Study thwarts 79-year-old belief about the reactor for the 'Nazi bomb' project ‪

A new study has dismissed a long-standing claim about the Nazis and their nuclear ambition. German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who led the project to create a reactor for the "Nazi bomb" project, wrote in 1947 that it was almost ready by the time the Second World War ended. He claimed that the reactor was "just insufficient" to create a self-sustaining fission reaction, adding that it needed only a "relatively small amount of uranium".

However, his claims have been refuted by scientists in a new study published in the journal PNAS Nexus. They used historical documents and forensic investigations of two surviving uranium cubes to state that Heisenberg had wrongly made this claim.

If the German B8 reactor had worked, Germany would have taken a major step towards the development of the atomic bomb. It could have also created the platform for specialised fission reactors which can be used to create weapons-grade plutonium from uranium.

According to the new study, Germany’s B8 reactor contained less than half the heavy water and roughly half the uranium required to sustain a continuous chain reaction.

Lead author Patrick Park, a doctoral student at Princeton University, said, "My results argue that Heisenberg was off by roughly a factor of two." He also admitted that Heisenberg should be given grace for believing that the reactor was almost ready, since his calculations were only approximate. Besides, the project was relocated to a rock cellar in Haigerloch, Germany, after Berlin was bombed.

Because of the bombing, the reactor calculation took a backseat as taking care of the affected people became the priority.