Why uranium enrichment was slow/near impossible in the beginning of Manhattan project but few years later it became trivial?

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So I’ve watched Oppenheimer and a recurring theme in the movie was how tedious task it was to get fission material (demonstrated as filling a large fish bowl by marbles). All they manage to collect in two year period was just enough for two bombs. but fast forward few years US have a complete arsenal of bombs to flat the earth. I understand they must’ve innovated a method and the exact method maybe classified, what i’m interested in is knowing what was the obstacle(s) for this and rough idea of how they might’ve overcome it.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Let’s say you decode you want to build a boat.

You have no tools, no wood, no carbon fibre, no idea what boats are made out of.

It’s going to take alot of time and research to build that first boat, you don’t have rhe resources, you don’t have the skills, to your mind, a way to bend wood has not yet been discovered. You need to figure that all out from square one.

Well after you have the workshop setup with all the equipment, professionals, skills, and discovered these novel processes, the second boat is much faster and easier to build.

Only this time instead of carpentry it was nuclear physics

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