ABSTRACT
During the next six months, the Manhattan Engineering District of the U.S. Corps of Engineers was organized to direct the work. Two routes were undertaken: the uranium route at Oak Ridge, Tennessee in new facilities (code-named Y-12 and K-25); and the plutonium route in new facilities in Oak Ridge (code-named X-10) and at Hanford, Washington. Laboratories at several universities had been for some time studying possible approaches for separating uranium isotopes (gas centrifuge, gaseous diffusion, thermal diffusion, photochemical, electromagnetic). The choice was narrowed down in late 1942 to two methods: the electromagnetic process and the gaseous diffusion process.
