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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The nuclear test that vaporized an entire island seventy two
years ago. The island of Elujalab in the Pacific Ocean
instantly vanished after a six meter twenty ton hydrogen bomb
unleashed a ten point four megaton explosion. On November first,
nineteen fifty two, the United States detonated its first hydrogen bomb,

(00:22):
nicknamed Mike, as part of the nuclear tests known as
Operation IVY. According to Interesting Engineering, this was the first
full scale test of a breakthrough design by Hungarian American
physicist Edward Teller and Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam. The bomb
was placed on the uninhabited island of Elugelab, part of

(00:42):
the Eniwetac Atoll, which consists of forty small islands and
coral atolls spread across the South Pacific. Mike quickly released
its immense power. The once solid island of Eleujelab evaporated
in an instant, leaving behind a massive crater one point
nine kilometers wide and fifty meters deep. The explosion generated

(01:04):
a six meter high tsunami that wiped out vegetation on
surrounding islands. Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission
summarized the test results to President Dwight D. Eisenhower with
the words, a lu Jahlab island is gone. The explosion
produced a fireball with a five kilometer diameter. Within ninety seconds,

(01:25):
the mushroom cloud rose to a height of seventeen kilometers,
reaching thirty three kilometers a minute later. Eventually, the cloud
stabilized at an altitude of forty one kilometers, with the
mushroom's cap spanning one hundred sixty one kilometers and its
base thirty two kilometers wide. The explosion's measured force was unprecedented,

(01:46):
reaching ten point four megatons. A military report quoted witnesses
aboard several ships stating that the explosion was indescribable, accompanied
by blinding light. The heat from the blast could be
felt immediately at a distance of forty eight to fifty
six kilometers. The massive fireball on the horizon appeared like
a rising sun, expanding rapidly after hovering for a brief moment.

(02:10):
Mike was a symbol of extraordinary technical achievement, standing six
meters tall and weighing twenty tons. Though not practical as
a conventional weapon, its importance lay in being the first
nuclear device to generate explosive force from a thermonuclear fusion reaction,
as opposed to the fission splitting of atoms process used

(02:32):
in earlier bombs. The bomb's function relied on using a
fission reaction to trigger fusion inside liquid deuterium, a heavy
isotope of hydrogen. Mike's appearance resembled an industrial complex more
than a traditional weapon. The bomb was encased in a
wrinkled aluminum structure, accompanied by a signal tower over thirty
meters high to communicate with the control room on the

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USS Stes. Due to the use of liquid uterium fuel,
a large refrigeration plant was required to keep the deuterium
near absolute zero. The power for this complex set up
came from a three thousand kilowat electric plant. The ivy
mic test also led to the discovery of two new elements.
Shortly after the detonation, a fleet of US Air Force

(03:17):
planes flew through the mushroom cloud, equipped with modified fuel
tanks designed to collect and filter debris from the air.
The filters on board were sealed in lead containers and
sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico, for analysis. Nuclear scientist
Albert Giorso at the University of California, Berkeley was among
those intrigued by the scientific potential of the filters. Giorso

(03:40):
speculated that the filters might contain atoms that had transformed
into elements ninety nine and one hundred, which had been
predicted but not yet observed through radioactive decay. Guillorso, along
with chemist Stanley Jerald Thompson and Glenn Seborg, obtained half
a filter paper from the ivy mic test on it,

(04:00):
they discovered the existence of elements ninety nine and one
hundred in nineteen fifty five. These new elements were named
Einsteinium and fermium in honor of Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi.
Nuclear testing on enoetuc Atoll ended in nineteen fifty eight.
In nineteen seventy seven and two thousand, the U. S.

(04:20):
Military carried out decontamination efforts on Enoetuc and surrounding islands.
Scientists predict that the island may be suitable for human
habitation by twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven.