I’m amazed that it didn’t collapse in on itself. Is this cavern radioactive?
Yes but very slightly.
The Gnome detonation created a cavity about 170 ft (52 m) wide and almost 90 ft (27 m) high with a floor of melted rock and salt. A new shaft was drilled near the original and, on 17 May 1962, crews entered the Gnome Cavity. Even though almost six months had passed since the detonation, the temperature inside the cavity was still around 140 °F (60 °C). Inside, they found stalactites made of melted salt, as well as the walls of the cavity covered in salt.[9] The intense radiation of the detonation colored the salt multiple shades of blue, green, and violet.[2] Nonetheless, the explorers encountered only five milliroentgen, and it was considered safe for them to enter the cavern and cross its central rubble pile. While the three-kiloton explosion had melted 2400 tons of salt, the explosion had caused the collapse of the sides and top of the chamber, adding 28,000 tons of rubble that mixed with the molten salt and rapidly reduced its temperature. This was the reason the drilling program had originally been unsuccessful, finding temperatures of only 200 °F (93 °C), without high pressure steam, though the boreholes had encountered occasional pockets of molten salt at up to 1,450 °F (790 °C) deeper amid the rubble.[
It says in the wiki article that they usually did collapse, with this one being an exception thanks to it being made in rigid salt rock. The radioactivity dropped quite fast iirc, but the cavern did still have a temp of 60C when they drilled in to it 2 weeks later
For the sake of the guy in the picture I hope not
It’s fine, he took some Rad-X first
So you’re saying we already have a place to throw all the magats, billionaires and Tech Bros?
I say we put them in the cave where the bomb hasn’t gone off yet 😁
oh no, what if that bomb goes off and kills them all?
Such a weird feeling. It reminds me of when you just make yourself a new cave in the endless expanses of the underground using TNT in Minecraft
Anyone else hear Roy Brown? Just me?
Guess I’d better pop some Rad-X.
I’m surprised how small it is, given what Little Boy did to Hiroshima. I was expexting it to be 100s of metres across
Little Boy was only 15 kilotons, subsequent tests were orders of magnitude stronger. Little Boy also detonated in the air above Hiroshima.
this was only 3 kilotons so littleboy was like 5 times as powerfull. Also being underground it has to compress already solid matter. rock and salt.
Hey I assume it was just a brain fart but Fukushima was the Power plant reactor disaster from 2011. Little boy was dropped on Hiroshima.
Cool photo though! I’d heard of plowshare but never knew there were photos of the cavern!
Ah thanks, whoops. Yes, this is actually the only ohoto of such a cavern that was ever taken!
Your history teacher should be disciplined for malpractice.
