[KS] the atomic bomb & German-Japanese cooperation

[Bill Streifer]

Frank Hoffmann wanted more juice, so here's the juice. First, let it be known that we're at the tail end of a book on the subject, and that my co-author is a particle physicist from Stanford, the #1 rated school in the country in nuclear physics at the Ph.D. level. So what I am about to explain was explained to me by the best in the business. He does the science and I do the history.
Here's the background information first:
Japan and German both had nuclear weapons programs during the war. The Germans are best known for their atomic pile that was discovered at the end of the war. Their goal was to produce plutonium for a bomb. They felt that uranium enrichment was too difficult, so they abandoned that approach early on. The Japanese are best known for their efforts in Tokyo to enrich uranium at RIKEN in Tokyo. Their goal was to produce U-235 for a bomb. Both of their efforts failed.
Both a U-235 bomb (like Hiroshima) and a plutonium bomb (like Nagasaki) have approximately the same yield, about 15-21 kT. The Nagasaki bomb was a bit more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, but they were both in about the same range. So there was no such thing as a "small" nuclear weapon, or was there?
According to this document I just found (I was just shown), the Germans were working on a small-yield weapon, about 1/10 the yield of Hiroshima and presumably 1/10 the physical size. The Germans then shared that information with the Japanese in exchange for technologies the Japanese were working on. Sounds fair. 
The fact is, while a small atomic bomb is theoretically possible, it's nearly impossible as a practical matter. But if you want to try, here's how you would build it... First, you take uranium oxide (not pure uranium metal) and submerge it in a bucket of heavy water. After a while, the uranium oxide turns into uranium deuteride (see http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2567/uranium-deuteride-initiators ). 
The problem is triggering the atomic explosion. Not a problem (again) in theory. What you do is fire a beam of particles at a small amount of uranium deuteride (about the size of a box of matches should do), and BOOM! The resulting explosion will be about 1/10 the power of Hiroshima, or 1,500 tons of TNT, still quite a wallop. 
The problem is, any "gun" capable of firing that much power at a small cube of material would be powerful enough to take down an aircraft in flight. Besides, the gun would be so large, it would be too big to carry to the target. Bottom line, it has been tried but never achieved by any nation on earth to date, so the Germans and Japanese were certainly not capable of building such a bomb during WWII.

Read more about this bomb and related stories in our book-in-the works:"Dr. Fritz J. Hansgirg: Heavy Water and the Secret History of the Atomic Bomb" by Bill Streifer and Dr. Kenneth N. Ricci.
Bill
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