Nuclear technology the element plutonium possesses an isotope that is sufficiently unstable for this process to be usable. Terrestrial plutonium does not currently occur naturally in sufficient quantities for such use, so it must be manufactured in a nuclear reactor. Ultimately, the Manhattan Project manufactured nuclear weapons based on each of these elements. They detonated the first nuclear weapon in a test code-named "Trinity", near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. The test was conducted to ensure that the implosion method of detonation would work, which it did. A uranium bomb, Little Boy, was dropped on the Japanese city Hiroshima on
Nuclear arms race Vulcan, SEPECAT Jaguar, Panavia Tornado and several other Royal Air Force strike aircraft carrying WE.177 gravity bomb provided the air deterrent. France became the fourth nation to possess nuclear weapons on February 13, 1960, when the atomic bomb "Gerboise Bleue" was detonated in Algeria, then still a French colony [Formally a part of the Metropolitan France.] France began making plans for a nuclear-weapons program shortly after the Second World War, but the program did not actually begin until the late 1950s. Eight years later, France conducted its first thermonuclear test above Fangatuafa Atoll. It had a yield of 2.6 megatons.