Meson cannon vs. Meson screen

[dean]

Fermi's first reactor was not part of the manhatten project, but it was pivotal in the development of the reactors that were used to generate the plutonium needed for the first bombs.

No reactor - no bomb. Reactor came first.

Again. My POINT is that it is easier to make something USEFUL that's destructive (e.g., a weapon) than it is to make something USEFUL that's non destructive of the same technology. I never tried to argue the reactor came second, I said that applying technology in a destructive way is easier than applying technology in a nondestructive way.

The reactors were for proving that the theory was correct; since the Bomb was still going to cost a lot of money, the theories needed to be proven first. The first plant to produce useful power wasn't until 1951, and only by 1954 was power being fed to an electrical grid by a nuclear-powered plant. That's 9 years after the first test of a weapon.

The Hansford "breeder" reactors were not truly useful for anything other than creating plutonium to build bombs with. And the Little Boy bomb was a uranium 235 device, made using non-breeder techniques.

We can agree to disagree, if you like.

 

[BlackBat242]

Wasn't the first self-sustaining nuclear (atomic) reactor the CP-1?

Which powered up in 1943?

And which absolutely WAS part of the Manhatten Project?

 

[mike wightman]

Yes the CP-1 was the first - it powered up in 1942.

 

[mmbutter]

Fermi's first reactor was not part of the manhatten project, but it was pivotal in the development of the reactors that were used to generate the plutonium needed for the first bombs.

No reactor - no bomb. Reactor came first.

The reactor was a pile of uranium and graphite blocks, assembled under the supervision of the renowned Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. It contained critical mass of the fissile material, together with control rods, and was built as a part of Manhattan Project research done by the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. The shape of the pile was intended to be roughly spherical, but as work proceeded, Fermi calculated that critical mass could be achieved without finishing the entire pile as planned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1

 

[mike wightman]

I'm afraid that is another example of wiki's re-writing of history - the manhatten project did not begin until summer 1942 and by that time fermi's work was well under way

In 1942 the Manhattan Engineer Project was set up in the United States under the command of Brigadier General Leslie Groves. Scientists recruited to produce an atom bomb included Robert Oppenheimer (USA), David Bohm (USA), Leo Szilard (Hungary), Eugene Wigner (Hungary), Rudolf Peierls (Germany), Otto Frisch (Germany), Niels Bohr (Denmark), Felix Bloch (Switzerland), James Franck (Germany), James Chadwick (Britain), Emilio Segre (Italy), Enrico Fermi (Italy), Klaus Fuchs (Germany) and Edward Teller (Hungary).

Fermi's work, and lots of other research being done around that time, was funded by the Uranium Committee.

This decision seemed imperative after a brief scare surrounding the pile project. While Fermi's calculations provided reasonable assurance against such a possibility, the vision of a chain reaction running wild in heavily-populated Chicago arose when the S-1 Executive Committee found that Compton was building the experimental pile at Stagg Field, a decision he had made without informing either the committee or Groves.

Looks like the manhatten project didn't even know what was going on at this time.

And here's another wiki quote:

This successful initiation of a chain-reacting pile was important not only for its help in assessing the properties of fission — needed for understanding the internal workings of an atomic bomb — but also because it would serve as a pilot plant for the massive reactors which would be created in Hanford, Washington, which would then be used to produce the plutonium needed for the bombs used at the Trinity site and Nagasaki. Eventually Fermi and Szilárd's reactor work was folded into the Manhattan Project.

and another:

Soon after the Chicago Pile, the U.S. military developed nuclear reactors for the Manhattan Project

 

[BlackBat242]

OK, you use "Manhatten Project" in the narrow sense of ONLY the official work placed under that specific program, as if it were operating in isolation.

I used the term in the sense of the directed, coordinated, widespread research & development program that was intended to create an "atomic weapon".


Plans, funding, and various study groups had been around since 1938-39, starting with individual scientists, then with Britain's MAUD committee in 1939 (named as such in early 1940).

In October 1939, the Advisory Committee on Uranium (the "Briggs Uranium Committee") in Washington, DC, was created at Pres. Roosevelt's order.

On July 1, 1940, the newly founded National Defense Research Council (NDRC), headed by Vannevar Bush*, took over responsibility for uranium research.

One of their first acts was to secure the funding ($40,000) for Fermi to start assembly work on his pile, which became CP-1. This funding was transferred to Fermi in November 1940.

In May 1941, the larger and more powerful Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was created, empowered to engage in large engineering projects in addition to research.


Once the results of these early studies came in, and it was apparent that an "atomic weapon" was possible, then a formal program to build such a bomb (the S-1 project) was approved in Dec. 1941.

In January 1942, work on reactors (including Fermi's) was ordered transferred from Columbia University in New York City to the University of Chicago at the newly-created Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab).


Thus, Fermi's work WAS part of the overall research & development program that was created to first explore the possibility of, then to create, the A-bomb, and would not have been funded if the A-bomb was not being sought.



http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq10.html


* not related to the political Bush family

 

[mike wightman]

I completely agree with you

Still doesn't alter the fact you can't make an A bomb without making a reactor first

Or that Fermi's work, and the work of others, was initially a civilian research project which didn't become the militarised Manhatten Project until later.

Incidentally, much of the early research was not for the sake of building a bomb but to unlock the secrets of nuclear reactions. Many of the scientists involved in the early work were very uncomfortable with the weaponisation of what they were doing.

I've also read one claim that Heisenberg may have deliberately stalled on nazi nuclear weapons development - but that's a real bone of contention.