Thin Man (nuclear bomb) Thin Man (nuclear bomb) "Thin Man" was the code name for a proposed plutonium gun-type nuclear bomb using plutonium-239 which the United States was developing during the Manhattan Project. They aborted its development when they discovered that the spontaneous fission rate of their nuclear reactor-bred plutonium was too high for use in a gun-type design, due to the high concentration of the isotope plutonium-240. In 1942, prior to the Army taking over wartime atomic research, Robert Oppenheimer held conferences in Chicago in June and Berkeley, California, in July at which various engineers and physicists discussed nuclear bomb design issues. A
Britain, Australia and the Bomb Britain, Australia and the Bomb Britain, Australia and the Bomb: the Nuclear Tests and Their Aftermath is a 2006 book by Lorna Arnold and Mark Smith. It is the second edition of an official history first published in 1987 by HMSO under another title: "A Very Special Relationship: British Atomic Weapons Trials in Australia". The book uses declassified material that has become available in the two decades prior to the book's publication. It covers the clean-up operations in the Maralinga Range and epidemiological studies on the health of the atomic test participants. Lorna Arnold is a Fellow of both the