Ashlee VanceNYT Best Seller | Reporter at Bloomberg Businessweek

Shocking! Building Used 14% of US Electricity! #electricity #manhattanproject #nuclearpower

29 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief dialogue, the speakers discuss the staggering electricity consumption of a Manhattan Project-era uranium enrichment facility. They note that at its peak the plant used enough power to supply 14% of New York City's electricity and about 1.5% of the entire United States' electricity. Over the period from 1943 to 1945, roughly one‑seventh of all U.S. electrical generation was devoted to enriching uranium for the atomic bombs, highlighting the massive industrial scale of the wartime effort and the public's surprise at these figures.

14% of New York's electricity. But the craziest thing— can we hit—
oh, maybe I'm fast-forwarding. Not only the largest building, but then it ends up consuming something like 1.5% of America's electricity. Higher.
More electricity than New York City. 14%.
14% of New York's electricity.
You tell this to people and they're like, no, no, you're wrong. That doesn't, doesn't make sense. So like, it, it was consuming a very large amount of electricity. Like, in the peak, it was 1.5, 1.5% of the US., but it was running all the time. So it really, from 1943 to '45, 1/7 of the United States' electrical power went into the effort of enriching uranium to make the fuel for the bombs.