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.

Read more about this topic:  Manhattan Project

Famous quotes containing the word cost:

    Mining today is an affair of mathematics, of finance, of the latest in engineering skill. Cautious men behind polished desks in San Francisco figure out in advance the amount of metal to a cubic yard, the number of yards washed a day, the cost of each operation. They have no need of grubstakes.
    Merle Colby, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    Keeping accounts, Sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won’t eat less beef today, because you have written down what it cost yesterday.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
    Gore Vidal (b. 1925)