Seven Elements That Have Changed the World (47 page)

9.
James Chadwick, ‘Possible Existence of a Neutron’,
Nature
, p. 312 (27 February 1932). Following his discovery of the neutron, Chadwick also went to work on the Manhattan Project.

10.
Otto Hahn led the team that split uranium using neutrons. He was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the discovery of nuclear fission. Meitner should have been jointly awarded it.

11.
Protons and neutrons are held together in the nucleus by the strong force, one of
four fundamental forces in nature. The other three are the familiar gravitational and electromagnetic forces, and the more obscure weak force.

12.
Otto Frisch,
What Little I Remember
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 116. Frisch was later among the first to hold the initial samples of U-235 produced in the Manhattan Project. ‘I had the urge to take one, as a paperweight, I told myself. A piece of the first uranium-235 metal ever made. It would have been a wonderful memento, a talking point in times to come.’ Tom Zoellner,
Uranium
:
War
,
Energy and the Rock that Shaped the World
(New York: Viking, 2009), p. 64.

13.
Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, ‘Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction’,
Nature
, Vol. 143, No. 3615, p. 239 (11 February 1939). Otto Frisch, ‘Physical Evidence for the Division of Heavy Nuclei under Neutron Bombardment’,
Nature
, Vol. 143. No. 3616, p. 276 (18 February 1939).

14.
Only 64kg of uranium was inside the Little Boy atomic bomb. Less than a kilogram of this underwent nuclear fission and a mere 0.7g was directly converted into energy. To destroy a city you do not need much matter.

15.
Isotopes are chemically the same, containing the same number of protons in the nucleus, but differing numbers of neutrons.

16.
Only 0.7 per cent of naturally found uranium is of this type.

17.
Richard Rhodes,
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
(New York: Touchstone, 1988), p. 292.

18.
Many question why he brought so destructive a weapon to the attention of an authority that could make it a reality. This question is answered by Otto Frisch, who, having the same idea as Szilárd, presented his idea to the British government: ‘I have often been asked why I didn’t abandon the project there and then, saying nothing to anybody. Why start on a project which, if it was successful, would end with the production of a weapon of unparalleled violence, a weapon of mass destruction such as the world has never seen? The answer was very simple. We were at war, and the idea was reasonably obvious; very probably some German scientists had had the same idea and were working on it.’ Rhodes,
The Making of the Atomic Bomb
, p. 325.

19.
Charles W. Johnson and Charles O. Jackson,
City Behind a Fence
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981), p. 43.

20.
The other major method of enrichment at Oak Ridge was by electromagnetic separation. First electrons are removed from atoms of uranium so that they become positively charged. When directed into a magnetic field, these charged ions of uranium will follow a curved path, but the heavier uranium-238 ions will be deflected less than the uranium-235 ions and so the two isotopes can be separated.

21.
Zoellner,
Uranium
Charles W. Johnson and Charles O. Jackson,
City Behind a Fence
(Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981), p. 66.

22.
Michael H. Studer et al., ‘Lignin content in natural Populus variants affects sugar
release’,
PNAS
, Vol. 108, No. 15, pp. 6300–305 (12 April 2011).

23.
Harry Truman announcing the bombing of Hiroshima, 6 August 1945. Harry S. Truman Library, ‘Army press notes’, Box 4, Papers of Eben A. Ayers.

24.
Ibid.

25.
Space Adventures
, March 1960, Charlton Comics.

26.
Scott Zeman and Michael Amundson,
Atomic Culture
,
How we Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
(Boulder CO: University Press of Colorado, 2004), p. 15.

27.
This was the stern warning given by General Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, in the introduction to ‘Dagwood Splits the Atom’, a pamphlet produced in consultation with the US Atomic Energy Commission in 1949.
Dagwood Splits the Atom
(New York: Kings Features Syndicate, 1949).

28.
Dallas Morning News
, 12 August 1945, section 4, p. 8.

29.
Eagle
, 1 August 1952.

30.
Calder Hall was the first commercial-scale nuclear power plant in the world, producing tens of megawatts of electricity for civilian use. Both the US and Soviet Union had previously generated small quantities of electricity from atomic energy.

31.
‘Queen Switches on Nuclear Power’, BBC, 17 October 1956.
www.bbc.co.uk

32.
Ibid.

33.
R. F. Pocock,
Nuclear Power
:
Its development in the United Kingdom
(London: Institution of Nuclear Engineers, 1977), p. 25.

34.
Peter Hennessy,
Cabinets and the bomb
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 48.

35.
The reactor design at Calder Hall was named PIPPA, or Pressurised Pile Producing Power and Plutonium. Plutonium is produced in reactors as a result of neutron absorption by uranium atoms. Weapons grade plutonium has a high concentration of the Pu-239 isotope. To get this, uranium fuel must only be left in the reactor for a short period of time and, as a result, less of the energy in the fuel is harnessed for electricity generation.

36.
Michihiko Hachiya,
Hiroshima Diary
,
The Journal of a Japanese Physician August 6–September 30
,
1945
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1955), p. 35.

37.
Robert Socolow, ‘Reflections on Fukushima: A time to mourn, to learn, and to teach’,
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, 21 March 2011. Socolow writes: ‘Unless a large dread-to-risk ratio is assigned to choices such as whether to eat or not to eat, the experts’ models of risk will not match the choices.’

38.
Any deaths resulting from Fukushima are very unlikely to be statistically detectable. More dangerous than radiation could be carcinogenic chemicals scattered about by the earthquake and tsunami.

39.
The week before I arrived in Japan, high radiation levels had been measured on a street in the Setagaya ward of Tokyo. The source turned out to be old bottles of radium
stored in a cellar below the street, only discovered because of the now widespread radiation monitoring.

40.
Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Soviet Central TV later that year said that the Chernobyl accident was ‘a cruel reminder that mankind is still trying to come to grips with the fantastic, powerful force which it has brought into being’.

41.
Widespread anxiety and depression were prevalent in the population surrounding Chernobyl. This resulted from a fear of radiation, but also from their relocation to uncontaminated areas. Increased anxiety and stress may have had further adverse health effects through changes in lifestyle, such as diet, smoking and drinking habits.

42.
Outside the immediate disaster area, lower level radiation in the surrounding nations of Belarus and Ukraine led to thousands more cases of thyroid cancer, but this is usually treatable. A possible increase in the incidence of leukaemia has been observed in those workers involved in the clean-up of Chernobyl. There has been no observable increase, above background levels, of other types of cancer.
Source and Effects of Ionising Radiation
, United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly, Vol. II, ‘Health effects due to radiation from the Chernobyl Accident’, United Nations, New York, 2011.

43.
These fears continue today. On 20 July 2012, a batch of radioactive blueberries, containing nine times the recommended radiation limit, were found at a market in Moscow, believed to have come from the contaminated Chernobyl fallout region.

44.
Forty-six per cent favoured maintaining Japan’s reliance on nuclear power at its current levels, while 44 per cent thought the use of nuclear power should be reduced. Only 8 per cent wanted Japan to increase its use of nuclear power (about the same percentage as in previous polls over the last twenty years).
Japanese Resilient
,
but See Economic Challenges Ahead
, Pew Research Center, June 2011.

45.
‘Kan heaps pressure on atomic plant operator’,
Financial Times
, 15 March 2011.

46.
The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission ruled that: ‘The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties.’ The National Diet of Japan, 2012, p. 16.

47.
Japanese Wary of Nuclear Energy
:
Disaster ‘Weakened’ Nation
, Pew Research Center, June 2012.

48.
For each energy source, the average number of fatalities per Gigawatt-year of energy produced (counting accidents of five or more fatalities from 1969 to 2000) are:

Coal (without China): 0.60

Coal (with China, from 1994 to 1999): 6.1

Oil: 0.90

Natural Gas: 0.11

LPG:14.9

Hydro: 10.3

Nuclear: 0.048

Source: Nuclear Energy Agency,
Comparing Nuclear Accident Risks with Those from Other Energy Sources
(OECD, 2010).

49.
Ian Buruma,
Wages of guilt
(London: Atlantic Books, 2009), p. 99.

50.
The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons
(UN, 1968), Article VI.
www.un.org

51.
Excluding Iran, these nations are: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. Between them they hold an estimated 22,400 nuclear weapons, over 95 per cent of which belong to Russia or the United States.

52.
Back in 1965, before becoming President (and later Prime Minister), Bhutto said: If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own. We have no other choice.’ Gordon Corera,
Shopping for Bombs
(London: Hurst & Company, 2006), p. 9.

53.
Ibid., p. 10.

54.
Khan once told an interviewer: If I escort my wife to the plane when she’s flying somewhere, the crew will take notice of who she is and she will receive VIP treatment from the moment she steps on the plane. As for me, I can’t even stop by the roadside at a small hut to drink chai without someone paying for me. People go out of their way to show their love and respect for me.’ Zoellner,
Uranium
, p. 118.

55.
‘Mutual Deterrence’ Speech by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, 1962.

56.
The ‘Dead Hand’ system was most famously depicted as the Doomsday Machine in the 1964 film
Dr. Strangelove.

1.
Titanium’s high strength-to-weight ratio is a result of the structure in which its atoms are arranged. The atoms in the metal are arranged in alternating layers. Titanium atoms bond in a ‘hexagonal close-packed’ structure, in which the atoms in every second layer will lie directly above each other (ABABAB). Iron atoms bond in a ‘cubic close-packed’ structure, in which atoms in every third layer will lie directly above each other (ABCABCABC). The density of atoms in a hexagonal close-packed structure is much smaller than that in a cubic close-packed structure, so that titanium is far lighter than iron, but remains very strong. Titanium’s resistance to corrosion is, surprisingly, a result of the element’s high reactivity. Titanium is so reactive that it bonds with oxygen in the air forming a very thin layer
of titanium dioxide on the metal surface. It is this layer which protects the metal from corrosion and which quickly re-forms if scratched away.

2.
Uranium was named after Uranus, the planet, which was discovered a few years earlier by William Herschel. Klaproth writes: ‘Wherefore no name can be found for a new fossil [element] which indicates its peculiar and characteristic properties (in which position I find myself at present), I think it is best to choose such a denomination as means nothing of itself and thus can give no rise to any erroneous ideas. In consequence of this, as I did in the case of Uranium, I shall borrow the name for this metallic substance from mythology, and in particular from the Titans, the first sons of the earth. I therefore call this metallic genus TITANIUM.’ Martin Heinrich Klaproth,
Analytical Essays Towards Promoting the Chemical Knowledge of Mineral Substances
, Vol. 1, p. 210 (1801).

3.
An air-breathing jet takes in air from the environment, rather than a liquid oxidiser, to mix with fuel in the combustion chamber.

4.
B. R. Rich and L. Janos,
Skunk Works
(Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1994), p. 193.

5.
The high temperature is a result of kinetic heating due to the compression of gases around the aircraft. Aluminium alloys can cope with temperature up to 130 degrees centigrade, reached between Mach 2 and Mach 3, but for anything higher titanium alloys must be used. At these temperatures no off-the-shelf electronics would work and the whole system had to be designed from scratch.

6.
According to Kirchhoff’s law of thermal radiation good absorbers are also good emitters. By painting the aircraft black, more heat was radiated away, reducing the wing temperature by around 35 degrees centigrade.

7.
Small weight savings can dramatically reduce the fuel needed to boost a space vehicle into outer space. Fuel tanks were often made from titanium alloys for their high strength-weight and long-term chemical compatibility. For Apollo 11, titanium and aluminium were used extensively in the Lunar Module.