Earliest Atomic Power?

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Guaporense
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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#16

Post by Guaporense » 10 Feb 2015, 08:25

maltesefalcon wrote:If it is so simple, and the answers are out there already, why haven't more nations been able to develop nuclear technology by now?
Which nations? Even Argentina has a nuclear reactor. Any middle sized nation can make an atomic bomb, those that don't have nukes don't have because they don't want to, not because they cannot produce one.

And of course, if it was highly desired, heavy investment could yield nuclear reactors producing electricity in the 1930's. Any technology could have been developed earlier if the human capital focus was shifted to that technology.
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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#17

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 10 Feb 2015, 08:52

phylo_roadking wrote:....
Carl, don't forget the whole aspect of why anyone would fund atomic physics research to that degree just to create steam...and why they didn't ;) Steam power = steam turbine electricity generation of course...but the utilities companies had that all sewn up, power generation wasn't that costly - but the cost of developing and building atomic power plants in that timescale would have no backers at the level needed. Look at Nikolai Tesla's revolutionary ideas for power generation etc. - that fell over due to cold feet on the part of big investors ;)
The economics of this is difficult. There is some upper level of cost that is impossible to overcome, but there are levels of higher cost that may not be perceived as a to much. A example might be the investment in canals in the 19th Century US. Railroads were gaining in cost vs return while cannals remained at the same cost vs return, but there was still investment (often lost) in canals.

Tesla was a bad salesman.

Investment in a technology is as much a product of a positive view of the object as anything else. If the public does not buy the sales pitch for small efficient autos then your investment in production of those has a low return vs big sedans or SUV. At the turn of the 20th Century the US public dumped a relatively low cost land line telephone system for a wireless system with higher use fees because of a perception of efficiency Had desireability been focused on things like clarity or reliability then early cell phones would have failed & we might still be debating which long distance plan to buy.

What I am getting at is a favorable perception of the development of radioactive energy may or may not occur whatever the actual costs are in the end. Investors might with the right salesman pile onto 'Atomics' the same way they threw money at aircraft builders from 1910, despite that the aircraft technology of that year, or 1920, or even 1930 had low commercial potiential. I remember how in 1988 Cold Fusion had folks frantically sniffing about for someone to take their money.


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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#18

Post by wm » 10 Feb 2015, 09:49

The breaking point was the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939. There was a chance for an earlier discovery, some people had bad luck and others lacked perseverance in their work. But it's two/three years earlier no more, how much luck we can have after all.

This leaves the possibility that a wealthy business magnate could have financed the research and its application. But still, not a chance even for that, because at that time the scientific consensus was it couldn't be done. He could have asked anyone, Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and they would say it's not possible, save your money.

And they were right. It wasn't like they were ignorant, they knew a lot in the thirties. Quantum physics was well understood, they re-created fusion on the laboratory scale.
But that discovery was unexpected. Nature was very generous by aligning a few disparate physical phenomena perfectly for the atomic power to be possible (at least here, Sun is in a different league). And she really didn't have to. They didn't expect such a generosity.

Additionally in 1939-41 the problems with isotopes separation looked totally daunting. Because of that without a good scary reason (like a war) the progress would likely be slow, even after the discovery of fission.
Last edited by wm on 10 Feb 2015, 15:19, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#19

Post by maltesefalcon » 10 Feb 2015, 13:30

Guaporense wrote:
maltesefalcon wrote:If it is so simple, and the answers are out there already, why haven't more nations been able to develop nuclear technology by now?
Which nations? Even Argentina has a nuclear reactor. Any middle sized nation can make an atomic bomb, those that don't have nukes don't have because they don't want to, not because they cannot produce one.

And of course, if it was highly desired, heavy investment could yield nuclear reactors producing electricity in the 1930's. Any technology could have been developed earlier if the human capital focus was shifted to that technology.
Iran has been unable to do so, despite their desire for nuclear technology. North Korea has tried and its efforts have been quite problematic as well.( In fairness North Korea would not fit your definition of a middle sized nation.)

However, the later nations that built reactors and/or weapons, used previous knowledge and sometimes even hardware developed over the years, by more advanced nations. India for instance, got its first nuclear reactors from Canada, then modified them to create weapons grade materials.

I believe that nuclear technology was actually sped up by the threat of Nazism. Niels Bohr, Einstein, Fermi an Oppenheimer may have plodded on separately for many more years had events not pushed them together for common purpose.

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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#20

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 11 Feb 2015, 14:38

This document is a bit more useful that the chronologies I'd been working with.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...BNu3PQWYaGR-tg

I notice that Nodack proposed the correct explination for Fermis 1933-34 experiment results, that is fission, but the idea was not pursued. Skimming over the entire text suggests how important funding was to accomplishing anything in the laboratory, which was essential to moving on to the next step.

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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#21

Post by phylo_roadking » 11 Feb 2015, 20:08

Carl, the thing is....with SO many different "schools" working on the problem in the laboratory - contrary to the above the Germans weren't always at the forefront - there was the Vienna School, the Juliot-Curies in Paris etc. - it wasn't just a matter of funding and a step-by-step development ladder if funded properly...

There was also the ladder of "inspiration" and how various individual scientists made individual breakthroughs in various places - and how these breakthroughs were then incorporated into their research by other scientists elsewhere....so what you had by the end of the decade was that each of the leading groups was working with what was, in effect, the culmination of everything that had gone before, elsewhere. It was very much a research paper-driven development process....which the groups each incorporating everyone else's breakthroughs into THEIR work each time.

After all - it's not just the "pure" striving after knowledge that drives scientists ahead - at "researching" universities, it's ALSO the need to publish to hold down tenure! :lol: :lol: :lol:

The question is - in a secure, funded, development environment of an all-encompassing big-budget research effort - could the exchange of test results by research paper that proved so necessary to the development of atomic physics...actually happen? 8O
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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#22

Post by wm » 12 Feb 2015, 10:42

Carl Schwamberger wrote:I notice that Nodack proposed the correct explination for Fermis 1933-34 experiment results, that is fission, but the idea was not pursued.
It wasn't really a correct explanation, because she didn't explain anything. It was a speculation, a lucky guess. And scientists don't like empty speculations.
She explained an inconsistency in others work by introducing a huge inconsistency of her own. She said it was fission (fission was known and well understood, because a few years earlier lithium was split) but according to then accepted theories it wasn't possible, and those theories explained correctly many others phenomena.
Because, how's that possible a tiny neutron can split such a large atom, over two hundred times larger than the neutron. Lithium is comparable in weight but uranium certainly not.
If we accept that, splitting smaller atoms like oxygen or iron should be even easier. It's easier to break a small stone than a large one. Even more, how is it possible the Universe exists if destroying atoms is so easy.

Gomov's liquid drop theory of the atom (1935), pursued logically to its end could have explained/predicted the fission of uranium, but it wasn't.

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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#23

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 12 Feb 2015, 14:18

wm wrote:
Carl Schwamberger wrote:I notice that Nodack proposed the correct explination for Fermis 1933-34 experiment results, that is fission, but the idea was not pursued.
It wasn't really a correct explanation, because she didn't explain anything. It was a speculation, a lucky guess. And scientists don't like empty speculations.

...

Gomov's liquid drop theory of the atom (1935), pursued logically to its end could have explained/predicted fission of uranium, but it wasn't.
Never the less if research had been pursued at the time Nodacks hypothesis would have been proved & Gomovs disproved much sooner. Reading through the literature I see the potiential energy of the radio active phenomena observed vs chemical energy was grasped a decade or two earlier than Nodaks proposal. Again the idea was investigated at a glacial part time pace. The low amount of time or money allocated to research of radio activity & the internal functioning of the atom becomes increasingly clear. The Curies research is a example, for the better part of two decades most of their actual research hours were spent at tasks like rendering Pitchblende, or away from the lab earning a living. A tiny amount of time was spent actually doing tests. A research laboratory of the era like Edisons or of the DuPont company would have a crew of technicians taking care of the pedestrian tasks to enable the lead researchers to focus on their work & not dragging bags around. After Carnegie & others in the 1920s settled sufficient grants
on them for the research the pace of testing and results accelerated significantly.

The disruption of physics research by the nazis is one part of the question, but it does look as if another factor was the lab work was pursued very slowly at a very small scale.

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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#24

Post by wm » 12 Feb 2015, 18:43

I really can't agree it was glacial. Almost every year a groundbreaking discovery was made: the cloud chamber, accelerators, transmutation of elements, nuclear fusion, nuclear reactions, modern models of the atom, antimatter, neutron, gamma radiation, annihilation, spin, wave–particle duality, and especially quantum mechanics - a fundamental theory comparable, if not more important than the theory of relativity. Never science advanced so much and so fast like then.

It was slow from our point of view because we want a single development to succeed, something they assumed wasn't possible.

This is the apparatus used to discover fission: Image
Basically a kitchen table experiment, other experiments were equally simple. Those people didn't need money but a highly profitable goal and there was none - it was all pure science.

And we should forget Curies and their pitchblende, before modern electronics (like those vacuum tubes in the picture above) no important discoveries were possible in this field, that means the years after the Great War.
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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#25

Post by phylo_roadking » 12 Feb 2015, 20:07

wm wrote:I really can't agree it was glacial. Almost every year a groundbreaking discovery was made: the cloud chamber, accelerators, transmutation of elements, nuclear fusion, nuclear reactions, modern models of the atom, antimatter, neutron, gamma radiation, annihilation, spin, wave–particle duality, and especially quantum mechanics - a fundamental theory comparable, if not more important than the theory of relativity. Never science advanced so much and so fast like then.
...and so much of it depending on what had gone before, or problems removed from the table by others' work.

So while large levels of research grants might have assisted one or two particular steps in the process of discovery...who's to say that they simplywouldn't have butted up against one of the "insurmountable" problems faster and stuck there...pending someone else's flash of inspiration elsewhere...

That's why MANHATTAN achieved what it did in a few short years - the "hothouse" effect of gather all the different approaches and intellects under one metaphorical roof.
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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#26

Post by wm » 12 Feb 2015, 22:01

Although the manhattanities had a clearly defined goal. Earlier there was none.
And crude blueprints for the bomb and nuclear reactors had existed before Groves arrived with bundles of money in tow. The money was for engineering problems, most of the scientific problems had been solved with pen and paper, and kitchen tables like that above.

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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#27

Post by Erwinn » 26 Mar 2015, 15:44

Besides, Germans drafted the scientists working on the Heavy Water project to the Eastern Front. They lost a valuable time until realizing their mistake.

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Re: Earliest Atomic Power?

#28

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 26 Mar 2015, 19:40

wm wrote:I really can't agree it was glacial. Almost every year a groundbreaking discovery was made: the cloud chamber, accelerators, transmutation of elements, nuclear fusion, nuclear reactions, modern models of the atom, antimatter, neutron, gamma radiation, annihilation, spin, wave–particle duality, and especially quantum mechanics - a fundamental theory comparable, if not more important than the theory of relativity. Never science advanced so much and so fast like then.

It was slow from our point of view because we want a single development to succeed, something they assumed wasn't possible.

....

And we should forget Curies and their pitchblende, before modern electronics (like those vacuum tubes in the picture above) no important discoveries were possible in this field, that means the years after the Great War.
The Curies did what they did first in a second hand university laboratory with small funding. Later they received some substantial grants & accelerated the research. While fundamentals were accomplished in the early years a huge amount of work was later enabled by proper funding.
wm wrote:Although the manhattanities had a clearly defined goal. Earlier there was none.
And crude blueprints for the bomb and nuclear reactors had existed before Groves arrived with bundles of money in tow. The money was for engineering problems, most of the scientific problems had been solved with pen and paper, and kitchen tables like that above.
Indeed. Fermi s first test reactor was more or less his baby, based on research he had worked out in the 1930s. While there were some specific questions, those were worked out as money became available. That & his second reactor were fairly low budget items, certainly not costing 'billions'. Largest sticking point was the limited production of the isotope he needed. In 1942 there was not much for a industrial scale facility & he was supplied from what amounted to lab bench scale sources.

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