Castle Union was the code name given to one of the tests in the Operation Castle series of United States nuclear tests. It was the first test of the TX-14 thermonuclear weapon (initially the "emergency capability" EC-14), one of the first deployed U.S. thermonuclear bombs. An "Alarm Clock" device is a "dry" fusion bomb, using

lithium deuteride Lithium hydride is an inorganic compound with the formula Li H. This alkali metal hydride is a colorless solid, although commercial samples are grey. Characteristic of a salt-like (ionic) hydride, it has a high melting point, and it is not solub ...

fuel for the fusion stage of a "staged" fusion bomb, unlike the

cryogenic In physics, cryogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The 13th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration (held in Washington DC in 1971) endorsed a universal definition of “cryogenics” and “cr ...

liquid deuterium of the first-generation Ivy Mike fusion device. It differed from the

Castle Romeo Castle Romeo was the code name given to one of the tests in the Operation Castle series of U.S. nuclear tests. It was the first test of the TX-17 thermonuclear weapon, the first deployed thermonuclear bomb. It was detonated on March 26, 1954, a ...

"Runt" device, tested shortly before, in using highly enriched lithium (approximately 95% lithium-6; natural lithium is a mixture of lithium-6 and lithium-7 isotopes). The "Runt" device had 7.5% lithium-6 in the fusion fuel. The test took place on April 26, 1954 at Bikini atoll of the Marshall Islands, on a barge moored in the lagoon, off Yurochi island. The yield of 6.9 megatons of TNT was somewhat higher than the predicted 3-4 megatons. Although the barge had been moored in over of water, the test left a crater in diameter and deep in the bottom of the lagoon. Like the Ivy Mike, Castle Bravo, and Castle Romeo tests, a large percentage of the yield was produced by fast

fission Fission, a splitting of something into two or more parts, may refer to: * Fission (biology), the division of a single entity into two or more parts and the regeneration of those parts into separate entities resembling the original * Nuclear fissio ...

of the natural uranium tamper, which contributed to the extensive fallout caused by these tests. As the highly enriched lithium was both expensive and scarce at the time, it limited the number of these weapons that could be produced. The "Runt" design tested in Castle Romeo and

Castle Yankee Castle Yankee was the code name given to one of the tests in the Operation Castle series of American tests of thermonuclear bombs. It was originally intended as a test of a TX-16/EC-16 ''Jughead'' bomb, but the design became obsolete after the ...

was preferred for deployment.

External links

Wikimapia
* * *

References

* Chuck Hansen, ''U. S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History'' (Arlington: AeroFax, 1988) {{Nuclear weapons tests of the United States Explosions in 1954 Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll 1954 in military history 1954 in the environment 1950s in the Marshall Islands 1954 in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands April 1954 events in Oceania