Nazi German Nuclear Project

Ariosto

Ariosto

This is not a "WI: Nazis had Nukes" thread.

I won't say that it will never amount to that in the end, but that largely depends on the conclusions that are drawn up as we go.

What I wish to discuss is how we could make the German Nuclear Energy Program more successful, more effective, and how such changes in favor of the German program would effect the British and American programs. So an analysis of the overall effects of the effort, and how far they could reasonably get.

I'll be honest, my knowledge on the German nuclear program is not that strong; I've read about it in a cursory manner, but have not read literature or papers on the program in-depth, so I'm hoping for posters who are more enlightened to participate.

Again, I am looking for butterflies and how far they could reasonably get, rather than the Germans actually attaining the weapon itself.
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Ariosto

Ariosto

Generaloberst said:
Well, for starters, not reject any of the previous findings in the fields of Nuclear studies as 'subhuman research.'
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Well yes, but something like that can't really be effected by a proper POD that doesn't have drastic butterflies (in the sense this changes the Nazis). I've looked at putting other people in charge of Education for example other than Bernhard Rust, individuals who are less apt to root out anyone suspected of being Jewish, or even keeping the universities and colleges out of his umbrella entirely, but I'm unsure how realistic a proposition that is.
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BELFAST

BELFAST

250px-German_Experimental_Pile_-_Haigerloch_-_April_1945.jpg

German nuclear energy project


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_energy_project

German never had the resources to put in to the project and even if they had it was not going to change the outcome of the war.

it did not help that they scared off some of the best people in the field either.

nazi_lattice-design.jpg

Design of German Nuclear reactor
 
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Ariosto

Ariosto

BELFAST said:
German never had the resources to put in to the project and even if they had it was not going to change the outcome of the war.
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Again I am not really looking for success, but how far along the Germans could reasonably get, and how it might effect the American or British programs.
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SAVORYapple

Ariosto said:

Again I am not really looking for success, but how far along the Germans could reasonably get.
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If you're looking for physically? A nuclear accident leading to a mini-chernobyl. Heisenberg's calculations were somewhat off, so he believed that since the k factor was so low, the nuclear reaction could have been stopped by just throwing in a bunch of barium beads into the reactor vessel. There wasn't even a drain for the heavy water used as a moderator, so the reaction would have eventually caused a runaway nuclear reaction until the reactor lid was blown off......
 

asnys

I have a suggestion. This won't be enough by itself, but it might help: have plutonium discovered earlier, before the West's nuclear physicists stopped publishing their findings on fission. As far as I can tell it's quite plausible that somebody might try bombarding uranium with deuterons in a cyclotron earlier than they did. A project based on plutonium piles has the potential for a lower initial cost than uranium enrichment - I'm going on memory here, but I believe the Manhattan Project's spending was 2:1 or 3:1 on uranium : plutonium. (In the long run uranium enrichment is cheaper per bomb, but it had higher startup costs and took longer to get running.) Besides being more doable for Germany's economy, an earlier discovery of plutonium will also raise awareness of atomic energy among politicians earlier, making it more likely they'll start a program.
 
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Ariosto

Ariosto

SAVORYapple said:
If you're looking for physically? A nuclear accident leading to a mini-chernobyl. Heisenberg's calculations were somewhat off, so he believed that since the k factor was so low, the nuclear reaction could have been stopped by just throwing in a bunch of barium beads into the reactor vessel. There wasn't even a drain for the heavy water used as a moderator, so the reaction would have eventually caused a runaway nuclear reaction until the reactor lid was blown off......
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That is an interesting possibility in and of itself. Was there ever a proposed site for the reactor? Or was it simply to be established at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute?
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Asnys said:
I have a suggestion. This won't be enough by itself, but it might help: have plutonium discovered earlier, before the West's nuclear physicists stopped publishing their findings on fission. As far as I can tell it's quite plausible that somebody might try bombarding uranium with deuterons in a cyclotron earlier than they did. A project based on plutonium piles has the potential for a lower initial cost than uranium enrichment - I'm going on memory here, but I believe the Manhattan Project's spending was 2:1 or 3:1 on uranium / plutonium. (In the long run uranium enrichment is cheaper per bomb, but it had higher startup costs and took longer to get running.) Besides being more doable for Germany's economy, an earlier discovery of plutonium will also raise awareness of atomic energy among politicians earlier, making it more likely they'll start a program.
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Using this POD is dependent on when such a POD would be done; I want to avoid major butterflies that will result in immediate significant changes all around the world, and concentrate on those events which for a time have their butterflies largely contained in the Reich.

Not saying that this idea doesn't have merit, but it might effect OTL in such a way that we would now have variable we could not easily observe.
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Ariosto

Ariosto

So apparently any reactor or pile created would, I think, be done in a place called Gottow where they had done a number of their nuclear fission experiments. That or Stadhilm. No idea where this Gottow is however, so if there were a major accident (the mini-Chernobyl as proposed by another poster), it would be hard to judge as to what the actual effects might be.
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asnys

Ariosto said:
So apparently any reactor or pile created would, I think, be done in a place called Gottow where they had done a number of their nuclear fission experiments. That or Stadhilm. No idea where this Gottow is however, so if there were a major accident (the mini-Chernobyl as proposed by another poster), it would be hard to judge as to what the actual effects might be.
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It's unlikely to be too awful. There just won't be that much material in there even if it's completely scattered - I'm not sure what the size of the Nazi's planned pile was, but the Manhattan Project's X-10, the pilot plant for Hanford, was 3.5 MWth; Chernobyl was about 3,000 MWth. The first Nazi pile would likely be smaller than the X-10, probably much smaller. Contamination does not scale directly with power level and depends on how long it's been running before it goes Horribly Wrong, but the consequences would be at least a factor of 100x and probably more than 1000x smaller than the Chernobyl disaster. So a lot of potentially fried physicists, and I wouldn't want to live nearby, but we're probably not talking about massive contamination over wide areas.
 
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Dathi THorfinnsson

SAVORYapple said:
If you're looking for physically? A nuclear accident leading to a mini-chernobyl. Heisenberg's calculations were somewhat off, so he believed that since the k factor was so low, the nuclear reaction could have been stopped by just throwing in a bunch of barium beads into the reactor vessel. There wasn't even a drain for the heavy water used as a moderator, so the reaction would have eventually caused a runaway nuclear reaction until the reactor lid was blown off......
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Errrr.... no. Heavy water is a moderator, ie it slows fast neutrons down enough to be usable. If the moderator drains off, then the reaction stops.
 
Ariosto

Ariosto

Reading through that book, there are a number of points that presented great difficulties, yet could have easily been solved by the government taking a harder line here, a lighter line there, and so on; the changes don't even have to be radical just slight. But there is one thing that jumped out at me, and I would like to bring that out first.

One of the scientists proposed using Dry Ice as a moderator rather than Heavy Water, and was set to experiment as to its effects; however due to the rivalries present he never got enough uranium oxide to come to any real conclusion, and so the theory simply faded away in favor of Heavy Water.

Could Dry Ice really have acted as a moderator, or would it have failed?
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asnys

Ariosto said:
Reading through that book, there are a number of points that presented great difficulties, yet could have easily been solved by the government taking a harder line here, a lighter line there, and so on; the changes don't even have to be radical just slight. But there is one thing that jumped out at me, and I would like to bring that out first.

One of the scientists proposed using Dry Ice as a moderator rather than Heavy Water, and was set to experiment as to its effects; however due to the rivalries present he never got enough uranium oxide to come to any real conclusion, and so the theory simply faded away in favor of Heavy Water.

Could Dry Ice really have acted as a moderator, or would it have failed?
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I'm not a nuclear physicist, so I'm not positive, but I'm about 90% sure that that wouldn't have worked with natural uranium. Graphite would have; I'm not sure why they never tried that.
 
Ariosto

Ariosto

Asnys said:
I'm not a nuclear physicist, so I'm not positive, but I'm about 90% sure that that wouldn't have worked with natural uranium. Graphite would have; I'm not sure why they never tried that.
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Heisenberg for some reason came to the conclusion that graphite actually wouldn't have been that effective, and by the time they would have tried that he had enough influence as to render that option not possible. Really, the man wasn't even one of those men on the actual lists, and was brought in as an advisory due to rivalries.
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Dathi THorfinnsson

For graphite to be useful, it has to be very, very pure. Iirc, the Germans actually tried it, and it didnt work because impurities.

The Germans were planning on using heavy water, which being produced in Norway where there was lots of electricity available. This was famously destroyed in a daring raid by the Norwegian resistance. Which was yet another reason the nazi bomb effort died.
 
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