Montebello Islands

Montebello Islands - darkometer rating : 7 - The site in Australia where the first British atomic bomb was detonated on 3 October 1952, making the UK the third country to enter the circle of nuclear powers (after, obviously, the USA and the USSR ). Code-named " Operation Hurricane ", a 25 kiloton device (very similar to the Fat Man bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945) was exploded off Trimouille Island inside a surplus warship. Nuclear testing carried out by Great Britain returned to the Montebello Islands in 1956 when two more devices were detonated under the code name " Operation Mosaic ": G1 on Trimouille Island, a 15 kiloton device, and G2 on Alpha Island, which at a yield of 98 kilotons was the biggest ever explosion in Australia. (At the same time the main inland test site was being developed at Maralinga - see that chapter for more elaborate historical background!) The remote Montebello Islands lie off the west coast of Australia – and were of course chosen precisely for their remoteness (they were thus a kind of British-Australian Bikini ). Within the UK there wouldn't have been a place sufficiently far from any settlements. Still, "Operation Mosaic" G2 (at least) is said to have affected the health of inhabitants on the mainland, as the fallout, like the yield, was much larger than predicted. And today? Well, the islands have been declared a "Marine Park" by the Department of Environment and Conservation, and apparently you can indeed go to these sites of nuclear testing, provided you take the necessary care.