Trinity Site Visit
on 04/13/2007 at 09:12 AM
I remember my own visit there about 13 years ago. It was amazing to see how desolate that area still is (and that it’s still measurably radioactive), and to see how little remained after the test. Think about it: a 100-foot tall, steel-reinforced tower was completely vaporized to the ground, probably in the space of that first .006 second of the chain reaction. Also, the “gadget”, the Trinity test device was a plutonium device, like the “Fat Man” weapon dropped on Nagasaki; the first bomb dropped on Hiroshima ("Little Boy") was a much-simpler gun-type uranium device. I guess they figured that if the more complex weapon worked well, the simpler one was a sure bet Good thing they were right…
The purpose of Jumbo was to contain the plutonium from the Gadget in case critical mass was not achieved and the chain reaction failed. Remember, each slice of plutonium was backed by a chunk of high explosive, designed to drive it towards the other wedges into a sphere of critical mass. That much HE could conceivably have disintegrated the plutonium and dispersed it into the air if it didn’t achieve critical mass, causing widespread death and destruction. No, really. In addition to being pretty radioactive, plutonium is also a heavy metal, like cadmium or mercury. But after further calculations, the eggheads from Los Alamos determined that it would work, and they hacked through the case and pulled the Gadget out. The rest is history.
Trinitite is pretty cool stuff. Green radioactive glass, almost like jade in appearance. Must have been a lot of copper in the sand down there.
The legend of the test includes a report about a blind girl who was riding in a car well over 150 miles away from the test site. She is reported to have asked what that bright flash in the sky was…
The vegetation pix are actually taken between the outer and inner fences. That’s what there now.
It is indeed high desert, in the area called the Jornada del Muerta, or “horn of death”. Though it’s not quite as high as where I used to live, in Los Alamos. I have also been to the public areas of White Sands, and probably nearly went “sand blind”, if you will. Not too much down in that area, except for parts of the VLA (used in the movie Contact with Jodie Foster), as well as Holloman AFB in nearby Alamogordo. Lots of history in the whole state.
