Oral Histories

Sam Beall is an American nuclear engineer. During the Manhattan Project, he worked for the DuPont Company at the Chicago Met Lab, Oak Ridge, TN, and Hanford, WA. After the war, he stayed at Oak Ridge and ultimately became head of the Reactor Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In this interview, Beall discusses his involvement with various nuclear reactors at Oak Ridge and recalls his friendship with former ORNL director Alvin Weinberg. He also describes his childhood in Richland, Georgia.

Dr. Raymond Grills was a DuPont physical chemist who worked at the University of Chicago Met Lab and later at Hanford during the Manhattan Project. While at Hanford, he was one of two men who invented the canning process that sealed uranium slugs for use in Hanford’s water-cooled nuclear reactors. In this interview, he describes the challenges and pressures he and his colleagues had to overcome, and explains why the canning had to be designed perfectly. He also describes humorous encounters with a machinist and a railroad porter while transporting uranium slugs.

Jack Miller came to Richland, Washington as an employee of Remington Arms, a munitions manufacturer operated by the DuPont Company. In 1944, he was assigned to work in the control room at Hanford’s B Reactor and was eventually promoted to the rank of Chief Reactor Operator. His position required both confidence and an acute attention to detail, as his work was often measured in tenths of inches. Over the course of his time at Hanford, Miller became intimately acquainted with the reactor and its inner workings. He shares this knowledge in his interview, specifically focusing the design and engineering of the reactor itself, the water cooling system, and the transportation process by which irradiated rods were moved for plutonium extraction. He explains the elaborate safety procedures reactor operators and others working close to the B Reactor underwent to avoid radiation.

Dewitt “Bill” Bailey, originally from New Albany, Mississippi, was working at an Alabama shipyard when he heard of the job opportunities in Hanford. At Hanford he worked as a special material handler for DuPont, and experienced the regime of intense compartmentalization and secrecy. In this interview, Bailey discusses his life and work at Hanford, as well as the role played by the DuPont Company.