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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 1 March 1954, the device remains the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States and the first lithium deuteride -fueled ...
The cover to the Project 4.1 Final Report, "Study of Response of Human Beings Accidentally Exposed to Significant Fallout Radiation" Project 4.1 was the designation for a medical study and experimentation conducted by the United States of those residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to radioactive fallout from the 1 March 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, which had an ...
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 26 March 1954 (just three weeks after Bravo), with production of 275 weapons beginning in late 1955.
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 first successful man-made fusion device was the boosted fission weapon tested in 1951 in the Greenhouse Item test. The first true fusion weapon was 1952's Ivy Mike, and the first practical example was 1954's Castle Bravo. In these devices, the energy released by a fission explosion compresses and heats the fuel, starting a fusion reaction.
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 Castle Bravo test resulted in the worst radiological event in US history as radioactive particles spread over more than 11,000 square kilometers (4,200 sq mi), affected inhabited areas (including Rongelap Atoll and Utirik Atoll), and sickened Japanese fishermen aboard the Lucky Dragon upon whom "ashes of death" had rained.
Castle Bravo was the code name given to the first U.S. test of a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device, detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as the first test of Operation Castle. Fallout from the detonation poisoned the islanders who had previously inhabited the atoll.