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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.
In 1954 the Castle Bravo fallout plume spread dangerous levels of radiation over an area over 100 miles (160 km) long, including inhabited islands. Atomic and nuclear tests can involve many hazards. Some of these were illustrated in the US Castle Bravo test in 1954. The weapon design tested was a new form of hydrogen bomb, and the scientists ...
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 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 United States was the first nation to develop the hydrogen bomb, testing an experimental prototype in 1952 ("Ivy Mike") and a deployable weapon in 1954 ("Castle Bravo"). Throughout the Cold War it continued to modernize and enlarge its nuclear arsenal, but from 1992 on has been involved primarily in a program of stockpile stewardship.
The fission reactions though, especially the last fission reactions, release a tremendous amount of fission products and fallout. If the last fission stage is omitted, by replacing the uranium tamper with one made of lead , for example, the overall explosive force is reduced by approximately half but the amount of fallout is relatively low.