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40 Years Ago, the US Lost a Nuclear Bomb
Hugh Pickens writes "A BBC investigation has found that in 1968 the US abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland after a nuclear-armed B52 crashed on the ice a few miles from Thule Air Base. The Stratofortress disintegrated on impact with the sea ice and parts of it began to melt through to the fjord below. The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons on board detonated without setting off the nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew. The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been 'destroyed' and while technically true, investigators piecing together fragments from the crash could only account for three of the weapons. Investigators found that 'something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary.' A subsequent search by a US submarine was beset by technical problems and, as winter encroached and the ice began to freeze over, the search was abandoned. 'There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components,' said a former nuclear weapons designer at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory. 'It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Bomb
And it's far more conveniently located (somewhere off the coast of Georgia). No need to go diving somewhere in the Arctic!
The capital is "nuuk", which would be pretty fitting.
Chances are the device was no longer operational after the crash. And, if they are correct that "The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons on board detonated", then the device is probably in a large number of very small pieces.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Thermonuclear bombs are composed of a small amount of mildly radioactive uranium-235 and tritium, and larger amounts of minimally radioactive uranium-238 and stable lithium deuteride. The fission products that make up the most dangerous form of radioactive waste are far more dangerous, so this bomb would not provide much useful data about waste disposal.
In any event we don't really need more research. We already know that the best solution is to put it in a geologically stable and dry mountain.
In 1966, a nuclear armed B52 crashed over Palomares Spain, scattering radioactive material from multiple bombs, each 100 times more powerful than those which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
you had me at #!
"to a responsible and trustworthy country, France for example"
I actually find myself speechless...
France being the #4 arms exporter (if you exclude the EU as a whole) in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_largest_arms_exporters
Yeah, and France's rather recent history of illegal underwater testing of nuclear weapons, the reason for the huge zone of floating dead animals in the South Pacific, also doesn't speak well of them here.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Stalin was a maniac, that can be said with certainty, however after his death the USSR quickly got away from the idea of 'spreading the communism' onto the rest of the world and just tried to survive in its own planned economy
... while continuing to occupy Eastern Europe and crushing any attempts by those countries to leave the orbit of Mother Russia.
Fixed that for you.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
To this day, the USA alone have admitted losing 92 nuclear bombs.
This doesn't count those that were recovered in sometimes very expensive operations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomares_hydrogen_bombs_incident
What about Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968?
$signature =~ s/$signature//;
Unless the nuclear warheads went off (what someone would have most likely noticed) the radioactive material is uranium from the tamper and plutonium from the primary. Both are "harmless" from a radioactivity point of view, so plutonium is extremely toxic. Standard chemical protection measures would have been sufficient.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
It's not over if she keeps talking...
Appearing on Fox News Channel's "On the Record" last night, Palin told ...brig
Greta Van Susteren, "If there is an open door in 2012 or four years later,
and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my
state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that
door."
-- When I grow up I'd like to be a systems defenestrator.
No, the best solution for dealing with highly radioactive nuclear waste is to burn it in a modern reactor design until we've extracted nearly all of the energy from it. The remainder is much lower volume, much less radioactive, and has a much shorter halflife. After a few hundred years, it'd be no more radioactive than the ground, so it'd be ok if it got out of storage and was sprinkled around at that point.
The reactors we currently use in the US are kind of like filling your car's tank with gas, driving a few miles, and then looking for a safe place to dump the 'dirty' gas that remains in your tank so you can refill it.
Really? The "main international aggressor for the past 60 years"?
Yeah. I can't think of a single instance of any other nation doing anything aggressive over the past sixty years.
And we all know about those massive amounts of territory the US has added to its borders since 1948.
Like I said - Good job Republicans!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wilson_(politician)
Charles Nesbitt Wilson (born June 1, 1933), is a former United States naval officer and former Democratic United States Representative from the 2nd congressional district in Texas.
He is best known for leading Congress into supporting the largest-ever CIA covert operation, which supplied the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan after the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan took over during the Afghan Civil War and asked the Soviet Union to help suppress resistance from Mujahideen.
Good job Republicans at the behest of a Democratic congressman ...
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt