Military Effects Studies on Operation CASTLE
About this film
Operation CASTLE was a six-detonation test series held at the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Pacific Proving Ground in the Spring of 1954. This test series, principally conducted at the Enewetak and Bikini Atolls in the northwestern Marshall Islands, provided proof tests of large-yield thermonuclear, or hydrogen, devices. CASTLE represented the end of a drive for a workable thermonuclear weapon and the beginning of the refinement of large-H-bombs into smaller and more efficient weapons. After CASTLE, the U.S. could choose in a range of small tactical weapons to large strategic weapons. From this point, weapons development programs concentrated on producing bombs of specific nuclear weapons effects -- heat, blast, and radiation. The Bravo event of the CASTLE series yielded 15 megatons, unexpectedly the most ever exploded in atmospheric testing by the U.S.. A scientific miscalculation based on a then-unknown "tritium fusion bonus" of highly enriched lithium-6 contributing the the detonation yield caused the yield to be about two and a half times of that what was expected. Reports indicate that Bravo was the single worst incident of fallout exposure in all of the U.S. atmospheric te…
Directors & creators
AFSWP
Subjects
Operation Castle;Castle;atomic;nuclear;Cold War;atomic testing;nuclear testing;1951;military;Eniwetok;Enewetak;Eniwetak;Bikini;Bikini Atoll;Pacific Proving Ground;national defense;Department of Defense;Department of Energy;radiation;radioactivity;fallout;radioactive;thermonuclear test;thermonuclear