Word: pilings
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...spite of multiple obstacles, the Germans almost achieved a working pile. Their experimental models, made of uranium plates separated by heavy water, got better & better...
...Germans never came very close to making a bomb, apparently. In a recent issue of Britain's Nature magazine, German Nobel-Physicist Werner Heisenberg tells how they almost achieved a successful uranium pile; but they did not even try to make a bomb...
...other possibility was to construct a chain-reacting pile made of uranium combined with some substance to slow down the neutrons shot out by its fissioning atoms. Theory indicated that carbon or heavy water would serve as this "moderator." The U.S. used carbon (graphite), but the Germans decided it would not do. This was a bad mistake; it led them to use heavy water, which could be produced only by a slow and costly process...
...time was running out. The Germans' only heavy water plant, in Norway, was destroyed by Commandos and bombing when only two tons of the vital water had been produced. Air raids slowed Germany's industry, disrupted her communications. The pile-builders never got all the uranium they needed. They were forced to work in cellars and air-raid shelters. In 1945, they took refuge in a dugout hewn in the rock near the village of Haigerloch, about 32 miles from Stuttgart...
Keeping its secrets close to its chest, the A.E.G. hardly mentioned the practical possibilities. The fast reactor must be surrounded, like its predecessors, by a thick shield to protect the neighborhood from destructive radiation. This limits its use. But the comparatively small size is an obvious advantage. The new pile, further developed and allowed to run faster and hotter, may be the furnace of tomorrow's atomic power plant...