The initial declassification involved some redactions that are discussed by nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein here.) (The “Memorandum on ‘Political and Social Problems’ from Members of the ‘Metallurgical Laboratory’ of the University of Chicago” with Compton’s cover letter, is posted here. The "Franck Report,” which became the seminal document on nuclear arms control after it was published in the issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, focused on the concern that revealing the bomb through a surprise attack on an already defeated Japan could make a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union impossible to prevent. One of the products of their concern was a memorandum on "Political and Social Problems” written in early June 1945 by a committee of project scientists chaired by the refugee German Nobelist, James Franck. With these tasks completed, some of the scientists at the Met Lab began to consider the implications of nuclear weapons for the future. He directed the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) at the University of Chicago, where refugee Italian Nobelist Enrico Fermi supervised the construction of the first reactor, future Nobelist Eugene Wigner, from Hungary, led the design of the plutonium-production reactors subsequently built at Hanford, Wash., and future Nobelist Glenn Seaborg developed the first chemical process for extracting plutonium from irradiated uranium. Compton was one of the many past and future Nobel laureates who worked in the secret US nuclear weapons project during World War II.
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