Every few months or so, there's another thread about "WI the Nazis got the bomb?" And the answer is usually, "well, they couldn't have." Well, what if the Nazis tried to get the bomb, but failed?
Let's say they use the money that would have gone into the V2 on trying to build a Hanford-style graphite pile to breed plutonium. How far could they have gotten? How would it effect the post-war world, especially if the Soviets got their hands on some of the scientists and equipment?
For that matter, how much collateral damage would the inevitable Allied air strike cause? Could you fit a production graphite pile into one of the underground bunkers they were building, or would it have to be exposed on the surface?
The best route forward for the Nazis was not to build a Hanford style graphite pile, since this would have required a Uranium enrichment programme that would have consumed vast resources and been almost impossible to hide. Remember that in OTL, the main reason that the British moved Tube Alloys to the US was the inability to hide/protect the enrichment facility.
The better bet for the Nazis was something similar to ZEEP, the Zero Energy Experimental Pile which went critical at Chalk River Laboratories in Canada. Although this design needed heavy water, it could use natural un-enriched Uranium 238 to breed Plutonium. ZEEP went critical in September 1945, but its conceivable that a German equivalent could have gone critical early 1945, although too late for a Nazi A Bomb.
This wikipedia link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage#Operations_Grouse_and_Freshman
gives a pretty good account of everything that the allies did in order to prevent the Germans getting enough heavy water to put a ZEEP into operation.
Of course getting the German Zeep critical is only the start of their problem, especially since they had a fair part of the basic physics wrong. I happen to agree with the consensus here; the Nazis can't build a working bomb by 1945 regardless of the POD. Thats not to say you can't put a POD for a non Nazi Germany.......
Capturing ZEEP dosn't help the Russians all that much. Its a dead end technology for them without the Norwegian or Canadian heavy water. Possibly they get some Plutonium to play with a couple of years early, but I cant see this as a POD to change the in service date for a Russian Bomb.
The damage caused by an allied air strike on the German ZEEP would depend on how long it had been operating. There isn't remotely the energy in the core to get close to a Chernobyl. The worst part of any release will likely be the I
131 with a half life of 8 days. This in itself would be intersting to post war scientists since there may be a statistically significant thyroid cancer blip which may in turn effect the post war atmospheric testing philosophy.
I'll go out on a limb, and guess that any Deterministic (short term) radiation deaths will be lost in those from the bombing raid itself while the Stochastic (long term, i.e. cancer) deaths will be small enough to get lost in the post war, displacement noise.
Just my random thoughts after two nice glasses of a particularly nice single malts. Anyone else?
UK05