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Fat Man
"Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) was the design of the nuclear weapon the United States used for seven of the first eight nuclear weapons ever detonated in history. It is also the most powerful design to ever be used in warfare. A Fat Man device was Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki#Bombing of Nagasaki, detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second and largest of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare. It was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress ''Bockscar'' piloted by Major Charles Sweeney. Its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. The name Fat Man refers to the wide, round shape. Fat Man was an implosion-type nuclear weapon with a solid plutonium Nuclear reactor core, core, and later with improved cores. The first Fat Man to be detonated was the gadget in the Trinity (nuclear test), Trinity nuclear test less than a month earlier on 16 July at the Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo Bombing an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanford Site
The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It has also been known as SiteW and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the Hanford Engineer Works and B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb, which was tested in the Trinity nuclear test, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki. During the Cold War, the project expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the more than 60,000 weapons built for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Nuclear technology developed rapidly during this period, and Hanford scientists produced major technological achievements. The town of Richland, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tube Alloys
Tube Alloys was the research and development programme authorised by the United Kingdom, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Starting before the Manhattan Project in the United States, the British efforts were kept Classified information in the United Kingdom, classified, and as such had to be referred to by code even within the highest circles of government. The possibility of nuclear weapons was acknowledged early in the war. At the University of Birmingham, Rudolf Peierls and Otto Robert Frisch co-wrote Frisch–Peierls memorandum, a memorandum explaining that a small mass of pure uranium-235 could be used to produce a chain reaction in a bomb with the power of thousands of tons of TNT. This led to the formation of the MAUD Committee, which called for an all-out effort to develop nuclear weapons. Wallace Akers, who oversaw the project, chose the deliberately misleading code name "Tube Alloys". His Tube Alloys Directorate was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wallace Akers
Sir Wallace Alan Akers (9 September 1888 – 1 November 1954) was a British chemist and industrialist. Beginning his academic career at Oxford he specialized in physical chemistry. During the Second World War, he was the director of the Tube Alloys project, a clandestine programme aiming to research and develop British atomic weapons capabilities, from 1941 to 1945. After the war he was director of research at Imperial Chemical Industries. He also served as a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and the committee that drew up the organisation of what became the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. He died in 1954 at the age of 66. Biography Wallace Alan Akers was born in Walthamstow, England, the second child of an accountant, Charles Akers, and his wife, Mary Ethelreda née Brown. He was educated at Lake House School in Bexhill-on-Sea, Essex, and Aldenham School in Hertfordshire. He entered Christ Church, Oxford, where he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard C
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language">Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'strong in rule'. Nicknames include " Richie", " Dick", " Dickon", " Dickie", " Rich", " Rick", "Rico (name), Rico", " Ricky", and more. Richard is a common English (the name was introduced into England by the Normans), German and French male name. It's also used in many more languages, particularly Germanic, such as Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Dutch, as well as other languages including Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Finnish. Richard is cognate with variants of the name in other European languages, such as the Swedish "Rickard", the Portuguese and Spanish "Ricardo" and the Italian "Riccardo" (see comprehensive variant list below). People named Richard Multiple people with the same name * Richard Andersen (other) * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gun-type Fission Weapon
Gun-type fission weapons are fission-based nuclear weapons whose design assembles their fissile material into a supercritical mass by the use of the "gun" method: shooting one piece of sub-critical material into another. Although this is sometimes pictured as two sub-critical hemispheres driven together to make a supercritical sphere, typically a hollow projectile is shot onto a spike, which fills the hole in its center. Its name is a reference to the fact that it is shooting the material through an artillery barrel as if it were a projectile. Since it is a slow and asymmetrical method of assembly, weapons-grade plutonium cannot be used. The presence of the isotope 240Pu, with its high spontaneous fission rate, causes predetonation. It is extremely impractical to produce plutonium of the required isotopic purity in a reactor. Additionally, the required amount of highly enriched uranium is relatively large, and thus the overall efficiency is relatively low. The main reason fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland, California, Oakland and Emeryville, California, Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany, California, Albany and the Unincorporated area, unincorporated community of Kensington, California, Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County, California, Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321. Berkeley is home to the oldest campus in the University of California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed and operated by the university. It also has the Graduate Theological Union, one of the largest religious studies institutions in the world. Berkeley is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Oppenheimer
J. Robert Oppenheimer (born Julius Robert Oppenheimer ; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in overseeing the development of the first nuclear weapons. Born in New York City, Oppenheimer obtained a degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1925 and a doctorate in physics from the University of Göttingen in Germany in 1927, studying under Max Born. After research at other institutions, he joined the physics faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was made a full professor in 1936. Oppenheimer made significant contributions to physics in the fields of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics, including the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions; work on the theory of positrons, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum field theory; and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Ranger
Operation Ranger was the fourth American nuclear weapon, nuclear test series. It was conducted in 1951 and was the first series to be carried out at the Nevada Test Site. All the bombs were dropped by B-50 Superfortress, B-50D bombers and exploded in the open air over Frenchman Flat (Area 5 (Nevada National Security Site), Area 5). These tests centered on the practicality of developing a second generation of nuclear weapons using smaller amounts of valuable nuclear materials. They were planned under the name ''Operation Faust.'' The exact locations of the tests are unknown, as they were all air drops. However, the planned ground zero was set at for all except the ''Fox'' shot, which was "500 feet [] west and 300 feet [] south" in order to minimize damage to the control point. Footage of the Operation Buster–Jangle, ''Buster-Jangle Baker'' test is often mislabeled as belonging to the ''Ranger Able'' test. Both shots can be told apart because the ''Buster Baker'' test ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark 4 Nuclear Bomb
The Mark 4 nuclear bomb was an American implosion-type nuclear bomb based on the earlier Mark 3 Fat Man design, used in the Trinity test and the bombing of Nagasaki. With the Mark 3 needing each individual component to be hand-assembled by only highly trained technicians under closely controlled conditions, the purpose of the Mark 4 was to produce an atomic weapon as a practical piece of ordnance. The Mark 4 Mod 0 entered the stockpile starting March 19, 1949 and was in use until 1953. With over 500 units procured, the Mark 4 was the first mass-produced nuclear weapon. Design The Mark 4 utilized a near-identical nuclear explosive package to the 1561 assembly of the Fat Man, but the newly-formed Z Division of Los Alamos focused on re-engineering the electronics and conventional explosives packages to be more modular for easier assembly in the field. The priority objectives of the Mark 4 bomb program were to have the ability to monitor the weapon battery and electrical system ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Sandstone
Operation Sandstone was a series of nuclear weapon tests in 1948. It was the third series of American tests, following Trinity in 1945 and Crossroads in 1946, and preceding Ranger. Like the Crossroads tests, the Sandstone tests were carried out at the Pacific Proving Grounds, although at Enewetak Atoll rather than Bikini Atoll. They differed from Crossroads in that they were conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission, with the armed forces having only a supporting role. The purpose of the Sandstone tests was also different: they were primarily tests of new bomb designs, especially the more efficient levitated pits, rather than of the effects of nuclear weapons. Three tests were carried out in April and May 1948 by Joint Task Force 7, with a work force of 10,366 personnel, of whom 9,890 were military. The successful testing of the new cores in the Operation Sandstone tests rendered every component of the old weapons obsolete. Even before the third test had been carried out, p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bikini Atoll
Bikini Atoll ( or ; Marshallese language, Marshallese: , , ), known as Eschscholtz Atoll between the 19th century and 1946, is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a central lagoon. The atoll is at the northern end of the Ralik Chain, approximately northwest of the capital Majuro. After the Second World War, the atoll was chosen by the United States as a nuclear weapon testing site. It would be the site of the fourth nuclear bomb detonation and would go on to be the site of many more tests. The people that lived on Bikini—all 167 of the atoll's inhabitants—agreed to relocate after being informed of the plan to test then-new nuclear weapons, of great importance to humankind, though it is sometimes considered a forced relocation. In 1946 they moved to Rongerik, a small island east of Bikini Atoll, but it turned out to have inadequate resources to support the population. The islanders began experiencing starvation by early 1948, and they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
