What if no Soviet spy in Manhattan project?

[RanulfC]

Would the south at least be in a better position to resist an invasion?

Probably not as Rhee was insistent on preparing for an attack, not defense. It was pretty much a race to see who invaded first.
He'd have actually probably gotten more US support if he'd been arguing defensive but both him and Kim were aimed solely on the offense as soon as possible.

Randy

 

[Nell_Lucifer]

And the Soviets still ended up building big gaseous diffusion plants despite their scientists not likeing the route. They would not have spent the money if they had an equally efficient centrifuge route available, they would have cancelled it like they did electromagnetic separation, where they improved on the US process but still was not as efficient

Both of those programs were basically pure experimental, so they may have thought for the quantities they needed

That has more to do with following the American route than any great enthusiasm with the gaseous diffusion method, which did not work well enough for a bomb (hitting a ~50% enrichment wall) hence they approved Max Steenbeck's centrifuge pilot plant to be built, forgot if it ended up being built or not after they fixed the issue a few years later with the gaseous diffusion plant. Still, the reason of sticking with the gaseous diffusion method also has more to do with the fact that they already have it and it doesn't require to invest into a new big plant doing the same thing.

I've heard completely differently about both programs and that the Farm Hall transcripts pretty much indicate Germany had no functional bomb program and didn't even have a good critical mass calculation. They may have known "large amount of highly enriched Uranium/plutonium, compression, boom" but I haven't seen indications they knew enough to calculate a critical mass given all the interacting factors involved and that some of their fundamental calculations were pretty off(IE neutron absorption of Graphite)

The Farm Hall transcripts should be dealt with caution as they are extremely fragmented and the people being recorded were aware of that, Heisenberg even gets called for lying at some point in the transcripts regarding the mass required for a bomb, afterwards he refuses to comment on the fact.

There's a clear indication that Heisenberg knew the required amount in 1942 when he told either Speer or Milch (forgot who it was) that for a bomb the mass required would be "the size of a pineapple" (which is around 30-50 kg)

I don't know about any calculations but they probably are in one of the G papers in either the physical archive or on the online one of the Deutsche museum. (They are free to look through)

The Japanese were still purely in the experimental phase. The Germans were working on some of the issues but they didn't get particularly far, they could make cubes of Uranium Oxide but hadn't really worked on the pure metal itself and hadn't touched Plutonium, they didn't really work on the fusing issue, they hadn't solved one of the biggest issues with Centrifuges that the US did, how far they got in explosive lenses is a question

While the highest priority program for the Soviet Union, it is still a program from a war ravaged state that was substantially poorer than the US before losing 30 million people and having its industrial regions wrecked by the war, and in 1946 is in a borderline state of famine. Quite simply put it won't have the same resources as the top priority program from a richer state

The cubes were made out of pure metallic uranium, not oxide, they were pyrotechnic and would spark when hitting the ground, though most were coated to avoid that.

They got physical Plutonium in labs to experiment with though I forgot which team worked on thatz together with the idea of a breeder reactor. As for fusion, I believe it was Flugge who proposed it in 1940/1941 by utilizing tritium and a later G paper in 1945 talking about lithium deuterite.

Regarding the US budget and Soviet one, I wasn't referring to the Soviet Union having as much money or resources as the US, but that the Manhattan Program itself wasn't the most expensive, the B-29 costed something like 3 billion and they spend by the end of the war since the start something like 30 trillion. It is likely that the Soviet Union could spend 2 billion on a similar program without issue (with a slight detriment in spending on other projects)

 

[Joku_]

The Farm Hall transcripts should be dealt with caution as they are extremely fragmented and the people being recorded were aware of that, Heisenberg even gets called for lying at some point in the transcripts regarding the mass required for a bomb, afterwards he refuses to comment on the fact.

There's a clear indication that Heisenberg knew the required amount in 1942 when he told either Speer or Milch (forgot who it was) that for a bomb the mass required would be "the size of a pineapple" (which is around 30-50 kg)

I don't know about any calculations but they probably are in one of the G papers in either the physical archive or on the online one of the Deutsche museum. (They are free to look through)

The cubes were made out of pure metallic uranium, not oxide, they were pyrotechnic and would spark when hitting the ground, though most were coated to avoid that.

They got physical Plutonium in labs to experiment with though I forgot which team worked on thatz together with the idea of a breeder reactor. As for fusion, I believe it was Flugge who proposed it in 1940/1941 by utilizing tritium and a later G paper in 1945 talking about lithium deuterite.

I wonder how long it would have taken for the Germans to produce the bomb, if there was no war going on...

 

[grdja83]

Few years delayed most likely. I doubt more than 5. While I'm fairly certain that at least part "all spy knowledge was only used to cross check, Russia invented everything itself" is propaganda bullshit or exaggeration, they did have a good team that started working way back.

Though of course a 5 year delay means no bomb for Stalin and that in itself is a big change in the timeline.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

The historical consensus is a delay of 1-2 years. The Soviet actually got more use out of open-source material, like the Smyth Report, then they did espionage.

 

[Joku_]

The historical consensus is a delay of 1-2 years. The Soviet actually got more use out of open-source material, like the Smyth Report, then they did espionage.

So the atomic spies likely didn't have much effect on the early Cold war anyways?

 

[ObssesedNuker]

So the atomic spies likely didn't have much effect on the early Cold war anyways?

Depends. As noted, the timing of this could affect Korea immensely. If Stalin isn’t willing to risk giving Kim the go ahead without a few bombs of his own, then that delay could notably impact the war and also delays American rearmament.

 

[aaronupright]

Few years delayed most likely. I doubt more than 5. While I'm fairly certain that at least part "all spy knowledge was only used to cross check, Russia invented everything itself" is propaganda bullshit or exaggeration, they did have a good team that started working way back.

No. If anything, they used the information in less optimal ways since they not unreasonably wondered if they weren't getting had.
Also they as a matter of policy investigated all "dead ends" and on occasion showed it was not a dead end.

 

[jlckansas]

The processes to obtain the U 235 and Pu 239 in quantities that you can use in the bomb are chemical engineering not physics. Gaseous diffusion, centrifuges, cyclotrons are just versions of processes used by chemical engineers to make other products. Finding out what to make is the physics and the ideas behind them like the cyclotrons are physics, but the actual processes are not. Centrifuges were in use for years to make different products in the 1800's, it is a matter of scale that you need.

 

[aaronupright]

Centrifuges were in use for years to make different products in the 1800's, it is a matter of scale that you need.

Well, no. Its like saying that since rockets have been around for a thousand years anyone can have a space program.
Enrichment centrifuges operate at RPM and tolerances far beyond basic industrial centrifuges. And quality control is another problem.
The Iranians have about 20,000 operational centrifuges. They **may** have enriched enough uranium for one or two bombs.
Pakistan has never had more than 3000, made hundreds.

 

[jlckansas]

Well, no. Its like saying that since rockets have been around for a thousand years anyone can have a space program.
Enrichment centrifuges operate at RPM and tolerances far beyond basic industrial centrifuges. And quality control is another problem.
The Iranians have about 20,000 operational centrifuges. They **may** have enriched enough uranium for one or two bombs.
Pakistan has never had more than 3000, made hundreds.

The Soviets were able to build all of the equipment that was used to enrich the fissile material. They might need a year or two to build it more than the US but they are more than capable of making anything the US had. In some ways they were able to build better because they would be able to shift resources, man power and money more easily than the west because you have just one person to make happy and that is Stalin. Plans were there for them to use, the Cyclotron as an example was prewar and was a matter of scaling up to the size needed. You already had the chemical, mechanical, electrical and civil engineering to support the building of the Soviet bomb.

 

[Akkarin]

Note that the Soviets ability to actually attack the US with nukes was very limited during the 50s, even as they got more of them. Most of their planes simply weren't capable to reach the US in realistic missions. That's why aircraft like the M-4 were only build in limited numbers and often not for the ADD. The Tu-95 finally had the range to hit the US, but by the time it entered service a high-flying, subsonic bomber delivering gravity bombs wasn't very viable either. The US had already developed and deployed SAGE, vast radar networks, NIKE Ajax and the F-102A and was in the process of developing the Nike Hercules, F-102B and F-106.

The real game changer was the deployment of ballistic missiles. These could not be economically intercepted and thus finally allowed the USSR to reliably threaten the US. But that is in the early 60s, not the 50s.

Fewer/later nukes mostly means that the western european nations are less threated in the mid 50s, both from tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

 

[Nivek]

Spies,those were several