Dayton Project
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Unit III, Dayton Project
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Buildings at Unit III, seen in 2012
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| Location | Dayton, Ohio |
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| Coordinates | 39°43′29″N 84°10′46″W / 39.72472°N 84.17944°WCoordinates: 39°43′29″N 84°10′46″W / 39.72472°N 84.17944°W |
| Built | 1944–45 |
| NRHP Reference # | 06000480 |
| Added to NRHP | 10 May 2006 |
The Dayton Project was a research and development project that was part of the larger Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs. Work took place at several sites in and around Dayton, Ohio. Those working on the project were ultimately responsible for creating the polonium-based modulated neutron initiators which were used to begin the chain reactions in the atomic bombs. The Dayton Project ran from 1943 to 1949, when the Mound Laboratories were completed and the work moved there.
The Dayton Project began in 1943 when Monsanto's Charles Allen Thomas was recruited by the Manhattan Project to coordinate the plutonium purification and production work being carried out at various sites. Scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory calculated that a plutonium bomb would require a neutron initiator. The best-known neutron sources used radioactive polonium and beryllium, so Thomas undertook to produce polonium at Monsanto's laboratories in Dayton, Ohio.
The Dayton Project developed techniques for extracting polonium-210 from the lead dioxide ore in which it occurs naturally, and from bismuth targets that had been bombarded by neutrons in a nuclear reactor. Ultimately, polonium-based neutron initiators were used in both the gun-type Little Boy and the implosion-type Fat Man used in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. The fact that polonium was used as an initiator was classified until the 1960s, but George Koval, a technician with the Manhattan Project's Special Engineering Detachment, penetrated the Dayton Project as a spy for the Soviet Union.
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