General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
Re: Italian subs and nuclear cargo?
Posted by:
Paul
()
Date: March 27, 2006 03:53PM
Simon,
Outstanding report!
Question: I recently saw a documentary about the U.S. Army's ALSOS mission in which the showed photographs of a German reactor. One of the ALSOS officers said they tracked one of the German nuclear scientists who brought them to a burried cache of some 2 tons of Uranium. He did not say what type of uranium, but he had a plexiglass block with what appeared to be a black square of material inside, which he said was a sample of the material they confiscated. I can not believe that the Germans could have generated 2 tons of actual U-235 and would imagine that the stuff in the plastic box would have been dangerously radioactive if it were fissionable material. Also, I think that such a mass of Uranium, if it were actually fissionable, would have created a seroius critical mass problem! Is it also true that the Germans had been using a French reactor outside of Paris? That was another topic mentioned in a past documentary. It is my understanding that the Germans would have had to have created sufficient U-235 through gaseous diffusion centrifuge to then run through a fission reactor to get the spent fuel to create Pu-239, so I assume they must have succeded in actually creating weapons grade U-235. If not, what were they fueling the reactor(s) with?
Sincerely,
Paul
Outstanding report!
Question: I recently saw a documentary about the U.S. Army's ALSOS mission in which the showed photographs of a German reactor. One of the ALSOS officers said they tracked one of the German nuclear scientists who brought them to a burried cache of some 2 tons of Uranium. He did not say what type of uranium, but he had a plexiglass block with what appeared to be a black square of material inside, which he said was a sample of the material they confiscated. I can not believe that the Germans could have generated 2 tons of actual U-235 and would imagine that the stuff in the plastic box would have been dangerously radioactive if it were fissionable material. Also, I think that such a mass of Uranium, if it were actually fissionable, would have created a seroius critical mass problem! Is it also true that the Germans had been using a French reactor outside of Paris? That was another topic mentioned in a past documentary. It is my understanding that the Germans would have had to have created sufficient U-235 through gaseous diffusion centrifuge to then run through a fission reactor to get the spent fuel to create Pu-239, so I assume they must have succeded in actually creating weapons grade U-235. If not, what were they fueling the reactor(s) with?
Sincerely,
Paul
