Silver II.

This is coolbert:

Conclusion.

Silver - - Manhattan Project.

As to the demand and need for silver as used by the Manhattan Project during World War Two [WW2]. That demand, unprecedented and without parallel, a tip off, an indicator that was of great interest to Soviet Red Army intelligence [GRU]. The GRU through inspired and very correct analysis able to make very reasonable inferences regarding the development of atomic energy for military purposes.

From the book by Victor Suvorov: "Inside Soviet Military Intelligence":

"During the Second World War a section of the tenth directorate [GRU] (economics and strategic resources) was studying the trends in the exchange of precious metals in the United States. The specialist were surprised that an unexpectedly large amount of silver was allocated 'for scientific research'. Never before, either in America or in any other country, had such a large amount of silver been spent for the needs of research. There was a war going on and the specialists reasonably supposed that the research was military. The GRU information analysed all the fields of military research known to it, but not one of them required the expenditure of so much silver. The second reasonable assumption by the GRU was that it was some new field of research concerning the creation of a new type of weapon. Every information unit was brought to bear on the study of this strange phenomenon. Further analysis showed that all publications dealing with atomic physics had been suppressed in the United States and that all atomic scientists, fugitives from occupied Europe, had at the same time disappeared without trace from the scientific horizon. A week later the GRU presented to Stalin a detailed report which had been complied on the basis of ONE [my emphasis] unconfirmed fact, but its contents left no room for doubt about the correctness of the deductions it made. Stalin was delighted with the report: the rest is well known."

Silver, rather than ordinary copper being needed in such abundance for those electro-magnets used to extract the weapons grade uranium [U-235] in the quantities needed to assemble a uranium [gun-type] atomic bomb of the type as dropped on Hiroshima.

From several Internet sites we have the full dope on:  "Silver and the Manhattan Project"

"The Manhattan Project was using hundreds of large electro-magnets to make weapons-grade uranium [U-235]. Since the war was on, copper (needed for the wiring) was in short supply. The Manhattan Project went to the Treasury and was given enough silver to make the wiring that was necessary."

"the magnets needed so much copper for windings that the Army had to borrow almost 15,000 tons of silver bullion from the United States Treasury to fabricate into strips and wind on to coils as a substitute for copper. Treasury silver was also used to manufacture the busbars that ran around the top of the racetracks."

Those busbars conducting the enormous amounts of electricity required by the assemblage of electro-magnets. It is no wonder that both Oak Ridge and Hanford were built in proximity to hydroelectric sources of magnitude, TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] and Grand Coulee Dam [Columbia River].

[it is for good reason that the Soviet code word for the Manhattan Project was "Enormoz"]

"The borrowed silver was used for the windings in the coils to construct these electro-magnets. A total of 940 magnets were constructed with coils fabricated from about 28 million pounds of silver in the Phelps-Dodge Copper Products Company located in Bayway, New Jersey and another 268,000 pounds of silver was shipped to Oak Ridge to be fabricated into busbar pieces"

Comments:

* Electro-magnetic separation of the weapons grade U-235 no longer is done. The current effective method is the centrifugal separation process as currently in use by the Iranians using thousands of centrifuges and subjected to attack by the Stuxnet virus.

* That "borrowed silver" only twenty-five years later returned to American reserves,  the cost of that silver [$20/ounce as of 1944] alone I would have to assume indeed a pretty hefty percentage of the overall cost for the Manhattan Project [$2 billion U.S.].

coolbert.