P-9 Project

The P-9 Project was the codename given during World War II to the Manhattan Project's heavy water production program. The Cominco operation at Trail, British Columbia, was upgraded to produce heavy water. DuPont built three plants in the United States: at the Morgantown Ordnance Works, near Morgantown, West Virginia; at the Wabash River Ordnance Works, near Dana and Newport, Indiana; and at the Alabama Ordnance Works, near Childersburg and Sylacauga, Alabama. The American plants operated from 1943 until 1945. The Canadian plant at Trail continued in operation until 1956. Three nuclear reactors were built using the heavy water produced by the P-9 Project: Chicago Pile 3 at Argonne, and ZEEP and NRX at the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada.

Origins

Heavy water is a form of water that contains a larger than normal amount of the hydrogen isotope deuterium, also known as heavy hydrogen, rather than the common hydrogen-1 isotope that makes up most of the hydrogen in ordinary water. Deuterium was discovered by Harold Urey in 1931 and he was later able to concentrate it in water.[1] His mentor Gilbert Newton Lewis isolated the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis in 1933.[2]

Although a scientific curiosity from the start, considerable interest in heavy water was aroused in 1939 when Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski suggested that heavy water could be used as a neutron moderator in a nuclear reactor using natural uranium. They carried out experiments on uranium using ordinary water, but had found that the hydrogen atoms absorbed neutrons, thus preventing the desired chain reaction. Heavy water though, was an ideal moderator. The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) put Hugh S. Taylor, a British physicist at Princeton University in charge of heavy water research. Taylor and Urey began looking at means for producing heavy water on an industrial scale. For his plutonium

Trail

Cominco had been involved in heavy water research since 1934, and produced it at its Teck Cominco smelter plant in Trail, British Columbia. On 26 February 1941, the Canadian National Research Council inquired about its ability to produce heavy water. This was followed on 23 July 1941 by letter from Taylor that offered a National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) contract to produce 2000 lb, for which the NDRC was prepared to pay $5 per pound for low-grade and $10 for high-grade heavy water. At the time it was selling for up to $1,130 a pound.

Cominco's president, Selwyn G. Blaylock, was cautious. There might be no post-war demand for heavy water, and the patent on the process was held by Albert Edgar Knowles, so a profit-sharing agreement would be required. In response, Taylor offered up $20,000 for plant modifications.[3][4] There the matter rested until 6 December 1941, when Blaylock had a meeting with the British physicist G. I. Higson, who informed him that Taylor had become discouraged with Cominco, and had decided to find an alternative source of heavy water. Blaylock invited Taylor to visit Trail, which he did from 5 to 8 January 1942. The two soon found common ground. Blaylock agreed to produce heavy water at Trail, and quickly secured approval from the chairman of the board, Sir Edward Beatty. A contract was signed on 1 August 1942.

American sites

The Director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., had, in November 1942, recruited DuPont as the prime contractor for the construction of a plutonium production complex. Although DuPont's preferred designs for the nuclear reactors were helium cooled and used graphite as a moderator, DuPont still expressed an interest in using heavy water as a backup, in case the graphite reactor design proved infeasible for some reason. For this purpose, it was estimated that 3 ST of heavy water would be required per month. As the plant at Trail, which was then under construction, could produce 0.5 ST per month, more capacity was required.

Groves therefore authorized DuPont to establish additional heavy water facilities at the Morgantown Ordnance Works, near Morgantown, West Virginia; at the Wabash River Ordnance Works, near Dana and Newport, Indiana; and at the Alabama Ordnance Works, near Childersburg and Sylacauga, Alabama. Although known as Ordnance Works and paid for under Ordnance Department contracts, they were built and operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Locating them at Ordnance plants saved the cost of acquiring land, since it was already owned by the government, and they already had personnel and utilities, including steam generating equipment. The three American plants used a process different from Trail's; heavy water was extracted by distillation, taking advantage of the slightly higher boiling point of heavy water. This was not considered to be an efficient process, but it was known to work and scale to an industrial process, and therefore represented less risk than other proposals. Morgantown, Wabash and Alabama were expected to produce 0.4 ST, 1.2 ST and 0.8 ST respectively of heavy water per month, with a concentration of 99.75%.

Production

The three American plants never achieved the intended production of 4800 lb per month. A series of suggestions for improving production was considered, and the most promising were carried out. The most successful of these was the reconstruction of the first stage towers at Morgantown to reduce leakage, which resulted in a considerable improvement in performance. However, by this time, early 1945, it was decided that production was sufficient, and the expense of doing this at the other plants could not be justified.

The P-9 distillation plant at Alabama was closed in June 1945, that at Wabash in July, and the one at Morgantown in August. The electrolytic finishing plant at Morgantown was closed in September. Intermediate product remaining when the plants were closed was sent to Trail. This resulted in approximately 1600 lb of extra production at Trail. Between February 1944 and August 1945, the electrolytic finishing plant at Morgantown, which finished the product for all three plants, produced an average of 2277 lb per month, for a total of 43253 lb.

The electrolytic finishing plant also processed 3151 lb from heavy water recovered from Germany by the Manhattan Project's Alsos Mission. The average monthly production cost was $72,000 for Morgantown, $154,000 at Alabama and $197,400 at Wabash, for a total of $423,400. Thus, heavy water cost $186 per pound, excluding the $11,967,000 cost of the plants. If this is included, it cost $550 per pound, compared to $111 per pound at Trail.

Intermediate product was shipped from Wabash and Alabama by rail in sealed metal containers. The finished product was shipped by rail from Morgantown via the Monongahela Railway and Trail via the Canadian Pacific Railway to the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Heavy water from Trail was used for