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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The problem is that U-235 (fissile uranium) and U-238 (non-fissile uranium) have the same chemical properties. The U-235 is just a bit lighter. So to enrich uranium to increase the U-235 content, you need to use the very small difference of physical properties that U-235 has because it is a tiny bit lighter.
The Manhattan Project built three different plants for enrichment using different techniques – the Y-12 Electromagnetic Isotope Separation Plant, the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and the S-50 Liquid Thermal Diffusion Plant. These plants were expanded during the war, so by the time the war ended, they had significant capacity to enrich more Uranium. So they had more capacity, and the processes had improved to increase efficiency.
The enriched Uranium went into breeder reactors that use uranium fussion to make fissile plutonium for weapons. Plutonium is a different element, and can be isolated from the raw uranium fuel by chemical processes.
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