The Pyramid Power

Operation Sandstone was the third American series of nuclear weapon tests. It was conducted in 1948 at Enewetak Atoll. These tests followed Crossroads and preceded Ranger. As was the custom, each explosion was given a nickname.

• X-Ray / 14 April 1948 / Enewetak Atoll / 37 kilotons
• Yoke / 30 April 1948 / Enewetak Atoll / 49 kilotons
• Zebra / 14 May 1948 / Enewetak Atoll / 18 kilotons  

The tests were authorized on June 27, 1947 and Enewetak Atoll was chosen as the test site on October 11. The 140 inhabitants of the atoll were relocated to Ujelang Atoll in December.

The tests were used to evaluate new atomic weapon designs that had been developed at Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project but had not previously been used. The bombs used oralloy, a form of enriched uranium, as a replacement for plutonium, which had been used in all atomic weapons prior to this with the exception of the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which utilized uranium-235. The X-Ray test used a 2:1 mix of oralloy and plutonium. The Yoke and Zebra tests used all oralloy.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Operation Sandstone”

written by admin \\ tags: A-bomb, Atomic Bomb, Atomic Energy Commission, Atomic Weapon, Enewetak Atoll, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Manhattan Project, Operation Sandstone, Plutonium, United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Uranium, Uranium-235, X-Ray, Yoke, Zebra