Quotes About Heavy water

General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, the commander in chief of the occupying German Army in Norway, called the Vemork attack "the best coup I have ever seen."1778 Whatever German physicists might be doing with heavy water, they would do it more slowly now.

What do you know about the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory?" "Never heard of it." "It's a big, two-million-pound bottle of heavy water over a mile below ground in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. The whole thing is surrounded by a sixty-foot-thick array of photomultiplier tubes and is suspended in a huge tank of light water.

the physicist John Wheeler once calculated that if one took all the heavy water in all the oceans of the world, one could build a hydrogen bomb that would compress matter at the center so much that a black hole would be created. (Of course, there would be no one left to observe it!)

By Heisenberg's calculations, he was sure to have a self-sustaining reactor if he could only obtain 50 percent more uranium and heavy water. He would get neither.

Norsk Hydro wanted to know the purpose of such a large order, but with experiments using heavy water now labeled SH-200, a high-level military secret, the IG Farben representative offered only silence. Not long after, the Norwegians did find out, from Jacques Allier, what that purpose was: the potential development of an atomic bomb.

The Norsk Hydro director general offered to give France the heavy water on loan, with no price attached, and told Allier that Norsk Hydro would provide France with first claim on what was produced in the future.

The Allies had broken their word. Without consulting the Norwegian government, they had sent a fleet of bombers to strike Vemork. Many civilians had died. Much needless destruction had been wrought, especially on the nitrate plant in Rjukan. That site had never appeared on any target list and only produced fertilizer for Norwegian agriculture. Hardest to accept was the fact that the primary target, the heavy water plant, had not even been damaged, just as Tronstad had warned it would not be.

If production continued, the Allies would likely attack Vemork again. He wanted to move the plant's high-concentration equipment—including all existing stocks of heavy water at every level of concentration—to Germany, where a new plant would be constructed.

The Germans now wanted to increase heavy water production to five thousand kilograms a year, and Paul Harteck, whom Tronstad knew from Cambridge, was on his way to advise on new methods to obtain such levels. Realizing the importance of conveying this information to the British, but with Skylark B in jeopardy, Tronstad found a courier—a man planning to escape by boat to Scotland the following week.

In Farm Hall, a quiet country house outside Cambridge, ten Uranium Club scientists were waiting for a decision to be made about their fate. They had been held there since July 3, 1945, rounded up when the Nazi regime fell, along with their papers, laboratory equipment, and supplies of uranium and heavy water. Among them were Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg, Walther Gerlach, Paul Harteck, and Kurt Diebner.

Mississippi Heavy Water Blues

Because through the heavy water, I heard the sound of an angel calling my name, calling me to the only heaven I wanted.

The best intelligence the British received came through German activity at Vemork. As early as April 1940 Jacques Allier had alerted his British allies to Nazi efforts in uranium research using heavy water from the plant.

They had been told that the plant produced something called heavy water, and that with this mysterious substance the Nazis might be able "to blow up a good part of London.

Within days, Tronstad received final confirmation from Skinnarland's spies that the entire shipment of Vemork's heavy water—except for a few drums of nearly worthless concentrate—was at the bottom of Lake Tinnsjø.