Essay Sample about Castle Bravo: The Largest U.S. Nuclear Explosion

On the morning of March 1, 1954, an explosion rocked the Marshall Islands. The culprit was a bomb that was part of a series of thermonuclear tests done by the United States. All together these tests were called “Operation Castle”, and the one that occurred on March 1 was “Castle Bravo”. This test was a big deal to the surrounding area and left long-lasting impacts on the people and environment of the islands around the detonation site.

During the Castle Bravo test, the US tested the hydrogen bomb off the coast of Bikini Atoll. The bomb that was dropped was nicknamed “shrimp”. Shrimp had a case that weighed around 10.7 tons and was 14 feet long. The explosive device inside the 10.7-ton shell was a deuterium-tritium gas-boosted hydrogen bomb. The fusion fuel inside the bomb, which was responsible for the explosion, was lithium deuteride. Being a Thermonuclear bomb instead of an atomic bomb let the scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have more destructive power while also using the “ingredients” more efficiently. However, the scientists had a miscalculation in the design of the bomb. They had never worked with lithium deuteride before and were surprised at how much it contributed to the yield of the explosion (Rowberry Paragraph 4). This unlucky miscalculation caused the bomb to be much bigger than previously anticipated. It was only supposed to generate 5 megatons but instead generated around 15 megatons of explosive power. That means that the final explosion was equal to 15 million tons of TNT and had 1,000 times more destructive power than the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima. This of course had huge repercussions on the surrounding area and people. 

The island of Rongelap was the host to 82 people who, because the test had been moved to Bikini Atoll, were now close to the “danger zone”. The US had to make a decision, were they going to relocate these people, or were they going to let them be because they were almost certainly out of the area where dangerous fallout would be an issue. They decided to leave the inhabitants on the island but had navy ships waiting to evacuate if necessary. The bomb, of course, had three times the expected power. But when this was realized, the priority for the task force conducting the test was unfortunately not the islanders on Rongelap. The B-29 that had been put to the task of tracking the cloud of radiation was late and the second plane was contaminated and had to be replaced. This resulted in a delayed response to the radiation spreading from the blast site. The radiation levels in question were higher than they had anticipated and were also moving faster, arriving at the islands east of Bikini Atoll hours before predicted. Thirty-six hours after the bomb had been tested, the radiation levels on Rongelap were in emergency range. Finally, two full days after Castle Bravo, the islanders were starting to be evacuated. A task force official stated, “many complained of stomach aches and headaches accompanied by vomiting on the first day with similar symptoms to a lesser degree on the second day” (Hacker, 4). It took three years after the test for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to say it was safe for the islanders to return to the island. This turned out to be wrong. When the 82 people moved back, they found that their foods, including arrowroot, makmok, and fish either made them sick or had disappeared altogether. In 1963 the islanders began to get thyroid cancer directly related to the radiation they were exposed to during Bravo. This story was just about the natives living on Rongelap, but in total there were 15 islands and over 200 people affected by the Bravo test done by the USA ( BRAVO, 6).

The people on the islands were not the only things affected by the blast. Animals and the environment were also greatly affected by the Bravo Test. Offspring of the animals that were around the detonation site at the time of the bomb exploding had major deformities and mutations from the radiation. On the side of ocean life, the fish that had been exposed to high levels of radiation died out very quickly. Seventy years after the thermonuclear tests, researchers from Stanford traveled to the island to study ocean life and they found that there was still a diverse ecosystem including “coral as big as cars”. The team also discovered that hundreds of schools of fish were still living there, including tuna, sharks, and coconut crabs. This is very strange due to the fact that a UN report in 2012 said that the effects of the bombs were “long-lasting” and that there was “near irreversible environmental contamination” (Roy 2017). One of the reasons that the fish are able to survive there is partly because most of these fish swim in and out of the Atoll regularly which makes the levels of radiation they are subjected to is very low. It is very fortunate that the fish life surrounding the Atoll is bouncing back especially because of the amount of destruction the Castle series of bombs did to the island and the animal life. 

Even though the United States had been responsible for the islanders and the animals being contaminated, they never accepted legal responsibility (Hacker, 14). They have, however, provided medical care to those affected by the blast. The United States has also created a $150,000,000 trust fund alongside the Republic of the Marshall Islands. This was created by the 1983 Compact of Free Association. When that compact came into effect, however, all lawsuits against the United States had to be dropped as part of the agreement. All future claims also had to be renounced even though the suits were totaling 6 billion dollars (Hacker, 14). The US had dodged a bullet and the natives on the Marshall Islands still were sick. There are many 

As you can see, the Bravo Test was a highly destructive endeavor that left long-lasting impacts on the surrounding islands and people. The people on the islands around Bikini Atoll never fully recovered and the environment has just recently started to come back to life. These nuclear tests were very important to the development of the thermonuclear bomb, but it came at a price that the United States barely paid. The impact of this test was a race to see who can perfect the design. The Soviets and the US were both trying to make the perfect bomb and each was coming up with new designs. All of this stems from the Bravo test. This test was very influential in thermonuclear warfare and impacted lives as we can never imagine. It may have been one of the most destructive tests ever done.