Emu Field (also Emu Junction or simply Emu) is the site of

Operation Totem Operation Totem was a pair of British atmospheric nuclear tests which took place at Emu Field in South Australia in October 1953. They followed the Operation Hurricane test of the first British atomic bomb, which had taken place at the Montebe ...

, a pair of nuclear tests conducted by the British Government in South Australia during October 1953. The site was surveyed by

Len Beadell Leonard Beadell OAM BEM FIEMS (21 April 1923 – 12 May 1995) was a surveyor, road builder, bushman, artist and author, responsible for constructing over of roads and opening up isolated desert areas – some – of central Australia fro ...

in 1952. A village and airstrip were constructed for the subsequent testing program. The site was supported from the

RAAF Woomera Range Complex The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a S ...

. Two British nuclear weapon tests were conducted at the site. ''Totem I'' was detonated on 15 October 1953 and ''Totem II'' was detonated on 27 October 1953. The devices were both sited on towers and yielded 9

kilotons TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. A ton of TNT equivalent is a unit of energy defined by convention to be (). It is the approximate energy released in the det ...

and 7 kilotons respectively. The site was also used in September–October 1953 for some of the Kitten series of tests, which were conventional (rather than nuclear) explosions used to evaluate neutron initiators. It was later found that the

radioactive Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...

cloud from the first detonation did not disperse as expected, and travelled north-east over the Australian continent. The site at Emu Field was unsafe for further testing due to contamination by nuclear radiation, and the search for another location led to the survey of

Maralinga Maralinga is a desert area around large located in the west of South Australia, within the Great Victoria Desert. The area is best known for being the location of several British nuclear tests in the 1950s. In January 1985, in recognition of ...

, where a further series of atomic tests was conducted in 1956. There are now stone monuments at the ground-zero points, which can be visited by tourists (with the written approval of the RAAF Woomera Test Range who now control access to the area), though the location is still extremely remote (see

Anne Beadell Highway Anne Beadell Highway is an outback unsealed track linking Coober Pedy, South Australia, and Laverton, Western Australia, a total distance of . The track was surveyed and built by Len Beadell, Australian surveyor, who named it after his wife. ...

). Evidence of the explosions may still be seen at ground-zero in the form of

vitrified sand Vitrified sand is sand that has been heated to a high enough temperature to undergo vitrification, which is the melting of the silicon dioxide or quartz that compose common sand. Vitrified sand is a type of natural glass, contrasted with manufacture ...

and concentric blast rings. A history of the tests at Emu Field by Elizabeth Tynan was published in 2022.

References

External links

* {{cite web , url=http://www.atomicforum.org/uk/totem.html , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090105213805/http://www.atomicforum.org/uk/totem.html , url-status = dead , archive-date = 5 January 2009 , title = Operation Totem – 1953 , work = Atomic Forum – An illustrated history of nuclear weapons , accessdate=24 December 2007 Nuclear test sites Nuclear test sites in Australia Geography of South Australia Great Victoria Desert