Project On The Atomic Bomb example essay topic

The Atomic Technology of War: The spread of atomic weapons. Scientists in several countries performed experiments in connection with nuclear reactors and fission weapons during World War II, but no country other than the United States carried its projects as far as separating uranium-235 or manufacturing plutonium-239. The Axis powers By the time the war began on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany had a special office for the military application of nuclear fission; chain-reaction experiments with uranium and carbon were being planned, and ways of separating the uranium isotopes were under study. Some measurements on carbon, later shown to be in error, led the physicist Werner Heisenberg to recommend that heavy water be used, instead, for the moderator. This dependence on scarce heavy water was a major reason the German experiments never reached a successful conclusion.

The isotope separation studies were oriented toward low enrichment's (about 1 percent uranium-235) for the chain reaction experiments; they never got past the laboratory apparatus stage, and several times these prototypes were destroyed in bombing attacks. As for the fission weapon itself, it was a rather distant goal, and practically nothing but 'back-of-the-envelope's tidies were done on it. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Japanese scientists initiated research on an atomic bomb. In December 1940, Japan's leading scientist, Nishi na Yoshio, undertook a small-scale research effort supported by the armed forces. It did not progress beyond the laboratory owing to lack of government support, resources, and uranium. Great Britain.

The British weapon project started informally, as in the United States, among university physicists. In April 1940 a short paper by Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, expanding on the idea of critical mass, estimated that a super weapon could be built using several pounds of pure uranium-235 and that this amount of material might be obtainable from a chain of diffusion tubes. This three-page memorandum was the first report to foretell with scientific conviction the practical possibility of making a bomb and the horrors it would bring. A group of scientists known as the MAUD committee was set up in the Ministry of Aircraft Production in April 1940 to decide if a uranium bomb could be made. The committee approved a report on July 15, 1941, concluding that the scheme for a uranium bomb was practicable, that work should continue on the highest priority, and that collaboration with the Americans should be continued and expanded.

As the war took its toll on the economy, the British position evolved through 1942 and 1943 to one of full support for the American project with the realization that Britain's major effort would come after the war. While the British program was sharply reduced at home, approximately 50 scientists and engineers went to the United States at the end of 1943 and during 1944 to work on various aspects of the Manhattan Project. The valuable knowledge and experience they acquired sped the development of the British bomb after 1945. The formal postwar decision to manufacture a British atomic bomb was made by Prime Minister Clement Attlee's government during a meeting of the Defence Subcommittee of the Cabinet in early January 1947. The construction of a first reactor to produce fissile material and associated facilities had gotten under way the year before. William Penney, a member of the British team at Los Alamos during the war, was placed in charge of fabricating and testing the bomb, which was to be of a plutonium type similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki.

That Britain was developing nuclear weapons was not made public until Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced on Feb. 17, 1952, plans to test the first British-made atomic bomb at the Monte Bello Islands off the northwest coast of Australia. There, on Oct. 3, 1952, the first British atomic weapons test, called Hurricane, was successfully conducted aboard the frigate HMS Ply m. By early 1954 Royal Air Force Canberra bombers were armed with atomic bombs. The Soviet Union. In the decade before the war, Soviet physicists were actively engaged in nuclear and atomic research.

By 1939 they had established that, once uranium has been fission ed, each nucleus emits neutrons and can therefore, at least in theory, begin a chain reaction. The following year, physicists concluded that such a chain reaction could be ignited in either natural uranium or its isotope, uranium-235, and that this reaction could be sustained and controlled with a moderator such as heavy water. In June 1940 the Soviet Academy of Sciences established the Uranium Commission to study the 'uranium problem. ' In February 1939, news had reached Soviet physicists of the discovery of nuclear fission in the West. The military implications of such a discovery were immediately apparent, but Soviet research was brought to a halt by the German invasion in June 1941. In early 1942 the physicist Georgy N. Flerov noticed that articles on nuclear fission were no longer appearing in western journals; this indicated that research on the subject had become secret.

In response, Flerov wrote to, among others, Premier Joseph Stalin, insisting that 'we must build the uranium bomb without delay. ' In 1939 Stalin ordered the commencement of a research project under the supervision of Igor V. Kurchatov, who had been director of the nuclear physics laboratory at the Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad. Kurchatov initiated work on three fronts: achieving a chain reaction in a uranium pile, designing both uranium-235 and plutonium bombs, and separating isotopes from these materials. By the end of 1944,100 scientists were working under Kurchatov, and by the time of the Potsdam Conference, which brought the Allied leaders together the day after the Trinity test, the project on the atomic bomb was seriously under way. During one session at the conference, Truman remarked to Stalin that the United States had built a 'new weapon of unusual destructive force. ' Stalin replied that he would like to see the United States make 'good use of it against the Japanese.

' Upon his return from Potsdam, Stalin ordered that work on the fission bomb proceed at a faster pace. On Aug. 7, 1945, the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, he placed Lavrenty P. Beria, the chief of secret police, in charge of the Soviet version of the Manhattan Project. The first Soviet chain reaction took place in Moscow on Dec. 25, 1946, using an experimental graphite-moderated natural uranium pile, and the first plutonium production reactor became operational at Kyshtym, in the Ural Mountains, on June 19, 1948. The first Soviet weapon test occurred on Aug. 29, 1949, using plutonium; it had a yield of 10 to 20 kilotons.

France French scientists, such as Henri Becquerel, Marie and Pierre Curie, and Fr " ed'eric and Ir " ene Joliet-Curie, made important contributions to 20th-century atomic physics. During World War II several French scientists participated in an Anglo-Canadian project in Canada, where eventually a heavy water reactor was built at Chalk River, Ont., in 1945. On Oct. 18, 1945, the Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat 'a l'Energie Atom ique; CEA) was established by General Charles de Gaulle with the objective of exploiting the scientific, industrial, and military potential of atomic energy. The military application of atomic energy did not begin until 1951.

In July 1952 the National Assembly adopted a five-year plan, a primary goal of which was to build plutonium production reactors. Work began on a reactor at Mar coule in the summer of 1954 and on a plutonium separating plant the following year. On Dec. 26, 1954, the issue of proceeding with a French bomb was raised at Cabinet level. The outcome was that Prime Minister Pierre Mend " es-France launched a secret program to develop a bomb. On Nov. 30, 1956, a protocol was signed specifying tasks the CEA and the Defense Ministry would perform. These included providing the plutonium, assembling a device, and preparing a test site.

On July 22, 1958, de Gaulle, who had resumed power as prime minister, set the date for the first atomic explosion to occur within the first three months of 1960. On Feb. 13, 1960, the French detonated their first atomic bomb from a 330-foot tower in the Sahara in what was then French Algeria. China On Jan. 15, 1955, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) and the Chinese leadership decided to obtain their own nuclear arsenal. From 1955 to 1958 the Chinese were partially dependent upon the Soviet Union for scientific and technological assistance, but from 1958 until the break in relations in 1960 they became more and more self-sufficient. Facilities were built to produce and process uranium and plutonium at the Lan-chou Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Chiu-ch' "u an Atomic Energy Complex, both in the northwestern province of Kansu.

A design laboratory (called the Ninth Academy) was established at Hai-yen, east of the Koko Nor in Tsing hai province. A test site at Lop Nor, in far northwestern China, was established in October 1959. Overall leadership and direction was provided by Nie Rong zhen (Nih Jung-chen), director of the Defense Science and Technology Commission. Unlike the initial U.S. or Soviet tests, the first Chinese detonation -- on Oct. 16, 1964 -- used uranium-235 in an implosion-type configuration. Plutonium was not used until the eighth explosion, on Dec. 27, 1968. Other countries On May 18, 1974, India detonated a nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert near Po karan with a reported yield of 15 kilotons.

India characterized the test as being for peaceful purposes and apparently did not stockpile weapons. Pakistan declared its nuclear program to be solely for peaceful purposes, but it acquired the necessary infrastructure of facilities to produce weapons and was generally believed to possess them. Several other countries were believed to have built nuclear weapons or to have acquired the capability of assembling them on short notice. Israel was believed to have built arsenal of more than 200 weapons, including thermonuclear bombs. In August 1988 the South African foreign minister said that South Africa had 'the capability to [produce a nuclear bomb] should we want to. ' Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan also had the scientific and industrial base to develop and produce nuclear weapons, but they did not seem to have active programs..