The Brits might have been able to field a Los Alamos during WWII, but not a Hanford or Oak Ridge/TVA, especially not in the British Isles while under direct fir

The Brits might have been able to field a Los Alamos during WWII, but not a Hanford or Oak Ridge/TVA, especially not in the British Isles while under direct fire. Also, in the very improbable event of a successful Nazi island invasion, nice to keep such projects an ocean away in the US. The UK couldn’t have afforded an expanded post-WWII atomic program at the level the Soviets eventually fielded, at least not while transitioning back to a civilian economy. The US could and did. The big challenge for the UK to meet at the time was decolonization, a challenge they met with aplomb and whose successful achievement was and is under-appreciated by the global community.