Operation Hurricane Operation Hurricane Operation Hurricane was the test of the first UK atomic device, on 3 October 1952. A plutonium implosion device was detonated in the lagoon in the Monte Bello Islands in Western Australia. With the success of Operation Hurricane, Britain became the third nuclear power after the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Second World War, Britain commenced a nuclear weapons project, known as Tube Alloys, but the 1943 Quebec Agreement merged it with the American Manhattan Project. Several key British scientists worked as part of the British contribution to the Manhattan Project, but after the war
Leslie H. Martin off the coast of Western Australia in October 1952, and then for Operation Totem tests at Emu Field in South Australia in October 1953. When the British government established the Maralinga Test Range in 1953, the Australian government created the Maralinga Safety Committee, which became the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee, with Martin as its chairman. As such he was responsible for safety of the Operation Mosaic tests at Monte Bello in May and June 1956, and Operation Buffalo tests at Maralinga in September and October 1956, after which he handed over the chairmanship to Ernest Titterton. An advocate for