Voyage of Discoveries – Fascinating Finds

Fascinating finds are down every aisle and around every corner in the National Security Research Center, the Lab’s classified library.

An original pencil drawing of Little Boy’s bomb case. Handwritten notes by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Classified notebooks of Nobel laureates. And the vast collections of materials from history’s greatest scientific minds that researchers rely upon today.

Too great in number to list in their entirety, here are just a few of the highlights of the materials in the NSRC.

Fat Man nuclear weapon assembly manual

• What is this? A step-by-step manual that shows how to assemble a Fat Man (implosion) nuclear weapon.
• Why is it important? This unique, how-to book is a one-of-a-kind reference source from the late 1940s that includes drawings and photographs.
• Why is this item remarkable? Several copies of this manual were reportedly made, but this is the only known copy that remains in existence. Gerry Strickfaden gave this copy of the manual to the NSRC. He worked as a mechanical engineer and began his career at LANL when it still employed many Manhattan Project veterans.

Patent for “Super”

• What is this? Scientists Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam jointly conceived the breakthrough idea for the world’s first thermonuclear device (also known as the hydrogen bomb). Their idea is recorded in this patent from 1946.
• Why is it important? This original document records an idea that changed the world.
• Why is this item remarkable? The one-of-a-kind document includes freehand drawings of the world’s first thermonuclear device. Ivy Mike was the first full-scale test of a hydrogen bomb, detonated on November 1, 1952.

Project Rover collection

• What is this? A step-by-step manual that shows how to assemble a Fat Man (implosion) nuclear weapon.
• Why is it important? This unique, how-to book is a one-of-a-kind reference material from the late 1940s that includes drawings and photographs.
• Why is this item remarkable? Several copies of this manual were reportedly made, but this is the only known copy that remains in existence. Gerry Strickfaden gave this copy of the manual to the NSRC. He worked as a mechanical engineer and began his career at LANL when it still employed many Manhattan Project veterans.

British mission reports collection

• What is this? A collection (1943–1963) of documents, memos, and research provided by Great Britain and British scientists who came to Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.
• Why is it important? The collection provides detailed information on the work done by the group during World War II.
• Why is this item remarkable? The collection gives background information on British research prior to the U.S. entry into World War II and how this helped the Manhattan Project.

Paul Whalen collection

• What is this? A collection of Paul Whalen’s published papers, reports, and reference materials related to weapons codes and hydrodynamic testing that date back to the 1960s. Whalen was a weapons designer, weapons physics expert, and computational capabilities developer who worked at the Lab for 61 years and pioneered significant weapons physics advancements.
• Why is it important? Whalen was responsible for many firsts associated with radiochemistry insertion into codes, gamma-ray output codes and calculated cross sections, X-ray source devices, and alpha diagnostic codes. Notably, he also helped to establish modern international radiation-exposure standards, which have protected thousands of people around the world.
• Why is this item remarkable? Whalen joined the Lab’s primary design group in 1956, which was an active time in the United States’ nuclear weapons program. He would eventually be regarded as an expert in nuclear survivability.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reports

• What is this? The NSRC provides access to all of LLNL’s nonlimited reports,LLNL documents that LANL does not have in its collections (for example, data from a variety of important experiments). Additionally, LANL’s Online Vault has tens of thousands of LLNL documents that LANL researchers use daily, thanks to a mutual exchange agreement.
• Why is this important? Access to and exchange of materials, including legacy documents and current research approved for exchange, are vital to the success of LANL’s scientists, engineers, and researchers.
• Why is this item remarkable? Hundreds of documents are exchanged between LANL and LLNL, strengthening each national lab’s efforts in support of a common national security mission.

Nerses “Krik” Krikorian collection

• What is this? A collection dating from 1946 to the mid-1990s of Nerses “Krik” Krikorian’s Russian technical books and reports, Union Carbide Corporation papers, Project Rover reports, technical notes, memoranda, and photos. Krikorian was a chemist and intelligence officer. He worked at the Lab for 45 years.
• Why is it important? The collection contains Krikorian’s scientific and intelligence work, as well as critical work on Project Rover. He was responsible for ensuring that certain materials would support the rigorous demands of nuclear propulsion at high temperatures.
• Why is this item remarkable? These materials, some in Russian, are of work that was especially challenging at the time because of the lack of field research. Krikorian learned Russian while working on Project Rover because the only books he could find were written in that language.

Rocky Flats Collection

• What is this? Reports, film, and other materials from the Rocky Flats Plant, which was a U.S. manufacturing complex near Denver, Colorado. Before the plant closed in 1992, it produced nuclear weapons parts, primarily plutonium pits, that were shipped to other facilities for weapons assembly.
• Why is it important? This large collection includes documentation of nuclear weapons parts as they went into the stockpile and technical reports describing efforts by Rocky Flats researchers to develop new pit technologies.
• Why is this item remarkable? These materials are important for the Lab’s current pit-production mission.