The day after the first fission chain reaction

12/3/2013

By Lenka Kollar

On December 2, 1942, the first fission chain reaction was sustained at the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) reactor at the University of Chicago. The team was lead by Enrico Fermi as part of the Manhattan Project to create a nuclear weapon for the United States. This was a significant event because the team proved that energy could be created and sustained from the fissioning, or breaking up, of the isotope Uranium-235. This fission chain reaction provided the basis for the technology used for nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.

But what happened 71 years ago today on December 3, 1942? Did the CP-1 scientists wake up with a sense of excitement or foreboding for what they had created? According to the video below, the achievement of the chain reaction was full of excitement with applause and wine. The two scientists featured in the video, Harold Agnew and Warren Nyer, were actually there in 1942.

In the video, Warren Nyer states there were two things that might follow from this discovery, "nuclear power for civilian purposes or what was really purpose of that time, a nuclear weapon." As we know now, both nuclear weapons and nuclear power were developed. And, nuclear weapons came first because that was the immediate need in 1942 to end the war.

What if, on December 3, 1942, Fermi's team had realized how destructive this technology could be and not allowed further research? Of course, their research was owned by the U.S. government so they didn't really have a say. What if the fission chain reaction was discovered 10 years earlier or later, not in the middle of a war? Would we only have nuclear energy and not weapons?

People have many different opinions about the discovery of fission and most of them are negative. It is very true that nuclear weapons cause mass destruction and could end the existence of humankind. But one can also argue that they ended a world war and have prevented subsequents wars. If Fermi's team didn't have the government military funding to do their research, the fission chain reaction may have taken much longer to develop, and we would be much further behinds on nuclear energy technology. Many great scientific achievements have come from government funding motivated by defense and war. Examples include aircraft, landing on the moon, and even GPS. As can be seen in the United States budget, funding is dominated by defense.

How would you have felt if you woke up on December 3, 1942, after achieving the first fission chain reaction at CP-1? I think I would have been excited, but nervous for things to come.

8 Comments

Rod Adams link

12/3/2013 12:02:47 am

The CP-1 pile experiment was completed with about $1 million worth of material and a few weeks of grad student/professor labor. It was not elaborate and not beyond the capabilities of ordinary researchers. Heck, the Curies alone were wealthy enough to have funded the project based on their profitable radium business.

There is no doubt in my mind that if fission had been discovered during a less threatening time, it would have been put to use as a valuable heat source rather than as a weapon. The technology of building piles and extracting heat was a lot easier and had far more commercial uses than weapons.

By the time fission was discovered, supplying energy had been one of the world's most important enterprises for at least a century. Shivering scientists like Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi and Marie Curie would have been keenly interested in finding a new source of heat that could compete with coal and oil.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights

Lenka Kollar link

12/3/2013 11:44:06 pm

I agree that Fermi's team could have done it without defense funding but maybe not as quickly because there was a sense of urgency at that time since the Germans were supposedly working on the same thing. It is so interesting to think about how different our perceptions of nuclear power would be today if the weapon had not come first, or at all.

Rod Adams link

12/4/2013 01:18:02 am

You may be right, but I don't think there would have been much delay. Scientists that are in the hunt for new and exciting discoveries often move very quickly, especially when they are not burdened by excessive, government-imposed paperwork burdens and an over abundance of bureaucratic caution.

Based on the speed with which nuclear physics was moving, even before the Manhattan Project started, I think a privately funded CP-1 would have happened within months of when it actually did happen.

Lenka Kollar link

12/4/2013 01:22:57 am

It's hard to say how nuclear physics would have progressed without the war. But I agree with you that it would have happened regardless of government funding. However, all of the reactor research (submarine and commercial) was government funded.

Rod Adams link

12/4/2013 03:17:18 am

Of course it was. That might be because the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 made it illegal for any civilian investment into the technology. It nationalized all patents and made information sharing an offense that could be considered to be treason and punishable by death.

My point is that developing a new energy source has always had some tremendous civilian applications. There was no need for people to think too hard about how to produce something that had potential commercial applications.

Another point that I am working on trying to make is that the global energy establishment, invited into the development of atomic energy from the very beginning, had substantial financial motives for taking control of the technology and constraining its development.

As history has shown from the very beginning of the Industrial Age, any over abundance of fuel always leads to gluts and unprofitable prices driven by producers trying to sell more product than the market desires.

Pedro Camacho

12/4/2013 04:07:32 pm

I agree with you Rob in the sense that the technology would have been develop anyways because of its clear advantages over all other forms of energy.
However, even without the bomb, i believe that ones the government realized the potential of that energy source for the development of superior submarines and ships all the nuclear information would have been made top secret anyways, specially because of the communist fear that the US had at the time.

Rod Adams link

12/4/2013 04:50:45 pm

@Pedro Camacho

Please remember that we are engaging in a bit of "what if" and exploring what would have happened if fission had been discovered at a time when there was no "war on".

It is highly unlikely that CP-1 would have been built in the United States because without the existence of the German war machine and its war on the Jews, most of the scientists involved would never have come to the US. They would have kept making progress in their laboratories in Germany, Italy, France, and Denmark.

They would have certainly shared their information openly with their colleagues in the scientific community, but by the time that they assembled a critical mass and proved the self sustaining chain reaction there would have been no way for any single government to declare that the information was now secret.

Also recall that the US and country being led by "the communists" were reasonably friendly before about 1947 or so. Heck, we were even allies in the war that actually happened. There was not much "communist fear" and certainly nothing like an enormous standing army with a military industrial complex before WWII.

Pedro Camacho

12/4/2013 05:20:55 pm

In that case I completely agree, in a "war off" situation everything would have been complete different, because as you point out the developments would not have been control by one government.
Probably even we the other americans in the south (I am from Dominican Rep.) probably would have better access to nuclear technology and more reliable power without the fears we have now of the nuclear plants.
I really like the last paragraph with the "reasonably friendly" which is actually true, and for me is ironic to think that the friendship deteriorated because US and USSR where both victorious in the war and emerge as global powers.

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