By: David Wang

The Trinity Nuclear Test was conducted on July 16, 1945 at around 5:29 A.M. local time. The explosion was much stronger than lead scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the other scientists of the Manhattan Project had anticipated, and so was the subsequent irradiated mushroom cloud. Said cloud reached 50,000 to 70,000 feet in the atmosphere.

But no one guessed that the cloud actually went farther than expected. A study published on the 13th ahead of its submission to a scientific journal showed that within 10 days, radioactive fallout reached 46 states, Canada and Mexico. Lead author Sébastien Philippe, from Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security stated to , “it’s a huge finding and, at the same time, it shouldn’t surprise anyone.” The study used recently uncovered historical weather data and state-of-the-art modeling software to find its results. Along with analyzing the fallout reach of the Trinity Test, the study also looked into the 93 aboveground U.S. atomic tests in Nevada and created a map depicting fallout from the 93 tests and Trinity.

Susan Alzner, an author of the study and co-founder of shift7, an organization that coordinated with the study’s research, said that its difficult to calculate the remaining fallout that came from Trinity’s original deposition sites across the country. The study only documents the deposition from 1945, not currently.

While Trinity left a lot of deposition across the country, scientists at the time can’t really be blamed, as they had no knowledge about the possible effects on ecosystems and populations. Back then, Dr. Stafford L. Warren, a Manhattan project physician specializing in nuclear medicine, reported to Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project, that the Trinity cloud remained towering over the northeast corner of the site for several hours, and soon added that various levels had been spotted to move in different directions. General Groves was assured by Dr. Warren that an assessment on fallout could be taken later on horseback.

A lack of crucial data in the decades following has obstructed many assessments and studies attempted on Trinity’s fallout. According to Dr Philippe, there were no monitoring stations back then in the U.S., so it was impossible to track anything until 1948, when stations first sprung up. But remodeling on nuclear tests only began in 1951, with Trinity still frustratingly difficult to reanalyze.

The study hoped for something new, so they kept pushing starting from 18 months ago. When March came, the team had a breakthrough when Ms. Alzner and Megan Smith, another co-founder of shift7 and a former United States chief technology officer in the Obama administration, asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for help. Gilbert P. Compo, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado and the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory, informed everyone that the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts released all historical weather data on events 30,000 feet or higher just a week ago. Dr Compo eventually became a co-author on the study, and using new data and software from NOAA, Dr Philippe reanalyzed Trinity’s fallout.

A professor at the University of British Columbia, M. V. Ramana, said that he was not surprised upon seeing the results of the study. The results themselves show New Mexico as heavily affected, with the cloud’s trajectory primarily spreading up over northeast New Mexico and a part of the cloud circling to south and west of ground zero over the course of the next few days.

Dr Philippe states that Trinity’s fallout accounts for 87 percent of total radioactive deposition discovered across New Mexico, which also received deposition from the Nevada aboveground tests. The study also discovered Socorro County, where Trinity took place, has the fifth highest deposition per county of all counties across the U.S.

Much of Trinity’s fallout has yet to be studied, but from what we know now, we can conclude that it had many effects that we didn’t know about and it actually affected much more than what we thought before. So we should continue to study it in case there are any more hidden problems that need to be resolved. That way, we can get rid of those problems.

David,, your article is well-crafted and you’ve made some strong authorial decisions. One thing to continue to consider before your final draft is citing the sources you get your information from. “Per the NYTimes” “As reported by the Washington Post” etc etc .