| Operation Plumbbob | |
|---|---|
Plumbbob Priscilla |
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| Information | |
| Country | United States |
| Test site | Nevada Test Site |
| Period | May - October 1957 |
| Number of tests | 29 |
| Test type | Atmospheric |
| Device type | Fission/Thermonuclear |
| Max. yield | 74 kt |
| Navigation | |
| Previous test | Project 57 |
| Next test | Project 58 |
Operation Plumbbob was a series of nuclear tests conducted between May 28 and October 7, 1957, at the Nevada Test Site, following Project 57, and preceding Project 58.[1] It was the biggest, longest, and most controversial test series in the continental United States.
Contents |
The operation was the sixth test series and consisted of 29 explosions, of which only two did not produce any nuclear yield. Twenty-one laboratories and government agencies were involved. While most Operation Plumbbob tests contributed to the development of warheads for intercontinental and intermediate range missiles, they also tested air defense and anti-submarine warheads with smaller yields. They included forty-three military effects tests on civil and military structures, radiation and bio-medical studies, and aircraft structural tests. Operation Plumbbob had the tallest tower tests to date in the U.S. nuclear testing program as well as high-altitude balloon tests. One nuclear test involved the largest troop maneuver ever associated with U.S. nuclear testing.
Almost 1,200 pigs were subjected to bio-medical experiments and blast-effects studies during Operation Plumbbob. On shot Priscilla (37 KT), 719 pigs were used in various experiments on Frenchman Flat. Some pigs were placed in elevated cages and provided with suits made of different materials, to test which materials provided best protection from the thermal pulse. As shown and reported in the PBS documentary Dark Circle, the pigs survived, but with third-degree burns to 80% of their bodies.[2] Other pigs were placed in pens behind large sheets of glass at measured distances from the hypocenter to test the effects of flying debris on living targets.
Approximately 18,000 members of the U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines participated in exercises Desert Rock VII and VIII during Operation Plumbbob. The military was interested in knowing how the average foot-soldier would stand up, physically and psychologically, to the rigors of the tactical nuclear battlefield.
Studies were conducted of radiation contamination and fallout from a simulated accidental detonation of a weapon; and projects concerning earth motion, blast loading and neutron output were carried out.
Nuclear weapons safety experiments were conducted to study the possibility of a nuclear weapon detonation during an accident. On July 26, 1957, a safety experiment, "Pascal-A," was detonated in an unstemmed hole at NTS, becoming the first underground shaft nuclear test. The knowledge gained here would provide data to prevent nuclear yields in case of accidental detonations - for example, a plane crash.
The Rainier shot, conducted September 19, 1957, was the first fully contained underground nuclear test, meaning that no fission products were vented into the atmosphere. This test of 1.7 KT could be detected around the world by seismologists using ordinary seismic instruments. The Rainier test became the prototype for larger and more powerful underground tests.
Plumbbob released 58,300 kilocuries (2.16 EBq) of radioiodine (I-131) into the atmosphere. This produced total civilian radiation exposures amounting to 120 million person-rads of thyroid tissue exposure (about 32% of all exposure due to continental nuclear tests).
Statistically speaking, this level of exposure would be expected to eventually cause between 11,000 and 212,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer, leading to between 1,000 and 20,000 deaths.[3]
In addition to civilian exposure, troop exercises conducted near the ground near shot "Smoky" exposed over three thousand servicemen to relatively high levels of radiation. A survey of these servicemen in 1980 found significantly elevated rates of leukemia: ten cases, instead of the baseline expected four.
During the Pascal-B nuclear test, a heavy (900 kg) steel plate cap (a piece of armor plate) was blasted off the top of a test shaft at an unknown speed. Before the test, experimental designer Dr. Brownlee had performed a highly approximate calculation that suggested that the nuclear explosion, combined with the specific design of the shaft, would accelerate the plate to six times escape velocity.[4] The plate was never found, but Dr. Brownlee believes that the plate never left the atmosphere (it may even have been vaporized by compression heating of the atmosphere due to its high speed). The calculated velocity was sufficiently interesting that the crew trained a high-speed camera on the plate, which unfortunately only appeared in one frame, but this nevertheless gave a very high lower bound for the speed. After the event, Dr. Robert R. Brownlee described the best estimate of the cover's speed from the photographic evidence as "going like a bat!"[5][6] The use of a subterranean shaft and nuclear device to propel an object to escape velocity has since been termed a "thunder well".
This incident was reputedly used as part of the technical justification for the Orion project for possible use of nuclear blasts for outer-space propulsion.
| Test Name | Date | Yield | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boltzmann | 28 May 1957 | 12 kt | Tower shot |
| Franklin | 2 June 1957 | 140 tons | Fizzled |
| Lassen | 5 June 1957 | 0.5 kt | Balloon shot |
| Wilson | 18 June 1957 | 10 kt | Balloon shot |
| Priscilla | 24 June 1957 | 37 kt | Balloon shot |
| Coulomb-A | 1 July 1957 | zero yield | Safety experiment |
| Hood | 5 July 1957 | 74 kt | Balloon shot, largest atmospheric test in the continental United States |
| Diablo | 15 July 1957 | 17 kt | Tower shot |
| John | 19 July 1957 | 2 kt | Live fire of AIR-2 Genie air-to-air rocket |
| Kepler | 24 July 1957 | 10 kt | Tower shot |
| Owens | 25 July 1957 | 9.7 kt | Balloon shot |
| Pascal-A | 26 July 1957 | 55 tons | Shaft safety experiment. Yield described as slight. Expected yield was 1–2 pounds.[7] |
| Stokes | 7 August 1957 | 19 kt | Balloon |
| Saturn | 10 August 1957 | Zero yield | Shaft safety experiment |
| Shasta | 18 August 1957 | 17 kt | Tower shot |
| Doppler | 23 August 1957 | 11 kt | Balloon shot |
| Pascal-B | 27 August 1957 | 300 tons | Shaft safety experiment. Yield often described as slight. Expected yield was 1–2 pounds.[6] |
| Franklin Prime | 30 August 1957 | 4.7 kt | Balloon |
| Smoky | 31 August 1957 | 44 kt | Tower shot |
| Galileo | 2 September 1957 | 11 kt | Tower shot |
| Wheeler | 6 September 1957 | 197 tons | Balloon shot |
| Coulomb-B | 6 September 1957 | 300 tons | Surface safety experiment |
| Laplace | 8 September 1957 | 1 kt | Balloon shot |
| Fizeau | 14 September 1957 | 11 kt | Tower shot |
| Newton | 16 September 1957 | 12 kt | Balloon shot |
| Rainier | 19 September 1957 | 1.7 kt | Tunnel shot. First US underground nuclear test. |
| Whitney | 23 September 1957 | 19 kt | Tower shot |
| Charleston | 28 September 1957 | 12 kt | Balloon shot |
| Morgan | 7 October 1957 | 8 kt | Balloon Shot |
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