
Possible Existence of a Neutron (1932) - mgdo
http://fermatslibrary.com/s/possible-existence-of-a-neutron#email-newsletter
======
acidburnNSA
As soon as it was confirmed, people started shooting neutrons at various
things. In 1938 they were shooting them at Uranium to try to produce trans-
Uranium elements. When they found Barium instead of transuranium, it was
discovered that sometimes Uranium fissions, releasing an astounding 200
million electron-Volts of energy per reaction. Soon after, it was confirmed
that Uranium fission releases enough secondary neutrons to cause a chain
reaction if Uranium atoms are placed close enough together, meaning it should
be possible to make a runaway fission chain reaction, aka an atomic bomb.

Einstein was relied upon to raise the alarm to the US military, and by
December 1942, Fermi had a chain reaction running in a squash court in Chicago
(Chicago Pile 1). Uranium enrichment efforts at Oak Ridge, TN and plutonium
production efforts in Hanford, WA (using the world's first high-power
reactors) ramp up. Bomb engineering occurs at Los Alamos, NM.

July 16, 1945 a Plutonium implosion bomb is tested: the Trinity shot. On Aug 6
and 9, the US drops atomic bombs on Japan.

By the 1950s, people are using chain reactions for peace: medicine, industry,
energy, space travel. Other things were tried but abandoned: nuclear
excavation, commercial nuclear propulsion, nuclear explosive fracking, you
name it! Today ~70% of the carbon free energy produced in the USA comes from
commercial nuclear chain reactors.

It's kind of crazy how things went after the neutron was discovered.

------
dboreham
Coincidence: I was reading Kenneth Ford's "Building the H-Bomb" immediately
prior to seeing this. The paper is mentioned in the book.

~~~
timthorn
The world is full of coincidences - I spent this evening on a tour of the
Cavendish Museum, looking at the actual apparatus described in the paper :)

------
goalieca
I've seen longer abstracts on epsilon papers.

