History Lessons from du Pont for the Successful Development of Future Public-Private Partnerships in Fusion Enterprises

by Gordon Goodman Formerly President of the DuPont Power subsidiary of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (1995-1999) and Currently a Candidate for Justice on the 1st Texas Court of Appeals

IAEA FUSION ENTERPRISES WORKSHOP 13-15 June 2018, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Introduction

During World War II, the U.S. War Department’s Army Corps of Engineers asked E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. to design, construct, and operate the first industrial plutonium fission reactor and separation facility. The resulting Hanford Engineer Works became the largest chemical plant du Pont had built at that time (du Pont was originally founded in 1802 with the support of Thomas Jefferson). As this project began, du Pont had to resolve a series of major issues, the five Big Challenges described below, to insure a successful public/private partnership involving innovative and untried technologies. The following background information highlights some of the significant events in this project’s history, and may suggest possible paths forward for the fusion projects of the future.

The Five Big Challenges: du Pont’s Hanford Plutonium Project

• PROFIT: What “Profit” Should a Private Company Expect to Receive in Public/Private Partnerships on Big Science Projects?

• CONFLICTS: How Were the “Conflicts” That Arose Between the Univ. of Chicago Physicists and du Pont Engineers Resolved in the Hanford Project?

• TRADITIONAL VALUES: Why Were du Pont’s traditions of “Durability, Survivability, Safety, and Conservatism” Critical to the Hanford Project?

• MANAGING CHANGE: How Did du Pont Manage Technologies that were Subject to “Major Design/Process Changes” During Construction?

• TIMELINESS: How Did du Pont Finish the Hanford Project “On Time” for the U.S. Government and What Made This Possible?

Background and History

• OSRD: During 1941, the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) determined that a nuclear weapon could be made using either uranium U235 or the new element plutonium. OSRD decided to pursue production by three methods—two focused on isotope separation of U235 and the third on the production of plutonium.

• Plans for a Fission Reactor: Though U235 could be produced through well understood separation processes, it was determined that plutonium would need to be produced by placing purified metallic uranium in a graphite reactor and bombarding it with low-energy neutrons.

• The Hanford Reactors: Under the right conditions, uranium and a moderator (graphite) can achieve a controlled chain reaction and create plutonium. The task is then to separate the plutonium from the highly radioactive uranium fuel and purify it to produce material for a bomb.

• Plutonium Production: Production of plutonium avoided the need for isotope separation but involved making a new element. This had only been done in small quantities with little-known chemical properties.

• Metallurgical Laboratory: For research, OSRD set up the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, under James Conant and Enrico Fermi, to conduct research on making and separating this new element.

• Building an Industrial Scale Plutonium Reactor: It was the assessment of the Army’s General Leslie Groves however that the task of taking lab results from the Met Lab and then designing, building, and operating a production facility could only be done through a contract with du Pont.

• Choice of du Pont: du Pont was chosen for its practice of designing and building its own plants with its own engineering department, its reputation for quick construction, its emphasis on research, and its safety culture derived from long experience with explosives and munitions.

• du Pont’s Terms: The company refused any profit and agreed to this contract on the condition that du Pont would only be reimbursed for its expenses plus one dollar. du Pont also asked that within six months following the end of the war, its contract would end. At that time, they had no corporate interest in the ongoing nuclear business.

• Review of U235 Separation Processes: du Pont requested that a committee review the status of the other processes for fissile fuel production, namely isotope separation of U235 via gaseous diffusion (conducted by Harold Urey at Columbia) and electromagnetic separation (conducted by Ernest Lawrence at the University of California).

• The Contract: On December 21, 1942, a contract was signed between the Corps of Engineers and du Pont, which provided that du Pont would be in charge of designing, building and operating the plutonium plant. Crawford Greenewalt, a 40 year old engineer at du Pont, became director.

• Site Selection: A week before contract signing, University of Chicago physicists joined Army Corps of Engineers staff to meet with du Pont in Wilmington to agree on criteria for location of the plutonium production facilities. A site search was undertaken in the western U. S. in December 1942. The Hanford, Washington site was selected in January 1943.

• Camp Construction: Construction of the camp in the desert to house 45,000 workers, where only a small town of less than 500 people had existed, began almost immediately, together with preparation of the ancillary facilities, roads, railroads and support buildings.

Comments from du Pont’s Executives: President Walter S. Carpenter and Engineer

Crawford Greenewalt (Later President)

• Crawford Greenewalt and the Manhattan Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB8SZqghxvU&index=2&list=PL8B75F9553F4961D1

• Possibility of Failure: There was a real possibility that the Hanford project would not succeed. – “There was no assurance that any of these elements would operate,”

commented Crawford Greenewalt, chemical engineer for DuPont. – “There was no assurance that you could make a reactor run at the high power

levels that were required to produce plutonium. There was no assurance that the plutonium, if produced, could be separated,” said Greenewalt.

– “There certainly was no assurance at that time that an atomic bomb could be made, even given the plutonium,” added Greenewalt.

• Managing Scientists: “This is the important thing, because the people in [The University of] Chicago had not the remotest concept of what was involved in building a plant of this sort,” added Greenewalt.

• Safety Concerns: Safety concerns were immediately apparent. – “The losses conceivable in connection with this thing were just appalling—

cataclysmic,” commented Walter Carpenter, then President of du Pont. – “No one was quite sure that this might not get out of hand. And, if it did, it

might devastate that entire area,” said Carpenter.

• Pragmatism: “My responsibility was to take the information from the scientific effort in Chicago and translate it into terms that our engineering and technical people could use to design and build a plant,” noted Greenewalt.

• The Right Executive: “The reason he [Greenewalt] was able to put those two groups together [the University of Chicago physicists and the du Pont engineers],” said Irénée du Pont, Jr. [a du Pont board member], “was because he had this gift of being both a thorough theoretical man as well as a hands-on, fix-it engineer.”

1. The Profit Challenge

• Prior Experience in World War I: The du Pont company was accused of war profiteering after World War I due to its large sales of gunpowder and other explosives to the U.S. military.

• du Pont’s Approach for World War II: du Pont insisted in its contract with the War Department’s Corps of Engineers during World War II that it would be paid only for its expenses plus one dollar ($1).

• Benefit to du Pont: Though its “profit” was only $1, du Pont gained significant knowledge and unique experience through its design, construction, and initial operation of the Hanford Project.

• Future Fusion Plants: In the future, private companies looking at forming possible large scale industrial public/private partnerships with sovereign governments should consider whether the du Pont model of charging only for its expenses plus $1 should be replicated.

2. The Conflicts Challenge

• du Pont’s Caution: du Pont’s caution regarding the likelihood of success led James Conant, head of the Met Lab, to tell General Groves that they should talk to General Electric or Westinghouse instead of du Pont – he felt they would be more optimistic, but Groves decided on du Pont.

• Refusal to Form Joint Venture: “As for operating policy, du Pont had from the first insisted upon complete control. In the months of negotiations with Groves, the company had refused to consider any sort of joint venture. This approach appealed to both Groves and Compton.” Hewlett & Anderson, History of the Atomic energy Commission.

• Exclusion of Met Lab Physicists from the Industrial Design: “Although du Pont’s [lead Engineer] Greenewalt consulted Chicago on isolated theoretical problems, [Physicist] Wigner realized that du Pont had no intention of giving the Metallurgical Laboratory a free hand….” Hewlett & Anderson, History…

• Undertones of Discontent: “Whether the Chicago scientists liked it or not, the Metallurgical Laboratory had become a vital, but distinctly subordinate affiliate of the du Pont organization. More than any other event, that shift in authority engendered the undertones of discontent which pervaded the laboratory until the end of the war. . . . .” Hewlett & Anderson, “History...”

• The “Revolt” of the Chicago Physicists: The conflicts between the Chicago physicists and the du Pont engineers led to a minor “revolt” of several physicists in mid-summer 1943. They wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt and contacted Bernard Baruch, a close friend of President Roosevelt, claiming DuPont was trying to undermine the whole project.

• Difference in Cultures: There was a difference in the culture of the two groups. The most significant example of this tension centered on the fact that the reactor design at Hanford did not directly follow the conceptual design laid out by Eugene Wigner’s group.

• Who Writes the History: Years later, when the opportunity arose to document the WW II Hanford experiences, these tensions were reinforced when the popular histories of the Manhattan Project focused almost entirely on the contributions of the physicists at the Met Lab.

• Quoting Greenewalt: "To my way of thinking it was one of the greatest interdisciplinary efforts ever mounted. . . but the physicists always want to pull the covers way over to their side of the bed.”

3. The Traditional Values Challenge

• The Physicists’ Approach: Enrico Fermi chafed under du Pont’s leadership and expressed his view on how the project should have been built:

– “What you should do is build a pile just as quickly as you can, cut corners, do anything possible to get it done quickly. Then you will run it, and it won’t work. Then you find out why it doesn’t work and you build another one….”

• Freezing the Design: Though du Pont’s engineers understood many aspects of engineering thru mathematical models, they realized those models were only approximate. du Pont concluded that conservatism should be added for industrial design to accommodate unforeseen factors.

• See if It Works: Also, the concept of “build one and see if it works” was not part of du Pont’s culture. To get a working reactor in the shortest possible time, the design had to be “frozen” relatively early in the process.

• Need for Design Conservatism: It was important for du Pont to apply operating conservatism throughout the design process for radiation protection and backup systems for process malfunction or power failures.

• Safety Culture: The du Pont corporate culture had a lasting influence on the safety culture of the Hanford Project through the establishment of programs to insure adequate radiation safeguards for workers and increased understanding of the impacts of radiation on the environment.

4. The Managing Change Challenge

• Four Issues for du Pont: The new plutonium production environment at Hanford involved four issues that du Pont had never faced before:

– the “care and feeding” of neutrons;

– heat removal requirements were unprecedented and involved multiple back-up systems because of the dire consequences from failure in any way;

– the need for design of a separation process that had to be remotely operated and maintained, due to the high levels of radioactivity; and

– protection of personnel and environment from unknown levels of radiation.

• Highest Corporate Priority: The president, Walter Carpenter, made sure that du Pont’s senior staff accepted that they held the future of the company in their hands, that a poor performance would have a serious impact on the reputation of the company, and that anything they needed by way of support from the company would be promptly delivered. It was by far the largest project the company had ever undertaken.

• Multiple Parties—Gaseous Diffusion: For the U235 gaseous diffusion program, the concept started in the SAM laboratory at Columbia University, plant design was done by the Kellex Corp., construction was done by J.A. Jones, and Union Carbide was the operator.

• Multiple Parties—Electromagnetic Separation: For the U235 electromagnetic separation program, the concept started in the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California; construction at Oak Ridge was done by Stone and Webster, equipment contracts were with General Electric for power, Allis-Chalmers for magnets, and Westinghouse for process bins. Tennessee Eastman was the operator.

• Sole Designer, Constructor, and Operator at Hanford: At Hanford, du Pont was solely responsible for site selection, managing 45,000 workers, designing at Wilmington headquarters, building the town of Richland, operating the Hanford complex, and delivering plutonium for a test device in July 1945 and the Nagasaki bomb in August 1945.

• Major Changes: Major changes were made by du Pont in neutron shielding of the reactor, materials handling (charging and discharging uranium), cooling water treatment, and backup systems. Several aspects of the Met Lab designs would have had serious consequences had du Pont not modified them. du Pont’s revised reactor designs provided most of the fissile material for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal in the Cold War.

• The Original Met Lab Design: du Pont’s final industrial designs were in contrast to the “minimalist” laboratory designs included in the Met Lab’s CE-407 report focused on the immediate needs for a “war-time” situation.

• Met Lab’s Complaints: During the du Pont design period, the physicists argued DuPont was too concerned with safety and conservative design.

• Site Proposal from the Met Lab: Met Lab physicist Wigner had originally proposed that the plutonium reactors be built at the mouth of the Potomac River where it flows into Chesapeake Bay.

• Biggest Change in Design: The most publicized du Pont change was to increase the number of process tubes from 1,500 to 2,004 by filling in the corners of the cylindrical arrangement of tubes within the reactor core.

• Effect of Xenon Gas: The physicists’ original calculations of the reactivity of the core had not sufficiently accounted for the effect of xenon gas, which is a strong neutron absorber and a byproduct of the fission reaction.

• Major Change during Construction: During construction, a du Pont staff scientist became concerned that xenon would reduce the reactivity of the core. He advised du Pont to take action to offset this “growing encroachment” on the reactivity of the core and increase the margin for success by adding process tubes to the corners of the reactor.

• Over-Engineered Solution: The Chicago physicists objected because of the delay and extra uranium required. They complained that it was an example of du Pont being overly concerned with safety and reliability. du Pont’s solution of increasing reactivity by adding uranium to extra process tubes made it possible for the reactor to operate at full power.

• Differences in Mindset: The Chicago physicists eventually claimed du Pont’s design change was “more from luck than foresight,” but it highlighted a difference between experimenters who observe an event in a lab, but have no idea what is required for commercial production, versus engineers who seek ways to build conservatism into industrial designs.

• Design Conservatism: In the case of the Hanford reactors, without du Pont’s design conservatism, delivery of plutonium would have been set back by at least ten months, and the end of the war possibly delayed.

• Separating Plutonium: During much of the early design phase the process for separation/purification of plutonium had not been determined. Almost nothing was known about physical aspects of plutonium and very little was known about its chemical aspects, since the material had previously been obtained only in microgram quantities in the laboratory.

5. The Timeliness Challenge

• Complex Planning: du Pont had developed a system for organizing complex projects into discreet self-contained jobs that identified required inputs of information, materials, circumstances, etc., and resultant products of information, materials, etc. to be used by subsequent jobs.

• Inputs and Products: These self-contained jobs, which had estimates of time duration and manpower needs, were arranged into a web such that each job was placed in the appropriate sequence of inputs and none was arranged before required inputs had been received from prior jobs.

• The Route Through the Web: This web showed the required amount of time to go from start to finish by each branch of the web. The route through the web that showed the longest time requirement was identified as the critical path of the project, i.e. the series of tasks that had to be completed in sequence that required the longest time. Thus, all other sequences of required tasks could be done in a shorter period of time.

• Minimum Time to Complete: The critical path defined the minimum time required to complete the project, provided manpower was not an issue. A similar assessment of manpower and crafts needed in each job, and the period during which all tasks had to be performed, would indicate the staffing needed to maintain the critical path, or possibly identify another set of tasks which could become the critical path.

• Updating Frequently: At frequent intervals, this chart would be updated to reflect actual times required for accomplished tasks and new estimates for upcoming tasks (a form of Bayesian probability). It also identified those parts of the project which would most benefit the overall project from close control and efforts to improve the rate of progress.

• Sharing the CPM System: du Pont first developed the Critical Path Method (CPM) system in 1940, a couple of years before the Hanford plutonium project. It remained an unshared company trade secret for more than 15 years before its disclosure in the late 1950s to the U.S. Navy.

• The Process Cell (Form of Plug and Play): du Pont devised a process cell, a remote chemical-laboratory, which included flexible equipment that could be installed using crane-controlled wrenches, and viewed by the operator through a periscope while shielded by a thick concrete wall.

• Standardization: A series of different standard cell designs were developed for a variety of processes including process lines, power, and instrument outlets on the walls of the cells. The walls were lined with welded stainless-steel sheets over thick concrete. A heavy concrete covering plug isolated highly radioactive equipment within the cells.

• Jumpers and Connections: Specially designed jumpers provided connection of these process, power, and instrument lines to whatever pieces of equipment were needed to carry out selected chemical operations. All jumpers had to be designed with a lifting rig that would maintain the right orientation to allow it to be lifted or lowered into the cell and mate with the desired jumper or wall connection.

• Installation of Cells Remotely: Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the design and construction of the remote facilities was du Pont’s practice of mocking-up each unique cell design in their Wilmington shop, and instead of using craftsmen to install individual cells in the 800 foot Hanford concrete “canyon” separations facilities, they had the operations and maintenance staff do the installation remotely. In so doing, they assured an integrated process line from startup.

• Teflon and Closed Circuit Television: du Pont engineers also came up with a modular cell concept, which allowed major components to be removed and replaced by an operator sitting in a heavily shielded overhead crane. This method required early application of two technologies that later gained wide use: Teflon, used as a gasket material, and closed-circuit television, used to give the crane operator a better view of the process.

• Beating Rational Expectations: Thayer, in his book on the management of Hanford during the war, analyzed the “rational” war-time scheduling of projects which followed a prudent sequencing of conceptual design, semi-works study of production, design, construction, and operations. He concluded that by rational expectation, the first bomb would have been expected to be available in mid-1948 – three years later than actual.

• Time Compression: Without the ability to keep on top of the complex tasks at Hanford, through such capabilities as the CPM method, the compression of the schedule that combined design, construction and operation under one organization within du Pont would probably have been unmanageable and the Hanford success impossible.

• Interface Between Engineering and Construction: Another way in which du Pont’s construction methods were unique was the interface between the engineering and construction organizations, i.e. field management.

• Thayer’s Summary on du Pont’s Success at Hanford: Thayer noted that Hanford’s plutonium plant, made of totally unprecedented components, was brought in a year ahead of schedule, with a nearly flawless startup and with cost overrun limited to 11%.

• Thayer’s Explanation for du Pont’s Success at Hanford:

– A time-tested field organization, staffed with individuals experienced in process-plant construction who had worked together for years

– Scheduling by the du Pont-invented Critical Path Method (15 years before it became known to the industry generally)

– Day-to-day close supervision of crafts by du Pont’s Assistant Division Engineers

– An effective Quality Assurance program (a generation prior to the coining of that phrase).

• Fear of Failure: Thayer also noted that the quality of du Pont’s work was based in part on du Pont’s fear of catastrophic failure that was uppermost in the minds of du Pont’s Board of Directors.

• Hanford Worked: The Hanford Engineer Works actually worked – a nearly flawless start (after implementation of du Pont’s workaround with added process tubes in the B reactor because of a problem in the conceptual design from the Met Lab).

• Plutonium Was Delivered On-time: Hanford delivered the required plutonium product on time – June 1945 – for a test device on July 16 and for the second bomb on August 9 of that year.

Postscript: The Environmental Challenge

• du Pont’s Departure in 1946: In accordance with its U.S. government contract, du Pont turned over operations at Hanford in 1946, but the project continued to produce plutonium for more than 40 years until 1989.

• The Nuclear Arsenal: During the Cold War, Hanford Engineering Works produced most of the plutonium that was used in the more than 60,000 weapons built for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

• Unintended Consequences: Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation's largest environmental cleanup.

• The Cleanup Begins: The cleanup of the Hanford site began in 1989. As of 2014, cleanup cost had been about $40 billion. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which owns and operates Hanford, predicts cleanup will run through year 2060, with a remaining estimated cost of about $114 billion.

Source Materials • Carpenter, W.S. Letter from W. S. Carpenter, Jr., President of du Pont, “To all

employees of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company.” August 24, 1945. Archives Center of the Smithsonian Institution (archivescenter@si.edu) in Technology, Invention, and Innovation Collections; DuPont Nylon Collection; 1939-1977; #7; Box 1; Series 1: Nylon Production; 1939-1948; Subseries 4: Nylon in War Folder 22.

• b-reactor.org. “The DuPont Company The Forgotten Producers of Plutonium.” Last modified in Revision 3 – March 2017. http://b-reactor.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Lost_In_The_Telling-Rev_3.pdf.

• atomicheritage.org. “Manhattan Project Spotlight: E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. ” September 2014. https://www.atomicheritage.org/article/manhattan-project-spotlight-ei-du-pont-de-nemours-company.

• oregon.gov. “Hanford Cleanup: The First 25 Years.” September 2014. http://www.oregon.gov/energy/facilities-safety/safety/Documents/Hanford%2025%20Year%20Report.pdf.

• Ndiaye, P.A. Nylon and Bombs. Translated by Elborg Forster. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

• Thayer, H. Management Of The Hanford Engineer Works In World War II. New York, NY: ASCE Press, 1996.