Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

InfiniteMothman t1_iu76pjo wrote

Reply to comment by sadetheruiner in TIL about Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk. He was responsible for rescuing a team of French nuclear scientists and the entire world stockpile of heavy water from France during WW2. He also served as part of an unexploded bomb detachment, successfully tackling 34 unexploded bombs by SteO153

Nuclear research had been going on for decades by then, weapons research not as long(the idea of a neutron chain reaction was only about 10 years old) but preliminary R&D into nuclear weapons was taking place in several nations by 1940.

iirc there was a British commando raid to destroy a heavy water production facility in Norway in '41.

6

sadetheruiner t1_iu8lvoh wrote

Decades would be an overstatement, nuclear fission was discovered in 1938. Heavy water was only relevant then to slow neutrons. When it first started being produced was 1932. 1934 was the first working reactor. 1939 had the first official document for atomic weapons. Put your decades in a sack.

1

InfiniteMothman t1_iuad5f4 wrote

Wasn't what I meant. Didn't mean weapons research. Just the concepts of research into the atomic nucleus, first modernish theories of the nucleus etc.

1