5 ms·

Cold war files show UK fear of US H-bomb

26 points by jeo1234 11y ago

btown 11y ago
Referrer link: 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 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- celsoazevedo 11y ago
  Or... https://archive.is/HbkhZ https://archive.is/HbkhZ
- snorrah 11y ago
  Thanks! How does this get past the paywall, exactly? Is it passing a user auth through ?
  - corin_ 11y ago
    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)
runarb 11y ago
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
- mcintyre1994 11y ago
  There's some interesting claims about the current trident system too : https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/ https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/
- arethuza 11y ago
  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.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    "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"?
    - arethuza 11y ago
      It's pretty clear that the existence of nuclear weapons deterred political leaders from contemplating war. However, the actual number of weapons in place spiraled vastly beyond what was actually required for deterrence - largely, it has to be said, due to internal US political reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap NB I'm in no way defending the Soviets, who were a deeply unpleasant bunch, but I think it's pretty clear that a lot of unnecessary risks were run during the Cold War and the UK would have been one of the worst victims.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - 11y ago
DennisP 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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_chemistry_and_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_hydride#In_nuclear_che...), 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 11y ago
    Ah that makes sense. Any idea on thorium?
    - hga 11y ago
      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_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United... 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.
kstenerud 11y ago
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.

26 points by jeo1234 11y ago

btown 11y ago

Referrer link: 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 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

celsoazevedo 11y ago
Or... https://archive.is/HbkhZ https://archive.is/HbkhZ
snorrah 11y ago
Thanks! How does this get past the paywall, exactly? Is it passing a user auth through ?
- corin_ 11y ago
  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)

runarb 11y ago

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

mcintyre1994 11y ago
There's some interesting claims about the current trident system too : https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/ https://wikileaks.org/trident-safety/
arethuza 11y ago
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.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  "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"?
  - arethuza 11y ago
    It's pretty clear that the existence of nuclear weapons deterred political leaders from contemplating war. However, the actual number of weapons in place spiraled vastly beyond what was actually required for deterrence - largely, it has to be said, due to internal US political reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_gap NB I'm in no way defending the Soviets, who were a deeply unpleasant bunch, but I think it's pretty clear that a lot of unnecessary risks were run during the Cold War and the UK would have been one of the worst victims.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - 11y ago

DennisP 11y ago

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 11y ago
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_chemistry_and_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_hydride#In_nuclear_che...), 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 11y ago
  Ah that makes sense. Any idea on thorium?
  - hga 11y ago
    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_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United... 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.

kstenerud 11y ago

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.