Atomic Energy used for actual energy purposes?

Zioneer

Banned
What if, instead of using the nuclear energy research on the atomic bomb as in OTL, FDR/Truman decide to use nuclear energy for fuel and non-oil energy purposes?

Of course, this has tremendous butterflies on the oil crises, Japan, and etc, so I'm interested in what would cause this change to happen, and what exactly would be the long-term ramifications of it.
 
Are you suggesting that no atomic bomb is dropped?

Well, either way Japan surrenders before the invasion. Does the USSR get atomic weapons then?
 
What if, instead of using the nuclear energy research on the atomic bomb as in OTL, FDR/Truman decide to use nuclear energy for fuel and non-oil energy purposes?

Of course, this has tremendous butterflies on the oil crises, Japan, and etc, so I'm interested in what would cause this change to happen, and what exactly would be the long-term ramifications of it.
:confused:
Firstly, they did, of course, build reactors, both mobile for propulsion (sub, surface ship, and even one merchantman!) and stationary for power generation.

However, the whole Manhattan project was specifically to produce a bomb. There is no way that that amount of money and effort would have been poured into power generation during WWII, as it wouldn't have paid off in time and they knew it.

Wiki said:
On June 27, 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid, and produced around 5 megawatts of electric power.[19][20]

9 years after the end of the war, and only 5MW, with all the OTL work done to make reactors work for military purposes.

Similarly, the first nuclear powered sub was the USS Nautilus (SSN-571??) launched in January of '54.

So, there is just no reason for that kind of massive crash program to happen unless it's for building a bomb.

Sorry.
 
Humanity will spend billions to kill each other, but only pocket change to help each other.

No way anyone would spend the funds of the Manhattan project, the man power, the speed, etc on simply nuclear energy. The entire thing, as said above this, was for the atomic bomb; that was the point. Atomic energy for peaceful purposes was a nice dream, but the scientists and not the politicians cared anything about that.
 
What if, instead of using the nuclear energy research on the atomic bomb as in OTL, FDR/Truman decide to use nuclear energy for fuel and non-oil energy purposes?

Of course, this has tremendous butterflies on the oil crises, Japan, and etc, so I'm interested in what would cause this change to happen, and what exactly would be the long-term ramifications of it.

There's no way this could happen during the war. No way. The US could't throw around that amount of money at a civilian project during the greatest war the country had ever seen. It would be criminal.

If you're talking about greater postwar emphasis on civilian nuclear power to replace coal and natural gas, then that's possible. How dependent on Middle Eastern oil was the US in the 50s? If the Suez Crisis could evolve into something resembling the '73 oil embargo, then you could get a lot of emphasis on nuclear power a lot earlier.
 
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If you're talking about greater postwar emphasis on civilian nuclear power to replace coal and natural gas, then that's possible. How dependent on Middle Eastern oil was the US in the 50s? If the Suez Crisis could evolve into something resembling the '73 oil embargo, then you could get a lot of emphasis on nuclear power a lot earlier.

I think that the US was a net oil exporter until the 1960s. I doubt that a 1950s oil embargo would cause anything close to the disruption in the USA that it could by the 1970s.
 
agreed with the previous posters, the only nations that had a real need for a crash program to develope nuclear power as an alternative are the axis, and they in turn had an even bigger need for a working weapon than any of the allies did at the time. Of course none of them had a decent delivery system for an atomic weapon, so if you really think about it, pursuing a nuclear power program makes marginally more sense than building a nuclear bomb. However this is moot as none of the axis nations had the ability to pursue such a project in the first place.

Although, I do like the idea of an atom-punk TL, but it probably belongs in ASB.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Hmm.. So it's lack of interest mostly.

What if the U.S. try to use nuclear power more for easy powering of military efforts, then a bomb? Like Dathi THorfinnsson was pointing out, the atom-powered sub and so forth?

Could there be a push within the higher levels of the government to have a more subtle development of nuclear power, into vehicles instead of a one-time bomb?

EDIT: Oh, whoops, I repeated myself. My bad, guys.
 
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