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Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Castle. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device remains the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States and the first lithium deuteride -fueled ...
Operation Castle was an unqualified success for the implementation of dry fuel devices. The Bravo design was quickly weaponized and is suspected to be the progenitor of the Mk-21 gravity bomb. The Mk-21 design project began on March 26, 1954 (just three weeks after Bravo), with production of 275 weapons beginning in late 1955.
The fact that a large proportion of the yield of a thermonuclear device stems from the fission of a uranium 238 tamper (fission-fusion-fission principle) was revealed when the Castle Bravo test "ran away," producing a much higher yield than originally estimated and creating large amounts of nuclear fallout. [13]
The Castle Bravo shot of 1 March 1954, at Bikini Atoll, was the first test of a deployable (solid fuel) thermonuclear weapon, and also (accidentally) [citation needed] the largest weapon ever tested by the United States (15 megatons). It was also the single largest U.S. radiological accident in connection with nuclear testing.
On March 1, 1954, the largest-ever U.S. nuclear test explosion, the 15-megaton Castle Bravo shot of Operation Castle at Bikini Atoll, delivered a promptly lethal dose of fission-product fallout to more than 6,000 square miles (16,000 km 2) of Pacific Ocean surface. [41]
The second series of tests in 1954 was codenamed Operation Castle. The first detonation was Castle Bravo, which tested a new design utilizing a dry-fuel thermonuclear bomb. It was detonated at dawn on March 1, 1954. Scientists miscalculated: the 15 Mt of TNT nuclear explosion far exceeded the expected yield of 4–8 Mt of TNT (6 predicted). [6]
The Tsar Bomba far surpassed the largest explosion the United States has ever conducted - a 15-megaton "Castle Bravo" hydrogen bomb detonated on Bikini Atoll in 1954. (Reporting by Maria Vasilyeva ...
The device, dubbed the Sausage, used an extra-large fission bomb as a "trigger" and liquid deuterium—kept in its liquid state by 20 short tons (18 t) of cryogenic equipment—as its fusion fuel, [citation needed] and weighed around 80 short tons (73 t) altogether. Castle Bravo detonation, 1st Mar 1954