Secret World War Two nuclear city open to tours

By Verna Gates

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (Reuters Life!) - Visiting a nuclear city may be an unusual tourist attraction but the U.S. Department of Energy is finding growing interest in a uranium plant once so secretive it had no address and was not on maps.

From June to September visitors can tour parts of the facility at Oak Ridge in eastern Tennessee which was set up in 1943 and ran 24 hours a day separating uranium 235 from natural uranium.

It was part of the Manhattan Project that eventually produced atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.

But during World War Two staff recruited to the community that spread over 59,000 acres, frequently had little idea how their jobs fitted into the larger picture.

"I didn't know what I was doing or why I was doing it. I just knew how to do my job," said Gladys Owens, who operated a uranium enrichment machine.

At the time even the word uranium was rarely used and "tuballoy" was a frequent substitute.

"I was recruited straight from college as a junior chemist. I was greeted by a man in a three-piece suit who told us we would be working with uranium and that would be the last time we would hear or speak that word," said Bill Wilcox, 84.

U.S. citizens can now get a look at parts of the original facility. Oak Ridge was the world's first fully operational nuclear reactor.  Continued...