leslie R. Groves, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson stayed at the historic inn. After the war, it was a community landmark. But it hadn’t been used since […]

In December 2013, the Department of Energy completed its demolition of the historic K-25 gaseous diffusion plant, once the largest roofed building in the world. In an August 2012 “memorandum of agreement” with preservationists and other parties, DOE promised to “mitigate” the demolition of the building by creating a history center, building a viewing tower […]

In 1937, Westinghouse Company built an atom smasher on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, PA. The atom smasher stood 65 feet or five stories high. It was the first industrial particle accelerator ever built. According to Physics Central, “Its unusual bulb shape is because it is an old Van de Graaff style electrostatic accelerator. The steel dome […]

In 2012, Berkeley health physicist Phil Broughton stopped by the office of the Atomic Heritage Foundation and relayed some exciting news: he had discovered a tiny plutonium sample at Berkeley, which he believed to be one of Seaborg’s first samples. In 1942, Chicago chemists Burris Cunningham and Lewis Werner purified and extracted plutonium from uranium […]