15 Megatons of Hell: The Castle Bravo Nuke Test

Real Clear Defense ^ | March 2, 2015 | Paul Huard

[C19fan]

Sixty-one years ago on an island in the South Pacific, scientists and military officers, fishermen and Marshall Islands natives observed first-hand what Armageddon would be like.

And it almost killed them all. The Atomic Energy Commission code-named the nuclear test Castle Bravo.

The March 1, 1954 experiment was the first thermonuclear explosion based on practical technology that would lead to a deliverable H-bomb for the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command—part of the Operation Castle series of tests needed to manufacture the high-yield weapons.

Bravo was the worst radiological disaster in American atomic testing history—but the test provided information that led to a lightweight, high-yield megaton bomb that would fit inside a SAC bomber.

[tanknetter]

It was a plutonium fission detonation via implosion. Yield was around 20 kilotons (20,000 tons).

Castle Bravo was 15 megatons (15,000,000 tons)

Had the USS Arkansas been in the same location for a 15 megaton shot it would have ended up, mostly, in the stratosphere. As highly radioactive particles.

[Monkey Face]

I am a Downwinder.

I believe to this day that my CFIDS is a by-product of the nuclear tests. A lot of my classmates suffer various maladies in ratios that are far beyond the “norm.”

Southern Utah had a large number of Down Syndrome babies born during and after the tests.

Thanks for the ping, Nully.

[backwoods-engineer]

What the scientists didn’t know at the time was that the “dry” lithium deuteride had much more explosive potential when the neutrons it released split the atoms in the uranium-238 “jacket” much higher than anticipated. That’s why the original yield estimate was around 6 MT, when in reality it came out to 15 MT.

Yeah, that, and one of the lithium isotopes they thought would be "inert" wasn't -- it fused, too. I think it was Li-7, IIRC.

[Conan the Librarian]

The USS (formerly KM) Prinz Eugen was in two of the tests at Bikini.

It survived both tests and is laying upside down at Kwajalein.

It’s clean enough for diving now.

[OldMissileer]

Was this the test where a decommissioned battleship was blow vertical standing up in the water?................

No. That was Operation Crossroads-Baker, an underwater shot performed much earlier in 1946.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Smoke rockets to be able to photograph the progress of the blast wave.

[OldMissileer]

Can anyone explain why these blasts have squiggly lines of smoke near them that look like jellyfish tentacles? The donation pic in this thread has them.

Just prior to the shot rockets were launched to create the vertical smoke trails. Those trails were used as a visual reference for the observation of the blast wave.

[NorthMountain]

Scientists messing with things they don’t fully understand.

Scientists messing with things they don't fully understand is why you aren't living in a cave, eating raw meat that you killed with your bare hands ... and then dying of infection from the bite wounds you sustained killing it.

You should thank God (the real one, who gave us a mind and the freedom to use it) for scientists who mess with things they don't fully understand.

< signed >

-A Scientist (also An Engineer)

[libstripper]

It’s all about learning the “unknown unknowns.”

[Blood of Tyrants]

And what are the deaths of a few innocent people in the grand scale of advancing science?

[OldNavyVet]

My late Brother in Law was in the Navy at the Bikini test explosions. He died young ... while in his fifties.

[Kickass Conservative]

I still think of the Night Gallery (?) Episode where William Windom played a Government Scientist grieving for his Dead Daughter. They had a Psychiatrist trying to treat him so he could get back to work on a Project.

He had designed a Weapon that used Non-Fissionable Material and the Military tested it, for the last time...

[NorthMountain]

It’s all about learning the “unknown unknowns.”

Indeed.

The worst I've ever gotten from that is singed. Castle Bravo is the most extreme example I can think of. "We" had a lot to learn. It is instructive to compare today's almost paranoid radiological safety measures to Marie Curie's standard laboratory practice ...

[Fred Hayek]

What was not accounted for was lithium 7 being involved in the reaction. When the Li-7 was cooked, it changed to Li-6, which acted like the rest of the Li-6. The lighter isotope provided the tritium to fuse with the deuterium. Thus the runaway. There were more neutrons available to fast fission the U-238. The latter provided much of the yield as well as the fallout.

[libstripper]

Many of our greatest scientific discoveries have occurred by accident.

[OregonRancher]

Twisting the tail of the tiger

[Red Badger]

The Wilson cloud lifts, revealing a vertical black object, larger than ships in the foreground, which most observers believed was the upended battleship Arkansas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads

[Pecos]

So it still would have been pointed straight up! (more or less)

[RayChuang88]

What was even scarier was there were test technicians on the far side of the island where there detonated the Castle Bravo bomb who should have been safe if the yield was only 6 MT--but with the 15 MT "runaway," the technicians had to stay in the sealed blockhouse for much longer until the detonation effects dissipated.

[NorthMountain]

Fine. Go live in a cave, eat raw meat, and die of infection.

That or become a scientist yourself, and help expand the frontiers of what we know ... and what we know that we don't know.

In any case, life's a bitch ... then you die.