b'P ROVING THE P RINCIPLEhis group that housing for single most important asset inthem and their families might Phillipspackage. The compa-be a problem, although an ny expected to benefit from theIdaho Falls developer was broad exposure and invaluablebuilding a subdivision that training the experience wouldwould contain enough afford- provide its scientists. 7able homes for each of them. 3Once in Idaho, Doan proceed-Despite their unfamiliarity ed to set the standards for test-with Idaho, the mystery about reactor operations and Phillipsthe project, and the promised employees. If Bill Johnstondi f ficulty with housing, no one had invented the testing sta-whom Doan beckoned chose Idaho State Historical Society/INEEL 57-1216 tion, Doan transformed it into ato decline. To a man, they trooped to Ponderosa Drive, Idaho Falls. New subdivisions genuine scientific laboratory. RunningOak Ridge, where they slept in barracks around Idaho Falls kept pace with the growth in reactors was still a profoundly new andby night and hovered around a mock-up employment at the NRTS. potentially dangerous enterprise, andof the MTR by day. Architects from Doan felt that safety had to be institu-Idaho Falls came to consult each man tionalized at every level. He insistedabout the kind of house his family Compton, a Nobel laureate, was a that engineers and physicists be on-linewould need. When they got to Idaho member of the Manhattan Projects S-1 at the MTR twenty-four hours a day.Falls, the city gave them its usual warm Committee, the group that guided the Excellence in every part of the opera-welcome, printing their names in the program. When Compton organized the tion, he felt, was the only sure way topaper along with necessary social data secret Metallurgical Laboratory in safety. 8about club memberships and street of Chicago, he asked Doan to leaver e s i d e n c e . 4 Oklahoma and direct the lab. One of Doans interest in safety, combinedDoans unique managerial duties was to with his status as a Manhattan DistrictRichard Doan, a fully matured scientist hunt for any pure uranium that might alumnus and wide-ranging connectionsand administrator at fifty-two years old, be found in the industrial closets of the in the AEC and industry, led to newarrived early in January 1951. Born and country, a pursuit that was said to have projects and new missions. Many ofraised in Indiana by a family with turned his hair gray. In 1943 he moved them had to do with reactor safety, butQuaker roots, he taught high-school and to Oak Ridge to direct the scientists others were in the realm of purecollege physics while earning a doctor- developing the Hanford plutonium-sep- research. He set the NRTS on a trajec-ate at the University of Chicago. It was aration process. 6 tory of growth far beyond the AECsthe right place to be for a young physi- original vision for the place. 9cist in the 1930s. He worked with Dr. After the war, Doan returned to PhillipsArthur Holly Compton on X-ray and and became director of research over Doan, sometimes referred to ascosmic ray research. Doan built, cali- the companys work on geophysics, Pappy by employees, had acquired abrated, and tested cosmic-ray meters hydrocarbon conversion, chemicals, certain charm and a talent for persua-destined for Peru, Greenland, and other and rubber. Phillips aimed to be a new- sion, but that veneer was rarely mistak-exotic places around the globe. He made products leader in the energy industry, en for softness. He was willing to behis reputation as a scientist by develop- which in the early 1950s meant getting unpopular for his decisions, and thising useful methods of measuring X-ray a foothold in nuclear energy. When quality made him seem either aloofwavelengths. In 1936 he went to work Phillips bid for the AEC contract to or tough, but fair. He understood thefor Phillipsresearch division. 5 operate the MTRone of thirty-four tension between logical scientificfirms to do soDoan was, perhaps, the development and the role of individual5 6'