"Castle Koon" and "Redwing Zuni" shot craters

Marshall Islands / Mili / Arbar /
 nuclear testing area  Add category
Craters of the "Castle Koon" and "Redwing Zuni" thermonuclear tests.

"Castle Koon" was fired on the surface April 7, 1954. Koon was the first thermonuclear device to be designed by UCRL (now Lawrence Livermore), and was the last weapon design on which Edward Teller directly worked. It was a fizzle - with a predicted yield of 1 megaton its actual yield was only 110 kt. Of this, 100 kt was from fission (almost entirely due to the primary), only 10 kt of energy was contributed by fusion reactions.

"Redwing Zuni" was fired on the surface 100 feet east of the Koon crater on May 28, 1956, yielding 3.5 megatons as predicted.
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Coordinates:   11°30'11"N   165°22'13"E
This article was last modified 16 years ago