How vital was heavy water to the Nazi bomb project and would we see more battles around Norway?
It was vital for their reactor program, a reactor that was a Chernobyl or Windscale waiting to happen.How vital was heavy water to the Nazi bomb project and would we see more battles around Norway?
There's a timeline POD.... A Nazi reactor that goes Chernobyl (with less ability to contain it) near the end of the war. What's the impact: atomic energy use in general and the use of the bombs on Japan?
I'm just cruious, does anyone know why was Norway producing heavy water at this point ?Had the German physicists organized a viable project the Heavy Water would have been important. There is a reason the French government paid for the purchase of all Norwegian Heavy Water at the end of 1939 & shipped every ml. of it to France in March 1940.
I'm just cruious, does anyone know why was Norway producing heavy water at this point ?
I'm just cruious, does anyone know why was Norway producing heavy water at this point ?
The Haigerloch experiment didn't even result in a functional reactor (i.e. did not reach critical mass for sustained nuclear fusion) and therefore posed no Chernobyl-type risk at all. Maybe it could have done so with a longer war or with higher prioritizing by the Nazi leadership.There's a timeline POD.... A Nazi reactor that goes Chernobyl (with less ability to contain it) near the end of the war. What's the impact: atomic energy use in general and the use of the bombs on Japan?
If the Germans were going down the plutonium path it was very important. Heavy water is used as a moderator in reactors that produce plutonium. Light water is a great moderator but absorbs many more neutrons then heavy water. The neutrons are needed so one can be captured by a U238 atom. This will then decay to Pu239. If they were going to enrich uranium then it’s really not needed. The odds of them developing a usable fission device before the war ended was IMHO about the same as the sea mammal succeeding or the Japanese winning the Pacific war though.
From what I've read, the Germans had gone down the wrong path on the road to an A-Bomb. They weren't anywhere close to getting it and the heavy water was pretty much irrelevant.
Not particularly someone in the German team had screwed up the math rendering any possibility of a German bomb rather mynute
oddly for spa related purposes, I believe it had sales value as a sort of atomic super mineral water. In the thirties, anyway.
Well, long term, every patient eventually dies after taking the medicineThey used to use Uranium for medicinal purposes in the 30s. Apparently it was very succesful until the patients died.