British nuclear test Totem 1 is detonated at Emu Field, South Australia.
Emu Field is located in the desert of South Australia, at 284154S 1322217E (ground zero Totem I test). Variously known as Emu Field, Emu Junction or Emu, it was the site of the Operation Totem pair of nuclear tests conducted by the British government in October 1953.
The site was surveyed by Len Beadell in 1952. A village and airstrip were constructed for the subsequent testing program. The site was supported from the RAAF Woomera Range Complex.
Two British nuclear weapon tests were conducted at the site. Totem I was detonated on 15 October 1953 and Totem II was detonated on 27 October 1953. The devices were both sited on towers and yielded 9 kilotons and 7 kilotons respectively. The site was also used in SeptemberOctober 1953 for some of the Kitten series of tests, which were conventional (rather than nuclear) explosions used to evaluate neutron initiators.It was later found that the radioactive cloud from the first detonation did not disperse as expected, and travelled north-east over the Australian continent.The site at Emu Field was unsafe for further testing due to contamination by nuclear radiation, and the search for another location led to the survey of Maralinga, where a further series of atomic tests was conducted in 1956.
There are now stone monuments at the ground-zero points, which can be visited by tourists (with the written approval of the RAAF Woomera Test Range who now control access to the area), though the location is still extremely remote (see Anne Beadell Highway). Evidence of the explosions may still be seen at ground-zero in the form of vitrified sand and concentric blast rings.A history of the tests at Emu Field by Elizabeth Tynan was published in 2022.
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. 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.
The first nuclear device was detonated as a test by the United States at the Trinity site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, with a yield approximately equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT. The first thermonuclear weapon technology test of an engineered device, codenamed "Ivy Mike", was tested at the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952 (local date), also by the United States. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the "Tsar Bomba" of the Soviet Union at Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961, with the largest yield ever seen, an estimated 50–58 megatons.
In 1963, three (UK, US, Soviet Union) of the then four nuclear states and many non-nuclear states signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The treaty permitted underground nuclear testing. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, and China continued until 1980. Neither has signed the treaty.Underground tests in the Soviet Union continued until 1990, the United Kingdom until 1991, the United States until 1992 (its last nuclear test), and both China and France until 1996. In signing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, these countries have pledged to discontinue all nuclear testing; the treaty has not yet entered into force because of failure to be ratified by eight countries. Non-signatories India and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998. North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016, and 2017. The most recent confirmed nuclear test occurred in September 2017 in North Korea.