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DoD Report On 32 "Nuclear Accidents"
natebjones writes "Remember the time the US Air Force accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on a family in South Carolina? [This DoD report lists] that and 31 other nuclear accidents including: nuclear bombs inadvertently falling through bomb bay doors; the accidental firing of a retrorocket on an ICBM; the vast dispersal of radioactive debris; and the loss of enriched fissile material and nuclear bombs (which are 'still out there somewhere')."
Where they can do no harm, until they do.
It's pretty hard to split an atom, which is why we poured billions into learning how during the Manhattan Project.
True enough that there are way more ways for an accident to not result in a full detonation than to do so. But the above statement is a bit misleading: thanks to the Manhattan project, we now have devices lying around that are designed to split atoms. (Itself, not difficult. Nature does it every second of every day.) Comparing the probability of an accident yielding a nuclear explosion to the pre-Manhattan odds is dubious.
Whereas the leftover warheads from the former USSR........well, they're not lost, I'm sure that former officials in Russia know exactly who they sold them to.
right, because no one would bother looking for them
you lack imagination. plenty of other people don't lack imagination, and plenty of them mean you harm. so make up for your imagination gap, or you will someday suffer for it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The conclusion at the end was pretty ignorant.
This small sampling of harrowing accounts clearly chinks the counter-intuitive and commonly argued position that nuclear weapons actually make the world a safer place. It reminds us that the shattering blast and fiery rain of a nuclear detonation may not occur because of war, terrorism, or miscalculation, but rather, because of something more common: an "accident."
Nuclear deterrence / M.A.D. theory has never been proposed as a way to prevent "A" individual nuclear detonation, so the article claiming that they've somehow proven it is not exactly insightful. However, it is a very reasonable and successful way to prevent "ALL" nukes from detonating aka full out total nuclear strategic warfare WWIII.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yes, there may be no detonation, but even a low-level atomic weapon having its high explosives going off is good enough to irradiate a good-sized area. Now imagine the impact of that weapon that set off it's high explosives, in mid-air, over a large metropolis. Dirty bombs are just as much of a pain in the ass. The destruction isn't wide spread, but you're still not going to want to live there. Actually, in the end, the economic and social damage may even be greater in the long run.
TFA says this is a list of "accidents" that occurred before 1980. I wonder:
* How many "accidents" have happened since 1980?
* How bad any of them have been? (not that there is actually a good accident)
* What's happened to the items lost at sea? Are they safe or will their protective casings start to deteriorate after decades?
You're assuming that this article is talking about lost (ie, stolen) materials. It's about accidents, so you're arguing the wrong case to start with. And yes, it's more likely that a device will be too damaged to properly explode in an accident, but given enough accidents, odds are pretty good that at least a partial nuclear detonation could occur. Failing that, a blast of the conventional explosives (which has happened) could scatter some rather nasty radioactive material about, possibly in a residential area.
Now imagine the impact of that weapon that set off it's high explosives, in mid-air, over a large metropolis.
The public knee-jerk panic over anything with the word "nuclear" would be far more dangerous than the actual radiological release. Pu-239 has a long half life, low rate of spontaneous fission and breaks down via alpha decay. It's actually more dangerous with regards to metal toxicity than with regards to radioactivity. You can hold Pu-239 in your hands with no ill effects.
There are much more effective isotopes to use in a dirty bomb than weapons grade plutonium.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
you have no imagination
just because something is difficult or improbable, doesn't mean it won't get done. in fact, it is improbable events, with major implications, that pretty much define the whole game. from politics, to economics, to military campaigns, to history itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
the point is this: don't worry about every improbable event, but DO worry about improbable events that radically change the game. some improbable events have extremely huge consequences. know them. make contingencies around them. good military intelligence is all about their analysis
our entire historical narrative is pretty much a litany of black swans. from the assassination of the archduke of austria to the collapse of lehman brothers: we talk about these historical events as inevitable. but thats all argument after the fact, hindsight, that's easy. however, shortly before lehman's collapse, or franz ferdinand's little trip to sarajevo, no one was seriously predicting anything remotely like what was about to happen, and yet these events changed absolutely everything
so you worry about the black swans. you worry about nukes sitting on the seabed that "nobody" will find
the black swans control your fate, my fate, the fate of the entire world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hate to break it to you, but wood is usually flammable.
Worse when soaked with accelerants. Like the difference between keeping a stack of firewood leaning against your house vs keeping a stack of gasoline-soaked firewood leaning against your house.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I'm not so worried about the lost devices as the accidents at the moment that they happen, when accidental detonation should be most likely. (I have to imagine, anyway.) Those devices will be in good firing order, too, since that's their whole point and the point of maintaining them.
What would be interesting to see is if the old bombs that have been left around have maintained the perfect symmetry required to properly compress the plutonium and ignite the nuclear fire; otherwise the ensuing explosion will be weak compared to the optimum yield, if it can occur at all.
Absolutely true and likely. However, a "weak" nuclear blast in an inhabited area would still suck for those involved, and that's the thing to remember. "It could be worse" is well and good, but it often overlooks the fact that it's still bad.
i don't think they'll be able to disassemble, they used a proprietary torx-type screw. *that*'ll stop 'em!
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
I'm sure most people here have heard about the Documentaries made by Peter Kuran, but in case you have not, I suggest watching this movie http://www.vce.com/nuc911.html (Nuclear 911) about nuclear weapons accidents, and also the other films from the same director. All of them have superb scenes and music.
www.meneguzzi.eu/felipe
For what it's worth I'm firmly in the anti-alarmist category and don't make a fuss over silly things that are otherwise labeled a crisis for media consumption.
That said isn't getting weapons grade Pu or U the most difficult part of building a nuclear bomb? I'm not talking about the highly refined Fission-fusion-fission 50Mt or man-portable devices. But given a modest budget and the internets it wouldn't be THAT difficult to build a Manhatten-project era nuclear device...assuming you had sufficient quantity of enriched material.
People seem to automatically assume that obscurity (or ocean depth) equals safety. Then you hear about 4 college kids with a budget of 3 grand who design an automated SAR diving robot. I'm not saying MIT will be a nuclear power next week but for all the insane amounts of money we spend doing cavity searches on grandma at the airport...maybe we should consider that eventually another non-dumb terrorist cell will come along.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Hydrochloric acid is also a naturally occurring substance, along with hemlock. Neither of which I would want to put into my body.