WWII Atomic Secrets See the Light of Day
In 1941, a Nobel laureate named James Chadwick got his hands on documents that described how to build a nuclear reactor written by his colleagues. Like any good scientist he sent them off to the Royal Society in London. But instead of submitting them for publication, Chadwick urged that they be kept under wraps. The papers, forgotten and lost over time, were found in the institution’s archives last January during an audit. This month, a CERN particle physicist named Brian Cox opened them for the first time.
The Chadwick papers, as they came to be known, are a laundry list of sensitive atomic science, which include directions on how to safely conduct a nuclear chain reaction and how to get plutonium from uranium. (That’s pretty much one step away from making a bomb, hence the present-day brouhaha over Iran’s nuclear reactors). They also shed light on a bygone era of cloak-and-dagger science. “I can see why these papers were locked away during the war,” Cox said. “They contain details that could be used to build a nuclear reactor.”
http://www.inklingmagazine.com/articles/secret-nuke-reactor-papers-opened-for-first-time-since-wwii/
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