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Five Times the US Almost Nuked Itself
kdawson writes "io9 has a scary outline of five times the US came close to accidental nuclear disasters. Quoting: 'In August of 1950, ten B-29 Superfortress bombers took off from what was then called Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base in California, headed for Guam. Each was carrying a Mark IV atom bomb, which was about twice as powerful as the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. Shortly after takeoff, one of the B-29s had engine trouble. On board was General Robert Travis. He commanded the plane to turn back to the base when the landing gear refused to retract. Sensing the plane was going down, the pilot tried to avoid some base housing before crashing at the northwest corner of the base. The initial impact killed 12 of the 20 people aboard, including General Travis. The resulting fire eventually detonated the 5,000 pounds of conventional explosives that were part of the Mark IV. That massive explosion killed seven people on the ground. Had the bomb been armed with its fissile capsule, the immediate death toll may have reached six figures.'"
In the case of the Travis accident, there was no nuclear disaster precisely because the nuclear core was not loaded. The Air Force was all too aware of the number of B-29's that crashed on or shortly after takeoff and never armed the weapons until they were close to the target area. To call this a "close call" is simply fear mongering to get page hits.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
IANANP, but AFAIK a regular explosion or fire will not set off a nuclear weapon. The trigger explosion has to be carefully controlled, otherwise it'll just blow apart the nuclear material instead of compressing it to supercritical. That's why it's so hard to build a nuke. Crashing with a nuke is at worst going to spread some nuclear material over a small area, in the same way that any other material in the crash would be. No nuclear explosion.
Not really. Unlike the UK, almost all doctors in America are private practice doctors and not on government salary. The same with hospitals, a mix of private and local/state public hospitals. The health care reform legislation passed is mainly for insurance; the government won't change its control of doctors or which private plans people choose. So the government really isn't in charge of health care, although they've taken a more regulatory role in insurance.
If the fission capsule were in there, it most likely would not have gone off. With a implosion bomb (fat man style, as the Mark IV was), all the explosive has to go off at the same time, to very close accurate (picoseconds). If some goes off first, it just blows the core apart instead of pushing it to supercriticality.That is, if the core weren't scattered in the crash before the fire set off the explosives anyway.
Basically, you would have had a dirty bomb, no more.
Now, a little boy (uranium gun-type) bomb can go off by accidentally more easily, but getting the material for those is so difficult that few are made.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So none of these times did we almost nuked our self... ,people that will not bother to read, and those that are already full of fear mindless fear. Move on nothing to see here.
The first on in 1950 at Travis the bomb wasn't armed. AKA it had no nuclear material in it.
So there was zero chance that we would get nuked.
The second at Fermi 1. A reactor problem that was contained and couldn't have caused a nuclear explosion as in a bomb going off. It could have been bad but the systems worked.
The third was another un armed bomb.
The forth another reactor problem and again the emergency systems worked and no chance of a bomb like blast.
The last was a when a training tap was played on real systems. Yes air craft where launched and that mistake was never made again but the the safety systems and procedures worked.
What is this a piece of FUD? Good at scaring children
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
Not one, 4 hydrogen bombs. 2 of them actually detonated on impact. Probably the worst USA nuclear weapons incident in history.
Only the conventional portions detonated, that's a pretty important omission there.
In addition nuclear plants cannot cause nuclear explosions so while the US may have come close to contaminating areas there was zero danger of a nuclear explosion in such cases.
This reminds me of the time the US was almost attacked by giant killer terrorist robots. Luckily, Osama didn't invent and deploy them, otherwise the death toll could have been in the 9 figures.
Ironically, that's kind of what happened with both the recent Times Square Bomber and the London nightclub carbomb back in 2007 - neither of the bombers built anything particularly dangerous. In both cases the bombs lacked oxidizers (and other things too) - which meant that at best they might blow the windows out of the car the bomb was in. But all the politicians were eager to make hay and said exactly the same sort of thing, "if the bomb had exploded it could have killed thousands!"
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
To further elaborate, unless the conventional explosives detonate in the correct sequence, the chance that a nuclear explosion will occur is effectively 0. Just smashing into the ground and detonating because of the shock is NOT how you trigger an atomic bomb.
Plutonium doesn't even make a half-way decent dirty bomb. You'd be better off with Cobalt 60 or something along those lines.
He who regulates something, runs it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
A an accidental detonation from a bomb twice the size dropped on Japan would not result in " immediate death toll" that " may have reached six figures".
In 1950, the population of Fairfield was around 3000. I don't know the size of the air force base, but I don't think it was close to the 6 figure range (today it has 15K military and civilian workers, it may have been higher during the cold war). Suisun City today has a fraction of the population of Fairfield.
Just 3km from the hypocenter of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, most structures withstood the blast and most people that were indoors survived the initial blast.
And that bomb detonated at an altitude of 500m to maximize destruction. An accidental surface detonation in an airplane crash is going to have a much smaller destructive zone, even though the bomb is twice as powerful. So even if that bomb had detonated in the crash, there would be survivors even on the airbase itself.
Even in a 1 megaton blast (50 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki) , there's a 75% survival rate just 7.5 miles from the blast.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/1mtblast.html
So even if a a 1 Megaton accidental detonation occurred in the NW corner of the base today, it wouldn't cause an immediate 6 figure death toll.
This, of course, this ignores the long term deaths and illness caused by radiation exposure.
B-52 crash at Thule, Greenland, 1968.
4 hydrogen bombs aboard, contamination of a large area. The secondary of one the 4 bombs were never found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Thule_Air_Base_B-52_crash
Kind of like Canada. The government pays doctors, builds and run hospitals, chooses what procedures are covered, but has no say in which doctor you use. I can use whatever doctor, at whatever clinic, at whatever hospital I want. The doctor doesn't have to worry about a "pre-existing" condition invalidating my insurance, or about caps, or co-pays.
Still not happy, and have lots of money? nothing stopping you form flying to the states, and there are private clinics up here too.
Anarchists never rule
The irony of the total cost of nuclear weapons by the USA is that it is about enough money (by one estimate I read) to tear down and rebuild every building in the USA twice...
California has money problems right now -- a shortfall of, what, US$20 billion? According to here:
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/mil_cos_of_nuc_wea-military-cost-of-nuclear-weapons
a total of US$2,139,150,000.00 has been spent on just California's behalf on nuclear weapons in the past.
What are we really defending here?
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
That sure would come in handy for CA right now, to have an extra two trillion dollars in their budget reserve (not to mention interest).
As Albert Einstein said, with the advent of understanding the power of the atom, everything has changed but our way of thinking. Thus my sig below about the irony of such advanced ultra-powerful tools of abundance in the hands of those obsessed with fighting over perceived scarcity.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
One big thing that has happend - the control over what is and is not insured has pretty much been ceded to the goverment now. It was previously in the hands of the state Board of Insurance in each of the 50 states. This has a huge effect on costs.
How does it effect costs? Well, let's say you are part of a group that believes that Fibromyalgia is a serious condition that must be covered by insurance plans. Previously, your group would have to lobby in each of the 50 states to get coverage approved and mandated. Now all you have to do is stop at one federal agency and if they agree, it is mandated for all 50 states.
Copy this for acupuncture, massage therapy, sex disfunction treatments involving use of a surrogate, etc. You get the idea. It has now become about 50 times easier to get coverage for the malady of the week covered by insurance.
Why is health insurance more expensive in California than in, say, Wyoming? Well, California mandates coverage for a lot of things that aren't required to be covered anywhere else.
When people say costs are going to triple in 2014, I'd listen to them. They stand an awfully good chance of being right.