If Russia had to develop the atomic bomb on their own, how long would it have taken them?

Factual Questions
21

You may very well be right about my needing to get some perspective. However, the manpower needed to build atomic bombs requires educated manpower - not just any old manpower.

Seems to me the majority of those 168 million Russians were not very educated - maybe even not educated at all! I would guess that most of them were illiterate and that just would not be any good for the manpower needed.

As I recall, before the US accepted men for soldiers in WW2, a great many of them had to first learn to read and write. I wish I had the exact figures. But a great number of the US citizens who went into the army were illiterate and first had to be educated to read and write. I can only imagine that problem would be much, much greater in Russia.

Much of the manpower needed were highly educated - like PHD level - scientists and engineers.

I don’t know enough to contradict you about the USA planning on using those 3 or 4 gigantic sites to build thousands of bombs. But I sure would love to see some cites that would support that contention.

They didn’t have enough money to build even 4 bombs (they only built 3). So it’s difficult for me to imagine they actually planned on building thousands.

Today, the science and engineering is tremendously different. It takes far less time and effort to produce Plutonium today than it did in 1945. But I doubt the folks back then could have imagined that would be the case. They were working with 1945-era scales of economy.

22

The theory was understood by most everyone much, much earlier than 1945.

You get enough radioactive material (critical mass), put it all together, and it explodes. The theory is pretty simple.

But the engineering required to convert uranium into weapons-grade material is a huge project - both the skill and knowledge required and the money and manpower required.

Developing the ability to do that would be much easier for anyone who had the plans to do it.

23

OK, you really need to educate yourself about this. Read The Making of the Atomic Bomb (for starters).
The reason the US only made three bombs to start wasn’t money - it was time. At that point, the process could only produce enough plutonium for 1 bomb every month or so. It rapidly ramped up to 1 every two weeks.

Here’s some back-of-the-evelope calculations on the PU-239 generation capacity at that time:

From here.

During the Manhattan Project, Hanford had 2 reactors of 2GW each. If you figure that 1 gram of plutonium /day requires 1 MW, than those two reactor could make 4 Kg of plutonium/day. If you assume that a 1940’s-era bomb might require 20Kg, than that allowed the US to make 1 bomb every 5 days. If that isn’t designed to produce thousands of bombs, I don’t know what is.

24

OK.

Nothing to say about the numbers and education level of the Russian population circa 1945?

That is not a challenge. If I’m mistaken, I’d genuinely like to know.

Please do not feel like I’m challenging you to write a very long and detailed post. I don’t wish to see you waste a lot of time. I’d be happy with just a brief summary of the status of the literacy level of the Russian people around 1945.

25

Huh?

From Wikipedia, the B reactor was 250MW, the later D and F reactors identical. Maybe later they were ramped up more, but Wikipedia says B went critical Sept. 1944, D in December, and F in February 1945. Even by April 1945 with 3 reactors, they had only delivered enough for the two bombs. hardly “pumping out thousands”.

One of the big secrets after dropping the bomb on Nagasaki was that there would not be another one available for a month. The US dropped two a week apart to make it appear they had an good supply.

Not exactly. Everyone thought there would be a big release of energy, nobody was sure whether that would actually translate into a weapon or a controllable blast or a useless fizzle. One of the scientists was taking bets up to the blast about whether the chain reaction would carry on to consume the whole world (an outside chance, but who could say for sure back then?) Once the Americans showed hat could be done, and how, it took a lot of guesswork out of the process.

the whole theory of nuclei and subatomic particles was only a few decades old. Separating isotopes was completely uncharted territory. Critical mass is still classified information, but somewhere around 10kg is supposedly the guess.

One of the other issues is running the whole thing. Feynman tells about auditing the Kentucky facility and having to instruct the plant managers about not storing the barrels of enriched material too close together, since it could create critical masses. There are a thousand complex details that need serious technical ability. maybe any shop facility can build centrifuges, but running the plants required a decent number of educated managers, technicians, and engineers.

26

From Wikipediia:

The last figure is final power in MW.

27

It looks like you have swallowed US propaganda hook, line and sinker…
I’m no fan of the USSR - I think communism is a bad system (in general), but that doesn’t mean that I can’t recognize their accomplishments.

They arguably had the best tanks in WWII.
Their military airplanes are as good (if not better) than ours.
Their space program was more advanced than ours at the outset.
They have done some of the best R&D on fusion and lasers.
Etc, etc.

They easily had enough talent to develop the A and H bombs.

I mean, look at freakin’ North Korea! Most of their population lives just shy of the Bronze age, the entire world is trying to isolate them, and they still managed to build a crude weapon!

28

Good Information and well presented. I thank you very much. I love to learn this kind of information when it is presented in the way you did that.

Just curious about one thing, though. If the whole world was consumed, how would the winners collect their bet? :slight_smile:

29

I wonder if I should just keep quiet here or risk provoking more dispute. I really am not looking to quarrel. I’m looking to learn about these things and I hope you will accept that.

I have often heard that Russia’s jets are designed for one thing - and that is to protect their cities from incoming invaders.

I had read somewhere that their fighter jets cannot even detect incoming planes that are outside the range of radar. IOW, the only planes they can fight are planes they can see.

Does that seem to fit in with your understanding? I mean their planes may well be best when it comes to defending a city - and if that is their entire concern - then maybe it can be said they have the best planes.

But, it seems to me, that if they are being honest, and they have no interest in attacking other countries - but only in defending themselves, that goes a long way to supporting the concept that they really are peace loving people who do not want to provoke any war.

Consider WW2, their strategy was to trade land for time. They retreated and let the Nazis come into their country until winter hit. IOW they gave up land and gained time until winter came and the Nazis were in a very depleted condition. Then they could fight the Nazis and win - whereas they would have had a hard time winning in the summer.

I certainly don’t want to live under Communism either. But it seems to me that the Russians have been painted with an “aggressor” brush in an unfair way. I would feel even more strongly about that had Stalin not been such a crazy bully.

Stalin was such an interesting guy. On the one hand, he was largely responsible for enabling the Nazis to get ready and prepared and then attack them to start the war. But on the other hand, he was also responsible for trading land for time and winning WW2. Then again, on the other hand, his conduct at the end of the war was to swallow up all those countries that the Allies could not really defend (like Poland, Chzekslovakia, Romania, Hugary, (Lith, Latvia, Estonia), etc. etc. Stalin was a crazy bully and an evil dictator and he almost certainly deserved to be hung for war crimes.

So, if only he had 3 hands, he could have left a better impression in the History books. :slight_smile:

30

I still can’t find any info about the levels of Russian literacy circa 1945 and I’d really love to get an approximate idea - even a guess - if anyone can make one.

31

I’m not sure what you meant by writing “Tehran” followed by a question mark.

Was there something you wanted to know about Tehran? Or the Tehran Conference?

32

Oh, and here’s some more information on the amount of plutonium that Hanford was built to produce:

Note that the initial two reactors produced 500Kg (enough for 25 bombs or so) in the first few years. Those reactors ran for 20 years! Just those two alone accounted for 500 bomb’s worth of plutonium. The site was designed to be expanded out the outset - the third reactor was added only 1 year after the plant went on-line, and the 4th 4 years later.

So, when I say that the US planned *at the outset * to produce thousands of bombs, I mean it. These were no research, 1-bomb-per-year reactors! They were huge installations.

33

Did you check Wikipedia?

34

Well, I’m no fighter jock, but I’m pretty sure our planes can’t do this either…
We use AWACS to detect threats and vector planes to intercept, but I don’t think that AWACS can detect threats over the horizon, either (although the horizon is pretty far when you’re way up high).

If you want to read up about one of their smart guys, here’s Andrei Sakharov.

Note that they treated him even worse than we treated Opje.

Also, if you think the USSR was behind in the sciences, you might want to study up on how worried our government was in the late 50’s, and early 60’s.

35

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-scientists-risked-destroying-the-earth-during-nuclear-tests-and-cern.692/

they may have been the original nerds, but they had a sense of humour.

36

I thank you very much.

I searched for “wikipedia literacy russia” and found this chart:

It shows that currently, Russian levels of literacy are very, very close to 100 percent.

Thank you again.

37

There’s a difference between “literate” and “Masters in Physics”, especially in a country where famines were a regular occurrence. At least they didn’t send the students into the countryside to re-educate them in the concept that book learning was elitist and useless. (Although that brand of insanity did not seem to stop China from making bombs either.)

38

The USSR certainly had the engineering and industrial capability to build the bomb. We know this because they actually did it. The only relevant question is whether they had the capability to design it.

39

I dont think they would have.

Well technically, maybe 5-10 years more. BUT, by then the US would have taken the initiative and declared war on the Soviets and taken them out before they could have finished their bomb.

40

I’m guessing there must have existed some when the USA could have been able to 100% exterminate the USSR without any fear of serious harm from retaliation.

But, the USA never did that and so, I would guess that should serve as proof that America was never looking to exterminate Russia and live in a world without them.