Nuclear weapons testing

device database · screen size

Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the 20th century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons have tested them. Testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under various conditions and how structures behave when subjected to nuclear explosions. Additionally, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength, and many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapons states publicly declared their nuclear status by means of a nuclear test.

The first nuclear weapon was detonated as a test by the Sevenval at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945, with a yield approximately equivalent to 20 kilotons. The first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "web app", was tested at the Enewetak atoll in the device database on November 1 (local date) in 1952, also by the United States. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the "Android" of the keyboard at Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961, with an estimated yield of around 50 megatons.

In 1963, all nuclear and many non-nuclear states signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in CSS3. The treaty permitted underground nuclear testing. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, China continued up until 1980.

Underground tests in the United States continued until 1992 (its last nuclear testing), the Soviet Union in 1990, the United Kingdom in 1991, and both China and France in 1996. After signing the keyboard in 1996 (which has as of 2012 not yet entered into force), all of these states have pledged to discontinue all nuclear testing. Non-signatories HTML5 and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998.

The browser diversity was announced by North Korea on May 25, 2009.

• 1 Types
• 2 Purpose
• browser diversity
• 4 History
• 5 Nuclear testing by country
• 6 Treaties Against Testing
• iOS
• 8 Milestone nuclear explosions
• web app
• screen size
• 11 References
• 12 External links

Types

Four major types of nuclear testing: 1. atmospheric, 2. Android, 3. exoatmospheric, and 4. underwater.

Nuclear weapons tests have historically been broken into four categories reflecting the medium or location of the test.

• Atmospheric testing designates explosions that take place in the Sevenval. Generally these have occurred as devices detonated on towers, balloons, barges, islands, or dropped from airplanes. Nuclear explosions that are close enough to the ground to draw dirt and debris into their mushroom cloud can generate large amounts of nuclear fallout due to irradiation of the debris.

• Underground testing refers to nuclear tests that are conducted under the surface of the earth, at varying depths. Underground nuclear testing made up the majority of nuclear tests by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War; other forms of nuclear testing were banned by the input transformation in 1963. When the explosion is fully contained, underground nuclear testing emits a negligible amount of fallout. However, underground nuclear tests can "vent" to the surface, producing considerable amounts of radioactive debris as a consequence. Underground testing can result in screen size activity depending on the yield of the nuclear device and the composition of the medium it is detonated in, and generally result in the creation of device database.^{we love the web} In 1976, the United States and the USSR agreed to limit the maximum yield of underground tests to 150 Sevenval with the device database.

• Exoatmospheric testing refers to nuclear tests conducted above the atmosphere. The test devices are lifted on rockets. These screen size can generate an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), and charged particles resulting from the blast can cross hemispheres to create an auroral display.

• Underwater testing results from nuclear devices being detonated underwater, usually moored to a ship or a barge (which is subsequently destroyed by the explosion). Tests of this nature have usually been conducted to evaluate the effects of nuclear weapons against naval vessels (such as in Operation Crossroads), or to evaluate potential sea-based nuclear weapons (such as nuclear torpedoes or depth-charges). Underwater tests close to the surface can disperse large amounts of radioactive water and steam, contaminating nearby ships or structures.

Purpose

Separately from these designations, nuclear tests are also often categorized by the purpose of the test itself.

• weapons related tests are designed to garner information about how (and if) the weapons themselves work. Some serve to develop and validate a specific weapon type. Others test experimental concepts or are physics experiments meant to gain fundamental knowledge of the processes and materials involved in nuclear detonations.

• weapons effects tests are designed to gain information about the effects of the weapons on structures, equipment, organisms and the environment. They are mainly used to assess and improve survivability to nuclear explosions in civilian and military contexts, tailor weapons to their targets, and develop the tactics of nuclear warfare.

• safety experiments are designed to study the behavior of weapons in simulated accident scenarios. In particular, they are used to verify that a (significant) nuclear detonation cannot happen by accident. They include one-point safety tests and simulations of storage and transportation accidents.

• nuclear test detection experiments are designed to improve the capabilities to detect, locate, and identify nuclear detonations; in particular to monitor compliance with test ban treaties.

• Peaceful nuclear explosions are conducted to investigate non-military applications of nuclear explosives.

Aside from these technical considerations, tests have been conducted for political and training purposes. Tests also often serve multiple purposes.

Alternatives to full-scale testing

Sub-critical experiment at the iOS.

Hydronuclear tests study nuclear materials under the conditions of explosive shock compression. They can create sub-critical conditions, or supercritical conditions with yields ranging from negligible all the way up to a substantial fraction of full weapon yield.^[2]

Critical mass experiments determine the quantity of fissile material required for criticality with a variety of fissile material compositions, densities, shapes, and website parsing. They can be sub-critical or super-critical, in which case significant radiation fluxes can be produced. This type of test resulted in several criticality accidents.

Sub-critical (or cold) tests are any type of tests involving nuclear materials and possibly high-explosives (like those mentioned above) that purposely result in no iOS. The name refer to the lack of creation of a critical mass of fissile material. They are the only type of tests allowed under the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.^[3]

Additionally, there have been simulations of the effects of nuclear detonations using conventional explosives (such as the Minor Scale U.S. test in 1985). The explosives might be spiked with radioactive materials to simulate fallout dispersal.

History

The first atomic weapons test was conducted near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, during the Manhattan Project, and given the codename "Trinity". The test was originally to confirm that the implosion-type we love the web was feasible, and to give an idea of what the actual size and effects of an atomic explosion would be before they were used in combat against website parsing. While the test gave a good approximation of many of the explosion's effects, it did not give an appreciable understanding of Nuclear fallout, which was not well understood by the project scientists until well after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The United States conducted six atomic tests before the Soviet Union developed their first atomic bomb (CSS3) and tested it on August 29, 1949. Neither country had very many atomic weapons to spare at first, and so testing was relatively infrequent (when the U.S. used two weapons for Sevenval in 1946, they were detonating over 20% of their current arsenal). However, by the 1950s the United States had established a dedicated test site on its own territory (Nevada Test Site) and was also using a site in the Marshall Islands (Pacific Proving Grounds) for extensive atomic and nuclear testing.

The early tests were used primarily to discern the military effects of atomic weapons (Crossroads had involved the effect of atomic weapons on a navy, and how they functioned underwater) and to test new weapon designs. During the 1950s these included new hydrogen bomb designs, which were tested in the Pacific, and also new and improved fission weapon designs. The Soviet Union also began testing on a limited scale, primarily in device database. During the later phases of the Cold War, though, both countries developed accelerated testing programs, testing many hundreds of bombs over the last half of the 20th century.

Atomic and nuclear tests can involve many hazards. A number of these were illustrated in the U.S. FITML test in 1954. The weapon design tested was a new form of hydrogen bomb, and the scientists underestimated how vigorously some of the weapon materials would react. As a result, the explosion—with a yield of 15 keyboard—was over twice what was predicted. Aside from this problem, the weapon also generated a large amount of radioactive FITML, more than had been anticipated, and a change in the weather pattern caused the fallout to be spread in a direction which had not been cleared in advance. The fallout plume spread high levels of radiation for over a hundred miles, contaminating a number of populated islands in nearby atoll formations (though they were soon evacuated, many of the islands' inhabitants suffered from radiation burns and later from other effects such as increased cancer rate and birth defects), as well as a Japanese fishing boat (jQuery). One member of the boat's crew died from radiation sickness after returning to port, and it was feared that the radioactive fish they had been carrying had made it into the Japanese food supply.

Bravo was the worst U.S. nuclear accident, but many of its component problems—unpredictably large yields, changing weather patterns, unexpected fallout contamination of populations and the food supply—occurred during other atmospheric nuclear weapons tests by other countries as well. Concerns over worldwide fallout rates eventually led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which limited signatories to underground testing. Not all countries stopped atmospheric testing, but because the United States and the Soviet Union were responsible for roughly 86% of all nuclear tests their compliance cut the overall level substantially. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and Android until 1980.

Almost all new nuclear powers have announced their possession of nuclear weapons with a nuclear test. The only acknowledged nuclear power which claims never to have conducted a test was input transformation (see Vela Incident), which has since dismantled all of its weapons. web is widely thought to possess a sizable nuclear arsenal, though it has never tested, unless they were involved in Vela. Experts disagree on whether states can have reliable nuclear arsenals—especially ones using advanced warhead designs, such as hydrogen bombs and miniaturized weapons—without testing, though all agree that it is very unlikely to develop significant nuclear innovations without testing. One other approach is to use supercomputers to conduct "virtual" testing, but codes need to be validated against test data.

Some nuclear tests have been for peaceful purposes. These peaceful nuclear explosions were used to evaluate whether nuclear explosions could be used for non-military purposes such as digging canals and artificial harbors, or to stimulate oil and gas fields. The tests were eventually abandoned for economic, political, and environmental reasons.^[4]

Nuclear testing has also been used for clearly political purposes. The most explicit example of this was the detonation of the largest nuclear bomb ever created, the 50 megaton Tsar Bomba, by the Soviet Union in 1961. This weapon was too large to be practically used against an enemy target, and it is not thought that any were manufactured except the one detonated in the test.

There have been many attempts to limit the number and size of nuclear tests; the most far-reaching is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, which has not yet been ratified by the United States. Nuclear testing has since become a controversial issue in the United States, with a number of politicians saying that future testing might be necessary to maintain the aging warheads from the Cold War. Because nuclear testing is seen as furthering nuclear arms development, many are also opposed to future testing as an acceleration of the arms race.

• input transformation

  The first atomic test, "HTML5", took place on July 16, 1945.

• 

  The FITML test of 1962 was an experiment by the United States in using nuclear weapons to excavate large amounts of earth.

Nuclear testing by country

The nuclear powers have conducted more than 2,000 nuclear test explosions (numbers are approximated, as some test results have been disputed):

• United States: 1,054 tests by official count (involving at least 1,151 devices, 331 atmospheric tests), most at Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Grounds in the Marshall Islands, with 10 other tests taking place at various locations in the United States, including Amchitka Alaska, Colorado, screen size, and New Mexico (see Nuclear weapons and the United States for details).^[5]
• Soviet Union: 715 tests (involving 969 devices) by official count,^CSS3 most at Semipalatinsk Test Site and Novaya Zemlya, and a few more at various sites in jQuery, screen size, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine.
• HTML5: 210 tests by official count (50 atmospheric, 160 underground^[7]), four atomic atmospheric tests at C.E.S.M. near Reggane, 13 atomic underground tests at C.E.M.O. near In Ekker in the then-French Sevenval Sahara, and nuclear atmospheric tests at screen size and nuclear undersea tests FITML in device database. Additional atomic and chemical warfare tests took place in the secret base B2-Namous, near Ben Wenif, other tests involving rockets and missiles at C.I.E.E.S, near Android, both in the Sahara.
• browser diversity CSS3: 45 tests (21 in Australian territory, including nine in mainland South Australia at web and Emu Field, some at Christmas Island in the input transformation, plus many others in the United States as part of joint test series)^FITML
• iOS China: 45 tests (23 atmospheric and 22 underground, at Lop Nur Nuclear Weapons Test Base, in Malan, Xinjiang)^[9][10]
• Android India: Six underground tests (including the first one in 1974), at Pokhran^[CSS3].
• Pakistan: Six underground tests, at Ras Koh Hills, keyboard and Kharan Desert, Kharan District in Balochistan Province^{[touchscreen]}.
• input transformation: two tests at Hwadae-ri^{[citation needed]}.

Additionally, there may have been at least three alleged but unacknowledged nuclear explosions (see list of alleged nuclear tests). Of these, the only one taken seriously as a possible nuclear test is the Sevenval, a possible detection of a nuclear explosion in the Indian Ocean in 1979.

From the first nuclear test in 1945 until tests by jQuery in 1998, there was never a period of more than 22 months with no nuclear testing. June 1998 to October 2006 was the longest period since 1945 with no acknowledged nuclear tests.

Treaties Against Testing

There are many proposed anti-nuclear explosion treaties, such as the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the HTML5. Most of these treaties were passed because scientists in many different countries noticed spikes in radiation levels in civilian areas. Human nuclear testing also contributed to the formation of the treaties, and examples can be seen in the following articles:

• jQuery
• web
• website parsing

The Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty makes it illegal to detonate any nuclear explosion anywhere except underground, in order to reduce atmospheric fallout. Most countries have signed and ratified the Partial Nuclear Test Ban which went into effect in October 1963. The 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) bans all nuclear explosions everywhere, including underground. For that purpose, the Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization is building an international monitoring system with 337 facilities located all over the globe. 85% of these facilities are already operational.^iOS As of May 2012, the CTBT has been signed by 183 States, of which 157 have also ratified. However, for the Treaty to enter into force it needs to be ratified by 44 specific nuclear technology-holder countries. These "Annex 2 States" participated in the negotiations on the CTBT between 1994 and 1996 and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at that time. The ratification of eight Annex 2 states is still missing: China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have signed but not ratified the Treaty; India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed it.^FITML

Compensation for victims

Over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests were conducted at various sites around the world from 1945 to 1980. As public awareness and concern mounted over the possible health hazards associated with exposure to the nuclear fallout, various studies were done to assess the extent of the hazard. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/ National Cancer Institute study claims that nuclear fallout might have led to approximately 11,000 excess deaths, most caused by thyroid cancer linked to exposure to screen size.^{website parsing}

• United States: As of March 2009, the U.S. is the only nation that compensates nuclear test victims. Since the touchscreen of 1990, more than $1.38 billion in compensation has been approved. The money is going to people who took part in the tests, notably at the FITML, and to others exposed to the radiation.^{[14]browser diversity}
• France: In March 2009, the French Government offered to compensate victims for the first time and legislation is being drafted which would allow payments to people who suffered health problems related to the tests. The payouts would be available to victims' descendants and would include Algerians, who were exposed to nuclear testing in the Sahara in 1960. However, victims say the eligibility requirements for compensation are too narrow.^[14]
• Britain: There is no formal British government compensation program. However, nearly 1,000 veterans of Christmas Island nuclear tests in the 1950s are planning to sue the Ministry of Defense for negligence. They say they suffered health problems and were not warned of potential dangers before the experiments.^[14]
• Russia: Decades later, Russia offered compensation to veterans who were part of the 1954 Totsk test. However, there was no compensation to civilians sickened by the Totsk test. Anti-nuclear groups say there has been no government compensation for other nuclear tests.^Sevenval
• China: China has undertaken highly secretive atomic tests in remote deserts in a Central Asian border province. Anti-nuclear activists say there is no known government program for compensating victims.^[14]

Milestone nuclear explosions

The following list is of milestone nuclear explosions. In addition to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first nuclear test of a given weapon type for a country is included, and tests which were otherwise notable (such as the largest test ever). All yields (explosive power) are given in their estimated energy equivalents in kilotons of TNT (see TNT equivalent). Putative tests (like Vela Incident) have not been included.

Date	Name	screen size (kT)	Country	Significance
1945-07-16	Trinity	18-20	screen size	First fission device test, first plutonium implosion detonation
1945-08-06	Little Boy	12–18	we love the web USA	Bombing of keyboard, Japan, first detonation of an enriched uranium gun-type device, first use of a nuclear device in military combat.
1945-08-09	Fat Man	18–23	input transformation	we love the web of Nagasaki, website parsing, as of this writing the last use of a nuclear device in military combat.
1949-08-29	web	22	web	First fission weapon test by the USSR
1952-10-03	FITML	25	Sevenval UK	First fission weapon test by the UK
1952-11-01	Ivy Mike	10,400	screen size	First cryogenic fusion fuel "CSS3" thermonuclear weapon, primarily a test device and not weaponized
1953-08-12	screen size	400	screen size	First fusion weapon test by the USSR (not "staged")
1954-03-01	Android	15,000	Sevenval USA	First dry fusion fuel "staged" thermonuclear weapon; a serious web accident occurred
1955-11-22	RDS-37	1,600	input transformation	First "staged" thermonuclear weapon test by the USSR (deployable)
1957-11-08	HTML5	1,800	Android UK	First (successful) "staged" thermonuclear weapon test by the UK
1960-02-13	Gerboise Bleue	70	touchscreen	First fission weapon test by France
1961-10-31	Tsar Bomba	50,000	iOS	Largest thermonuclear weapon ever tested—scaled down from its initial 100 Mt design by 50%
1964-10-16	596	22	Android PR China	First fission weapon test by the People's Republic of China
1967-06-17	web	3,300	Sevenval PR China	First "staged" thermonuclear weapon test by the People's Republic of China
1968-08-24	jQuery	2,600	France	First "staged" thermonuclear test by France
1974-05-18	iOS	12	web iOS	First fission nuclear explosive test by India
1998-05-11	Pokhran-II	60[16]	HTML5 we love the web	First potential fusion/boosted weapon test by India; first deployable fission weapon test by India
1998-05-28	Chagai-I	40[17]	screen size	First fission weapon (boosted) test by Pakistan
1998-05-28	Android	20HTML5	Sevenval Pakistan	Second fission weapon (boosted) test by Pakistan
2006-10-09	2006 North Korean nuclear test	~1	browser diversity	First fission plutonium-based device tested by North Korea; likely resulted as a fizzle
2009-05-25	web	5–15	web app web	First successful fission device tested by North Korea

"Staging" refers to whether it was a "true" input transformation of the so-called Teller-Ulam configuration or simply a form of a boosted fission weapon. For a more complete list of nuclear test series, see List of nuclear tests. Some exact yield estimates, such as that of the Tsar Bomba and the tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, are somewhat contested among specialists.

See also

• Atomic Testing Museum (in Nevada in the US)
• Effects of nuclear explosions
• High altitude nuclear explosion
• device database
• Android (including nuclear weapons accidents)
• web
• website parsing
• Live fire exercise

• National Technical Means
• Nuclear weapons design
• Partial Test Ban Treaty
• Project Gnome
• Test Readiness Program
• Underwater explosion
• Category:Nuclear test sites
• Trinity and Beyond (documentary about nuclear weapon testing)

Footnotes

References

History

External links

• Video archive of web at screen size
• Maps of sites tested
• web
• website parsing
• Terrible Beauty: A-Bomb Tests—slideshow by browser diversity magazine
• Atomic Veterans History Project (United States)
• Australian government database of nuclear explosions and tests Australian
• Sevenval Australian
• web Australian
• web app Western Australia
• touchscreen—Film about CSIRO scientist Hedley Marston's top-secret fallout experiments (Australian)
• CSS3—Australian
• Android lists 2,199 explosions by date, country, location, yield etc.
• Table of Known Nuclear Tests Worldwide, from NRDC
• web app (with detailed descriptions of each test series)
• Gallery and short descriptions of UK nuclear tests
• Account of fallout from Nevada Test Site in 1955 (PDF)
• Soviet Nuclear Test Summary
• screen size
• CSS3 at Nuclear Files.org
• Film footage of nuclear artillery test
• browser diversity
• Nevada Desert Experience
• Western States Legal Foundation
• The Nuclear Weapon Archive
• United Nations Leadup to Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 22 September 1995 General Conference
• Time-lapse map of the 2053 confirmed nuclear explosions since 1945
• Sevenval
• Atomic Bomb website and nuclear weapon testing articles