Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Lost Nazi Uranium Found In a Dutch Scrapyard

Posted by kdawson on from the sturm-und-drang dept.

colin_faber writes "Lewis Page of the Register is reporting that forensic nuclear scientists at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre traced the two pieces of metal found in a Dutch scrapyard — described as a cube and a plate — back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the 'Joachimsthal' mine in what is now the Czech Republic from the former Nazi nuclear-weapons programme of the 1940s." The article runs through the roadblocks that, unknown to the Allies, the Nazi regime erected against their possible success in any nuclear bomb development during the war.

19 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Many boffins died ... by DrJimbo · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ... to bring us this information. Context:

    Furthermore the Germans were hampered by having driven many top physicists out of the country with their anti-Semitic policies, and also by drafting other boffins into the army to fight as ordinary soldiers.

    --
    We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
    -- Anais Nin
    1. Re:Many boffins died ... by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why can't we talk about 1940s Germany without bringing up the Jews?

      but you fuck one goat...

    2. Re:Many boffins died ... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 5, Informative

      The article is about Germany trying to build an atomic bomb during WWII. Jewish scientists who fled Germany around that time include Einstein (E=mc^2, the basis for atomic bombs), Teller (father of the hydrogen bomb), Bloch (worked with neutrons, worked on the Manhattan project), Wigner (told Roosevelt about Nazi bomb plans, worked on the Manhattan project), Szilard (same as Bloch, one of the people who first conceived the a-bomb) and Frisch (same as Szilard).

      Do you suppose some of those guys might have been kind of useful to a German atomic weapons program?

    3. Re:Many boffins died ... by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 5, Informative

      Einstein did many things, and yes his formula was instrumental in predicting the power that a nuclear explosion would have (and yes - he miscalculated the first time, everyone did). However his contribution to the atomic bomb was limited to the suggestion that "matter should be convertible into energy". Not much more than that sentence. Of course, that sentence was the reason a lot of scientists re-examined the properties of known radioactive materials, leading to :

      The direct basis for atomic bombs, for a quick neutron-cascade reaction in enriched uranium, laid by these scientists :
      Otto Hahn (German, Nazi)
      Fritz Strassman (German, most likely also a Nazi)
      Lise Meitner, Jewish, who initially received a "special exception" from the Nazi regime for her work, and protection from a thoroughly Nazi university in Austria, but then was forced to flee anyway

      But this was only fission itself, and the suggestions that if somehow large amounts of U-235 were used with cadmium-enriched water between them that a "large amount" of energy would be released. This release of energy was not yet a bomb, it is what we call today a "meltdown". Dangerous, very hot, and poisonous, but nowhere near an atomic explosion. Niels Bohr calculated exactly how much energy a meltdown would produce : 200 million electron-volts PER split atom. The principle that guides bomb development was still missing 2 concepts : enrichment and the discovery of "critical mass".

      Incidentally, Otto Hahn was part of the nazi nuclear weapon development program (in fact he was the one that suggested the Nazi's start one). Enrichment was eventually mostly perfected by Otto Hahn, in parallel with the enrichment accomplishments in the Manhattan program.

      Critical mass, the actual direct cause for an explosion (nazi weaponization of nuclear power at that point was mostly focused on e.g. launching bombs with it, or producing oil with it, that sort of stuff), was discovered by Francis Perrin.

      Then, in 1939, all elements to produce a working atomic bomb were in place. Eventually, while Otto Hahn has in fact drawn up plans that would have worked before the Americans had a working plan, the Americans were the first to get a working atomic bomb in July 1945, a month after the fall of the third reich.

    4. Re:Many boffins died ... by martyros · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the quote from Heisenberg in the article is particularly interesting:

      "We definitely did not want to get into this bomb business," said Heisenberg. "I wouldn't like to idealize this; we did this also for our personal safety. We thought that the probability that this would lead to atomic bombs during the War was nearly zero. If we had done otherwise, and if many thousand people had been put to work on it and then if nothing had been developed, this could have had extremely disagreeable consequences for us."

      In other words, simple-minded tyrants think that the best way to motivate people is to say, "Make this happen or die." (And less powerful but just as simple-minded people in the workplace use "Make this happen or lose your job.") But one result is that no one is willing to suggest the idea of anything moderately risky, for fear that they'll be put to work on making that happen, and punished when it can't be done.

      --

      TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.

    5. Re:Many boffins died ... by Lord+Pillage · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you take 2 H and make an He, the mass of the products does not equal that of the reactants. Some mass is lost through the process and is converted into energy which is what gives the bomb is power. It's also what makes the Sun hot as well.

      --
      try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
    6. Re:Many boffins died ... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Informative

      I didn't say ANY of them were FROM Germany.

      Teller left Hungary when he was 18 and completed his undergraduate and graduate training in Germany. Wigner was also educated in Germany and worked there until he moved to the US, around the same time the Nazis were gaining power. Szilard also did much of his training in Germany and worked there for some time before fleeing the Nazis.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Wigner
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leó_Szilárd

  2. Doesn't address the most interesting issue by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's been a lot of controversy over whether Heisenberg deliberately sabotaged the Nazi bomb-making or whether he tried to help but was incompetent or whether the failure was due to factors beyond Heisenberg. Although I have not read the book, I've been told that Paul Rose's book "Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project" presents a strong case that Heisenberg tried his hardest to assist the Nazi regime in the building of the atom bomb.

    1. Re:Doesn't address the most interesting issue by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

      There's been a lot of controversy over whether Heisenberg deliberately sabotaged the Nazi bomb-making or whether he tried to help but was incompetent

      I guess we'll never really know. Maybe it was both.

  3. Fun trivia by iluvcapra · · Score: 4, Informative

    Fun trivia: Joachimsthal mine is where we get the modern word "dollar." Silver extracted from this mine was minted to attest its purity and the coin thus produced was called a "thaler." TH is a relatively unusual consonant sound in many languages, and corrupts to D in romance languages like French, and here we are.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    1. Re:Fun trivia by _merlin · · Score: 4, Informative

      You'll find that Romance languages is the accepted English term for the language group including French, Italian and Spanish. The name for the group including English, Dutch and German is Germanic languages. (Not the capitalisation, too.)

  4. Politics by iluvcapra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The issue of Heisenberg, and any theoretical physicist being treated like a pariah (and thus dooming Nazi Germany's atom bomb program) is very instructive. The Nazi's made a political and ideological decision, to wit:

    Quantum mechanics and general relativity is all about 'relativism' and 'ambiguity,' and is unworthy of Aryan science. It's emphasis on relative physical laws and indeterminacy are endemic of its moral turpitude and obvious Jewish origins.

    They would then cast about trying to find every white atheist physicist who had doubts about 20th century physics, and then give them huge grants, fat think tank jobs, and would promote their work to the moon and back. On the other hand they would work to suppress the contributions of people like Lise Meitner, who used the 'Jewish physics' to provide them with proof of the first lab fission reaction.

    I suppose there's some sort of argument pro or con of climate change in this... exercise for the reader.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    1. Re:Politics by grouchomarxist · · Score: 4, Informative

      Atheist? Perhaps non-Jewish, but I've never heard of the Nazi's having an inclination to promote a person *because* they were atheist, as opposed to Protestant or Catholic.

      The Nazi's were at least superficially Christian and opposed atheism:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views#Hitler.27s_reaction_to_atheism
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany

      Or perhaps you mistyped and mean Aryan.

    2. Re:Politics by blind+biker · · Score: 4, Informative

      Your post misses the mark: Nazis were not opposed to Christian scientists. They were against Jewish scientists. Against as in, first they marginalized them, made it difficult for them to work, then to find a job and finally (if the scientists and their family were stil residing in Germany or a Nazi-occupied country) deported to a concentration camp and gassed.

      Germany COULD have had a nuclear weapon before the allies, if only they didn't engage in their futile/counterproductive policy of extermination, genocde and racial discrimination against Jews. Scientists like Szilard (father of nuclear fission) would have stayed in Germany instead of moving to the USA where they then worked on the Manhattan project.

      And a note at the end: had the Nazis had a nuclear weapon, it would have changed the course of history. They didn't necessarily need more than one, either: just blow up one major USSR city (say, Moscow) and watch the Eastern front fold up and a truce being signed.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
  5. Re:quick, someone call Clive Cussler! by Dexter+Herbivore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's no such thing as a *new* Dirk Pitt novel, they all have roughly the same plot.

  6. Boffin by burningcpu · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case any of you Americans were wondering what a Boffin is, it is a scientist. Here is a quote from wikipedia,

    "In the slang of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa, boffins are scientists, medical doctors, engineers, and other people engaged in technical or scientific research.
    The word 'boffin' (or 'boff'—often as an insult[1]) can also be used to refer to any particularly clever person. The closest American equivalent is "egghead"."

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

  7. Re:Elsewhere in the scrapeyard... by ibsteve2u · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it true that Schrodinger's cat was feeding upon the remains?

    --
    Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
  8. Re:Elsewhere in the scrapeyard... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes and no.

  9. Interesting That This Was Not Congo Uranium by careysub · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The fact this can be traced to production batches at Joachimstal during the war is interesting for the following reason: it was a mine incapable of supporting a nuclear weapon program.

    Joachimstal (Jachymov today) is an ancient and famous mining district (others have noted here that Thaler == Dollar originated from its name) and due to radon gas in its mine is also the earliest recorded incidences of death from occupational radiation exposure - - - lung cancer was a common cause of death of underground miners from the 16th century onward. It was also a prominent source of material for the discovery of radiation and radioactive elements.

    But it could only produce a few tens of tons of uranium annually! Something like a 1000 tons of uranium was needed to support an effective nuclear weapons program.

    Germany had however a couple of thousand tons of already mined and processed ore from the Belgian Congo, captured at the outset of the war. This material was perfect for a nuclear weapons program - if it had one. This material was captured by the U.S. at the end of the war unused. A couple of thousand tons of ore from this same mine and shipped to the U.S. before the war in fact powered the Manhattan Project through most of its wartime operations.

    That Germany was still relying on old pre-war supply arrangements through Joamchimstal to obtain research uranium is very interesting. It is another manifestation of the failure to create a real weapons program.

    --
    Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj