Ivy Mike
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1952 U.S. nuclear test; first full-scale test of a hydrogen bomb
Key facts
- Country
- United States, Marshall Islands
- Test series
- Operation Ivy
- Test site
- Enewetak , Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands
- Date
- November 1, 1952 , (73 years ago) ( 1952-11-01 )
- Test type
- Atmospheric
- Yield
- 10.4 megatons of TNT
via Wikipedia infobox
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device, in which a significant fraction of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, by the United States on the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll, in the now independent island nation of the Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Ivy. It was the first full test of the Teller–Ulam design, a staged fusion device.
Due to its physical size and fusion fuel type (cryogenic liquid deuterium), the "Mike" device was not suitable for use as a deliverable weapon. It was intended as a "technically conservative" proof of concept experiment to validate the concepts used for multi-megaton detonations.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ivy Mike” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.