Forest Hills, PA: 1937 Atom Buster at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories and US-30 (Lincoln Highway)

(Satellite)

Street View, Aug 2011

Jackson-Township historical preservation posted
Atom Buster at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Forest Hills, Allegheny County. The Westinghouse Atom Smasher was a 5 million volt Van de Graaff electrostatic nuclear accelerator operated by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation at their Research Laboratories in the borough of Forest Hills. It was instrumental in the development in practical applications of nuclear science for energy production. In particular, it was used in 1940 to discover the photofission of uranium and thorium, and was most cited for certain nuclear physics measurements. The Westinghouse Atom Smasher was intended to make measurements of nuclear reactions for research in nuclear power. It was the first industrial Van de Graaff generator in the world, and marked the beginning of nuclear research for civilian applications. Built in 1937, it was a 65-foot-tall pear-shaped tower. It was essentially unused after World War II, and the main structure was laid on its side in 2015. In 1985, it was named an Electrical Engineering Milestone by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics. (Photo from https://www.post-gazette.com/) Lawrence Mohan: When was that taken, my dad worked at Westinghouse Research in Churchill from the 1950,s thru the 80,s I thought that was the only Research 😳. John Farren: I grew up in East Pittsburgh, and every time we drove Rt. 30 going to (or past) Forest Hills, we would see the atom smashers on top of the hill. It was on one side of the highway and Vincent's Pizza was on the other. I hope the developer who tore it down isn't suffering from radiation sickness. It was AN ATOM smasher, after all.

Note that the date on the street view above is 2011. This is what is left.

Chris Wagner, Apr 2021

James Rieker, Dec 2024

Adam Ryan, Jul 2025

Jim Roepke posted
In Forest Hills, PA. This 65-foot-tall, pear-shaped structure sat on top of a building and was used for civilian nuclear research. The reactor was decommissioned in 1958 and its supporting brick buildings were demolished in 2015. What remains is the massive steel bulb lying on its side. 

Mark V Shock: They also had a mini reactor onsite!! I saw it several times while working on the property

Back in 99-2000. I knew exactly what it was and when I asked the guy that was our escort I said that’s a nuclear reactor and the dude got stone faced and was like how do you know that and I told him and he says yeah we don’t really discuss it with anybody….

It appears that today's route for US-30 may have been the original Lincoln Highway route in this area. The next oldest topo map available is 1907, and there was nothing around here back then.

1953/55 Braddock Quad @ 24,000

Facebook Reel

Facebook Reel

City Life Adventures by Carla Cardello posted nine photos with the comment:

Photos taken on 8/1/26 of Pittsburgh’s atom smasher in Forest Hills being prepped for preservation! Scaffolding was set up last week so the crew can dismantle and relocate it to the Westinghouse facility in Cranberry where it’ll be preserved for years to come. 

For those of you who want to stop by for last minute photos, the gate has been locked up with no trespassing signs. You can walk around the perimeter or fly a drone like me (when they aren’t actively working, of course).

This is a big deal because it was the world’s first industrial Van de Graaff generator used for nuclear research. The building was demolished in 2015 but the neglected smasher sat there abandoned until now. No, it is not a water tower. 

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

JB Byers commented on the above post
Here is a little diagram to explain how it worked.

Jackson-Township historical preservation posted

Atom Buster at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Forest Hills, Allegheny County.  The Westinghouse Atom Smasher was a 5 million volt Van de Graaff electrostatic nuclear accelerator operated by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation at their Research Laboratories in the borough of Forest Hills. It was instrumental in the development in practical applications of nuclear science for energy production.  In particular, it was used in 1940 to discover the photofission of uranium and thorium, and was most cited for certain nuclear physics measurements. The Westinghouse Atom Smasher was intended to make measurements of nuclear reactions for research in nuclear power. It was the first industrial Van de Graaff generator in the world, and marked the beginning of nuclear research for civilian applications. Built in 1937, it was a 65-foot-tall pear-shaped tower. It was essentially unused after World War II, and the main structure was laid on its side in 2015. In 1985, it was named an Electrical Engineering Milestone by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics. 

(Photo from https://www.post-gazette.com/)

Tom Buchan commented on the above post
Picture looking inside. I took this about 8 or 10 years ago.

Gloria Blake commented on the above post

Heinz History Center magazine, Western Pennsylvania History.

Fall 2015.

An Unlikely Atomic Landscape

by Marni Blake Walter

Jim Donehoo commented on the above post

Jim Senkewitz commented on the above post

Jim Senkewitz commented on the above post

Mark Smith commented on the above post
Currently

Grants, NM: Route 66 Sign near US-66, Santa Fe Caboose and Uranium Mining Museum

US-66 Sign: (Satellite)

Caboose: (Satellite)

Museum: (Satellite)

Wall Mural: (Satellite)

US-66 Overview

Vegas Bassist posted
[Looking North from US-66, or at the south side of the sign.]

Earl Gates Jr commented on Vegas' post
We visited Grant's in December [2025]
[Looking South from an unlabelled street.]

The south side of the sign must have recently been repainted. The next oldest view, Mar 2021, looks like this instead of the "flames" sign in the post at the top of these notes.

Street View, Mar 2025

I found a nighttime photo so that we can see it lit up. This was the north side before it was repainted as in Earl's photo above.

Txtravler, Nov 2024

The mining museum features an underground uranium mine.

Street View, Mar 2025

This is the caboose that we see in the left background of the above view.

Street View, Mar 2025

This wall mural does not exist in the Mar 2021 street view.

Street View, Mar 2025

These motels are old, but Springfield, MO, has two motor courts which are a generation older. Motor courts were the original lodging style along national highways.

I started looking for the posted sign by "cruising" Historic 66 from the east side of town. I passed some motor hotels on the east side. This one was fancy for its day because it had two stories.

Street View, Mar 2025

I remember when the motel signs would brag about Color TV.

Street View, Mar 2025

Like depots, if a building is not maintained, it falls apart.

Street View, Mar 2025

One is still in business. But it appears that it specializes in longer stays.

Street View, Mar 2025

This was labeled Former East Pueblo Texaco Service Station. The pumps are gone in the May 2015 view.

Street View, Dec 2008

Of course, now food, gas and lodging is along the exit from I-40.

Street View, Mar 2025

Tiverton, ON: Bruce Nuclear Power

(Satellite)

John Vincent commented on a post about Byron
The Bruce NGS site on Lake Huron when Bruce "B" was under construction. Bruce A is at the top of the picture, 5 heavy water plants are below that. Douglas Point NGS (which goes back to about 1964) is near the lake with the white dome. The plant with the stack is the oil fired steam plant that supplied process steam to the heavy water units. At the bottom of the picture are the early stages of Bruce B construction.

Bob Ciminel posted
Bruce Generating Station in the Land of the Sideways Snow. I made too many trips up there in the winter. When I finally got one in the summer it was enjoyable.

BrucePower
"Bruce Power is a leading supplier of medical isotopes that are used worldwide in life-saving cancer treatments and sterilization of medical devices."

 

BrucePower-history

BrucePower-life-extension

BrucePower-unit6
"Bruce Power’s Unit 6 Major Component Replacement (MCR) reached another important milestone when the final of eight steam generators was lifted into place on December 18[, 2021], safely and event-free....Each steam generator weighs approximately 320,000 pounds and was lifted through the powerhouse roof enclosure using Mammoet’s PTC-35 crane. This 1,600-ton capacity crane is one of the largest in the world and features a boom the length of a hockey rink that can stretch over the station, which is seven storeys tall, and reach the inner-most steam generators."

Dave Trumble posted, croped
Unit 4 at Bruce GS A Bruce Power, Tiverton Ontario.

safe_image for Bruce Power’s Unit 3 marks 45 years since declaring commercial operation; Final preparations underway for Major Component Replacement outage

World Nuclear News posted

Canada's Bruce Power has signed an agreement with Siemens Energy Canada for new high-pressure steam turbines for its four Bruce A nuclear power plant units - which will increase their combined output by 125 MW.

https://world-nuclear-news.org/.../bruce-a-set-for-power...

Oak Ridge, TN: Uranium Enrichment

(Satellite)

Rich Showalter posted
Women at work inside the K-25 uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, TN.

Ni Zu: ....and now we have automation...

Rob Walker: Interesting story about these women. They were non technical high school graduates. It was believed that they would “tinker” with the Calutrons less than the scientists. They would simply run the equipment as they were taught. Many had no idea what they were actually working on.

https://time.com/5191480/atomic-city-womens-history/

Mike Andrews: Rob, exactly. And the the control panels were designed to as to reveal as little information as possible about just what they were controlling.

Sandy Hawkins posted

Y12 plant Oak Ridge TN 1944. These are the controls for gaseous diffusion of enriched uranium.

Michael White commented on Rich's post

These young women were operating the Calutron mass spectrometer enrichment machines at the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge. They could focus the matter beams much, much better than the scientists who built the machines. And indeed, they didn't know what they were actually working on.

"We can train you how to do what is needed, but cannot tell you what you are doing. I can only tell you that if our enemies beat us to it, God have mercy on us!"

Navin Johnson posted

Almost ten thousand girls right out of high school were hired in Oakridge Tennessee in 1943, to operate mass spectrometers called Calutrons. They weren't even told what they were doing. They were only told to turn this knob, flip this switch, make this meter read a certain level. But they were enriching Uranium and it took them two years to make enough material for one bomb, the one dropped on Hiroshima. 

My mother-in-law was one of these "Calutron Girls". Whenever I asked what she did at Oakridge she would say, "if I told you, I would have to kill you! It was something for the war effort". I assumed she was a secretary. 

Then in the 90's, after things were declassified, I printed this picture from the internet and showed it to her, asking if this is what she did. She said, "Yeah! That's where I worked!! In building Y-12!  I'm not sure she ever knew what those machines did.

History's Mirror posted

The S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was a critical but short-lived component of the Manhattan Project. As the third major uranium enrichment facility built during World War II, S-50 complemented the Y-12 Electromagnetic Plant and K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant, each representing different approaches to the same urgent goal: producing enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb. Unlike its counterparts, S-50 used thermal diffusion to slightly enrich uranium before it passed through K-25 and then Y-12 for further refinement. Approved by General Leslie Groves on June 24, 1944, S-50 was rushed into service—operational by September 16 of that year, just 69 days after construction began. This haste came at a cost, with the facility suffering a high accident rate, though fortunately no fatalities occurred.

Despite its operational success, S-50 was rendered obsolete by the more efficient K-25 plant and was shut down on September 9, 1945, shortly after the end of the war. Its columns were removed, and the facility was repurposed for the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft Project until 1951. S-50 was ultimately dismantled, but its contribution marked a unique and intense chapter in the story of atomic development.

Brett Wanamaker shared

John Solakiewic: Also, the Portsmouth and Paducah Gaseous Diffusion plants, add our centrifuge plants in New Mexico and Ohio.

Manhattan Project National Historical Park posted

The S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant along the Clinch River in Oak Ridge was the third of three competing technologies pursued by the Manhattan Project in an effort to speed up production of enriched uranium for use in Little Boy, the world's first atomic bomb. Manhattan Project administrators first built the Y-12 Electromagnetic Isotope Separation Plant and the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant. S-50 was the last-built and shortest-lived plant. All three plants operated in unison. Uranium would be slightly enriched at S-50 before being enriched further at K-25 and then receive its final enrichment at Y-12. Approved for construction by General Leslie Groves on June 24, 1944, S-50 began enrichment on September 16, 1944, only 69 days after construction began, but at a high cost. It also suffered a higher accident rate than the other plants, possibly due to S-50 beginning operation while most of the plant was still under construction, with both construction and operational crews often working in the same areas. No accidents were fatal.

With the end of World War II, the high cost and inability to compete with the enrichment method of K-25, S-50 was put into standby. On September 9, 1945, less than a year after the first column came online, S-50 shut down. The enrichment columns were quickly removed and from May 1, 1946, through December 31, 1951, S-50 housed the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft Project. S-50 was demolished when the project moved to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Image Credit: US Department of Energy/Ed Westcott

Michelle Shocklee: S-50, K-25, and the Clinch River all play a significant part in my historical novel The Women of Oak Ridge. I grew up in Santa Fe, NM, with family members who worked at Los Alamos Labs, and a grandmother who saw the “flash” of the Trinity test……and yet I had never heard of Oak Ridge until I moved to Tennessee in 2017! I knew I’d have to write a book about this fascinating place! 😎

Daniel Ian Cohoon posted
Over view of y 12 in Oak Ridge Tennessee as found in Wikipedia sources. This is a public domain image.

RB Moose: This a very old picture. Minimum of 20 years old.

Brad Woods posted 13 photos with the comment:

Y-12  ELECTROMAGNETIC SEPARATION FACILITY,  Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  In an effort to produce enriched Uranium-235, Oak Ridge utilized three separate methods, electromagnetic separation, gaseous diffusion and thermal (steam) separation. 

The Electromagnetic separation method, using a modified cyclotron, called a "Calutron" was the first method to be used at Oak Ridge. The first stage units were known as Alpha Units, later Beta Units were used to take the partially enriched feed from the Alpha Units and enrich it to weapons grade.

Oak Ridge was the first  geographical site, of the Manhattan Project, to be selected by General Groves,  in the massive drive to develop an atomic weapon.  He selected Oak Ridge from a sparsely populated ridge area in September 1942.  In less than a year, the first Alpha unit became operation.

The units worked, but created very small amounts of enriched U-235 per unit.  Grove continually added on units. Because copper was scarce during the war, silver was borrowed from the Treasury department which was formed into coils of the giant electromagnets in the Calutrons.  Two years later, over 22,000 people were being employed just in the Y-12 complex.  Most of these were young women, many of who had just graduated from college.  Colloquially known as "Calutron Girls."  They were not told what the machines controlled, how they functioned, nor what was being made.  They were simply trained to monitor gauges and alter controls in response to changes.  In Oak Ridge, knowledge was compartmentalized.  You were told what you needed to do your job and nothing else.  Codes or codewords were used for Uranium, many chemicals and many processes.  You were not allowed to discuss your job with anyone.

Eli Benson: The “Calutron Girls” were following a written protocol to adjust the machines based on gauge readings. A rivalry developed between the engineers and the Calutron Girls about who was doing the job the best. The engineers with their innate knowledge of the process, or the girls that read the gauges and adjusted the machines accordingly. The girls won the competition.

Stephen Bitmead: If I remember from reading a very exhaustive book on this, I think these devices were used eventually to further enrich the uranium from the gas diffusion units. That way the process became quite efficient. As this post says they weren’t good at enriching the raw uranium, but once it had been enriched to a certain level, they were quite good at getting them to the final required level of enrichment.

Brad Woods: Stephen Bitmead Yes, that is why the he electromagnetic process had to have two stages. K-25 was not fully functional until after the war, so they used the first few stages of it, which were functional, and used that as feed material for the Calutrons. As you indicated, this increased production efficiency greatly.

Brad Woods: Eli Benson Exactly. They put the engineers in their place. After working their machines for 8 hours shifts for months they got used to the machines individual peculiarities and could run them with fine tuned precision.

Rod Stadum: Jun Santos I've read that the Project requested virtually all of the silver the Treasury had, for conductors. Copper was needed on the frontlines for shells.

Peter Beringer: Ohh, I don’t know anything about “thermal (steam) separation”! A little surprised, given my tendency to become obsessed with obscure aspects of the history of nuclear technology. Guess I got a date with the Google machine!

Brad Woods: Peter Beringer Look up the "S-50" facility at Oak Ridge. It was located near K-25 along the Clinch River . We don't hear as much about it as it was the last separation plant to go online in Oak Ridge. It was not operated for a long time.

https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Places/OakRidge/oak-ridge-s50.html

Albert LaFrance: I wonder what variables the operators monitored and controlled. I'd love to see the user manual for that equipment! To assess production, maybe they watched the beam currents through the two collection pots?

Brad Woods: Albert LaFrance I don't know all the variables, but they did monitor the voltage to the filaments in the heaters that vaporized the Uranium compound, the strength of the magnetic fields, and as you say, the current for the ion beams. I would imagine they had to monitor the vacuum pressure in the "D" chambers for leakage as well. The developer of the Calutrons was the physicist Ernest Lawrence. He often visited Oak Ridge to see/oversee the installation and running of his machines. He took great pride in them. The Calutrons girls were often not so happy to see him. Of course, they didn't know the functions of the machines nor what their actions inputed on the controls did, but they were quite adept at keeping the Calutrons operating within their designed parameters. Lawrence would walk around up and down the isles and occasionally go to a console and tweak with it in an attempt to improve performance. He would get frustrated glares from the girls as oftentimes he failed and messed the girls console controls up so badly that had to go back and recalibrate it from start. In one case Lawrence actually shorted out one of the girl's machine trying to push it to its limits. As someone mentioned earlier, the girls knew the idiosyncrasies of their particular machine and could operate it with fine controlled precision. All too often, a smug scientist or supervisor, thinking they could show the girl how to do it better, got humiliated as they crashed the machine. Adding insult to injury were the barely suppressed giggles of the other operators!

John Post: I’m thinking Los Alamos was the first site….?

Brad Woods: John Post Oak Ridge was the first of the three sites selected by General Groves.

The time line was very close, John. Oak Ridge was selected in September and Los Alamos not until November. By February Oak Ridge had already started construction of the Y-12 plant. Los Alamos was not deemed a lab until April. So yes, the time differences are subtle as all three sites were progressing concurrently. Los Alamos was dependent on Oak Ridge for fissionable material for their experimental work. Although they had many meetings at Los Alamos, and we're doing mathematical modeling, they could not do their physical bomb construction experimental work until they started receiving Plutonium for Oak Ridge's X-10 reactor and Enriched Uranium from Oak Ridge's Y-12 plant.

1

2

3

4

5
A rare look into the inside of a Calutron Control unit. The picture is not clear, but at the top of the units, you can see the name of the manufacturer, General (GE) Electric.

Albert LaFrance: Do you know where these panels were located in relation to the actual calutrons? It looks like the there's some high power/voltage equipment and plumbing (vacuum system?) inside, so I'd assume they were in close proximity.

Brad Woods: Albert LaFrance Good question. They were adjacent, but the panel operators were not permitted into the calutron areas. The panels or cubicles not only allowed control but provided power to each "D" unit to heat the Uranium compound and vaporize it. The D units were operated at a vacuum.

Mark Saxton: https://www.y12.doe.gov/.../assets/document/08-01-03.pdf

Mark Saxton commented on photo 5.

6
End of shift! The "CEW" on the sign stands for Clinton Engineering Works, which was the official name of the Oak Ridge Facility used by the Government.

7
One of the "D" units, which was a tank that would be housed between electromagnetic coils and contained the Uranium. The vaporized U-25 and U-238 followed different arcs due to their difference in molecular weight. Two small bins collected the enriched Uranium and the depleted Uranium at the end of the arcs.

Dan Reinhart: So, it condensed within the equipment?

Brad Woods: Dan Reinhart Yes, the ion streams ended in a "collector box." Technicians periodically took these out of the machines and removed the enriched material (plus all of the other gunk that inadvertently condensed out all over the inside of the machine.)

8
Exterior of one of the Alpha buildings.

9

10
Many "D's" put together formed a "racetrack." Each D had a control panel. Often an operator had responsibility for two panels or "consoles." (usually a young woman, known as a "Calutron Girl.') Racetrack technicians have many stories. Walking on top of the racetracks, is stated as like trying to walk through a vat of honey. The great magnetism from the electromagnets below their feet pulled on the nails in their shoes making walking a concerted effort. Women reported bobby-pins being pulled from their hair. One worker was carrying a sheet of steel, when he got too close to the calutrons the magnetism yanked him over to the machine and trapped him between the steel sheet and the side of the unit. Power had to be turned off to extricate him (he was not seriously harmed.)

11

12
Construction of alpha and Beta electromagnetic separation buildings never seemed to cease.

13

Joe Osullivan: I would imagine these photos would have been highly classified at the time.

Brad Woods: Joe Osullivan Absolutely!

Gist of History posted

When wartime shortages threatened to halt the creation of the world's first atomic bomb, Manhattan Project engineers bypassed a critical copper shortage by borrowing thousands of tons of pure silver directly from the United States Treasury. 

In 1942, as construction began on the massive Y-12 electromagnetic isotope separation plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the project required immense quantities of electrical conductor wire to build thousands of giant electromagnets. However, because copper was a critical war material strictly rationed for shell casings, wiring, and hardware, General Leslie Groves and his team turned to a unique alternative: the vast, unused silver reserves sitting idle in the Treasury vaults at West Point.

When Manhattan Project officials approached Undersecretary of the Treasury Daniel W. Bell to request 6,000 tons of silver, the bureaucrat famously replied with dry financial precision: "In the Treasury, we do not talk about tons of silver; our unit is the troy ounce." Undeterred by the terminology shift, the Manhattan Engineer District ended up borrowing a staggering 408 million troy ounces of silver, equivalent to roughly 14,700 short tons (about 13,300 metric tons), valued at over $300 million at the time. The precious metal was cast into heavy busbars and precision wiring, sealed under strict security, and installed directly into the giant Calutron magnet coils designed by Ernest O. Lawrence to separate uranium-235 from uranium-238.

Because silver is actually a superior electrical conductor to copper, the silver coils functioned flawlessly throughout the war, driving the enrichment process that produced the fuel for the "Little Boy" atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Following the war's conclusion, every single silver busbar was carefully uninstalled, melted down, cleaned, and returned to the U.S. Treasury vaults, with accountants noting that less than 0.03% of the total tonnage was lost during the entire industrial process.

Ole Yearian: The bomb--excuse me, "gadget"--you see depicted here is not the "Little Boy" bomb. This is the Trinity bomb: the test device detonated for the Trinity Test on July 16th 1945 at the "Trinity test site" in New Mexico. The Little Boy bomb did not need to be tested: it was obvious that it would work. That was the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. And it did, in fact, work. Perhaps interestingly the gentleman in the bush hat seated left of the bomb in the upper photo is--unless my aging mind is fuzzing again--Robert J. Oppenheimer.

Michael Matalis shared

They also looked into using gold, but decided on silver. To give yoiu an idea of how the minds of nerds work, when it was decided to go with silver they asked what had happened to the gold ingot they had been provided they found it being used as a doorstop.

Comments on the above post