Trinity Test Reach

Trinity Test Reach

Subject : History

Concept :

• J Robert Oppenheimer and the other researchers of the Manhattan Project prepared to test the first ever atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert.
• At the time, they knew relatively little about how the bomb would behave and the risks it posed.
• A new study, released on July20, shows that the irradiated mushroom cloud and its fallout went farther than imagined in 1945.
• Using state-of-the-art modeling software and recently uncovered historical weather data, the study says that radioactive fallout from the Trinity test reached as many as 46 states, Canada and Mexico within 10 days, with the state of New Mexico bearing most of the fallout.
• New results
• A lack of crucial data has thus far bedeviled assessments of the Trinity test’s fallout.
• The US had no national monitoring stations in place in 1945 to track to fallout. Plus, essential historical weather and atmospheric data were unavailable.
• However, a breakthrough came in March when the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts released historical data that charted weather patterns extending 30,000 feet or higher above Earth’s surface.
• This meant that, for the first time, scientists had access to accurate hourly reconstruction of the weather which could be used to reanalyse Trinity’s fallout.
• Implications
• Based on the new data, computations by Philippe and his colleagues show the cloud’s trajectory primarily spreading up over north east New Mexico and a part of the cloud circling to the south and west of ground zero over the next few days.
• It found that Socorro County — where the Trinity test took place—has the fifth highest deposition per county of all counties in the United
• The findings could be cited by advocates aiming to increase the number of people eligible for compensation by the federal government for potential exposure to radiation from atmospheric nuclear explosions.
• Trinity test “downwinders” — a term describing people who have lived near nuclear test sites and may have been exposed to deadly radioactive fallout—have thus far been ineligible for compensation under the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).

The dawn of the Atomic Age – US Trinity Test

• Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device.
• on July 16, 1945, the world’s first super bomb loaded with about 13 pounds of plutonium at its core exploded in a desert in New Mexico.
• The super bomb, nicknamed ‘Gadget’, was built by a team of scientists at a top-secret site in Los Alamos.
• It destroyed everything in its vicinity and melted vast swathes of sand into sea-green glass.
• It was developed as part of the US-led Manhattan Project.