![]() ![]() Both processes create three types of radioactive debris: fission products, activation products (elements that become radioactive by absorbing an additional neutron) and leftover fissionable material used in bomb construction that does not fission during the explosion.Ī nuclear explosion creates a large fireball within which everything is vaporized. Fusion, triggered by a fission explosion that forces tritium or deuterium atoms to combine into larger atoms, produces more powerful explosive yields than fission. Fission releases energy by splitting uranium or plutonium atoms, each fission creating on average two radioactive elements (products), one relatively light and the other relatively heavy. Nuclear explosions involve the sudden conversion of a small portion of atomic nuclear mass into an enormous amount of energy by the processes of nuclear fission or fusion. Department of Energy bottom photograph from the National Archives Top photograph from the Nevada Test Site, U.S. Kennedy signed the treaty on Octo( bottom). (France ceased atmospheric testing in 1974 and China in 1980.) President John F. stopped atmospheric testing in 1963, when the nations signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Fortunately, the U.S., the Soviet Union and the U.K. HOOD was the largest atmospheric test conducted at the Nevada Test Site (and in the continental U.S.). The characteristic cap forms when the fireball from the explosion cools sufficiently to lose buoyancy. Mushroom clouds, such as the one from the 74-kiloton test HOOD on J(detonated from a balloon at 1,500 feet altitude), are a universally recognized icon of nuclear explosions. ![]() The legacy of open-air nuclear weapons testing includes a small but significant increase in thyroid cancer, leukemia and certain solid tumors. Cancer investigators have been studying the health effects of radioactive fallout for decades, making radiation one of the best-understood agents of environmental injury. These tests injected radioactive material into the atmosphere, much of which became widely dispersed before being deposited as fallout. Between 19, the U.S., the U.S.S.R, the U.K., France and China carried out more than 500 atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons totaling the explosive equivalent of 440 megatons of TNT. ![]()
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