Hi All,
For my leisure reading of late, I've been going through Steffane Groueff's excellent book "Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb" and am near the end. The book, which I picked up in a second hand bookshop several years ago, is however a little dated having come out in 1967. I'm wondering if there is any major information about the project declassified since then that would add any significant details.
Also, I was interested to learn that the world's first Atomic bomb was actually preceded by the world's first "dirty bomb."
In order to study the potential effects of an explosion of the magnitude of Trinity, On May 7, 1945 100 Tons of TNT, laced with highly radioactive fission products from the Hanford reactor to simulate the effects of fallout, were blown up. I believe that this blast, called "Project TR," was the largest conventional detonation of conventional explosives that had ever occurred to that date. I'm unaware of a larger one.