U-2 Plane Authors TD Barnes & Chris Pocock (UK) Tour the Nevada Test Site
- December 5th, 2019
- Posted in Uncategorized
- By tdbarnes
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In November 2019, Author TD Barnes arranged for his UK friend and fellow U-2 author to receive a tour of the Nevada Test Site where more than 1,000 nuclear devices were denotated.
TD Barnes and Chris Pocock. Between us is a mockup of the nuclear device mounted in the cage for dropping into the hole for an underground denotation.

Operation Icecap test town left in place, including the .5 million pounds (230,000 kg) instrumentation payload, the crane, the wiring, and many of the recording trailers when the test ban was signed.

The Sedan Crater. The Sedan test of Operation Storax on July 6, 1962, a 104 kiloton shot for Project Plowshare which sought to discover whether nuclear weapons could be used for peaceful means in creating lakes, bays or canals. The explosion displaced twelve million tons of earth, creating a crater 1,280 ft wide and 320 ft deep in Area 10. For an underground shot, a relatively large amount of energy was vented to the atmosphere, estimated to be 2.5 kilotons. Two radioactive dust clouds rose up from the explosion and traveled across the United States, one at 10,000 ft and the other at 16,000 ft. Both dropped radioactive particles across the USA before crossing into the sky above the Atlantic Ocean.
TD Barnes and Chris Pocock viewing the Sedan Crater. The 1,280 by 320 ft crater was created on July 6, 1962, by a 104-kiloton-of-TNT thermonuclear explosion. The device was buried 635 feet below the desert floor in Area 10 of Yucca Flat and was the largest cratering shot in the Plowshare Program. When the 104 kiloton bomb was detonated 600 feet below the ground level, it lifted the ground above it into a dome over 300 feet high before it broke the surface, sending a massive shockwave of dirt cascading from its epicenter. According to the informational site that sits at the site today, over 12 million tons of dirt got blown away. The explosion created fallout that affected more US residents than any other nuclear test, exposing more than 13 million people to radiation. Within 7 months of the excavation, the bottom of the crater could be safely walked upon with no protective clothing and photographs were taken.
This one of the houses constructed at varying distances from the blasts to test the impact and effects of the explosions.

A Mosler Safe is all that was left of the blockhouse following a 37-kiloton atom bomb denotation. Everything inside the safe survived the blast.


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