Operation Hurricane (Australia)
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Nuclear test Operation Hurricane
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 Newspaper report after the explosion in Western Australia |
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| information | |
| nation |
 United Kingdom
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| Test location | Trimouille Island |
| date | October 3, 1952 |
| Test type | Ship interior |
| Test height | –2.7 meters |
| Weapon type | fission |
| Explosive power | 25 kT |
The Operation Hurricane was the first British atomic bomb test , the Trimouille on Iceland, one of the 174 small on October 3, 1952 Montebello Islands on the northwest coast of Western Australia was conducted.
politics
Britain decided in 1947 that it own nuclear weapons regardless of the United States in its Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in the county of Berkshire develop and will produce. Since these weapons were only to be tested in sparsely populated areas due to the public health risks, a suitable test area was sought. At first, the British hoped to use the American test site in Nevada for their own purposes, but this was not approved by the US. The British then initially planned to carry out tests on an area of the Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria or on one of the islands in the Bass Strait of Tasmania . In 1950, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee sent a personal message to Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies, under top secret, asking whether British nuclear weapons could be tested in the Montebello Islands. Menzies agreed to do this in principle without consulting the Australian Parliament beforehand.
Attlee pointed out to the Australian side the consequences of radioactive contamination of the northeastern archipelago as a result of the tests for the next three years and that entering this area could cause radiation damage, for example to pearl fishers and other people. Attlee hoped that the Australian government would take this into account and take appropriate action. The consequences for nature were not mentioned by him.
Bomb test
The British atomic bomb was a copy of the Fat Man bomb dropped by a US bomber on Nagasaki , Japan during World War II on August 9, 1945. This bomb had been detonated about 550 meters above a Mitsubishi arms factory and developed an explosive force of about 21 kilotons of TNT.
Fearing that a nuclear bomb on a ship could be smuggled into Britain and detonated, the British tested the effects of the explosion on a ship.
The tested bomb containing plutonium , which in many parts of the UK in the nuclear power plant in Windscale today renamed, Sellafield , in the county of Cumbria was created. Since this British nuclear power plant had not produced enough plutonium by the time it was delivered on August 1, 1952, Canada supplied the plutonium that was needed to carry it out.
The hurricane bomb exploded on October 3, 1952 at 8:00 a.m. local time inside the hull of HMS Plym , a 1,370 gross tonnage frigate , which was anchored in a bay on Trimouille Island 350 meters from the island's shore. The explosion occurred 2.7 meters below the frigate's waterline with an explosive force of about 25 kilotons of TNT. The explosion created a crater 6.0 meters deep and a radius of 300 meters. The ship was pulverized down to a few small pieces of metal. The hot little bits of metal ignited Spinifex grass growing on the island, and the atomic cloud created by the explosion reached a height of 4,500 meters.
According to this test, Britain was a nuclear power . Further British tests were carried out mainly in the interior of Australia at Maralinga in the Woomera Prohibited Area (see also list of nuclear weapons tests ).
Investigative commission
In 1985 the McClelland Royal Commission dealt with the consequences of British nuclear tests. This revealed that the tests had significant consequences for people and nature and that the fallout exposure was three times higher than expected.
literature
- Peter Bird (1989): Operation hurricane Worcester: Square One Publications. ISBN 187201710X First published: 1953.
Web links
- Video of Hurricane nuclear tests (English)
Individual proof
Coordinates: 20 ° 24 ′ 6.5 ″ S , 115 ° 34 ′ 37.2 ″ E