March 1, 200719 yr From BBC News 1 March 1954: US tests hydrogen bomb in Bikini The US has produced the biggest ever man-made explosion so far in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. It is believed the hydrogen bomb was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It was so violent that it overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. The bomb was the equivalent of 20m tons of TNT. One of the atolls has been totally vaporised, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide and dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fall-out. The Atomic Energy Commission announced this was the first in a series of tests to be carried out in the area. Natives resettled Tests first began in Bikini in 1946 after the natives were moved to the island of Rongerik, then to Ujelan a year later and to Kili on 1949. This is the second H-bomb test in the area. A 10.4 megaton bomb was exploded on 1 November 1952 at Enewatak, west of Bikini. It destroyed one island and left a crater 175 feet deep. It was hundreds of times more powerful than that used over Hiroshima. Unlike that device which tapped energy by splitting atomic nuclei, the Enewetak weapon forced together nuclei of hydrogen to unleash an even greater destructive force.
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