Evening star., 1949-12-30
(The Last of a Series.)
By Thomas R. Henry
Ihf star's Science Editor

Tht Stars Science Editor
When DR.. Werner Heisenberg,
director of Hitler's ill-financed
atomic flssion project and one Of
the greatest Of living physicists,
heard about the dropping Of an
atomic bomb on Hiroshima. he
was shocked by such "fiendish-
ness"
His own work had been carried
out, he declared, with no such end
in view. Neither he nor the
Fuehrer had thought of using
atomic energy for destruction =
only for peaceful postwar indus
try and, if they got around to it
In time, for the propelling OF
guided missiles"
The professor is talking through
his hat. Personally, he may have
had no ideas of an atomic bomb.
Some of his associates on the
project who were corralled around
Munich just after the war GER
tainly did and glibly described
several rather crude models which
they had drawn UPON paper.
The ideas seemed sound enough.
The Germans just were not given
the money or the manpower to
carry them out. Hitler's common
sense revolted where President
Roosevelt's daring imagination
triumphed. e..
Bomb Simpler.
Accepting DR.. Heisenberg's own
statements, however, it is obvious
that. he and his colleagues had
been given a much more difficult
ard costly job than that intrust-
ed to the Manhattan Project. De-
veloping an atomic bomb was
vastly easier than developing an
atomic engine, as those who have
worked at it all over the world
since the war have come to real
ize. It is one thing to blow of
the side of a mountain with a
charge of dynamite. 1t would be
somewhat more difficult to run
an automobile on millions of tiny
explosions of dynamite.
But somehow the American
public has been led to expect
atomic energy in the near future,
and there seems to be little ten
dency to appreciate the enormous
complexities involved.
At the threshold is the problem
of atomic fuel. even if one is in
clined to disregard costs entirely.
Fortunately, the present Acc
commissioners are not blind to
this aspect.
Only Fashionable Material.
The only fashionable material
ever found in nature is Uranium
235, a light isotope of the heaviest
Of the elements.
Nobody expects ever to find
another. This queer stuff. which
opened the whole Medusa trunk
Of the horrors of atomic warfare
10 years ago, may well have been
one of natures oversights in the
process of building up the ele-
ments.
This substance is extremely
scarce. It is found mixed with
the most abundant form of
uranium, itself a relatively rare
mineral, only in a ratio Of l to
40. One of the two big hurdles
crossed in making the. atomic
bomb was separating the two
isotopes so as to obtain a rela-
lively pure supply of U-235.
This, of course, was only a start
ing point It was found that, by a
somewhat complicated process,
this rare isotope could be used to
create out of ordinary uranium
another fashionable element, psu-
tonium.
When an atom of 235 is split,
one of the neutrons elected in the
flssion might be captured" by the
nucleus of the far more abundant
U-238. This results in the momen-
tary existence of another isotope
of uranium, non-existent in ma
turt. This is U-239. It's nucleus is
highly unstable and almost i'm
mediately into still another ele-
result is a new element, neptun-
ium. This transmutes almost i'm
mediately into still another ele-