page_title: Franklin Matthias
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Franklin Matthias / World War II
caption_attribution_description: English: "100-B REACTOR AND WATER TREATMENT AREA." B Reactor is at center.
context_page_description: Franklin Thompson Matthias was an American civil engineer who directed construction of the Hanford nuclear site, a key facility of the Manhattan Project during World War II.
  A graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Matthias joined the Tennessee Valley Authority as a Junior Hydraulic Engineer in 1935, and worked on hydroelectric projects. In April 1941, he was called to active duty by the United States Army, and joined the Construction Division of the Army Corps of Engineers. He was area engineer at the Manhattan Project's Hanford site from 1942 to 1945. As such, he supervised the enormous construction effort, which included three chemical separation plants so large that they were known as "Queen Marys", and the world's first three production-scale nuclear reactors.
  After the war Matthais went to Brazil, where he helped build a hydroelectric facility. He joined the Aluminum Company of Canada in 1951, and was involved in the construction of its Kemano-Kitimat hydroelectric dam and aluminum smelter project in northern British Columbia and the Chute-des-Passes project in Quebec. He was a vice president at Kaiser Engineering from 1960 to 1973.
context_section_description: In April 1941, Matthias was called to active duty by the United States Army as a first lieutenant, and joined the Construction Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, where he received rapid promotion. On 14 December 1942, as a 34-year-old lieutenant colonel, he accompanied Colonel Kenneth Nichols to Wilmington, Delaware, to discuss the location of a proposed plutonium production plant with representatives of DuPont. At this point, Matthias had not yet been assigned to the Manhattan Project, whose mission was to build an atomic bomb, but he had worked on some special studies for it, and had worked with its director, Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., on the construction of The Pentagon. He was already Groves's choice for area engineer for the plutonium project.
  Initially, the intention had been to locate the plutonium plant with the Manhattan Project's other production facilities at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, but concerns had arisen about the dangers of an atomic explosion, and Knoxville lay only 20 miles (32 km) away. A larger site was required where facilities could be separated from each other. It had to be in a sparsely populated but accessible area with access to abundant water and electric power. When he returned from the meeting, Matthias was met by Groves, who instructed him to take a survey team and find a suitable site.  Matthias surveyed four sites in California and Washington, and chose the area around Richland, Washington.
  
  Matthias later recalled that:
  As far as my working relationship with Du Pont was concerned, of course, we had differences from day one. I was fortunate that Gil Church and Walt Simon (Du Pont's project construction manager and operations manager) were people I could deal with and respect, and we had a very good working relationship. I remember one time Granville Read (Du Pont's assistant chief engineer) called up Groves and said Matthias and Church were having a big argument about something and what should we do? Groves replied, "Well, if those two guys don't have some arguments, then neither of them are worth a damn."
  Because of the isolation of the site, known as the Hanford Engineer Works, Matthias exercised more administrative autonomy than the Manhattan Project's other area engineers. The number of personnel assigned to his office grew to over 500 in 1944. Construction work commenced on the 400,000-acre (160,000 ha) site in April 1943. The size of the construction work force eventually reached 44,900 in June 1944; over 150,000 workers were employed at the site between 1943 and 1946.
  The scale of the task was enormous. Matthias supervised the construction of 554 buildings, 386 miles (621 km) of roads, 158 miles (254 km) of railroad track, three chemical separation plants and the world's first three production-scale nuclear reactors. The 800-foot-long (240 m) chemical separation plants, where the plutonium was separated from uranium slugs that had been irradiated in the reactors, were so large that they were known as "Queen Marys", after the ocean liner. Because the slugs were dangerously radioactive, the Queen Marys had concrete walls 7 feet (2.1 m) thick, and operations were by remote control.
  The first production batch of uranium slugs were dissolved at the separation plant on 26 December 1944, and in January 1945 Matthias personally couriered the first batch of plutonium nitrate to Los Angeles, where he handed it over to another courier, who took it to the Los Alamos Laboratory. Plutonium from Hanford would be used in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki. For his wartime services, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.
caption: B Reactor in June 1944
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