How Radioactive Is The First Atomic Bomb Site?
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2022
- The Trinity Site is the place where the first atomic bomb was detonated 76 years ago. Its open twice a year to the public, located on the White Sands Missile Range. The ground zero site is still radioactive. Trinitite, a radioactive mineral that was created when the first nuclear bomb was detonated can be found very easily all over the ground zero site.
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"Light in the Darkness" One Hundred Years
"Motion" Roary
"Direction feat meaning machine" Roary
"A boy and a man and a satellite" (Instrumental) Kerbin
If you are looking for some uranium ore or radioactive antiques check out uraniumstore.com
Camera Used in this video: amzn.to/3WZsU53
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I was in the Army stationed at WSMR in the mid eighties, as a weather observer. One of our remote met stations was close by the Trinity site. We had to drive out to Trinity every 3 weeks or so to check on the equipment, change ink and paper, and just do a little maintenance on the enclosure box. We had several met stations throughout the range - this one was the northernmost. Made for a long day's drive. The Trinity site at that time was open - no fence enclosure...we could drive right up to the monument. After the first 4 or 5 visits, it lost it's appeal, and was just another dreaded task. We never gave the radiation a second thought.
dayum
@@taylordooley3765 It sounds as though Davis soon found it uninteresting. There's only limited appeal to a big, shallow, radioactive depression in the ground.
I've always been a massive WWII buff, so when I went to Japan years ago, I went to the detonation site in Nagasaki. The bomb detonated over a prison, and the only thing left was a narrow-width bit of dug in concrete that would of formed a perimeter around the prison's foundation. When I stood there, and really thought about it, it was one of those rare occasion where you can feel the weight of a historical event; that only happened twice.
They modified the house since I was there 20 years ago you could see the roof that almost blew off because of the blast and it looks like they repainted as well one thing that use to be there if it’s not any more was the swimming pool that they had to keep them self cool
@@jayklink851 those cities are prosperous.. Thriving. Radiation didn't stop life going on there... All sounds like bullshit to me
My grandpa was an observer of the first bomb tests, he took pictures. But normally after so many years most are dead of old age or radiation causes. My grandpa is still alive today and finally got his "Atomic Veteran" plaque and coin after 76 years.
that’s rad. did you see the nolan film that just came out?
@@keithwaynejones which one?
@@mmm-hmm oppenheimer
That's so cool
@@noot1254 ah no, i heard it’s trash
About ten years ago (2011-12) an old man, estimated to be in his eighties came all alone into our hangar in Fort Worth, Texas. He was a WWII B-29 aircraft crew chief. I engaged him in conversation about his service. He told me that on July 16, 1945 he was preflighting his aircraft at what I recall he said was Walker Army Air Base. He said it was still somewhat dark requiring the use of a flashlight. Suddenly to the North the sky lit up bright as daylight. I recall he said there was rising terrain between him and the light, so he could see the outline of the mountans. Shortly thereafter It dimmed. He went about his work. He said it wasn't until after the war ended that he realized he unknowingly witnessed the Trinity test. I regret I did not get his name or record our conversation.
That would have been a cool conversation to have on record.
@@RadioactiveDrewiu
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@@Daniel-vo1vfI’ll put that to record
My grandfather was still in France around that time. He saw a glow come up, too, but it was an ongoing fusion bomb that gave life to Earth.
It may have been Alamogordo Air Field (now Holloman AFB). There is record on their website that B-29's flew from there, and the Trinity site is 60 miles north-northwest, on the other side of the mountains, which aligns with the old man's account.
"If you wanna take a picture sir, all you have to do is just take it" Such wise words
The two signs: “caution radioactive material” and “beware of rattlesnake”, I’m glad they’re two separate signs… for now…
LOL beware the radioactive rattle snake
The radioactive hissing, ticking & glow in the dark rattlesnake with 3 heads and 6 eyes.
Snakezilla
Something something Nightstker
Hmm...snakes on a plain.
As regards "Jumbo". As the video stated, they intended on having the test explode inside it in order to capture the plutonium in case the bomb didn't work. But they decided to not use it because someone asked a very important question. "If the bomb works, will jumbo be completely destroyed, or would we instead have constructed the world's largest fragmentation grenade?" They decided that using Jumbo wasn't worth the risk.
One bomb malfunctioned in the south pacific and spread plutonium everywhere. They sent a bunch of dopes out to pick up the pieces by hand and put them in a hole. They covered the hole with concrete. The site is now going under water due to sea level rise. DOD has known about it for decades but has'nt spent the money to clean it up. The guys who were exposed are some of the many who can't get the government to pay their health costs. The plutonium will spread into the ocean.
That sure is a concerning fact. I wonder who would've been assigned cleanup duty for the fragments embedded with plutonium sent miles all over the desert? That's a short straw you'd really want to avoid....
Wouldve made the Halifax explosion in ww1 look like child's play lmao
Being that nuclear bombs are thermonuclear, I wonder if they evacuated the air out to a complete vacuum and detonated the bomb, no air to expand, just a thought
@@nigelman9506 You'd still have all the radiation pressure, not to mention even at the small scale of the Trinity the immediate vaporization radius is still much bigger than the Jumbo
I had a small piece of trinitite from the blast collected by a relative who worked on the initiater portion of the project. He collected it as soon after the explosion as they were allowed near the site. It is encased in a piece of plexiglass. It gets passed around the family and currently is with a nephew for safekeeping.
My great-grandfather did the same thing, but the piece he brought home got confiscated by the military according to my grandmother.
What never ceases to amaze me is how quickly atomic weaponry went from first successful detonation (July 16) to actual combat use in the Pacific Theater less than a month later (Hiroshima Aug 6, Nagasaki Aug 9). I've walked ground on which atomic bombs were detonated twice in my life - Eniwetok Atoll 1976 (my ship - USS St Louis LKA-116 - brought in preliminary cargo for commencement of planning for & construction of the Runit Dome) & Nagasaki 2023.
Every minute counted, I suppose. Thank you for pointing out these facts, and thank you for your service.
It was utterly remarkable, especially given how involved the logistics were of staging everything at Tinian.
I remember reading a comment with a conspiracy theory saying that the US never actually developed the bombs but took them from the nazis when they defeated Germany and dropped them on the Japanese. Funny story.
All three weapons were taken from a secret and separate Nazi who had 4 devices on a remote Greek island. The indigenous who helped said all 4 were different. Then one day they were kept inside as one was tested. Days later the Nazi scientists and the other 3 were gone. All that was left was a massive scar that still exists, and some really messed up observation bunkers. When the ground was tested it showed a Nuke was detonated. This all came from an episode of NASAs unsolved mysteries. They give out Earthly formations for study and didn’t know what they had when they detected the scar. It’s since been removed from the series library. So 3 left = Trinity and the two used for combat. All different and using different Radioactive means. Google Nazi Nuke test Rugen Island.
This sounds extremely unlikely.
In the 70s I was stationed at Holloman AFB and I was on a disaster preparedness team. Sometimes we would train for a Broken Arrow-and the supervisors would hide some mildly radioactive material in the desert for us to find with our Giger counters. One piece of the material was a melted down small piece of the tower. It was still somewhat hot and the counter would go crazy when someone found it - was kept in lead box.
Still thermally hot in the 70s?
@@user-ty2uz4gb7v probably not thermal heat.
Radioactivity is often referred to as hot.
I was at Holloman (medic) 70 to 74. I just hope it wasn't in the water. I know Alamogordo/Tularosa have high cancer rates.
Sphinx is alien nuclear detector after earth human made nuclear wipe out. Pyramid is the emergency hospital for alien reborns (human body with alien soul) who died during the earth human made nuclear wipe out.
Please no nuclear. UK🇬🇧 HM King George VI, the father of HM Queen Elizabeth, also died of nuclear dust attached to his lower rib.
Nuclear dust from 1945 August, two atom bomb dust blew from Japan🇯🇵 to China, killed more Chinese than Japanese, then blew to Spain🇪🇸 and the UK🇬🇧.
Please don't use nuclear in space. The Gods who maintain this Universe (aliens) are removing nuclear material from this planet Earth and hanging them on the outside of the metal wall of this Universe.
In 2019, 24 of the European Space Agency's Galileo satellites lost contact because these satellites provide services for nuclear power plants, nuclear facilities, nuclear military, and aliens shut down these satellites.
Global oil and gas prices and electricity prices jack up because nuclear power plants worldwide are nearly all broken and unable to generate electricity.
The nuclear matter is a true time-reversal machine and energy vampire. Because of the nuclear material, this Earth is so trash. Nuclear works by drawing energy from any being (human, animal, insect, soil, soul) attached to nuclear dust.
The Gods who maintain this Universe (aliens) made oil, gas, coal and minerals.
Please use these energies. Gods recycle the landfills, trash, plastics, waste, sewage, and the dead body of water creatures under the crust to make oil, gas, and minerals.
Gods use flying saucers to compress dead trees and plants under the soil to make coals. So Gods can bring better asteroid soil and better seeds to Earth to upgrade Earth. Most asteroids are worth hundreds of millions or billions or trillions.
God bless I do oil, gas, coal and Solar resonator.
Global warming is because the Sun was destroyed by human nuclear explosions since 1945.
Gods (aliens who created and maintain this Universe) have been repairing the Sun since 2002-07-13. Gods are pulling Earth away from Sun since 2018-06-03. Since 2019-03-23, Gods have been taking nuclear particles away from Earth to stop nuclear wipeout and nuclear disasters.
guestbook.lingpai.org/d/30-move-the-himalayas-to-the-pacific-ocean-to-build-et-base-island
@@user-ty2uz4gb7v when someone says the term "Hot" their meaning Extremely Radioactive not Temperature
Enjoyed it, thx! Visited the site with my kids in the early 90's.
Met a women who actually saw the light in the sky when the bomb was detonated. She was a little girl, and her Mom and Dad were cooks on a work train. They had kicked her outside to play so they could prepare breakfast, and she saw the sky light up in an intense purple-violet flash. The newspapers reported an ammo storage site had accidentally blown up.
My mother in law saw the blast from Belen NM. Its weird to see the sun rise in the South...
Another ironic thing is my father in law enlisted in the Navy during WW2 Due to 2 of his brothers we're POWs and Part of the ANG 200 Coast artillery unit from Gallup. The brothers and my father in law all came home because of gadget being dropped on Japan !!!
I guess that poor little girls parents really didn’t want her in the house at all imagine being told to go out and play at 5:00 am
My paternal grandmother went out to get the milk off the porch in Alamogordo and saw the “ammo dump” explosion.
@@PatrickNthedesert lmaoo
I've lived in Hiroshima, and the hypocentre of that explosion is by a car park. You can very easily miss the plaque denoting it. But then again, not something you'd want to be reminded of daily either, I suppose. The city is a very peaceful place.
Science did that.
I have a big chunk of that Trinitite. My father, stationed there with the army in the early 50's, shinnied over a fence and grabbed a piece about the size of a brick. It crumbles easily so isn't that big anymore, but I inherited it. Dad said it can't be very radioactive because his piece sat in a box at the head of his bed for 50 yrs with no ill effects. He died of common heart failure in his 80's.
Trinitite isn’t that radioactive now. The most active isotope in it usually is cesium 137, which had a half-life of 30 years. So at this point it should have a little less than a quarter of that cesium left. After about 220 years it won’t be noticeable radioactive.
I used to fly out of Holloman AFB Alamagordo. The site was very easy to see from the air. The pattern it left on the ground is invisible at ground level, but from the air it looks like a meteor hit without any crater... there are rays of what look like ejecta, and an obvious round central area. I never visited the site personally. Quite a bit of history there.
Edit: 08:55 is the image, I posted my comment before seeing that. It wasn't as distinct in the 1980's as that photo, but still very discernible.
My son was at Holloman during the filming of Transformers. He was an extra, but as he noted to me, "you might see my knee."
🌺🏛️🗽🌺 WSMR kid building the Collussal statue of Freedom might need ARMY backup 😉🌺
I've stood at the ground zero bomb site in Hiroshima. A very daunting emotion. The screaming and moaning of "water, water" you could almost here 130,000 souls. Ground zero lies behind the the ruined dome building about 100m away. Every now and then you see scorch marks, burnt fire hydrants etc in the city.
Maralinga is way more radioactive, as are the Montebello islands.
In the late 1960s, while in the U.S. Navy, I visited the Nagasaki G0 site. By that time, the city had declared the area surrounding the G0 a permanent memorial area named Peace Park. A huge statue of a Shinto holy man (I guess) sitting cross-legged at the exact target coordinates with one hand raised, a finger pointed toward the heavens. Quite an impressive and sobering experience for this 24 year old sailor.
@@dragonmeddler2152 My dad was in the Royal Airforce and was involved with the British A bomb and H bomb tests at Maralinga South Australian outback and Montebello islands in the Indian Ocean and Christmas island in the Pacific Ocean .
The radiation he got destroyed his cardio vascular system. The most dangerous test was performed at Christmas island of a hydrogen bomb, they were only around 15 kilometres away from the blast. Apparently the heat was so intense that the service men complained that it was like a electric bar heater being pressed against their skin for a few seconds
I'm guessing a lot of people found your video now since Oppenheimer released, highly recommend watching the film by the way. I'm glad you could share more information about the trinity site nice video.
I second you.
Yeah there has been a huge uptick in traffic on my Trinity Site video. I also made a second video mapping out the radiation of that site. CZcams haven’t started pushing that yet.
@RadioactiveDrew have you seen the movie? It was awesome.
I’ve seen it about 20 times now because I’m the projectionist for one of the 70mm film prints. Making a video about the whole process.
@@RadioactiveDrew that’s actually really cool
Thank you for being a great person and still responding to genuine comments and questions after a full year!
I really like interacting with the community here on CZcams. Usually the people are pretty cool and I don't mind answering questions.
@@RadioactiveDrew Keep being you!😊
I went to trinity site in early 2000’s after begging my dad to take me, I was in high school at the time but was obsessed with learning about nukes and their history. This vid was nice, it took me back! I am pretty sure the spot to look down onto the old crater floor was still open/visible at that time.
There are Titan missle site tours in various places.
You have a good Dad
On my bucket list. I've read that the tower wasn't actually vaporized - at least not entirely - but that it was blown into fragments that have been subsequently found all around G-0. Unimaginable force. When I was a kid, my parents took a trip out west and one of the stops was the Petrified Forest. When you go in you are admonished to NOT TAKE any bits you find on the ground. My father grabbed a hunk as big as a football and stashed it in the back seat with me. At the gate they asked if we had taken any bits of petrified wood....my father being unable to lie, fessed up and I handed the football over the seat and Pop gave it to the ranger. I thought his head was going to explode. We got away without further incident...
Whose head was going to explode? Your father's or the gate attendant?
If you visit the towns nearby you will see bigger and tons of petrified tees in people’s yards, around businesses. You could buy a a huge log if you want!
One of my friends was stationed there and grabbed a chunk of trinitite. He kept it under his bed for years. His wife couldn’t get pregnant and he developed cancer. I don’t know if it was related. But lots of rock shops still sell the stuff.
@@sigsin1 sounds like that was the cause
It wasn’t related. I have a stash of it that was liberated by a federal employee from the site. Being an enthusiast I have several means of detecting and classifying radiation sources. Trinitite is not vigorously radioactive. A single piece isn’t detectable more than a few inches away by the most sensitive devices. A few hundred pounds stored close to your body and and in a manner that makes dust that is readily inhaled, well that’s another story.
As someone who was exposed to radiation in the military, told it was a “safe dose” and now has leukemia, in excess of caution I would not visit any site with residual radiation. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Its not a gift that keeps on giving. Our bodies are designed to heal from radiation damage. What our bodies are not use to dealing with is chemical exposure.
A few years ago I worked for the DTRA. My office was about 2 miles down the road from the Trinity Site. My dad was a Nuclear Weapons instructor back in the late 1950s. He worked in the USAF for the Defense Special Weapons Agency. Turns out DSWA, DTRA, DNA, and Manhattan Project were all the same government agency. Loved that job and all the implications of it's past and future. My dad was able to come to White Sands and tour the Trinity Site, Mc Donald Ranch and witness a nuclear simulation test we did at the Large Blast and Thermal Simulator (LBTS).
That sounds really cool.
Nice site. When we visited the trinitite viewing enclosure was still open. When driving out of the parking area and on the access road, I looked in the rear view mirror and realized that most of the displays and the monument were in a shallow depression that was cause by the bomb. No way would I call it a crater but I guessed it looked to be about 3 or 4 feet deep at the center of the bowl. It was so shallow we never realized it when we were in it.
Any idea why the trinitite enclosure was removed? It was extant when I visited twenty years ago, thanks in advance!
They didnt leave big crators because the bombs were high above it, but sounds like it still blew the top soil away in the blastwave.
@@christianbuczko1481 The tower at Trinity Site was 100 ft high. Compared to the Nagasaki detonation which was set at about 1,650 ft.
@@christianbuczko1481 The original crate was 8 feet deep and 1/2 mile in diameter. The bomb was not exploded "high above it." The bomb was on a 100-foot tower. The site was bulldozed to remove the trinitite because it was radioactive and some fill was brought in. The remainder of the original depression has been filled with wind-blown sand and dust.
@@christianbuczko1481 that crater was pretty big it's just had sand blowing into it for years.
The Manhattan Project is what made me obsessed with Nuclear Physics. So much so that i became a Nuclear Engineer. This place is on my list of places to visit, but having had two kids sinxe graduating, its rather difficult.
Thanks for posting this. Not enough people are educated on Nuclear Physics/Radiation. If people were, they'd better understand how intriguing it is, as well as how much potential it has to power a so called "green" future.
Forgive me I'm not good at nuclear physics, but are you saying that nuclear power can also be use for greener or eco friendly?
@@Firmpillars yes.
Look up thorium molten salt reactors. Theyre a much, much different design from the common PWR/BWR reactors styles. Basically, the Thorium Salt reactors is much higher efficiency and can get more useage out of fuel than a conventional reactor. So much so that we can use whay we already consider "spent fuel" inside of them. Thus, we have some 700 years worth of fuel just sitting in storage containers in the Nevada deserts (where we send our spent fuel from current reactors).
Also, if we can harness the power of fussion, we have unlimited energy. Fusion reactors will also create virtually zero nuclear waste. The only problem with fusion is..
1. We havent been able to sustain fusion reactors for very long due to the immense heat they produce (millions of degrees).
2. The energy required to start a fusion reaction is more than the energy we get out from it (currently).
We are slowly getting there with fusion, but itll probably be 15-20 years until fusion is fully achievable.
@@shaggydaboy2 Since you seem to be an expert.
My chemistry teacher told us that "It is really selfish to use our Uranium resources which only last 100-200 years and pollute the planet for hundreds of thousands of years."
What is your oppinion on this?
@@shaggydaboy2interesting 🤔 let's build one 🕜
There is a great interview with Mr. Teller from 1973 saying the very same about the people in the U.S. and how there was a lack of inspiration to study physics and science in general. As you likely well know, Teller envisioned the possibilities that were created by understanding and developing nuclear energy. Unfortunately, today we see little of that vision in the U.S.
Thanks for the Tour!
No problem.
Curious about the stoneworks at about 18:24?
The last time I was there was 1988. I was part of the Navy contingent there and my job was to drive a truck with a telemetry missile, called a Vandal, up there to a temporary launch site for a very large conventional explosive test. The idea was to simulate a nuclear explosion and to launch various missles toward it to gauge the effects. There was noone around other than us and wild horses and a few antelope. It is a quiet and peaceful place.
Great work on this tour! 30 years ago I was only able to drive by on route 380 and gaze into the distance, so this was a treat. Thanks for your work and videography.
The tower was not vaporized, it was blown into pieces. I spoke to Freeman Dyson and Ed Teller about it once. Because the individual pieces were found scattered about, that is what led to Project Orion.
The bulk of the metal was protected by ablation. Project Orion was the greatest/craziest idea ever---imagine sitting in a captain's chair while a nuclear bomb explodes ~100m(?) behind you every second or less!
It might not have been vaporized, but it was certainly liquid metal for more than a few seconds.
@@truthseeker2321 no, a thin layer of surface WAS "vaporized"---ablated, to be precise. The resulting plasma protected the underlying metal, so that the tower was pretty much all there, albeit blown to pieces. The tower was actually reconstructed just to prove this.
@@maxr.dechantsreiter5226 Wow,I never heard about that. I always thought that the tremendous heat would have vaporized it, but of course, it didn't vaporize any of the ships at Bikini Atoll.
Thanks for the information 👍
@@truthseeker2321 it's the same idea that protected the Space Shuttle on re-entry. In a modern H-bomb up to 3./4" (20mm) of U-238 or other heavy metal is vaporized to plasma almost instantly, the reaction force driving the implosion of DT and Pu "spark plug"
A life long "bucket list" item for me. I was there on the 50th Anniversary. A wonderful and educational visit. Only open to the public two times per year. I recommend a visit. No radiation danger.
A relative was at Los Alamos for 2 years during WW2 with his wife. Paul was a scientist and lawyer. Back in the ‘70’s told me a bit about day to day life there. He said their address was a PO Box. Also that as a patent lawyer he was tasked with drawing up the patent for the atomic bomb.
That pretty cool.
My Aunt, Mary Argo was a Nuclear physicist recruited from Brown University along with her husband (also a physicist) and my dads brother Harold Argo in 1943 to join the Manhattan Project. She was the ONLY WOMAN invited to the Trinity test. I'm 62 and would LOVE to have a conversation with her today about her and Harolds involvement in the building of the first Atomic weapon. Her job at Los Alamos was to calculate what a explosion of such magnitude would do to the Earths Ozone layer. I'm very proud of their accomplishments and also the rest of my family during that terrible time in world history.
That's a cool piece of family history...thanks for sharing.
She would have met Richard Feymann, who was involved in a lot of the calculations made to estimate the effects of the bomb. I met and spoke with Edward Teller, but would have like to have met Feymann.
@@ru2yaz33 My Aunt Mary Argo went on desert hikes every Sunday (their only day off) with her husband Harold (also a physicist) and Edward Teller. She said it was their only day away from the stress of the task they were trying to accomplish. She said they talked about ANYTHING but what they were doing the other 6 days a week. It was the one day they had that provided them even the smallest sense of normalcy and they never broke the rule and spoke about "The Bomb" they were helping so desperately to create.
I drove through White Sands back in early '90's and just happened to be driving near enough to the Trinity test site to visit when it opened for it's 50 year anniversery I believe. Some Army guys with geiger counters were on hand and went around with it showing us that radioactivity was no worse than normal background radiation amazingly enough. So much for being a 10,000 year hot spot.
Yeah but then they put batteries in the counters.
@@rogersmith7396 I wonder what was making them click then?
@@oriraykai3610 background radioactivity. Not to mention that many elements make it tick, not just the radiation from fallout.
@@rogersmith7396 actually not. Look at Hiroshima, Nagasaki... These were precise bombs. Now you have these pocket thermonuclear and they destroy half the city and the radiation is way, way worse. Till certain point in the 50s theh were aimed at destruction, since the 70s it's aimed at inflicting casualties.
Same for Hiroshima or Nagasaki. These are thriving cities.
"About ten times the amount of background radiation. Not too bad..." Reminds me of "3.7 Roentgen. Not great, not terrible."
10x above background radiation is extremely low.
I was at the open site day this summer. First of all, according to the security personnel, this was by far the busiest visitation ever and there is some re-thinking going on. Second, there were about twenty people I saw (besides myself) with radiation counters! I saw nothing significantly above background. Even samples of trinitite were very low.
However, the White Sands of the missile testing range consists of gypsum, the same stuff you have in the sheetrock in your home, but any wind at all lofts this stuff into the air.
I'm so glad I found this channel. This topic is so fascinating!
My wife's father worked for Dupont, first at Oak Ridge, then at Los Alamos, as a nuclear chemist. When we visited the museum in Los Alamos back in 2004, we were surprised to see his picture and an artifact with his last name, Madinabeitia, on it. He had no idea.
That museum is terrific. Been there a few times. Well worth the stop.
Did she know anything about the plutonium injections on people at that time?
should be proud !!!!!! at least i would be very much !!!!! part of history !!
I’m from Oak Ridge TN
Little did he know that Chirstoper Nolan will bless this video with views one year later
It helped for sure.
I've been close to there, Girl Scout camp in Cloudcroft. I also went with a scout group to Los Alamos in the early 1970s. That was interesting. Having grown up in Amarillo, with the Pantex plant nearby, we knew it was a "target site" in the cold war.
I worked on the observatory on the mountain just east of the trinity sight and to this day you can clearly see the blast pattern in the terrain around the sight from up on top of that mountain .
This video brings a refreshingly different perspective to the topic of nuclear energy, which is often neglected in the public discussion. As a German who witnessed the decommissioning of all nuclear power plants in my country, I think it is important to critically question this decision.
It seems as if politicians have acted out of excessive fear of the potential dangers of nuclear energy, without taking into account the real and immediate effects of the alternatives. It is worth noting that we now get a significant part of our energy from fossil fuels such as lignite.
It is undeniable that nuclear power plants can pose an enormous danger in the event of a disaster. But it is also important to remember that the burning of fossil fuels actually leads to many deaths every year. In other words, nuclear energy can kill, but other forms of energy actually do.
One aspect that particularly fascinates me about this video is the fact that places that were actually hit by nuclear bombs can be visited today without any particular danger. This suggests that the radiation in the environment has reduced considerably.
This leads me to a question I would like to pose: How has radiation levels in the oceans changed as a result of the discharge of highly radioactive water, as was the case after the Fukushima disaster, or as a result of the disposal of radioactive waste in the sea? Have these radioactive materials been dispersed and diluted in the vastness of the sea to such an extent that they ultimately do not have a major impact on the radioactive contamination of the environment?
This is a month after your question but I can give you a partial answer. The water coming from a functional nuclear reactor is far less radioactive than from coal plants. It's so close to background radiation it's almost impossible to detect. The Fukishima water is another story entirely and I don't know how well the radiation will be diluted. It's not the water that will be radioactive, it's everything in the water that could be dangerous. I just don't know how much radioactive gunk will float in the water nor how long it will keep floating.
@@bigmekboy175 I think the ocean is pretty good at diluting stuff.
Mostly Fukushima discharging into the Pacific is like adding a pinch of salt to a swimming pool. Irrelevant.
But there's arguments either side for whether bioaccumulation is an issue.
Tritium doesn’t bioaccumulate.
@@RadioactiveDrew
Indeed it stabilises and has a rather short halflife anyway.
I'm firmly in the camp of "we evolved to survive on a fairly radioactive planet".
Carbon-14 is mostly what's left over after the producing process (called ALPS)
I don't think it's that dangerous.
Not as dangerous as _not_ discharging it, letting it accumulate on land and another earthquake and tsunami causing a rapid release of _ALL_ the contaminated water at once!
Worked at WSMR and was given a visit to it. It's a kind of surreal place that this was the very first nuclear bomb test.
Looks like you had a blast. You were absolutely radiant.
(Enjoyed the video - thanks). My first job out of college (late 1970s & early 80s) was as a field engineer for a company that built microwave communications equipment for the telephone industry. For a brief time I was working in the Clovis (NM) area with another engineer and over a long holiday weekend (our customer, the phone company, didn't want us working while most of their people were off) we drove down through Roswell (toured the Goddard rocket museum) and then south of Guadalupe Mtns Nat'l Park. We needed to be making our way back towards Clovis (to be back at work on Monday) but didn't want to go through El Paso (neither of us were fans of big cities) so we drove through Dell City (just south of the Texas - New Mexico border) and on county roads heading northwest through the desert (intending to reach the highway between El Paso and Alamogordo). We got to a point miles northwest of Dell City when we came upon a sign that said not to go any further as there was unexploded ordnance. We spread our maps (detailed) on the hood of our car to try and figure what to do (we didn't want to backtrack all the miles back to Dell City). Just then an old pickup came down the road from the west. An old timer (in the mandatory khaki pants, shirt and sweat-stained hat) got out along with his grandson. They walked-over, we all shook-hands, introduced ourselves, and he said "What are you boys doing ?" We told him of our dilemma. He said "The government lets us graze our cattle on the range 9 months a year ..... besides they don't bomb on Sundays." Well, that was good enough for us. We thanked the old timer and bid him and his grandson goodbye. Then we continued on our journey heading northwest. We made it to the highway without incident (didn't get blown-up) and had an uneventful trip up through Cloudcroft, Ruidosa, and then on east going down the Rio Hondo valley on our way back to Clovis. I've never forgotten the old timer's assurance that "they don't bomb on Sundays" (he clearly knew what he was talking about).
Had my first view of the site from Oscura peak while in the Air Force during training operations. Later in the week I spent a few days down in the valley and was able to visit the site. If I remember correctly there are shops just outside the site that had large quantities of trinitite for sale.
This is the first vid I’ve seen of you and the opening sold me.
Glad you liked it.
I visited Trinity with less than twenty people back in 1968 on the annual day that it was open. My husband and I were stationed with the USAF at the White Sands Missile Range, as were most of the others who went that day, too. None of the cars had air conditioning back then so we sweltered in the desert. I found a piece of Trinitite and kept it for years (visitors were so rare that it wasn't illegal to remove it then if you were stationed there) until I figured it was probably still radioactive, so I buried it in a remote desert location.
Nuke-u-ler?? Dude 😮
I’ll help
New-Clee-Ur
@@drkwoodswhat are you talking about?
@@ironpizza5150 the guy is a radiation expert?? And and cannot properly pronounce Nuclear. Go read my comment again. Now you’ll get it
@@drkwoods You replied to a random commenter. Not the video
Great video. I bought a rock collection several years ago and one of the specimens was a chunk of green glass labeled Atomsite, White Sands NM. I knew right away it had to be from the Trinity site. Thanks to you I now know the proper name of the mineral. I've always regarded it as one of the coolest specimens in my collection.
It's not highly radioactive at Trinity test site, no more than flying at cruising altitude over Southern Argentina or South Australia
@@blake9358radiation is higher while flying than it is on the ground? I'm clueless about this matter
When you fly you get way more radiation exposure than spending all day at the Trinity site. Flight crews get more radiation exposure than most nuclear power workers.
@@johnf.r6658air protects against cosmic radiation to an extent, higher altitudes = thinner air, which means more cosmic radiation gets to you. And that is just one radiation source.
@@RadioactiveDrew Doesn't the plane's skin block all alpha and most beta radiation? Is it mainly gamma inside the plane?
I was lucky enough to visit the Trinity site about 4 years ago, in November. It's open only twice a year, first Saturday in April and first Saturday in November, as I recall. Being at the obelisk, the actual site of the first nuclear explosion ever is just truly amazing. I think they estimated about a teaspoonful of plutonium actually was converted to pure energy. Met some interesting people there. There was a group of Japanese people from Hiroshima. They were kind of getting closure. Then there was the bus driver over to the McDonald House, a young man who said he was thrilled to be there, as his father had worked on the Manhattan project! But the most interesting was a man with his two teenage children. He said his father landed on the beach on D Day, and survived WWII. Then on the GI bill, he went through college and got his PhD in physics, and then got a position at Los Alamos, where he met this man's mother. His mother was the first woman in US history to get a PhD in physics! He was bring his children to the Trinity site to try to educate them a little about their grandparents. Funnily, he said it wasn't working and they were just being brats :). Hey, I bet some of it sank in! All in all, a totally memorable place to visit.
They really should just have it be open every day at this point there really isn’t much radiation left at this point
@@ianloeb1672 I think the issues are that it is very far away from anywhere, so it wouldn't have much traffic. We drove for four hours from one of the nearest towns, just to get there. Also, it is situated on the White Sands Missile Range, and would need a military presence for all visitors. Again, it is very far out in the middle of nowhere, as a nuclear blast should be :). And further, there is still a lot of trinitite there which would be a public hazard if not tightly controlled. Taking it home to make a necklace would be a really bad idea. So I can at least understand it :).
I visited the Trinity Site on the 50th Anniversary special opening day. It was an experience I will always remember... both solemn and awash in history and filled with surprises. There were protestors throwing fake blood, and new "hippies" singing as they circling the obelisk and ordinary people just wanting to feel the history of the site for themselves. I highly recommend going to this site if you get the opportunity.
The protests seem to be outside of the Army base when I’ve been there. Can’t imagine people doing a protest at the ground zero obelisk lasting long now.
The fact I got this when Oppenheimer got released is wonderful
Cool! My grandfather grew up in New Mexico. He would go on to help develop the detonation switches for the bomb as part of the Manhattan project.
I worked security at NTS, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Savannah River and Pantex.
Interesting to see the history of the development and results of the tests that were conducted.
what did you think of the oppenhiemer movie? is it accurate?
@@kosaki9750 Its too long thats fro sure
@@serzhan222 I thought 3 hours was perfect for the amount of history Oppenheimer has.
Was always a treat to visit while I was stationed at WSMR early 2010s
Great video, thanks. I was stationed at Holloman AFB 80-83, I worked security for the Space Shuttle Columbia landing (STS-3), but never went out to Trinity Site. Again, thank you.
No problem.
I would love to go here. When I was in the Navy, I got to visit Nagasaki, Japan and visited Peace Park and the Atomic Bomb Museum. In the courtyard of the museum they have a tall, green obelisk which represents ground zero for the explosion. It was a rather sobering visit and was able to get some photos of it. I'll never forget that experience.
I would rather go there than Trinity. A reminder of the obscenity of nuclear weapons.
When I visited Tokyo, I looked over on the street to find an old woman glaring at me with more hate than II 'd ever witnessed. (I'm a gaijin). I pretty much knew at the time why. I was embarrassed.
@@Kinann Why? You never had to stare down anybody who had misplaced race based anger before and set them straight?
More were killed in thermite bombings of Tokyo, Dresden and others. Of course the Nazis gassed 6 million. Stallin killed 36 million Russians.
@@mattmarzula Neither have you, to be fair
Fascinating ... I haven't been to this site ... I was however in the Navy, during Vietnam, and visited Nagasaki in Japan. I have a photo of myself, standing in front of a gazebo structure with a pointed roof ... that was mapped as the location of where the bomb would have hit, if it had been a surface blast. It wasn't of course, exploding over that point, and I'm not sure how far above that spot when it exploded. The above surface blast did more damage, spreading out over a larger area.
happened across your video after seeing the film last night! very cool!
Visited Trinity back in 2001 while living in Alamogordo... They advised not to pick things up at the site, mainly to leave stuff for others to see later on, not necessarily as a safety precaution.
Anyways, while waiting for others to clear out from the monument so I could get a picture taken, I noticed some weird rocks on the ground; I was maybe 25-30 feet from the monument. I picked one up and looked at it for maybe 5-8 seconds. The monument cleared out so I dropped the rock and went on with the visit.
When I got home and went to brush my teeth my fingers hurt grabbing the toothbrush. I looked and I had blisters on the tips of 2 fingers and my thumb, in the hand I held the rock with. The blisters were gone by the time I woke up the next day.
I visited the trinity site on July 16, 1995, when they opened it up for the 50th anniversary. Trinitite pieces were everywhere, but there was an glass enclosure with undisturbed trinitite. The central area was a shallow depression, I assume from the blast.
In 2018 I built a facility at Stallion Range Camp just a few miles up the road. We went over to the site several times and spent as much time in and around the McDonald House as at the actual detonation site. 100 miles south, at the HQ of WSMR just east of Las Cruces, is a good museum as well as outdoor displays, where they generally have the bomb mock-up that was on the trailer. There's also a cutaway V2 rocket and good history & photographs of how we entered the space age. The museum is just inside the main gate, where there is restricted entry, but it is possible to park and walk over rather than trying to get a pass.
Museum is closed and guards are A-holes!
Yes it surprised me you had to have permission to go to the museum but they let me in. I mostly remember the V2 as it was surprising to me. Very large extremely complicated. Did'nt look like something from the 1940s. Once they let me through the gate nobody paid any attention to me. Tried to see the boneyard at Davis Monthan. They said it would take a week to get FBI clearance. I thought it was a joke to see a bunch of scrap metal and was'nt happy. I think they take bus tours now.
Yes, the V-2 rocket display is unforgettable...
I love how chill everyone was
I grew up in Los Alamos, though the town has changed a lot since back then. My great-grandfather (my grandmother's father) worked on the Manhattan Project. Apparently, some of the scientists and military personnel took trinitite home as a little souvenir of the first detonation and the MPs had to go around collecting all of it. My grandma has so many stories about how the town used to be back then!
That would be weird, that MPs would collect the pieces taken.
I did helicopter training at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque in the early 2000's we used to fly over the Trinity site on the way to the gun range on White Sands. It is a amazing thing to see from the air. At night on NVGs it is a eerie place.
That sounds like fun.
Really appreciate the measurements. I went here years ago but didn’t have the device. Very cool
Very cool video. This is my first time coming across your channel. I love history. It’s kinda cool that you gravitate towards one niche like you do. Did those kids get kicked out for climbing on the display? I’m gonna go check out some of your other stuff now. You’ve earned a new subscriber in me. Very very interesting :)
I’m glad you liked the video and thanks for the sub. Hope you like the other videos. Those guys did end up getting kicked out. The military police don’t mess around.
The noise adds a good touch to the area. It makes it a lot more cooler to hear the counters going off.
I feel the same way. That’s why I encourage people to have a Geiger counter of some kind with them when visiting the site.
There's plenty of Pu in that trinitite. Fat Man was only 17% efficient, which means 83% of the core is scattered all around. In the case of Trinity, I would have to assume about the same efficiency. Also there was a U-238 tamper, so yep, there is some U out there too, just so low in radioactivity as to be negligible.
I am lucky to have a bit of the real trinitite, taken from the site before the restriction, given to me by a friend who worked on the hill. He's passed on, but I was his heir due to no family. I even have his old ID badge, with the dog-tag and fissile/breedable samples in it. (They wanted to know what killed you, and what the dose of it was.)
There was some prepositioning of A bombs to Japan during the Korean War. One of them was on a B-29 that crashed at what was Susuin AFB, killing Gen. Travis & some others. The base was renamed to Travis AFB. Of course, the plutonium pit was not inside the bomb, but the explosives did go off, scattering U-238 all over the area. There's sign radiation warning signs around that area.
Thanks! Good perspectives, dates and typical weather, trinitite prevalence, bomb assembly building, great overview!
Thanks.
Here after watching Oppenheimer. Very interesting! Great video
Thanks…glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for making and sharing that experience. subbed!
Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the sub.
What a great video! Absolutely love going to trinity each year.
Its a very fun experience....for people into that type of thing.
Based on this video, which I saw when it came out 9 months ago, I went to the next Trinity public access on 4/1/23. I also researched and was part of the special 125 vehicle convoy that accessed the site by crossing the heart of WSMR to access Trinity from Tularosa via the “Tulie” gate on the East side versus driving 131 miles around WSMR to enter via the “Stallion” gate on the north end of the base. The entire drive across WSMR was well over 100 miles, entering at Tulie and exiting through Stallion. On that route you see it all and also breathtaking vistas and mountain ranges and outcroppings, all still largely undisturbed. It’s both sobering and exhilarating. I kept trying to imagine the impressions that were made on the engineers and scientists, largely from the tech factories and universities on the eastern side of the USA who travelled to one of the most remote areas of the continental US back in the 1940s, before freeways and interstate highways with air conditioned vehicles that float along the road. It must have been like being transported to mars. Wow. I took many photos trying to capture that feeling and impression. Thanks Drew. Visiting Trinity had been on my bucket list for more than 20 years and this video, with the information regarding the public opening, nudged me to fulfill that dream.
Not my type of place i wanna visit
Life is short
there is a fantastic talk on this from the inside plus his journey out to NM by nobel winning scientist who worked on this project here on YT. RICHARD FEYNMAN from the bottom .... something like that. it was fabulous! and he is funny. i just heard it. He is very special. i was amazed to hear a first hand on site talk. YT is so wonderful.
I was there too on 4/1/23. I saw you.
Thanks for posting this video, cheers from Canada.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Love all the bomb recommendations I’m getting now for obvious reasons
Beginning in late 1946 my grandfather was involved / employed in development of nuclear weapons as a Machinist-Technician. By mid-1950 he was no longer employed in that capacity. He died in 1972. Cause of death was Leukemia, but mysteriously (or not so mysteriously), Leukemia doesn't appear on his New Mexico death certificate.
Drew, this is good stuff on your channel. I live about 5 miles from the old K25 site from the Manhattan Project, and about 15 from where they made the first reactor produced Plutonium, and also where they produced the uranium used for the Hiroshima bombing. You can still take a bus tour of the graphite reactor at ORNL (X-10), the New Hope Center at Y-12 and the old K-25 site.
I would like to head out that way one day and check those locations.
The B reactor at Hanford WA conducts tours.
I don’t brag about exposure. I do talk to people about the places I go to.
A God by nature is usually smart
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 Everyone's got a gimmick these days.
I worked at a Uf6 plant in Metropolis, IL , I have always found this interesting. The Geiger counters were constantly used, and we had to be tested before we left for home.
Thank you for this video - I intend to visit in the future!
When i was a kid back in the 60s, my parents bought me a piece of trinitite from the Trinity site. When i was in middle school, i brought it into science class when we were studying radioactive materials, the "trinitite" showed a fairly low but above background, the orange pottery was much higher.
Yeah, trinitite isn't that radioactive compared to other things you can find in an antique shop.
Just found your channel dude! I’m fascinated by the thought of a terrifying atomic bomb ever being used On a world scale. It’s a war you can’t win, and the collateral damage caused by one simply can’t be imagined. Great channel, you have a new sub!
Glad to have you aboard.
Then why would you worry? Thermonuclear war will be the same to you as slipping on ice and dying, the same as you growing old and dying? Its not even worth worrying about. The soul advantage to nuclear firearms is that you know you will never suffer their fate, less every single person in the world will as well.
@Mark Bohm Joshua : A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
@@c3aloha had to watch it again last week!
I love living by this and learning the history!
AWESOME as usual Drew! Another place I would love to go to!!
Thanks. I would recommend going there. Its pretty cool to check out. Plus if you've never been to White Sands NP you should check that out as well.
@@RadioactiveDrew If I get to retire next year, I am planning on visiting the West and doing some Nuclear Tourism!!
You would be interested in my latest find in an antique shop a few weeks ago - a Radi-Glo ring still on the card. Little sucker is a bit spicy - 55,000 cpm
If I get a chance, I will send you a pic of it!!
@@randyhavener1851 I've heard of those rings before. I've never found one though. That is pretty spicy for a small source.
Borne with a security clearance in Los Alamos. In high school my dad took me to the Nevada Test Sight. He worked for the gov. Saw Trinity as a Boy Scout. The troupe was given a White Sands Missile Range tour. The missile range is beyond thought. Nice work. I never had the opportunity to see the home. Edward Aaby “fire on the mountain” a fictional book on the viewpoint of a grandson during government eviction for the missile range. It’s ok. Thank you for your work. Stay rad.
rad 🙄
Very very fantastic . Thank you for filming ! 🤝🏻🔥🖤
No problem…glad you enjoyed it.
My grandfather was director of training for AFWSP and witnessed most of the detonations. He later died of thyroid cancer. RADM Frederick VH Hilles.
Good stuff. Love your content. Been fascinated by all of this history for years.
Great video!! Love the history. I'm a radiologist so I find your vids really intriguing.
I'm glad someone in a professional industry finds my videos interesting.
Same. Radiologist here. Stumbled on your channel while looking for some radiation physics info. This is great stuff.
That's wild it's only open twice a year. I was wondering why so many people were parked there and it was so busy. Great video
Thanks.
@@RadioactiveDrew I bet you kept a little chunk of that... "Glass". It's ok I won't tell anyone your secret 😉😉
Obviously joking. I know you have too more integrity to do that 😊
love this , i just watched the Movie Oppenheimer yesterday...
Awesome
Plutonium Room sounds like a good name for a bar
I actually went down into the trinity crater, and took radiation tests with a geiger counter, back in the 1983-84 time period, it was part of my Primary Leadership Development (PLDC), out of FT. Bliss. Not my first exposure to radiation as I was actually born in a radioactive town.
The sound of the counter and the music together are strangely relaxing
Some people like it and others don’t.
Thanks for the Tour!. Thanks for the Tour!.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Between my Navy service and working nuclear plant refuelling outages, I have been in at least 2 dozen reactor compartments and/or reactor vessels. My total whole-body dose during my active duty time was 915 mrad, i got a larger whole body exposure in the first 4 days at Pilgrim nuclear plant in Massachusetts.
Retired now, but my total lifetime occupational exposure upon retiring in 2017 was 22.79 Rad. For a comparison, based on an average background dose rate, one would receive 1.3 Rad per year, so my lifetime non-occupational dose is around 94 Rad. If I were to move to the Rockies where some of my family lives, non-occupational dose rates are 3 to 4 times higher. This means my cousin in Colorado is sitting around 300 Rad lifetime.
Radiation is all around us. Your granite countertop (if you have one) will have a dose rate of 250 - 400 counts per minute from NORM, or Naturally Occuring Radioactive Materials. Got a deep(>300' deep) well? It can be extremely hot from NORM.
Live with it, man. You have no choice, really!
I go mine exploring in Cornwall uk. There is the mine were Madame curie got her uranium ore from. The radon gas levels are insane. You can get youre self 30/60 msv a hour. 😂😂😂😂
❤1
This is cool man thank you for sharing! Why do the Rockies have so many RADS?
@@samuelb7546 It's not specifically the Rockies, but the higher elevations get a higher exposure rate from cosmic rays and their secondary radiation from collisions between energetic particles from space interacting with air molecules up in the stratosphere. This principle was actually discovered by 19th century scientists working from balloons over Europe. They didn't know what was generating the radiation, but detected the higher levels using gold-foil electroscopes and other early instruments.
Really fascinating to read how many discoveries are far older than most people know!
@@samuelb7546 Part is altitude. A lot of radiation comes from the Sun and our atmosphere can protect us from only so much.
That was a fun/interesting video.Thanks for posting
No problem. It was a fun time making this video.
Its great to see the knowledge of a fanatic. TY
Really enjoyed this video Drew after watching Oppenheimer. Thumbs up and subscribed. Thanks for sharing your passion with others. Going to plan a trip out here in November.
Actually, maybe I should go in April -- "DUE TO THE RELEASE OF THE MOVIE, OPPENHEIMER IN JULY, WE ARE EXPECTING A LARGER THAN NORMAL CROWD AT THE 21 OCTOBER OPEN HOUSE. YOU MAY EXPERIENCE WAIT TIMES OF UP TO TWO HOURS GETTING ONTO THE SITE. IF YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THE FIRST 5,000 VISITORS, YOU MIGHT NOT GET THROUGH THE GATE PRIOR TO ITS' CLOSURE AT 2 P.M."
@@biggdogg285 well I’m planning on being there in April. I’ll be making a video about the site and what made people want to check it out. It will be more a video about the people that visit. Might even try and do a meet up the day before. Stay tuned.
loved the kid geeking out over the geigercounter and the trinitite everywhere. :) great to see parents stimulating their kid's curiosity.
Drew, the closest I have been to Trinity was at the airport in Albuquerque, but I have been to ground zero at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, 2 of the "big 3." Doubt if I'll ever make Trinity. Thanks for the video. Jon
My guy, such a great video. Good candid conversations with other visitors. Take it east with the twirls. There is no visual information conveyed when you hold a camera at arms length and spin around. You nailed it when you set up your tripod and talked to people or narrated.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been trying to not turn around so much. I just sometimes think people like seeing more of the environment I’m in but I guess out of focus behind me isn’t the way.
A few years ago I bought a piece of Trinitite. From what I've read about how it was formed I now know it was inside that fireball only to rain down onto the desert later. It's got a slightly green cast to it.
Sounds like a real piece . Best way to know for sure is to see if its radioactive.
@@RadioactiveDrew It looked a lot like all of the photos I've seen, plus the dealer seemed legit and the story sounded good. He was selling some guy's collection because you can't harvest new pieces. I've been meaning just for fun to see if my local college has a Geiger counter and will screen it for me.
Always interesting to see how much is still residual after all these years. I did get a cheap counter and a card to calibrate it, like scaring people that it hits between 7-800cpm off of it.
you should take it on an airplane and see what it reads at higher altitudes.