All language subtitles for The.Half-Life.of.Genius.Physicist.Raemer.Schreiber.2017.WEBRip.x264-ION10

The news of Europe
as it occurs the world is

now awaiting the arrival

in Berlin of German
Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

America
must keep out

of this war the President

the Congress should be

supported in their every
effort to keep us out.

At 9 a.m. this morning
his Majesties Ambassador

in Berlin informed
the German

government a state of war
would exist between the

two countries as from
that hour

Now we are at

war and we are
going to make war

and persevere
in making war

until the other side

has had enough of it.

My great uncle
Raemer Schreiber was born

in 1910, in Yamhill
County, Oregon.

He got up and did chores
early before school

everyday I know he played
with his cousins

he'd go out and build a
campfire for lunch and

play for the

afternoon and then return
just before dinner.

He attended
McMinnville High School

and then on to undergrad
at Linfield College

he did Masters work at
the University of Oregon

and completed a doctorate
in physics at

Purdue University.

He was a teaching
assistant they had to have

a summer job

so Uncle Raemer and Aunt
Marge would come back

to Oregon

where he worked on
my grandfathers farm.

I think it said
of Uncle Raemer to

have an amazing

work ethic for the rest
of his life.

He had opportunity
and a place to come back

too, they put up some
vegetables,

that they could take
back with them for

the school year

and it was a chance
to see family.

My dad and his
farming days in

McMinnville were long
and tedious and tiring

it was certainly pre-
gasoline powered engine

even for the
threshing machine

because when he was ten,
they were threshing

with a steam powered
thresher which had a

belt on it that

looked like it could
wrap up a building

he did not like farming,
and in fact he

thought he was
going to be an electrician

when he was ten

electricity came
to the valley

he spent some
period of time

wiring the houses

it might have been
at Linfield,

but Im inclined

to think it was more
at the University of Oregon

where he got
diverted to physics,

and it was a result
of a professors intervention

and it was a very
fortuitous decision on his

part needless to say.

My mom
decided to come for my

graduation then in
June of '41

we spent several
pleasant weeks together

graduation was
the usual thing

she probably only stayed
two or three weeks because

pop wasn't in good
health at that time.

I think the

physicists that
came of age

in the 1930's and
early 40's, represented

American society as
a whole there were a fair

number including

Scheib, who grew up on
farms, some like

Oppenheimer and

Teller came from well
to do families so I would

say the physicists

represented American
society at the time, you

had a little bit
of everything

all kinds of backgrounds
all kinds of religions.

Schreiber
epitomised physics

and physicist

out of the first era of
modernization they were

exploring new territory.

E is equal
MC squared showed

that very amount
of mass may be

converted into a very
large amount of energy.

If Germany was
going to build an atomic bomb

Heisenberg was going
to be the

Oppenheimer of Germany

Heisenberg
collaborating with others

in Germany and Denmark

elucidated the structure
of complex atoms and

announced the principle of

indeterminacy of
physical measurements.

Heisenberg was an
internationally renowned

physicist he came for a

physics conference and
I know lectured

around the country

Uncle Raemer
took pictures of him and

listened to his
lectures this was

a brilliant man
who had every possibility

of developing the

bomb before we got
it done in America.

One day a knock
at the door and there was

Dr Oppenheimer coming
to see him

he'd remembered
that Raemer had taken

photos in those

lectures at Purdue
and he asked if he

still have the negatives?

We'll Percival
and I put in that summer

and fall getting
the Cyclotron

physically removed into
the new laboratory,

expected to take me
all the next year

with the help of several
graduate students

in doing this.

This was a very
important tool in early

nuclear research a
lot of people who

got started in the
Manhattan Project had

a background in in
some topic

related to particle
accelerator technology of

the day, Cyclotrons
were an important

emerging tool in
the study of nuclear

scattering and
nuclear reactions

he was really in an
ideal place at Purdue

with that Cyclotron,
to jump off

the precipice of the
new Nuclear physics

as it became important

for national security.

We'll that
summer after I did a

couple more things
to wind up my thesis

for publication, which
I never did quite get

wound up for.

For my dads
thesis, my mom typed it,

I know is an act of
intense activity

because it was
submitted 5 hours before

it was due and I
don't know

how many times my
mother typed it?

I would guess at the
end of the year that

she probably knew as
much about what dad did

as dad did because

she had learn
how to spell all that stuff.

Schreib was truly
unique at Los Alamos

during the war
there were 6 or 7

thousand scientists,
technicians but there

really were only 2 or 3

people who could
actually build an atomic

bomb actually
put it together

handle the parts,
Schreib was one

of those people,

Outside of Holloway
and one other person

these are the only guys

who could really build
an atomic bomb Oppenheimer

could conceive it,

Teller could conceive
it, Bethe could conceive

it, but those guys

really couldn't build it
they couldn't put their

hands on it, they
couldnt' assemble it

and so this was the
role that Schreib played

both at Trinity and again

with Fatman on
Tinian later on.

1938 brought
the startling discovery of

fission of the
Uranium Nucleus by

Neutron bombardment,
leading names in this

research carried
on in Germany

were Dr Otto Hahn
and Dr Fritz Strassmann.

The discovery of
nuclear fission was like

the discovery of fire.

It was the
first major form of

energy that does not
depend upon ultimately

the sun so it was a
turning point for

humankind when
that discovery was made

Lise Meitner,
working at Copenhagen soon

demonstrated that
fission of the

nucleus was accompanied
by a release of enormous

amounts of energy.

Time was short the
inevitable entry of the

United States was
accepted one reason

for the decision to
concentrate forces against

the Germans
was recognition

that German scientists
could produce weapons

of great devastation.

Through the
cunard ladies and

gentlemen we interrupt
this broadcast to bring you

an important bulletin
from United Press flash

Washington the White House

announces Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor

stay tuned to WOR for

further developments...

On December
7th, 1941 there

was Pearl Harbor

we'll we weren't sure
what to do, research came

to a grinding halt as
what was there for a

nuclear physicist to do?

Oppenheimer and
a number of others were

recruiting extensively
across the

United States would raid
universities for graduate

talent if
Oppenheimer couldn't

convince say a mentor
directly he would call on

James Conant at Harvard

to intervene on his
behalf and so these

people were released
very often reluctantly

and with some
animosity during the early

part of the war.

There's a
continuing question of

what did I do to
help out the war effort

and periodically
somebody would come in

recruiting for these
other war related

research jobs and
every time I'd be

interviewed I'd
go and tell

Dr Lark-Horovitz about
it and he'd raise my

salary a little
bit and say

"stick it out, don't
want you to go, do

the work here".

Marshall
Holloway showed up

approached Perc
and myself the

deal was worked
out that we were to

work on a secret
project that we

couldn't be told about
until we had agreed that

we would indeed
work on it,

and of course we did
agree our contacts

we're through either

Marshall or through
Hans Bethe who was

our theoretical
consultant

and we then worked
our tails off morning,

afternoon and evening

and most Saturdays, we
did did try to take

Sundays off keep our

wives happy, We'll in
May of '43 we were

invited to come out
to Project Y.

We finally convinced Hans
Bethe that the large

cross-section for the

Deuterium/Tritium
reaction we've been

measuring all summer was

for real and so, we
closed out the

project in September

I well remember
Schreiber coming home

at noon, Paula was a baby

and he sort of
mysteriously, swished me

back to the back
of the house

and then portentously
said what would you think

of going to New Mexico?

All I knew about New
Mexico was the Capital

was Santa Fe and
I had no idea

what sort of a place it
was, I thought it was

all desert,
rattlesnakes and things

like that and actually
it didn't sound to

interesting but this
was wartime and

I said, its alright
with me if you want

to go Ill go

Everybody
was suppose to go and

take whatever vacation
they wanted to take

for the duration and
Marge and Paula got on

the train and went
out to Oregon

Traveling in
wartime is something you

don't attempt unless
you're strong and

I wasn't strong but I was
ignorant, I didn't

realize how difficult
it was going to

be to take a baby and
our luggage, my 70 plus

year old mother
and change trains

and all of the soldiers
traveling everyone

traveling, the
soldiers were

a help they helped me
any number of times

when I got in a bind.

And I had the
car of course, I got to

Santa Fe a day
early and decided to

follow my nose and see
if I couldn't get up here

to Los Alamos.
So I knew the

general direction to
take and I then saw a

rather broad road
that showed

a lot of signs of traffic
turning off there, so I

followed it
came right up

to the guard gate much
to the consternation

of the MPs. I asked

for the gentleman whom
I had been corresponding

with here and they

didn't know what quite
what to do? But finally

an MP got in the car with

me and brought me in
and I found the man

in question

and talked to him a
little bit and he was a

little surprised that

I got in without any
passes being arranged.

But he started to to talk

and I said we finished up
work on the Cyclotron

and he said shhh! Because

the MP was standing
outside and he had to keep

me in his sight,

because MPs didn't know
what Cyclotrons were

or why they were of

interest there. Anyhow,
having accomplished

my mission essentially,

mostly curiosity and I
eventually got out to

Oregon spent about 10
days there

and then after many
farewells Marge and Paula

and I came back same

route via Denver, well
the time the bus hauled

us into Santa Fe it
was pushing on

toward 5 I went roaring
over to 109 East Palace

for our passes
and they said

I hope we can get you
through because they won't

let you in up
there after 6 o'clock

well in the meantime we
hadn't had any lunch,

so on the way to
or from 109 East

Palace I'd seen a bakery
and popped in there

and got some sweet rolls.

We started for Los Alamos
gave Paula a sweet roll

and shortly afterwards

when we were going up the
winding and dusty

and hot mountainside she

preceded to urrp
everything up and

of course Marge had
just put her

in fresh clothes so she
would be pretty for the

arrival, she arrived
in the old

Indian blanket which we
still carry around

in the back of the car.

The announcement
has been made in

Athens tonight that
the Greek armies

in Albania have begun
a general advance along

the middle northern
front the

second big Italian
counterattack has been

thrown back and
the fascists

Athens says have again
suffered heavy loses

and that's all
for tonight, listen to

our regular news
broadcasts and keep

abreast of history
in the making.

I on the next
day. After we arrived,

went over with
Marshall and Perce

and was duly sworn in
given a badge and

taken in to read LA1

which was the primer,
told me for the first time

what was really suppose

to be going on.

Groves wanted it
to be isolated not only

for safety but also
for security he

was kind of obsessed with
security and Oppenheimer

wanted a place where

people could be free
to talk to each other,

The whole system of the
Manhattan Project was

built around no one
knowing more than they

needed to know, to do
the specific part of the

work they were engaged

in Oppenheimer understood
that science does work

that way it works

by people talking to each
other. He remembered that

there was a ranch

school so called, it
was a private school a

prep school for
boys located on a

mesa and that ranch school
with its cluster of

dormitories and cottages

for the teachers and one
big central hall could

serve as a kind
of a starting

point for a laboratory.
Where people could be

all inside the
fence if you

will barbed wire fencing
blocking them away from

the rest of the world,

but they can talk to
each other and as soon as

General Groves saw the

place he knew that was
the right place

Oppenheimer thought
maybe 30 men

would be all they need
they ended up with

about 5000.

Because Los Alamos
was isolated you didn't

have people coming and

going. Your social life
was really the people you

work with or
your neighbors

there was some very
large functions that were

carried out at
Fuller Lodge,

and so you dressed up,
you danced, you had music

you drank, you had

a good time and they were
stress relievers for the

laboratory as well,

because the men in
particular and a few

women were working long

shifts, long weeks and
these parties when they

came along were
a great opportunity

to relieve stress and
to really laugh and have

a good time, if only
for a few hours.

Parties at the lab
during the war were very

segregated, Mom
and dad certainly

partied with the
Oppenheimer's and with the

Jetties and with the
Holloways and all

the people they knew
during the war, it was

always fun I can
tell you that.

You didn't talk
to the people who came to

the parties about
what they did because

you just didn't do that
so you had to have some

other way of
having a conversation

with them which was
certainly more about

family and hobbies and
what did you

read lately, rather than
what do you do for

a living? You didn't ask
that question.

I do remember my
parents stories of the

gatherings at the
lodge and this was

usually the place where
the Saturday night

parties happened.

There were skits
and my dad was a

rascal about
that he was

quite good about writing
up skits that were

good parodies.

We played charades
a lot in the family

and he would get a
absolutely goofy,

and it was so in contrast
to the professional

man of the lab

I totally enjoyed him on
that part of it, he and

mom both got the giggles

and had a great time and
they had some

very good memories

I know of parties.
The women in particular

had a very strong

interrelationship
and bonding.

Your mom and dad weren't
there when

children were born

because Los Alamos is
closed and they weren't

allowed to come in.

So you did develop very
strong relationships

with your neighbors

and those carried over
I know my mom had

lifelong friends
after that

I kind have duality
as far as my recollections

of her her main
position and the way

that she needed to be,
specially early on, she

was Miss Dr RE Schreiber,
so she in a

lot of ways was the
social coordinator and

social aspect of my
grandfather and would

also keep Paula and Sara
in-line Theres very much

the attitude, we
cannot do this because

your father is who he
so especially as he

started working his way
up as head of the

W Division, it was you
need to act befitting

the children of
an Associate Director.

We got a television
soon as they were

available in black
and white, as children

we werent allowed to turn
on the TV and watch it

by ourselves,
it was evening

and it was after dinner
when it was on my

neighbors on the
other hand we could

go over and watch Roy
Rogers and Gene Autry

shows on their
television set.

In the house,
lots of reading, there

was always reading,
Dad would usually get

us up on Sunday morning
with some symphony on his

stereo system that he

had cranked up so we
knew we werent going to

stay in bed any
longer, so culture

was part of the
environment always.

My Grandma
absolutely loved that

every now and then and
I say loved sarcastically

there, that my grandfather
would say so and so is

coming into town
on Friday we

need to host em and this
was Thursday afternoon

late, so now
my grandmother

gets to completely
re-organize the entire

house, figure out
how shes going

to host these people
which sometimes could

have been another
scientist, it could

have been somebody
from Washington, it could

have been
dignitary from another

country, she got to deal
with it sometimes

a little begrudgingly
she had a lot of good

friends, the other wives
would help out and pitch

in as needed and
they all kind of had

a tight knit club, It
was a kind of funny

duality because my
grandmother was kind of

little bit more the rigid
one on the exterior side

because she very
much wanted to make

sure they had an image
where my grandfather at

the same time was much

more laid back and casual
about it was you know,

well this just happens
to be the job

Im doing I'm not somebody
special, it just happens to

be where I've
gotten, heres the

entire hierarchy of
nuclear physics as you

know It today back
then, it was. You know

these are just the people
who are working & they're

working together and so

theyre going to
blow off steam together.

He worked in Omega
he and Perc King with

Enrico Fermi doing the

Water Boiler Experiments
and I still dont know

for sure what the Water
Boiler is?

I've seen it.

New discoveries were
being made everyday

so on a Monday or Tuesday

they would be learning
about it because the

theoreticians
finally figured

this part out and it
was, this is the way we

think it is, lets
go prove it.

It's amazing
that the five of us

didn't seem to think it
particularly odd that

we were being asked to
build something we just

heard of a few days before

So when my Grandpa
first got to Los Alamos one

of the first
projects he was

on was the Water Boiler
Project, code named to not

give away what it really

was but it did have
meaning to it it became

one of the first aqueous

homogeneous reactions
using Uranium.

What we did.
Was to keep adding

Uranium to the
solution as it became

available, so we had the
world's supply of

separated U235
down in Omega, and this

led to certain
complications because it

was a heavily guarded site
you went out

to the woods around
there at your own risk

because there were
MPs stationed

around this fence and
there was at least

one machine gun post.

As it got further
and further along they

finally got to the
point where they were

predicting criticality.

Guessing at
how many grams it would

go critical, I
think we were we

were all within 15 or 20
grams out of some 700.

Fermi took the
controls and almost

on the exact spot
where they predicted

it was going to go
critical, it went critical

I remember my Grandpa
making a

comment on it really kind
of awe inspiring this thing

is living and
breathing on its

own self-sustaining
reaction. Very early on.

Very bleeding edge.

Well there was
always a problem of a

few bugs here and
there we hadnt

realized that the solution
would give off so called

Radiolytic gas, there were

also radioactive products
being carried off, next

thing was to run
a copper tube

up one of the tallest
pine trees there

and discharge
the gas up there

and hope that it would
dissipate, well that

didn't seem to work, as we

found out because we
were running the reactor

and running around with

radiation instruments to
see what was happening

and the
instruments started

going off the scale. So
Fermi and I went outside

as we got closer
to this pipe

that went up the tree the
hotter it got, then we

came back in,
the instruments

still read very high until
we put them down and

walked away from them.

So we found out that
we were contaminated,

our clothes were

contaminated. Fermi said
"well now, that isnt

too bad that's all

short life stuff and
it's soft, but Schreib

you and I better go home

and change our clothes
and take a shower",

so we did, I just hung the

clothes in the closet,
a couple of days later I

got em out took em down

and checked them
and they were alright,

little bit more casual

about that then we are now

They understood
as healthy young men

and a few women that they

would otherwise be out
fighting on the front

lines somewhere that they

were being protected
from the risk of death in

battle in order to perfect

this new weapon of war,
If they had to cut some

corners take a little

more radiation than
might be best for them

that they should go

ahead and do so in the
interests of potentially

shortening the war

and saving lives.

Water Boiler
had two purposes. Uranium

is going to be used
at least one

atomic bomb and that bomb
was Little Boy, and so

if youre going to
use Uranium

or Plutonium in an atomic
bomb you need to know

what is the critical
state is? That

is, how much material
you can amass before it

blows itself apart, and

so the purpose of the
Water Boiler reactors of

which there were three

variations was to find
out the critical mass of

Uranium how much could
be put together.

About June,
the decision was made

that the Water Boiler
should be rebuilt

the first one could
run possibly up to 100

watts if everybody
stayed behind

the wall because we had
no shielding, and about

the same time Marshall and

Charlie and Don Kerst
were reassigned to other

jobs and it was left

up to Perce King and
myself Perce was the

group leader and
I was his deputy we

were to then build this
HYPO high-powered reactor

along with designing
the shielding

and supervising all
of this building

primarily involving
being down there

everyday with old
clothes on and I learned

how to run an
acetylene torch and burn

out pieces of lead brick
to fit around control

rods and that
sort of thing.

Enrico Fermi was
a very important figure

in physics I think the
main reason was

because he was equally
adept as a theoretician

and an experimentalist

he was competent with
the theory of nuclear

scattering and
nuclear reactions

and did a lot to develop
the ideas behind how

we understand the
nucleus and

he was also phenomenal
as an experimentalist.

Fermi would
come down in the

afternoons he was busy
mornings with the more

serious affairs of bomb
design, but then the

HYPO was his play thing
so he would come down

after lunch, call us
in all around and say

"what do we do today?"

And then he would

answer his own question
because he knew exactly

what he wanted to do,
but then we

would all go out and
work in the shop if there

was something to be
built and then we would

jointly operate the
experiment It was a very

meaningful learning
process for me

because he had almost
phenomenal intuition for

what things ought
to be. If the answers

didnt come up the way
he thought they should be

he would patiently
go back and

repeat the experiment
and he was usually

right It was very

interesting to work
with him.

There was a
terrible and almost

devastating discovery made
about Plutonium.

Originally the
laboratory was going to

build one type of an
atomic bomb what

we know as Little Boy
and it was going to shoot

one piece of Uranium
at a second

piece or was going to
shoot one piece of

Plutonium at a second
piece of Plutonium

In the spring
of 1944 all the Plutonium

that had been used
in measurements

in Los Alamos up to that
time had come from an

linear accelerator,
It was very

different from the
production Plutonium that

began flowing from
Hanford Washington

where Plutonium in large
amounts comparatively

speaking meaning grams

rather than micrograms
was bombarded heavily

inside of a reactor
with neutrons

when that happens
you not only make the

kind of Plutonium
they wanted which

was PU-239, but also
PU-240, another isotope

241, yet another
isotope 242

yet another isotope
were so intensely

fissionable that they
tended to pre-detonate

the gun-bomb that was
designed to handle the

Plutonium would
have fired

one piece up the barrel
of the cannon but it

would have actually
melted down

this was a disaster,
Los Alamos was thinking

they would only
have one bomb

by the end of the war
and that had not been

what their intention
had been they

spent the summer of
1944, everybody in the

lab who was working
on the Plutonium

bomb was busy trying
to think of alternatives,

and what they came up
with an idea for

a whole new way of
detonating fissionable

materials that they
called implosion. It

Involved having a sphere
of the Plutonium at the

center of a large
spherical weapon

surrounded by some
Uranium tamper to hold

it together a little
longer and then

around that would
be big blocks of

high-explosive.

To use high-
explosives in such a

precision manner
because you would

have to crush this
ball of Plutonium

symmetrically was
a very iffy thing

high-explosives have
been used a little bit

to sculpt Mount
Rushmore but

that was about the
extent of the knowledge

of using high-explosives,

These separate
blocks would bring the

converging shock
wave down to fit a

little ball of Plutonium
in the middle and

actually squeeze
it to twice its previous

density, making it
supercritical and setting

off a chain
reaction in the

Plutonium so fast, that
it didnt have time to

pre-detonate so everything

in the lab, the Uranium
bomb was basically done,

everybody in the
lab turned to

dealing with this new
problem of inventing

this new way of detonating

nuclear weapons.

Trinity first and
foremost was simply going

to see if high-
explosives could be

used to crush a
ball of Plutonium.

By February '45
the design for Fat Man

was pretty much
complete, but there

was still a lot of anxiety
about not only would

it work but how well
would it work

and so there was a search
for one across the country

for a site to
detonate what

could be a very large bomb
and it was decided to go

to the Jornada Del Muerto

in southern New Mexico.

In March of
1945, the plans for the

bomb test at Trinity
and the overseas operation

had been firmed up and
Marshall asked me if I

would join him in
working under

Bob Bacher for
the field tests.

If youre going
to invent an entirely

new way to detonate
a weapon especially

when its complicated
as pieces of high-

explosive that are
shaping the charge

in an entirely different
direction and so forth,

youre probably
going to have to

test this system and of
course it was tested in

various ways
without a nuclear

core, but ultimately the
only test that was going

to satisfy everyone
was a test at full-yield.

We'll the
job was to get all the

procedures and the
instrumentation, the

tools and so

on worked out for the
Alamogordo test the

Trinity test and to set
up identical kits to ship

overseas they had to
go out by ship to

the Marianas Islands
Tinian and there

was a very tight time
scale for that so we had

top priority all over
the place and my

djob in particular was to
assemble these kits and

check out the
tools and then

we went on with the
preparations for

the Trinity test.

No one was quite
sure how much explosion

you get out of this
device and there was

even a betting pool that
was put together by the

scientists ranging
from zero to blows

up the world, and
everybody took a bet

and put in some money

You would choose a
yield. In kilotons of what

you thought the blast
might be and

the winner was a man by
the name of Isidore Rabi

II Rabi he was a

Nobelist actually in
physics from Columbia

and he won not because

he calculated anything but
he got to Trinity late

the train was delayed

at Lamy, and he took
the last number in the

betting pool and
his number

was the closest to
the actual yield.

No one has ever
seen such a thing before

one of the physicists
who was there

I interviewed Philip
Morrison said I was 10

miles away and it
was as if someone

had opened the door on an
oven, thats how much

heat was coming off the

fireball even
that far away.

Teller put on
sunscreen, sun lotion to

protect against the
sunburn and in fact Fermi

anticipating the wind
tore up small pieces of

paper so when
the blast wave

or the wind passed by
him he measured the

lateral dispersion
of the paper.

So they built a
tower about a hundred feet

high out of steel and
they put a shot cab as

they came to be called
a little cabin up on top

where the bomb could
be could sit and

all the wiring and all
the testing & everything

else could be run off
from that tower in every

direction, out to bunkers
that were built in

the desert. Out farther
to an old ranch that

was used as an assembly
site for the weapon.

My grandfather was
actually back at the

McDonald ranch house
which is where they

did all the early assembly
theres a few pictures

of him around.

The shot was
getting ready storms are

rolling in that night,
and theyre afraid

of electricity

setting off the device,
they actually left a poor

guy up there to
monitor the entire device

in the electrical storm,
as my grandpa put it he

wasnt quite sure
what he was supposed

to do because lightning
struck it he wasnt going

to do anything,
but they wanted

somebody up there
monitoring device anyway.

General Groves
running around insisting

that the weather change
he was after all a

General in the Army and
he ordered the weather

to change dammit the

weather should change
and it did!

My grandpa had my
grandma pack lunches for

him and said OK
were going to run some

more tests, didn't say
anything beyond that my

grandma that point
in time also knew

not to ask because
my grandpa wasn't

going to say.

Oppenheimer at
that point down to 115

pounds, this man
of six feet

one inches in height,
from a bout of Chickenpox

over the last two
weeks, leaning against the

"I must stay conscious,

I must stay conscious",
worried that his weapon

wouldn't work, they pushed
the button and it worked.

At the five
minute warning we were

supposed to lie down,
and we had to keep

our heads covered turned
away from the blast,

and the light of course
that was the longest

five-minutes I ever went
through in my life, we

could see some eleven
miles away where the

tower was the light that
was on top of the tower

just a little tiny
candle flame essentially,

and then

all of a sudden the whole
world was lighted up very

brilliantly, I had some
welders goggles which

I put on and turned to
look at the blast and

the fireball had faded
enough that the welders

goggles we're too faint,
so I snatched them off

and then it was too
bright for my eyes

didn't blind me

accept momentarily as
a bright light would, and

then after long time
why here came the

sound of the bomb itself,
which was more concussion

than any noise
and wasn't half

as impressive as the
light, but we certainly

knew something
had happened.

A lot of people
in town actually knew

about it, not necessarily
exactly what was

going to happen

some of the scientists
and told her wives okay

on this such a date,
this time roughly, you

might want to go over
here and look this

direction, we'll that's
wasn't my grandpa's style.

And we came
home later that day of

course we were forbidden
to tell anyone what had

happened except by the
time we got back here,

everybody at the site
practically including

the wives knew
something had happened.

The night that the
test went off my grandma

was sleeping soundly
because she wasn't

told to go out, and all
her neighbors, everyone

else up on a
mountain looking

the correct direction
and the next day through

the wives clubs & whatnot

hear chatter of did you
see this did you see that?

And my grandma was
a little at a time,

perturbed to my grandpa of
"why didn't you tell me?"

If it was secret
he kept it

secret and thats the way
it was, don't

bother asking.

Trinity while it
was a big deal and a

consumed a lot of
time and energy, it came

and went quickly, and the
people at the laboratory

had to move on because the

bigger mission was
to build the combat bombs.

Admiral
Nimitz recently pointed

out at Okinawa that the
Pacific forces welcome

the help of United
States airmen employed

in Europe, they know
it will require months to

shift Yank power
across the Atlantic.

The materials for
the Uranium core for the

Little Boy bomb was
delivered by ship,

Groves did not want to
lose these cores so he

preferred to deliver
them by ship thinking

that a plane would be
a riskier way to carry

these billion dollar
pieces of metal to this

little island where they
were going to be

assembled into the
weapon. But there really

wasn't time with the Pu
core, it was delivered

just a couple days before
it was actually used and

therefore had to be
delivered by plane and

Schreib was the one
who carried the thing out.

I was picked
for that job by a flip

of a quarter,
Boyce McDaniel and

I we're both logical
candidates for the

position Marshall
wasn't willing to make

the choice and either was
Bob Bacher, so we finally

flipped a coin and I won.

Tinian is one
of the islands in the

Marianas group in
the central Pacific

very hot, very humid,
lots of jungle, it was

a big air base
being used by

the 20th Air Force
to bomb Japan.

Ordered enough
GI clothes to wear out

there because we
went out as pseudo

officers civilians
working with the military.

Combat troops
are very quick to point

out people who who
don't fight and so

for people like Schreiber
and others who were

there they were
seen as a

special class of citizen
they were getting some

special treatment
but worst of all

they weren't really
fighting, and so people

really did
wonder what their

value was to
the war effort.

Some security
officers came by the house

with a GI car
waited while I told

Marge goodbye and off
we went driving to

Albuquerque, the
convoy included

the core for the bomb,
and I was the quote

technical courier
for the bomb we

drove to Albuquerque
and got on the train the

three of us together
with the

little case that carried
the core got out to

Oakland and met
with the automobiles

and taken to the base
where I was told to go

into the ditching
briefing where

you were told what you
were supposed to do if

the plane had to
go down and I

was right in the middle
of it when somebody tapped

me on the shoulder
and said come on we're

going, so we got on
the airplane and

we started out.

He stuck the
core in the back of plane

and went up front
with the crew which

evidently made the crew
rather nervous asked him

to go back and
strap it down

back there in case it
rolled around, it

would not have
done anything it was

subcritical,
but but he did.

I was met by
the usual crew of MP's we

had our Quonset
which was air

conditioned for our
workshop and this was

two or three
miles away from

camp toward the airfield
and that was in another

heavily guarded compound,

we'll it was nice to have
air conditioning in fact

we became quite
popular with the

rest of the crew that
was out there Los Alamos

because I think there

were only two such places
and the other one had

the high-explosives
in it so people

weren't quite as happy
sitting there as they

were in our cozy quarters.
We'll the first

operation was Little
Boy the gun type assembly

and I had nothing
to do with

that work, there was a
whole separate crew which

took care of
putting that one

together. The plane took
off alright and the drop

was made on
Hiroshima, we were

so remote from the
explosion

that it was a little hard
to realize the tragic

loss of life which
actually occurred, one of

the greatest damages
was due to the

fact that the city was
just built out of paper

and bamboo and the intense

heat from the bomb started
a firestorm which

swept across the city.

Most of the
damage from atomic bombs

about 95+ percent
comes from

explosive force, when
they were looking at

where to drop
an atomic bomb and

then how to drop an
atomic bomb one of

the issues became
at what altitude

and so ideally to maximize
he destructive portion

of the atomic bomb

you would detonate it
at some number feet above

ground in this
case it was about

1800 feet plus or minus
100 feet, it also helps

to minimize the
amount of radiation

and amount of residual
radiation that you get,

so if you explode
something close to

the ground, and the
explosion and entrains

dirt, steel, concrete,
whatever, it can irradiate

some of those materials
and make them radioactive

and so you would have an

environmental wasteland
if you will and so one of

the benefits and
its a marginal

benefit I think is that
if you detonate an a

atomic bomb at altitude
you don't get the

environmental damage you
would if it were detonated

closer to the
to the ground.

Then we waited
to see if anything would

happen, I believe thats
when the ultimatum

was sent out for Japan
to surrender in fact there

had been
surrender leaflets

dropped, while nothing did
happen and so on August

9th Fatman was dropped and

we had gone to work
assembling our part of

the bomb, that is
the core and capsule

that fitted into
the high-explosives.

A fairly
complicated process, you

have a little half-piece
of the Plutonium Core

and the little initiator

thats put very
carefully in the hole in

the middle, and the
next piece of Plutonium

on top, then the tamper
of Uranium which is in

several pieces, and
you're working down

inside this huge explosive
lens system which is about

4 or 5 feet in diameter

with these huge blocks of
waxy high-explosive

around it, and you're
reaching over down into it

hooking things together
putting pieces in,

someone who
assembled the weapon.

It might have been
Schreiber I don't recall

remembered that when the

thing was supposedly
finished he noticed that

some of the wires
were reversed

and stayed up all night
reversing them back the

way they were
supposed to be

or the thing might not
have worked at all, and

it was General Groves
horror that the

bomb might not work, the
material would land on the

ground and the
Japanese would sweep

it all up and use it to
make a bomb themselves,

not a very likely scenario
but General Groves

worried a lot about making
sure these things

actually worked
when and how

they were supposed to work.

This plane
had a target which was

obscured by clouds and
they picked Nagasaki as a

secondary target we're
a little low on gas when

they dropped the
bomb they made it

back to Iwo Jima refueled
there and then returned

back to Tinian
later that afternoon

surrender was finally
arranged and we thought

we thought we
would of come home,

generals decided that
we would have to stay

there until
Japan was occupied

so we did stay there
until first week in

September and we
finally given orders

to return home, and they
were busily making another

core back here in Los

Alamos and it could
have delivered out there

if there had been any
hanky-panky

about a fake surrender.

This was not only
the blockade, but it was

the invasion force,
almost every single ship

was a landing craft
landing ship there was

thousands upon
thousands of

people that were getting
ready to invade, he knew

his job was to stop
this, the very

specific action that he's
helping out with has to

work, they wanted
to end the war

and as quickly
as they could.

Harold Agnew who
helped build atomic bomb,

flew the Hiroshima mission

and later became a
director here Los Alamos

says that the hospital

facilities being
built on Tinian

and Saipan were massive,
they were anticipating

casualties far beyond
what we had seen and

so had we invaded Japan
rather than drop the

atomic bombs there would

have been a lot of deaths
on both sides and it

would have been
a horrific scene

with no good
outcome for anybody.

One of the
things which I've always

remembered when people
ask me, "we'll you

know, wasn't this a
terrible thing to do and

don't you regret awfully
having been involved",

and so on, is one morning
I got up and was walking

around the camp
and looked out

on the leeward side of
the island and all I could

see were landing craft
from clear out to the

horizon, these were
landing craft that were

being worked up the
coast along the Mariana

Islands for the invasion
of Japan, because that

was the plan which was
the backup in case the

bombs did not get
delivered, or they didn't

work as promised
and when you stop

to consider how many
hundreds of thousands of

troops that would
of been involved in that

sort of an operation,
what sort of massacre

there would of
been on both sides,

they would of had to make
an amphibious landing, and

I think that
there was a net

saving of both Japanese
and American lives by

dropping the bomb.

We're just told
that Wednesday & Thursday

have been declared
legal, federal holidays

VJ. Day, maybe you can
hear the people screaming

down there ladies and

gentlemen let's
give a listen...

I think they're
will always questions,

strong opinions about the
use of the

atomic bombs during
World War II,

by the
summer of 1945, in total

had claimed about 70M
lives, if you figure that

World War II started as
early as 1932 in China

and certainly in
the 30's with

Nazi Germany by the
time 1945 the war

was over 10 years old

and in a war that
killed 70 million people

it was time for it to
end, and the atomic bomb

certainly did that.

The Japanese
Emperor having been

apprised of
what happened at

Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
did an absolutely

historically unique
thing he stepped out

of his role as the
spiritual leader of the

country into politics
he said a new and

most terrible weapon
of war has forced us to

think the unthinkable
and asked his

people to lay down their
arms which remarkably

enough they did with
very little debate.

All we can see is
a sea of humanity people

in every color
costume people

from all the nations
of world have assembled

here today to celebrate

this truly great victory
over the Japanese.

The war was
over I'd returned from

Tinian and the place
was in a fair turmoil

there was another group
of senior personnel who

were much concerned
about the laboratory

and they stayed on to help
plan a strategy for

whatever was to
come at this time

Oppenheimer resigned to
return to academic

career and
Norris Bradbury was

selected to replace him.

Bradbury just ended
up sending out a message

to everyone
saying its time

to make the decision if
your'e going to leave

leave but if you're
going to stay

stay so we can start
actually figuring out

who's here what we
have to work with

and start going forward.

There was of
course, a great deal

of uncertainty on
the civilians who had been

brought in for the
duration and there were

about 2000 GI's all they
wanted to do was to get

out, not to mention
all the housewives and

families that didn't
know if they should pack

up and get ready to
move or what was to happen.

Bradbury develops
this philosophy that the

laboratory would become
a scientific laboratory

he changes the name from
its wartime designation

which is basically just

Los Alamos. He undertakes
programs and basic

science and weapons work.
He makes it a

meaningful place for
scientists to come and

practice their craft
and many and Schreib is

one of these that does
stay and makes a

major contribution,

The war was
over, mission

accomplished, what next

Schreib comes to
Los Alamos during the

war as a relatively junior
scientist but at the end

of the war he becomes a
senior scientist he

becomes one of those
people who stays who

takes on management
responsibilities who's

responsible for
providing scientific

leadership and he along
with Bradbury for whom

he develops a very
close relationship

over the years really do
save the laboratory

intellectually
after the war.

Good afternoon
ladies and gentlemen

we're speaking to you
from the site

of the laboratory

of the atomic bomb project
at Los Alamos

New Mexico where in
a moment we'll bring

you the ceremonies of the
Army-Navy E Award Colonel

Kenneth B Nichols
will act as

ceremonies
for the afternoon.

Dr. Oppenheimer was
giving his speech

everybody was gathered
on the lawn at

Fuller Lodge I was in the
car with my parents

listening to the speech
and at some point I

moved from my mothers lap
to my fathers lap and

then I sat on the horn,
it was recorded

it was recorded
on the radio,

my mom wrote a letter
to her parents and told

them that I had had
achieved posterity

because I
in fact, had been

recorded and they

had heard the horn on the
radio broadcast.

My sister was
almost 3 at that

point I was a year old
and it was much

more important for

her to see him and of
course my mother,

she was just grinning
from ear-to-ear

My sister was my
best friend my mentor

she was very significant
part of my

life all the time,

we were enough different
that we didn't actually

compete for people or
attention at all we got

along quite well, she was
a very delightful person

to grow up with and
she took good care of me.

A Lot of
scientists started

packing up and leaving
going back to the

different colleges the

colleges needed them
to teach.

Dr, Lark
Harovitz called me several

times and urged
me to come back to

Purdue, Marge and I talked
about this and we just

decided that was
going to be a pretty

dull life, so we
turned him off.

My grandfather
already had his PhD

really liked the
area and decided at

least for a short
term to stick around.

I went and
talked to Bob Bacher

who was my division
leader and he said

we'll what are they
offering you and I told

him he says
we'll we'll match

that offer if you'll stay,
and I think it was

in that winter
when all the pipes

froze up, the captain in
charge of the water

supply threatened
to shoot himself

if it froze again, but it
froze again but he

didn't shoot himself,
then in

January of '46 Norris got
a letter from General

Groves which essentially
said hold

everything together as
best you can, we're

going to plan to do
something about the water

do something about the
houses, you should

plan to continue at
least for the next several

years, and then it was
about in February of

that year that
the Navy decided to

hold a test of the effects
of Nuclear

bombs on Navy vessels.

The joint chiefs of
staff approved the code

name suggested by
Admiral Blandy and

the venture
was christened

Operation Crossroads.

With so little
Plutonium and Uranium

available for the first
bombs, the scientist had

to devise ways to see if
they would work the way

they thought they would
work but without actually

blowing them
up, the way they did that

was basically to
surround a bomb core with

stacks of material that
would reflect neutrons

coming from the bomb core

back into the core and
increase the chain

reaction, if theres
enough material it's

basically infinite in
which case the material

blows up if there's
not enough material the

chain reaction fizzles
out at some point along

the way and slowly dies
down so because of this

two different facts it's
possible to determine

whether you have the right
sized bomb core.

It's a tricky
business, one version

of this kind
of testing the

physicist Richard Feynman

called it, tickling the
tail of a Dragon,

because of course if
you get things

wrong you can actually

start a chain reaction
going so fast that

it's very
difficult to stop it.

Then it goes
supercritical, you get

high levels of radiation
that's not the soft

radiation, its not alpha

you're talking beta,
you're talking gamma,

it's the stuff that
will kill you, they

also tried to keep it away

from the general
population so if it

did happen nobody else
was going to get

injured from it.

Only twice in the
course of those years

did it actually
happen where someone

was actually fatally
irradiated in the process,

once just at the end
of the war and then after

the war at a rather
famous or notorious

event when Louis Slotin
who loved to do these bomb

core tests, because
they were tickling

the Dragons tail
they had the

breath of danger on them.

The upper part of
that reflector shell

slammed shut around that

critical assembly and
caused it to become

supercritical,
what you have is a

runaway chain reaction
that just produces

huge numbers, you know
billions of of Neutrons

almost instantaneously,
faster than a human

being can react within
a millisecond there

many generations of
neutrons that have evolved

in this assembly
and the neutron

population is huge, and
this manifests itself

in some interesting
physical phenomena

that you really don't
see unless you're in

real trouble, for example
theres a flash

of light as the air is
ionized, these neutrons

run out into the
air and and hit

things and and cause them
to become radioactive

and so the
counters in the

room all of the radiation
detectors just go wild

you have heat from
the release of this

nuclear energy its a
phenomenon that very

few people
experience and and those

who do tend to have
serious health problems

or in the case of
Louis Slotin you know,

a fatal bout with
radiation illness, I think

he was actually
probably fully

aware of the dangers and
and yet probably felt

a little too safe
because he had done

it many times before,
had done it successfully.

Enrico Fermi was
so concerned about

Slotin's testing that
whenever there

was a criticality

test going on Fermi would
move his entire team to

another building far
away so that if something

happened he wouldn't be
there to be irradiated

with Slotin so he
was indeed concerned about

this guy in the way he
was running these tests.

I was down at
Parjito site checking

things out at the time
of the Slotin accident

He was
testing to be sure it

was working properly
with a setup of

materials around it

And while I
as not a participant at

all in the experiment
which led to this I was in

the room and this of
course led to Louis

Slotin's death and
Al Graves having a very

heavy dosage of radiation
from which he recovered.

He was holding
the two pieces of the

core apart, and the
pieces fell together and

there was a burst of blue
light in the room,

irradiated everyone
including Schreib.

When the
screwdriver slipped

Slotin's instant
reaction was to

break the pieces apart

so he reached over with
his bare hands of

course which also
increased his exposure.

There was enough
tamper around it

reflecting neutrons in
that it started

a chain reaction.

And I was
stuck in the hospital

for two days I think while
observing me, and finally

decided that there was
nothing wrong, I had

been far enough
away that I

only got
about 25R of exposure.

They got a pretty
good dose although

nobody was was
seriously affected most

of the people in the room
except for poor

Slotin lived to a ripe
old age Slotin however was

fatally irradiated and
died a slow and rather

agonizing death
over the next 8 days.

We were there,
knowing how he and my

mother interacted he
probably said something

about, theres been an
accident, I need to

change of clothes,
you cant get close to me,

I'm going to the hospital
and I think everything's

going to be fine
and that was probably

pretty much the
conversation, she had

to find Harriet Holloway
probably to

take care the kids

so she can go, but she
couldn't get to dad

because he was
radioactive and so they

weren't letting the family
close, and I get this

from what my dad
wrote not from what

he said, that Louie was a
very bright physicist

and really his loss
was significant because he

had a lot to contribute,
but he didn't do it

he didn't play by the
rules entirely

and it cost him.

The accident
itself plus the

evaluations that Schreib
and others conducted

led to remote

handling of nuclear
materials, and this is

really the beginning of
formal safety practices

dealing with critical
materials here at

the laboratory, and
we go to remote handling

the use of
televisions and just

staying away from the
stuff, being able

to to say if there's

an accident it won't kill
anybody but certainly

Schreib's work in the
accident contributed

mightily to moving to that
regime.

At the 50th
anniversary we went

down there with my
grandfather to visit

around Parijito site

and went out and saw
some of the Kivas, well

you could see him
from a distance you

couldn't actually get
into him because they

were being used and
she was asked multiple

questions one of them
about going into

building one well,
after a little bit of

calm my grandfather

decided yes, under the
requirements of while

he was in there, no
questions are

asked, no films

taken, he would go in
there and say whatever

he wanted to say but
I think the really the

only reason why I agreed
to it was

because myself and my

mother was there, so we
went in it was a very

solemn occasion it was
kind of eerie in ways

so my grandfather pointed
out where, where he

was roughly, where he
was standing, where the

table was. I think a
couple of benches

were actually still in
there from around

that time, it was

calm and surreal, you can
tell it had an effect

on my grandfather, we got
out of the building there

was a few people asking
if he thought that that

was a really reckless
thing to do he got very

taunt very short with his
response and you could

tell it set him off, this
was a friend, it was a

guy that he worked with
his not going to say

he wasn't reckless,
he was doing things he

shouldn't have done the
way, my grandfather

put it was it was a
stupid act, somebody

died you had to say was
stupid but to criticize

a co-worker and a
criticize somebody that's

now dead that was ground
he didn't want to

tread on unfortunately
its also the thing that

almost everyone
interviewed my grandpa

wanted to know so it
became kind of a bit

of sore subject for him,
it was something that yes

it happened, it was a
mistake, we learned

from it, we've moved on,
we completely redid

everything for to keep
everyone else safe not

just Los Alamos but
everyplace that did

critical assemblies.

I was at lunch
one day with Schreib

talked about the accident
with tears in his eyes

he felt badly about it,
he felt that Slotin I

think had gotten kind of
a raw deal over the years

he very much respected
him and the accident

and the outcome
troubled him

many many years later

The decision
had been made that we

we're going to keep
the laboratory

going, we we're

to develop new bombs and
there was going to

be a nuclear bomb
stockpiling effort

by the laboratory.

These two men
Schreib and Bradbury

were in many ways
very similar men, you

know they were both
experimental physicists

and people who
haven't been around

physicists possibly
don't realize how

different theoretical
physicist are the ones

do the calculations from
the guys who actually

do the hands-on
experiments on

the lab bench or in the
field. Experimentalists

a totally different
breed as far as Ive been

able to tell often
politically more conservative

strangely enough, they
tend to be intensely

practical people they've
learned to think

clearly about how you
manipulate objects to make

a certain outcome occur,
whereas theoreticians

are often into
literature and

art, often politically
quite liberal,

Robert Oppenheimer
was perhaps an extreme

example but he was a
rather neurotic man,

a chain smoker troubled
in some ways,

troubled certainly about
who he was, you never

had a sense with
Bradbury or Schreib

that they ever had any
doubt about who they

were and what their
place was in the

world and how they went
about doing their work.

In the fall
of '47 Holloway asked

me if I would like
to come up and work in

the division offices as
an associate division

leader because I was
quite interested

in the overall

work of the division and
was showing some signs

of interest in
organization

and management.

Schreib and
Norris Bradbury were

kindred spirits similar
training, similar

education, and

they meshed well they
worked well together,

they were both
nose-to-the-grindstone

let's make the laboratory
work, lets advance

the science and technology,
they weren't politicians

Bradbury could run the
laboratory from his

directors slot, he could
take care of the overall

picture, as
Technical Associate Director.

Schreiber could
handle all the technical

details he could look at
individual programs and

analyze them for what they

were in there
worth technically.

He ended up being in
charge of the W Division

the cores the criticality
experiments the high

explosive sides of it, the
chemistry side of it.

As well as metallurgy
side of it everything that

was the entire
weapons program.

It's said of
Oppenheimer that he built

the laboratory, but it's
said of Bradbury that he

made the laboratory of
permanent entity, and

certainly if that's
true Schreiber was

Bradbury's right
right hand

man making that so.

A crucial change
that came in '48 was

what was called
levitation, the first bomb

had a solid ball of
Plutonium, actually two

hemispheres at the
center of a massive

assembly of high
explosives and the

high explosives
squeezed that ball to

double its previous
density and about

half it's previous
size, they made an air

gap from between the
ball and the explosives

so that the explosive

shockwave had time to
accelerate before it

hit the core and therefore

could hit it a lot harder
that meant for example

that you could make

a smaller core, you didn't
need as much Plutonium

if you could hit it

harder because you could
squeeze it to a greater

density than the

other system, so when
Schreib and the others

developed this
first generation

of levitated cores they
basically doubled the

United States of
supply of bombs

you could make a bomb with
half the material you

made the
previous bomb with

that you could double the

number of bombs, this
turned out to be very important

because in August of 1949
the Soviet Union

tested its first atomic
bomb which was a carbon

copy gotten from espionage
in Los Alamos during

the War, I interviewed
some of the Soviet

scientists who worked on
those first weapons,

they said, and I

have no reason to
disbelieve them, that

by 1947 they had already
figured out a levitated

design and had a design
for a weapon that would

have been twice the yield

and half the weight of the
Fatman bomb and then

I said so why didn't you

use it in your tests?

And they said well are
bomb program was run

by the notorious KGB guy

Lavrenti Beria who was
notorious for being a

brute. And he told
them when they

took their levitated core
design to him in '47,

comrades I don't care
about you or damn

design. I want the American
bomb, we know it works

give me the American
bomb or I will

turn you into camp dust,
meaning he would send

them off to the gulag,
the leader of the

Soviet program told me
after the end of the Soviet

Union in '92, he said
we were concerned

for our families and our
children and each other

and we gave Beria
the weapon that

he wanted, but the 2nd
Soviet test a year later

was of a weapon that
was half the weight,

and twice the yield as the
Fatman bomb so clearly

they moved on
to levitated

weapons by then of course
Schreib and his team had

already done
the same thing

and doubled the US arsenal
and then when the Soviets

tested their first bomb we

already understood that we
had an answer to that

if you believe
that there's

such a thing as deterrence
and certainly at some

level the fact that
a country that's

your enemy has nuclear
weapons would certainly

deter you from
deciding to attack

them without a good deal
of thought at least and

of course, there never
was a war between

the United States and the
Soviet Union probably

for exactly that
reason, nevertheless

there was a great hurrying
and scurrying in Washington

among the
politicians about

what are we going to do?
What are we going to do?

The Russians have
the bomb shouldn't

we go for a hydrogen bomb,
what should we do?

What should we do?
And the calm

answer from people like
Schreib and Robert

Oppenheimer and
others was

look we've got a lot more
atomic bombs than they

do, a lot more
fission weapons

than they do and were
turning them out at a

great rate now we've
got the reactors

going in Washington where
were making good bombs

they're reliable
off-the-shelf

wooden bombs, now hold
your horses as

Oppenheimer said
to Teller

hold your horses,
keep your shirt on.

Bikini Atoll a dot
on the map in the mid

Pacific was destined
to become a focal

point for the eyes of
the world.

There was
discussion among some

politicians and
military people about

further demonstrating the
destructive capacity

of atomic bombs,
and it was a

little bit of a
controversy particularly

here at Los Alamos
because Bradbury among

others thought that
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

provided more than ample

proof about the
destructive capability

of atomic bombs, but
the military particularly

the Navy wanted to test
the atomic bombs

against ships.

The summer of '46
the Navy assembled what

remained of the
Japanese battle fleet,

there was the German
cruiser the Prinz

Eugen and then
a number of United

States warships that were
becoming obsolete,

and they sailed
all these

ships into Bikini Lagoon
in the Marshall Islands

and detonated two
atomic bombs

to test the effects.

There was actually
three, so there was going

a be a deep water
shot, a shallow water

shot and then airburst
shot, the airburst was

going to be another
almost exactly like a

Fatman shot, then there
was going to be the

deep water which
was going to be

about a mile down and
they we're going to

try and do a shallow
water they ended up

only doing the shallow
and the air burst

because they couldn't
quite figure out how

to anchor it down low to
be actually get data

from it, and they
don't want to just

blow something
up and not

get data from it.

Schreib had kind
of an interesting part

in Crossroads, he was
again a courier

as he had been for the
Nagasaki bomb.

We got an Army
knapsack, it's one I still

carry around for
hauling rocks

and that sort of thing and
stuffed the carrying

case in it.

He was carrying at
least one of the cores

again like he'd
done over to

Tinian the boats we're
pitching around in water

and as they were getting

ready for the shot and
he's bringing the core

with him and
all the sudden

he gets grabbed by one of
the military officers

he hands a rope
down and tells

him to tie it off, and at
first grandpa was a little

ike "tie what off?",
the officer said

tie the knapsack you can
go into the water

but I don't want that going
into the water.

The Albemarle was
converted into the bomb

carrying and
assembly vessel.

They had to find a
way to both keep the

Plutonium secure and
secret and protecting

anybody from knowing what
it is, so they made a big

deal about
putting backpacks

in bolted strong boxes on
the ships deck and then

they surrounded
the strong boxes

with a company of soldiers
with rifles and machine

guns and made a
big deal about

protecting it, but the
truth is that the real

backpack was taken
below put on a

bunk and one of the one of
the army guys quarters

and Schreib
slept with it

all the way out to Bikini.

The Plutonium
Core was actually in a

stateroom next
to my stateroom

with our local MP security
officers living with it

I went in everyday
or so to pat it

take it's temperature and
sniff around I don't know

what I would
done if anything

had gone wrong and I had
to go through the act.

He was responsible
at Bikini for building

the two bombs
that were used

they were codenamed
Able and Baker.

My assembly
crew, Neil Davis and

Roy Thompson,
Ted Perlman

and Harold Hammel

was my team, we'll
they'd gotten out there

beforehand and
had our little

laboratory all set up we
had our own private

Marine guard in
front of the door

people we're only let in
on showing their badge

identifying themselves.

Modifications to
prepare a Daves Dream

for the bomb were
made by technicians

assigned by Manhattan
Engineer District.

In due course,
we then had the time for

the loading of the
aircraft went through

all of the assembly
procedures offloaded the

assembled bomb onto
the pier and

it was trundled away on
it's trailer behind

a truck and loaded
into the

B-29 which was to drop it.

The laboratory unit
of this group delivered

the first bomb to
the crew of the plane a

minimum period before
takeoff, two-weaponers

were assigned to
ride in the plane

and arm the bomb after the
aircraft was a safe

distance from
Kwajalein, all was

ready for Able Day and at
eight-forty nine,

Admiral Blandy signals
for the start of

the bombing run, on

the cry "bomb away" the
world's 4th atomic bomb

plummets earthward
about five-hundred

feet above the surface of
the lagoon the

bomb explodes.

Well the bomb
is dropped unfortunately

the bombardier missed
the center of the target

array by about 1500 feet
and then a few days

after everything settled
down again we

disembarked from Kwajalein
and went down and

anchored in the
Bikini Lagoon outside the

target array for the
underwater test they had

a landing barge which
had been specially

adapted, what they had
done is cut right down

through the hull and
put in a well and suspended

it underneath this landing
craft and I have a series

of shots that I took
in 35 millimeter

slides of that bomb blast,
I got up on the

searchlight platform
and we could hear the

countdown, so at zero I
just started shooting

pictures as fast as
I could and I got about

eight or ten before the
cloud chamber effect

obscured the whole
target array

one....

fire...

Then over the
next few days we were able

to go and take a
small boat and go

around and see
what happened.

Of course,
the effects as Bradbury

predicted were
the same, theres no

defense against atomic
bombs ships are never

rugged enough and if you

don't sink him you make
them radioactive so that

the crews can't
survive or sail them.

We had
something like 10 days

to 2 weeks just
to loaf around

It's a pretty
humdrum existence there

was an editor from all
places the canning & food

freezing magazine who was
invited out as part of

the press contingent
and he basically

was bored to death,
and I think that

epitomizes sort of the
life at Bikini was you had

several seconds of intense
excitement as these

bombs went off
and you saw the

mushroom clouds, but the
day-to-day life was

pretty tedious
you could swim you

could read maybe watch a
movie on the ships

deck of it didn't rain,
you can drink a little

beer but beyond that it
was pretty humdrum

and fairly tedious.

We did an
awful lot of sunning & we

also went off on
junkets and it

was very annoying

that the smoking lamp was
out about half the

time aboard ship,
we finally learned to

take care of that
situation by retiring to

our laboratory where not
even the ships captain

could come and having our
smokes there and we

returned on the
Able Mable blessed

captain decided he was
going to make an economy

run and so we
chugged along

I think it took us
twelve days to come back

at 10 knots and it
was awfully dull.

He not knowing it
probably not really

appreciating it and
in knowing Schreib

not putting much stock in
it, he probably and I

think in all reality,
the summer

of '45-'46 he was one
of the three most

important people in the
world when it came

to atomic bombs, not even
the Soviets had a

Schreiber who
could to build

an atomic bomb
at that point.

The time is ten
forty-seven, this is a

Conelrad radio
alert normal broadcasting

will be discontinued for
an indefinite period.

Ladies and
gentlemen you've heard

the reports of
enemy planes are

approaching in less than
3 hours an H Bomb might

fall over
Portland.

Edward Teller a
Hungarian-American

scientist who had
come up with the idea

of a hydrogen weapon
in 1941 talking with the

great Italian
physicist Enrico Fermi.

Teller was one
of those people that

chafed at what he called
pedestrian work during

World War II He was
originally in charge of

the Theoretical Division
but he didn't like

it he felt like developing
the atomic bomb was a done

deal certainly
theres a lot of

work to do he never
denied that but he knew

it was a done deal
and his mind

was fertile enough and
active enough that he

was looking for
the next challenge.

And so
Oppenheimer rather

wisely decided,
well alright

if Edward wants to
work on the Hydrogen

bomb were
going to work on

that someday, so let him
get started and he turned

Teller over to that
task rather

than the task of doing
some of the very

complicated mathematics
that had to be

done one of the outcomes
of that decision was

that Oppenheimer
was short on

mathematicians who could
do calculations, that's

what they
substituted in those

days for the computers,

that did not yet exist
and called on the British

to send over their team to

supplement the calculating
team in Los Alamos

among the people in the

British team was one of
the Soviet spies Klaus

Fuchs so it's possible

to blame Teller to some
degree for the

appearance in Los Alamos

of Klaus Fuchs.

The ring was
first uncovered following

the arrest of Klaus Fuchs
in England Greenglass

Mrs Rosenberg's brother
confessed theft of the

secrets while
stationed at the

Los Alamos atomic project.

Teller acquired
a small team to help

him including a Polish

mathematician of great
gifts whose name

was Stanislaw Ulam

Stan Ulam a bit
reluctantly joined in

working with Teller
the two men really

did not get along they
were very different

personality types
nevertheless they worked

together on this problem
and then the question

as I said came up of
whether or not the

United States should
start a crash program

to build a Hydrogen
bomb and the Oppenheimer

lead committee of the
Atomic Energy Commission

voted no! Teller and
his rather

politically conservative

friends were immensely
incensed decided that

someone was trying to let

the Soviets get a
head of us.

There's a lot of
emotions that started

running high
about that time.

Teller
notoriously said in his

distinctive Hungarian a
accent

"if we don't build a

Hydrogen bomb, I will be
prisoner of the Soviet

Union in the
United States within

five years", thats an
amazing thing for someone

to say but I
think Teller had

a longstanding fear of the
Russian colossus that

played into his sense and

remember the Hydrogen
bomb in his mind

was his idea.

We were very much
in the Cold War and

the arms race at that
point, there was a lot of

consternation including
Teller pretty much

stomping out in the
laboratory, going over

to Lawrence Livermore to
continue developing

it instead of being
at the lab.

When the Soviet
Union tested its first

atomic bomb, the
scientific advisory

committee to the Atomic
Energy Commission

met in an important

meeting in October of 1949
and basically said we

don't know how to build a

Hydrogen bomb yet, if you
want us to go that route

there are some
reasons why its not

a good idea we do know how
to build smaller,

lighter weight,
more efficient

atomic bombs, so we think
we should do what we're

already doing because

President Truman ordered
us to do this

last summer which is
increase the

production of fission
weapons that should

be our response to the
Soviet development of

a fission weapon
of it's own.

There had
been debates going on in

the upper circles for
sometime

about the possibility

of building a Hydrogen
bomb so called and finally

there was the top
level decision

that the laboratory should
go into an all out effort

to develop this if it
could be developed

and this decision was made
I believe in

November of 1950.

Up to now the
laboratory has had

sufficient time to compile
information

and revise weapon

design before a field
test of the weapon

as of now the
situation has changed we

must take risks calculated
risks is true but

risks nevertheless.

Almost
immediately went onto

a six day work week a
year to the day of the

decision to start, we
made the first test,

of the so
called Mike shot.

Unlike Little Boy
and Fatman Mike was

about 80 tons had
this liquid fuel that

had to be maintained at
extraordinary low

temperatures in
hot humid Pacific

where was tested and it
stood about three or

four stories tall
so it was it was

not a weapon of war it
was certainly a bomb

but it was not a
weapon of war.

We'll Marshall
was chosen by Norris

Bradbury to take
charge of that

whole operation and he had
essentially top

priority on all of the

laboratory facilities and
personal I was put

in as acting
N Division leader

our job there was to
follow up with the

experimental work
the design and

fabrication of the test
devices but we we're

supposed to be
following up with some

reasonable designs which
could actually be used and

shoehorned
into an airplane.

When then
everything was shipped

out to Enewetak
they were testing

everything out in the
last days before the

thing was going
to be exploded

he discovered that the
core that was used in

this really hot
atomic bomb

might have a tendency
to pre-detonate, which

would mean it
would melt down

instead of exploding
properly and the whole

test would be
wasted and this

was a big test, I mean
this was a tank of

Deuterium with
gallons and gallons

of a material that
previously in been made

by the gram, this
was really

a heroic test that was
involved so Schreib took

the responsibility the night

before the test of
changing out the core,

for another core
that they knew was

reliable so that he was
quite confident that it

wouldn't pre-detonate
thats the

kind of thing that sounds
easy to do but if you

think about it the
risk that he

had to take in terms of
his personal

responsibility, his
confidence, in his

numbers, his confidence
in the physics of what

he was doing it probably

required all those
previous years of work

that he had done,
intimate

hands on work for him
to be prepared to make

such a momentous decision.

I was out for
the Mike shot and it was

truly impressive we
were about 30 miles

away on a ship and it
still scared the hell

out of me when
it went off

The previous
explosions were large,

but the Mike shot was awe
inspiring, as he put it

it truly defined the word
awesome as how big the

shot was, kept on going
and going and going

We'll this
successful test brought

on another flurry of

activity to develop
stockpileable

devices, and over the next
18 months there were about

5 or 6 different
variations

designed and tested, the
interesting thing was

they all worked
including some that

were regarded as being of
very marginal design

on a theoretical basis.

So all of that
was going on the lab

was thriving they were
recruiting young scientist

to come work there they
were turning out bombs

and fast, we were
turning on bombs

by the thousands the
United States by the

height of the
Cold War had

some 40,000 Hydrogen and
Uranium and Plutonium

weapons in its
storehouses and

the Soviet Union
which always cranked out

more than it needed
had some 75,000 enough

to destroy the world
many times over, I'm

happy to say were
now down to about a

total in the world of
about 13,000

still enough to destroy
the world many times

over but perhaps not as
many times as in the 1980's

With the
extraordinary

ingenuity and real

genius that was involved
in taking a physical

reaction discovered
on a bench top in Nazi

Germany in 1938, and
turning it into this

whole new field of
energy, for power,

for medicine

for all sorts of
humane uses, but also

for terrible weapons,
it's easy to shrug and

say those were terrible
things we should of

never of done that,
as an historian I feel

that it's real Monday
morning quarterbacking

to look back on the
past and say, those

people shouldn't have
done that, they were

not nice people, I think
instead the way to think

about the past had its own
principles and rules

and it's own
challenges and fears

One has to say why?
Why did they do that?

What was it that
lead them to make the

decisions they made, what
can we learn from what

they did and what
they thought and

what they said about what
they did, all of that

is part of what
we call history

and it's much more helpful
I think to us now,

looking at the future
were looking forward to

to try to understand what
happened not simply

to condemn them
out of hand and

say, well we wouldn't have
done that were

better people
than that

Would we not have?
What would we have done?

They're are really
two applications

for nuclear energy,
one of course is atomic

bombs or Hydrogen bombs,
but the second is

power production
you can produce a whole

lot of power that you can
use to drive machines or

Industries, the electrical
industry for instance

with the nuclear energy,
It can also be used

for propulsive power & so
in the late 50's there was

a lot of interest at the
laboratory and developing

power systems and so
the laboratory inaugurated

what became project ROVER,
which was to use nuclear

power to drive
space rockets

for interstellar flight.

My grandfather was
getting tired of being

on the weapons side
and he was given the

ability to rise a little
further up, start get a

little more of the culture
of the lab that was

when the Rover project
started coming on.

The moon, closest
neighbor to earth,

presently the
focus of man's

greatest scientific
adventure, landing men

on the moon will be a
truly great

achievement but only

the beginning of a new era
in space exploration,

no one can predict the
exact missions that will

follow in the years and
decades ahead, but the

most exciting
possibilities will require the

acceleration and
deceleration of very

heavy loads nuclear
rockets when perfected,

can provide the

same propulsion energy,
with less overall weight

they will expand our
ability to explore space

this is the story.

During the space
race in the 60s and early

70's through Dr Schreiber's
work at Los Alamos a

tremendous amount of work
was done to develop

these nuclear thermal
rockets and they were

almost ready to go, if
they're had been a Mars

mission, I have a great
degree of

confidence that
they would

have been involved in
that architecture.

In early '55
when Darol who was then

the associate Director
came around one evening

and says how would you
like to get together a

small group to see if
you can build a nuclear

rocket, we'll I knew
nothing about nuclear

rockets I knew there
had been a

study committee set up

and I even sat in on a
few of those,

frankly, I didn't think
the thing could be made

to work at the time, but
I said sure

I'll give it a whirl.

We tend to live
in a world that's

dominated by energy that's
available from

the Sun, most of

our chemical energy comes
indirectly from the Sun,

our wind power, solar
power come from the Sun

when we burn coal we're
burning the remains

of plants that grew
from photosynthesis

millions of

years ago, but were still
using an energy

source thats
dependent on the sun.

Nothing humans
have discovered up into

this point can match the
energy density contained

in the binding of nucleons
the the atomic energy

locked in the nucleus
of literally all of the

atoms around us.

Why is the nuclear
rocket so much better

than the chemical
rocket? It's lightweight,

high-velocity exhaust will
use propellant about

twice as efficiently
as chemical rockets.

The less material
you have to take up in

the form of traditional
chemical propulsion the

farther you can go,
the less expensive,

and for some applications
nuclear power

is all we've got
basically, deep space

missions traditionally
rely on a technology

known as an

RTG or Radioisotope
Thermoelectric Generator,

and those have
powered our deep space

probes, our Pioneer, our
Voyager, the Mars Curiosity

Rover for example
has a very large

Radioisotope
Thermoelectric Generators

on-board, but if were
going to go and were going

to take humans and were
going to go farther

with more payload,
we need to improve the

technology, solar and
chemical while they are

good technologies for
certain places,

the farther

you get away the less
effective or not

effective at
all, they become.

We were given
any amount of money

that we wanted and
I was asked well how much

money will it take for
construction to build

a test site and build
any additional

structures we needed

here and I guessed maybe
10 million, and Norris

said you really don't
know so let's

ask for 15, Louie

Strauss says we'll let's
put you down for 25

million and that ought
to run you for awhile,

so different from now that
it seems unreal and

finally it was
resolved yes

indeed we would go

we LASL would go ahead
with the nuclear rocket

this was all done in
complete secrecy

even the fact

the program was going was
a secret, It was January

of '57 before we
really got going.

It was pursued
simultaneously with

other elements of
Kennedy's vision

for space which

included putting a person
on the moon, some of

this was motivated
by the space race with

the Soviet Union, some of
it was motivated by

Kennedy's vision for
a technocracy a society

that was really you know
developed on a firm

foundation of science
and technology.

The purpose of
President Kennedy's visit

to the Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratory

was a briefing

on the details of project
ROVER the laboratories

program to develop
nuclear rocket engines for

space travel President
John F Kennedy the first

President of the United
States to visit Los Alamos

Scientific Laboratory has
arrived, Dr Norris E

Bradbury Laboratory,
Director Dr Raemer

Schreiber, Associate

Director, Mr Charles C.
Campbell, AEC manager of the

Los Alamos area office
and other officials

met the visitors as
they arrived.

Grandpa had a little
of a downside that

Bradbury and President
Kennedy and a

couple others talking

about budget it ended up
rather than a big

presentation and ended up
being, okay

here's the rocket

here's what it does,
here's how we do it,

and a quick overview and
then the next thing you

know President Kennedys
heading out the door

waving to everyone & he's
gone and

thats the end of it

The President spent
approximately an hour

in the ROVER briefing
and meeting

the staff at the

laboratory here President
Kennedy and Dr Bradbury

leave the classified
area to pose

for the photographers.

It was at the AEC's
Los Alamos Scientific

Laboratory high in the
mountains of New Mexico

that the first steps were
taken, here in the mid

50's scientists set about
to determine if nuclear

energy really
could be used to

provide rocket propulsion.

I talked
Norris into setting it

up as a division so they
agreed to form a

division and I bummed

people from W Division and
anyplace else that seemed

to be interested in this
by that fall I think

we had about fifty people
at work, and then we

had to go find a place
to live, I stayed down at

Parjito for quite awhile
and I even had my

headquarters there and
we had people scattered

all over the place, and
then we finally laid

hands on TA46 which is
out on the Pajarito

Road and that

was our headquarters well
throughout the duration

of the so called
ROVER program.

They would test
the reactor concepts

at Los Alamos they would
do a lot of

development of the

test reactors using a
number of critical

assembly stations that
they assembled at

the Parijito site and

Raemer Schreiber lead this
effort at Los Alamos

to develop these reactors
for use in Project KIWI.

We had to
start from scratch

essentially saying how
would we test

all these reactors,

the normal way of doing
reactor testing is to

put 'em inside a great
big concrete vault

so if something goes wrong
why we had some

protection, but when
you're spewing

out enormous quantities
of Hydrogen or other

hot gases why
that isn't a very

practical system and so
the decision was made

that we turn
things around the

controls and the
instrumentation would

be inside the concrete
block house and the

people would be well
removed from there at a

separate control area,
and we also

selected the Jackass
Flats area for

this test site
for this testing.

If you turn one
of these reactors on

your going from liquid
hydrogen temperatures to

thousands of degrees
very quickly and so

they were faced
with these enormous

materials challenges, KIWI
was really designed to

solve some of
those problems

and there are number of
reactors in the KIWI

series that progressed
from essentially

zero power, which is what
they would be able to

test at the Parjito
site in Los Alamos,

all the way up to powered
versions that that ran at,

you know hundreds
of kilowatts,

hundreds of megawatts.

The technology
that Dr Schreiber promoted

was a technology
known as a nuclear

thermal rocket and
basically what this is

is using a reactor
is a big heat source, and

then you take a gas like
hydrogen, you compress it

and force it through
this nuclear reactor

and the nuclear reactor
transfers heat it

expands and it exits
the nozzle of the rocket

at Incredibly
high-velocity.

It was a very
interesting program in

that nobody had done
anything of this general

nature before, we had to
be extremely careful to

test everything we
could without actually

firing up the reactor,
when they decided they

wanted something
like this, we were

under very heavy pressure
to move as rapidly as

possible, the
Russians had put up

Sputnik in the fall of '57
I believe, and the

United States wasn't
doing too well in

regard to similar exploits
and the Atlas Missile

which had been
under development

for quite a few years,
chemical rocket, was

having its problems,
so in between

doing things here at the
laboratory, I was always

rushing back to a
congressional

hearing to assure

Senator Anderson and the
other eager supporters

of the ROVER program
that we were working

just as hard as we could
and no we didn't

need anymore money,
all we needed was to

solve a few
technical problems.

With KIWI he spent
so much time in

Washington D.C., I think
he probably was

home half of every

month and traveling the
rest of the time,

that was a part of that
project he did not like

and that was all the
politicking that had

to be done during that
period of time, and

I was in high school

for lot of that, he just
wasn't there, when he was

he was distracted and we
we're all

being just a little

careful around him
because he was very

tired, he didn't
travel well.

Meantime we
had designed a KIWI B,

which was looking much
more like a rocket engine

and had a sizeable nozzle
on it and I'd been getting

help from Aerojet
and Rocketdyne on

pumps and nozzle design
and fabrication, and

KIWI B then was run
with liquid hydrogen

being pumped in and
vaporized as it went

into the reactor,
and a couple things

didn't go too smoothly
for awhile because we

tried to run two or
three reactors & we would

get going pretty well and
then pieces would start

flying out the nozzle,
which isn't exactly the

proper behavior for a
nuclear rocket, supposed

to run for 20 to 25
minutes, to make a long

story short it was finally
found out that we had

not properly considered
all of the aerodynamic

forces that we're
operating on the fuel

element bundles In blowing
this enormous stream of

Hydrogen through there,
and so it took a number

of tests and rather
strenuous redesign work

under extreme pressure
out of Washington to get

a reactor which would
indeed hold itself

together and run for any
extended period of time.

We'll we finally solved
these problems and

we ran several reactors
for periods of up

15-20 minutes, the mission
was originally thought to

require a 10 minute burn
by reactor but in the

meantime the targets
we're set higher and

higher and we would get a
reactor ready for

testing and for
someone decided that

wasn't really quite good
enough and so we had

to start redesigning
and replanning for

even higher performance,
longer times, ability

to restart in space and

all those sorts of things,

The Phoebus phase
was actually the attempt

to build power plant
scale reactors that could

actually be used in
nuclear rockets, and

Phoebus really consisted
of three large

scale reactors that were
tested out at the Nevada

test site and
they incorporated

some enormous power
densities, if you think

of a 2 liter bottle, if
you think of that volume

being used to generate 10
million watts that

was the power density
that was found in the

highest power test with
the Phoebus reactors,

even by todays
standards have really not

been and not been matched.

By '69 NASA
who had taken over and

become a great empire
in itself, finally

decided that they we're
not go for a manned man

in space beyond the moon

landing, so the ROVER
program was phased out,

we'll we did
have one triumph

before that, technical
triumph at least, in that

we ran the
Phoebus 2 reactor at

4000 megawatts, which I
think was the world

record at that time,
which may still stand

for a total power out of
a single reactor which

translates into
about a 200,000

pound thrust, which is
nothing to be sneered at.

That was the apex
of of work on Project

Rover that was
the highest powers,

the highest power
densities, the longest

duration tests, the
largest reactors,

and it demonstrated a high
level of technological

readiness to move

these systems into
practical nuclear rocketry.

In the summer
'61 Daryl Froman decided

that he was going to
retire and so there

was a search put on for an
associate technical

director to replace
him, I was

selected to be that person
and moved up to the 4th

floor in January of '62.

The reason I have talked
about the ROVER program

so extensively is that

I continued to have the
major responsibility for

that as far as the

division of work between
Norris and myself was

concerned, my job there

was to keep on top of
the number of different

programs and take care of

some of the
administrative chores,

it's very complicated
story if you start

writing a job description

to 5 or 6 pages
I suspect.

Work at the laboratory
continued we had the

ROVER program
phased out but

by the time that was
phasing out there were

other programs coming in.
And then in 1970,

Norris decided he was
going to retire and there

was a search for a
director, my hat

was in the ring for at
least a brief period of

time, the more I thought
about it the less

I felt at that age
I wanted to undertake the

job and furthermore,
I felt that the demands

particularly in field
of public relations in

Washington and in
spearheading the

weapons program was

something that I just
didn't want to get

involved in, of course
Harold Agnew came out as a

selection no surprise
to anyone I think and I

was given the job
of keeping University

of California happy and
I took over more and more

of the administrative
duties and so

from that time up
and including my time

before my retirement, I
had the responsibility for

the 11 departments I
think it was, in addition

to serving as the
number two man to the

director, once the
decisions we're made,

it was my job to
see to that they were

carried out, meaning
while that is fine once

you start slowing down,
it's very difficult

to recognize

you got to run fast and
can't keep up with the

younger people.
My retirement was in

December of '74 and it
was about that time also

that I got contacted by
Jack Campbell, former

Governor Campbell, I
guess is the more polite

way of putting it, to see
if I would be interested

in going on to the
energy resources board.

After my
grandfather retired he

still very much involved
with the lab, very much

involved with the

town, he was President
American Nuclear Society

he was very much
involved with a

lot of the
nonproliferation.

My dad passed
away in '98 when he was 88

we called Roger Meade
to do the details of the

memorial service which
was held 3 days later

at Fuller Lodge, to put
together such a marvelous

celebration of my dads
life, Roger was

just invaluable.

Approximately 6000
people jammed the football

field to welcome
the President.

And lastly I
think this country has

performed its great
function because as

Senator Anderson

has said, it's people
have had brains and we

have appreciated
the cult of

excellence and we
have developed that

talent in a way which is
served our country and

served mankind and

there are no group of
people in this country,

whose record over the last

20 years has been more
preeminent in the service

of their country
than all of

you here in this small
community in New Mexico.

We want to express our
thanks to you, its not

merely what was
done during

the days of the second
war, but what is been

done since then,
not only in

developing weapons of
destruction which by

and irony of fate
help maintain

the peace and freedom,
but also in medicine,

and in space and
all the other

related fields which
can mean so much to

mankind if we
can maintain

the peace and
protect our freedom.

I think Dr
Schreiber's legacy is a

very important one,
whether it was his work

with the Manhattan Project
or his work with nuclear

rockets I mean this is a

person who had this hand
in shaping the course

of human history.

The reason that
nuclear thermal rockets

are particularly
important at

this moment in history
is that NASA is finally,

seriously considering
a manned

Mars mission, any type of
Mars mission involves a

long trip being
constantly bathed

in Cosmic Rays and nuclear
thermal rockets provide a

way of to get from point A

to point B, in space far
faster for far less

fuel and we now know
that with modern material

science we can make

these far better than
there creators

ever imagined.

I think we can
have that conversation now

I think culturally
were able to appreciate

the benefits and the
risks of nuclear

technology, I think
we can competently

get back in the saddle
on a project like this,

we already have done
a lot of the

work necessary, this
program was wildly

successful according
to nuclear propulsion

folks at NASA, it was
it was essentially ready

to go and you can say,
well we can

leave those Curies in the
desert and it can all be

in vain, or we can take that

knowledge and essentially
use it and work

with it again.

We have climbed
the tallest peaks on

earth, we have explored

basically on the land
most places on the surface

of our planet,

but there is an infinite
universe out there and

hopefully using nuclear
technology including the

kind of reactor technology
that Dr Schreiber

was a driving force

at Los Alamos, that
technology, I have very

little doubt, will propel
us to the planets

...and beyond.