Before the big Hanford nuclear reactors could be built, the process for building them had to be tested to make sure that the reactors would work. Some scientists at the University of Chicago were given the job of building these small, test reactors. One of the people working on the project was named Crawford Greenewalt, who worked for the Du Pont Company. Du Pont was the company that had been picked to build the nuclear reactors and other buildings at Hanford.

 

When the scientists at the University of Chicago successfully built and tested a small nuclear reactor, it meant that construction on the larger nuclear reactors at Hanford could start. It was decided that somebody who worked with the scientists at the University of Chicago should also be involved with the people building the nuclear reactors at Hanford. That person was decided to be Crawford Greenewalt.

 

Greenewalt was a smart guy, and his job was to take the information about building nuclear reactors from the people at the University of Chicago, and explain it to the people building the facilities at Hanford. It was a tough job because sometimes, the construction workers at Hanford didn’t understand what the scientists in Chicago wanted them to do. Other times, the construction workers couldn’t complete the construction of the nuclear reactors in the way the scientists wanted them to. When that happened, Greenewalt was the person who had to explain to the scientists that they had to come up with another way of making the reactors. Greenewalt himself was the person who sometimes made decisions about the construction projects, based on information he’d been given by both the scientists and the construction workers.

 

After the war was over, Greenewalt became the President of the Du Pont Company.