Related papers: Weapons Radiochemistry: Trinity and Beyond
One hundred and one atmospheric nuclear weapon tests were conducted between 1945 and 1962 in the United States, resulting in widespread dispersion of radioactive fallout, and leading to environmental contamination and population exposures.…
This article is set during the 1944 and 1945 final push to complete Project Y -- the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos -- and focuses primarily on overcoming the challenge of creating and demonstrating a successful convergent explosive…
The atomic bomb uses fission of heavy elements to produce a large amount of energy. It was designed and deployed during World War II by the United States military. The first test of an atomic bomb occurred in July of 1945 in New Mexico and…
The Trinity test of July 16, 1945 marked the scientific apex of the Manhattan Project. Often recognized as the symbolic birth of the nuclear age, Trinity's multifaceted legacy remains just as captivating and complex as it did 75 years ago.…
Reactor neutrinos have been an important tool for both discovery and precision measurement in the history of neutrino studies. Since the first generation of reactor neutrino experiments in the 1950s, the detector technology has been greatly…
New measurement and assessment techniques have been applied to the radiochemical re-evaluation of the Trinity Event. Thirteen trinitite samples were dissolved and analyzed using a combination of traditional decay counting methods and the…
Nuclear physics advances in the US and Britain, from 1939-1945, are described. The Manhattan Project's work led to an explosion in our knowledge of nuclear science. A conference in April 1943 at Los Alamos provided a simple formula used to…
An International Working Group has been meeting to discuss ideas for a new Nuclear Reactor Neutrino Experiment at meetings in May 2003 (Alabama), October 2003 (Munich) and plans for March 2004 (Niigata). This White Paper Report on the…
The development of nuclear fuels requires unsteady/transient testing for design process and qualification under postulated accident conditions. Breach, rupture, fracture, melting, and other fuel failure modes may occur during the use of…
I shall sketch the history of reactor neutrino physics over five decades since the Reines-Cowan proof of neutrino existence in the late 50s, till the advent of the present era of precision reactor neutrino oscillation experiments. There are…
Dawning neutron physics was more complex than one might expect. The chance that the neutron comprised a proton and an electron was diffusely taken into account after the discovery of the neutron. Moreover, uncertainties persisted about the…
The hydrodynamic response of materials under extreme conditions of pressure, temperature and strain is dependent on the equation of state of the matter in all its states of existence. The Trinity plutonium implosion device development…
Much of George Dracoulis's research career was devoted to utilizing gamma-ray spectroscopy in fundamental studies in nuclear physics. This same technology is useful in a wide range of applications in the area of nuclear forensics. Over the…
Trinity is a proposed air-shower imaging system optimized for the detection of earth-skimming ultrahigh energy tau neutrinos with energies between $10^7$ GeV and $10^{10}$ GeV. Trinity will pursue three major scientific objectives. 1) It…
The September 11 terrorist attack against America has caused a lot of concern to the American public and the entire world, which is suspecting a new attack sooner or later. The most frightening scenario is the one involving the detonation…
The proposed Mitchell Institute Neutrino Experiment at Reactor (MINER) experiment at the Nuclear Science Center at Texas A&M University will search for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering within close proximity (about 2 meters) of…
There is a growing realization that neutrinos can be used as a diagnostic tool to better understand the inner workings of a nuclear weapon. Robust estimates demonstrate that an Inverse Beta Decay (IBD) neutrino scintillation detector built…
We recall the early theoretical speculations on the possible explosive uses of antimatter, from 1946 to the first production of antiprotons, at Berkeley in 1955, and until the first capture of cold antiprotons, at CERN on July 17-18, 1986,…
This article addresses shortcomings in the existing secondary literature describing the nature and involvement of computing at the World War II Los Alamos Lab. Utilizing rarely used source materials, and identifying points of bias among…
Atomic nuclei are quantum many-body systems of protons and neutrons held together by strong nuclear forces. Under the proper conditions, nuclei can break into two (sometimes three) fragments which will subsequently decay by emitting…