Re: Atomic Airplane - True Story

On Oct 10, 11:17 am, Dean <damark...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 10, 9:25 am, Eunometic <eunome...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Oct 1, 11:46 pm, "Vaughn Simon" <vaughnsimonHATESS...@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

"Eunometic" <eunome...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:c6c29a44-2865-4af2-a74b-bcda388a2970@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

That was a good summary of the main points.
A few comments:

3 Plutonium first requires a reactor and sizeable quantities.

True! And then it requires a very nasty purification facility to actually
extract the Plutonium from the highly radioactive nuclear fuel elements. Once
done, just like the US program, they would first have needed to master the
difficult metallurgy of Plutonium.

Chemistry and metallurgy is and was a strength in Germany; I believe
the chemicals industry in Germany was and presently is the largest in
the world. I doubt Pu enrichment would have been an impediment once
the right people were involved. Resources would be pulled from the
Penemunde program.

Then, perhaps after a fizzle or two, figure
out that a gun-type weapon won't work. After that there would have been much
time-consuming physics and engineering to be done to independently conceive and
develop an implosion weapon. It was never possible for the Germans to even see
the necessity for most of these steps because they were never able to get past
the first step.

i see the first step as the only problematical one, once the
conceptual leap was made the
rest would be straightforward. I the idea of assembling a critical
mass was certainly
well known in German and Austrian circles, the use of a tube (rather
than a sphere) being
postulated even before the war began in Austria.

The result was that the German program, and the physicist started
focusing on atomic power rather than atomic bombs something that
some of them were morally more comfortable with.

On one point, I agree. Germany was energy-starved so therefore nuclear
energy may have seemed more important to them than it would have to the Allies.
That said, you would need to do much convincing before I could believe that the
German's scientists were somehow more moral than those of the allies. There was
plenty enough morality and immorality on both sides.

Nuclear power could have been used for
1 production of electricity
2 production of nitrates for fertilizers and explosives (via water
splitting and electrolysis folowed by haber-bosch). Norsk hydro was
of course doing this using hydro power.
3 production of hydrogen to provide feed to the fischer tropsch and
hydrogenation synthetic fuel plants.
4 Nuclear Submarines.

Inevitably as soon as a chain reaction starts in a reactor the
possibility a a bomb becomes recognized.

Yet they did manage to build several ultra
centrifuges which did enrich gram quantities of Uranium and they did
build a device called a Uranium sluice that also worked and was far
more reliable. (both bombed).

I have taken the trouble to visit Oak Ridge and seen the huge industrial
installation that it took for 1940's technology to separate sufficient Uranium
to make only a very few weapons. Wartime Germany could never have managed a
project on that scale. They had neither the materials nor the energy supply.
Further even if they could somehow have managed, such an installation would have
been quite impossible to hide from allied aerial surveillance and aerial attack.
A German Uranium weapon was far more improbable than the (highly improbable)
Plutonium weapon.

Gaseous diffusion was impossible from a energy point of view for
Germany. However the ultra centrifuge and the uranium sluice both
actually worked and have the advantage that they can enrich uranium
all the way to fissionable levels and require a tiny fraction of the
energy. The former was highly stressed due to high rpm but
reliability fears aside the biggest problem was that the various
centrifuges kept getting bombed. The latter uranium sluice however
was not highly stressed (I think the rpm was about 500 or so) (it
relied on chopping up a gaseous natural uranium beam/jet and chopping
of the faster U235 tips from the beam). I believe there was also a
photosensitive process developed.

It's hard not to think that they
were only a few months from seeing atomic power (and bombs) as
difficult to doable.

For the reasons I have stated above and others, I disagree. Germany was
nowhere near close.

I believe they were only months away from self sustaining fission,
even considering the country was collapsing, since they were at the
sub critical phase in the first month 0f 1945; indeed apart from the
continuous disruption that the German atomic bomb program suffered
from shortages of heavy water, bombing of their enrichment devices the
scientists efforts might have advanced by perhaps 1 year. Speer had
in mind a minimum funding of 100 million reichs marks and was prepared
to offer it (1942 or so) apart from the vacillation of Heisenberg.
Having a reactor going by early 1944 (the best I can realistically
envisage) still means no bomb will be ready till Jan 1946 though.
Churchill approved bomb research on the basis of a 2 in 10 chance of
success.

Sorry but Germany is only the world's third largest chemical
producer. Any guesses as who is number one?

Dean

And now I must correct myself. Germany is NOT even #3 but rather has
dropped into 4th place. Far behind the USA, Japan and Peoples
Republic of China.

Dean
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Atomic Airplane - True Story
    ... Chemistry and metallurgy is and was a strength in Germany; ... out that a gun-type weapon won't work. ... possibility a a bomb becomes recognized. ... centrifuges which did enrich gram quantities of Uranium and they did ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: Atomic Airplane - True Story
    ... Chemistry and metallurgy is and was a strength in Germany; ... out that a gun-type weapon won't work. ... possibility a a bomb becomes recognized. ... centrifuges which did enrich gram quantities of Uranium and they did ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: Atomic Airplane - True Story
    ... extract the Plutonium from the highly radioactive nuclear fuel elements. ... out that a gun-type weapon won't work. ... Germany was energy-starved so therefore nuclear ... centrifuges which did enrich gram quantities of Uranium and they did ...
    (rec.aviation.military)
  • Re: Kensington runestone in the Scandinavian press
    ... >> dirty bomb from unenriched uranium and there is no evidence ... >> than Germany. ... Nazis nor the Soviets would care ...
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  • Re: Kensington runestone in the Scandinavian press
    ... > dirty bomb from unenriched uranium and there is no evidence ... > than Germany. ... device that you detonate 1000 feet above surface that destroys ...
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