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Old May 12th 04, 07:01 AM
Chad Irby
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In article ,
(robert arndt) wrote:

Uranium ore produces U-235 and U-238. U-238 can be made into
Plutonium by putting it in a reactor, fool. Thus, the captured German
uranium supplied to the Manhatten project could have been used with
any of the three A-bombs detonated: Trinity, Little Boy, or Fat Man.


Nope. Not enough time. Especially for the plutonium, which had to go
through a fairly lengthy time in a reactor first, then get separated,
then machined.

The fact that captured German uranium was supplied to the Manhatten
Project:
http://www.ask.ne.jp/~hankaku/english/np7y.html
BEFORE any of the bombs were detonated.


Two or three months before.

Which means that every bit of fissionable material used in the two bombs
had been in process for a month or so (at least) before the German
material was even captured. Note that almost all of the German uranium
was uranium oxide, not refined metal. The Russians captured most of
Germany's refined uranium in Berlin.

This does not count the 560kg of uranium seized from German U-boat of
which 4 kg of U-235 could have been extratced.


....which wasn't needed, since the US had plenty of access to raw uranium
ore and processed ore (the uranium oxide in the sub wasn't that useful,
in other words). They had access to thousands of *tons* of the stuff by
that point (the Canadian mines alone could supply hundreds of tons of
uranium, not to mention the African and western US supplies), and the
uranium enrichment plants were in full swing. There literally wasn't
enough time for the German uranium to get captured, get shipped back
across the Atlantic, go through all of the enrichment processes
involved, and make it into the one uranium-based bomb used in 1945.

You have to remember that we had fairly large stocks (hundreds of tons)
of uranium oxide sitting around in waste piles before the war, as a side
effect of extracting vanadium from some ores.

Total stocks of uranium oxide for the Manhattan Project was _18.9
million pounds_. A few hundred more pounds fro the tiny German program
wouldn't even be worth shipping, except to keep it out of the hands of
the Germans.

A small amount, but a contributor to Little Boy which recent
information suggests was one-fifth German (or 12kg).


No "recent information" that holds up under scrutiny.

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