Why would they detonation be in New York when by 44 all the development was happening in Nevada?What would be the outcomes, both social and geo-political, were the manhatten project to go drastically wrong. By this I mean that at some point during the research, I.E. most likely late 1944, human error leads to an atomic denonation in central new york.
How? There weren't any significant atomic materials in New York. Plutonium was refined in Washington state and Uranium was enriched in Tennessee. The fissile materials were brought to facilities in New Mexico. If you want an atomic accident in a large metropolitan area, you could have the test reactor in Chicago malfunction. But it wasn't a very large nuclear reaction as it only had enough power output to energize a light bulb.What would be the outcomes, both social and geo-political, were the manhatten project to go drastically wrong. By this I mean that at some point during the research, I.E. most likely late 1944, human error leads to an atomic denonation in central new york.
It was done in a collection of places, as the posts say. The test unit in Chicago, I believe, was the only one in a highly populated area. Could it have gone critical over a mistake? Remember, years later, the first H-bomb was bigger than predicted, with negative consequences.I think that because it was called the Manhattan project the poster thought the testing was being done in Manhattan.
What if one of the scientists gets trapped in a reactor chamber and gets turned into a blue-skinned superhero with god-like powers?
So, if a real disaster happens with the project, it will likely be in Tennessee, Washington, Nevada or New Mexico and kept a hush-hush military secret for who knows how long. A super-critical detonation would likely preclude the need for the test at White Sands.Maybe it could melt down or have a huge reactivity excursion leading to a thermal release. What it can’t have is a nuclear detonation. This is simply not possible. It was started in May, 1944 in Palos Hills, IL. This was probably pretty far outside Chicago in 1944. IMHO the military would have just buried it, figuratively and literally, learned from the mistakes and moved on.
The Chicago reactor was rated at 0.5 watts. They calculated that because of delayed neutrons they would have plenty of time to shut it down before anything bad could happen. The entire reason for it’s existence was to prove that sustained controlled chain reaction was possible. “Critical” was what they were trying to do. “Super critical” or “Prompt critical” is when bad things happen. The design, power level and delayed neutrons meant that the odds of something bad happening was very, very small. Wiki has a very well written article on the reactor.
It was done in a collection of places, as the posts say. The test unit in Chicago, I believe, was the only one in a highly populated area. Could it have gone critical over a mistake? Remember, years later, the first H-bomb was bigger than predicted, with negative consequences.
CP-1 at Chicago never ran higher than 200 watts, so there's not much of a Chernobyl or Windscale possibility, not enough thermal watts to get the graphite burning.
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The next reactor, Chicago Pile 2, a larger version of CP-1, was able to do 10,000 Thermal Watts, that may have been enough to start a fire, but unlikely to spread much radioactivity
How about the Japanese balloon bombs? One of the balloon bombs damaged one of the outhouses of the project - but a little wind to the right or left...well... that might have turn things interesting.
Indeed, there would have to be an external source of ignition, perhaps a lab-fire spreads or other possibilities.