1953 Tests
During early phases of Manhattan Project, in 1943, uranium hydride was investigated as a promising bomb material; it was abandoned by early 1944 as it turned out such design would be inefficient. After World War II, Los Alamos physicists were skeptical of uranium hydride in weapons. Edward Teller remained interested, however, and he and Ernest Lawrence experimented with the devices in the early 1950s at UCRL (later Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).
Two test devices were exploded in 1953 as part Operation Upshot-Knothole. The aim of the University of California Radiation Laboratory design was to produce an explosion powerful enough to ignite a thermonuclear weapon, with the minimal amount of fissile material. The core consisted of uranium hydride, with hydrogen, or in the case of Ray, deuterium acting as the neutron moderator. The predicted yield was 1.5 to 3 ktTNT for Ruth and 0.5–1 ktTNT for Ray. The bombs failed to have the predicted explosive power in practice.
Ruth, which used ordinary hydrogen-1, was the first device entirely designed at Livermore; it was fired on March 31, 1953 at 05:00 local time (13:00 GMT) at Mercury, Nevada. The explosive device, Hydride I, weighed 7,400 lb (3,400 kg) and was 56 inches (140 cm) in diameter and 66 inches (170 cm) long. The predicted yield was 1.5 to 3.0 kilotons, but the actual yield was only 200 tons. Wally Decker, a young Laboratory engineer, characterized the sound the shot made as "pop." The lower 100 ft (30 m) of the 300-foot (91 m) testing tower remained intact, although the upper third was vaporized.
A second device, Ray, used deuterium. It was fired on a 100-foot (30 m) tower on April 11, 1953. Although Ray managed to level the tower, the yield was similarly disappointing: again 200 tons, as opposed to the predicted 0.5–1 ktTNT.
Read more about this topic: Uranium Hydride Bomb
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