Trinity test
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The "Trinity" test was the first test of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, thirty miles southeast of Socorro on what is now White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was a test of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, the same type of weapon later dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The detonation was equivalent to the explosion of around 20 kilotons of TNT, and is usually credited as the beginning of the Atomic Age.
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Background
- For more information, see Manhattan Project
The creation of nuclear weapons arose out of political and scientific developments of the late 1930s, as the rise of fascist governments in Europe and new discoveries about the nature of atoms converged in the plans of the United States and the United Kingdom to develop powerful weapons utilizing nuclear fission as their primary source of energy. The Manhattan Project, as the Allied effort was called, culminated in the test of a nuclear weapon at what is now called Trinity site in July 1945, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few weeks later.
Research, design, test, and production
While U.S. and British efforts to investigate the feasibility of nuclear weapons began as early as 1939, the effort at development only began in earnest in 1942 when it was transferred under the authority of the U.S. Army and became the Manhattan Project. The project focused on the development of fissile material to power the nuclear chain reactions which took place inside the weapons, and the design of the weapons themselves at the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico.Bet91
From January 1944 to July 1945, the large-scale production plants were set in operation, and the fissile material thus produced was used to determine the features of the weapons. Multipronged research was undertaken to follow several angles of attack against the problem of bomb design. Early decisions about weapon design had been based on minute quantities of uranium-235 (enriched uranium) and plutonium created in pilot plants and laboratory cyclotrons. From these results it was thought that the creation of a bomb was as simple as shooting one piece of fissile material into another to form a critical mass.
The production of uranium-235 proved to be quite difficult with existing technology, but the production of plutonium was comparatively easier, as it was a by-product of specially constructed nuclear reactors, the first of which was developed by Enrico Fermi only in 1941. Reactor-grade plutonium, however, was considerably less pure than cyclotron-produced plutonium, and the presence of another isotope of plutonium in the resulting product meant that the simple "gun type" model of bomb design would not work: the presence of extra neutrons meant that the weapon would pre-detonate in a messy, expensive, and nonspectacular fashion. This problem, when discovered in 1942, led to a redesign of the plutonium bomb towards the idea of "implosion", by which a spherical core of plutonium would be compressed using conventional explosives, which would increase its density and thus create a critical mass.
The problem was then to construct a weapon which would precisely compress the plutonium sphere on all sides exactly equally — any error would result in a "fizzle" which would simply eject the valuable plutonium and not result in a large explosion. Because of the difficulties in creating the shaped charges for perfect compression using the existing technology, it was decided by Manhattan Project military leader General Leslie Groves and scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer that a test of the concept would have to be undertaken before a weapon could be confidently used in war conditions.
Planning for the test
Planning for the test itself was assigned to Kenneth Bainbridge, a professor of physics at Harvard University, working under explosives expert George Kistiakowsky. A proper site had to be located that would guarantee secrecy of the project's goals even as it planned to detonate a nuclear weapon of unknown strength, proper scientific equipment had to be assembled for retrieving data from the test itself, and safety guidelines had to be developed to protect project personnel from the results of an unknown and highly dangerous experiment. Official test photographer Berlyn Brixner set up dozens of cameras to capture the event on film.
Site for the test
The site was part of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, now the White Sands Missile Range. The test site is at the northern end of the range, between the towns of Carrizozo and Socorro, New Mexico, in the Jornada del Muerto Desert in the southwestern United States (33.675° N 106.475° W). The culmination of the Manhattan Project, the event was code-named "Trinity", using the device code-named "Gadget" (nicknamed "The Gadget" in part since it was not a deliverable weapon).
Origin of the name
The exact origin of the name is unknown, but it is often attributed to laboratory leader J. Robert Oppenheimer as a reference to the poetry of John Donne. Oppenheimer had been exposed to Donne primarily through his former girlfriend Jean Tatlock, who had committed suicide in July 1944. In 1962, General Leslie Groves wrote to Oppenheimer on the origin of the name, asking if he had chosen it on the basis that it was a name common to rivers and peaks in the West and would not attract attention. "I did suggest it, but not on [that] ground... Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: 'As West and East / In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are on, / So death doth touch the Resurrection.'" ("Hymn to God My God, in My Sicknesses"). Oppenheimer continued, "That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God;—.' Beyond this, I have no clues whatever." (Holy Sonnets XIV).Rho86
Predictions for the test result
Betting pools were set up among the observers for the results of the test. Some predictions ranged from zero, a dud, to 18 kilotons of TNT (predicted by I. I. Rabi), to destruction of the state of New Mexico, to ignition of the atmosphere and incineration of the planet (fortunately, this result was calculated to be impossible beforehand, though for a while it caused some of the scientists some anxiety). As it turned out, Rabi won the bet.Her93
Preparing the test
There was a pretest explosion of 100 tons of TNT on May 7 to calibrate the instrumentation. (Since then, almost all nuclear detonation yields have been measured in units of kilotons, or the equivalent of that many thousand tons of TNT.) For the actual test, the plutonium-core nuclear weapon, nicknamed the gadget, was hoisted on the top of a 20-metre steel tower for detonation — the height would give a better indication of what the weapon would be like when dropped from an airplane, as detonation in the air would maximize the amount of energy applied directly to the target (as it expanded in a spherical shape), and would kick up the least nuclear fallout.
The "gadget" was assembled at the nearby McDonald Ranch House, the components arriving on July 12. It was assembled on the 13th and precariously winched up the tower the following day. In case of failure, a huge steel canister code-named "Jumbo" was prepared to recover the valuable plutonium at the order of General Groves. Weighing 240 tons, "Jumbo" was meant to contain the explosion from the 5 tons of conventional explosives used to compress the plutonium in case the chain reaction failed. At great expense, "Jumbo" was constructed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and brought out to the test site by rail, but by the time it arrived the confidence of the scientists was high enough that it was decided not to be used. It was instead hoisted up in a steel tower 800 yards from the "gadget", as a rough measure of how powerful it would be. In the end, "Jumbo" survived, though its tower did not.
The detonation was initially planned for 4:00 a.m. but was postponed due to rain and lightning from early that morning. Under conditions of rain it was feared that the danger from radiation and fallout would be greatly increased, and the lightning put the scientists on edge about the possibility of an accidental detonation.
The explosion
At 4:45 a.m. a crucial weather report came in favorably, and at 5:10 a.m. the twenty-minute countdown began. Most of the top-level scientists and military officers were observing from a base camp, ten miles southwest of the test tower. Many other observers were around twenty miles away, and some others were scatted at different distances, some in more informal situations (physicist Richard Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the dark glasses provided, relying on a truck windshield to screen out harmful ultraviolet wavelengths). The final countdown was read by physicist Samuel K. Allison.
At 05:29:45 local time (Mountain War Time), the device exploded with an energy equivalent to around 19 kilotons of TNT (87.5 TJ). It left a crater of radioactive glass in the desert 3 meters deep and 330 meters wide. At the time of detonation, the surrounding mountains were illuminated brighter than daytime for one to two seconds, and the heat was reported as being as hot as an oven at the base camp. The observed colors of the illumination ranged from purple, to green, and eventually to white. The roar of the shock wave took 40 seconds to reach the observersHer93. The shock wave was felt over 160 km away, and the mushroom cloud reached 12 km. As Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the demonstration, he later said that a line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita came to mind:
- "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."Hij00
Variants on this quote exist, both by Oppenheimer and by others. A more common translation of the passage, from Arthur Ryder (from whom Oppenheimer studied Sanskrit at UC Berkeley in the 1930s), is:
- Death am I, and my present task
- Destruction. (11:32) Hij00
Since the Gita's first translation into English in 1785, most experts have translated not "Death" but instead "Time". A further elaboration of the supposed Oppenheimer quote often cited is taken from Robert Jungk's 1958 Brighter than a Thousand Suns:
- If the radiance of a thousand suns
- were to burst into the sky,
- that would be like
- the splendor of the Mighty One—
- I am become Death, the shatterer of Worlds.Jun58
Test director Kenneth Bainbridge, in an attempt to be less poetic, or perhaps more so, was said to have replied, "Now we are all sons of bitches." According to Oppenheimer's brother, Frank, at the time of the test he simply said, "It worked."
In the crater the desert sand, which is largely made of silica, melted and became glass of a light green color and mildly radioactive; this was named trinitite. The crater was filled in soon after the test. The military reported it as an accidental explosion at a munitions dump, and the actual cause was not publicly acknowledged until the August 6 attack on Hiroshima. The Manhattan Project's official journalist, William L. Laurence, had previously put multiple press releases on file with his office at the New York Times to be released in case of emergency, ranging from a successful test (the one which was used) to more macabre scenarios explaining why all of the scientists had perished in a single freak accident.
Around 260 personnel were present, none closer than 9 km. At the next test series, Operation Crossroads in 1946, over 40,000 people were present.
After the test
The results of the test were conveyed to President Harry S. Truman and were used by him as leverage in his negotiations with the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference. Truman was, however, somewhat shocked by Joseph Stalin's lack of response when he told him in private about the weapon — through espionage, Stalin was already well aware of the American endeavor.
Following the success of the Trinity test, two bombs were prepared for use against Japan. The first, dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, was code-named "Little Boy", and utilized uranium-235 as its fission source. It was an untested model, but seemed very likely to work. The second, dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, was code-named "Fat Man", and was a plutonium bomb of the type tested at the Trinity test. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed at least 120,000 people outright and many more over time, but were credited by the government for saving many more lives in the long run (see the previous link for information on this historical question and the controversy that surrounds it).
The information about the Trinity test was made public shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima. The Smyth Report, released on August 11, gave some information on the blast, and the hardbound edition released by Princeton University Press a few weeks later contained the famous "bulbous" pictures of the Trinity fireball. Oppenheimer and Groves posed for reporters near the remains of the mangled test tower shortly after the war. In the years after the test, the pictures have become a potent symbol of the beginning of the so-called "atomic age", and the test has often been featured in popular culture.
In 1975, the area was declared a National Historic Landmark; the public is admitted on the first Saturdays of April and October. There is still a little residual radiation at the site, though officials maintain that the amount of exposure received during a one-hour visit is far less than that received from eating food and being exposed to the sun.[1] The Trinity monument, a rough-sided, lava rock obelisk around 12 ft (3.65 m) high, marks the explosion's hypocenter, and "Jumbo" is still kept nearby. The site is still a reasonably popular destination for those interested in atomic tourism. On July 16, 2005, a special tour of the site was conducted to mark the 60th anniversary of the Trinity test.
See also
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Nuclear weapons and the United States
- Joe 1: the first Soviet atomic bomb test (with a device modeled after the type used at the "Trinity" test).
References
- ^ James A. Hijiya, "The Gita of Robert Oppenheimer" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 144:2 (June 2000). [2] (on Oppenheimer's Gita quote)
- ^ Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1986). Quotes regarding the naming of the test from p. 571-572.
- ^ Hans Bethe (1991), The Road from Los Alamos. American Institute of Physics ISBN 0-671-74012-1
- ^ James Hershberg (1993), James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age. 948 pp. ISBN 0394579666 p. 233
- ^ Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, trans. James Cleugh (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), 201.
External links
- Trinity Remembered: 60th Anniversary
- BBC article on the 60th Anniversary
- Atomic tourism: Information for visitors
- The Trinity test on the Los Alamos National Laboratory website
- Carey Sublette's Nuclear Weapon Archive Trinity page
- The Trinity test on the Sandia National Laboratories website
- Richard Feynman, "Los Alamos from Below"; Surely, You're Joking, Mr. Feynman.
- Trinity Test Fallout Pattern
- Trinity Test Photographs
- Trinity test site, Google Maps satellite photo
- "My Radioactive Vacation", report of a visit to the Trinity site, with pictures comparing its past with its present state.
- CNN.com feature on 60th anniversary tour of the Trinity site.
- Visiting Trinity Short article by Ker Than at 3 Quarks Daily
- "War Department release on New Mexico test, July 16, 1945", from the Smyth Report (1945)
