Shot Mike v2.0

Mike Shot
Mike
The Mike Shot / Neg. CN590034

Fission bombs have upper limits to their explosive yields. Hydrogen bombs do not. Their yields can be increased by adding more fuel. The prospect of facing a Soviet Union having a thermonuclear capability was sobering for the United States. Taking all of this into account, President Harry Truman authorized an accelerated effort to develop the hydrogen bomb in January 1950.
Design Breakthrough

Despite the presidential authorization, designing, building, and testing a hydrogen bomb proved extraordinarily difficult. Not until January 1951, almost a decade after first being proposed and a year after Truman's decision, did a promising design emerge, employing Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller's principle of radiation implosion. This principle broke a theoretical logjam and quickly led to the first workable model of a hydrogen bomb that could be tested. As J. Robert Oppenheimer observed, "The program was so technically sweet that you could not argue about that." Designed by Richard Garwin, the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed Mike, employed a fission bomb (the primary) to compress and ignite a liquid deuterium secondary. As Hans Bethe recalled many years later, "The theoretical design of Mike was completed by June 1952 in good time to make the device ready for testing on November 1."
Test

The test of the Mike device was scheduled as part of the Operation Ivy test series, to be conducted in the fall of 1952 at the Enewetak Atoll Pacific Proving Ground in the Marshall Islands. The Mike device was constructed on the remote island of Elugelap, located in the northern part of the atoll. Mike was not a bomb in the combat sense of the word. As ultimately constructed, it stood three stories tall, weighed over one million pounds, and used liquid deuterium, a cryogenic fuel. On October 31, 1952 (local time), after the entire atoll had been evacuated, Mike exploded with a yield of 10.4 megatons. The fireball was estimated to be over three miles in diameter. The island of Elugelap disappeared as did portions of other nearby islands. The successful test of Mike ushered in the era of multi-megaton nuclear weapons.

- los alamos.com