Nuclear weapons without WW2

As we all know the first use of nuclear weapons was when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end WW2.

While atomic weapons were discussed prewar my understanding is that respective research programmes were set up and obviously intensified due to the nature of the international situation.

If for whatever reason WW2 doesn't occur - how does that impact the development and deployment of nuclear weapons?

And a sub question - how would a non-Nazi government impact the development of a German nuclear weapons programme.

Look forward to your thoughts!
 
They were first discussing the possibility of nuclear power. most likely the first nuclear development would be done towards that end.

But i'm no expert on nuclear physics so i have no idea how that develops further into the research of possible nuclear weapons. My guess that it will probably take a very long time, without the urge of WWII hanging around the scientists. There were so many difficulties they needed to overcome, so many moments of being stuck in the calculations and problems of the physics of such a device.
 
In a world at peace, some vital aspects of nuclear weapons design might be easier to obtain outside the country in which the research was done. In OTL, the Soviets had well-planted spies that gleaned a lot of the important information from the Manhattan Project; in a peaceful world, some that information would likely be published in the open scientific literature. Information like the size of a critical mass, the neutrons-per-fission and neutron cross-sections of U and Pu (a measure of how easily a nucleus can be made to undergo fission), and perhaps even methods of refining plutonium might well have been available in every university library until some power realized the information should be restricted. Physicists would be aware of the possibility of nuclear weapons but might well publish their data openly to aid in the development of electricity generation by nuclear energy.

At some point someone would design a weapon. Supposing a given state "goes dark" and stops publishing its nuclear research, other states might (correctly) assume that they had decided to make a weapon and might begin more active research to that end. So once nuclear research stopped appearing in the Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Americans might pull their research and begin a Manhattan Project. The total time spent on developing a weapon would be shorter than we saw OTL, because crucial experiments would already have been performed.

The same might have happened if key discoveries in nuclear physics happened 4 or 5 years earlier than OTL. The time between Hahn and Meitner's publication on nuclear fission and the beginning of WW2 was roughly eight months OTL. Give them four years' head start, and Einstein and Szilard warn FDR about the possibility of nuclear weapons in the mid-30s.
 
The total time spent on developing a weapon would be shorter than we saw OTL, because crucial experiments would already have been performed.

Except for the crucial experiments that are required to make it a weapon. Like the plutonium in a gun design problem. Thats gonna take a while, certainly considdering how dangerous it was to experiment with. A long time unless someone gets lucky. Noobdy would be doing those experiments unless they wanted a weapon.
 
Except for the crucial experiments that are required to make it a weapon. Like the plutonium in a gun design problem. Thats gonna take a while, certainly considdering how dangerous it was to experiment with. A long time unless someone gets lucky. Noobdy would be doing those experiments unless they wanted a weapon.

Yes, that's true. It took the Soviets 4 years to obtain a working bomb even though they had lots of information from their spies. So what I mean is that the availability of some data in the open literature would save some time, but there is still lots of work that has to be done. Or, looked at another way, the first power or two to obtain nuclear weapons might take about the same as in OTL, maybe a little less, but proliferation might be faster than in OTL. Or maybe not; it's difficult to say how much data Hiroshima and Nagasaki affected the US nuclear program post-war.

Regarding the time saved, I'm thinking of the experiment Louis Slotin died performing: determining the critical mass of U and Pu. Earlier availability of those numbers would have saved time and freed up scientists for Los Alamos.
 
It's true that information not being classified is a factor that speeds up the research.

OTOH, a much more important factor that slows down the development is the lack of urgency. You don't build a super-super costly weapon if you aren't in a war.

Naturally, much depends on why and how WWII doesn't take place. If that's because everybody loves his neighbor, it's one thing. If it's because Germany is much smarter diplomatically and manages to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union without anybody else getting involved, then Britain may well not be actually at war, but Germany has become a deadly danger. A war may well erupt in the immediate future. So those "tube alloys" are pretty interesting even if it's technically peacetime.
 
In my understanding, developing the bomb cost a fortune: would such an endeavour have been justified in peacetime?

Would the incentives have been as strong? And even so, who had the capital (in addition to technology and materials) to develop it? Germany was broke, as Roches said the USSR piggybacked on other nations' research via espionage and even the idea of doing it was second hand.

That leaves USA, the British Empire, France and Japan. The first three aren't enemies, so I'd count them out. Could Japan have done that without the Pacific war? Didn't they go to war precisely for a lack of resources?

In conclusion, I think it would have happened much later, unless some other conflict upset the global equilibrium.
 
It's true that information not being classified is a factor that speeds up the research.

OTOH, a much more important factor that slows down the development is the lack of urgency. You don't build a super-super costly weapon if you aren't in a war.

Naturally, much depends on why and how WWII doesn't take place. If that's because everybody loves his neighbor, it's one thing. If it's because Germany is much smarter diplomatically and manages to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union without anybody else getting involved, then Britain may well not be actually at war, but Germany has become a deadly danger. A war may well erupt in the immediate future. So those "tube alloys" are pretty interesting even if it's technically peacetime.
Yes, a cold war is just as good
 
those "tube alloys" are pretty interesting even if it's technically peacetime.
They're going to get a fair amount of concerted attention in any event. Nukes were considered for development prewar as prestige weapons, if for no other reason, so while it might take until 1960 or so, they're going to happen.

And that has some serious implications for diplomacy, & "local" wars: if nukes have never been used, they will be,:eek: in wars that OTL we'd never imagine going nuclear, because the perceived taboo doesn't exist. Algeria, anyone (too early?)? Suez Crisis (maybe too early)? Vietnam (by France)? And without nukes in service, does the SU take a chance on invading Europe in the '50s?:eek::eek:
 
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