Evening star., 1948-04-16
Stars, Men ssd Atoms
Soviet AtomicD Development
Is Widely Debated mus.

Is Widely Deboted mus.
Little Known Except that Russia
Started Late, Faces Problems
By Thomas X. Hs~ry
Has Russia an atomic bombi
Any answer to this question, asked en every
hand. can only be purely speculativs-unlsss.
Of course. tie armed services have specific
confidential information. .
Production Of an atomic bomb dspsnds "a
two major factors: knowledge Of the basis
scientific principles involved and tndustzial
capacity. Respecting the first It u the son-
sensus Of Washington scientists. including
several who were involved In production sf the
hrst atomic bomb. that there 4 . possible
chance that the Russians have gotten svss
the hurdles
Opinions vary widely, largely over the ability
Of Russian scientists. One eminent physicist
has been quoted a. saying that If he had the
job of making such bomb, starting from
scratch. he would prefer to have = team Of
Russian scientists and American engineers.
Others, however, have quite = low opinion Of
Russian capacities in this particular line-ths
relatively new science Of nuclear physics.
First, it is pointed out. at least S5 per cent
Of the secret" was revealed when the frst
bomb was dropped. The celebrated smyths
report did little more than amphfy details
which any one even superncially familiar with
the subject would have suspected. To q nuclear
physicist anywhere, 1t was Immediately appar.
ent that some one Of q quite limited number
of ways must have been taken. 1t would not
have been too dificult to have eliminated the
less feasible techniques.
Wartime Work Is Known.
The outstanding physicists Of Russia and
their work up to the end Of the war are
fairly well known here. First among them
stands Dr.. Peter Kapitza. English trained. hs
Is unquestionably one Of the worlds great
physicists, but all his major work had been In
the fields Of extremely low temperatures and
magnetism. There Ii no evidence from any
Of his publications that DR. Kapitza had given
any particular attention to the physics Of the
atomic nucleus.
1t Is not something which can be followed ~
= sideiine. DR.. Kapitza doubtless had q general
familiarity with the subject equal to that Of
an average physics professor In an American
college. The same Is true OF Russias next
best known physicist, Prof. JofIe. He had no
special training, and had done no notabls
work In nuclear reactions. In fact, Russia
Is not known to have had any particularly
eminent man specializing In this field.
Russia has many brilliant young physicists.
But If there were no older men to train them,
together with apparent almost complete lack
Of essential laboratory equipment. it Is highly
doubtful If any Of them were well versed at
the end of the war in probably the most
difficult specialized neld in all science. This
is not denying that some Of them may have
made rapid progress once they were started
in the right direction.
Russia. it Is known, took over some Of Ger
manys best-known scientists after the war.
These men were given attractive offers to
insure their enthusiastic cooperation. But
not one Of them was among the prominent
known nuclear physicists OF Germany. They
had specialized In other lines. Their knowledge
Of the atomic nucleus was general and II
would take them some time to become experts.
Results Were Published.
Russia of course, became interested In atomie
hssion as soon as the first news Of 1t came
from Washington in January, 1889 But neither
here nor there was the possibility Of an atomic
bomb seen clearly. For some time there was
no bar on complete publication of results in
the United States and it is unlikely that there
was any secrecy in Russia
The Russian work-so far as is known from
anything published-dealt entirely with de-
veloping means of separating the supposedly
essential isotope of uranium U 235, from or
dinary uranium by means Of the thermal diff
fusion process. This required getting uranium
in the form Of . gas, uranium f1uoride, one
OF the most corrosive substances in existence.
In this line their work was quite good, although
they actually made no better progress than
was being made in the United States.
This is the picture previous to August 8, 1s4S.
That the Russians were keeping something
back is quite improbable.
There II every reason to believe that news
Of the atomic bomb was as much OF surprise
to the Russians ~ to the rest Of the world.
There also can be little doubt that they started
work Immediately to learn the approximately
IS per cent Of the necessary information.
Much time must have been spent in pure
organization, in getting the right people to
work on the right jobs. This Is especially true
in light of the known paucity Of nuclear
physicists
At least up to 1942 there was only one
cyclotron in Russia. This was 50 poorly built
and inef1icient that even some Russians said
it probably had been built ~ joke.
Problems Take Time.
Now this last Is per cent Of the road, ac-
cording to Washington physicists. had lot
of hurdles. There were none which could not
be crossed BY teams Of competent nuclesr
physicists But, unless there were series OF
unbelievably fortunate accidents all this would
take time and several of the bombs were al
most certain to turn out "duds." In view OF
the techniques which probably would be fol-