JUNIPER - 65 kiloton Shot • Operation Hardtack 1 (1958)

Published on 2022-03-09 | Archived on 2023-11-24

Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory www.llnl.gov/

High speed film - approx. 2,400 frames per second

JUNIPER predicted fallout, surface radiological exclusion (radex) area, ship positions, and aircraft participation. JUNIPER, the last nuclear detonation to occur at Bikini, was detonated on July 22, 1958, at 1620. JUNIPER was detonated on a barge 4,000 feet (1.22 km) from the west end of Eneman in the ZUINI crater at Bikini . The detonation cloud rose to 40,000 feet (12.2 km) with an estimated 24,000-foot (7.32 km) base, and produced a 65 kilotons of TNT (270 TJ) yield range. No DOD-sponsored experiments were scheduled for JUNIPER. 

The U.S. conducted 210 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962, with multiple cameras capturing each event at around 2,400 frames per second. But in the decades since, around 10,000 of these films sat idle, scattered across the country in high-security vaults. Not only were they gathering dust, the film material itself was slowly decomposing, bringing the data they contained to the brink of being lost forever.

For the past five years, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) weapon physicist Greg Spriggs and a crack team of film experts, archivists and software developers have been on a mission to hunt down, scan, reanalyze and declassify these decomposing films. The goals are to preserve the films’ content before it’s lost forever, and provide better data to the post-testing-era scientists who use computer codes to help certify that the aging U.S. nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective.

Video Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
www.llnl.gov/news/physicist-declassifies-rescued-n…

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