Timeline for What benefits were there to the USA of developing both Uranium and Plutonium bombs in World War 2?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 26, 2015 at 3:11 | comment | added | Mark | A gun-type plutonium bomb will work just fine with cyclotron-produced plutonium (see: Thin Man), but reactor-produced plutonium has higher concentrations of Pu-240, which will cause a pre-detonation. | |
| Aug 21, 2015 at 16:52 | comment | added | Patrick N | @PieterG To be precise, the initial conception was for a gun-type plutonium bomb, which would have been the best of both worlds, but it was only later that they realized that due to the high fissile rate of the plutonium they were producing, there was a significant chance of a small explosion happening as the two masses were coming into contact, destroying the weapon before criticality could be achieved. After this discovery, they began to work on the two designs separately. | |
| Aug 21, 2015 at 16:22 | comment | added | Pieter Geerkens | @IanRingrose: In the large, yes - but the complexity and difficulty of designing a working plutonium bomb wasn't. In essence, the Uranium bomb was the fallback, in case the Plutonium bomb didn't work or took longer than anticipated to perfect. | |
| Aug 21, 2015 at 16:11 | comment | added | Ian Ringrose | At the time that the work on the uranium bombs started was it know how much easier it was to get plutonium? | |
| Aug 21, 2015 at 16:02 | comment | added | Patrick N | @IanR Sorry, could you be more specific? | |
| Aug 21, 2015 at 16:00 | comment | added | Ian Ringrose | At what point was this know to the people working on it? | |
| Aug 21, 2015 at 15:46 | review | First posts | |||
| Aug 21, 2015 at 16:15 | |||||
| Aug 21, 2015 at 15:46 | history | answered | Patrick N | CC BY-SA 3.0 |