Witton and nuclear engineering
The History Detectives programme was fascinating. But it only gave a view of what Witton did in one particular and barely hinted at the broad scope of work done in furtherance of the country’s nuclear programme. The presenter is seen at one stage thumbing through a history of Kynoch, covering the years 1862 to 1962. This is what that history had to say about such things, written from a 1961/1962 perspective:
Most secret of all the most secret operations with which the Metal Group was concerned, perhaps, was the work from 1940 onwards on the so-called Tube Alloys Project. This was the code name for Britain's atomic energy effort, which impinged on the Metal Group in its earliest days because of the abstruse metallurgical problems involved. In those crowded and abnormal times, senior staff could disappear for weeks or months on end without causing 'careless talk': employees at all levels and in many departments became so used to inexplicable hush-hush experiments that historic milestones flashed past unnoticed. It was only much later that Authority publicly acknowledged the important contributions made by Metal Group employees to the development of nuclear engineering, and by that time the industry had acquired new civilian status. We shall see later how wartime work on separating uranium isotopes, producing extruded uranium and developing nuclear fuel cans was to open up a new sphere of activity for the Metal Group as a whole and for Kynoch Works in particular………………..
...........The intricate metallurgical problems involved in utilising and controlling atomic power are not readily translated into everyday terms, and this is no place for a technical dissertation. The nearest we can achieve to a summary is to say that every stage in the development of nuclear engineering, from separating fissile uranium for the first atomic bomb to stepping up the output of the latest nuclear power station, has created metallurgical problems of unprecedented difficulty, and that the technical expertise and practical experience of Metals Division have at every point contributed impressively to their solution.
One of the Division's first jobs - nearly 20 years ago (i.e. in about 1942) - was to convert massive uranium (made by ICI General Chemicals Division) into a usable wrought form, and it was in a Witton mill that Britain's first extruded uranium first saw the light of day. In those early days, however, most of the work done at Witton and in other Division factories consisted in adapting conventional metals, such as copper and aluminium, to new and exacting forms - to make porous metal membranes for isotope separation, for example, or various forms of sheathing for nuclear fuel. At this point it was knowledge of metal working and fabrication which was most in demand, and both Kynoch Works and Marston Excelsior helped to supply it.
Soon, however, it became obvious that some nuclear engineering components, particularly fuel sheathing, demanded combinations of properties which no existing structural metal could provide. Some problems could be solved by developing special alloys of aluminium or magnesium (still used by Metals Division for large quantities of fuel cans) the remainder only by turning to metals never before used outside the laboratory. Fortunately, the first of these - zirconium - was not required in large quantities until the Division had solved most of the problems involved in titanium manufacture, and it was soon found that the new techniques could be adapted quite readily to zirconium production. So it came about that, within three years of launching wrought titanium, Metals Division was able to make available on a commercial scale a second new and important structural metal.
Since then the Division has come to know still more unusual metals - hafnium, niobium, vanadium, beryllium. The last named - perhaps the most intransigent of all structural metals - is not, alas, amenable to processing techniques used for zirconium and other nuclear metals. To produce it, Metals Division had to build a separate factory - the first of its kind in Europe - and to establish processes and working conditions never before encountered in the metal industry. Only seven years ago (1954/5) almost nobody at Witton outside Research Department knew anything of these exotic strangers in the world of metals. Today they are as commonplace as brass and copper, and only visitors spare a second glance for the much-publicised titanium, zirconium and beryllium plants.
The development of techniques to produce membranes for isotope separation was particularly significant and I understand that some of the expertise for this came from the Kynoch Press, with its knowledge of printing techniques.
My own father had non-ferrous metal production responsibilities throughout the war and was no doubt heavily involved in some of these abstruse manufacturing challenges. The only reference I recall his ever having made to the latter was when he told me, much later, that he had put forward a proposal for the manufacture of these membranes – possibly before the final solution was established – but that his suggested method had not been practicable. And of course, I never cross-examined him further, being too intent on getting on with my own life until it was too late.
There must still be people around who were involved in this initial work between 1940 and 1945 - some of it crucial to how the world's history evolved - and how nice it would be if one of them turned out to be a member of this forum. And in the meantime what a story it is which emerges from a bloke arf-inching a small rod offcut in around 1943!
Chris
