There was a separate desire voiced for a very short delay in the test, for more political reasons: it was scheduled to take place just a few days before the November 4 holding of the United States presidential election, 1952. : 139–142 The panel lacked political allies in Washington, however, and no test delay was made on this account. Robert Oppenheimer, who felt that avoiding a test might forestall the development of a catastrophic new weapon and open the way for new arms agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union. One attempt to significantly delay the test, or not hold it at all, was made by the State Department Panel of Consultants on Disarmament, chaired by J.

Truman a model of what the Ivy Mike device would look like the test was set for November 1, 1952. : 482 On June 30, 1952, United States Atomic Energy Commission chair Gordon Dean showed President Harry S.

: 556 In October 1951 physicist Edward Teller pushed for July 1952 as a target date for a first test, but project head Marshall Holloway thought October 1952, a year out, was more realistic given how much engineering and fabrication work the test would take and given the need to avoid the summer monsoon season in the Marshall Islands. : 137–139 A date within 1952 seemed feasible. Schedule īeginning with the Teller–Ulam breakthrough in March 1951, there was steady progress made on the issues involved in a thermonuclear explosion and there were additional resources devoted to staging, and political pressure towards seeing, an actual test of a hydrogen bomb.

Samples from the explosion had traces of the isotopes plutonium-246, plutonium-244, and the predicted elements einsteinium and fermium. It was intended as a 'technically conservative' proof of concept experiment to validate the concepts used for multi- megaton detonations. ĭue to its physical size and fusion fuel type ( cryogenic liquid deuterium), the 'Mike' device was not suitable for use as a deliverable weapon. It was the first full test of the Teller–Ulam design, a staged fusion device. Ivy Mike was detonated on November 1, 1952, by the United States on the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll, in the now independent island nation of the Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Ivy. Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first full-scale test of a thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion.

Instal the new Trinity Fusion