Everything about The Dayton Project totally explained
The
Dayton Project was one of several sites involved in the
Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs.
Charles Allen Thomas an executive of the
Monsanto corporation was assigned to develop the
neutron generating devices that triggered the nuclear detonation of the atomic bombs once the critical mass had been "assembled" by the force of conventional explosives.
Thomas established the project in the
Runnymede Playhouse on the grounds of the
Talbott family estate in a wealthy residential section of
Oakwood a suburb of
Dayton, Ohio. The Playhouse was a leisure facility that included a ballroom, indoor squash and tennis courts as well as a stage for community theater. It was located at the intersection of Runnymede Road and Dixon Avenue (latitude 39 degrees, 43 minutes, 29.8 seconds; longitude 84 degrees, 10 minutes, 48.3 seconds). The Talbotts were among the heirs of the
Delco (by then a part of
General Motors) fortune. Before the war, Thomas worked as a chemist for
Delco/
GM and was married to Margaret Talbott. He promised his mother-in-law that he'd return the building to the family intact after the war. He was unable to keep his promise because the building had become contaminated with radioactivity. The facility (also known as Dayton Unit IV) was in use for nuclear work until 1949 when
Mound Laboratories was opened in
Miamisburg, Ohio. The Playhouse was dismantled in 1950 and later buried in
Tennessee.
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The
neutron generator used on the
implosion design (such as the
Fat Man bomb that was dropped on
Nagasaki) was coded named "
Urchin". It was composed of alternating layers of
polonium (Po-210) and
beryllium separated by
gold foil. The initiator, located in the center of the bomb, was carefully designed to ensure that during the implosion of the bomb core, the
polonium and
beryllium mixed. Once the elements mixed,
alpha particles emitted by the
polonium were absorbed by the
beryllium causing it to emit neutrons. The precise timing of the
neutron pulse was necessary to avoid pre-detonation of the bomb which would have resulted in a "fizzle" rather than the desired blast. In modern nuclear weapons a
pulsed neutron emitting tube has replaced
polonium/
beryllium initiators, as polonium-210 has a relatively short half-life and thus would need to be replaced every few months.
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