Operation Totem km north west of Woomera, South Australia. A natural claypan known as the Dingo Claypan provided a ready-made airstrip. In August 1952, Sir William Penney, the Chief Superintendent Armament Research (CSAR) at the British Ministry of Supply, and the head of the British atomic weapon development effort, notified W. A. S. Butement, the Chief Scientist at the Australian Department of Supply, of his intention to visit the site before the Hurricane test. Butement warned Penney that it was very remote, and that Beadell and his companions might well have been the first non-Aboriginal people to see the area. Sir John
Agathe (atomic test) Agathe (atomic test) Agathe (aka Agate) was the name of the first French nuclear underground test. It was an atomic bomb detonated in the Hoggar mount (near In Ekker) of the then French Sahara desert on November 21, 1961, during the Algerian War (1954–62). Agathe was the first test of the jewel designation series running from 1961 until 1966. Minor and major incidents occurred during these experiments, the most important being the Beryl incident on May 1, 1962, where the nine militarymen of the "621ème Groupe d'Armes Spéciales" unit were heavily contaminated (600 mSv) as portrayed in the 2006 docudrama