Cockcroft reported to Sir Roger Makins at the Foreign Office that Menzies had agreed in principle to Penney's reconnaissance of the Emu Field site. Other matters discussed included the attendance of Butement and Leslie Martin, the Australian Defence Scientific Adviser, as Australian observers at the Hurricane test, the creation of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, and the supply of Australian uranium to the UK. Sir John Cockcroft, the director of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, personally lodged a formal request for a feasibility study with the Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, at a meeting on 4 September. Butement warned Penney that it was very remote, and that Beadell and his companions might well have been the first non- Aboriginal people to see the area. Butement, the Chief Scientist at the Australian Department of Supply, of his intention to visit the site before the Hurricane test. In August, Sir William Penney, the Chief Superintendent Armament Research (CSAR) at the British Ministry of Supply, and the head of the British atomic weapon development effort, notified W. A natural claypan known as the Dingo Claypan provided a ready-made airstrip. It was an isolated dry, flat clay and sandstone expanse in the Great Victoria Desert 480 kilometres (300 mi) north west of Woomera, South Australia. A site, originally given the codename X200 but later renamed Emu Field, was selected. Harry Pritchard, the Chief Superintendent there, loaned a Bristol Sycamore helicopter for the purpose. Surveys of the area were carried out by Len Beadell, the surveyor at the Long Range Weapons Establishment (LRWE). The search for an alternative site on the mainland in the vicinity of the Woomera Rocket Range had already begun in June 1952. The Royal Navy was unable to provide the level of support it had for the Operation Hurricane test in the time available, so the Montebello Islands were ruled out. Ĭlass=notpageimage| Location of Emu Field in Australia Nuclear testing was required to gauge the effect of an increased proportion of plutonium-240.
Since plutonium-240 is prone to spontaneous fission, this increased the risk of criticality accident and a fizzle that would reduce the yield. For cost reasons PIPPA was to operate in such a way that there would be a higher proportion of plutonium-240 present with the plutonium-239 product than in the Windscale-produced material. Construction of the first PIPPA commenced at Calder Hall in March 1953. The electricity produced was more expensive than that of a conventional coal-fired plant, but this was offset by the value of the plutonium produced, which was about £100 per gram (£3,100 per ounce).
Īlthough PIPPA produced less plutonium than a Windscale Pile, it also produced electricity which it could put back into the grid, whereas a Windscale Pile consumed GBP £340,000 a year worth of electricity to run its blowers. These were intended to produce both electricity and plutonium, and the design was known as PIPPA, for pressurised pile producing power and plutonium. The plutonium used in the original Hurricane device was produced in the nuclear reactor at Windscale, but the Windscale Piles did not have the capacity to provide sufficient material for the British government's planned weapons programme, and consequently eight more reactors were planned.
#Black desert toem trial
The main purpose of the trial was to determine the acceptable limit of the amount of plutonium-240 that could be present in a bomb. The first British atomic bomb was tested in Operation Hurricane at the Montebello Islands in Western Australia on 3 October 1952. Fearing a resurgence of United States isolationism, and Britain losing its great power status, the British government restarted its own development effort, which was given the cover name " High Explosive Research". The British government expected that the United States would continue to share nuclear technology, which it regarded as a joint discovery, after the war, but the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) ended technical co-operation. During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, code-named Tube Alloys, which the 1943 Quebec Agreement merged with the American Manhattan Project to create a combined American, British, and Canadian project.
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