Cost
Site | Cost (1945 USD) | Cost (2012 USD) |
---|---|---|
Oak Ridge | $1,188,352,000 | $15.3 billion |
Hanford | $390,124,000 | $5.04 billion |
Special operating materials | $103,369,000 | $1.33 billion |
Los Alamos | $74,055,000 | $956 million |
Research and development | $69,681,000 | $900 million |
Government overhead | $37,255,000 | $481 million |
Heavy water plants | $26,768,000 | $346 million |
Total | $1,889,604,000 | $24.4 billion |
The project expenditure through 1 October 1945 was $1.845 billion, equivalent to less than nine days of wartime spending, and was $2.191 billion when the AEC assumed control on 1 January 1947. Total allocation was $2.4 billion. Over 90% of the cost was for building plants and producing the fissionable materials, and less than 10% for development and production of the weapons.
A total of four weapons (the Trinity gadget, Little Boy, Fat Man, and an unused bomb) were produced by the end of 1945, making the average cost per bomb around $500 million in 1945 dollars. By comparison, the project's total cost by the end of 1945 was about 90% of the total spent on the production of US small arms (not including ammunition) and 34% of the total spent on US tanks during the same period.
Read more about this topic: Manhattan Project
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