Perhaps the single most curious things in Rhode's book is what put them off the path of graphite moderated natural uranium reactors, the work of a single unreli

Perhaps the single most curious things in Rhode's book is what put them off the path of graphite moderated natural uranium reactors, the work of a single unreliable scientist who, as it happened, was not using pure enough graphite (too many neutron poisons, it was quite a challenge for us to get graphite pure enough). That pretty much dead ended their efforts on the science front, heavy water natural uranium reactors are quite possible (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor although I remember reading somewhere the Canadians had access to extra rich in U-235 uranium), but definitely not trivial, especially when we were zapping their supplies of heavy water from Norway.