page_title: Project Camel
section_title: Salt Wells Pilot plant
hierarchical_section_title: Project Camel / Manhattan Project / Salt Wells Pilot plant
caption_attribution_description: English: Salt Wells Pilot Plant. Explosives for atomic weapons were manufactured here from 1945 to 1954.
context_page_description: Project Camel encompassed the work performed by the California Institute of Technology in support of the Manhattan Project during World War II. These activities included the development of detonators and other equipment, testing of bomb shapes dropped from Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers, and the Salt Wells Pilot Plant, where explosive components of nuclear weapons were manufactured.
context_section_description: The explosive lenses required by the Fat Man had to be fabricated. A small explosive plant was established at Los Alamos known as Site S, as it was a former sawmill. Groves was appalled at the work practices and safety at Site S, and considered it only a matter of time before it blew up. On Parsons' recommendation, Groves decided to establish a pilot plant at NOTS, because Caltech had experience in building and operating pilot ordnance plants. He had some misgivings about this, because he thought that the Navy might err too far on the side of workplace safety.
  Groves and Parsons met with Lauritsen and Bruce Sage, who had built the China Lake Pilot Plant where the rockets were made, and it was agreed that Caltech would build and operate the plant. A site was chosen in the Salt Wells Valley and work commenced on 80 buildings, 52 of them permanent, at a cost of $13 million. Groves wanted the plant working within 100 days. While Site S had sufficient capacity to make explosive components for one or two bombs, it was unlikely that it could meet the expected demand in the months to come. Complicating the construction program was the fact that Los Alamos had not finalized what processes would be used.
  Equipping the Salt Wells Pilot Plant involved its own challenges. Some facilities had to be fabricated for the purpose. Some items were hard to locate, while others were in short supply in the wartime economy. The Manhattan Project's overriding priority overcame this problem. In some cases, the Army had representatives at the factories where items were made who designated them for use by Project Camel. Groves felt that his fears about excessive safety were realized: reinforced concrete, blast proof doors and electrical shielding drove up costs. In the end, after 115 days, the first explosives were melted, mixed and poured on 25 July 1945.
caption: Salt Wells Pilot Plant in August 1946
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