Saturday Times Jumbo Cryptic 1675...
Quizzes & Puzzles1 min ago
No best answer has yet been selected by barrsp. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Heavy water is water where one or more of the hydrogen atom(s) in water are replaced with deuterium. ( which is hydrogen with 1 neutron and 1 proton in the nucleus instead of just a proton)
In order to make an atomic bomb you need either enriched uranium or plutonium. Which generally (although not always) requires a nuclear reactor.
Heavy water is a neutron moderator and is used in some nuclear cores to slow down neutrons so that a chain reaction can be established. Using Heavy water means that you can build a nuclear reactor using raw Uranium without the difficult job of enriching it first. - The Canadian reactors do this I think.
The Nazis were attemting to build nuclear reactors with raw Uranium and Heavy water in order to obtain enough Plutonium to make a bomb.
Therefore blowing up the plant in Norway isolating the heavy water was pretty important.