Castle Bravo

Castle Bravo was a 1954 United States thermonuclear test at Bikini Atoll. Its unexpectedly high yield spread severe radioactive fallout across inhabited islands and exposed a Japanese fishing crew.

Lithium deuteride: A solid compound of lithium and deuterium used as fusion fuel in thermonuclear weapons. Lithium-6 in Bravo’s fuel produced tritium, increasing the fusion yield beyond predictions.
Daigo Fukuryū Maru: A Japanese fishing vessel exposed to radioactive fallout from Castle Bravo in 1954. Its crew became the most widely known civilians exposed beyond the test site.
Operation Castle: A 1954 United States series of thermonuclear tests conducted at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Bravo was the series’ first shot and its most powerful test.
Edward Teller: A Hungarian-born American physicist who helped develop the United States hydrogen bomb. Teller was a leading advocate for thermonuclear weapons development that produced tests such as Bravo.
Ivy Mike: The first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device, conducted by the United States in 1952. Unlike Bravo’s solid fuel, Ivy Mike used cryogenic liquid deuterium and was not a deliverable weapon design.
Teller–Ulam design: A thermonuclear weapon design that uses radiation from a primary explosion to compress a secondary fusion stage. Bravo was a test of a weapon built around this staged thermonuclear principle.
Rongelap Atoll: An atoll in the Marshall Islands whose residents were exposed to Castle Bravo fallout. Radioactive ash contaminated the island, prompting evacuation and lasting health and displacement concerns.
Bikini Atoll: An atoll in the Marshall Islands used by the United States for nuclear weapons testing. The test took place there, after residents had been relocated from their home atoll.
Ralph Lapp: An American physicist and science writer who reported on nuclear weapons and their effects. His reporting helped bring the Bravo fallout disaster to wider public attention.
Operation Crossroads: A 1946 United States series of nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. It made Bikini a testing site years before Bravo’s far more powerful thermonuclear detonation.

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