Oppenheimer the Film, Los Alamos and the National Nuclear Laboratory

A timely reminder of war’s devastation, nuclear or conventional. It should encourage visitors to Los Alamos and the Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque.

The new Hollywood blockbuster movie Oppenheimer is worth seeing even if a bit long. It is an ambitious film that fails in its ambition. It tells from what I can see four and arguably five complex stories. Two relate to science, two are forensic quasi-judicial proceedings concerning public appointments and another relates to the morality of the possession and use of nuclear arsenal and the geopolitical relationship between the USA and the USSR at the start of the Cold War in the mid-1940s.

Dr J Robert Oppenheimer and Major General Leslie Groves Los Alamos

Dr J Robert Oppenheimer Director of the Manhattan Project

Each of these is complicated. Combining them in a series of non-chronological flash backs employing the full array of coup de theatre available to modern cinema, did not help. Too many interesting historical figures make cameo appearances without proper explanation for the audience of their significance, the best example of this lack of explanation is the appearance of the Austrian-Czech mathematician Kurt Godel.

The Manhattan Atom Bomb Project and the Hydrogen Bomb

The two science stories being told relate to confounding Lord Rutherford’s famous dictum that any practical use arising from the splitting of the atom, such as power for a super weapon or civil purposes as a source of electric power generation, was ‘moonshine’. The first is the story of the atom bomb itself, the purpose of the Manhattan Project and the second science story is the creation of the more powerful hydrogen bomb, that Edward Teller was involved in. The film would have benefitted from a greater effort to explain the challenges involved and the differences between the two bombs. Referring to heavy water without explaining its significance is an opportunity missed.

Senate Confirmation Hearing and a Security Inquiry into Oppenheimer

The two quasi-judicial proceedings that the film follows are the US Senate hearing to confirm whether Lewis Strauss, the Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), should be appointed to President Eisenhower’s Cabinet as Commerce Secretary in 1959 appointment; and an  AEC Personnel Security Board internal security clearance inquiry to consider whether in 1954 to renew the US Federal Government security clearance of Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who was the Director of the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb that was used in Japan in August 1945. These sorts of forensic proceedings are very difficult to get a purchase on. Following two in tandem is quite difficult. Not least, because from the film, it is not clear why the man nominated to the Cabinet by President Eisenhower is getting the job.

‘Admiral’ Lewis Strauss AEC Chair and Robert Oppenheimer’s nemesis, who failed to be confirmed as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Commerce in 1959

The Cold War Security State

What the film captures well is the security paranoia of the Cold War state apparatus in the western democracies from the 1940s until the end of Cold War in the 1990s. The positive vetting, the enhanced vetting, the intercepted phones, the following of suspects and the searching of rubbish bins and trash cans. The scope that salacious stories about a person’s social life and political opinions. I am sure I am not the only person exasperated by questions about people, who once worked for me. I had to assure one security officer fishing for information that that my hugely capable and sensible secretary, was a straightforward Daily Mail reading woman, who took little interest in party politics and was much more interested in organising ‘a girls’ trip’ for tea at the Ritz Hotel. And that was in Whitehall in the UK. The US was much worse, with the menace and malice of J Edgar Hoover presiding. It was difficult not to feel very sorry for Robert Oppenheimer and his family.

The morality and geopolitical implications of the nuclear age

The fifth story buried in the film is about how the US should have responded having acquired the atom bomb in 1945. Should it have shared its knowledge with the USSR or with a United Nations’ international authority. And should the US have gone on to develop the Hydrogen Bomb and other later more powerful nuclear fission weaponry. Apart from Peter Oppenheimer’s cogent advice to President Truman suggesting sharing and collaboration with the USSR and through the UN, and the irritation expressed by US officials from President Truman down, this is an undeveloped dimension of the film. In 1945 the Soviet armed services occupied the whole of eastern and central Europe. It was not at all clear the US and the UK had the conventional armed forces that could reliably defeat a further Soviet incursion into Germany or Austria. Winston Churchill understood the vulnerability of western Europe. President Roosevelt did not. The Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie King was a spiritualist. His attempts to contact President Roosevelt, after his death, for advice in how to deal with Stalin did not help much either. The west had to turn to nuclear deterrence given that they had no confidence in the scale of their conventional forces at the disposal of NATO.

Potsdam Conference, Cecilienhof Palace, where Stalin, Truman and Churchill met in 1945

Questions about historical accuracy

In terms of historical accuracy, I am intrigued by two things in the film. After Oppenheimer goes to call on President Truman and gives advice on future nuclear arms policy and exhibits the emotion that went with having the responsibility for creating a bomb that killed so many people in Japan, Truman said get that cry baby out of here I never want him in here again. My understanding is that President Truman was plainly and directly spoken, but not intemperate. I would be fascinated to learn if this is based on accurate historical fact or part of cinematic licence.

Another matter of historical fact that intrigues me is whether deux chevaux car used is the right model. One of Oppenheimer’s friends Haakon Chevalier was an active Communist and key to ‘Admiral’ Lewis Strauss’s security allegations against Oppenheimer. A professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and a distinguished translator of Anatole France and Andre Malraux, Chevalier was called before the House Subcommittee on Un-American Activities and was sacked from his job at Berkeley. He retreated from the difficult environment of Un-American Activities Committee, to exile in post-war France. He is shown in picturesque French location with a Citroën deux chevaux car. The Citroen 2CV often said to be ‘an umbrella on wheels,’ was in production from 1949 to 1990 and went through several models. I am not certain that the model I glimpsed at in the film is one that would have been available in the early 1950s. If it is not, the film makers can be forgiven, because the scene was very evocative. A sort of Marxian political cameo meets an Elizabeth David and Julia Child approach in the kitchen.

The benefits of visiting Los Almos and Albuquerque

The New Mexican landscape in the film is breathtaking and should encourage people to visit Los Almos. The Fuller Lodge was the dining room the original Los Alamos Range School was taken over by the Federal Government for the Manhattan Project in 1942. It is now the Alamos Historical Museum located in what had been the Guest House, which was used in the film. The museum that tells the story of the 1940s project.

Fuller Hall part of the Lodge taken over from the Ranching School by the Manhattan Project in 1942

The Bradbury National Nuclear Laboratory Museum, named after Norris Bradbury, who, succeeding Robert Oppenheimer, was Director of the National Nuclear Laboratory form1945 to 1970 describes the history and present work of the National Nuclear Laboratory. Anyone visiting Los Alamos would also profit from visiting the National Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque about two hours away by car.

The opportunity to visit both Los Alamos and the National Nuclear Museum invites reflection. In technological terms the destructive power of the atom bomb is the biggest human event in history. Attempting to understand it scientifically, morally and politically is important. Watching the film reminded me that visiting them last year was one of the most interesting and thought-provoking experiences of my life.

The Bradbury Science Museum not only explains the Manhattan project but brings the contemporary work of Los Alamos up to date. Today the facility maintains the US nuclear arsenal so that it is safe, functional and effective. This contemporary work is largely conducted by computer modelling and simulations. For around twenty-five years there has been no nuclear testing. The nuclear weapons themselves were manufactured decades ago. As they age their chemistry changes as does the physics of how their material would behave during fission.

Fat Boy and Little Boy the Atom Bombs at the Bradbury Museum Los Alamos

A US nuclear arsenal kept on a care and maintenance basis for twenty-five years?

The computer modelling is to ensure that these changes are understood. Yet it would appear to be a bold assumption that computer stimulation can reliably replace full regular proper physical testing. At its peak - probably in the late 1960s the US had about 30,000 nuclear weapons it is now down to about 3,000 - the US Government remains coy about precise numbers then and now. The video presentation and the explanatory texts at the Bradbury Museum convey an impression of a nuclear arsenal that has been maintained on a minimal care and maintenance basis. The Laboratory stands ready to become more active if the Federal Government and Congress were to ask it do so.

Cars that were used to drive the scientists around New Mexico, now on exhibit at the National Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque

The National Nuclear Museum offers a brilliant display of the Manhattan Project, politics and science of the creation of the bomb and has some very evocative artifacts – Fat Boy, the six door Packard limousine used to ferry the scientists around and an outdoor exhibit of among other things a Flying Fortress and 53 Jet Bomber as well as a good account of the wider cultural impact of nuclear weapons on the popular mind -the fear that people like my mother had of atomic warfare, the optimism that everything from ships to domestic electricity would go atomic, including the atomic show girl in Las Vegas who wore a mushroom cloud costume. It is fair to say that it did not offer a visitor guidance on nuclear deterrent theory – the world of the late John von Neumann and Sir Michael Quinlan, mutually assured destruction, first use and the use of nuclear weapons as battlefield weapons, such as depth charges etc in an otherwise conventional conflict, the economics of going nuclear to economise on expensive conventional forces, the process of testing to maintain an effective deterrent, the scale of arsenal needed.

Progress on nuclear fusion – ‘too cheap to meter’ or swift commercial use still Moonshine?

By chance when I visited Los Alamos in early February 2022 the UK JET nuclear research project based in Oxfordshire announced that it had successfully demonstrated fusion the day before. The guide in charge of the Los Alamos Historical Museum an older retired man, explained that he also had done research on fusion. He was very sceptical of the Greek chorus of British scientists claiming that this was the high road to nuclear power and the decarbonisation with commercial applications within ten years. Among ‘Admiral’ Lewis Strauss’s other judgements, as Chair of the AEC in 1954 was the observation that atomic power would make electricity ‘too cheap to meter’. Of course, Lord Rutherford maintained until his death that the idea that nuclear energy released by splitting the atom could civil power generation was 'moonshine'!

Concluding thoughts

Visiting Los Alamos and the National Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque are among the most thought-provoking things that I have done. Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues involved in the Manhattan Project and beyond it in the wider scientific community changed the world, made it more dangerous and saved lives at the same time. The nuclear arsenals constrained the behaviour of the superpowers during the Cold War. The threat of a nuclear exchange deterred countries from testing the boundaries of conventional warfare given the risks involved when powers have thermonuclear weapons. In discussion of the kinetic destructive power of nuclear weapons, the huge destruction of conventional warfare can appear to be overlooked. The strategic bombing of Germany and Japan wrought huge devastation. Anyone who has travelled to Berlin or Dresden is likely to have an appreciation of the destructive power that was involved. In the context of decarbonisation, it may yet be nuclear power fission or possibly fusion that makes the change practical. It is salutary reflecting on both the film Oppenheimer and a visit of Los Alamos eighteen month ago, at a time when the former President of the Russian Federation, Dimitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia is speculating about the use of nuclear weapons, along with unilaterally changing the borders of Poland.

Warwick Lightfoot

16 August 2023