List of nuclear weapons tests of the United Kingdom

The list of nuclear weapons tests summarizes all the nuclear tests performed by the United Kingdom from 3 October 1952 to 26 November 1991 at Montebello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga Field in Australia, on Kiritimati and Malden Islands in Kiribati, and at the Nevada Test Site in the United States. The total of 88 tests include 64 tests carried out in the atmosphere.^[1]

List

United Kingdom's nuclear testing series summary

Series or years	Years covered	Tests [Summ 1]	Devices fired	Devices with unknown yield	Peaceful use tests	Non-PTBT tests [Summ 2]	Yield range (kilotons) [Summ 3]	Total yield (kilotons) [Summ 4]	Notes
Hurricane	1952	1	1			1	25	25	First British nuclear test.
Totem	1953	2	2			2	8 to 10	18
Mosaic	1956	2	2			2	15 to 60	75
Buffalo	1956	4	4			4	2 to 15	30
Antler	1957	3	3			3	1 to 27	34
Grapple	1957–1958	9	9			9	24 to 3,000	7,869	First scalable thermonuclear test.
Vixen	1959–1963	43	43	31		43	0	0	Classic safety testing of weapons against fire and shock
NTS series	1961–91	24	24				0 to 140	1,232
Totals	1952-Oct-03 to 1991-Nov-26	88	88	31		64	0 to 3,000	9,282	Total country yield is 1.7% of all nuclear testing.

1. Includes all tests with potential for nuclear fission or fusion explosion, including combat use, singleton tests, salvo tests, zero yield fails, safety experiments, and bombs incapacitated by accidents but still intended to be fired. It does not include hydronuclear and subcritical tests, and misfires of a device which was subsequently fired successfully.
2. Number of tests which would have been in violation of the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, such as atmospheric, space or underwater tests. Some "peaceful use" cratering tests which should have been violations were protested, and later quietly dropped.
3. "Small" refers to a value greater than zero but less than 0.5 kt.
4. Some yields are described like "< 20 kt"; such are scored at one half of the numeric amount, i.e., yield of 10k in this example. "Unknown yield" adds nothing to the total.

References

1. "The Nuclear Testing Talley". Arms Control Association. Retrieved August 17, 2014.Discrepancy in the total count of 45 presented here and 88 tests in the table is explained by the inclusion of 43 Vixen safety tests.

Sources

• Yang, Xiaoping; North, Robert; Romney, Carl (August 2000). "CMR Nuclear Explosion Database (Revision 3)". SMDC Monitoring Research.
• Andryushi, LA; Voloshin, N.P.; Ilkaev, R.I.; Matushchenko, A.M.; Ryabev, L.D.; Strukov, V.G.; Chernyshev, A.K.; Yudin, Yu.A. Mikhailov, V.N., ed. "Catalog of Worldwide Nuclear Testing". Retrieved 2013-03-04.
• Wm Robert Johnston, PhD. "Johnston Archive of Nuclear Weapons". Retrieved 2013-12-31.