Eventually the Y-12 complex counted 268 permanent buildings large and small—the calutron structures of steel and brick and tile, chemistry laboratories, a distilled water plant, sewage treatment plants, pump houses, a shop, a service station, warehouses, cafeterias, gatehouses, change houses and locker rooms, a paymaster’s office, a foundry, a generator building, eight electric substations, nineteen water-cooling towers—for an output measured in the best of times in grams per day. An inspection trip in May 1943 awed even Ernest Lawrence.
