what was the yield and type of the first atomic bomb exploded at Alamogordo/Trinity?

Question

what is IIRC ?

and make up your mind - is it 10 or 20?
fission material used?

Answer 1

20 kilotons. Some references say 22 kt but generally 20 kt is accepted. Obviously fission type as fusion type was developed with a fission bomb as the trigger. But uranium was not the fissionable material in the Alamogordo test. It was Plutonium 239. Uranium at Alamogordo was a common misconception as historical texts say there was not enough fissionable uranium to make more bombs. The scientists at Alamogordo confidently knew the uranium gun-type design would work but were less confident about how to make the Pu-239 work as they calculated that the Pu-239 would melt down before the 2 pieces could be rammed together unlike the uranium. So they designed an implosion design for the Pu-239 but wanted to test it, and it was a plutonium bomb and not a uranium bomb that was tested at Alamogordo.

Answer 2

It had the yield of 10.000 tons of dynamite, it was a fission devise; fission means, splitting. When atoms are split a huge amount of energy is released. Urainium was the fuel used, it is very unstable because the atoms have large surpluses of neutrons, when you bring two masses of urunium close together the neutrons rush towards each other and a large amount of radiacity is produced, but the repulsive forces that are generated push the masses away from each other, they have to be held in close contact, for a fraction of a second, to form a critical mass, at this point a chain reaction takes place, splitting all of the uranium atoms. A fucused explosive force of exploding dynamite is required to hold the masses together to cause the chain reaction to take place.

Answer 3

It was a simple fission weapon and, IIRC, it was only about 10 or 20 kilotons.

Doug

Answer 4

IIRC = If I recall correct(ly?). Sorry, I'm not a native speaker, but this is what I've been told

Ilusion