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SCE Engineers and the Manhattan Project

In 1943, five Southern California Edison engineers were quietly ordered to work on a special project at California’s Radiation Laboratory. The men were part of a task force that designed the electrical system for an Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plutonium-extraction facility. The facility was a vital component of the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bombs, and the team’s secret was revealed in August 1945 by headlines describing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.