Development of Atomic Bomb
In April 1944 a Combined Policy Committee meeting at Washington agreed that Canada would build a heavy water reactor. Scientists who were not British subjects would leave, and John Cockcroft would become the new Director of the Montreal Laboratory. This was also because following the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, Halban returned on a visit to London and Paris, where he saw Joliot-Curie for the first time since leaving France. While he maintained that he did not divulge any nuclear secrets to his previous boss (although he had discussed patent rights), Halban was not allowed to work or to leave North America for a year, by General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project.
When Cockroft took over, the Americans fully supported the reactor project with information and visits. They also supplied material e.g. uranium and heavy water. The project developed the ZEEP reactor and then the NRX reactor. Lew Kowarski of the Paris group who had not wanted to work for Halban joined the Laboratory.
The Chalk River Laboratories opened in 1944, and in 1946 the Montreal Laboratory was closed.
Read more about this topic: Montreal Laboratory
Famous quotes containing the words atomic bomb, development of, development, atomic and/or bomb:
“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (19041967)
“The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“I have an intense personal interest in making the use of American capital in the development of China an instrument for the promotion of the welfare of China, and an increase in her material prosperity without entanglements or creating embarrassment affecting the growth of her independent political power, and the preservation of her territorial integrity.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“No atomic physicist has to worry, people will always want to kill other people on a mass scale. Sure, hes got the fridge full of sausages and spring water.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)
“No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.”
—Charles De Gaulle (18901970)