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
Agathe (atomic test) "Vive La Bombe!". The French Defence Minister Pierre Messmer and other officials and civilians were present in the command post and were contaminated too (around >200 mSv). The millisievert (mSv) is commonly used to measure the effective dose in diagnostic medical procedures. See radiation poisoning for a more complete analysis of effects of various dosage levels. Data provided by the French Defense Ministry on January 2007. 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