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22 Sep 2017 02:28:12 UTC
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Operation Castle 1954
Operation Castle began with the test of the Bravo shot. Castle Bravo was a proof test of a "dry" thermonuclear device. Instead of using liquid Deuterium/Tritium as a fusion fuel, Lithium Deuteride was used as a solid fuel. The designers of this device wanted to use Lithium-6 as the source of Tritium (a neutron would split a Lithium-6 nucleus into a Tritium nucleus, and a Helium nucleus), but the processing was not completed in time, so a mixture of Lithium-6 and Lithium-7 was used instead. The scientists assumed that the Lithium-7 would be inert, and not have any effect in the fusion reaction. Instead what happened was that the Lithium-7 nuclei split into two Tritium nuclei, with two additional free neutrons. The scientists were expecting an explosive yield of 5-7 Megatons, but instead the yield was 15 Megatons. The blast effect leveled the base camp on an island 15 miles away from the test, and dropped so much fallout at the control bunker, that the scientists were trapped inside for several hours. The test also released a plume of fallout that contaminated several other inhabited atolls hundreds of miles away, as well as a japanese fishing trawler that was in the area. The scientists abandoned the use of a land based control station for the rest of the test series, and controlled the later tests from a ship.
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video/mp4
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