
Cold war files show UK fear of US H-bomb - jeo1234
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cd462a38-78ca-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html
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kstenerud
Couple of problems with this article:

1\. The atomic bomb didn't end the war with Japan; an impending Russian
invasion did. Japan preferred surrendering to America first while they still
had some bargaining power left (plus they hated the Russians). Dropping a
couple of big bombs on some secondary cities was nothing compared to the
devastation of major metropolitan centers from the firebombing campaign.

2\. The UK's primary worry was that the USA would once again become
isolationist like it usually does, which would leave the UK alone to contend
with a very powerful neighbor that could push them around now that Germany was
divided and France essentially impotent. The H bomb was simply a demonstration
of how powerful (and thus influential) a nation could get. The UK's "special
relationship" with America is a diplomatic consequence of this worry.

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runarb
The title "Cold war files show UK fear of US H-bomb" is quite misleading. The
UK feard that the Russians would attack them with hydrogen bombs. Can't see
where the US fit into this, except for pioneering the hydrogen bomb, but that
doesn't make all hydrogen bombs US bombs.

When we are on the topic of the UK and atomic bombs. This is a great article
from the archive: "British nukes were protected by bike locks" \-
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7097101.stm)

~~~
arethuza
The UK was worried that the US was escalating the Cold War conflict and that
we'd be _more_ at risk rather than safer as a result.

Given that this was exactly what happened in the late 50s and early 60s (US
over estimates Soviet threat for internal political reasons, builds huge
arsenals, Soviets scramble to catch up) this is pretty much what happened so
their worries were justified.

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Turing_Machine
"US over estimates Soviet threat for internal political reasons"

"Over-estimated" how?

I mean, there really was about a 2:1 Warsaw Pact tank advantage, and nuclear
deterrence really was the only realistic way of countering it.

Can you be more specific about how this threat was "over-estimated"?

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CapitalistCartr
Nuclear wasn't the only way. We built the A-10 Warthog specifically to counter
the tank problem and it filled its role brilliantly.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thun...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II)

~~~
dingaling
The A-10 program only survived the 1970s as an anti-tank respin of a Vietnam
counter-insurgency specification.

The gun was only effective against certain aspects of T-64 armour and only
after US Army Cobras had eliminated or reduced ZSU and Gaskin vehicles to
allow the A-10 to approach to gun range.

What it does very effectively today in close-support was for what it was
originally intended, not tank-busting.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
The GAU-8 cannon was designed specifically for the anti-tank role using APDU.
The A-10 was designed solely for close air support, including attacking tanks
as the link I provided mentions. All close air support requires control of the
air space.

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btown
Referrer link:
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAAahUKEwj-
tZ-
ghdjIAhXDrD4KHZQdBco&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fcd462a38-78ca-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html&usg=AFQjCNHki9a147PKWJNMJqzj_EtWKz4bJA&sig2=lwnuUOon7UYfD8uJZ34QTw)

~~~
snorrah
Thanks! How does this get past the paywall, exactly? Is it passing a user auth
through ?

~~~
corin_
Sites with paywalls often prefer that Google can index them, and Google
doesn't like indexing a page that will be shown differently to a user who
clicks on it from a search, therefore to get the full content indexed and
avoid being penalised by Google, they show the full article if you come from a
Google search (or through a Google link that makes it look like you came from
a search)

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DennisP
Curious why thorium and heavy water are necessary for H-bombs. I'm more
familiar with reactors than bombs but from that perspective, heavy water is a
moderator, which you don't need with the highly-enriched fissile in bombs, and
thorium isn't fissile, but can be turned U-233 which is fissile but not
something we actually use in bombs, or need if we have U-235 or plutonium.

~~~
hga
Don't want to use up my very small quota of FT articles, but as for heavy
water, thermonuclear bombs use lithium-6 deuteride, lithium-6 hydride where
the hydrogen atoms are deuterium
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_hydride#In_nuclear_che...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_hydride#In_nuclear_chemistry_and_physics)),
the best source of which is heavy water.

This compound is a compact and stable solid at the relevant temperatures; as
the above says, when bombarded by neutrons the lithium-6 is converted into
tritium in an exothermic (favorable) reaction, and then it fuses with the
deuterium.

~~~
DennisP
Ah that makes sense. Any idea on thorium?

~~~
hga
None whatsoever,

I'm still in my intensive study of the Manhattan Project and one thing that's
very clear is that the "try everything that looks like it might work to make
sure at least one will" had a great benefit in building the insanely scaled
K-25 gaseous diffusion plant
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-25)).
This allowed us to easily build reactors and all sorts of things with enriched
uranium. With that good an ecosystem, where does thorium fit in?

Ah, here's a theory: the U.K. didn't know how well we'd done in finding
uranium sources. So early on, besides just trying it out, wasn't it posited as
an alternative to U-235 if we ran low on it? And I've read on Wikipedia that
some thermonuclear primaries were/are U-235 implosion designs; if that's
advantageous, alternates to U-235 for power reactors could be useful.

And skimming this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom)
and finding this
[http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Uk/UKFacility.html](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Uk/UKFacility.html)
confirms that it took a long time for the U.K. to enrich uranium, especially
to militiarily useful levels (HEU) and amounts, 1954 and 1957 respectively,
long after the 1952 creation of successful H-bombs.

But I still can't find or think of anything that supports the bald assertion
in the article (which I did break down and read), which tells me the author is
grossly ignorant of the most basics of the subject, and I strongly suspect the
whole article is highly suspect, putting a spin on events that's not in the
least supportable by reality, there are plenty of tells, including extremely
limited quoting of the documents which are supposed to reveal all this.

