Ivy Mike Crater

Marshall Islands / Majuro / Biken /
 nuclear testing area, bomb/explosion crater
Site of first full-scale fusion explosion, "Ivy Mike", on November 1, 1952 at 7:15am with a yield of 10.4 megatons. Elugelab Island was vaporized and replaced with a crater in the reef 6,240 feet in diameter and 164 feet deep.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   11°40'0"N   162°11'22"E

Comments

  • Official DoE data shows that Castle Nectar was also detonated on a barge moored over the Ivy Mike crater. Castle Nectar was a proof-test of the Mk.15 thermonuclear aircraft bomb widely deployed by the US, and also supplied on a dual-key basis to the Valiant bombers of the British Royal Air Force.
  • Although it was one of the biggest devices we tested, Mike has been described as being more like a big, messy fission bomb. 3/4 of the yield, about 8 MT was from fission of the heavy U238 tamper shell. It did further prove that we could induce thermonuclear fuels to fuse and get megaton range yields but only a few megatons of this test was from fusion reactions.
This article was last modified 6 months ago