What is the basic nuclear structure and changes that happen during transmutation and fission? Objective To understand the basic nuclear structure and changes that happen during transmutation and fission. Background The Manhattan Project, America’s wartime effort to build an atomic bomb, was so promising, yet so unlikely to succeed, that two independent paths were followed, in the hopes that at least one of them would produce a war-changing bomb. One of those methods was based on using carefully refined uranium as the heart of the bomb. That work was done at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The second met Duration: 90 Minutes.