Uranium cubes explain German nuclear project failure
The gist
A new study finds the German B8 reactor needed 1,292 to 1,775 uranium cubes, not 664.
The finding suggests Heisenberg's team was far from a working reactor.
How it unfolded
- Aug 2013Timothy Koeth, out for a jog on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, received a heavy metal cube from a friend and recognized it as one of the German uranium cubes.
- 2019Ars Technica reported on Koeth's quest to trace the cube's origins; he and then-graduate student Miriam "Mimi" Hiebert had tracked down ten such cubes around the US.
- Sep 29, 2026The new study was published in the journal PNAS Nexus.
Key terms
- heavy water
- A form of water whose hydrogen atoms are the heavier deuterium isotope instead of ordinary hydrogen.
- graphite
- A soft crystalline form of carbon made of stacked graphene layers, used in batteries, lubricants and refractories.
- Manhattan Project
- A World War II research program led by the United States to build the first nuclear weapons.
Source: Wikipedia