AHC/WI: The Commonwealth Develops the Atomic Bomb without the United States

The British Empire could have run an atomic program on its own but the program would have been smaller and stretched out over a longer period. Only the U.S. had the resources to throw at such a program to allow it to run 'at the speed of thought' instead of 'the speed of funding'. The U.S. also could run large scale enrichment programs better because they had the ability to build large scale facilities such as Oak Ridge that the Commonwealth would have had to strain to even approach.
I'm fairly sure the Commonwealth would go with Heavy Water reactors producing plutonium, rather than trying to enrich U235. Still, your point about infrastructure is valid. There's no way the Commonwealth program could have set up a Plutonium breeding site on the scale of Hansford, which is why I suggested that their initial production would likely be more on the order of 2/year. (Unlike the US which was ready to crank up to 3/month when the war ended, IIRC).

Only the US had the resources to build the massive isotope separation facility at Oakridge or the massive plutonium breeding project at Hansford. Let alone both at once. Let alone during the war.
 
IOTL the British laboured under a shortage of fissile materials and at a much greater cost than the USA. This was a large factor in Britain jumping back into the nuclear bed with the USA in 1958.

I would imagine that a similar situation would occur, probably worse actually, if the Commonwealth was going it alone.
 

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Looks like the PLAAF operated some Tu-4 bombers too. They probably didn't use them as nuclear bombers, but it allows me to say this siggable quote:

Four out of five atomic powers prefer the B-29. The fifth one is French.

I'm fairly sure the Commonwealth would go with Heavy Water reactors producing plutonium, rather than trying to enrich U235. Still, your point about infrastructure is valid. There's no way the Commonwealth program could have set up a Plutonium breeding site on the scale of Hansford, which is why I suggested that their initial production would likely be more on the order of 2/year. (Unlike the US which was ready to crank up to 3/month when the war ended, IIRC).

Only the US had the resources to build the massive isotope separation facility at Oakridge or the massive plutonium breeding project at Hansford. Let alone both at once. Let alone during the war.

The Canadians produced a large amount of highly enriched uranium and tritium for both the American and British nuclear programs during the Cold War. I don't know how much of that came from the infrastructure developed during the Manhattan Project though, as a lot of Canada's nuclear exports are due to the resources consumed and produced by the CANDU reactor design.

IOTL the British laboured under a shortage of fissile materials and at a much greater cost than the USA. This was a large factor in Britain jumping back into the nuclear bed with the USA in 1958.

I would imagine that a similar situation would occur, probably worse actually, if the Commonwealth was going it alone.

The French were able to build an entire nuclear triad independently in a rather short period of time, as well as a host of other things (the French space program, civilian nuclear program, etc.). I don't think the state of the British economy or French nationalism can explain that.
 
The Canadians produced a large amount of highly enriched uranium and tritium for both the American and British nuclear programs during the Cold War. I don't know how much of that came from the infrastructure developed during the Manhattan Project though, as a lot of Canada's nuclear exports are due to the resources consumed and produced by the CANDU reactor design.
Cite? I haven't heard of any (significant) Uranium enrichment happening in Canada. I'd like to learn of any, thanks.
 

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Are there indications as to what direction an independent Commonwealth program would have gone in terms of enrichment technology, weapons design, and nuclear reactor technology? I'm not as familiar with the work of Commonwealth scientists on the Manhattan Project and unsure on how much knowledge they had concerning the totality of the program, especially since they were cutoff from some information following the 1946 McMahon Atomic Energy Act.
 
Which brings up another question: could the United States develop the atomic bomb without the Commonwealth? By develop, I mean be the first to do so. The Commonwealth brought a lot of rare materials and scientists to the program, while the United States brought a lot of capital, workers, and heavy industry.

It was their alliance that allowed them to develop the atomic bomb. The US and the Commonwealth needed eachother
 

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It was their alliance that allowed them to develop the atomic bomb. The US and the Commonwealth needed eachother

It sped things along, but if anything the United States actually required Canadian participation to some extent, as they had access to large uranium deposits. American uranium deposits weren't discovered for several years. The Congo was far away and lacked infrastructure for large scale mining and development work, so it wouldn't have been a feasible alternative.

The Commonwealth needed American industry, and to some extents funding, while the United States required Commonwealth raw materials.
 
Can't you just put a parachute on the bomb - giving the bomber plenty of time to escape

Took the USA a few years in the '50s to get drogues that worked properly on the 2nd&3rd gen bombs.

remember, it's 9000 pounds. That why the Fatman and Little Boy had drag plates in the box tail
 

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Took the USA a few years in the '50s to get drogues that worked properly on the 2nd&3rd gen bombs.

remember, it's 9000 pounds. That why the Fatman and Little Boy had drag plates in the box tail

Parachutes are also only a partial solution, as they reduce accuracy. Accuracy still matters for nuclear weapons.
 
The French were able to build an entire nuclear triad independently in a rather short period of time, as well as a host of other things (the French space program, civilian nuclear program, etc.). I don't think the state of the British economy or French nationalism can explain that.

At the budgetary expense of the other armed service though. Also, the time (1954-1960) used for development is roughly the same as UK (1946-1952).
 
Off the cuff, I'd say it's possible. I do have two questions: how many bombs do they want? If it's only 1-2, low production isn't an issue. When do they need it? If they see Germany's program in the tank after the Telemark mission, end of the war, or later, might be okay...
 

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Off the cuff, I'd say it's possible. I do have two questions: how many bombs do they want? If it's only 1-2, low production isn't an issue. When do they need it? If they see Germany's program in the tank after the Telemark mission, end of the war, or later, might be okay...

As the Manhattan Project eventually learned, it's much more efficient to acquire plutonium through reprocessing spent nuclear reactor fuel than it is to enrich uranium. If they go the plutonium route, weapons production can be done fairly regularly.
 
Are there indications as to what direction an independent Commonwealth program would have gone in terms of enrichment technology, weapons design, and nuclear reactor technology? I'm not as familiar with the work of Commonwealth scientists on the Manhattan Project and unsure on how much knowledge they had concerning the totality of the program, especially since they were cutoff from some information following the 1946 McMahon Atomic Energy Act.
That's very clear - read the MAUD report, which sets out the British plans prior to US involvement via the Manhattan Project. They were intending to use gaseous diffusion (ICI had already got the process working in the lab at this point) to enrich uranium for a double-gun type device. Plutonium was not mentioned as a possibility, but this was published in July 1941 - only 3 months after Seaborg had shown it was fissile and long before anybody knew how to make it in industrial quantities.

As the Manhattan Project eventually learned, it's much more efficient to acquire plutonium through reprocessing spent nuclear reactor fuel than it is to enrich uranium. If they go the plutonium route, weapons production can be done fairly regularly.
Not quite - in 1958/9 the RAF costed HEU at £19,200 per kg and Plutonium at £143,000 per kg!
The reason for this seems to be that producing military grade Plutonium (low percentage of Pu-240) is seriously disruptive to reactor operations - you can only go for a low burnup fraction on the fuel before it needs to go for reprocessing, meaning you need to refuel very frequently and then reprocess the spent fuel rods after only a fraction of their life. There are ways to make this easier (CANDU for instance with the pressure tubes and fuelling machine, or similarly MAGNOX), but you're still stuck with doing an awful lot of expensive reprocessing on highly radioactive fuel. By comparison UF6 is apparently really easy to work with (!).
 

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That's very clear - read the MAUD report, which sets out the British plans prior to US involvement via the Manhattan Project. They were intending to use gaseous diffusion (ICI had already got the process working in the lab at this point) to enrich uranium for a double-gun type device. Plutonium was not mentioned as a possibility, but this was published in July 1941 - only 3 months after Seaborg had shown it was fissile and long before anybody knew how to make it in industrial quantities.

Gaseous diffusion is much better than the other processes the Manhattan Project experimented with. Centrifuges would be ideal, but they don't seem to have been worked on much by the Western Allies at the time.

Not quite - in 1958/9 the RAF costed HEU at £19,200 per kg and Plutonium at £143,000 per kg!
The reason for this seems to be that producing military grade Plutonium (low percentage of Pu-240) is seriously disruptive to reactor operations - you can only go for a low burnup fraction on the fuel before it needs to go for reprocessing, meaning you need to refuel very frequently and then reprocess the spent fuel rods after only a fraction of their life. There are ways to make this easier (CANDU for instance with the pressure tubes and fuelling machine, or similarly MAGNOX), but you're still stuck with doing an awful lot of expensive reprocessing on highly radioactive fuel. By comparison UF6 is apparently really easy to work with (!).
There might have been some fudging of the numbers for plutonium. The British government wanted to build nuclear power to help reduce reliance on imports, reduce the power of the coal miner unions, etc., but the economics weren't quite working out. The plutonium credit was created to help bolster the economic case, accounting for the value of plutonium for defense purposes. The plutonium credit was never actually paid to the reactor operators though, so it was more of a theoretical accounting device. Interestingly enough, despite access to cheap fossil fuels, private companies in the United States were building nuclear power plants purely on their economic merits and without government subsidies by the early 1960s.
 
Gaseous diffusion is much better than the other processes the Manhattan Project experimented with. Centrifuges would be ideal, but they don't seem to have been worked on much by the Western Allies at the time.
The interesting thing is that all of the design decisions they took would have pretty much worked first time - it's essentially the lowest-risk route through the Manhattan project, selected at the end of 1940! That rather suggests that any commonwealth project (almost certainly based in Canada) would have been a success.

There might have been some fudging of the numbers for plutonium. The British government wanted to build nuclear power to help reduce reliance on imports, reduce the power of the coal miner unions, etc., but the economics weren't quite working out. The plutonium credit was created to help bolster the economic case, accounting for the value of plutonium for defense purposes. The plutonium credit was never actually paid to the reactor operators though, so it was more of a theoretical accounting device.
Have a dig around in the national archives to see if you can find the nineteen fifty-something white paper on nuclear energy, which seems to be the origin of the plutonium credit (I've got a copy, but no access to it right now). It's a free download, and goes into this in quite some detail. One of the main drivers for nuclear power (at least ostensibly) was that they couldn't dig enough coal - the miners were working 6 days a week and barely keeping up with demand, and they were predicting a huge boom in demand for electricity. Incidentally, this was one of the major drivers for the British Railways dieselisation programme - the right sort of coal was almost impossible to get in the quantities needed.
The plutonium credit is also said in the white paper to be mostly for civil purposes (diversion to the military programme is described as temporary and undesirable) as a replacement for enriched uranium to allow the use of liquid-cooled reactors without a major enrichment programme. I think they're essentially describing MOX fuel, but it's also remotely possible that they were looking ahead to the AGR design (the white paper talks about gas-cooled reactors as a stopgap on the way to water-cooled ones).
 

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The interesting thing is that all of the design decisions they took would have pretty much worked first time - it's essentially the lowest-risk route through the Manhattan project, selected at the end of 1940! That rather suggests that any commonwealth project (almost certainly based in Canada) would have been a success.

Well, I'm not sure a double-gun device would work. Presumably that involves firing two components at each other, or alternatively at a target placed between them?

Also, they might have gone down the path of the plutonium gun type bomb, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue since my understanding is that a top British explosives scientist was loaned to the Manhattan Project to figure out how to make the implosion devices work.

Have a dig around in the national archives to see if you can find the nineteen fifty-something white paper on nuclear energy, which seems to be the origin of the plutonium credit (I've got a copy, but no access to it right now). It's a free download, and goes into this in quite some detail. One of the main drivers for nuclear power (at least ostensibly) was that they couldn't dig enough coal - the miners were working 6 days a week and barely keeping up with demand, and they were predicting a huge boom in demand for electricity. Incidentally, this was one of the major drivers for the British Railways dieselisation programme - the right sort of coal was almost impossible to get in the quantities needed.

Is there a British equivalent to the United States Department of Energy site? It could be useful for nuclear history research.

The plutonium credit is also said in the white paper to be mostly for civil purposes (diversion to the military programme is described as temporary and undesirable) as a replacement for enriched uranium to allow the use of liquid-cooled reactors without a major enrichment programme. I think they're essentially describing MOX fuel, but it's also remotely possible that they were looking ahead to the AGR design (the white paper talks about gas-cooled reactors as a stopgap on the way to water-cooled ones).

Another option would be for use as fuel by breeder reactors. Apart from MOX, there isn't a way to make a conventional reactor run on plutonium. There was an experimental reactor in the United States that ran on molten plutonium though.

Also, it's interesting that the British wanted to go from gas cooled reactors to water cooled reactors. It was somewhat the other way around in the United States. This might be because at the time gas cooled reactors were less efficient then water cooled ones because they ran on natural uranium and had to use gas to heat steam to drive steam turbines. Later on it was discovered that gas cooled reactors can actually be quite efficient, as they can drive Brayton cycle gas turbines, which are more efficient than Rankine cycle steam turbines.
 
Well, I'm not sure a double-gun device would work. Presumably that involves firing two components at each other, or alternatively at a target placed between them?
I would assume two components at one another. Most likely it would be dropped to a single gun when the closing speeds required are better understood - the double gun gives you twice the assembly speed for minimal extra complexity.

Also, they might have gone down the path of the plutonium gun type bomb, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue since my understanding is that a top British explosives scientist was loaned to the Manhattan Project to figure out how to make the implosion devices work.
This was uranium, not plutonium - plutonium wasn't even considered at the time the decision as made (it had only just been shown to be fissile a matter of weeks before). A Pu gun-type bomb (thin man) is unlikely to work, but since an implosion type device is much more efficient with scarce fissile material I think it's very clear that they'll look into it at some point.

Is there a British equivalent to the United States Department of Energy site? It could be useful for nuclear history research.
http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/nuclear-power-programmes.htm
Have a dig through the entire national archives site - quite a lot has still not been digitised so you need to pay for it, but just about every government document not still classified is in there and hence available. Cabinet minutes and the like are in there too, so you can see who said what when the decisions were taken.

Another option would be for use as fuel by breeder reactors. Apart from MOX, there isn't a way to make a conventional reactor run on plutonium. There was an experimental reactor in the United States that ran on molten plutonium though.
No reason in theory you can't run a reactor on only Plutonium, but the engineering is going to make it rather different to a conventional Uranium one. The MSR experiment tried running on pure Plutonium for a while, apparently, and I think some of the breeder reactors are designed like that too.

Also, it's interesting that the British wanted to go from gas cooled reactors to water cooled reactors. It was somewhat the other way around in the United States. This might be because at the time gas cooled reactors were less efficient then water cooled ones because they ran on natural uranium and had to use gas to heat steam to drive steam turbines. Later on it was discovered that gas cooled reactors can actually be quite efficient, as they can drive Brayton cycle gas turbines, which are more efficient than Rankine cycle steam turbines.
It's all about the temperatures - Magnox ran at about the same temperature as PWR and CANDU. AGR got to higher temperatures and hence better efficiency, but at the cost of requiring enriched fuel. The drive was all about increasing the heat rate, i.e. the efficiency of the system, and I think that was due to the very early Magnox design (this was written while Calder Hall was being built) having to run at relatively low temperatures to keep the magnesium fuel rod material to specification. AGR changed the material, but this is what forced them to use enriched fuel.
 
OK, so the paper I was talking about is at http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-129-73-c-55-31-31.pdf

A few highlights:
The second type of reactor that may be built for commercial operation during the next ten years is a liquid-cooled " thermal" reactor. This type requires more complicated techniques which at present would result in higher costs. But with further development liquid-cooled reactors should be able to give a much higher heat rating than the first gas-cooled reactors for the same capital cost. They might therefore eventually prove more economic than the gas-cooled reactors although the comparison will depend on how much the gas-cooled type can be improved. They could take any of several forms (see Annex 1) most of which need " enriched" fuel and could use for this purpose the plutonium produced in the earlier reactors in conjunction with natural uranium. The first commercial liquid-cooled reactors might be built during the latter part of the next ten years and begin operating about 1965.

Development after 1965 may take various forms: thorium may be used, at first in conjunction with plutonium, as an alternative fuel; "homogeneous" and " fast breeder " reactors may be developed.

On the assumptions set out above, and taking what appears to be a reasonable credit value (being a high value but well below the cost of separated uranium 235) for the plutonium by-product, the cost of electricity from the first commercial nuclear stations comes to about 0.6d. a unit. This is about the same as the probable future cost of electricity generated by new coal-fired power stations (see Annex 2 para. 10). If no credit were taken for the plutonium the cost of nuclear power would be substantially more than 0.6d. a unit. Later stations should show a great improvement in efficiency, but the value of plutonium would probably fall considerably during their lifetime and they would eventually have to take a much lower credit for it. Even so their higher efficiency should enable them to remain competitive with other power stations.

These estimates assume that all the plutonium is used for civil purposes, as would be most desirable. No allowance has been made for any military credits.

The ten-year programme would produce an installed capacity of about 1,500 to 2,000 megawatts by the end of the period, and the capacity would be growing rapidly. The rate of growth at the end of the ten years would be something like a quarter of this country's annual requirement for new generating capacity, which by then will probably be over 2,000 megawatts a year. On the assumption that nuclear stations would be used as base-load stations they would by 1965 be producing electricity at a rate equivalent to that produced by about 5 to 6 million tons of coal a year.
<snip>
If all went well it might be practicable to expand the rate of construction of nuclear power stations to match our total requirement of new generating capacity by the early 1970s, which by this time might amount to about 3,000 megawatts a year. On this assumption the total nuclear power station capacity installed by the early 1970s would be of the order of 12,000 mega*watts, the whole of which could be used for base-load operation. The nuclear power stations would then be producing electricity at a rate equivalent to that produced by about 40 million tons of coal a year.

Without nuclear power the rate of consumption of coal (or its equivalent as oil) by the power stations alone would increase on the assumption in the- last paragraph by perhaps 2 1/2 times over the next 20 years, reaching about 65 million tons a year by 1965 and 100 million tons a year in the 1970s, and would at that time be rising by 4 or 5 million tons a year. On the basis of the provisional programme of nuclear power, the Coal required by power stations would level off in the region of 60 to 70 million tons a year during the course of the 1960s. This levelling off in the demand for coal for power stations would come none too soon to help with the difficulties of finding manpower for the mines and of producing at reasonable cost enough coal for the other users of solid fuel whose demand would have been steadily rising meanwhile.
Since the war the production of. coal from deep mines has increased from 175 million tons in 1945 to 214 million tons in 1954. But the demands of our expanding home industries have been rising even faster. We have had to supplement output from the deep mines by opencast coal mining and by importing coal, and even so supplies for the householder are still restricted and there is not enough for exports. The National Coal Board have in hand a large programme of capital investment which has gone ahead rapidly in the last year or two; but a great part of this will be needed to maintain the output of the mines at the present level. Greater efficiency in the use of coal and the substitution of oil for coal in certain processes including electricity generation will give some limited relief but, the increasing demand for fuel cannot be met without exploiting to the full any new and economic technique available.

The provision of enough men for the mines is one of our most intractable problems and is likely to remain so. In order to meet the present demand for coal recourse has been had to voluntary Saturday working as well as to opencast production and to imports : but the demand continues to increase. Any relief that can come from other sources of energy such as nuclear power will do no more than ease the problem of finding and maintaining an adequate labour force. There can be no question of its creating redundancy. The mining industry will in any case remain one of the major employing industries of the country, but it may hope to be relieved by the advent of nuclear power of the excessive strains which are now being put upon it.
 
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