Many LLNL Atmospheric Nuclear Test Videos Declassified

Peter Lobner

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has posted 64 declassified videos of nuclear weapons tests on YouTube. LLNL reports:

“The U.S. conducted 210 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1945 and 1962, with multiple cameras capturing each event at around 2,400 frames per second. But in the decades since, around 10,000 of these films sat idle, scattered across the country in high-security vaults. Not only were they gathering dust, the film material itself was slowly decomposing, bringing the data they contained to the brink of being lost forever.

For the past five years, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) weapon physicist Greg Spriggs and a crack team of film experts, archivists and software developers have been on a mission to hunt down, scan, reanalyze and declassify these decomposing films. The goals are to preserve the films’ content before it’s lost forever, and provide better data to the post-testing-era scientists who use computer codes to help certify that the aging U.S. nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective.”

Operation Hardtack-1 – Nutmeg 51538. Source: LLNL

Here’s the link:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvGO_dWo8VfcmG166wKRy5z-GlJ_OQND5

Update 7 July 2018:

LLNL has posted more than 250 declassified videos of nuclear weapons tests on YouTube.  The newly digitized videos document several of the U.S. government’s 210 nuclear weapons tests carried out between 1945 and 1962.  You’ll find these videos at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/user/LivermoreLab/videos