Operation Teapot was a series of 14

nuclear test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by ...

explosions conducted at the

Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of th ...

in the first half of 1955. It was preceded by ''

Operation Castle Operation Castle was a United States series of high-yield (high-energy) nuclear tests by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF-7) at Bikini Atoll beginning in March 1954. It followed ''Operation Upshot–Knothole'' and preceded ''Operation Teapot''. Condu ...

'', and followed by ''

Operation Wigwam Operation Wigwam involved a single test of the Mark 90 "Betty" nuclear bomb. It was conducted between ''Operation Teapot'' and '' Project 56'' on May 14, 1955, about 500 miles (800 km) southwest of San Diego, California. 6,800 personnel ...

''. ''Wigwam'' was, administratively, a part of ''Teapot'', but it is usually treated as a class of its own. The aims of the operation were to establish military tactics for ground forces on a nuclear battlefield and to improve the nuclear weapons used for strategic delivery.

Teapot series tests

Table notes:

Individual blasts

Wasp

During shot ''Wasp'', ground forces took part in Exercise Desert Rock VI which included an armored task force ''Razor'' moving to within of ground zero, under the still-forming

mushroom cloud A mushroom cloud is a distinctive mushroom-shaped flammagenitus cloud of debris, smoke and usually condensed water vapor resulting from a large explosion. The effect is most commonly associated with a nuclear explosion, but any sufficiently ener ...

Bee

An augmented test unit from the

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...

participated in shot ''Bee'' during the March 1955 exercises.

MET

The ''MET'' was the first bomb core to include

uranium-233 Uranium-233 (233U or U-233) is a fissile Isotopes of uranium, isotope of uranium that is bred from thorium-232 as part of the thorium fuel cycle. Uranium-233 was investigated for use in nuclear weapons and as a Nuclear fuel, reactor fuel. It ha ...

(a rarely used

fissile isotope In nuclear engineering, fissile material is material capable of sustaining a nuclear fission chain reaction. By definition, fissile material can sustain a chain reaction with neutrons of thermal energy. The predominant neutron energy may be ty ...

that is the product of

thorium-232 Thorium-232 () is the main naturally occurring isotope of thorium, with a relative abundance of 99.98%. It has a half life of 14 billion years, which makes it the longest-lived isotope of thorium. It decays by alpha decay to radium-228; its decay ...

neutron absorption), along with plutonium; this was based on the plutonium/U-235 pit from the TX-7E, a prototype

Mark 7 nuclear bomb Mark 7 "Thor" (or Mk-7') was the first tactical fission bomb adopted by US armed forces. It was also the first weapon to be delivered using the toss method with the help of the low-altitude bombing system (LABS). The weapon was tested in Operation ...

design used in the 1951 ''

Operation Buster-Jangle Operation or Operations may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''Operation'' (game), a battery-operated board game that challenges dexterity * Operation (music), a term used in musical set theory * ''Operations'' (magazine), Multi-Man ...

Easy'' test. It produced a yield of 22kt (comparable to the ''

Fat Man "Fat Man" (also known as Mark III) is the codename for the type of nuclear bomb the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the fir ...

'' plutonium-only weapon that exploded over Nagasaki), but significantly less than the expected amount. Since it was a military effects test, the DoD specified that the device should have a calibrated yield within 10% of ratings. However, weapon designers at Los Alamos substituted the experimental core without notifying the DoD. The unexpected lower yield, 33% less than the DoD expected, ruined many of the military's tests.

Apple-2

The Civil Defense ''Apple-2'' shot on May 5, 1955 was intended to test various building construction types in a nuclear blast. An assortment of buildings, including residential houses and

electrical substation A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or perform any of several other important functions. Between the generating station and ...

s, were constructed at the site nicknamed "Survival Town" by some and "Doom Town" by others. The buildings were populated with mannequins, and stocked with different types of canned and packaged foods. Not all of the buildings were destroyed in the blast, and some of them still stand at Area 1, Nevada Test Site. A short film about the blast, referred to as "Operation Cue", was distributed by the

Federal Civil Defense Administration The Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) was organized by President Harry S. Truman on December 1, 1950, through Executive Order 10186, and became an official government agency via the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 on 12 January 19 ...

. The houses are still standing at , at the east and west ends of the road loop. They are stops on the

Nevada National Security Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the ...

(NNSS) tour. From declassified documents dated February to May 1956, the Apple-2 shot, as part of Operation Teapot Project 35.5 "Effects of Nuclear Explosion on Records and Records Storage Equipment" was staged on the Nevada Test Site to determine the effects of nuclear explosions on various types of records and record storage equipment.

References

Operation Teapot Project 5.4 Evaluation of fireball lethality using basic missile structures(C)

External links

* * * * * NPR web page: effect on commercial beverage
YouTube—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL): "Operation Teapot − Turk 28112" videoYouTube—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Channel: LLNL Atmospheric Nuclear Tests website
— ''all uploaded LLNL videos of tests between 1945 and 1962, including 28 of Operation Teapot''. {{Nuclear weapons tests of the United States Nevada Test Site nuclear explosive tests, Teapot 1955 in military history 1955 in Nevada 1955 in the environment 1955 disasters in the United States Explosions in 1955 Articles containing video clips