{"id":158978,"date":"2025-02-18T14:57:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T22:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=158978"},"modified":"2025-02-18T15:06:29","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T23:06:29","slug":"dark-sun-the-making-of-the-hydrogen-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=158978","title":{"rendered":"Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Rhodes writes in his 1995 book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n* [Lavrentiy] Beria was vulnerable. He had been assigned a vital project which had been given the highest priority of the state, but he lacked the knowledge necessary to judge its progress. He was at the mercy of scientists, intellectuals, people he viscerally distrusted. \u201cWith all of Beria\u2019s apparent power,\u201d writes a Russian historian, \u201che understood nothing about physics and he remained silent when the subject came around to uranium, plutonium, the separation of isotopes, \u2018items\u2019. . . . And the success of the work . . . also meant the destiny of the leader\u2019s adviser himself, who bore personal responsibility for the creation of nuclear weapons under Stalin.\u201d \u201cAt first all the problems were solved through Kurchatov,\u201d says Yuli Khariton. \u201c[Eventually] [Beria] was forced to pay attention to us.\u201d
\n So Beria sought ways to decrease his vulnerability. He sent security officers to Japan to film the destruction at Nagasaki. He began developing a stable of \u201cbackup\u201d scientists \u2014 with fewer Jews among them \u2014 whom he might call upon to replace the Kurchatov team if it proved to be treacherous.<\/p>\n

* JUST WHEN THE SOVIET UNION began a crash program to build an atomic bomb, the American program \u201cessentially came to a grinding halt,\u201d Los Alamos experimental physicist Raemer Schreiber remembers. Schreiber, a handsome, confident man with warm blue eyes who grew up on an Oregon farm, had been one of the crew of scientists assigned to Tinian to assemble the first atomic bombs. Los Alamos \u201cwas stopped by the time I got back,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich was early in September [1945]. People were tidying up jobs. A few of the research projects were being finished up. We were about fifty percent staffed by the Special Engineer Detachment [enlisted men] and Navy officers and other military people. And, of course, all they wanted was out. A lot of the civilian staff were just as eager to go out and take their newfound knowledge and go back and start the programs at their universities. So there really wasn\u2019t much useful work going on. . . . It was a very severe transition period.\u201d 858
\n If the atomic bomb had shocked the Japanese, it had also shocked America. Materializing from secrecy to such conquering effect, it seemed a mysterious and almost supernatural force. It was a new fact dropped into the world \u2014 \u201ca new understanding of man, which man had acquired over nature,\u201d as I. I. Rabi called the first explosion at Trinity \u2014 and no one at first knew quite what to do with it. 859 The discovery of how to release nuclear energy was a technological revolution, most of all a revolution in war; like all revolutions, its meaning would not necessarily accord with hopes or theories or prophecies, but would reveal itself over time as individuals and governments maneuvered to exploit its energies and adapt it to their goals.
\n The scientists who worked on the bomb also materialized from secrecy and found it necessary to explain themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Rhodes writes in his 1995 book: * [Lavrentiy] Beria was vulnerable. He had been assigned a vital project which had been given the highest priority of the state, but he lacked the knowledge necessary to judge its progress. He … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42931,42696,29660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expertise","category-nuclear","category-soviet-union"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t