“I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. (…) I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth. (…) I would see people building a bridge, or they’d be making a new road, and I thought, they’re crazy, they just don’t understand, they don’t understand. Why are they making new things? It’s so useless.”

Richard Feynman — Physics Nobel Prize (1965)

August 24 2020 — Canopus (also known as “Opération Canopus” in French) was the code name for France’s first two-stage thermonuclear test, conducted on August 24, 1968, at Fangataufa atoll. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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The test made France the fifth country to test a thermonuclear device after the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and China.

Fangataufa was selected as the location of the shot due to its isolation in respect to the main base on Mururoa. The device was suspended from a large hydrogen filled balloon.

It was detonated at 18:30:00.5 GMT with a 2.6 megaton yield at an altitude of 1800 feet.

Michel Carayol — The Father of the French H-Bomb

Michel Carayol was born in 1934 and died in 2003. His father was an industrialist and his mother a teacher.

He entered Ecole Polytechnique in 1954, graduated in 1956, and joined the Armament. In 1962, he was part of the DEFA assigned to CEA-DAM at Limeil.

Michel Carayol (June 30 1934 Alger– February 23 2003 Paris)

In 1967, Carayol was part of the advanced studies branch.

Carayol was involved in the small group established to discuss ways to design a configuration in which the Li6D would be initially compressed using the energy from a first, separated fission stage.

Very soon Carayol tried a simulation of a new type of thermonuclear stage using a spherical geometry, the most efficient design for an inward crush.

This system included a substantial quantity of Li6D.

The originality of the scheme was its thick external layer, made out of a metal of intermediate atomic number, moderately transparent and moderately opaque vis-à-vis the photonic rays coming from the fission stage when the chain reaction was ending.

In Popular Culture — Godzilla

The 1998 film Godzilla uses this particular test as the basis for the origin of the titular monster, a marine iguana mutated by the fallout from the blast while still in its egg.

French Nuclear Test – Canopus

REFERENCES

Canopus (nuclear test) — Wikipedia

THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE MAKING OF THE FRENCH HYDROGEN BOMB by

Pierre Billaud & Venance Journé

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On This Day — France becomes 5th Thermonuclear Power [Canopus Test] (August 24 1968)

On This Day — France Becomes 5th Thermo-Nuclear Power [Canopus Test] (August 24 1968) [2019]

On This Day — France Becomes 5th Thermo-Nuclear Power [Canopus Test] (August 24 1968) [2020]