A Look At The Trinity Atomic Bomb Test Site, New Mexico скачать в хорошем качестве

A Look At The Trinity Atomic Bomb Test Site, New Mexico

Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. The test was of an implosion-design plutonium bomb, nicknamed the "gadget", of the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Concerns about whether the complex Fat Man design would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test. The code name "Trinity" was assigned by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, possibly inspired by the poetry of John Donne. The test, both planned and directed by Kenneth Bainbridge, was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range (renamed the White Sands Proving Ground just before the test). The only structures originally in the immediate vicinity were the McDonald Ranch House and its ancillary buildings, which scientists used as a laboratory for testing bomb components. Fears of a fizzle prompted construction of "Jumbo", a steel containment vessel that could contain the plutonium, allowing it to be recovered; but ultimately Jumbo was not used in the test. On May 7, 1945, a rehearsal was conducted, during which 108 short tons (98 t) of high explosive spiked with radioactive isotopes was detonated. On December 21, 1965, the 51,500-acre Trinity Site was declared a National Historic Landmark district, and on October 15, 1966, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The landmark includes the base camp where the scientists and support group lived, ground zero where the bomb was placed for the explosion, and the McDonald ranch house, where the plutonium core to the bomb was assembled. One of the old instrumentation bunkers is visible beside the road just west of ground zero. An inner oblong fence was added in 1967, and the corridor barbed wire fence that connects the outer fence to the inner one was completed in 1972. A special tour of the site on July 16, 1995 (marking the 50th anniversary of the Trinity test) attracted 5,000 visitors. Since then, the site has been open to the public on the first Saturdays of April and October. We were there on the third Saturday of October. 2024