192-633: The Atomic Age , also known as the Atomic Era , is the period of history following the detonation of the first nuclear weapon , The Gadget at the Trinity test in New Mexico on 16 July 1945 during World War II . Although nuclear chain reactions had been hypothesized in 1933 and the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction ( Chicago Pile-1 ) had taken place in December 1942,
384-426: A Privatdozent . Most of the organic chemists at the chemistry institute did not regard Hahn's work—detecting minute traces of isotopes too small to see, weigh or smell through their radioactivity—as real chemistry. One department head remarked that "it is incredible what one gets to be a Privatdozent these days!" The arrangement was difficult for Meitner at first. Women were not yet admitted to universities in
576-595: A Privatdozentin . She was the first woman to receive her habilitation in physics in Prussia, and only the second in Germany after Hedwig Kohn . Since Meitner had already published over 40 papers, she was not required to submit a thesis, but Max von Laue recommended that the requirement for an inaugural lecture not be waived, since he was interested in what she had to say. She therefore gave an inaugural lecture on "Problems of Cosmic Physics". From 1923 to 1933, she taught
768-464: A Maxwell Equation "), was submitted on 20 November 1905 and approved on 28 November. She passed an oral exam from Exner and Boltzmann on 19 December, and was awarded her doctorate on 1 February 1906. She became the second woman to earn a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Vienna, after Olga Steindler who had received her degree in 1903; the third was Selma Freud , who worked in
960-451: A colloquium or tutorial at Friedrich Wilhelm University each semester, and supervised doctoral students at the KWI for Chemistry. In 1926, she became an außerordentlicher Professor (extraordinary professor), the first woman university physics professor in Germany. Her physics section became larger, and she acquired a permanent assistant. Scientists from Germany and around the world came to
1152-513: A misnomer , as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom, just as it does with fusion weapons. In fission weapons, a mass of fissile material ( enriched uranium or plutonium ) is forced into supercriticality —allowing an exponential growth of nuclear chain reactions —either by shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another (the "gun" method) or by compression of a sub-critical sphere or cylinder of fissile material using chemically fueled explosive lenses . The latter approach,
1344-665: A policy of deliberate ambiguity , it does not acknowledge having them. Germany , Italy , Turkey , Belgium , the Netherlands , and Belarus are nuclear weapons sharing states. South Africa is the only country to have independently developed and then renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons aims to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, but there are different views of its effectiveness. There are two basic types of nuclear weapons: those that derive
1536-654: A tantalum pentafluoride ( TaF 5 ) carrier to the other 0.5 grams, which she dissolved in hydrogen fluoride ( HF ). She then boiled it in concentrated sulfuric acid ( H 2 SO 4 ), precipitated what was believed to be element 91, and verified that it was an alpha emitter. Hahn came home on leave in April, and together they devised a series of tests to eliminate other sources of alpha particles. The only known ones with similar chemical behaviour were lead-210 (which decays to alpha emitter polonium-210 via bismuth-210 ) and thorium-230 . For this more pitchblende
1728-418: A "burst" of the atomic nuclei had occurred. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch gave a full theoretical interpretation and named the process "nuclear fission". The first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place at Chicago Pile-1 in December 1942 under the leadership of Enrico Fermi . In 1945, the pocketbook The Atomic Age heralded the untapped atomic power in everyday objects and depicted
1920-475: A (cancelled) nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Kenneth Nichols , a consultant for the Connecticut Yankee and Yankee Rowe nuclear power stations, wrote that while considered "experimental" and not expected to be competitive with coal and oil, they "became competitive because of inflation ... and the large increase in price of coal and oil." He wrote that for nuclear power stations the capital cost
2112-528: A barium nucleus was much larger. They considered the liquid-drop model of the nucleus that had been proposed by George Gamow : perhaps it was possible for a drop to become elongated and then divide itself in two. Frisch later wrote: At that point we both sat down on a tree trunk (all that discussion had taken place while we walked through the wood in the snow, I with my skis on, Lise Meitner making good her claim that she could walk just as fast without), and started to calculate on scraps of paper. The charge of
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#17327685320622304-600: A combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb ), producing a nuclear explosion . Both bomb types release large quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter . The first test of a fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to 20,000 tons of TNT (84 TJ ). The first thermonuclear ("hydrogen") bomb test released energy approximately equal to 10 million tons of TNT (42 PJ). Nuclear bombs have had yields between 10 tons TNT (the W54 ) and 50 megatons for
2496-696: A conference—called for in the manifesto—in Pugwash, Nova Scotia , Eaton's birthplace. This conference was to be the first of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs , held in July 1957. By the 1960s, steps were taken to limit both the proliferation of nuclear weapons to other countries and the environmental effects of nuclear testing . The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) restricted all nuclear testing to underground nuclear testing , to prevent contamination from nuclear fallout, whereas
2688-800: A congress in Switzerland, with all expenses paid. Carl Bosch still said that she could remain at the KWI for Chemistry, but by May she was aware that the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture was looking into her case. On 9 May, she decided to accept Bohr's invitation to go to Copenhagen, where Frisch worked, but when she went to the Danish consulate to get a travel visa , she was told that Denmark no longer recognised her Austrian passport as valid. She could not leave for Denmark, Switzerland or any other country. Bohr came to Berlin in June, and
2880-412: A diamond ring he had inherited from his mother in case of emergency; she took only 10 marks in her purse (equivalent to €40 in 2021). She then spent the night at Hahn's house. The next morning Meitner met Coster at the railway station, where they pretended to have met by chance. They travelled on a lightly used line to Bad Nieuweschans railway station on the border, which they crossed without incident;
3072-458: A faster and less vulnerable attack, the development of long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) has given some nations the ability to plausibly deliver missiles anywhere on the globe with a high likelihood of success. More advanced systems, such as multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), can launch multiple warheads at different targets from one missile, reducing
3264-468: A feeling of nuclear optimism emerged in the 1950s in which it was believed that all power generators in the future would be atomic in nature. The atomic bomb would render all conventional explosives obsolete, and nuclear power plants would do the same for power sources such as coal and oil . There was a general feeling that everything would use a nuclear power source of some sort, in a positive and productive way, from irradiating food to preserve it, to
3456-614: A few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them. The only countries known to have detonated nuclear weapons—and acknowledge possessing them—are (chronologically by date of first test) the United States , the Soviet Union (succeeded as a nuclear power by Russia ), the United Kingdom , France , China , India , Pakistan , and North Korea . Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons, though, in
3648-555: A fission bomb to initiate them. Such a device might provide a simpler path to thermonuclear weapons than one that required the development of fission weapons first, and pure fusion weapons would create significantly less nuclear fallout than other thermonuclear weapons because they would not disperse fission products. In 1998, the United States Department of Energy divulged that the United States had, "...made
3840-421: A fusion weapon as of January 2016 , though this claim is disputed. Thermonuclear weapons are considered much more difficult to successfully design and execute than primitive fission weapons. Almost all of the nuclear weapons deployed today use the thermonuclear design because it results in an explosion hundreds of times stronger than that of a fission bomb of similar weight. Thermonuclear bombs work by using
4032-572: A future where fossil fuels would go unused. One science writer, David Dietz, wrote that instead of filling the gas tank of your car two or three times a week, you will travel for a year on a pellet of atomic energy the size of a vitamin pill. Glenn T. Seaborg , who chaired the Atomic Energy Commission , wrote "there will be nuclear powered earth-to-moon shuttles, nuclear powered artificial hearts, plutonium heated swimming pools for SCUBA divers, and much more". The phrase Atomic Age
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#17327685320624224-478: A junior assistant in charge of its radiochemistry section, the first laboratory of its kind in Germany. The job came with the title of "professor" and a salary of 5,000 marks per annum (equivalent to €29,000 in 2021). Unlike the universities, the privately funded KWI had no policies excluduing women, but Meitner worked without pay as a "guest" in Hahn's section. She may have encountered financial difficulties after
4416-567: A lucrative offer of employment because it required political training and Nazi Party membership, and resigned from the Society of German Chemists when it became part of the Nazi German Labour Front rather than become a member of a Nazi-controlled organisation. As a result, he could neither work in the chemical industry nor receive his habilitation. Meitner persuaded Hahn to hire him as an assistant. Soon he would be credited as
4608-472: A nation's economic electronics-based infrastructure. Because the effect is most effectively produced by high altitude nuclear detonations (by military weapons delivered by air, though ground bursts also produce EMP effects over a localized area), it can produce damage to electronics over a wide, even continental, geographical area. Research has been done into the possibility of pure fusion bombs : nuclear weapons that consist of fusion reactions without requiring
4800-537: A new nuclear strategy, one that is distinct from that which gave relative stability during the Cold War. Since 1996, the United States has had a policy of allowing the targeting of its nuclear weapons at terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction . Robert Gallucci argues that although traditional deterrence is not an effective approach toward terrorist groups bent on causing a nuclear catastrophe, Gallucci believes that "the United States should instead consider
4992-435: A new way of detecting radioactive substances. They soon discovered two more new isotopes, bismuth-211 and thallium-207. Meitner was particularly interested in beta particles. By this time, they were known to be electrons . Alpha particles were emitted with characteristic energy, and she expected that this would be true of beta particles too. Hahn and Meitner carefully measured the absorption of beta particles by aluminium, but
5184-425: A nuclear war between two nations would result in mutual annihilation. From this point of view, the significance of nuclear weapons is to deter war because any nuclear war would escalate out of mutual distrust and fear, resulting in mutually assured destruction . This threat of national, if not global, destruction has been a strong motivation for anti-nuclear weapons activism. Critics from the peace movement and within
5376-411: A nuclear weapon from another country by threatening nuclear retaliation is known as the strategy of nuclear deterrence . The goal in deterrence is to always maintain a second strike capability (the ability of a country to respond to a nuclear attack with one of its own) and potentially to strive for first strike status (the ability to destroy an enemy's nuclear forces before they could retaliate). During
5568-465: A nuclear weapon is a gravity bomb dropped from aircraft ; this was the method used by the United States against Japan in 1945. This method places few restrictions on the size of the weapon. It does, however, limit attack range, response time to an impending attack, and the number of weapons that a country can field at the same time. With miniaturization, nuclear bombs can be delivered by both strategic bombers and tactical fighter-bombers . This method
5760-409: A nuclear weapon to its target is an important factor affecting both nuclear weapon design and nuclear strategy . The design, development, and maintenance of delivery systems are among the most expensive parts of a nuclear weapons program; they account, for example, for 57% of the financial resources spent by the United States on nuclear weapons projects since 1940. The simplest method for delivering
5952-433: A nuclear weapon with suitable materials (such as cobalt or gold ) creates a weapon known as a salted bomb . This device can produce exceptionally large quantities of long-lived radioactive contamination . It has been conjectured that such a device could serve as a "doomsday weapon" because such a large quantity of radioactivities with half-lives of decades, lifted into the stratosphere where winds would distribute it around
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6144-448: A paper ready for publication. To speed the process, they decided to submit a one-page note to Nature . At this point, the only evidence that they had was the barium. Logically, if barium was formed, the other element must be krypton , but Hahn had mistakenly believed that the atomic masses had to add up to 239 rather than the atomic numbers adding up to 92, and thought it was masurium ( technetium ), and so did not check for it: Over
6336-399: A physical separation method known as radioactive recoil , in which a daughter nucleus is forcefully ejected as it recoils at the moment of decay. While Hahn was more concerned with discovering new elements (now known to be isotopes), Meitner was more interested in understanding their radiation. She observed that radioactive recoil, which had been discovered by Harriet Brooks in 1904, could be
6528-421: A policy of expanded deterrence, which focuses not solely on the would-be nuclear terrorists but on those states that may deliberately transfer or inadvertently leak nuclear weapons and materials to them. By threatening retaliation against those states, the United States may be able to deter that which it cannot physically prevent.". Graham Allison makes a similar case, arguing that the key to expanded deterrence
6720-640: A proton mass was just equivalent to 200 MeV. So here was the source for that energy; it all fitted! Meitner and Frisch had correctly interpreted Hahn's results to mean that the nucleus of uranium had split roughly in half. The first two reactions that the Berlin group had observed were light elements created by the breakup of uranium nuclei; the third, the 23-minute one, was a decay into the real element 93. On returning to Copenhagen, Frisch informed Bohr, who slapped his forehead and exclaimed "What idiots we have been!" Bohr promised not to say anything until they had
6912-448: A range of social problems, from the nuclear arms race to nuclear meltdowns , and the unresolved difficulties of bomb plant cleanup and civilian plant waste disposal and decommissioning. Since 1973, reactor orders declined sharply as electricity demand fell and construction costs rose. Many orders and partially completed plants were cancelled . By the late 1970s, nuclear power had suffered a remarkable international destabilization, as it
7104-405: A recurring theme ever since. But "Soddy also saw that atomic energy could possibly be used to create terrible new weapons". The concept of a nuclear chain reaction was hypothesized in 1933, shortly after James Chadwick 's discovery of the neutron . Only a few years later, in December 1938 nuclear fission was discovered by Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann . Hahn understood that
7296-500: A senior Pentagon official, remarked, "We now find ourselves in nothing short of a new nuclear age." He attributed this development to an "unprecedented mix of multiple revisionist nuclear challengers who are uninterested in arms control or risk-reduction efforts, each rapidly modernizing and expanding their nuclear arsenals." A large anti-nuclear demonstration was held on 6 May 1979, in Washington D.C., when 125,000 people including
7488-628: A sense of nostalgia or naïveté and is considered by many to have ended with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, though the term continues to be used by many historians to describe the era following the conclusion of the Second World War. Atomic energy and weapons continue to have a strong effect on world politics in the 21st century. The nuclear power industry has improved the safety and performance of reactors and has proposed new safer (but generally untested) reactor designs, but there
7680-558: A series of long-distance phone calls, Meitner and Frisch came up with a simple experiment to bolster their claim: to measure the recoil of the fission fragments, using a Geiger counter with the threshold set above that of the alpha particles. Frisch conducted the experiment on 13 January, and found the pulses caused by the reaction just as they had predicted. He decided he needed a name for the newly discovered nuclear process. He spoke to William A. Arnold, an American biologist working with George de Hevesy , and asked him what biologists called
7872-447: A significant portion of their energy from fission reactions used to "trigger" fusion reactions, and fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions. Only six countries—the United States , Russia , the United Kingdom , China , France , and India —have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. Whether India has detonated a "true" multi-staged thermonuclear weapon is controversial. North Korea claims to have tested
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8064-431: A solution of barium bromide, at each step the fraction drawn off would contain less radium than the one before. However, they found no difference between each of the fractions. In case their process was faulty in some way, they verified it with known isotopes of radium; the process was fine. On 19 December, Hahn wrote to Meitner, informing her that the radium isotopes behaved chemically like barium. Anxious to finish up before
8256-550: A substantial investment" in the past to develop pure fusion weapons, but that, "The U.S. does not have and is not developing a pure fusion weapon", and that, "No credible design for a pure fusion weapon resulted from the DOE investment". Nuclear isomers provide a possible pathway to fissionless fusion bombs. These are naturally occurring isotopes ( Hf being a prominent example) which exist in an elevated energy state. Mechanisms to release this energy as bursts of gamma radiation (as in
8448-489: A third collaborator on the papers they produced, and would sometimes even be listed first. Between 1933 and 1935, Meitner published exclusively in the journal Naturwissenschaften , as its editor Arnold Berliner was Jewish, and he continued to accept submissions from Jewish scientists. This generated a boycott of the publication, and in August 1935 the publisher, Springer-Verlag , fired Berliner. After Chadwick discovered
8640-507: A thoroughgoing breakup seems very difficult to me, but in nuclear physics we have experienced so many surprises, that one cannot unconditionally say: 'It is impossible.'" Meitner dismissed the possibility that Hahn's identification of barium was in error; her faith in Hahn's expertise as a chemist was absolute. Meitner and Frisch then considered how it could be possible. Previous attempts at atom splitting had never had enough energy to chip away more than individual protons or alpha particles, but
8832-522: A travel visa had been difficult with her invalid Austrian passport. Hahn joined her in Copenhagen on 13 November, and had discussions about the uranium research with Meitner, Bohr and Otto Robert Frisch. Hahn and Strassmann isolated the three radium isotopes (verified by their half-lives) and used fractional crystallisation to separate it from its barium carrier by adding barium bromide crystals in four steps. Since radium precipitates preferentially in
9024-444: A uranium nucleus, we found, was indeed large enough to overcome the effect of the surface tension almost completely; so the uranium nucleus might indeed resemble a very wobbly unstable drop, ready to divide itself at the slightest provocation, such as the impact of a single neutron. But there was another problem. After separation, the two drops would be driven apart by their mutual electric repulsion and would acquire high speed and hence
9216-506: A very different note to Hahn, reporting that: "The process must be neutron capture by uranium-238, which leads to three isomeric nuclei of uranium-239. This result is very difficult to reconcile with current concepts of the nucleus." With the Anschluss , Germany's annexation of Austria on 12 March 1938, Meitner lost her Austrian citizenship. Niels Bohr extended an offer to lecture in Copenhagen, and Paul Scherrer invited her to attend
9408-472: A very large energy, about 200 MeV in all; where could that energy come from? Fortunately Lise Meitner remembered the empirical formula for computing the masses of nuclei and worked out that the two nuclei formed by the division of a uranium nucleus together would be lighter than the original uranium nucleus by about one-fifth the mass of a proton. Now whenever mass disappears energy is created, according to Einstein 's formula E = mc , and one-fifth of
9600-420: Is a thermonuclear weapon that yields a relatively small explosion but a relatively large amount of neutron radiation . Such a weapon could, according to tacticians, be used to cause massive biological casualties while leaving inanimate infrastructure mostly intact and creating minimal fallout. Because high energy neutrons are capable of penetrating dense matter, such as tank armor, neutron warheads were procured in
9792-456: Is analogous to identifying a criminal by fingerprints. "The goal would be twofold: first, to deter leaders of nuclear states from selling weapons to terrorists by holding them accountable for any use of their weapons; second, to give leaders every incentive to tightly secure their nuclear weapons and materials." According to the Pentagon's June 2019 " Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations " of
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#17327685320629984-403: Is coming up with ways of tracing nuclear material to the country that forged the fissile material. "After a nuclear bomb detonates, nuclear forensics cops would collect debris samples and send them to a laboratory for radiological analysis. By identifying unique attributes of the fissile material, including its impurities and contaminants, one could trace the path back to its origin." The process
10176-481: Is for the purpose of achieving different yields for different situations , and in manipulating design elements to attempt to minimize weapon size, radiation hardness or requirements for special materials, especially fissile fuel or tritium. Some nuclear weapons are designed for special purposes; most of these are for non-strategic (decisively war-winning) purposes and are referred to as tactical nuclear weapons . The neutron bomb purportedly conceived by Sam Cohen
10368-503: Is no evidence that it is feasible beyond the military domain. However, the U.S. Air Force funded studies of the physics of antimatter in the Cold War , and began considering its possible use in weapons, not just as a trigger, but as the explosive itself. A fourth generation nuclear weapon design is related to, and relies upon, the same principle as antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion . Most variation in nuclear weapon design
10560-782: Is no guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built and operated correctly. Mistakes do occur, and natural disasters can effect nuclear power plants, such as the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima plant in Japan. According to UBS AG, the Fukushima accident cast doubt on whether even an advanced economy like Japan can master nuclear safety. Catastrophic scenarios involving terrorist attacks are also conceivable. An interdisciplinary team from MIT has estimated that if nuclear power use tripled from 2005 to 2055 (2%–7%), at least four serious nuclear accidents would be expected in that period. In September 2012, in reaction to
10752-409: Is not a fusion bomb. In the boosted bomb, the neutrons produced by the fusion reactions serve primarily to increase the efficiency of the fission bomb. There are two types of boosted fission bomb: internally boosted, in which a deuterium-tritium mixture is injected into the bomb core, and externally boosted, in which concentric shells of lithium-deuteride and depleted uranium are layered on the outside of
10944-490: Is not clear that this has ever been implemented, and their plausible use in nuclear weapons is a matter of dispute. The other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large proportion of its energy in nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs ), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen ( deuterium and tritium ). All such weapons derive
11136-564: Is the major cost factor over the life of the plant, hence "antinukes" try to increase costs and building time with changing regulations and lengthy hearings, so that "it takes almost twice as long to build a (U.S.-designed boiling-water or pressurised water) atomic power plant in the United States as in France, Japan, Taiwan or South Korea." French pressurised-water nuclear plants produce 60% of their electric power and have proven to be much cheaper than oil or coal. Fear of possible atomic attack from
11328-454: Is the primary means of nuclear weapons delivery; the majority of U.S. nuclear warheads, for example, are free-fall gravity bombs, namely the B61 , which is being improved upon to this day. Preferable from a strategic point of view is a nuclear weapon mounted on a missile , which can use a ballistic trajectory to deliver the warhead over the horizon. Although even short-range missiles allow for
11520-461: Is what she used. Her father was one of the first Jewish lawyers admitted to practice in Austria. She had two older siblings, Gisela and Auguste (Gusti), and four younger: Moriz (Fritz), Carola (Lola), Frida and Walter; all ultimately pursued an advanced education. Her father was a freethinker , and she was brought up as such. As an adult, she converted to Christianity, following Lutheranism , and
11712-668: The Akademisches Gymnasium . Four out of the fourteen women passed, including Meitner and Henriette Boltzmann, the daughter of physicist Ludwig Boltzmann . Meitner entered the University of Vienna in October 1901. She was particularly inspired by Ludwig Boltzmann and often spoke with enthusiasm about his lectures. Her dissertation was supervised by Franz Exner and his assistant Hans Benndorf . Her thesis, titled Prüfung einer Formel Maxwells ("Examination of
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#173276853206211904-573: The Cold War arms race . It was the largest anti-nuclear protest and the largest political demonstration in American history. International Day of Nuclear Disarmament protests were held on 20 June 1983, at 50 sites across the United States. In 1986, hundreds of people walked from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. , in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament . There were many Nevada Desert Experience protests and peace camps at
12096-432: The Cold War , mutual assured destruction , nuclear proliferation , the risk of nuclear disaster (potentially as extreme as anthropogenic global nuclear winter ), as well as beneficial civilian applications in nuclear medicine . It is no easy matter to fully segregate peaceful uses of nuclear technology from military or terrorist uses (such as the fabrication of dirty bombs from radioactive waste ), which complicated
12288-528: The German state of the Kingdom of Prussia , which included Berlin. Meitner was allowed to work in the wood shop, which had its own external entrance, but she could not enter the rest of the institute, including Hahn's laboratory space upstairs. If she wanted to go to the toilet, she had to use one at the restaurant down the street. The following year, women were admitted to Prussian universities, and Fischer lifted
12480-539: The Industrial Revolution . This included even cars, leading Ford Motor Company to display the Ford Nucleon concept car to the public in 1958. There was also the promise of golf balls which could always be found and nuclear-powered aircraft , which the U.S. federal government even spent US$ 1.5 billion researching. Nuclear policymaking became almost a collective technocratic fantasy, or at least
12672-692: The International Federation of University Women had been flooded with applications for support from Austria. On 27 June, Meitner received an offer of a one-year position at Manne Siegbahn's new Manne Siegbahn Laboratory [ sv ] in Stockholm , then under construction, which would be devoted to nuclear physics, and she decided to accept it. But on 4 July she learned that academics would no longer be granted permission to travel abroad. Through Bohr in Copenhagen, Peter Debye communicated with Coster and Fokker, and they approached
12864-573: The Netherlands Ministry of Education with an appeal to allow Meitner to come to the Netherlands. As foreigners were not allowed to work for pay, an appointment as a non-salaried privaat-docente was required. Wander Johannes de Haas and Anton Eduard van Arkel arranged for one at Leiden University . Coster also spoke to the head of the border guards, who assured him that Meitner would be admitted. A friend of Coster, E. H. Ebels,
13056-552: The Shippingport reactor went online in 1957 it produced electricity at a cost roughly ten times that of coal-fired generation. Scientists at the AEC's own Brookhaven Laboratory "wrote a 1958 report describing accident scenarios in which 3,000 people would die immediately, with another 40,000 injured". However Shippingport was an experimental reactor using highly enriched uranium (unlike most power reactors) and originally intended for
13248-695: The Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test in 1962, an unexpected effect was produced which is called a nuclear electromagnetic pulse . This is an intense flash of electromagnetic energy produced by a rain of high-energy electrons which in turn are produced by a nuclear bomb's gamma rays. This flash of energy can permanently destroy or disrupt electronic equipment if insufficiently shielded. It has been proposed to use this effect to disable an enemy's military and civilian infrastructure as an adjunct to other nuclear or conventional military operations. By itself it could as well be useful to terrorists for crippling
13440-558: The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968) attempted to place restrictions on the types of activities signatories could participate in, with the goal of allowing the transference of non-military nuclear technology to member countries without fear of proliferation. Lise Meitner Lise Meitner ( / ˈ l iː z ə ˈ m aɪ t n ər / LEE -zə MYTE -nər , German: [ˈliːzə ˈmaɪtnɐ] ; born Elise Meitner , 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968)
13632-554: The Tsar Bomba (see TNT equivalent ). A thermonuclear weapon weighing as little as 600 pounds (270 kg) can release energy equal to more than 1.2 megatonnes of TNT (5.0 PJ). A nuclear device no larger than a conventional bomb can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation . Since they are weapons of mass destruction , the proliferation of nuclear weapons is a focus of international relations policy. Nuclear weapons have been deployed twice in war , both by
13824-676: The Tsar Bomba of the USSR, which released an energy equivalent of over 50 megatons of TNT (210 PJ), was a three-stage weapon. Most thermonuclear weapons are considerably smaller than this, due to practical constraints from missile warhead space and weight requirements. In the early 1950s the Livermore Laboratory in the United States had plans for the testing of two massive bombs, Gnomon and Sundial , 1 gigaton of TNT and 10 gigatons of TNT respectively. Fusion reactions do not create fission products, and thus contribute far less to
14016-424: The hafnium controversy ) have been proposed as possible triggers for conventional thermonuclear reactions. Antimatter , which consists of particles resembling ordinary matter particles in most of their properties but having opposite electric charge , has been considered as a trigger mechanism for nuclear weapons. A major obstacle is the difficulty of producing antimatter in large enough quantities, and there
14208-553: The head of government or head of state . Despite controls and regulations governing nuclear weapons, there is an inherent danger of "accidents, mistakes, false alarms, blackmail, theft, and sabotage". In the late 1940s, lack of mutual trust prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from making progress on arms control agreements. The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on July 9, 1955, by Bertrand Russell in
14400-494: The neutron in 1932, Irène Curie and Frédéric Joliot irradiated aluminium foil with alpha particles, and found that this results in a short-lived radioactive isotope of phosphorus . They noted that positron emission continued after the irradiation ceased. Not only had they discovered a new form of radioactive decay, they had transmuted an element into a hitherto unknown radioactive isotope of another, thereby inducing radioactivity where there had been none before. Radiochemistry
14592-436: The tropopause into the stratosphere , where the calm non-turbulent winds permit the debris to travel great distances from the burst, eventually settling and unpredictably contaminating areas far removed from the target of the explosion. There are other types of nuclear weapons as well. For example, a boosted fission weapon is a fission bomb that increases its explosive yield through a small number of fusion reactions, but it
14784-537: The "implosion" method, is more sophisticated and more efficient (smaller, less massive, and requiring less of the expensive fissile fuel) than the former. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons (500 kilotons ) of TNT (4.2 to 2.1 × 10 GJ). All fission reactions generate fission products ,
14976-600: The 1950s to be with family members. In mid-1938, Meitner and chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry demonstrated that isotopes of barium could be formed by neutron bombardment of uranium . Meitner was informed of their findings by Hahn, and in late December, with her nephew, fellow physicist Otto Robert Frisch , she worked out the physics of this process by correctly interpreting Hahn and Strassmann's experimental data. On 13 January 1939, Frisch replicated
15168-586: The 1980s (though not deployed in Europe) for use as tactical payloads for US Army artillery shells (200 mm W79 and 155 mm W82 ) and short range missile forces. Soviet authorities announced similar intentions for neutron warhead deployment in Europe; indeed, they claimed to have originally invented the neutron bomb, but their deployment on USSR tactical nuclear forces is unverifiable. A type of nuclear explosive most suitable for use by ground special forces
15360-415: The American system of private enterprise, showcase the expertise of scientists, increase personal living standards, and defend the democratic lifestyle against communism". Some media reports predicted that thanks to the giant nuclear power stations of the near future electricity would soon become much cheaper and that electricity meters would be removed, because power would be " too cheap to meter ." When
15552-461: The Atomic Age, the U.S. initiated Project Plowshare , involving "peaceful nuclear explosions". The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman announced that Plowshare was intended to "highlight the peaceful applications of nuclear explosive devices and thereby create a climate of world opinion that is more favorable to weapons development and tests". Plowshare "was named directly from
15744-695: The Bible itself, specifically Micah 4:3, which states that God will beat swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks, so that no country could lift up weapons against another". Proposed uses included widening the Panama Canal , constructing a new sea-level waterway through Nicaragua nicknamed the Pan-Atomic Canal, cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and connecting inland river systems. Other proposals involved blasting caverns for water, natural gas, and petroleum storage. It
15936-681: The Christmas break, Hahn and Strassmann submitted their findings to Naturwissenschaften on 22 December without waiting for Meitner to reply. Hahn concluded the paper with: "As chemists... we should substitute the symbols Ba, La, Ce for Ra, Ac, Th. As 'nuclear chemists' fairly close to physics we cannot yet bring ourselves to take this step which contradicts all previous experience in physics." Frisch normally celebrated Christmas with Meitner in Berlin, but in 1938 she accepted an invitation from Eva von Bahr to spend it with her family at Kungälv , and Meitner asked Frisch to join her there. Meitner received
16128-425: The Cold War, policy and military theorists considered the sorts of policies that might prevent a nuclear attack, and they developed game theory models that could lead to stable deterrence conditions. Different forms of nuclear weapons delivery (see above) allow for different types of nuclear strategies. The goals of any strategy are generally to make it difficult for an enemy to launch a pre-emptive strike against
16320-606: The Frisch-Meitner publication of 11 February 1939, had electrifying effects on the scientific community. In 1940 Frisch and Rudolf Peierls produced the Frisch–Peierls memorandum , which established that an atomic explosion could be generated. Despite the many honours that Meitner received in her lifetime, she did not receive the Nobel Prize while it was awarded to Otto Hahn for the discovery of nuclear fission. She
16512-719: The Fukushima disaster, Japan announced that it would completely phase out nuclear power by 2030, although the likelihood of this goal became unlikely during the subsequent Abe administration . Germany planned to completely phase out nuclear energy by 2022 but was still using 11.9% in 2021. In 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine , the United Kingdom pledged to build up to 8 new reactors to reduce their reliance on gas and oil and hopes that 25% of all energy produced will be by nuclear means. On August 1, 2024, Vipin Narang ,
16704-782: The German border guards may have thought that Meitner was the wife of a professor. A telegram from Pauli informed Coster that he was now "as famous for the abduction of Lise Meitner as for the discovery of hafnium". Meitner learned on 26 July that Sweden had granted her permission to enter on her Austrian passport, and two days later she flew to Copenhagen, where she was greeted by Frisch, and stayed with Niels and Margrethe Bohr at their holiday house in Tisvilde . On 1 August she travelled by train and steamship to Göteborg station in Sweden, where she
16896-494: The Joint Chiefs of Staffs website Publication, "Integration of nuclear weapons employment with conventional and special operations forces is essential to the success of any mission or operation." Because they are weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation and possible use of nuclear weapons are important issues in international relations and diplomacy. In most countries, the use of nuclear force can only be authorized by
17088-444: The KWI for Chemistry to conduct research under her supervision. In 1930, Meitner taught a seminar on "Questions of Atomic Physics and Atomic Chemistry" with Leó Szilárd . Meitner had a Wilson cloud chamber constructed at the KWI for Chemistry, the first one in Berlin, and with her student Kurt Freitag studied the tracks of alpha particles that did not collide with a nucleus. With her assistant Kurt Philipp she later used it to take
17280-646: The Nevada Test Site during the 1980s and 1990s. On May 1, 2005, 40,000 anti-nuclear/anti-war protesters marched past the United Nations in New York, 60 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . This was the largest anti-nuclear rally in the U.S. for several decades. Nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions , either fission (fission bomb) or
17472-610: The Nobel Committee's proceedings became public, and the comprehensive biography of Meitner published in 1996 by Ruth Lewin Sime took advantage of this unsealing to reconsider Meitner's exclusion. In a 1997 article in the American Physical Society journal Physics Today , Sime and her colleagues Elisabeth Crawford and Mark Walker wrote: It appears that Lise Meitner did not share the 1944 prize because
17664-603: The Nobel Prize archive, she was nominated 19 times for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry between 1924 and 1948, and 30 times for the Nobel Prize in Physics between 1937 and 1967. Despite not having been awarded the Nobel Prize, Meitner was invited to attend the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1962. She received many other honours, including the posthumous naming of element 109 meitnerium in 1997. Meitner
17856-503: The Nuclear Age (1961) that mere possession of a nuclear arsenal was enough to ensure deterrence, and thus concluded that the spread of nuclear weapons could increase international stability . Some prominent neo-realist scholars, such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer , have argued, along the lines of Gallois, that some forms of nuclear proliferation would decrease the likelihood of total war , especially in troubled regions of
18048-674: The Reich Ministry of Education insisted they remain in Germany. Meitner was also concerned about her family in Austria. One of her first actions in Sweden was to apply for a Swedish immigration permit for Gusti and her husband Justinian (Jutz) Frisch. Hahn selected Josef Mattauch to replace her as head of the physics section, and went to Vienna to offer him the job. While there he dined with Meitner's sisters Gusti and Gisela and their husbands Jutz Frisch and Karl Lion on 9 November. The next day Gusti informed him that Frisch had been arrested. That day, Meitner arrived in Copenhagen; arranging
18240-515: The Soviet Union caused U.S. school children to participate in "duck and cover" civil defense drills. During the 1950s, Las Vegas earned the nickname "Atomic City" for becoming a hotspot where tourists would gather to watch above-ground nuclear weapons tests taking place at Nevada Test Site . Following the detonation of Able, one of the first atomic bombs dropped at the Nevada Test Site, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce began advertising
18432-507: The Trinity test and the ensuing bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II represented the first large-scale use of nuclear technology and ushered in profound changes in sociopolitical thinking and the course of technological development. While atomic power was promoted for a time as the epitome of progress and modernity, entering into the nuclear power era also entailed frightful implications of nuclear warfare ,
18624-664: The USAAF detonated a plutonium implosion-type fission bomb nicknamed " Fat Man " over the Japanese city of Nagasaki . These bombings caused injuries that resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel . The ethics of these bombings and their role in Japan's surrender are to this day, still subjects of debate . Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , nuclear weapons have been detonated over 2,000 times for testing and demonstration. Only
18816-777: The USAF AIR-2 Genie , the AIM-26 Falcon and US Army Nike Hercules . Missile interceptors such as the Sprint and the Spartan also used small nuclear warheads (optimized to produce neutron or X-ray flux) but were for use against enemy strategic warheads. Other small, or tactical, nuclear weapons were deployed by naval forces for use primarily as antisubmarine weapons. These included nuclear depth bombs or nuclear armed torpedoes. Nuclear mines for use on land or at sea are also possibilities. The system used to deliver
19008-527: The United States against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 during World War II . Nuclear weapons have only twice been used in warfare, both times by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II . On August 6, 1945, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) detonated a uranium gun-type fission bomb nicknamed " Little Boy " over the Japanese city of Hiroshima ; three days later, on August 9,
19200-526: The United States. Small, two-man portable tactical weapons (somewhat misleadingly referred to as suitcase bombs ), such as the Special Atomic Demolition Munition , have been developed, although the difficulty of combining sufficient yield with portability limits their military utility. Nuclear warfare strategy is a set of policies that deal with preventing or fighting a nuclear war. The policy of trying to prevent an attack by
19392-462: The atmosphere. These were ignored and downplayed until the program was terminated in 1977, due in large part to public opposition, after $ 770 million had been spent on the project. French advocates of nuclear power developed an aesthetic vision of nuclear technology as art to bolster support for the technology. Leclerq compares the nuclear cooling tower to some of the grandest architectural monuments of Western culture: The age in which we live has, for
19584-487: The basement to use as a laboratory. Hahn equipped it with electroscopes to measure alpha and beta particles and gamma rays . It was not possible to conduct research in the wood shop, but Alfred Stock , the head of the inorganic chemistry department, let Hahn use a space in one of his two private laboratories. Like Meitner, Hahn was unpaid, and lived off an allowance from his father, although somewhat larger than hers. He completed his habilitation in early 1907, and became
19776-485: The chance of a successful missile defense . Today, missiles are most common among systems designed for delivery of nuclear weapons. Making a warhead small enough to fit onto a missile, though, can be difficult. Tactical weapons have involved the most variety of delivery types, including not only gravity bombs and missiles but also artillery shells, land mines , and nuclear depth charges and torpedoes for anti-submarine warfare . An atomic mortar has been tested by
19968-468: The continued search for harmony. In 1973, the AEC predicted that, by the turn of the 21st century 1,000 reactors would be producing electricity for homes and businesses across the U.S. But after 1973, reactor orders declined sharply as electricity demand fell and construction costs rose. Many orders and partially completed plants were cancelled. Nuclear power has proved controversial since the 1970s. Highly radioactive materials may overheat and escape from
20160-438: The continuous spectrum was caused by the emission of a second particle during beta decay, one that had no electric charge and little or no rest mass . The idea was taken up by Enrico Fermi in his 1934 theory of beta decay , and he gave the name " neutrino " to the hypothetical neutral particle. At the time there was scant hope of detecting neutrinos, but in 1956 Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines did just that. Adolf Hitler
20352-435: The creation of nuclear fallout than fission reactions, but because all thermonuclear weapons contain at least one fission stage, and many high-yield thermonuclear devices have a final fission stage, thermonuclear weapons can generate at least as much nuclear fallout as fission-only weapons. Furthermore, high yield thermonuclear explosions (most dangerously ground bursts) have the force to lift radioactive debris upwards past
20544-582: The death of her father in 1910. Fearing she might return to Vienna, Planck appointed her as his assistant at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in the Friedrich Wilhelm University. As such, she marked his students' papers. It was her first paid position. Assistant was the lowest rung on the academic ladder, and Meitner was the first female scientific assistant in Prussia. Proud officials presented Meitner to Kaiser Wilhelm II at
20736-455: The decision process. The prospect of mutually assured destruction might not deter an enemy who expects to die in the confrontation. Further, if the initial act is from a stateless terrorist instead of a sovereign nation, there might not be a nation or specific target to retaliate against. It has been argued, especially after the September 11, 2001, attacks , that this complication calls for
20928-418: The development of nuclear medicine . There would be an age of peace and plenty in which atomic energy would "provide the power needed to desalinate water for the thirsty, irrigate the deserts for the hungry, and fuel interstellar travel deep into outer space". This use would render the Atomic Age as significant a step in technological progress as the first smelting of bronze , of iron , or the commencement of
21120-516: The development of a global nuclear-power export industry right from the outset. In 1973, concerning a flourishing nuclear power industry, the United States Atomic Energy Commission predicted that by the turn of the 21st century, 1,000 reactors would be producing electricity for homes and businesses across the U.S. However, the "nuclear dream" fell far short of what was promised because nuclear technology produced
21312-401: The director of IG Farben , a major sponsor of the KWI for Chemistry, assured Meitner that her position there was safe. Although Hahn and Meitner remained in charge, their assistants, Otto Erbacher and Kurt Philipp respectively, who were both NSDAP members, were given increasing influence over the day-to-day running of the institute. Others were not so fortunate; her nephew Otto Robert Frisch
21504-420: The discovery of what were then thought to be several new radioactive elements. Hahn was the same age as Meitner, and she noted his informal and approachable manner. In Montreal, Hahn had become accustomed to collaboration with physicists—including at least one woman, Harriet Brooks . The head of the chemistry institute, Emil Fischer , placed a former woodworking shop ( Holzwerkstatt ) at Hahn's disposal in
21696-416: The element "protoactinium" (subsequently shortened to protactinium ), and assigning it the chemical symbol Pa. In June 1918, Soddy and John Cranston announced that they had independently extracted a sample of the isotope, but unlike Meitner they were unable to describe its characteristics. They acknowledged Meitner's priority, and agreed to the name. The connection to uranium remained a mystery, as neither of
21888-469: The energy of a fission bomb to compress and heat fusion fuel. In the Teller-Ulam design , which accounts for all multi-megaton yield hydrogen bombs, this is accomplished by placing a fission bomb and fusion fuel ( tritium , deuterium , or lithium deuteride ) in proximity within a special, radiation-reflecting container. When the fission bomb is detonated, gamma rays and X-rays emitted first compress
22080-518: The energy of each disintegration was 0.35 MeV. Thus, the spectrum accounted for nearly, but not all, of the energy. Meitner found this result so troubling that she repeated the experiment with Wilhelm Orthmann using an improved method, and verified Ellis and Wooster's results. It appeared that the law of conservation of energy did not hold for beta decay, something Meitner regarded as unacceptable. In 1930, Wolfgang Pauli wrote an open letter to Meitner and Hans Geiger in which he proposed that
22272-401: The experimental physics institute, about doing some research. Rubens said that he would be happy for her to work in his laboratory. He also added that Otto Hahn at the chemistry institute was looking for a physicist to collaborate with. A few minutes later she was introduced to Hahn. He had studied radioactive substances under William Ramsay and Ernest Rutherford, and was already credited with
22464-436: The first images of positron traces from gamma radiation. She proved Chadwick's assertion that the discrete spectral lines were entirely the result of secondary electrons, and the continuous spectra were therefore indeed entirely caused by the primary ones. In 1927, Charles Drummond Ellis and William Alfred Wooster measured the energy of the continuous spectrum produced by the beta decay of bismuth-210 at 0.34 MeV where
22656-406: The first transuranic elements would be similar to group 7 to 10 elements, rhenium and platinoids . They established the presence of multiple isotopes of at least four such elements, and (mistakenly) identified them as elements with atomic numbers 93 to 96. They were the first scientists to measure the 23-minute half life of the synthetic radioisotope uranium-239 and to establish chemically that it
22848-455: The fission bomb core. The external method of boosting enabled the USSR to field the first partially thermonuclear weapons, but it is now obsolete because it demands a spherical bomb geometry, which was adequate during the 1950s arms race when bomber aircraft were the only available delivery vehicles. The detonation of any nuclear weapon is accompanied by a blast of neutron radiation . Surrounding
23040-420: The fusion fuel, then heat it to thermonuclear temperatures. The ensuing fusion reaction creates enormous numbers of high-speed neutrons , which can then induce fission in materials not normally prone to it, such as depleted uranium . Each of these components is known as a "stage", with the fission bomb as the "primary" and the fusion capsule as the "secondary". In large, megaton-range hydrogen bombs, about half of
23232-535: The globe, would make all life on the planet extinct. In connection with the Strategic Defense Initiative , research into the nuclear pumped laser was conducted under the DOD program Project Excalibur but this did not result in a working weapon. The concept involves the tapping of the energy of an exploding nuclear bomb to power a single-shot laser that is directed at a distant target. During
23424-603: The governor of California, attended a march and rally against nuclear power . In New York City on 23 September 1979, almost 200,000 people attended a protest against nuclear power. Anti-nuclear power protests preceded the shutdown of the Shoreham , Yankee Rowe , Millstone I , Rancho Seco , Maine Yankee , and about a dozen other nuclear power plants. On 12 June 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to
23616-546: The late 1970s, nuclear power suffered a remarkable international destabilization, as it was faced with economic difficulties and widespread public opposition , coming to a head with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, both of which adversely affected the nuclear power industry for decades thereafter. A cover story in the 11 February 1985 issue of Forbes magazine addresses
23808-405: The letter from Hahn describing his chemical proof that some of the product of the bombardment of uranium with neutrons was barium. Barium had an atomic mass 40% less than uranium, and no previously known methods of radioactive decay could account for such a large difference in the mass of the nucleus. Nonetheless, she had immediately written back to Hahn to say: "At the moment the assumption of such
24000-496: The majority of their energy from nuclear fission reactions alone, and those that use fission reactions to begin nuclear fusion reactions that produce a large amount of the total energy output. All existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as atomic bombs or atom bombs (abbreviated as A-bombs ). This has long been noted as something of
24192-652: The metal atoms. She submitted her findings to the Physikalische Zeitschrift on 29 June 1907. This was one of the experiments that led Ernest Rutherford to predict the nuclear atom . Encouraged and backed by her father's financial support, Meitner entered the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin , where the renowned physicist Max Planck taught. Planck invited her to his home, and allowed her to attend his lectures. This
24384-407: The midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. The signatories included eleven pre-eminent intellectuals and scientists, including Albert Einstein , who signed it just days before his death on April 18, 1955. A few days after the release, philanthropist Cyrus S. Eaton offered to sponsor
24576-486: The military during the World War, was an Austrian rather than a German citizen, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute was a government-industry partnership. However, she was dismissed from her adjunct professorship on 6 September on the grounds that her World War I service was not at the front, and she had not completed her habilitation until 1922. This had no effect on her salary or work at the KWI for Chemistry. Carl Bosch ,
24768-545: The military establishment have questioned the usefulness of such weapons in the current military climate. According to an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in 1996, the use of (or threat of use of) such weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, but the court did not reach an opinion as to whether or not the threat or use would be lawful in specific extreme circumstances such as if
24960-408: The missiles before they land or implementing civil defense measures using early-warning systems to evacuate citizens to safe areas before an attack. Weapons designed to threaten large populations or to deter attacks are known as strategic weapons . Nuclear weapons for use on a battlefield in military situations are called tactical weapons . Critics of nuclear war strategy often suggest that
25152-583: The nucleus of uranium to disintegrate. Without these contributions of Meitner, Hahn would not have found that the uranium nucleus can split in half. In 1945 the Nobel Committee for Chemistry in Sweden that selected the Nobel Prize in Chemistry decided to award that prize solely to Hahn, who found out from a newspaper while detained in Farm Hall in England. In the 1990s, the long-sealed records of
25344-739: The official opening of the KWI for Chemistry on 23 October 1912. The following year she became a Mitglied (associate) like Hahn (although her salary was still less), and the radioactivity section became the Hahn-Meitner Laboratory. Meitner celebrated with a dinner party at the Hotel Adlon . Hahn and Meitner's salaries would soon be dwarfed by royalties from mesothorium ("middle thorium", radium-228, also called "German radium") produced for medical purposes, for which Hahn received 66,000 marks in 1914 (equivalent to €369,000 in 2021). He gave ten per cent to Meitner. In 1914, Meitner
25536-484: The old wood shop, and later in a purpose-built radium house on the institute grounds. In July 1914—shortly before the outbreak of World War I —Hahn was called to active duty with the army in a Landwehr regiment. Meitner undertook X-ray technician training, and a course on anatomy at the city hospital in Lichterfelde . Meanwhile, she completed both the work on the beta ray spectrum that she had begun before
25728-486: The overall management of the nuclear power program in the United States: The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale ... only the blind, or the biased, can now think that the money has been well spent. It is a defeat for the U.S. consumer and for the competitiveness of U.S. industry, for the utilities that undertook
25920-483: The party would briefly stop so guests could silently watch the detonation. Some casinos capitalised on the tests further by creating so called " atomic cocktails ", a mixture of vodka, cognac, sherry and champagne. Meanwhile, groups of tourists would drive out into the desert with family or friends to watch the detonations. Despite the health risks associated with nuclear fallout , tourists and viewers were told to simply "shower". Later on, however, anyone who had worked at
26112-422: The periodic table, and alpha decay causes them to move two down. When Fermi's group bombarded uranium atoms with neutrons, they found a complex mix of half lives. Fermi therefore concluded that new elements with atomic numbers greater than 92 (known as transuranium elements ) had been created. Meitner and Hahn had not collaborated for many years, but Meitner was eager to investigate Fermi's results. Hahn, initially,
26304-479: The potential of nuclear technology and in part motivated development of the technology in the U.S. and in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union would go on to test its first nuclear weapon in 1949. In 1949, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission chairman, David Lilienthal stated that "atomic energy is not simply a search for new energy, but more significantly a beginning of human history in which faith in knowledge can vitalize man's whole life". The phrase gained popularity as
26496-560: The process Hahn and Strassmann had observed. In Meitner and Frisch's report in the February 1939 issue of Nature , they gave the process the name "fission". The discovery of nuclear fission led to the development of atomic bombs and nuclear reactors during World War II . Meitner did not share the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for nuclear fission, which was awarded to her long-time collaborator Otto Hahn. Several scientists and journalists have called her exclusion "unjust". According to
26688-428: The process by which living cells divided into two. Arnold told him that biologists called it fission . Frisch then applied that name to the nuclear process in his paper. He mailed both papers to Nature on 16 January; the jointly-authored note appeared in print on 11 February and Frisch's paper on recoil on 18 February. These three reports, the first Hahn-Strassmann publications of 6 January and 10 February 1939, and
26880-424: The program and for the private enterprise system that made it possible. In a period just over 30 years, the early dramatic rise of nuclear power went into equally meteoric reverse. With no other energy technology has there been a conjunction of such rapid and revolutionary international emergence, followed so quickly by equally transformative demise. In the 21st century, the label of the "Atomic Age" connotes either
27072-401: The public, been marked by the nuclear engineer and the gigantic edifices he has created. For builders and visitors alike, nuclear power plants will be considered the cathedrals of the 20th century. Their syncretism mingles the conscious and the unconscious, religious fulfilment and industrial achievement, the limitations of uses of materials and boundless artistic inspiration, utopia come true and
27264-492: The reactor building. Nuclear waste ( spent nuclear fuel ) needs to be regularly removed from the reactors and disposed of safely for up to a million years, so that it does not pollute the environment. Recycling of nuclear waste has been discussed, but it creates plutonium which can be used in weapons, and in any case still leaves much unwanted waste to be stored and disposed of. Large, purpose-built facilities for long-term disposal of nuclear waste have been difficult to site. By
27456-438: The release of energy. Soddy wrote in popular magazines that radioactivity was a potentially "inexhaustible" source of energy and offered a vision of an atomic future where it would be possible to "transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen poles, and make the whole earth one smiling Garden of Eden ." The promise of an "atomic age," with nuclear energy as the global, utopian technology for the satisfaction of human needs, has been
27648-428: The remains of the split atomic nuclei. Many fission products are either highly radioactive (but short-lived) or moderately radioactive (but long-lived), and as such, they are a serious form of radioactive contamination . Fission products are the principal radioactive component of nuclear fallout . Another source of radioactivity is the burst of free neutrons produced by the weapon. When they collide with other nuclei in
27840-545: The restrictions, and had women's toilets installed in the building. Not all the chemists were happy about this. The Institute of Physics was more accepting, and she became friends with the physicists there, including Otto von Baeyer [ de ] , James Franck , Gustav Hertz , Robert Pohl , Max Planck, Peter Pringsheim [ de ] and Wilhelm Westphal . During the first years Meitner worked with Hahn, they co-authored nine papers: three in 1908 and six in 1909. Together with Hahn, she discovered and developed
28032-479: The results in her report on "Some Conclusions Derived from the Fresnel Reflection Formula". In 1906, while engaged in this research, Meitner was introduced by Stefan Meyer to radioactivity , then a very new field of study. She started with alpha particles . In her experiments with collimators and metal foil, she found that scattering in a beam of alpha particles increased with the mass of
28224-460: The results were puzzling. In 1914, James Chadwick found that electrons emitted from the nucleus formed a continuous spectrum, but Meitner found this hard to believe, as it seemed to contradict quantum physics , which held that electrons in an atom can only occupy discrete energy states (quanta). In 1912, Hahn and Meitner moved to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Chemistry in Berlin. Hahn accepted an offer from Fischer to become
28416-531: The same element. In 1914, Hahn and Meitner had developed a new technique for separating the tantalum group from pitchblende , which they hoped would speed the isolation of the new isotope. When Meitner resumed this work in 1917, Hahn and most of the students, laboratory assistants and technicians had been called up to serve in the armed forces, so Meitner had to do everything herself. In February, she extracted 2 grams of silicon dioxide ( SiO 2 ) from 21 grams of pitchblende. She set 1.5 grams aside and added
28608-667: The same laboratory as Meitner, and received hers in 1906. Meitner's thesis was published as Wärmeleitung in inhomogenen Körpern ("Thermal Conduction in Inhomogeneous Bodies") on 22 February 1906. Paul Ehrenfest asked her to investigate an article on optics by Lord Rayleigh detailing an experiment that produced results Rayleigh had been unable to explain. She was able to explain the results, and also made predictions based on her explanation, which she then verified experimentally, demonstrating her ability to carry out independent and unsupervised research. She published
28800-499: The spectra of lead-210, radium-226 and thorium-238 . Meitner discovered the cause of the emission of electrons from surfaces of atoms with "signature" energies, now known as the Auger-Meitner effect , in 1922. The effect is co-named for Pierre Victor Auger , who independently discovered it in 1923. Women were granted the right of habilitation in Prussia in 1920, and in 1922 Meitner was granted her habilitation and became
28992-402: The surrounding material, the neutrons transmute those nuclei into other isotopes, altering their stability and making them radioactive. The most commonly used fissile materials for nuclear weapons applications have been uranium-235 and plutonium-239 . Less commonly used has been uranium-233 . Neptunium-237 and some isotopes of americium may be usable for nuclear explosives as well, but it
29184-498: The survival of the state were at stake. Another deterrence position is that nuclear proliferation can be desirable. In this case, it is argued that, unlike conventional weapons, nuclear weapons deter all-out war between states, and they succeeded in doing this during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union . In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Gen. Pierre Marie Gallois of France, an adviser to Charles de Gaulle , argued in books like The Balance of Terror: Strategy for
29376-465: The testing site or lived in areas exposed to nuclear fallout fell ill and had higher chances of developing cancer or suffering pre-mature deaths. The term "atomic age" was initially used in a positive, futuristic sense, but by the 1960s the threats posed by nuclear weapons had begun to edge out nuclear power as the dominant motif of the atom. In the Thunderbirds TV series, a set of vehicles
29568-422: The tests as an entertainment spectacle to tourists. The detonations proved popular, and casinos throughout the city capitalised on the tests by advertising hotel rooms or rooftops which offered views of the testing site or by planning "Dawn Bomb Parties" where people would come together to celebrate the detonations. Most parties started at midnight, and musicians would perform at the venues until 4:00 a.m. when
29760-453: The two known isotopes of uranium ( uranium-234 and uranium-238 ) decayed into protactinium. It remained unsolved until uranium-235 was discovered by Arthur Jeffrey Dempster in 1935. In 1921, Meitner accepted an invitation from Manne Siegbahn to come to Sweden and give a series of lectures on radioactivity as a visiting professor at Lund University . She found that very little research had been done on radioactivity in Sweden, but she
29952-402: The undiscovered element 91 on the periodic table that lay between thorium (element 90) and uranium (element 92). Kasimir Fajans and Oswald Helmuth Göhring discovered the missing element in 1913, and named it brevium after its short half-life. However, the isotope they had found was a beta emitter, and therefore could not be the mother isotope of actinium. This had to be another isotope of
30144-699: The war with Hahn and Baeyer, and her own study of the uranium decay chain . In July 1915, she returned to Vienna, where she joined the Austrian Army as an X-ray nurse-technician. Her unit was deployed to the Eastern front in Poland, and she also served on the Italian front before being discharged in September 1916. Meitner returned to the KWI for Chemistry and her research in October. In January 1917, she
30336-446: The weapon system and difficult to defend against the delivery of the weapon during a potential conflict. This can mean keeping weapon locations hidden, such as deploying them on submarines or land mobile transporter erector launchers whose locations are difficult to track, or it can mean protecting weapons by burying them in hardened missile silo bunkers. Other components of nuclear strategies included using missile defenses to destroy
30528-631: The world where there exists a single nuclear-weapon state. Aside from the public opinion that opposes proliferation in any form, there are two schools of thought on the matter: those, like Mearsheimer, who favored selective proliferation, and Waltz, who was somewhat more non- interventionist . Interest in proliferation and the stability-instability paradox that it generates continues to this day, with ongoing debate about indigenous Japanese and South Korean nuclear deterrent against North Korea . The threat of potentially suicidal terrorists possessing nuclear weapons (a form of nuclear terrorism ) complicates
30720-624: The yield comes from the final fissioning of depleted uranium. Virtually all thermonuclear weapons deployed today use the "two-stage" design described to the right, but it is possible to add additional fusion stages—each stage igniting a larger amount of fusion fuel in the next stage. This technique can be used to construct thermonuclear weapons of arbitrarily large yield. This is in contrast to fission bombs, which are limited in their explosive power due to criticality danger (premature nuclear chain reaction caused by too-large amounts of pre-assembled fissile fuel). The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated,
30912-526: Was a local politician from the border area, and he spoke directly to the guards on the border. On 11 July, Coster arrived in Berlin, where he stayed with Debye. The following morning, Meitner arrived early at the KWI for Chemistry, and Hahn briefed her on the plan. To avoid suspicion, she maintained her usual routine, remaining at the institute until 20:00 correcting one of the associate's papers for publication. Hahn and Paul Rosbaud helped her pack two small suitcases, carrying only summer clothes. Hahn gave her
31104-434: Was a protactinium isotope or not. It was a logical decision, having been the discoverers of protactinium." Between 1934 and 1938, Hahn, Meitner, and Strassmann found a great number of radioactive transmutation products, all of which they regarded as transuranic. At that time, the existence of actinides was not yet established, and uranium was wrongly believed to be a group 6 element similar to tungsten . It followed that
31296-519: Was able to produce a pure product that was strongly radioactive. By December 1917 she was able to isolate both the mother isotope and its actinium daughter product. She submitted their findings for publication in March 1918. Although Fajans and Göhring had been the first to discover the element, custom required that an element was represented by its longest-lived and most abundant isotope, and brevium did not seem appropriate. Fajans agreed to Meitner naming
31488-502: Was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discoveries of nuclear fission and protactinium . Completing her doctoral research in 1905, Meitner became the second woman from the University of Vienna to earn a doctorate in physics. She spent much of her scientific career in Berlin , where she was a physics professor and a department head at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry . She
31680-422: Was an isotope of uranium, but with their weak neutron sources they were unable to continue this work to its logical conclusion and identify the real element 93. They identified ten different half lives, with varying degrees of certainty. To account for them, Meitner had to hypothesise a new class of reaction and the alpha decay of uranium, neither of which had ever been reported before, and for which physical evidence
31872-405: Was an unusual gesture by Planck, who was on record as opposing the admission of women to universities in general, but apparently recognised Meitner as an exception. She became friends with Planck's twin daughters Emma and Grete, who were born in 1889, and shared Meitner's love of music. Attending Planck's lectures did not take up all her time, and Meitner approached Heinrich Rubens , the head of
32064-470: Was appointed as head of her own physics section. The Hahn-Meitner Laboratory was divided into separate Hahn and Meitner Laboratories, and her pay was increased to 4,000 marks (equivalent to €10,000 in 2021). Hahn returned to Berlin on leave, and they discussed another loose end from their pre-war work: the search for the mother isotope of actinium (element 89). According to the radioactive displacement law of Fajans and Soddy , this had to be an isotope of
32256-419: Was baptised in 1908; her sisters Gisela and Lola converted to Catholicism that same year. She also adopted the shortened name "Lise". Meitner's interest in science began when she was eight, when she kept a notebook of her scientific research under her pillow. She was drawn to mathematics and science, and studied the colours of an oil slick, thin films, and reflected light. The only career available to women
32448-536: Was coined by William L. Laurence , a journalist with The New York Times , who became the official journalist for the Manhattan Project which developed the first nuclear weapons. He witnessed both the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki and went on to write a series of articles extolling the virtues of the new weapon. His reporting before and after the bombings helped to spur public awareness of
32640-537: Was dismissed from his post in the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the University of Hamburg , as was Otto Stern , the director of the institute. Stern found Frisch a position with Patrick Blackett at Birkbeck College in England, and he later worked at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen from 1934 to 1939. Fritz Strassman had come to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry to study under Hahn to improve his employment prospects. He declined
32832-464: Was driven by fantasy: The very idea of splitting the atom had an almost magical grip on the imaginations of inventors and policymakers. As soon as someone said—in an even mildly credible way—that these things could be done, then people quickly convinced themselves ... that they would be done. In the US, military planners "believed that demonstrating the civilian applications of the atom would also affirm
33024-478: Was eager to learn about X-ray spectroscopy , which was Siegbahn's specialty. At his laboratory, she met a Dutch doctoral candidate, Dirk Coster , who was studying X-ray spectroscopy, and his wife Miep, who was working on her doctorate in Indonesian language and culture. Armed with her newly acquired knowledge of X-ray spectroscopy, Meitner took a fresh look at the beta-ray spectra when she returned to Berlin. It
33216-419: Was faced with economic difficulties and widespread public opposition , coming to a head with the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, both of which adversely affected the nuclear power industry for many decades. In 1901, Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford discovered that radioactivity was part of the process by which atoms changed from one kind to another, involving
33408-582: Was gravely concerned. When he returned to Copenhagen, he began looking for a position for Meitner in Scandinavia. He also asked Hans Kramers to see if anything was available in the Netherlands. Kramers contacted Coster, who in turn notified Adriaan Fokker . Coster and Fokker attempted to secure a position for Meitner at the University of Groningen . They found that the Rockefeller Foundation would not support refugee scientists, and that
33600-483: Was increasingly uncertain. She considered the possibility that the reactions were from different isotopes of uranium; three were known: uranium-238, uranium-235 and uranium-234. However, when she calculated the neutron cross section , it was too large to be anything other than the most abundant isotope, uranium-238, and concluded that it must be another case of nuclear isomerism , a phenomenon Hahn had discovered in protactinium years before. She therefore ended her report on
33792-422: Was known that some beta emission was primary, with electrons being ejected directly from the nucleus, and some was secondary, in which alpha particles from the nucleus knocked electrons out of orbit. Meitner was sceptical of Chadwick's claim that the spectral lines were entirely due to secondary electrons, while the primary ones formed a continuous spectrum. Using techniques developed by Jean Danysz , she examined
33984-732: Was lacking. Hahn and Strassmann refined their chemical procedures, while Meitner devised new experiments to examine the reaction processes. In May 1937, Hahn and Meitner issued parallel reports, one in Zeitschrift für Physik with Meitner as the first author, and one in Chemische Berichte with Hahn as the first author. Hahn concluded his by stating emphatically: Vor allem steht ihre chemische Verschiedenheit von allen bisher bekannten Elementen außerhalb jeder Diskussion ("Above all, their chemical distinction from all previously known elements needs no further discussion"). Meitner
34176-456: Was met at by Eva von Bahr . They took a train, and then a steamer, to von Bahr's home in Kungälv , where she stayed until September. Hahn told everyone at the KWI for Chemistry that Meitner had gone to Vienna to visit her relatives, and a few days later the institute had closed for the summer. On 23 August, she wrote to Bosch requesting retirement. He tried to ship her belongings to Sweden, but
34368-483: Was nominated 49 times for Physics and Chemistry Nobel Prizes but never won. On 15 November 1945, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Hahn had been awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei". Meitner was the one who told Hahn and Strassman to test their radium in more detail, and it was she who told Hahn that it was possible for
34560-413: Was not, but he changed his mind when Aristid von Grosse suggested that what Fermi had found was an isotope of protactinium. "The only question", Hahn later wrote, "seemed to be whether Fermi had found isotopes of transuranium elements, or isotopes of the next-lower element, protactinium. At that time Lise Meitner and I decided to repeat Fermi's experiments in order to find out whether the 13-minute isotope
34752-510: Was now no longer confined to certain heavy elements, but extended to the entire periodic table. Chadwick noted that being electrically neutral, neutrons could penetrate the nucleus more easily than protons or alpha particles. Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in Rome picked up on this idea, and began irradiating elements with neutrons. The radioactive displacement law of Fajans and Soddy said that beta decay causes isotopes to move one element up on
34944-995: Was offered an academic position in Prague , which was then part of her country of Austria-Hungary . Planck made it clear to Fischer that he did not want Meitner to leave, and Fischer arranged for her salary to be doubled to 3,000 marks (equivalent to €17,000 in 2021). The move to new accommodation was fortunate, as the wood shop had become thoroughly contaminated by radioactive liquids that had been spilt, and radioactive gases that had vented and decayed then settled as radioactive dust, making sensitive measurements impossible. To ensure that their clean new laboratories stayed that way, Hahn and Meitner instituted strict procedures. Chemical and physical measurements were conducted in different rooms, people handling radioactive substances had to follow protocols that included not shaking hands, and rolls of toilet paper were hung next to every telephone and door handle. Strongly radioactive substances were stored in
35136-542: Was praised by Albert Einstein as the "German Marie Curie ." Elise Meitner was born on 7 November 1878 into a Jewish upper-middle-class family at the family home in 27 Kaiser Josefstraße in the Leopoldstadt district of Vienna , the third of eight children of chess master Philipp Meitner and his wife Hedwig. The birth register of Vienna's Jewish community lists her as being born on 17 November 1878, but all other documents list her date of birth as 7 November, which
35328-408: Was presented that were imagined to be completely nuclear, as shown in cutaways presented in their comic-books. By exploiting the peaceful uses of the "friendly atom" in medical applications, earth removal and subsequently in nuclear power plants, the nuclear industry and U.S. government sought to allay public fears about nuclear technology and promote the acceptance of nuclear weapons . At the peak of
35520-719: Was proposed to plant underground atomic bombs to extract shale oil in eastern Utah and western Colorado . Serious consideration was given to using these explosives for various mining operations. One proposal suggested using nuclear blasts to connect underground aquifers in Arizona . Another plan involved surface blasting on the western slope of California 's Sacramento Valley for a water transport project. However, there were many negative impacts from Project Plowshare's 27 nuclear explosions. Consequences included blighted land, relocated communities, tritium -contaminated water, radioactivity, and fallout from debris being hurled high into
35712-403: Was required. Meitner went to Vienna, where she met with Stefan Meyer. The export of uranium from Austria was forbidden due to wartime restrictions, but Meyer was able to offer her a kilogram of uranium residue, pitchblende from which the uranium had been removed, which was actually better for her purpose. The tests showed that the alpha activity was not due to these substances. All that now remained
35904-694: Was sworn in as the Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, as his Nazi Party (NSDAP) was now the largest party in the Reichstag . The 7 April 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removed Jews from the civil service, which included academia. Meitner never tried to conceal her Jewish descent, but initially was exempt from its impact on multiple grounds: she had been employed before 1914, had served in
36096-415: Was teaching, so she attended a high school for girls where she trained as a French teacher. As well as French, her education included bookkeeping, arithmetic, history, geography, science and gymnastics. She completed high school in 1892. Women were not allowed to attend public institutions of higher education in Vienna until 1897, but when this restriction was lifted, the requirement for a gymnasium education
36288-744: Was the Special Atomic Demolition Munition , or SADM, sometimes popularly known as a suitcase nuke . This is a nuclear bomb that is man-portable, or at least truck-portable, and though of a relatively small yield (one or two kilotons) is sufficient to destroy important tactical targets such as bridges, dams, tunnels, important military or commercial installations, etc. either behind enemy lines or pre-emptively on friendly territory soon to be overtaken by invading enemy forces. These weapons require plutonium fuel and are particularly "dirty". They also demand especially stringent security precautions in their storage and deployment. Small "tactical" nuclear weapons were deployed for use as antiaircraft weapons. Examples include
36480-434: Was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany. She lost her positions in 1935 because of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany , and the 1938 Anschluss resulted in the loss of her Austrian citizenship. On 13–14 July 1938, she fled to the Netherlands with the help of Dirk Coster . She lived in Stockholm for many years, ultimately becoming a Swedish citizen in 1949, but relocated to Britain in
36672-411: Was to find evidence of actinium. For this yet more pitchblende was required, but this time Meyer was unable to assist, as the export was now prohibited. Meitner managed to obtain 100 g of "double residue"—pitchblende without uranium or radium—from Friedrich Oskar Giesel and began tests with 43 grams of it, but its composition was different, and at first her tests did not work. With Giesel's help, she
36864-438: Was waived and women only needed to pass the matura , the secondary school leaving qualification required for university entrance. Her sister Gisela passed the matura and entered medical school in 1900. Meitner began taking private lessons with two other young women in 1899, cramming the missing years of secondary education into two. Physics was taught by Arthur Szarvasy. In July 1901, they sat an external matura examination at
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