redlightning
Banned
What if before World War II, the Soviet Union begins developing an atomic weapons program and is able to get the bomb before the West?
What if before World War II, the Soviet Union begins developing an atomic weapons program and is able to get the bomb before the West?
Only possible if the Soviet Union doesn't lose 25 million people and much of its productive forces during the war years. The German invasion would have to either not happen or fail miserably.
USSR wasn't the world leader in industrial uses of Fluorine.
Basically the U..S. developed the atomic bomb thanks to a combination of the best scientists in the world from three major industrialized nations (the U.S., U.K. and Germany) supported by the financial, scientific, and industrial resources of the worlds largest economy effectively untouched by years of warfare.
Maybe 46, factoring in espionage and/or their stronger economy. Still second place, but much sooner then OTL.
But the biggest advantage was that the Soviets knew what worked, so didn't spend near a half billion dollars on the Y-12 Calutrons, but right to the improved gaseous diffusion method at K-25 and Hanford style reactors to make plutonium.
They didn't have enough Uranium for a test reactor till 1947, and it was a near copy of the 10 watt Hanford 305 test reactor.
I have doubts that the Soviets would have been able to come up with implosion on their own.
Kurchatov was brilliant, but still only one man.