Beyond the atolls, traces of radioactive material were discovered in Australia, India, Japan, the United States and Europe. An estimated 665 inhabitants of the Marshall Islands were overexposed to radiation. Believing that this powder was snow, many inhabitants played in and ate the powder.įor years later, inhabitants of the island experienced numerous health problems, including birth defects. In one tragic example, around five hours after Castle Bravo detonated, radioactive powder began to fall on Rongelap Atoll. Evacuations organized by the United States were too slow to limit the lethal doses of radiation and, in many cases, inhabitants did not know about the nuclear test or the consequences of nuclear fallout. Critical fallout occurred in the Rongelap, Rongerik, Alinginea and Utirik atolls in the Marshall Islands. The test resulted in nuclear fallout that rained down on inhabitants of the atolls near the site of detonation and serviceman working on Operation Castle. With a yield of 50 megatons, the Tsar Bomba, tested by the Soviet Union in October 1961, holds the record for the largest nuclear test. Despite its immense power, the Castle Bravo test is only the fifth largest test in history. The crater left behind has a diameter of 6,510 feet and a depth of 250 feet. The mushroom cloud formed after the detonation grew to nearly four-and-a-half miles wide and reached a height of 130,000 feet six minutes after the detonation. The Castle Bravo device weighed approximately 23,500 pounds. The miscalculation occurred because scientists did not realize that the “dry” source of fusion fuel, lithium deuteride with 40 percent content of lithium-6 isotope, would contribute so greatly to the overall yield of the detonation. nuclear weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Scientists were shocked when Castle Bravo produced an astounding 15 megaton yield, making it 1,000 times as powerful as the U.S. They predicted that the yield of the device would be roughly five to six megatons (a megaton is the equivalent of one million tons of TNT). The designers of Castle Bravo seriously miscalculated the yield of the device, resulting in critical radiation contamination. Castle Bravo was the first deliverable thermonuclear device, and the test aimed to pave the way for the creation of more effective weapons, including weapons that could be deliverable by aircraft. Whereas Ivy Mike was a “wet” thermonuclear device (meaning that the hydrogen isotope used in the device was liquid), Castle Bravo was a “dry” device, which greatly reduced its weight and size. scientists rushed to create a set of deliverable thermonuclear designs. The United States tested its first thermonuclear device, known as Ivy Mike, two years earlier in 1952, also in the Marshall Islands. While the test advanced thermonuclear weapons design, miscalculations about the yield resulted in the largest U.S. military beginning in 1946 for nuclear weapons testing research. The operation took place at Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, used by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and Department of Defense. The test was part of a larger operation for testing high-yield nuclear devices, known as Operation Castle, conducted by the U.S. “Those were small bombs, and they were bad enough.” Hydrogen bombs, he said, would result in a yield of about 100,000 kilotons of TNT, up to several million kilotons of TNT, which would mean more deaths.March 1 marks the 60th anniversary of Castle Bravo, the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated by the United States. “Those were the little guys,” Morse said. Morse said the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were each equivalent to just about 10,000 kilotons of TNT. “The extra yield is going to give you more bang,” Morse said. However, more energy is released during the fusion process, which causes a bigger blast. In both cases, a significant amount of energy is released, which drives the explosion, experts say. “The way the hydrogen bomb works - it’s really a combination of fission and fusion together,” said Eric Norman, who also teaches nuclear engineering at UC Berkeley. The hydrogen bomb relies on fusion, the process of taking two separate atoms and putting them together to form a third atom. To make a hydrogen bomb, one would still need uranium or plutonium as well as two other isotopes of hydrogen, called deuterium and tritium. “You have to master the A-bomb first,” Hall said.Īn atomic bomb uses either uranium or plutonium and relies on fission, a nuclear reaction in which a nucleus or an atom breaks apart into two pieces. Simply speaking, experts say a hydrogen bomb is the more advanced version of an atomic bomb.
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