Word: scaled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Problem & Promise. The Navy had no immediate plan at all for demobilization. It appeared that there could be no large-scale Navy releases for at least six months. Faced with the tasks of policing great areas, of supplying and transporting, the Navy had set no time for letting men out of service. But a Navy spokesman promised: "When the time comes we'll get them out in a hell of a hurrv...
When a piece of paper is lighted with a match, the paper particles first heated set others on fire; these in turn ignite others, and so on. The same sort of chain reaction must be started for a successful large-scale atomic explosion. Above, the rare form of uranium, U-235, is shown breaking down into barium and krypton (only one of several possible disintegrations). The "match" is a neutron source at left. (Radium mixed with beryllium is a common source of neutrons...
Reasonable Possibility. The first uranium explosions produced secondary neutrons, which in turn seemed capable of touching off uranium atoms, which would yield more neutrons, and so on. This "chain reaction" looked like the clue to a large-scale release of atomic energy., France's Joliot-Curie did in fact produce a chain reaction, but it died out after a few cycles (TIME, Feb. 12, 1940). The problem was to start one which would not dwindle but multiply...
...Full-scale plants, the committees urged, should be built at once. It was not known which processes were the best, so all the more promising ones should be started immediately. There was no time for failures, or even for pilot plants. The Nazis might be ahead in the race for Doomsday...
Group No. 2 argued that Japan, even if she were stripped down to the home islands, would still be the only integrated, industrialized nation in the hemisphere between the Rockies and the Himalayas capable of waging large-scale modern war. This school therefore insisted on the indefinite occupation of Japan, with complete deindustrialization and reorganization of Japanese society. (The fringe of this group wanted to kill 70,000,000 Japs...