How One Simple Mistake Caused a Nuclear Disaster

foreign was a nuclear detonation carried on the 1st of March 1954 at Bikini Atoll located in the Marshall Islands it was a part of operation Castle a series of tests dedicated towards thermonuclear weapons to this day the thermonuclear test conducted is considered as one of the worst radiological disasters to ever occur in the history of the United States all due to one single miscalculation this is the story of how one mistake led to the unintentional radiation sickness of thousands the test that was conducted relied on a thermonuclear device called the shrimp which was fueled by a Fusion fuel called lithium deuteride unlike a normal atomic bomb a thermonuclear or a so-called hydrogen bomb which in this case was used in the Castle Bravo test was dependent on a process of nuclear fission to catalyze nuclear fusion in a sense the process of the bomb was divided up into a primary and a secondary stage the primary stage consists of a typical fission bomb the same ones used in atomic weapons however when the nuclear bomb that was integrated inside the thermonuclear weapon was detonated after reaching critical mass the mass firing of neutrons would reach to the fusion material due to the geometry of the encasing this causes a process of fusion to occur which in a sense emits much more energy however in order to understand what caused the following disaster we need to know more specifically about what the Fusion fuel actually consisted of when lithium deuteride is bombarded with neutrons it catalyzes efficient process in which tritium forms due to the immense amount of thermal energy which gets released during a thermonuclear explosion which can result in temperatures 31 times hotter than the sun's core deuteride and tritium easily fuse together to become helium which in turn releases a high energy Neutron an exothermic reaction is thus created resulting in a large quantity of released energy which can be calculated using Einstein's famous Formula E equals to MC squared however lithium-7 which 60 of the Fusion fuel consisted of was unintentionally utilized during the explosion scientists who worked with Castle Bravo initially thought that the lithium-7 was going to be inert however it wasn't it was expected that when the neutron had interacted with the lithium-7 it would immediately turn to lithium-8 which often just before one second decays into simpler alpha particles but if the neutrons that are being shot at lithium-7 contain too high energy then it instead almost immediately decays into an alpha particle a tritium and another high-energy Neutron which causes a distinct chain reaction to form which is the reason why during March 1st at 6 45 AM local time they soon began to realize that something was horribly wrong a four and a half mile mushroom cloud formed which managed to Peak at an altitude of 130 000 feet it was so powerful that the amount of energy that was released in that single blast rivaled the total amount of bombs used by the Allies in the second world war being 750 times more powerful than fat man the second nuclear bomb to ever have hit Japan instead of the predicted blast having a power of roughly six megatons of dynamite it exploded with over 15 megatons two and a half times more powerful than it ever was to be expected as a result an unintended amount of radioactive fallout was released in the nearby Islands causing severe radiation sickness even though a few days prior when the weather seemed to go against safe testing the commander of the entire operation decided to launch it anyway this in turn along with the miscalculation by the scientists resulted in a radiological disaster even places distant away from the blast site were affected as a result of the accumulation of radioactive dust particles caused by the pulverizing of coral reefs and other biological organisms during the immense explosion no one knew that the particles that they were seeing were of any harm many even mistook it for snow approximately five hours after the detonation it began to rain radioactive fallout at rongolap within hours the atoll was covered with a fine white powder-like substance no one knew it was radioactive fallout the children played in the snow they ate it [Music] it was not after two days until the United States decided to evacuate the inhabitants of the nearby Islands another evacuation would take place during 1957 due to the fear of lingering radiation levels for the 82 people who decided to return a few years later the previous inhabitants of the Marshall Islands began to develop cancerous thyroid tumors and their chances of developing cancer in general increased by unimaginable Folds in the end the radiation caused by Castle Bravo extended several miles into the Pacific Ocean which led to unsustainable life in those particular areas the radiation was reportedly spread to Japan India and even the United States itself however to this day the radiation levels of the Marshall Islands are still higher than normal due to the remains of plutonium uranium and strontium-90 that still has not fully decayed yet it is not fully sure when it will fully be free from excess radiation since the beginning of the 1960s atmospheric nuclear testing along with testing underwater and in outer space has been prohibited this is through the backlash that was received due to Castle Bravo and the work of scientists to inform people about the dangers of nuclear weapons the nuclear testing that was conducted at the Marshall Islands that day was an impetus for this process that eventually led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. in conclusion Castle Bravo has managed to provide us with a valuable lesson even though we humans Make Mistakes by Nature even the smallest things that we Overlook can yield the gravest consequences but the gravest consequences lead to vast Improvement the thermonuclear testing was the reason why peace was acknowledged and why the term Fallout has been used more frequently to describe radioactive particles even though Castle Bravo will for a long time be considered as one of the biggest nuclear disasters it shall also remind us of all the things it has managed to bring to the table [Music] foreign

Channel: AllIsWell

Views: 79,629

Keywords: Castle Bravo, Miscalculation, Dealdy, Deadly, Castle, Bravo, Operation Castle, The Deadly Miscalculation, Miscalculation of Castle Bravo, Castle Bravo Incident, Calculation, Dead Miscalculation

Id: IFyPCODS6YM

Length: 7min 40sec (460 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023