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First off, I'm not going to argue about the exact date of the discovery of fission, but it was 1938-39ish and I credit Otto Hahn and Lise Meintner with the discovery. The results were published in 1939 as were several other experiments from different teams and it took 6 years give or take a few months to end up with a bomb.
No. Discovery of fission is meaningless. It's just a quirk, curiosity, nothing more. Real important thing was cheap Italian marble, thanks to which Fermi discovered some atoms hit by neutron give away another neutron. From this moment fission ceased to be trying to light wet concrete with match, and become trying to do it with wet newspaper.
Then, people noticed while investigating the above that some rare, pesky metals give away more than one neutron while split... meaning it was possible to light atomic fire and let it burn freely. Now, it was actually useful thing.
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At the same time they postulated the possibility of nuclear reactors using the same kind of chain reaction with mediators, and the use of particle accelerators at the UC Berkeley Lawrence labs were also getting running in the same period, which were able to manufacture U-235 safely. All of this put together set the stage for Los Alamos National Laboratory and heavy government funding, which vastly accelerated the creation of both bombs and reactors thanks to the huge number of collected scientists and money.
Um, you're wrong here. What was produced was Plutonium, Uran-235 is in natural ore all along and needs only to be separated.
Strike one against peaceful energy - most obvious reactor design relies on heavy water as moderator... And it so happens it is very difficult to produce, entire Europe's worth of heavy water production was far too little for Nazi weapon project, while USA had to build huge plants specifically devoted to it. Who will give scientists that didn't promised military the bomb resources to build
entire useless industry just to get some prerequisite? It took USA 400 mln of today's $ to produce the water purifying plant, where peaceful science not acting for military will get that?
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However, even when they were intent on developing a bomb, the creation of a nuclear reactor, up in Washington State iirc, was required first in order to refine enough uranium to make the fissile material for a bomb.
No. As above, you don't manufacture uranium, they needed reactor to A) confirm chain reaction is indeed possible, B) study moderators, C) calculate critical weight of the material. First reactor did nothing than burn uranium; it didn't produced energy, even. Second one burnt uran to produce plutonium. In fact, first nuclear power plant to produce energy for civil uses started in June 27, 1954, in Soviet Union - Obninsk NPP, mere 5 megawatts.
That's how long it took to produce something safe once 'WE NEED BOMB FIRST!' mode was disengaged.
10 years of accelerated Cold War tech race to go from bomb to civilian power.
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Fission reactors and fission bombs were invented almost simultaneously. It took another decade to get thermonuclear bombs, and it's unfair to compare that to controlled fusion because the issue with fusion is that it requires such high temperatures that it takes too much power to get it started and its incredibly difficult to control.
How about we compare it to fission? 10 years. And it was in Soviet Union, with speed cared more than safety. EURATOM and USA will produce theirs years down the line. The reactors you're talking of were just piles of dirty metal where they tried to produce plutonium for bombs, at huge costs and of little use to science. Fact is, bomb reactor, while more difficult to produce than bomb, is far easier than civilian reactor.
As for fusion, amount of energy to get it started doesn't matter. We would pay is as long as one critical problem,
paying less to keep fusion going than we get from it was solved. It isn't. Starting reaction is easy - we did it 60 years ago. It's keeping it contained so it
won't explode like a bomb and burns hydrogen controllably while giving net energy positive is stumping us.
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But back to nuclear reactors, the development of light water reactors was done before 1950 and by the 1960s there were several types of reactors and several countries around the world (mostly UN security council) were already beginning to build their own nuclear industries.
And all of them were copying industry that costed 25 billion $ to produce and was possible only because largest industrial power on Earth grabbed all possible scientists from entire world and went (due to Einstenin's letter) into panic mode that Axis will mitigate economic weakness by producing bomb first. That was to develop the bomb - over 5 years. It will take us 10 years more and countless billions of $ to produce first weak civilian plant - how it will be possible without state paying huge sums for... what?
Promising bomb is one thing, promising expensive power you can well produce in coal plants is another.
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Many of them also acquired the bomb, but not all. Japan, for example, accepted American engineers and in exchange they built a system of pressured light water reactors that do not produce fissile material suitable for use in a bomb, although their nuclear waste could be turned into a bomb through refinement in some other type of reaction.
Um, maybe you missed 1945 - Japan doesn't have a bomb due to being forbidden from having
any kind of military (not that their "coast guard" isn't really 6th or 7th military in the world...) - but Japan can produce their atomic bomb in 6-8 weeks. Exactly due to fact how
trivial it is for anyone capable of producing reactor to do a bomb.
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In all cases of practical nuclear power obtained via fission, however, the reactor and refinement process predated the development of weaponry.
As above, reactor, no. Refinement is done in centrifuge cascades - and while you can make nuclear power with uran refined to lesser degree than bomb material, refining is just simple industrial process and actually
making bomb is far simpler than making reactor.
By the way, cascade centrifuge that purified U-235 cost 5
billion $. Hardware alone, never mind buildings or workers. Again, without largest military in the world paying bills, you won't build it and they want results
now. Not in 10 years.
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This continues to be true in today's political climate, with nations such as Pakistan and Iran developing reactors as a prerequisite to obtain nuclear bombs.
Let's look at dates. India, Smiling Buddha, bomb test, 18 May 1974. First Indian research/energy reactor, Dhruva type, 8 August 1985. Again, 10 years of lag, and that was
40 years after all needed components were discovered.
Even in France, that specifically said they would make civilian program
only, culminating in reactor in late 1962, first bomb test ("
Gerboise bleue") took place on 13 February 1960. That's right, if you try to build reactor for civilian purposes, and devote little time to bomb program, bomb is possible as mere afterthought
years before main plant...
One additional point - making bomb reactor is so much easier than making civilian one that UN has to
bully people into making worse (but slightly safer) reactors incapable of making bomb material. It's stupid when you consider breeding reactors (that happen to be excellent bomb makers) could have killed energy mining/pollution due to making energy from the same piece of radioactive metal for up to 60 times longer - but alas, making bomb from them is too easy which scares everyone to death :smallsigh: