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
Famous quotes containing the word cost:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Greeting people doesn’t cost you anything except a roll of your tongue.”
—Chinese proverb.
“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)