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The Clinton Engineer Works was built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on 59,000 acres
west of Knoxville, to produce purified uranium. Work was already underway on
the Clinton Engineer Works when President Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan
Project. The original plans called for the Clinton Engineer Works to house
approximately 13,000 people in prefabricated housing; however, by the summer of
1943 the estimates had been revised to include 40-45,000 people. By the end of
the war, Oak Ridge was the fifth largest town in Tennessee.
Three production facilities were located in the valleys away from the town. The
Y-12 and the K-25 facilities separated and enriched uranium for use in
plutonium production reactors. The first true plutonium production reactor,
located in the heart of the X-10 facility, began operation in November 1943.
The Clinton Engineer Works supplied uranium for the plutonium production
facilities in Hanford, Washington and for the atomic bomb exploded over
Hiroshima, Japan.
The Clinton Engineer Works was renamed the Oak Ridge National Laboratory after
World War II.
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