|
 Today is the 47th anniversary of Gerboise Bleue (Blue Desert-Rat), France's first atomic explosion. On February 13, 1960, an atomic bomb was detonated near Zaouiet Reggane in the Sahara Desert of Algeria, a North African nation that was then part of Charles de Gaulle's France. The A-bomb explosion made France the world's fourth nuclear power after the United States (1945), the Soviet Union (1949) and the United Kingdom (1952). With a yield of 70 kilotons (kt), France's plutonium device was more powerful than the American Trinity (19 kt), Soviet RDS-1 (22 kt) and British Hurricane (22 kt) test-bombs combined. The French weapon also dwarfed Fat Man, the 22-kt weapon which the U.S. used against Japan at the end of World War II. Although the world's nuclear club now includes 7 to 10+ members (estimates vary), no other nation has ever detonated such a powerful first-weapon as Gerboise Bleue.
At the end of World War II, France's nuclear physicists lagged behind their American, Soviet, and British counterparts. Although Dr. Bertrand Goldschmitt had worked on the Manhattan Project in Montreal, nuclear research in France came to a halt during the Nazi occupation. On October 18, 1945, just six months after Germany's surrender, the French provisional government created a civilian atomic energy authority (CEA) and started work on a zero-power, uranium-oxide fuel (ZOE) reactor. Four years later, the CEA built a laboratory-scale plutonium extraction facility that experimented with irradiated fuel from the ZOE. Dr. Goldschmitt's development of the first practical solvent extraction process for separating plutonium was followed by the construction of a pilot processing plant at Fontenay aux-Rose. With the building of a second nuclear reactor (EL-2) in 1952, the Fontenay aux-Rose facility produced about 200 grams of plutonium from 1954 to 1957. By 1958, however, improvements to reactors and processing facilities provided France with over 12 kg of plutonium just from the natural-uranium, graphite-moderated reactor (G-1) at Marcoule.
Although domestic and international pressures sometimes delayed France's atomic weapons program, Charles de Gaulle insisted that France develop a force de frappe (strike force) independent of the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). On June 17, 1958, de Gaulle authorized Gerboise Bleue and named General Charles Aillert, the armed forces' leading proponent of nuclear weapons, as operational commander. The A-bomb that was detonated atop a 305-ft. tower on February 13, 1960 was a complete success, yielding the fully-designed 70-kt power.
Resources:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/France/FranceOrigin.html
http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/coldwar/page11.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerboise_Bleue
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/France/FranceOrigin.html
| 
Re: February 13, 1960: France Tests an A-Bomb
