Slashdot Mirror
Uranium-Filled 'Lost Nuke' Missing Since 1950 May Have Been Found (bbc.com)
Although the U.S. government "does not believe the bomb contains active nuclear material," schwit1 shares this report from the BBC:
A commercial diver may have discovered a lost decommissioned U.S. nuclear bomb off the coast of Canada. Sean Smyrichinsky was diving for sea cucumbers near British Columbia when he discovered a large metal device that looked a bit like a flying saucer. The Canadian Department of National Defence believes it could be a "lost nuke" from a US B-36 bomber that crashed in the area in 1950.... The plane was on a secret mission to simulate a nuclear strike and had a real Mark IV nuclear bomb on board to see if it could carry the payload required...
The American military says the bomb was filled with lead, uranium and TNT but no plutonium, so it wasn't capable of a nuclear explosion... Several hours into its flight, its engines caught fire and the crew had to parachute to safety... The crew put the plane on autopilot and set it to crash in the middle of the ocean, but three years later, its wreckage was found hundreds of kilometers inland.
The crew says they dumped their bomb-like cargo into the ocean first to avoid a detonation on land.
The American military says the bomb was filled with lead, uranium and TNT but no plutonium, so it wasn't capable of a nuclear explosion... Several hours into its flight, its engines caught fire and the crew had to parachute to safety... The crew put the plane on autopilot and set it to crash in the middle of the ocean, but three years later, its wreckage was found hundreds of kilometers inland.
The crew says they dumped their bomb-like cargo into the ocean first to avoid a detonation on land.
The uranium in this case was unenriched, and incapable of going critical. It was part of the device's "tamper" -- a kind of shield that delayed the expansion of the material in the pit during explosion, thus boosting efficiency. It was used mainly for its phsyical density, not its nuclear properties.
The mark IV bomb was designed to be transported and loaded on the aircraft without the "physics package", which contained the actual fissile material. As such this particular bomb is no more dangerous than a small conventional bomb. There is no particular reason not to use one in a training exercise.
Which is not to say there weren't some hair-raising incidents over the years. The closest we came to a real disaster was the Goldsboro incident, in which two thermonuclear weapons were ejected from a disintegrating airplane with nearly all of their safety mechanisms too damaged to operate.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Boy, are you going to be surprised when you figure out how the Soviet Union used to dispose of nuclear reactors from ships and submarines. At least with the U.S. one it was an accident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decommissioning_of_Russian_nuclear-powered_vessels
A Russian government report acknowledged in March 1993, that "during the period of 1965 to 1988 the Northern Fleet had dumped four reactor compartments with eight reactors (three containing damaged fuel) in the Abrosimov Gulf in 20 to 40 meters of water." Six other compartments, containing nine reactors in all, had also been dumped into the water in the 1960s and 1970s.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.