Tube alloys

William Penney , Otto Frisch , Rudolf Peierls and John Cockcroft received the Medal of Freedom in May 1947

Lord Cherwell , Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister, Chief of Air Staff Charles Portal , Fleet Admiral Dudley Pound and Winston Churchill in June 1941

Tube Alloys was the code name of a secret research and development program of the United Kingdom and Canada for the development of nuclear weapons during the Second World War .

The British-Canadian Tube Alloys Project was the world's first nuclear weapons research project, and was a forerunner of the American Manhattan Project .

history

After the discovery of nuclear fission in December 1938 by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and its physical explanation by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch , the theoretical possibility of an atomic bomb emerged .

The feasibility of nuclear weapons was recognized early in the war. At the University of Birmingham , Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch wrote a memorandum that explained how a bomb can be built with a small amount of pure uranium-235 by starting a chain reaction with an explosive force of several thousand tons of TNT .

As a result, the British MAUD Committee was formed in 1940 , which urged research into the construction of nuclear weapons to advance.

Wallace Akers, head of research at Imperial Chemical Industries , led the project and chose the misleading alias "Tube Alloys", which could be translated as "tube alloys". Tube Alloys was affiliated with the UK Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Due to the high cost and the fact that England was within range of German bombers, Tube Alloys was eventually merged with the Manhattan Project and the secret Quebec Agreement was signed with the United States . It stipulated that both states would exchange nuclear weapons technology, would not use nuclear weapons against one another and would not use nuclear weapons against third parties without mutual consent. However, the United States did not pass on all the findings of the Manhattan Project to the British.

The Soviet Union gained valuable intelligence with the help of spies who infiltrated both the British and American projects. This made the Soviet Union the second nation to successfully test nuclear weapons.

After the war ended, the United States ended its collaboration with the British through the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 . The British then resumed their own nuclear weapons development by starting the High Explosive Research program , and production facilities were also built. The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE or colloquially Harwell ) in Harwell near Didcot was the main center for atomic energy research and development in Great Britain from 1946 to the 1990s .

In 1952 the United Kingdom conducted the first nuclear test under the code name " Operation Hurricane ". It became the third nuclear power after the USA and the Soviet Union.

In 1958, under the influence of Sputnik shock and after the development of a British hydrogen bomb , the United Kingdom and the United States signed the US – UK Mutual Defense Agreement.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann: About the detection and behavior of the alkaline earth metals formed when the uranium is irradiated with neutrons . In: Natural Sciences . tape 27 , 1939, pp. 11-15 , doi : 10.1007 / BF01488241 .
2. ^ Lise Meitner, Otto Robert Frisch: Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: A New Type of Nuclear Reaction . In: Nature . 143, No. 3615, 1939, pp. 239-240. bibcode : 1939Natur.143..239M . doi : 10.1038 / 143239a0 .
3. ↑ Frisch-Peierls Memorandum , Rudolf Peierls, Otto Frisch, March 1940
4. ^ Margaret Gowing : Britain and Atomic Energy 1939–1945 . Macmillan, London 1964, OCLC 3195209 .
5. ^ Nekrasow, Wladimir F .: NKVD - MWD i atom, (The NKVD / MWD and the Atom), Moscow 2007