Eniwetok Atoll, Operation Ivy, “Mike” detonation at 1m, 10.4 Mton (10,400 Kton), the first thermonuclear (nuclear fusion) bomb, the first “artificial star.” Mike was equipped with a massive 82-ton refrigeration system to keep the deuterium and tritium liquid; the power of the explosion was greater than that of all the weapons of the First and Second World Wars; the mushroom cloud reached an altitude of 43,300 m and expanded to a maximum diameter of 161 km. The island of Elugelab, where the bomb was detonated, disappeared, sucked upward by the mushroom cloud. What remained was a crater 2 km in diameter filled with seawater, 50 m deep. The explosion was a 10.4 Mton explosion.
