6 When the Cold War was at its peak, the US Air Force developed a top-secret nuclear explosion plan. They were going to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to display their military might. Expectations were that the explosion would create a mushroom cloud so large that it would be visible from Earth.

The lead physicist of the project, Dr. Leonardo Reiffel, admitted that the main objective of the explosion was a PR exercise. The senior US officers approached the physicist to start working on the idea in 1958.

The plan suggested the detonation happen on the dark side of the Moon so that the Sun could brighten up the cloud. 

Dr. Reiffel said the explosion would have impacted the Moon’s surface severely, but it was none of the authorities’ concerns. All asserted the explosion to have a negligible impact on the Earth.

The name of the top-secret project was A119 and was a part of “A Study of Lunar Research Flights.”

Dr. Reiffel also chose Carl Sagan, a renowned scientist in the US, for the mathematical modeling of the resulting cloud.

Even if some of the researchers shared the brief details of A119, the full nature of the project is unknown. (Source)

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7 Before the first nuclear bomb exploded in July 1945, isotopes like strontium-90 and cesium-137 simply didn’t exist in nature. Therefore, the pieces of art and bottles of wine created before 1945 can be tested for cesium. If they contain any traces of cesium, they are most likely to be fake ones.

For years, researchers have been dating the paintings and artworks using radiocarbon techniques. The technique involved studying the carbon isotopes found on the ancient artifacts.

Since the first explosion and incidents at Hiroshima, humans have conducted more than 2,000 nuclear tests. These activities further created isotopes such as the carbon-14 isotope.

These isotopes make their way into the Earth’s soil and plants. Later, they transfer to paintings via natural oils that work as binding agents in plants. One common example is linseed from the flax plant.                                                                                                 

Items created after 1963 inevitably carry these unstable isotopes. This allows the researchers to distinguish between the paintings made before and after that date.

To test the originality of an art piece, researchers take a tiny sample from the painting, often only one square millimeter.

Elena Basner, a curator at a Russian museum, came up with this idea. (1, 2, 3)

8 During the Chernobyl nuclear accident, three volunteered in 1986 for a suicidal mission. The important task was to open the valves of the pool at the Chernobyl plant. If they hadn’t succeeded, the blast would have eliminated half of Europe’s population.  Moreover, the place would have been inhabitable for the next 500,000 years. Official reports say that the two of them were alive as of 2015 and were still working.

The tragedy that occurred at Chernobyl is undoubtedly the worst nuclear accident in history. The consequences could have been much uglier if the three men would not have heroically volunteered for the suicide mission.

Somebody needed to drain the pool underneath the reactor, or it could have resulted in a steam explosion. However, contaminated water flooded the basement and the valves were below that.

When the three went inside the radioactive water, their lamps shut down leaving them in complete darkness, but they still somehow managed to close the valves successfully.

Alex Anadarko, a mechanical engineer, and Valeri Bespalov were alive and working within the same industry as of 2015.

Unfortunately, the third member of the crew, Boris Baranov, the supervisor, died of a heart attack in 2005. (1, 2)

9 Britain and the US launched a joint-venture satellite into space in April 1962. The name of the satellite was Ariel-1, and it was the first one that Britain had launched. However, just a few months later, the US accidentally destroyed it by detonating a nuclear bomb in the satellite’s orbit.

Britain did all the design and building core systems of Ariel-1, and NASA helped in launching it into orbit.

The object of launching this particular satellite was to study the ionosphere and its relationship with the Sun. NASA launched it on 26 April 1962 and it started serving its purpose effectively by July that same year.

Under Project Fish Bowl, the US experimented by exploding a 1.4 megaton nuclear weapon called Starfish-Prime. A wave of radiation destroyed Ariel-1 by causing its complete malfunctioning. Along with this satellite, one-third of the other satellites in low-Earth orbit at that time also stopped working.

The radiation took years to affect the satellites, and the designers didn’t anticipate the vulnerability at all.

The goal of conducting this nuclear test was to observe nuclear explosions’ influence on the existing belts of radiation around the Earth. (Source)

10 In 1965, Soviet Union exploded a nuclear device nearby the Chagan River to make an artificial lake. The blast excavated 10 million cubic meters of land, and the site had a banner; “Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy.” The nickname of the lake is the “Atomic Lake,” and it is still slightly radioactive.

The detonation of the device happened at Chagan located on the edge of the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan.

The objective of conducting the Chagan test was to record the sustainability of nuclear explosions to create reservoirs.

A 140-kiloton nuclear device blasted in a 584-foot-deep hole in the middle of the dried-up Chagan River. The blast made the crater lip fill up the river during its high-flow period. The consequence of the experiment was a crater that was 1,312 feet wide and 328 feet deep with a lip height of 65 to 125 feet.

The Soviets were happy with the results. Moreover, the local cattle fed at the radioactively contaminated Atomic Lake. 

The Soviets ran the policy until 1989, and Chagan’s test was the first and largest among other nuclear detonations. At the brink of the scheme, they had employed 156 such nuclear devices. (Source)