Ep. #6: First Atomic Bomb; Trinity Test 1945 & Today
On July 16, 1945, a predawn thunderstorm moved through the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 120 miles south of Albuquerque. After it passed, at 5:29:45 a.m., detonators ignited explosives around a large, steel, globe-shaped device on a 100-foot tower. The explosion prompted a fission chain reaction in the plutonium inside the globe. The resulting nuclear blast from the Gadget, as the device was called, released an explosive force of 21 kilotons (equivalent to 21 thousand tons of TNT). It created a blinding flash of light, a thunderous sound, and a mushroom cloud 38,000 feet tall. \u201cSome people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind,\u201d remembered physicist Norris Bradbury of witnessing the event. \u201cI didn\u2019t. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.\u201d This was the Trinity test, the culmination of 27 months of work at Project Y\u2014a secret laboratory in Los Alamos\u2014to create the world\u2019s first atomic bomb.\n\nIn this episode of the National Security Science podcast, on the 76th anniversary of the Trinity test, we examine the test from two angles: from 1945, when the test occurred, and from 2021, when a group of Los Alamos employees traveled to the Trinity site to tour ground zero and the surrounding area.