|
15 July 2005 |
|
|
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0715-11.htm |
|
|
Sixty years after the first atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert, the United States still has some 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert and is considering new weapons such as earth-penetrating bunker busters.
The US administration has agreed to pare back its nuclear arsenal from about 10,000 warheads today to about 6,000 in 2012 under the Moscow Treaty reached with Russia in 2001. But even as it moves to retire much of its Cold War arsenal, it has pressed a reluctant Congress for funds for nuclear bunker-buster studies, refurbished nuclear testing facilities, and a facility to build the plutonium triggers for new weapons. The US Strategic Command in Omaha, Nebraska, is reported to be developing "global strike" options, including a nuclear option, against potential adversaries with nuclear weapons such as Iran and North Korea. More than 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, nuclear weapons "are alive and well," said Robert S. Norris, an expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an arms control and environmental advocacy group. Norris points to the administration's Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 as "the revealing document" that shows its intention to use nuclear weapons to counter a new cast of potential adversaries armed with weapons of mass destruction. The review called for a "new triad" in which conventional and nuclear forces would be meshed in a "global strike" capability, enabling the United States to respond to a threat anywhere in the world on very short notice. It envisioned more precise long-range missiles armed with conventional warheads as well as smaller, lower yield nuclear tips. The other parts of the triad are missile defense systems and a revived infrastructure of weapons labs and production facilities that had deteriorated since the end of the Cold War. "So the vision of the Bush administration is that we are going to need nuclear weapons well out into the middle of the 21st century, and beyond. I mean for decades to come," said Norris. But the administration appears not to have counted on Representative David Hobson. The Ohio Republican, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Energy Department's nuclear weapons programs, stunned the administration by rejecting last year's request for new nuclear weapons funding. He nixed nine million dollars in funding for research into new low yield "mini-nukes;" denied another 27.6 million dollars request for study of a Robust Nuclear Earth-Penetrating Weapon; and put off a request for another 30 million dollars for a new plant to manufacture the plutonium pits that trigger nuclear explosions. "The development of new weapons for ill-defined future requirements is not what the nation needs at this time," Hobson said in a speech February 3 to the Arms Control Association. "What is needed, and what is absent to date, is leadership and fresh thinking for the 21st Century regarding nuclear security and the future of the US stockpile," he said. The United States currently has 5,300 operational nuclear warheads, and another 5,300 in reserve, said Victoria Sampson, an expert at the Center for Defense Information. "We have about 2,000 which are on hair trigger alert, which means they can be ready to go within minutes of that decision to launch," she said. Hobson and others are worried that new nuclear weapons initiatives could lower the threshold for their use, and warned it would send the wrong signal at a time when the United States was demanding that North Korea and Iran stop their weapons programs. But the administration has struck back with a request for 8.5 million dollars of renewed funding for the nuclear earth penetrator in 2006. It also has asked for 25 million dollars to get its Nevada test site ready to resume testing in 18 months if needed, instead of the 24 to 36 months it would currently take. Those requests are working their way through Congress where opposition remains strong. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that only "very large, very dirty nuclear bombs" could now destroy the increasing numbers of facilities that potential adversaries have buried deep underground. "So the choice is: do we want to have nothing and only a large, dirty nuclear weapon, or would we rather have something in between. That is the issue," he said in April. "It seems to me studying it makes all the sense in the world," he said. But scientists warn that no earth-penetrating nuclear weapon could bore deep enough to trap devastating fallout that the National Academy of Sciences has concluded would still kill more
than a million people on the surface if it was near a densely populated urban area. |
|
|
16 July 2005 |
|
|
The worlds first nuclear detonation took place sixty years ago (5.29AM, July 16 1945) at a location known as the Jornada del Muerte (Journey of Death). As the nuclear fireball rose into the air, project leader Robert Oppenhiemer recalled lines in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, 'now I am become death, destroyer of worlds'. Others more prosaically said 'now we are all sons of bitches'. On August 6th, a simpler device was used to destroy the city of Hiroshima, and an identical device was used on August 9th to destroy Nagasaki. The Hiroshima blast killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people, vaporising many of them instantly. From the late 1950s up to 1990, and especially through the 1980s, the possibility of complete global destruction hung over the world. On a number of terrifying occasions, this nearly happened by mistake or miscalculation. To this day, the US and Russia maintain thousands of nuclear weapons on hairtrigger alert, able to be launched whenever President Bush gives the order to do so, or due to madness, miscalculation, mishap or malice. The latest round of negotiations at the 2005 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty review conference in New York ended in failure due to the refusal of the nuclear weapons powers to honour their legal obligations to achieve the total and unequivocal elimination of their nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan spent much of 2002 on the brink of mutual incineration, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and Iran may possibly be heading in that direction. Israel has something between 100 and 300 weapons. The US and Russia insist on hanging on to their diabolical ability to destroy the whole world. With the world poised on the brink of another round of nuclear proliferation, and with the actual use of nuclear weapons looking ever more likely, we must act to fulfil our oft repeated legal obligations to eliminate nuclear arsenals, before they eliminate us. Commemorations of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by nuclear weapons will take place in Australia and round the world. Sydney will hold a rally at Hyde Park North at
12.30pm on August 6th, while in Melbourne will hold a march and concert on Aug 7th 1-4pm. |
|
|
16 July 2005 |
|
|
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/07/15/atomic.anniversary.ap |
|
|
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- Herb Lehr hasn't been to Trinity Site since the day a mushroom cloud filled the early morning sky in the New Mexico desert. Standing 12 miles from the blast, he looked toward the Oscura Mountains and watched as scientists detonated the first atomic bomb 60 years ago Saturday, ushering in the nuclear age. "All of a sudden this very bright light came out and where I was, it was intense enough that the whole mountain range itself was completely whited out," he said. "I could see the ball and fire rising up. It was sort of awe-inspiring." This Saturday, Lehr will guide a tour bus from the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque to the Trinity Site, on what is now the Army's restricted White Sands Missile Range. More than 5,000 people visited the site for the 50th anniversary, and officials said they are prepared for an increase for the 60th. But just like the 50th anniversary, no special events or speeches are planned. For more than a year, Lehr was part of the top-secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos that developed two atomic bombs that essentially stunned Japan into surrender and ended World War II. Tens of thousands of people died when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Lehr said he never fully understood the impact the bombs would have. Nevertheless, he said he would do it again. "In a lot of respects I felt as if I had done something worthwhile," said Lehr, 83. "I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability." At Trinity Site, visitors can walk on Ground Zero, where the bomb was detonated from a 100-foot steel tower that was vaporized by the blast. Ground Zero, now a gentle depression in the desert, is marked by a lava obelisk with a simple inscription: "Trinity Site, Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945." Along the fence line hangs a pictorial history of what happened there. Not everyone is happy with that history. Anti-war groups planned to protest the anniversary at the National Atomic Museum on Friday. Bob Anderson of Stop the War Machine said celebrating the development of weapons sheds blood on the nation's morality. "It glosses over all the political and human tragedies that occurred as a result of the Trinity blast and the use of weapons on Japan," Anderson said. "We just think that's probably a more important message than trying to glorify the weapons." Lehr said it is unfortunate the bombs were used for war. But the development of a nuclear bomb was a race among scientists around the world that couldn't be stopped, he said. "I'm just interested in going and seeing it and maybe getting some memories back," said Lehr, who now lives in Mesa, Arizona. "Los Alamos was a whole interesting experience. It was something unique. I worked very hard down there." |
|
|
15 July 2005 |
|
|
WASHINGTON - To mark the 60th anniversary of the world's first nuclear bomb blast in the New Mexico desert, 10 men who helped make the bomb turned their
thoughts to the future of weapons in an age when terrorists and rogue states have replaced the Soviet Union as the enemy.
Some of their suggestions were startling. Panofsky, who developed a way to measure the force of the Trinity test bomb, invited the nine other former Manhattan Project scientists to a symposium Thursday in Washington sponsored by
the Committee on International Security and Arms Control to mark the anniversary of the Trinity explosion 60 years ago Saturday. |
|
|
16 July 2005 |
|
|
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4641861.stm |
|
|
The atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexico desert at 05:29:45 local time on 16 July, 1945, "lit up the entire world". That is how Private Daniel Yearout, one of the few remaining eyewitnesses some 60 years on, recalls the morning the powers of the atom were first unleashed. Asked for his first thought after the test, top scientist J Robert Oppenheimer quoted from his favourite Hindu poem, The Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Oppenheimer and other world-leading scientists who had taken part in the top-secret test knew that from that moment on, the world had changed forever. For others who were involved, such as Private Yearout, it would be some time before they fully realised what had taken place. The world would not know the full secret until 6 August, when the Japanese town of Hiroshima was bombed. Daniel Yearout, a 25-year-old army private with the US Corps of Engineers, was deployed close to what became known as "Ground Zero" on that morning in July. In 1945, Private Yearout was based at Los Alamos, the secret town that the US government had built during the war in the remote hills of New Mexico. It was here that a laboratory was established to design a nuclear weapon that the army hoped would win World War II. Some 8,000 people lived and worked in the town - scientists and their families, engineers, technicians, secretaries and army personnel. They had more or less disappeared from the world and set up their own communities. While each played their part, few fully understood the magnitude of the work that went on there. "The Los Alamos project was the best secret there's ever been," says Mr Yearout, who now lives in Waverly, Tennessee. Deployed in the desert On Saturday 14 July, 1945, Private Yearout and other members of the US Corps of Engineers left their base to take part in a "top-secret mission". "No one knew where we were going or what was going to happen," Mr Yearout told the BBC News Website. The officers were given telephone numbers to call along the way to find out where to go to next. The convoy travelled some 200 miles into the desert to a place called Alamorgordo, about 18 miles from "Ground Zero". They had been stationed in case the small communities in the probable fallout path needed to be evacuated. "We were called out the night before. One of the officers told us we were going to take part in some testing," says Mr Yearout. "He said that if everything went well, the war would be over in a few days. But, then he said that if it all went wrong, 'it was each damn man for himself'." Early on Monday morning Private Yearout and a few of his colleagues climbed a hill. They had been told it would be the safest place to be. The day of the actual test began with an early morning thunderstorm. "There was someone running a camera up on the hill. We lay there and talked to him for a bit. The test was supposed to take place at around 0400 but was delayed because of the weather." Shortly before 0530, half an hour before sunrise, the scientists went to bunkers six miles from the test site and put on sunglasses and sunscreen. The test began and the sky was lit up by an unnatural ball of fire. "I don't remember whether I was standing up or lying against the fence," says Mr Yearout. "Suddenly, without any sound, the whole world lit up. When I came to my senses, I was lying on the ground with my back to where the light was coming from. I put my hands over my eyes to protect them and I could see the bones in my fingers. It was as if I was looking at an X-ray. "I whisked around and looked towards the light. I could hear a rumble and the Earth shook. I saw a big fireball rising in the sky - it looked like it was pouring gasoline out there, all the way around. The fireball was getting bigger and bigger and we just stood and watched. "This was followed by a long rumbling - I'd say it went on for 10 minutes. In and out and round the mountains. The fire began going down and then I saw a swirl of black smoke rising in the sky. "I was scared at the time. I didn't know what was going on. I remember the man running the camera beside us hollering that it was the most beautiful picture he had ever taken in his life - he said it maybe 25 times. All he was interested in was the picture and all I was wondering was if we were going to get out of there or not." Eventually the men went back down the hill to their tents and started a game of poker. Radiation readings stayed at what was then considered safe levels and no one needed to be evacuated. "No one was allowed to talk about what we saw," says Mr Yearout. "Anyone who did was shipped out pretty quickly." The flash released four times the heat of the interior of the sun and was seen 250 miles away. But, so secret was the mission - codenamed Trinity - that local media were told that an ammunition dump had blown up on an army base in the area. In Potsdam outside Berlin, President Harry Truman waited for the coded message that the bomb had been successful. Mr Yearout says Trinity paved the way for bringing an end to the war and saving many American and Japanese lives. "If we had gone into Japan, we would have encountered the worst fighting we ever had ever seen. We would have been there for four to six years." But 60 years on, debate still rages over whether the bomb was really necessary to force the Japanese to surrender. A number of the scientists involved in the project ended up feeling extremely ambivalent about the bomb's use, and some went on to campaign against nuclear arms. For Mr Yearout, Trinity remains one of the 20th Century's most significant achievements. "I was glad I'd seen it," he says. "But I hope I don't see another one." |
|
|
15 July 2005 |
|
|
The staggering 19-kiloton magnitude of the Trinity explosion surpassed even the expectations of Los Alamos Director J. Robert Oppenheimer. Sixty years ago this
week, Los Alamos scientists tested the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The test, which General Leslie Groves described as "a blinding flash of light,"
was a milestone of the Manhattan Project, the first large-scale effort to build a nuclear bomb. The unqualified military and scientific achievement of the Trinity test led to the devastating bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cementing the decisive U.S. victory over Japan in World War II. Trinity brought to fruition the complex, multi-pronged effort to organize fissile materials production, perfect bomb designs, assemble the fissile materials in weapons, and stage the first successful test of an implosion-type weapon. What started as a small scientific effort to evaluate the military application of nuclear fission rapidly grew into one of the most expensive projects during World War II. The Manhattan Project established three different labs: Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Los Alamos. Oak Ridge and Hanford produced the first major stockpiles of fission materials that were sent to Los Alamos to be assembled into weapons. The gaseous diffusion plants and electromagnetic separation facilities at Oak Ridge produced fissionable uranium at two different sites, K-25 and Y-12. Oak Ridge also had a pilot-scale plutonium production facility, but it was at Hanford laboratory where nuclear reactors would separate plutonium on large enough scales to be sent to Los Alamos to build the bombs. Los Alamos scientists, led by Oppenheimer, were working on two different bomb designs: a simple gun-type uranium bomb and an implosion-type plutonium bomb. The team was confident, even without testing, that the uranium bomb would work. A gun-type nuclear weapon involves two subcritical parts of uranium. When one uranium part is shot into the other, the rapid combining of the two creates a critical mass, leading to a chain reaction and a nuclear explosion. The scientists assembled the gun-type weapon with uranium from Oak Ridge. This previously untested weapon, known as "Little Boy," was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, devastating the city. The second bomb design had variables that could not be determined without a test. The implosion-type design involves conventional explosions surrounding the mass of plutonium. The supersonic shockwaves produced by the conventional explosions create an inward force great enough compress the plutonium to critical mass, setting off a nuclear chain reaction. Los Alamos scientists feared that if the conventional weapons did not detonate uniformly, critical mass would not be achieved, and the weapon would become a "dud." Trinity was the first test of the implosion design. The scientists hoisted the assembled weapon, which they nicknamed "Gadget", atop a 100-foot tower. The weapon consisted of a plutonium core weighing 6.1 kilograms, roughly the size of an orange. At 5:29:45a.m., the bomb exploded, yielding a 19-kiloton blast. This was the type of weapon that the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki, Japan three days after Hiroshima. The devastation caused by both Hiroshima and Nagasaki was on a comparable scale, but the process for developing the gun-type weapon was simpler. The inherent complexity of the implosion-type bomb design makes it a more difficult process to replicate. On the other hand, gun-type weapons are easier to assemble, making them more attractive to first-users. Today, a terrorist organization would be more likely to employ this uranium design. This is why so many experts and officials call for the acceleration of government programs to eliminate and secure all stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium before terrorists can get their hands on them.
|
|
|
14 July 2005 |
|
|
Saturday, July 16, 2005 marks the 60th anniversary of the first test of an atomic bomb. The explosion took place in a secret location in the desert in the
southwestern U.S. state of New Mexico. The "Trinity Site" as it is known, is now part of a government missile range. It is usually only open to the public for one day in April and one in October. But this year, tourists will also be able to visit the historic landmark on the 60th anniversary of that test. VOA's Deborah Block takes a look back at the world's first nuclear explosion. The flash of light was blinding. The explosion, gigantic. The shock waves, earth-shattering. Jay Weschler has vivid memories of that first fireball. He measured the force of explosions for the top-secret government Manhattan Project where a group of scientists created the bomb. He was 15 kilometers from the Trinity Site when the nuclear bomb went off. "It was like a regular explosion but you began to get a feeling for the scale as it rose higher and higher. It stayed bright for so long and it was pretty luminous and it was like no other explosion I'd seen," he said. Now 81, Peggy Shephard saw the rainbow of colors from the blast at her home 200 kilometers away. But she didn't know until about a month later that she'd witnessed a nuclear explosion. She described events that morning. "And I had gotten up that morning, and it was brighter, much brighter than it is right now, for just a few seconds. And then you saw that cloud come with all those colors in it. Beautiful. Beautiful." The first atomic test bomb, and the first use of the bomb, came during World War II. The United States was in a race against time, trying to develop a nuclear device before the Nazis in Germany, who never perfected the process. Transporting the test bomb to the Trinity site In 1945, the plutonium core of the first atomic bomb was assembled at a former ranch house, and then taken to the nearby site,
code-named Trinity. The bomb was placed on top of a 30-meter steel tower and detonated just before 5:30 in the morning. |
|
|
14 July 2005 |
|
|
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifestyle/bal-to.bomb14jul14... |
|
|
On Aug. 6, 1945, in an airplane returning from the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, a young, reflective and religious physicist named Lawrence Johnston wrote a letter to his baby daughter. Dear Ginger, Your Daddy is leaving the city of Hiroshima in Japan in a B-29 bomber, after having dropped a bomb on the city which appeared to almost completely wipe it out. Until we land, only the people in our mission of three planes know what has happened, although there are a lot of Japanese who probably suspect they have seen something new under the sun ... Of course, we hope that it will not be necessary to drop another one. And that this may be the coup de grace that ends the war. But three days later, he flew on the mission that dropped the second A-bomb, on Nagasaki. Three weeks earlier, Johnston had been aboard a B-29 flying over the New Mexico desert when the first A-bomb was exploded in the test called Trinity and the nuclear age had begun. He may be the only person to have witnessed all three of those first nuclear explosions. He's 87 now and he'll join 10 other Trinity veterans today in a roundtable discussion at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington at a public symposium to mark the 60th anniversary of this first manmade nuclear explosion. In addition to the veterans, academic experts and one congressman will address the past, present and future of nuclear weapons. "The farther we get away from the actual events, the more difficult it is for people to grasp intellectually what nuclear war really would look like and what the impart of that would be," says Anne Harrington, director of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control, the sponsor of the symposium. "This is probably the last time any significant number of the individuals who created the science and developed the engineering that allowed this to happen will meet on a major anniversary," she says. "With all of the debate going on right now [about] what we should be doing with the U.S. nuclear arsenal, this is our attempt to put some perspective on that debate - driven by some of the people who created the nuclear age." In his short paper prepared for the symposium, Johnston says, "I have been asked many times in interviews what were my immediate thoughts when we saw the [Trinity] bomb go off? No problem remembering. I burst out 'Praise the Lord, my detonators worked!'" At the A-bomb laboratories at Los Alamos, N.M., Johnston had worked closely with Luis Alvarez, a physicist who would later win the Nobel Prize for his work in particle physics, in creating the complicated system that detonated the Trinity device and later the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Johnston received a patent for the detonator. Alvarez, one of his professors at the University of California at Berkeley, had become his mentor. Johnston was a graduate student at Berkeley in 1941 when Johnston recruited him to work on the creation of radar. He moved with Alvarez to work on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Johnston lives now in Moscow, Idaho. He was professor of physics at the University of Idaho there from 1967 until his retirement in 1988. In his paper and in a long telephone conversation before he headed off for Washington, Johnston says the scientists were not at all sure what would happen with the Trinity test. "I was in a B-29 flying at 30,000 feet," he says. "We were hoping to use that as a dress rehearsal." They carried the same equipment for monitoring the blast they would later use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb, had second thoughts. "Alvarez got a hurried call from Oppenheimer," Johnston says. "Oppie was worried the bomb might be a lot stronger than they had calculated and that we might be blown out of the sky. He ordered Alvarez to stay at least 25 miles from the tower [that held the bomb]." So they became spectators at Trinity. "Quite a few bets were settled," he says. He recalls that the great physicist Enrico Fermi, one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project, bet that half the atmosphere of New Mexico would explode in a thermonuclear reaction. But Trinity went off almost exactly as the theorists had predicted, Johnston says. "What I saw was a white flash on a cloud lit up by the flash of the bomb. There were thunderstorms in the area and a lot of clouds remained. The white flash was quite pervasive. It was just like daylight." He was watching from a small porthole which had replaced the machine gun blister in the side of the B-29. The scientists were in a fairly roomy compartment at the rear of the plane behind the bomb bays. That would be his vantage point at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But on those bombing runs he had more work to do and less time to look. "Our job on these flights was to measure the energy of the bombs," he says. He flew on a B-29 called The Great Artiste, which went in just behind the Enola Gay, which carried the "Little Boy" bomb at Hiroshima. They followed the B-29 called Bockscar which dropped Fat Man at Nagasaki. "We decided the best way was to record the pressure wave from the bomb," he says. Aluminum cylinders dropped on three parachutes contained microphones and a movie camera to record the shock wave. He received the information on the plane by telemetry. Johnston got only a quick look at the mushroom cloud forming above Hiroshima. "For the next five minutes after the bomb went off," he says, "I was very busy calibrating films. We had to tend to business." But he felt the shock wave. "It felt about like somebody had hit the outer skin of the plane with a 2-by-4. It was definitely noticeable but far from damaging." He doesn't remember praying. "I probably should have," he says. The son of Presbyterian missionaries, Johnston was born in China and didn't come to the United States until he was 6 years old. "I am a Christian," he says. "Should I have been praying for the people being killed?" He pauses, perhaps to search back down the years. "I don't think I was. I was all prayed up on what I was doing and decided it was right." But when he got back from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings he found a lot of people were already having misgivings about "our evil deeds." "Oppenheimer was saying 'we have known sin' and quoting the Bhagavad Gita," he says. "Alvarez was very much of the same mind as I was - that it was the right thing to do." In his paper for today's symposium, he says he doesn't have any new insights on nuclear proliferation. "Each of us has a sphere of influence," he says, "and I think we should all do all we can to promote goodwill and understanding."
|
|
|
13 July 2005 |
|
|
If Ben Diven ever wanted to write a book about his experience with the Manhattan Project, he could literally start it with, "It was a dark and stormy night." Diven, 86, was one of several scientists who spent hours testing the first atomic bomb 60 years ago this week. "The day we shot (the bomb), the weather was bad. There was thunder and lightning going on," the Los Alamos man recalled. Sixty years later, Diven is still not sure whether the atomic bomb was a change for the good or the bad. On Friday, that debate will be brought to the forefront at a fund-raiser hosted by the National Atomic Museum, which will be attended by people who worked on the Manhattan Project and members of the Los Alamos Study Group - an organization opposed to nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. With Saturday marking the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb test at Trinity site - a day some say changed the course of the world - the fund-raiser features a dinner, 1940s-style fashion show, and a panel discussion featuring some of those who were involved with the Manhattan Project. Those who buy tickets - at $125 per person - will take a tour of the site at the White Sands Missile Range and dine at the Owl Caf? just as scientists did back in 1945. "We thought it would be a fun fund-raiser," coordinator Kara Hayes said. "We thought it would be interesting to have people feel like they were part of the Manhattan Project." But not everyone embraces the anniversary. "We were somewhat appalled that such a serious subject would be treated as a parody," said Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. "The events they are celebrating resulted in the death of at least a quarter of a million people." Three members of the group bought tickets and will attend, along with Shigeko Sasamori, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing. "We understand that there will be some discussion and we certainly plan to be a part of that," Mello said. The museum is aware of the group's planned attendance and has no problem with it, Director Jim Walther said. "It's an event that changed our world," Walther said. "People feel different about it one way or another." Walther said the museum does not take sides on nuclear issues. "Our role is to inform people," he said. With money raised from Friday's event, the museum will run a "Peace Day" exhibit Aug. 6 to mark the dropping of the bomb at Hiroshima, Walther said. C. Paul Robinson, who recently retired as director of Sandia National Laboratories, said the world's first nuclear explosion on that July day 60 years ago made the world a less aggressive place to live in. "The second World War cost the lives of 45 million people, but it's important to note that since the Trinity explosion, we've had no other world wars," Robinson said. "It's my belief that we may have put the fear in people that the world cannot allow that kind of mass slaughter again." The goal of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex is not to use the country's weapons on other people but "to make people so fearful of the consequences of aggression that it stops that aggression altogether," Robinson said. Diven, who won't attend the museum's event, said the goal of his work at Trinity was to bring an end to World War II, which it did. "I don't see what good protesting does," he said. "We're going to have nuclear energy anyway. I would just urge people to advocate for the development of a safe way to harness that energy." That night 60 years ago, Diven remembered tensions growing as scientists watched the weather, afraid lightening would strike the bomb. "Up until minutes before, we didn't know when it was going to go off," Diven said. The weather began to clear. The countdown started. Scientists wore welding glasses as history unfolded before their eyes. "It was like the sun came out," Diven said. "It was a long time before the the shockwave hit, but it was obvious the bomb had worked."
|
|
|
Trinity Nuclear Blast Remembered |
|
|
On July 16, 1945 the world changed with the explosion of the first atomic device. On this day in 1945, a plutonium implosion device was exploded at a site located
210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico on the barren plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto. Inspired by the poetry of John Donne, J. Robert Oppenheimer
code-named the test Trinity. Hoisted atop a 100-foot tower, the plutonium device, or Gadget, detonated at precisely 5:29:45 am Mountain War Time over the New Mexico desert, releasing nearly
21 kilotons of energy, instantly vaporizing the tower and melting the surrounding desert sand and turning it into a green glassy substance, now known as Trinitite. An enormous blast came
seconds after the explosion, sending searing heat across the desert and knocking observers to the ground. The Trinity test meant that an atomic bomb using plutonium could be readied for use
by the US military. Three weeks after the Trinity test, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
The Manhattan Project Three observation points were established at 10,000 yards from ground zero. These were wooden shelters protected by concrete and earth. The south bunker served as the control center for the test. The automatic firing device was triggered from there as key scientists such as Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, head of Los Alamos, watched. At 5:10 the countdown started and at 5:29:45 am the device exploded successfully.
To most observers the brilliance of the light from the explosion - watched through dark glasses - overshadowed the powerful shock wave and sound that arrived later. The shock itself broke windows 120 miles away and was felt as far as 160 miles away. Hans Bethe, one of the contributing scientists, wrote, "It looked like a giant magnesium flare which kept on for what seemed a whole minute but was actually one or two seconds. The white
ball grew and after a few seconds became clouded with dust whipped up by the explosion from the ground and rose and left behind a black trail of dust particles."
|
|
|
|
