Word: plutonium
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...imbedding small bits of uranium in a "moderator"-a substance which would slow the speed of the neutrons but not absorb them. The Germans may have tried heavy water for this job. The Manhattan District men decided on graphite which was easier to get. If they could produce plutonium at an orderly controlled rate, they would have a charge for the bomb that would change the world...
...Pilot Plants. So far nearly all the work had been on the level of theory. No chain reaction had been achieved; no appreciable quantity of U-235 had been isolated; no plutonium had been produced. But on June 17, 1942, the various committees concerned sent their report to the President: let's make plutonium as well...
Squash Court Pile. Production of plutonium was probably no more important, but vastly more dramatic. On a squash court under the stands of University of Chicago's football field, a strange apparatus took form. It was an oblate spheroid (doorknob shape), built up of graphite bricks with lumps of uranium or uranium oxide imbedded in their corners. This was the world's first chain reaction "pile"-a uranium "lattice" and a graphite "moderator." If it worked according to Dr. Fermi's theories, it would produce the first chain reaction ever set up on earth...
This momentous experiment-the very first chain reaction-marked the beginning of the Atomic Age. The pile was successful. Long before the queasy process had been reduced to an orderly procedure, a gigantic, full-sized plutonium plant had been started at Hanford on the desert near Yakima, Wash. Advantages of the unattractive site: isolation, a good supply of Grand Coulee power and the Columbia River which would carry away the enormous heat generated in the piles...
Energy & Poisons. Besides plutonium, the Hanford plant produced two frightening by-product effects. The water which cooled the piles carried off enough energy, derived from the chain reaction, to heat the Columbia River appreciably. No definite figures have been released, but the hints in Dr. Smyth's report are portentous. Some relative of the uranium pile may still prove a power source great enough to run all the world's machines...