Last updated: August 3, 2023
Lesson Plan
Transportation and the Manhattan Project at Hanford, Washington
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- Grade Level:
- Lower Elementary: Pre-Kindergarten through Second Grade
- Subject:
- Social Studies
- Lesson Duration:
- 60 Minutes
- Thinking Skills:
- Remembering: Recalling or recognizing information ideas, and principles. Understanding: Understand the main idea of material heard, viewed, or read. Interpret or summarize the ideas in own words. Creating: Bring together parts (elements, compounds) of knowledge to form a whole and build relationships for NEW situations.
Essential Question
What was the global scale of transporting materials to and from Hanford during the Manhattan Project?
Objective
To understand the transportation methods and infrastructure needed to transport materials and products for the Manhattan Project, specific to work at Hanford.
Background
The Manhattan Project plutonium production story begins at the Shinkolobwe mine in present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as the Belgian Congo during World War II. Miners extracted some of the world’s richest uranium ore from this mine and shipped it to Canada for refining. After refining, the ore arrived at one of several plants in the United States that processed the uranium ore into pure uranium metal and shaped the uranium into billets. Workers loaded the billets onto railcars and shipped the billets to Hanford where they arrived at the fuel fabrication site, also known as the 300 Area. Here, machines milled the uranium billets into cylinders and sealed the uranium cylinders in aluminum jackets creating fuel slugs for the nuclear reactors.
Workers drove the fuel slugs across the Hanford Site to the B Reactor and its two siblings, D and F reactors, for irradiation. After irradiation in a nuclear reactor, workers carefully loaded the highly radioactive fuel slugs into shielded, water-filled casks on train cars for transportation to the T Plant. At T Plant, the fuel went through a series of complex chemical process to separate plutonium from uranium and other radioactive byproducts.
When a sufficient amount of plutonium had been produced, it was carefully and secretly shipped to the Manhattan Project site at Los Alamos, New Mexico. There, scientists, engineers, and craft workers designed and built the core of the Trinity Test device and the Fat Man atomic bomb using Hanford’s plutonium. The Trinity Test device was successfully detonated in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. A few weeks later, on August 6, the Little Boy bomb, as it was called, which was built from Oak Ridge uranium, was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. And then, on August 9, 1945, Hanford plutonium exploded in the Fat Man bomb over the city of Nagasaki, Japan. This was the second bomb used on human populations and, so far, the last.
Preparation
- Prepare supplies:
- Print uranium ore picture (or have digitally ready)
- Print location pictures, laminate them, and attach lanyards/ string to hang around neck
- Print modes of transportation pictures, laminate them, and glue hooks (two opened paperclips work well) to back so it can hang and slide on the string
- 3 pieces of string labeled, with loops for children to hold
- String #1: loop, 5 feet of string, loop
- String #2: loop, 1 foot of string, loop, 3 feet of string, loop, 6.5 feet of string, loop, 1.5 feet of string, loop
- String #3: loop, 6 feet of string, loop, 14 feet of string, loop
- World map
- 6 markers/stickers for map
- Have an open space
Materials
Sample Script for the Transportation and the Manhattan Project lesson.
Photo of uranium ore.
Photos of the locations.
Photos of the modes of transportation.
Download Modes of Transportation
Lesson Hook/Preview
Watch the Hanford Made video (15 minutes).
Procedure
- Prepare supplies and digital technology.
- Introduce and explain lesson.
- Play Hanford Made video.
- Facilitate lesson.
Enrichment Activities
- To connect with music, talk about how the railroads at Hanford needed to be built and sing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad."
- Further discussion could include colonization in Africa.