Research clarifies why Nazi Germany's nuclear reactor project failed

Revisiting the German Nuclear Program

During World War II, the Manhattan Project was concerned about Nazi Germany's nuclear ambitions. Historians have debated how close German scientists, led by Werner Heisenberg, came to achieving criticality in their B8 reactor pile.

Heisenberg claimed they were close and only needed more uranium. However, a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus presents new findings that dispute this.

Insufficient Materials for a Working Reactor

The new research concludes that the German project did not possess enough uranium or heavy water to construct a functional nuclear bomb, given their design. This directly contradicts Heisenberg's assessment of their progress.

The findings offer a more definitive explanation for the failure of the German nuclear program to achieve a nuclear weapon.

Uranium Cubes Provide Evidence

The research began in 2013 when University of Maryland physicist Timothy Koeth, a co-author of the paper, received one of the mysterious heavy metal cubes used by German scientists. He recognized it as a uranium cube from the unsuccessful reactor attempt.

Only 14 such cubes are currently known to exist. Koeth and Miriam Hiebert tracked down ten of these cubes across the US, including one at the Smithsonian Institute and another at Harvard University.