How long can you delay the Atomic Age?

By decades. The costs of the nuclear weapons projects were so staggering that it's perfectly believable that the contenders in WWII, absent Einstein letter, would choose to expend those vast resources in more practical and reliable stuff than superweapons based on novel physics.
They didn't just decide to carry out the Mannattan Project because it looked like it might be cool, they calculated the projected cost and then compared it to the cost of dropping an equivalent amount of regular explosives on their enemies with it coming out as less costly IIRC. There's also the fact that it was so expensive because they decided to carry out a crash development programme trying every single isotope separation method. If they had taken a calculated gamble and picked just one, as the British had decided with gaseous diffusion - correctly deducing that it was likely to be the most efficient, or concentrated on a plutonium weapon it slashes costs for an increased risk.


Absent a Manhattan Project, the German and British nuclear programs would prove ineffective at developing a weapon before the end of the war due the lack of funds.
IIRC when it has come up in past threads it's been suggested that a smaller scale British programme could have conceivably produced a weapon by around mid-1945. I'll try and dig them out again.
 
The Atomic bomb became the Battleship of the modern day, too pricey for most, too important for the few, seemingly indispensable for war yet too risk to use. I think that cost is certainly a barrier, especially in peacetime, but then one might see more open science, each thing that adds delay offers another quickening of the pace. The best thing might be a fundamental shift in Great Power relations, one that undercuts the funding, the impetus or the fear that drives defense procurement. You might have a disarmament movement be more successful and aggressive in curbing new weapons, the Washington Naval treaty did a lot to hamper the aircraft Carrier and rein back the Battleship from 1920 to 1935-ish. Even after, without the war those implements might have lost another decade of development and stagnated further. Have the first World War end differently such that a truer League of Peace occurs rather than a rearranging of chairs at the big table. A different Germany might pioneer nuclear science more fully, perhaps first in isotopes for industrial, medical or other peaceful uses, then power generation, perhaps the dangers of nuclear technology get revealed before a bomb is built yet after it is devised, sufficient to set forces upon it to contain it. The parallels exist but sadly all too often respond after the horse in question has bolted.
 
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