The mushroom cloud from the Mike shot. A mushroom cloud is a distinctive Mushroom -shaped Cloud of condensed Water vapor or Debris resulting from a very large Explosion.

Operation Ivy was the eighth series of American nuclear tests, coming after Tumbler-Snapper and before Upshot-Knothole. Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness yield and explosive capability of Nuclear weapons Throughout the twentieth century most nations Operation Tumbler-Snapper was a series of atomic tests conducted by the United States in the spring of 1952 at the Nevada Test Site. Operation Upshot-Knothole was a series of eleven nuclear test shots conducted in 1953 at the Nevada Test Site. The purpose of the tests were to help upgrade the U. S. arsenal of nuclear weapons, in response to the Soviet nuclear weapons program. A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from Nuclear reactions either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. A soviet (сове́т, "council" originally was a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia. The two explosions were staged in late 1952 at the Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshall Islands. The Pacific Proving Grounds was the name used to describe a number of sites in the Marshall Islands and a few other sites in the Pacific Ocean, used by the The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI is a Micronesian nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean

The first device, codenamed Mike, was notable for being the first successful test of a multi-megaton thermonuclear weapon design (the Teller-Ulam design), usually considered the world's first hydrogen bomb test. Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first US test of a fusion device where a major part of the explosive yield came from fusion The Teller–Ulam design is a Nuclear weapon design which is used in Megaton -range Thermonuclear weapons and is more colloquially referred to as "the The Teller–Ulam design is a Nuclear weapon design which is used in Megaton -range Thermonuclear weapons and is more colloquially referred to as "the It used liquid deuterium as its fusion fuel, kept cold with an expensive and cumbersome cryogenic system. Too unwieldy to be deployed as a weapon, it was built to demonstrate the power and possibility of using nuclear fusion as a principle for larger-yield nuclear weapons than previously possible. In Physics and Nuclear chemistry, nuclear fusion is the process by which multiple- like charged atomic nuclei join together to form a heavier nucleus It was detonated on Elugelab Island in the Enewetak atoll of the Marshall Islands. Elugelab Island (or Elugelap was part of the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands before it was vaporized by the very first test of the Hydrogen bomb Enewetak (or Eniwetok) is an Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the central Pacific Ocean. The Marshall Islands, officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI is a Micronesian nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean It yielded 10. 4 megatons of explosive power, almost 500 times the power of the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. ( is the Capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan. 8 megatons of the yield was from fast fission of the uranium tamper. The detonation obliterated Elugelab, leaving an underwater crater 6,240 ft (1. 9 km) wide and 164 ft (50 m) deep where an island had once been.

The second test, King, was a test of the largest nuclear weapon ever built at the time which utilized only nuclear fission as the source of its energy (it had none of its energy added from fusion or fusion boosting). Ivy King was the largest pure fission nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States Nuclear fission is the splitting of the nucleus of an atom into parts (lighter nuclei) often producing Free neutrons and other smaller nuclei which may A boosted fission weapon usually refers to a type of Nuclear bomb that uses a small amount of fusion fuel to increase the rate and thus yield of a fission It was dubbed the "Super Oralloy Bomb", and was intended as a backup if the fusion weapon was a failure. Enriched uranium is a kind of Uranium in which the percent composition of Uranium-235 has been increased through the process of Isotope separation. It had a yield of 500 kilotons, 25-40 times more powerful than the weapons dropped during World War II. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including

In Popular Culture

The influential East Bay ska-punk band Operation Ivy was named after this test. Ivy King was the largest pure fission nuclear bomb ever tested by the United States Operation Ivy was an influential Ska punk and Hardcore punk band formed in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. ^[1]

See also

• History of nuclear weapons
• Operation Castle

External links

• Operation Ivy
• Analysis of Radiation Exposure for Navy Personnel at Operation Ivy
• Internet Archive: Operation Ivy (1952) — film about Operation Ivy created by the US Air Force

References

• Chuck Hansen, U. The history of nuclear weapons chronicles the development of Nuclear weapons. Operation Castle was a United States series of high-energy (high- yield) Nuclear tests by Joint Task Force SEVEN (JTF-7 at Bikini Atoll beginning S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History (Arlington: AeroFax, 1988)