-),0~
that moment must be insulated
from each other) and the holding together of the
combined mass until a reasonable proportion of the uranium or plutonium atoms
have undergone fission.
A little reflection will indicate that the mechanism
which can accomplish this must be ingenious and elaborate in the extreme, and
é
bom’ as a sabotage instrument could work out a much simpler device,
the essential mechanism
Perhaps
could be broken down into small component parts such
as are easily smuggled across national frontiers, the essential mass being
provided by orude materials available locally in the target area,
Those familiar
with the present mechanismdo not consider such an eventuation likely.
And if
it required the smuggling of whole bombs, that too is perhaps possible.
But the
chances are that if two or three were successfully introduced into a country by
stealth, the fourth or fifth would be discovered,
Our federal police agencies
have made an impressive demonstration in the past, with far less motivation, of
their ability to deal with smugglers and saboteurs,
~n
| Those, at any rate, are some of the facts to consider when reading a
statement such as Professor Harold Urey was reported to have made:
"An enemy
who put twenty bombs, each with a time fuse, into twenty trunks, and checked one
in the baggage room of the main railroad station in each of twenty leading
American cities, could wipe this cowmtry off the map so far as military defense
is concerned,"
30
Quite apart from the question of whether twenty bombs, even
if they were considerably more powerful than those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
could produce the results which Professor Urey assumes they would, the mode of
3
0.
¥
;
,
The New Republic, December 31, 1945, p. 885,
used by the New Republic,
Ureyts remark,
.
The statement quoted is that
and is probably not identical in wording with Prof,