| Operation Hurricane |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT OPERATION HURRICANE | |
| military of the united kingdom | |
| operation hurricane | |
| british nuclear explosive tests | |
| 1952 in the united kingdom | |
| 1952 in australia | |
| history of western australia | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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Operation Hurricane was the test of the first British Atomic Bomb . The device tested was a plutonium implosion bomb intended to be as close a copy to the Fat Man weapon as possible but improved by using a levitated pit. Although increasing the power of the bomb, this was actually done to allow the pit to be inserted into the weapon shortly before detonation as a safety measure. There were concerns that without the gap between the tamper and the pit, a Criticality Accident could occur. The bomb used Plutonium produced at Windscale in Cumbria (now Sellafield ) with a low Pu-240 content since hurried production led to short irradiation times. In fact Windscale could not quite meet the 1 August 1952 deadline for manufacturing the core and the device also used some Canadian-supplied plutonium. To test the effects of a ship-smuggled bomb (a threat of great concern to the British at the time), Hurricane was exploded inside the hull of HMS ''Plym'' (a 1,370-ton River-class Frigate ) which was anchored in 12 m of water 350 m off shore. The explosion occurred 2.7 m below the water line, and left a saucer-shaped crater on the seabed 6 m deep and 300 m across. SPECIFICS
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