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 testing at Bikini Atoll first test was dropped from an aircraft and detonated above the target fleet. The second, "Baker", was suspending under a barge. It produced a large Wilson cloud and contaminated all of the target ships. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, the longest-serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called the second test "the world's first nuclear disaster." The second series of tests in 1954 was codenamed Operation Castle. The first detonation, Castle Bravo, was a new design utilizing a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. It was detonated at dawn on March 1, 1954. Scientists miscalculated and the 15 megaton (Mt) nuclear explosion