From Nevada to NIF and beyond

Manny, a Manitowoc 4600 ringer heavy-lift crane, is 14 stories tall, weighs 1,000 tons, and has a 320-foot boom (arm). Manny can lift 600 tons—that’s 1.2 million pounds. Now in his early forties, Manny has spent the bulk of his career in service to the country. Here’s a quick look at his contributions:

Nevada National Security Sites

The Department of Energy purchased Manny in 1983 for $3.4 million. He spent the first 19 years of his life  lifting and lowering experiments into place at  what is today the Nevada National Security Sites. The data from these experiments was used (and still is used) to inform the assessment of the nuclear stockpile. When the United States halted such experiments in 1992, Manny sat idly at the site of Icecap, a Los Alamos–designed experiment that never happened. “Manny stood patiently by the ICECAP tower, waiting to swing into action,” according to an article in Newsline, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s weekly newsletter. “He remained there idle for seven years. His metal muscle and steel sinew sagged unflexed, as the desert sun bleached his paint and tufts of rust blossomed on his boom.”

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

A total of 66 trucks were necessary to relocate Manny from Nevada to California, where he played an essential role in the construction of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In June 1999, Manny hoisted a 287,000-pound, 10-meter-diameter target chamber out of the massive oil tank where it had been assembled. Manny lowered the chamber into NIF’s target bay, and the NIF building was completed around the chamber. Newsline reported that “at Livermore, Manny emerged immediately as a big man on campus,” performing more than 250 power lifts in addition to helping out at NIF. According to Livermore rigging engineer John Reed, “just a few percent of mobile cranes of Manny’s generation worldwide have his reach and capacity. He’s big, he’s powerful, he’s safe.”

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

After NIF’s completion, Newsline reported that “In a career that has lifted millions of pounds—and millions of dollars—of technology, it was time again for Manny to move on to a place where his gargantuan size and Herculean strength could be put to use.” And so, in 2002, Livermore relinquished Manny—for free except for shipping costs—to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The cross-country trek required more than 60 trucks, including nearly a dozen 9-axle trailers. Manny—now with a new name: Big Bertha—was used for heavy lifting during construction of the Spallation Neutron Source, an accelerator-based neutron source facility that was completed in 2006.

Where is Manny now?

According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Manny was sold around 2015. His current whereabouts are unknown, although rumor has it he is working in the oil industry on the Louisiana bayou. If you have insight into Manny’s location, please email magazine@lanl.gov. ★