AW: [ RadSafe ] Japanese Nuclear Effort (WW II) - facts

Sun Aug 19 11:17:46 CDT 2007

John,

Thank you also to you for providing very interesting links. 

As for the facts - also in response to several other postings: 

1) I am well aware of the fact that some radioisotopes were created by using
cyclotrons so that their properties for fission (and finally a nuclear bomb)
could be studied. Between their isolation and their technical production in
sufficient quality (Pu-238, U-235) were several years and tens of billions
of (old) dollars. Cyclotrons cannot be used to produce significant
quantities of fissible material. Neither of them were at Hiroshima or
Nagasaki - those cities were chosen because they were not to far away from
Tinian, well populated to yield a terror effect like in Dresden or London.
Nagasaki was not a prime target, it was bombed because the other targets
were under heavy clouds. (To die or not to die depended on the weather.)

Even the calutrons, which worked on a different scale, have been abandoned.
Only Iraq has many years ago tried to use them, probably most of all because
of the simple technology, but it is not known to me that they produced any
enriched uranium. 

2) At the end of WW II Japan as well as Germany was in a state of
destruction and devastation, due to the extensive bomb raids, the losses of
the army both in material and soldiers and sure demoralization. Even
everyday infrastructure did not work any more - so how should such a huge
enterprise like building a second Hanford complex have worked? Even this
huge effort produced together with Oak Ridge produced only three nuclear
bombs until the end of war. How should it have gone undetected? The extent
of the army devastation is best demonstrated by the fact that the US bombers
could obviously fly unattacked over Japanese territory - so did the Enola
Gay. 

3) Japan had obviously not even enough uranium to theoretically extract the
quantity of U-235 necessary for a single bomb. To speculate about plutonium
production is simply ridiculous - see above.

4) The Germans had at the time of the seizure of the Haigerloch laboratory
no nuclear reactor and therefore no chance to produce any Pu-239, not taking
into account the technological problems, partly mentioned above. The same is
true for tritium, not to talk about that the technology for fusion bombs
took even in the USA many more years to develop and that they need a nuclear
bomb to initiate the fusion. The assembly constisted of natural uranium
cubes in a tank with heavy water. The amount of both uranium and D2O was
sufficient to create a small multiplication of neutrons, but not for a self
sustaining fission reaction. Obviously Germany was cut off - especially to
the end of the war - from any uranium supply and of course after the Norsk
Hydro factory for D2O in Norway was destroyed by sabotage from supply of
D2O. How to proceed with research or the production of a nuclear bomb under
such circumstances? 

5) The U-234 submarine had about 560 kg of raw uranium oxide on bord, which
would not have been sufficient to produce even a single nuclear bomb if
enriched to 90%. It was not destroyed, but ordered to surrender by the
German admiral Dönitz two days after the unconditional surrender of Germany.
Some rumors say that this uranium oxide was refined and enriched in the USA
to be a part of the bombs dropped on Japan. 

So much for a few facts on the topic - if I am wrong at any of them I
appreciate correction!

Best regards,
Franz

Franz Schoenhofer, PhD
MinRat i.R.
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Wien/Vienna
AUSTRIA

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] Im Auftrag
von John Jacobus
Gesendet: Sonntag, 19. August 2007 03:32
An: JPreisig at aol.com; radsafe at radlab.nl
Betreff: Re: [ RadSafe ] Japanese Nuclear Effort (WW II)

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_atomic_program

Apparently, Japan did have 4 cyclotrons, but the only
one I remember orginally reading about was the one
built by Nishima in Tokyo which was destroyed in May
1945. 
http://www2.nbc-nagasaki.co.jp/peace/voices/en-no20.html

Also,
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/japan/nuke/

By the way, there a number of documents about the
atomic bombing at 
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm

--- JPreisig at aol.com wrote:

> Dear Radsafe:
> 
>      This is from:    jpreisig at aol.com    .
> 
>       Howdy Radsafers:
> 
>              John Jocobus posts an e-mail saying the
> Japanese nuclear (bomb
> making) effort was rather small, consisting of one
> cyclotron, with limited
> uranium on hand.  Was the cyclotron in Hiroshima or
> Nagasaki???
> 
>              When we last left this story on radsafe
> (see the archives) the 
> American
> Military had taken over Heisenberg's Laboratory
> (according to the US History
> Channel --- TV) and had found a reactor there and
> considerable amounts of
> refined Uranium (but not enriched).  Clearly such a
> reactor could be used
> to make Plutonium or could be used to make heavy
> water into tritium.
> 
>             The USA had significant nuclear
> facilities (Los Alamos and Oak 
> Ridge)
> and the effort was not small at all.  I believe the
> USA had some cyclotrons
> and a Calutron at Oak Ridge.  The Calutron had large
> beam pipes,
> presumably using electromagnets or regular magnets
> for turning the beam
> of ions or perhaps for focusing the beam crudely.  I
> don't think the
> concept of strong focusing (or alternating gradients
> of magnets) had been 
> invented as of 1945.  See the book by Livingston and
> Blewett and the Nuclear
> Physics books by Kaplan and/or Segre.  Strong
> focusing was invented
> at Brookhaven Lab, I believe, and was also
> discovered independently by
> another scientist.  With such focusing, accelerator
> beam pipes can be 
> much smaller than that used in the Calutron or
> Cosmotron, and accelerator 
> beam focusing is much improved.
> 
>      Next, in the WWII nuclear story, the Germans
> were shipping enough
> elemental Uranium (to Japan) to make about one or
> two fission devices.
> The Uranium was being shipped by boat or submarine;
> I don't recall which.
> The boat or submarine was destroyed by the allies,
> and thus endeth the
> German/Japanese nuclear effort.  Clearly the
> elemental Uranium was being
> shipped to Japan so that Uranium enrichment could
> take place in Japan's
> cyclotron.  Clearly with one cyclotron, enrichment
> would have taken a
> while.
> 
>       So, that's the story, as I see it.  Your
> comments and/or corrections
> are welcome.
> 
>       In another story,  a Hurricane is bearing down
> on the Hawaiian Islands.
> The big island had a 5.3 (not too big) earthquake in
> the last few days.
> Will lava start to flow out of the volcanoes soon???
>  Could a hurricane "lift"
> lava flowing down the side of a volcano???  Sounds
> very nasty to me.
> I wish the Hawaiian people well in this storm.
> 
>      I was born in 1955!!!! (After WW II).
> 
>      Have a great week!!!
> 
> 
>      Regards,       Joseph R. (Joe) Preisig, Ph.D.
> 
> 
> <BR><BR>**************************************<BR>
> Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at 
> http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour</HTML>
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+++++++++++++++++++
““Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our
streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their
importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the
advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our
government will become precarious.”
-- Benjamin Franklin, circa 1750, on German immigration to Pennsylvania

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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