Atomic energy if not for WW2?

Archibald

Banned
As far as I understood the whole thing, getting the bomb first led to uranium enrichment. Nuclear enrichment led to PWR and BWR for military use, notably for Rickover's submarines. Then when Ike started Atom for peace in 1955, the industry just adopted the nuclear submarines PWR - and even today PWR are the standard nuclear energy powerplant - and then we had TMI and Fukushima coolant accidents (Chernobyl was different).

Now if peaceful use of the atom come first (let's take a cool ATL: Pdf27 A blunted sickle) then the whole enrichment and PWR never happens, and perhaps better reactor types become the norm. I have a crush for the Molten Salt Reactor, which is also pretty good for space applications.

I'd like to read a TL where peaceful use of the atom come first - no Manhattan project. Even if that mean that nuclear developments are one or two decades backward when compared to OTL.

It would be to nuclear power what alternate Apollos (think Nixonshead Kolyma's shadow)are for space TLs: reach for the Moon happens later than 1969, but in a much more sustainable way.
Same way for nuclear matters: no Manhattan project means that civilian nuclear power come later than 1956 (perhaps a decade or two), but with better reactors than goddam PWR.

To think the United States spent 8 trilion dollars (yes, 8000 billions) on nuclear weaponry between 1942 and 1992... imagine if all that money had flowed into making THIS happening instead (I really have to write that TL someday) No nuclear dick -measuring contest with USSR, perhaps that country is utterly weakened by the Nazis, who ultimately lose to America, now the one and only superpower without any nuclear weapons - whatif we invest all thoat money in colonization of space)
 
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Delta Force

Banned
Natural uranium reactors might be more widespread, since enrichment technology is really only required for nuclear weapons.
 
The problem with 'power first' is that an electricity generating reactor needs to be cost effective. OTL, the early power reactors were subsidized (if only by all the nuclear research used to produce bombs), and even then never managed to really make it.

I'm sure people would LOVE the idea of 'atomic power', and that research would go on - but I think you'd end up with 'research reactors' which did more isotope production for medical purposes than generating electricity.

Sure, the Soviets (or equivalent) would likely produce a token power plant to demonstrate their 'technological superiority', but...


Moreover. WHY on earth would anyone avoid the bomb? the military advantages are so huge, and it's easier to build bombs (which can be very expensive and allow expensive infrastructure), than a power generating reactor that was a failed experiment.

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So.
Yes, it would take longer, but nuclear development would likely follow more or less the same course - just more slowly.
 
Still think someone will say, Hey we can build a ship that doesn't need to be refueled. Maybe more commercial ships like the Savannah get built. Funny thing is when the Savannah was pulled from service, She was cheaper to run even with the extra crew for the reactor.
 
Now if peaceful use of the atom come first (let's take a cool ATL: Pdf27 A blunted sickle) then the whole enrichment and PWR never happens, and perhaps better reactor types become the norm. I have a crush for the Molten Salt Reactor, which is also pretty good for space applications.
Ummm... not quite sure where you're getting that interpretation from - we're only in mid-1941 and the UK has already made a commitment to developing nuclear weapons based on enriched uranium by means of gaseous diffusion. The postwar nuclear world will be very different, of course, but it will still be driven by nuclear weapons.
The only realistic way I can see of causing civil nuclear power to come first by a big margin is hit a lot of people with a stupid stick and cause Frisch–Peierls not to happen for a generation. That's hard but not impossible - Heisenberg thought that an atomic bomb would be too big to be airdropped, and the famous letter from Einstein to Roosevelt warned of a weapon that could be delivered by ship. Frisch–Peierls being ignored isn't impossible - the British picked up on it very quickly, but the US Uranium Committee really didn't pay much attention to it at all. Only when Marcus Oliphant flew over and started banging on tables and using the word "bomb" a lot did things change. Having the same thing happen in the UK is hard but not quite impossible.
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
The only realistic way I can see of causing civil nuclear power to come first by a big margin is hit a lot of people with a stupid stick and cause Frisch–Peierls not to happen for a generation.

Given that the question on the table suggests "without WW2", one could establish that a no-Hitler Germany having Frisch and Peierls not become refugees in Britain (instead both staying in Germany), and perhaps not meet and collaborate to find just the right calculations. While someone else might still determine it, it might be someone who either (a) doesn't realize what they have, (b) can't persuade anyone about it (as pdf27 has suggested) or (c) does realize what they have, and is so appalled by the destructive power there that they suppress the findings temporarily, long enough for others to believe that an atomic weapon is at least immediately too impractical to use, and instead civilian reactors begin first.
 
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