Manhattan Project National Historical Park

energy.gov

16 points·Oatseller··3 comments

"Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico"

They couldn't get access to the original site at the University of Chicago and Soldier Field, of course.

It's interesting that nuclear weapons have been re-invented about ten times in various nations around the world, sometimes just with public information and sometimes with American materials and instructions. Still, the original Manhattan Project is the fastest and cheapest of all the successful efforts to build a bomb. That's the value of hiring the best people in the world in your field.

There isn't really much to see at UofC, and you can go to a monument at the site now.

Most of the sites in the secret cities are decaying, cut off to the public or at extremely limited access, and the goal of the park is to preserve and help open them up. The graphite reactor (X-10) in Oak Ridge, for example, is a fairly tourist friendly site (one of the pics on the site), but it is right on the campus of ORNL, and it requires access to the lab or a rare tour to actually visit it. Hopefully the park can get security right and get the funds in place for frequent visits.