Word: smyth
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...greatest secret in connection with the atomic bomb was the fact that it was possible to develop it successfully. The Smyth [War Department] report has made public much information and revealed the most essential secret by describing along what road the development has to move. . . . Once this is known, a staff of technically trained men can follow any one of the roads indicated by the Smyth report and will then, step by step, discover what we have discovered. . . . It took us . . . three years to achieve the transfer from the laboratory to the battlefield. Other countries should be able to produce...
...Long? Plain people everywhere anxiously wondered how long the secret could or would be kept. The Smyth report, released by the U.S. War Department (TIME, Aug. 20), had been amazingly frank about production methods. It even hinted at the basic mechanism of the bomb itself-the sudden bringing together of two or more lumps of explosive material to form one lump which is over the "critical size" and which instantly explodes. The possibility that the secret might be discovered by some other nation creates no immediate dangers, because at this stage of the bomb's development huge production plants...
...below the "critical size" of the theory, instruments gave the alarm. The reaction was starting to cook. Luckily, the cadmium strips had been inserted at "retard" position. Slowed down by their influence, the reaction was easily stopped. "This," commented Dr. Smyth dryly, "was fortunate...
Energy & Poisons. Besides plutonium, the Hanford plant produced two frightening by-product effects. The water which cooled the piles carried off enough energy, derived from the chain reaction, to heat the Columbia River appreciably. No definite figures have been released, but the hints in Dr. Smyth's report are portentous. Some relative of the uranium pile may still prove a power source great enough to run all the world's machines...
...second by-product was pure horror. In the ordinary operation of a large-scale pile, calculated Dr. Smyth, enough radioactive poisons could be produced every day to make "large areas uninhabitable...