Interesting p9 comment about 10K tons of graphite being shipped from Madagascar to the United States. I wonder how much went to the University of Chicago?
Obviously we need more pencils for the war effort.
I don’t think any of it went to the University of Chicago. That reactor has already been built. My guess is that the graphite is headed to Hanford Washington to make plutonium for “Fat Man.”
I’ll check Richard Rhodes “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” to see where the graphite came from. He had an extensive discussion of how the graphite was used as a moderator, and that the Germans made a “wrong turn” in their nuclear research by rejecting graphite. It turns out that naturally occurring graphite is laced with boron, which acts as a neutron absorber and kills the reaction. But when the boron is removed, pure graphite is a perfect moderator. The American scientists realized this, Heisenberg did not.