The blast caused seismic waves equivalent to an earthquake of 4.75 on the Richter scale. A circular area of the desert floor five miles across was obscured by fast-expanding dust clouds moving out horizontally from the base surge, akin to pyroclastic surge. The resulting crater is 100В m (330В ft) deep with a diameter of about 390В m (1,280В ft). The fusion-fission blast had a yield equivalent to 104 kilotons of TNT (435 terajoules) and lifted a dome of earth 90В m (300В ft) above the desert floor before it vented at three seconds after detonation, exploding upward and outward displacing more than 11,000,000В t (11,000,000 long tons 12,000,000 short tons) of soil.

The explosive device was lowered into a shaft drilled into the desert alluvium 194В m (636В ft) deep.

The timing of the test put it within the Operation Storax fiscal year, but Sedan was functionally part of Operation Plowshare, and the test protocol was sponsored and conducted by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with minimal involvement by the United States Department of Defense. According to Carey Sublette, the design of the Sedan device was similar to that used in the Bluestone and Swanee tests of Operation Dominic conducted days and months prior to Sedan respectively, and was therefore not unlike the W56 high yield Minuteman I missile warhead. Sedan was a thermonuclear device with a fission yield less than 30% and a fusion yield about 70%.

Fallout 4 crater of atom