page_title: British nuclear testing in the United States
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: British nuclear testing in the United States / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of federal lands in southern Nevada, including: Nellis Air Force Base Area 51 Tonopah Test Range Yucca Mountain Mercury Nevada Test Site Nellis Air Force Range Desert National Wildlife Range Method of production a topographic map was rendered using Demis' mapserver. This combines public domain datasets and renders an image. Demis allows unlimited use of this: [1] says With this statement DEMIS BV grants you permission to freely copy the PNG images returned by our server and use them for your own purposes, including web pages. A second version was referenced with the same geometry but with all the available layers turned on. This was used as a guideline for the positions of roads and cities, although the second rendered map is not used in the final rendered image. The map was imported in to Inkscape where annotations were drawn in several layers over the bitmap. Roads were manually traced from the road lines in the detail map, and cities located from that reference. Maps (listed in references) used for reference when placing features (most features are somewhat schematic, with only moderate attention to details of precise size and location). Design rationale There's an argument (particularly for diagrams) that pictures shouldn't have text in them (for reasons of internationalisation). For maps that's really not practical (the map would be reduced to a giant number-matching game). As this is an SVG (and I'll upload the SVG source shortly) it's very straightforward to change the text labels for use in a different language wikipedia. There are lots of small airstrips (such as those at Lida and Jackass) that aren't on the diagram. To avoid filling the map with pretty trivial airstrips, only the military/DOE ones and civilian ones with hard-surfaced runways are shown. Similarly, there are a lot of smaller settlements, surface features (valleys, mountains, etc.) and roads. By and large the policy for inclusion was to include significant items and items which have (or are related to) an existing or anticipated wikipedia article. The giant size of the image is for two reasons - firstly, it's a consequence of the poor resolution of current computer monitors - to even remotely approach the detail available in an ordinary paper map (which this doesn't - it would have to be five times bigger to have as much detail even as a regular Rand McNally road map) the image has to be big. Secondly, when a page is printed (realistically when a wiki page rendered with a print-smart wikireader renderer is printed) the resolution is much higher, and 1000 pixel wide images would look very blocky when rendered on an A4 page. Writing county names along the edges of the map is something that's occasionally done by professional mapmakers, and now I see why. There are already enough overlapping zones (the NAFR/DNWR overlap is already more complex than I'd like), so this is a neat way to write them without making the main map a complete mess. Français: Carte des territoires fédéraux dans le sud du Nevada, incluant&#160;: La base aérienne militaire de Nellis La zone 51 Le site d'essais de Tonopah La montagne Yucca Mountain Mercury, un village du Nevada Le site d'essais du Nevada La zone militaire de Nellis L'aire protégée du Désert (des Mojaves)
context_page_description: Following the success of Operation Grapple in which the UK joined the club of thermonuclear nations, Britain launched negotiations with the US on a treaty under in which both could share information and material to design, test and maintain their nuclear weapons. This effort culminated in the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement. One of the results of that treaty was that Britain was allowed to use United States' Nevada Test Site for testing their designs and ideas, and received full support from the personnel there, in exchange for the data "take" from the experiment, a mutual condition. In effect the Nevada Test Site became Britain's test ground, subject only to advance planning and integrating their testing into that of the United States. This resulted in 24 underground tests at the Nevada Test Site from 1958 through the end of nuclear testing in the US in September 1992.
  The United Kingdom signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996 and ratified it in 1998, confirming the British commitment towards ending nuclear test explosions in the world.
context_section_description: During the early part of the Second World War, Britain had a nuclear weapons project, codenamed Tube Alloys. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, signed the Quebec Agreement, which merged Tube Alloys with the American Manhattan Project to create a combined British, American and Canadian project. The British government had trusted that the United States would continue to share nuclear technology, which it regarded as a joint discovery, but the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) ended technical cooperation. The British government feared that there might be a resurgence of United States isolationism, as had occurred after the First World War, in which case Britain might have to fight an aggressor alone, and that Britain might lose its great power status and its influence in world affairs. It therefore restarted its own development effort, now codenamed High Explosive Research.
  Implicit in the decision to develop atomic bombs was the need to test them. Lacking open, thinly-populated areas, British officials considered locations overseas. The preferred site was the American Pacific Proving Grounds. A request to use it was sent to the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, but no reply was received until October 1950, when the Americans turned down the request. The uninhabited Monte Bello Islands in Australia were selected as an alternative. Meanwhile, negotiations continued with the Americans. Oliver Franks, the British Ambassador to the United States, lodged a formal request on 2 August 1951 for use of the Nevada Test Site. This was looked upon favourably by the United States Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, and the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Gordon Dean, but opposed by the Robert A. Lovett, the Deputy Secretary of Defense and Robert LeBaron, the Deputy Secretary of Defence for Atomic Energy Affairs. In view of security concerns, Lovett and LeBaron wanted the tests to be conducted by Americans, with British participation limited to selected British scientists. President Harry S. Truman endorsed this counterproposal on 24 September 1951.
  The Nevada Test Site would be cheaper than Monte Bello, although the cost would be paid in scarce dollars. Information gathered would have to be shared with the Americans, who would not share their own data. It would not be possible to test from a ship, and the political advantages in demonstrating that Britain could develop and test nuclear weapons without American assistance would be foregone, and the Americans were under no obligation to make the test site available for subsequent tests. Also, as Lord Cherwell noted, an American test meant that "in the lamentable event of the bomb failing to detonate, we should look very foolish indeed." In the end, Monte Bello was chosen, and the first British atomic bomb was tested there in Operation Hurricane on 3 October 1952. The next British test series, Operation Totem, was conducted at Emu Field in South Australia, but at their conclusion, the British government formally requested a permanent testing site from the Australian government, which led to the  agreement on the use of the Maralinga test site in August 1954. The first of the British nuclear tests at Maralinga was held in September 1956.
  While British atomic bomb development represented an extraordinary scientific and technological achievement, hopes that the United States would be sufficiently impressed to restore the nuclear Special Relationship were dashed. In November 1952, the United States conducted Ivy Mike, the first successful test of a true thermonuclear device or hydrogen bomb. Britain was therefore still several years behind in nuclear weapons technology. The Defence Policy Committee, chaired by Churchill and consisting of the senior Cabinet members, considered the political and strategic implications, and concluded that "we must maintain and strengthen our position as a world power so that Her Majesty's Government can exercise a p
caption: Federal lands in southern Nevada
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