Atomic Bomb

[Icon134 0]

This has probably been discussed before... but I just finished watching a movie called "Infinity" which is a story about Richard Feynman and the role he played in the development of the atomic bomb.

my question is do y'all thing it was inevitable that the atomic bomb would be developed and/or do you think better or worse off harnessing nuclear power in general?

Discuss... oh and don't tear me up too badly...

Livin' on the Edge... sleeping with my rigger's wife...

[quade 4]

It's a little like Marconi and the wireless or Edison and the lightbulb. At least a few other folks were working on these inventions and it was only a matter of time.

As for atomic energy, if it wasn't us, it would have been the Germans.

One way or another atomic bombs and power were inevitable.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[Icon134 0]

That's kind of the way I see it as well... and I know that was the logic of the manhattan project as well...

Livin' on the Edge... sleeping with my rigger's wife...

[Gawain 0]

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One way or another atomic bombs and power were inevitable.

Yep. Look at that, we agree on something.

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[jakee 1,497]

I also say inevitable. Once the knowledge is there that its possible then it had to be us that got it first.

I think MAD probably worked as well. I just can't see how the cold war would have remained cold without the the threat of armaggedon.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[SkydiveJack 1]

When the US Atomic program was started during WW II the Germans, Russians and Japanese were also working on their own (albeit limited) nuclear programs. I think history has shown that it was better that the USA came up with it first. I'm not saying nuclear weapons are a good thing, just that it was better that the USA came up with it first.

BTW, the book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes is a fascinating read.

Jack

[kallend 2,027]

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When the US Atomic program was started during WW II the Germans, Russians and Japanese were also working on their own (albeit limited) nuclear programs. I think history has shown that it was better that the USA came up with it first. I'm not saying nuclear weapons are a good thing, just that it was better that the USA came up with it first.

BTW, the book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes is a fascinating read.

Jack

Funny you omit the British, whose program by 1942 was ahead of all the others, who had a viable design for a bomb (which became Little Boy) and an isotope separation plant, and which was transferred pretty much intact to the USA to get the Manhattan Project off the ground.

Since you quote the Rhodes book, perhaps you should re-read the sections on MAUD, Tube Alloys, and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[StreetScooby 5]

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BTW, the book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes is a fascinating read.

This is my favorite book. Well done in every way.

The atomic bomb was inevitable. It makes me angry to see how revisionist historians are trying to rewrite history and turn the US into really bad guys. The fathers of some of my childhood friends served in the Pacific campaign. They thought they were dead men because of the impending invasion of the Japanese home islands. They were very happy we ended the war with the least possible bloodshed, both American and Japanese.

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

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Since you quote the Rhodes book, perhaps you should re-read the sections on MAUD, Tube Alloys, and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum.

Just curious. Why should he reread this? What's your point, if there is one.

We are all engines of karma

[Lucky... 0]

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BTW, the book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes is a fascinating read.

This is my favorite book. Well done in every way.

The atomic bomb was inevitable. It makes me angry to see how revisionist historians are trying to rewrite history and turn the US into really bad guys. The fathers of some of my childhood friends served in the Pacific campaign. They thought they were dead men because of the impending invasion of the Japanese home islands. They were very happy we ended the war with the least possible bloodshed, both American and Japanese.

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The atomic bomb was inevitable. It makes me angry to see how revisionist historians are trying to rewrite history and turn the US into really bad guys.

We dropped it to prevent the Russians from winning a ground assault on Japan first. We were in talks with Japan about a conditional release.

Furthermore, per Discovery Channel we dropped the first on Hiroshima so we could see the damage done to an unmolested city, as Hir had never been conventionally bombed. 70k per bomb, plus 100'2 of 1000's later..... no blood shed.... please.

Again, the Russians had expressed that they were going in as soon as they could regroup from the finality of Germany, a venue they largely won. We couldn;t have them loking good.

Then, 24 years later, we did it again with the moon race....

[miked10270 0]

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Since you quote the Rhodes book, perhaps you should re-read the sections on MAUD, Tube Alloys, and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum.

Just curious. Why should he reread this? What's your point, if there is one.

The point John makes is that the atomic bomb project was about as American as their space program! I.E. As far as the contributions to The Manhattan project went... America supplied the money, and emigre British & European scientists spent it! "Little Boy" was a British design based on British theoretical work (but could only have been made with the massive industrial resources America had available). Likewise, it's been argued that "Fat Man" was unworkable until Dr. Heinz Schlicke provided his research & expertise on precision thyristor fusing to The Americans in June 1945.

Mike.

Taking the piss out of the FrenchAmericans since before it was fashionable.

Prenait la pisse hors du FrançaisCanadiens méridionaux puisqu'avant lui à la mode.

[kallend 2,027]

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Since you quote the Rhodes book, perhaps you should re-read the sections on MAUD, Tube Alloys, and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum.

Just curious. Why should he reread this? What's your point, if there is one.

Because those sections pertain to the paragraph of my post that you deleted.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[kallend 2,027]

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Since you quote the Rhodes book, perhaps you should re-read the sections on MAUD, Tube Alloys, and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum.

Just curious. Why should he reread this? What's your point, if there is one.

The point John makes is that the atomic bomb project was about as American as their space program! I.E. As far as the contributions to The Manhattan project went... America supplied the money, and emigre British & European scientists spent it! "Little Boy" was a British design based on British theoretical work (but could only have been made with the massive industrial resources America had available). Likewise, it's been argued that "Fat Man" was unworkable until Dr. Heinz Schlicke provided his research & expertise on precision thyristor fusing to The Americans in June 1945.

Mike.

Fat Man was truly multinational. The implosion concept came from an Australian, the hydrodynamic theory of the Fat Man was worked out by Ulam (Poland), the moving interface instability problem was solved by a Brit (Taylor), the Pu came from processes designed by Seaborg (US), the idea of the explosive lens came from Tuck (Brit), the lenses were designed by von Neumann (Hungary) and fabricated by Kistiakowski (US), and the firing system as you stated.

Ulam was also responsible for the basic design of the H-bomb.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[StreetScooby 5]

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Ulam was also responsible for the basic design of the H-bomb.

I named one of our cats after Stanislaw Ulam. We call him Stanley for short.

We are all engines of karma

[kelpdiver 2]

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Again, the Russians had expressed that they were going in as soon as they could regroup from the finality of Germany, a venue they largely won. We couldn;t have them loking good.

Don't belittle the losses and gains of the Normandy invasion just to backslap the US.

And yes, development of the bomb was inevitable. Too many people in too many countries working on it during the war. Had the US not done it, the introduction would have been delayed a decade or more - the other players were focused on recovery and wouldn't have had the same incentive as did the Soviets to catch up to the US.

Had someone else come up with a design in 1955, I suspect the chances would have been good that the Cold War would have gone hot, and the MAD standoff may not have been achieved.

[StreetScooby 5]

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Had someone else come up with a design in 1955, I suspect the chances would have been good that the Cold War would have gone hot, and the MAD standoff may not have been achieved.

I'm glad we'll never find out.

I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Many, many refineries there. I was told the Soviet Union had 3 megaton weapons targetted.

Check out this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Romeo

The 10 MT bomb produced a mushroom cloud that basically went to the edge of space (...I believe the airplane taking the picture was about 50 miles away). Complete destruction for about 10 miles radius. It's my understanding that 100 of these bombs would have produced a nuclear winter. During the cold war, there were 100s, if not more, actively targetted at ours and Russia's population centers.

There's a reason hydrogen bombs aren't made larger than 100MT. All they do is take the same 10 mile diameter column of air (...all of it, from ground to space) and eject it into outer space that much faster.

We are all engines of karma

[dorbie 0]

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This has probably been discussed before... but I just finished watching a movie called "Infinity" which is a story about Richard Feynman and the role he played in the development of the atomic bomb.

my question is do y'all thing it was inevitable that the atomic bomb would be developed and/or do you think better or worse off harnessing nuclear power in general?

Discuss... oh and don't tear me up too badly...

The A-bomb was inevitable yes but the H-bomb might have eluded us for longer if it weren't for some imaginative invention.

Before the H-bombs were developed the large A-bombs had the potential to go supercritical in a crash there was so much material in them. So they filled them with chains incorporating neutron absorbing boron. To arm the bombs you'd yank out the boron chains... then fly really carefully .

[billvon 2,995]

>The A-bomb was inevitable yes but the H-bomb might have eluded
>us for longer if it weren't for some imaginative invention.

I doubt it. Even early nuclear fission weapons (circa 1951) used fusion boosters.

>Before the H-bombs were developed the large A-bombs had the
> potential to go supercritical in a crash there was so much material in
> them.

That's only true with gun-type weapons. Implosion weapons rely on extremely tight timing tolerances, and carefully machined explosive lenses, to achieve stable implosions. Detonate just one of the explosives and you just blow the core to bits without starting a chain reaction. It would still be messy (plutonium everywhere!) but would not be a nuclear explosion.

[dorbie 0]

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>The A-bomb was inevitable yes but the H-bomb might have eluded
>us for longer if it weren't for some imaginative invention.

I doubt it. Even early nuclear fission weapons (circa 1951) used fusion boosters.

>Before the H-bombs were developed the large A-bombs had the
> potential to go supercritical in a crash there was so much material in
> them.

That's only true with gun-type weapons. Implosion weapons rely on extremely tight timing tolerances, and carefully machined explosive lenses, to achieve stable implosions. Detonate just one of the explosives and you just blow the core to bits without starting a chain reaction. It would still be messy (plutonium everywhere!) but would not be a nuclear explosion.

I strongly disagree on the first point, I'm thinking about x-Ray driven implosion and more significantly the Teller-Ulam "spark plug" fission trigger not just stuffing a few exotic isotopes in an A-bomb. It's not enough that the knowledge of fusion was there, the temperatures & pressures required were off the charts for practical purposes and it was thought to be impossible to get there.

On the second you're flat wrong. The devices I mentioned were spherical implosion devices with many times the minimum critical mass. If the sphere deformed it could easily go supercritical without a neutron absorber. They did make these devices insane as it sounds today, it was the only known way at the time to significantly increase yield after you'd added your fissionable tamper.

[kallend 2,027]

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>The A-bomb was inevitable yes but the H-bomb might have eluded
>us for longer if it weren't for some imaginative invention.

I doubt it. Even early nuclear fission weapons (circa 1951) used fusion boosters.

>Before the H-bombs were developed the large A-bombs had the
> potential to go supercritical in a crash there was so much material in
> them.

That's only true with gun-type weapons. Implosion weapons rely on extremely tight timing tolerances, and carefully machined explosive lenses, to achieve stable implosions. Detonate just one of the explosives and you just blow the core to bits without starting a chain reaction. It would still be messy (plutonium everywhere!) but would not be a nuclear explosion.

I strongly disagree on the first point, I'm thinking about x-Ray driven implosion and more significantly the Teller-Ulam "spark plug" fission trigger not just stuffing a few exotic isotopes in an A-bomb. It's not enough that the knowledge of fusion was there, the temperatures & pressures required were off the charts for practical purposes and it was thought to be impossible to get there.

.

It's a travesty to call it "Teller-Ulam". Teller was on completely the wrong track, his design was the size of a house. The focussed X-Ray idea was Ulam's, and Teller managed to insinuate his name onto it.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[dorbie 0]

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It's a travesty to call it "Teller-Ulam". Teller was on completely the wrong track, his design was the size of a house. The focussed X-Ray idea was Ulam's, and Teller managed to insinuate his name onto it.

I know the story, Teller denies it and his name is on the patent with Ulam's (much to Teller's chagrin). Honestly I almost called it Ulam's design :-).

I thought it was the fission "spark plug" going critical in the middle of the implosion that he'd come up with, not the whole focused X-ray - sheath expansion. Anyhoo, the point is it was fucking clever and we might not have had H-bombs for years if ever without it.

[StreetScooby 5]

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I thought it was the fission "spark plug" going critical in the middle of the implosion that he'd come up with, not the whole focused X-ray - sheath expansion. Anyhoo, the point is it was fucking clever and we might not have had H-bombs for years if ever without it.

It took them a very long time to solve that problem. Around a decade I believe. Talk about committment.

We are all engines of karma

[billvon 2,995]

>I'm thinking about x-Ray driven implosion and more significantly the
> Teller-Ulam "spark plug" fission trigger not just stuffing a few exotic
>isotopes in an A-bomb.

No question that the Teller-Ulam design was pretty elegant. If we didn't have it, we might now have inelegant thermonuclear weapons - but we'd still have em. Heck, it doesn't take a 'rocket scientist' to realize that detonating a fission trigger in a D-T bath is going to initiate fusion. It's just not very efficient.

> The devices I mentioned were spherical implosion devices with many
> times the minimum critical mass. If the sphere deformed it could easily
>go supercritical without a neutron absorber.

Of course. Heck, even deformation of the pit could result in exceeding the prompt-criticality limit. But for a plutonium based implosion device, unless you have a) a synchronized neutron source and b) a very uniform compression wave, you're not going to get a nuclear explosion. You're going to get a thermal event where the slow increase in flux blows the core to pieces and stops the reaction. This problem was the #1 problem in early implosion device development.

(Side note - early nuclear devices used the timing parameters for the lens detonators as a 'key.' If you didn't enter exactly the right timing delays to ensure a uniform spherical wave, you wouldn't get a nuclear detonation due to premature disassembly.)

[StreetScooby 5]

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(Side note - early nuclear devices used the timing parameters for the lens detonators as a 'key.' If you didn't enter exactly the right timing delays to ensure a uniform spherical wave, you wouldn't get a nuclear detonation due to premature disassembly.)

Where did you read/hear this? Interesting.

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[rehmwa 2]

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Where did you read/hear this? Interesting.

Must've been a Tom Clancey book. Takes a lot of grit to sit through one of those....

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