Manhattan Project - Cost

Cost

Manhattan Project costs through 31 December 1945
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.

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