Portal:Nuclear technology

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The S-50 Project was the Manhattan Project's effort to produce enriched uranium by liquid thermal diffusion during World War II. It was one of three technologies for uranium enrichment pursued by the Manhattan Project.

The liquid thermal diffusion process was not one of the enrichment technologies initially selected for use in the Manhattan Project, and was developed independently by Philip H. Abelson and other scientists at the United States Naval Research Laboratory. This was primarily due to doubts about the process's technical feasibility, but inter-service rivalry between the United States Army and United States Navy also played a part.

Pilot plants were built at the Anacostia Naval Air Station and the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and a production facility at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This was the only production-scale liquid thermal diffusion plant ever built. It could not enrich uranium sufficiently for use in an atomic bomb, but it could provide slightly enriched feed for the Y-12 calutrons and the K-25 gaseous diffusion plants. It was estimated that the S-50 plant had sped up production of enriched uranium used in the Little Boy bomb employed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by a week.

The S-50 plant ceased production in September 1945, but it was reopened in May 1946, and used by the United States Army Air Forces Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project. The plant was demolished in the late 1940s. (Full article...)

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Credit: Cherie Cullen
United Kingdom Defense Minister Des Browne addresses the audience during a reception hosted by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, left, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Mutual Defense Agreement between the United States and the U.K. at the State Department in Washington, D.C., July 9, 2008.

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Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation. It was a sensational discovery at the time: the wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, but the idea that light had both wave and particle properties was not easily accepted. He is also known for his leadership over the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago during the Manhattan Project, and served as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis from 1945 to 1953.

In 1919, Compton was awarded one of the first two National Research Council Fellowships that allowed students to study abroad. He chose to go to the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he studied the scattering and absorption of gamma rays. Further research along these lines led to the discovery of the Compton effect. He used X-rays to investigate ferromagnetism, concluding that it was a result of the alignment of electron spins, and studied cosmic rays, discovering that they were made up principally of positively charged particles.

During World War II, Compton was a key figure in the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear weapons. His reports were important in launching the project. In 1942, he became a member of the executive committee, and then head of the "X" projects overseeing the Metallurgical Laboratory, with responsibility for producing nuclear reactors to convert uranium into plutonium, finding ways to separate the plutonium from the uranium and to design an atomic bomb. Compton oversaw Enrico Fermi's creation of Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor, which went critical on December 2, 1942. The Metallurgical Laboratory was also responsible for the design and operation of the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Plutonium began being produced in the Hanford Site reactors in 1945.

After the war, Compton became chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. During his tenure, the university formally desegregated its undergraduate divisions, named its first female full professor, and enrolled a record number of students after wartime veterans returned to the United States. (Full article...)

Nuclear technology news


9 May 2024 – Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran–Israel relations
Iran warns that it will build a nuclear weapon if Israel continues to target its nuclear facilities. (Al Jazeera)
25 April 2024 – Russia–NATO relations
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warns that Russia will make NATO nuclear weapons in Poland one of its primary targets if they are deployed there. (The Jerusalem Post)
23 April 2024 – North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
North Korea claims that it tested a new command-and-control system in a simulated nuclear counterstrike. (CNN)

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