Deputy atoms

Following the paradigm of this treatise, MAALs may be represented as a series of deputy atoms, one for each attachment point, plus two at the outer atoms if they lack bonds. The bonds between the atoms are collinear, and... 

Cox, Frank, Battelle Memorial Laboratories, former Colonel, U.S. Army, Assistant to the Deputy for Chemical Warfare, Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, telephone interview, October 17, 2001. 

More interestingly, the conventional narrative of Britain and atomic weapons dates the decision to go ahead with the design and construction of a bomb to a meeting of a cabinet committee in January 1947. This committee had a relatively restricted membership Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison, Deputy Prime Minister and Lord President Viscount Addison, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs and John Wilmot, Minister of Supply. 

The primary separation plant received the first solutions produced from the pile on 25 February 1952, and between then and 31 July, 150 tons of irradiated uranium rods were processed. Plutonium nitrate solution was first received from the purification plant on 6 March 1952. It then had to be reduced to plutonium metal, and the Deputy Works Manager, Tom Tuohy, broke open the first reaction vessel to reveal a small lump (136 g) of plutonium at the bottom of the vessel. He later described it as being about the size of a 50 pence piece. Sufficient plutonium would be produced in time for the first British atom bomb test in October. 

---