Oak Ridge National Laboratory silver magnet winding (WWII uranium enrichment)

In fact during World War Two at Oak Ridge National Lab they used big magnets to separate uranium. They had basically a great big mass spec, and they would separate the fissile uranium from the non-fissile uranium isotopes — U-238 versus U-235. They had uranium hexafluoride vapors running around in a circle, and they would separate out the lighter ones. Copper was in very short supply during World War Two, so they wound their magnets out of silver from the US Mint in Philadelphia. After the war they had to return the silver to the US Mint, but nothing happened to it other than being fabricated into wire. Silver is better. Yes?

Copper was diverted to brass cartridge cases during WWII, so Oak Ridge borrowed ~100 tons of silver from Fort Knox to wind the calutron magnets for uranium isotope separation. Silver returned to Fort Knox after the war.

We did use silver wiring in World War II. They built a bunch of magnets at Oak Ridge National Laboratory because they were using magnetic separation of uranium. Copper was short because they needed the brass cartridge cases for all the bullets. They actually borrowed something like 100 tons of silver from Fort Knox, Kentucky, where they store all the precious metals for the government, and after the war they had to return it. But they wound their magnets out of silver, which is a better material for electrical conductivity.