Castle Bravo - plasma beauty

[GeneW]

This is a film of the test "Castle Bravo", part of the Castle series. Some of this film also includes segments of the Castle Romeo run.

This is the first use of a "Dry" lithium-deuteride system versus using pure liquid deuterium (heavy hydrogen).

The reaction "ran away" because the Los Alamos gang did not factor in a reaction where Lithium 7 would combine with a neutron to form Tritium and Helium. The resulting blast, conducted a ground level, pulverized a huge quantity of coral into dust, irradiated it and ejected it for hundreds of miles.

If you observe carefully you can see the edges of the Eniwetok atoll under the bomb's glare. This gives you a clue to how big it grew as the reaction continued.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd1IFjBNNVo



Gene

[GeneW]

You'll notice that the fireball is initially "dim" and then grows brighter. As the reaction continues the temperature "cools" emitting fewer X-rays and more visible light and then seems dimmer as the reaction cools into infrared.

Plasmas are cool. City busters are not cool.

Gene

[SilverBack]

It's 4th of July already?

[GeneW]

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x39eRJA1aVU&feature=related)

One of his interrogators asked Dr. Oppenheimer if he would have supported the use of a "hydrogen bomb" on Hiroshima.

He responded "No", adding, "It wasn't necessary to use such a large bomb on such a small city".

In those days people were touchy about communism and with the "loss" of China people were concerned about the "spread of communism". So Oppenheimer's answer was interpreted as being "soft".

Shame. Oppenheimer wasn't the problem. Edward Teller was the problem. While his intellectual curiosity was wonderful the man had a gigantic ego and refused to share knowledge or credit.

He picked a blind alley in bomb development, which was born out in the "Morgenstern" test. Only later was the concept fixed, probably long after he got out of the racket.

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

Oppenheimer was supposed to have been a great project manager. Pity that he wasn't given the benefit of the doubt later on.


Gene

[GeneW]

who was the general in charge of the Manhattan Project?

btw check the bigger than Castle Bravo:http://www.yarisworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16434

Gen. Leslie Groves. I don't think he was involved in the prosecution of Oppenheimer. However Col. Pash had some involvement in it later on.

Bravo was three times larger than Cannikin but Cannikin was underground. WAAAAY underground.

Some maniacs drilled a big hole, bored down almost 6,000 feet, slipped down a steel casing, then classified operators cut a manhole through the side of the steel casing and started digging with shovels. They dug a fifty foot wide sphere underground. As I recall "water seeped from the ceiling constantly and the temps were about 105 fahrenheit"

"Likewise, the Cannikin test was unique in a number of ways. It was the
first major project under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and was required to have an environmental impact statement. It was the largest mined shaft in the United States with a single elevator shaft of 6000 ft; down which a 400 ton load was lowered into a 52 ft diameter chamber. The post-blast cavity is estimated at about 1200-1300 ft diameter based on the empirical equation that the cavity radius in meters = k times the cube root of the yield (in kilotons), where k has been estimated from other blasts to be in the range of 10 to 12 (Charles Fairhurst pers com), and the Cannikin yield was about 5000 kilotons see Figure 2.2. About a meter of uplift occurred along the adjacent Bering Sea Coast which permanently reduced the littoral zone along that shoreline"

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=6&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.osti.gov%2Fbridge%2Fservlets% 2Fpurl%2F4019027-tjIoN2%2F4019027.PDF&ei=du3nSYu5HJ6xtgeopszQBQ&rct=j&q=Cannikin+test+underground+chamber&usg=AFQjCNFbHBC03sahFIksUPNIQZS_S7Vxdg

Gene

[CompanyXPaladin]

Kind of related... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba :eek:

[Bob_VT]

I am probably one of the few people who has actually been to Eniwetok. It's still "hot" and now covered in concrete.......