Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom weapons to be a joint discovery, but the American Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) restricted other countries, including the UK, from access to information about nuclear weapons. Fearing the loss of Britain's great power status, the UK resumed its own project, now codenamed High Explosive Research. On 3 October 1952, it detonated an atomic bomb in the Monte Bello Islands of Western Australia in Operation Hurricane. Eleven more British nuclear weapons tests in Australia were carried out over the following decade, including seven British nuclear tests at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957. The British hydrogen bomb programme demonstrated
British hydrogen bomb programme in 1949. The successful test of an atomic bomb represented an extraordinary scientific and technological achievement. Britain became the world's third nuclear power, reaffirming its status as a great power, but hopes that the United States would be sufficiently impressed to restore the Special Relationship were soon dashed. On 1 November 1952, the United States conducted Ivy Mike, the first successful test of a true thermonuclear device (also known as a hydrogen bomb). Due to its physical size and use of cryogenic liquid deuterium, it was not suitable for use as a deliverable weapon, but the Castle Bravo test on