Insights into the Nazis' failed nuclear program may lie within this 2-inch-tall uranium cube

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retropolis

Insights into the Nazis’ failed nuclear program may lie within this 2-inch-tall uranium cube



Brittany Robertson with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s cube, which is in a protective case. (Andrea Starr/PNNL)

By Caroline Anders
Today at 2:06 p.m. EDT

The race to nuclear arms was run in an information vacuum that created anxiety, terror and false impressions all around regarding who was nearing the finish line and how quickly.

Scientists in Nazi Germany identified nuclear fission first in 1938, so America called its top minds to arms. At the outset, the Nazis appeared to be far ahead.

But having miscalculated the amount of uranium it would take to set off an atomic bomb, the Germans figured that the United States would never be able to produce the quantity needed. The Americans, at first sure the Germans were nearing a workable weapon, slogged away, racing against a nightmarish hypothetical: Adolf Hitler’s nuclear bomb.

Many uranium cubes that are probably remnants of the long-since-failed Nazi nuclear program were brought to the United States after the war. Surprisingly to some researchers, these cubes — often seen as part of the Nazi nuclear effort, as two-inch blocks of natural uranium are difficult to come by — have never been officially confirmed to be left over from Hitler’s atomic project.

Three such cubes are now being studied by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington, one of the U.S. Energy Department’s national laboratories, which hopes to prove the uranium’s origins once and for all.

{snip}


By Caroline Anders
Caroline Anders is a reporting intern on the General Assignment desk. Twitter https://twitter.com/caroIineanders

[NNadir]

1. The Nazis never really had a serious nuclear weapons program.

After the war, German scientists claimed that the reason was moral qualms, but these claims are easily discounted by review of the secret tapes of their conversations made while the scientists were interned in England at Farm Hall.

Werner Heisenberg did try to build a reactor, and Niels Bohr brought a diagram of the device to Los Alamos, after escaping from Nazi occupied Denmark via Sweden, his drawing based on a famous and disastrous meeting with his former student, Heisenberg, after the Nazis took Denmark.

Bohr was lucky to get out alive. He was half Jewish.

The Manhattan Project scientists were amused.

[unc70]

2. A little personal history - connection to the cubes

Last edited Thu Aug 26, 2021, 12:18 AM - Edit history (1)

I have two small distant "connections" to these cubes. What I know is mostly hearsay, but possibly interesting. In 1969, I worked for one of the senior "Paperclip" scientists brought from Germany to the US after the war. He was then doing rocket science for White Sands, I was the whiz kid assistant who took his research essentially from the WWII technology of pencil, paper, & manual calculators to cutting-edge technology using IBM 360/75 computers, Calcomp plottters, & sophisticated statistics.

Herr Doctor was amazed when previously difficult problems of his could be solved in a single morning. I was more amazed by what I leaned from him about his life and experiences. He had gotten his PhD in the mid 1930s in hyperfine (atomic) physics particularly studying the nucleus. He was one of, knew, and worked with many of the German physics luminaries of that period. As the war progressed, he also became affiliated with various rocket projects, particularly on the data analysis side.

While we were working closely together, we discussed a lot of topics. When the US landed on the moon, he told me about what an AH von Braun had always been. We compared how Hitler had come to power, how the US had gone to war in Vietnam, and the hubris of the German supposed advantage in technology during WWII.

Realizing the inherent biases in his recollections and in my remembrances after over fifty years, I still find it interesting what he seemed proudest of. First, that he remained a civilian throughout the War and never accepted a commission; and second, the concerted efforts by most of the physicists to protect their Jewish colleagues and to facilitate their getting out of Germany during the war.

Now to those cubes. In 1969, he told me about the cubes of uranium. They were in very short supply; all together, there were probably enough of them to successfully build a bomb. Through a combination of resistance internally from those opposed to actually building any bomb and from competition between the rival labs for scarce materials, no single lab ever had enough critical resources to actually build a working bomb. He alleged that this was not by accident, though not quite deliberate sabotage. While there is even now continuing debate whether German scientists of the time were really capable of building a bomb, he told me there was a concerted effort to limit that possibility. Who knows. I wish I had taken better notes at the time.

Second limited connection. I had a very close friend whose father had one of these cubes. It was written up a few years ago, including an interview with her mother who was still alive at that time. Her father had been one of the very, very senior managers of the Manhattan Project. I would not have mentioned this if it had not been published.

Note: I believe I have avoided anything that might still be classified.

[wackadoo wabbit]

6. What an interesting history! Thanks for sharing it /nt

[brush]

3. What a nightmare...Hitler with nukes. The only thing that...

makes me relax a bit is he probably would've screwed it up as he did when ordered his generals to halt when the entire British army was trapped at Dunkirk, and then later on the eastern front, against his generals advice, halted his central army group's main thrust towards Moscow and concentrated on the north army group's Leningrad attack and the south army group's drive toward the Ukraine.

By the time the thrust towards Moscow was resumed it was too late as the Russians had time to reinforce Moscow's defenses and the Russian winter kicked in.

Hitler was not the military genius he thought he was. Thank God.

But Hitler with nukes still makes me shudder.

[hunter]

4. Here's a photo of the Nazi research reactor being inspected by U.S. and British forces....

It was basically a lot of these cubes hanging on cables in a vat of heavy water.

It never achieved a critical chain reaction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_weapons_program

Nazi Germany simply didn't have the intellectual or industrial resources to make it happen.

By 1943 most German uranium reserves had been released for use in non-nuclear ammunition.

The U.S.A. later shot up Iraq with depleted uranium, which is a potential nuclear fuel.

Uranium is typically used in armor piercing ammunition.

[hunter]

5. Here's a museum model of the reactor's core suspended above the vessel.

creative commons photo by Felix König.