| Test No. 6 | |
|---|---|
 Test No.6, 3.3 megatons. | |
| Information | |
| Country | China |
| Test site | Lop Nur Test Base |
| Period | June 17, 1967 |
| Number of tests | 1 |
| Test type | Atmospheric |
| Device type | Fusion |
| Max. yield | 3.3 megatons of TNT (14 PJ) |
| Test chronology | |
Test No. 6 is the codename for China's first test of a three-staged thermonuclear device and, also its sixth nuclear weapons test. It was a part of the "Two Bombs, One Satellite" program.
The device was detonated at Lop Nur Test Base, or often dubbed as Lop Nur Nuclear Weapon Test Base, in Malan, Xinjiang, on 17 June 1967. With successful testing of this three-stage thermonuclear device, China became the fourth country to have successfully developed a thermonuclear weapon after the United States, Soviet Union and the United Kingdom. It was dropped from a Xian H-6 (Chinese manufactured Tu-16) of the 36th Air Division and was parachute-retarded for an airburst at 2960 meters. [1] The bomb was a three-stage device with a boosted U-235 primary and U-238 pusher. The yield was 3.3 megatons.
The film of the prior 1966 tests have been released, as well as a unidentified later test. [2]
It was a fully functional, full-scale, three-stage hydrogen bomb, tested just 32 months after China had made its first fission device. It remains to date the fastest of any country to successfully develop this capability.
China had received extensive technical help from the Soviet Union to jump-start their nuclear program, but by 1960, the rift between the Soviet Union and China had become so great that the Soviet Union ceased all assistance to China and refused to help the Chinese government with their nuclear program. [3]
The goal of China was to produce a thermonuclear device of at least a megaton in yield that could be dropped by an aircraft or carried by a ballistic missile. Several explosions to test thermonuclear weapon designs, characteristics and yield boosting preceded the thermonuclear test. [3]
Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that cause the physics package of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three existing basic design types:
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance, yield, and effects of nuclear weapons. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by different conditions, and how personnel, structures, and equipment are affected when subjected to nuclear explosions. However, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength. Many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapons states publicly declared their nuclear status through a nuclear test.
Operation Castle was a United States series of high-yield (high-energy) nuclear tests by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF-7) at Bikini Atoll beginning in March 1954. It followed Operation Upshot–Knothole and preceded Operation Teapot.
The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers.
The B-41 was a thermonuclear weapon deployed by the United States Strategic Air Command in the early 1960s. It was the most powerful nuclear bomb ever developed by the United States, with a maximum yield of 25 megatons of TNT. A top secret document, states “The US has stockpiled bombs of 9 MT and 23 MT...” which would likely be referring to the B-41's actual yield(s). The B-41 was the only three-stage thermonuclear weapon fielded by the U.S.
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II.
RDS-37 was the Soviet Union's first two-stage hydrogen bomb, first tested on 22 November 1955. The weapon had a nominal yield of approximately 3 megatons. It was scaled down to 1.6 megatons for the live test.
Castle Yankee was the code name given to one of the tests in the Operation Castle series of American tests of thermonuclear bombs. It was originally intended as a test of a TX-16/EC-16 Jughead bomb, but the design became obsolete after the Castle Bravo test was successful. The test device was replaced with a TX-24/EC-24 Runt II bomb which was detonated on May 5, 1954, at Bikini Atoll. It released energy equivalent to 13.5 megatons of TNT, the second-largest yield ever in a U.S. fusion weapon test.
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel, thus allowing more efficient use of scarce fissile material such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239. The first full-scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952; the concept has since been employed by most of the world's nuclear powers in the design of their weapons.
The Teller–Ulam design is a technical concept behind modern thermonuclear weapons, also known as hydrogen bombs. The design – the details of which are military secrets and known to only a handful of major nations – is believed to be used in virtually all modern nuclear weapons that make up the arsenals of the major nuclear powers.
Project 596 was the first nuclear weapons test conducted by the People's Republic of China, detonated on 16 October 1964, at the Lop Nur test site. It was a uranium-235 implosion fission device made from weapons-grade uranium (U-235) enriched in a gaseous diffusion plant in Lanzhou.
A nuclear explosion is an explosion that occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from a high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion or a multi-stage cascading combination of the two, though to date all fusion-based weapons have used a fission device to initiate fusion, and a pure fusion weapon remains a hypothetical device. Nuclear explosions are used in nuclear weapons and nuclear testing.
Canopus was the codename of the first French two-stage thermonuclear test. It was conducted by the Pacific Carrier Battle Group on 24 August 1968, at the Pacific Experiments Centre near Fangataufa atoll, French Polynesia. The test made France the fifth country to test a thermonuclear device after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and China.
Orange Herald was a British nuclear weapon, tested on 31 May 1957. At the time it was reported as an H-bomb, although in fact it was a large boosted fission weapon and remains to date, the largest fission device ever detonated.
The Mk 36 was a heavy high-yield nuclear bomb designed in the 1950s. It was a thermonuclear, using a multi-stage fusion secondary system to generate yields up to about 10 megatons TNT equivalent.
A fizzle occurs when the detonation of a device for creating a nuclear explosion grossly fails to meet its expected yield. The bombs still detonate, but the detonation is much less than anticipated. The cause(s) for the failure can be linked to improper design, poor construction, or lack of expertise. All countries that have had a nuclear weapons testing program have experienced some fizzles. A fizzle can spread radioactive material throughout the surrounding area, involve a partial fission reaction of the fissile material, or both. For practical purposes, a fizzle can still have considerable explosive yield when compared to conventional weapons.
Two Bombs, One Satellite was an early nuclear and space project of the People's Republic of China. Two Bombs refers to the atomic bomb and the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), while One Satellite refers to the artificial satellite. China tested its first atomic bomb and first hydrogen bomb in 1964 and 1967 respectively, combining the atomic bomb with surface-to-surface missile in 1966, and successfully launched its first satellite in 1970.
The British hydrogen bomb programme was the ultimately successful British effort to develop hydrogen bombs between 1952 and 1958. During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, codenamed Tube Alloys. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, British prime minister Winston Churchill and United States president Franklin Roosevelt signed the Quebec Agreement, merging Tube Alloys into the American Manhattan Project, in which many of Britain's top scientists participated. The British government trusted that America would share nuclear technology, which it considered to be a joint discovery, but the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 ended technical cooperation. Fearing a resurgence of American isolationism, and the loss of Britain's great power status, the British government resumed its own development effort, which was codenamed "High Explosive Research".