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 Posted: 24-07-2003 23:29 Post subject: Atom Bomb Disaster? What Atom Bomb Disaster? |
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'UK hid 'nuclear accident threat'
BBC NEWS, 24th July 2003 | Quote: | By Dominic Casciani
BBC News Online community affairs reporter
[B]The British government in the 1960s was so worried about an American bomber laden with nuclear weapons crashing in the UK it decided the best policy would be to deny everything.
Papers released at the National Archives, formerly the Public Record Office, reveal that Whitehall wanted to block US authorities from ordering evacuations if one of its nuclear weapons fell upon the British countryside.
The debate over how to block the US military from alerting the public - and thereby causing expected national panic - went on for five years as mandarins tried to prepare press statements in the event of a potential catastrophe. |
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mejane1 miaow, miaow... purrrr Joined: 17 Jan 2002 Total posts: 1637 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 01:54 Post subject: |
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My first thought was "Wouldn't people notice the big mushroom cloud, EM disturbance... great big hole where their friends' village used to be?"
However, on reading the article, I think that such a policy sounds reasonable - you need to gather the facts first, then act. The last thing you need is a foreign government issuing confused unstantiated reports that something awful may have happened.
Jane. |
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| Timble2 Imaginary person Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Total posts: 7114 Location: Practically in Narnia Age: 58 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 09:38 Post subject: |
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The true extent of the Windscale (Sellafield) fire was covered up for over thirty years, it wasn't until the 80s that it was actually admitted that it brought the country to the brink of a major nuclear disaster.
I heard a story that at Lakenheath the British civilian fire brigade was called to help out, and only realised how serious the problem was when they arrived to find the USAF were involved in a full scale evacuation of the base (possibly a FOAF story). |
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| stuneville Administrator
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 Total posts: 10230 Location: FTMB HQ Age: 46 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 11:24 Post subject: |
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As I understand it (and I may be talking utter bollocks here, so please forgive me if that's so) but nukes don't go off accidentally - if they're not primed to go off, which has to be done in a precise set of actions and confirmations, then they'll just fall to Earth and lie there - the big risk is if they break open and the plutonium is exposed. Even then, the risk depends on how people come into contact with it - theres an excellent precis on the toxic effects of plutonium here. | Quote: | Although the popular myth that "plutonium is the most hazardous substance known to man" has been refuted many times, the misconception persists that even a small amount of plutonium taken into the body will be fatal. Plutonium is hazardous, but it is not as immediately hazardous to health as many more common chemicals. This is not to say that plutonium is not a dangerous, toxic material. Chronic exposure to even small amounts should be a matter of concern. But dispersal by terrorists as described in the press could not produce the drastic health effects that are popularly imagined...
..To understand the toxicity of plutonium, it is important to understand the mechanisms by which it can produce detrimental health effects.[5] Plutonium is primarily a radiological hazard, whose danger arises from the radiation dose delivered to various internal organs if it is taken into the body. Plutonium delivers a negligible radiation dose to human skin, because it emits alpha particles, which do not in general have enough energy to penetrate the skin. The chemical toxicity of plutonium (a heavy metal) is inconsequential alongside the radiation effects. The severity of the radiation dose, and the organs that are irradiated, depend primarily on the quantity of plutonium taken into the body and on the route by which it enters the body. In general, plutonium that is inhaled is far more hazardous than plutonium that is ingested, because it is more readily absorbed into the blood stream via the lungs than via the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Inhaled plutonium will deliver a radiation dose to the lungs; ingested plutonium will deliver a radiation dose to the walls of the GI tract. From either of these entry points, plutonium may migrate via the blood stream to selectively concentrate in the bones and liver.
Plutonium exposure may produce acute health effects (e.g., inhalation may lead to pulmonary edema, and ingestion to damage to GI tract walls), or long-term effects, such as increased risk of cancer mortality. Relatively high doses are required to produce acute effects.. |
Therefore, it's more about geting the plute collected and out of harm's way than anything else. And as military aircraft don't usually fly over cities the risk is more that it'll get into a reservoir or similar.
Last edited by stuneville on 25-07-2003 11:56; edited 1 time in total |
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| Timble2 Imaginary person Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Total posts: 7114 Location: Practically in Narnia Age: 58 Gender: Female |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 22:22 Post subject: |
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| stu neville wrote: |
Therefore, it's more about geting the plute collected and out of harm's way than anything else. And as military aircraft don't usually fly over cities the risk is more that it'll get into a reservoir or similar. |
I'd imagine (especially in the 1960s, given the overall nuclear paranoia of the times) that the greatest risk to life would be from people fleeing in panic, rather than from actual radiation exposure. Not immediately announcing a lost weapon to the public seems a wise policy. |
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| stuneville Administrator
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 Total posts: 10230 Location: FTMB HQ Age: 46 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 22:37 Post subject: |
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| Can't argue with that - people are always the biggest danger of them all. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 22:56 Post subject: |
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| Timble wrote: |
The true extent of the Windscale (Sellafield) fire was covered up for over thirty years, it wasn't until the 80s that it was actually admitted that it brought the country to the brink of a major nuclear disaster. |
The very thing thaty occurred to me.
It may all look very reasonable if bureaucratic, but you just have to imagine the kind of extremes, to which the Civil Service 'Jobsworths' of this World could take such a policy. Think 'Yes Minister.' | Quote: | Originally posted by Stu
Can't argue with that - people are always the biggest danger of them all. |
Yes, people are such a terrible inconvenience. Best they know nothing. Which, luckily, is the general policy in the UK, anyway.Thank Goodness for the [B]'Official Secrets Act.'
Last edited by Guest on 25-07-2003 23:05; edited 1 time in total |
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| stuneville Administrator
Joined: 09 Mar 2002 Total posts: 10230 Location: FTMB HQ Age: 46 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 23:05 Post subject: |
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| AndroMan wrote: |
]Yes, people are such a terrible inconvenience. Best they know nothing. Which, luckily, is the general policy in the UK, anyway.Thank Goodness for the 'Official Secrets Act.' |
To qualify slightly - the line from Men In Black sums it up: along the lines that individual people are smart and intelligent, but the public en masse are a danger to themselves when ill-informed panic takes over. In that context, I have to agree. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: 25-07-2003 23:36 Post subject: |
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| stu neville wrote: |
To qualify slightly - the line from Men In Black sums it up: along the lines that individual people are smart and intelligent, but the public en masse are a danger to themselves when ill-informed panic takes over. In that context, I have to agree. |
Strangely, I'm reminded of Michael Fish's greatest moment. The evening, in 1987, when he told the Great British Public that the rumours of a massive hurricane heading for Southern England were completely untrue. When it arrived and devasted woodland and forest and caused hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage and cut the power to half of London and the Home Counties, the rumour was that he had been lying in order to fool looters and to forecome panic.
Strangely, Netherlanders, also in the path of the storm, were given clear warnings in good time. Not often the British Met Office is that wrong.
Is there any country in Western Europe with less faith in its inhabitants? |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 26-07-2003 10:25 Post subject: |
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| AndroMan wrote: |
Strangely, I'm reminded of Michael Fish's greatest moment. The evening, in 1987, when he told the Great British Public that the rumours of a massive hurricane heading for Southern England were completely untrue. When it arrived and devasted woodland and forest and caused hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage and cut the power to half of London and the Home Counties, the rumour was that he had been lying in order to fool looters and to forecome panic.
Strangely, Netherlanders, also in the path of the storm, were given clear warnings in good time. Not often the British Met Office is that wrong. |
I think it's very unlikely that Michael Fish lied - at the time of his broadcast there was no indication that the small depression then over the Bay of Biscay would 'bomb' (technical meteorological term for the way a deep depression suddenly forms out of almost nothing  ). It's only in the last few years that we've started to understand the phenomena that caused the storm.
Can't comment on whether the Dutch had good warning, though of course they were a few hours downwind of us.
One things for sure, with the Internet today it would be impossible to hide an imminent meteorological disaster!
| Quote: | | Is there any country in Western Europe with less faith in its inhabitants? |
I don't have faith in [b]any country's inhabitants...
Last edited by Guest on 26-07-2003 10:28; edited 1 time in total |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 29-10-2003 04:08 Post subject: Re: Broken Arrow |
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Originally posted by Timble [/i]
As stu says, there's a lot of safeguards against accidental nuclear denotation, the bigger risk is a conventional expolosion breaking up the bomb and dumping plutonium over the surrounding countryside.
The USAF actually managed to do this in 1966 when a B52 came down off Spain in 1966 after colliding with its refuelling plane.
****************************************************
Actually this has happened a few times. Peter Kuran produced a movie called "Nuclear 911:Broken Arrows & Incidents" which detail 32 of the accident the US has admitted to.
1) Aug. 5,1960 a B-29 crashes at an airforce base in Northern Califorina the 10,000 pounds of conventional explosive encasing the bomb went off killing 19 first responders among them was Gen. Robert F. Travis who the base is now named for.
2) May 27, 1957 a B-36 loaded with a Mk 17 15 Mton weapon dropped it through the bomb bay doors on New Mexico once again detonating the conventional explosives.
3) March 11, 1958 a B-47 accidently jetisons an unarmed bomb east of Florence South Carolina near the home of Walter Gregg
detonating the conventional explosives destroying his home and car (he and his family were elsewhere on the farm). Mr. Gregg was interviewed in the documentary and said the crater later filled in with water but no frogs or tadpoles ever developed which he found quite strange. The government offered him $500 to fill the hole but he declined.
4) Jan. 24,1961 a B-52 on air alert experiences structural failure over Goldsboro, North Carolina. It drops two 20 Mton weapons one of them deploys it's parachute and is relatively undamaged.
Upon inspection of this weapon it is found that 5 of the 6 safety interlocks have failed only ONE safety kept the weapon from FULL detonation. After this incident many new safety devices were placed on U.S. weapons and the USSR was encouraged to do the same. The fate of the other weapon was never mentioned in the film.
5) Jan. 21,1968 a B-52 crashes 7 miles SW of Thule Airforce Base in Greenland with 4 high yield nuclear weapons. The conventional explosives in all 4 weapons detonate causing an 8 month clean up effort under artic conditions. 237,000 cubic feet of contaminated ice, snow and debris was removed to the U.S. for storage. Due to this accident Strategic Air Command orders the removal of all nuclear weapons from airborne alert.
6) Jan. 17,1966 a B-52 carrying 4 high yield nuclear weapons collides with a refueling plane near Palomares Spain 2 of the 4 weapons detonate their conventional explosives forcing the U.S. to remove 1400 tons of radioactive soil and plant matter for storage in the U.S. (this is the accident mentioned in the first
post).
Add to these avowed mishaps all the unknown accident that occur in the nuclear arsenals of Russia, China, France, Great Britian, Indian, Pakistan and Israel and the future indead looks bleak for the human race. (Yes, Israel has nukes just ask Mordechai Vanunu, put his name in your favorite search engine if you don't know his story)
By the way the Pentagon classifies nuclear accidents according to their degree of danger. The least dangerous is a "Dull Sword" or nuclear weapon minor incident (ie: weapon rolls off it' dolly with no damage). A nuclear weapon significant incident is a "Bent Spear" the June 1974 emergency landing of a helicopter carrying nukes near New York's popular Jones Beach is a good example. Then comes the well know term Broken Arrow this covers serious accidents, loss or outright theft of the weapon. I was told by one of my Native American friends that Broken Arrow is a phrase used to indicate peace among his people. Now we come to the term one one wants to ever hear "Nucflash" or accidental nuclear weapon detonation. In the cold war days a Nucflash could have started a war, it would be easier to blame your enemy than to admit your own incompetence. In today post 9/11 world you can be sure that a Nucflash would be blamed on terrorists not Georgie boy.
In conclusion you don't plan for things in such great detail that will "never" happen. To drive that point home here is a quote from the 1962 AEC/DOD report titled 'The effects of Nuclear Weapons':
"Nuclear weapons are designed with great care to explode only when deliberately armed and fired. Nevertheless, there is always a possibility that...an explosion will take place inadvertently."
Last edited by Guest on 29-10-2003 04:43; edited 1 time in total |
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| uair01 Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2005 Total posts: 1108 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 11-11-2008 16:54 Post subject: |
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Has this one been reported in this thread?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7720049.stm
| Quote: | The United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968, a BBC investigation has found.
Its unique vantage point - perched at the top of the world - has meant that Thule Air Base has been of immense strategic importance to the US since it was built in the early 1950s, allowing a radar to scan the skies for missiles coming over the North Pole.
The Pentagon believed the Soviet Union would take out the base as a prelude to a nuclear strike against the US and so in 1960 began flying "Chrome Dome" missions. Nuclear-armed B52 bombers continuously circled over Thule - and could head straight to Moscow if they witnessed its destruction.
Greenland is a self-governing province of Denmark but the carrying of nuclear weapons over Danish territory was kept secret.
'Darker story'
But on 21 January 1968, one of those missions went wrong.
Pilots recount Thule crash
We reunited two of the pilots, John Haug and Joe D'Amario, 40 years on to tell the story of how their plane ended up crashing on the ice a few miles out from the base.
In the aftermath, military personnel, local Greenlanders and Danish workers rushed to the scene to help.
Eventually, a remarkable operation would unfold over the coming months to recover thousands of tiny pieces of debris scattered across the frozen bay, as well as to collect some 500 million gallons of ice, some of it containing radioactive debris.
A declassified US government video, obtained by the BBC, documents the clear-up and gives some ideas of the scale of the operation.
It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them
William H Chamber
Former US nuclear arms designer
The high explosives surrounding the four nuclear weapons had detonated but without setting off the actual nuclear devices, which had not been armed by the crew.
The Pentagon maintained that all four weapons had been "destroyed".
This may be technically true, since the bombs were no longer complete, but declassified documents obtained by the BBC under the US Freedom of Information Act, parts of which remain classified, reveal a much darker story, which has been confirmed by individuals involved in the clear-up and those who have had access to details since.
The documents make clear that within weeks of the incident, investigators piecing together the fragments realised that only three of the weapons could be accounted for.
Even by the end of January, one document talks of a blackened section of ice which had re-frozen with shroud lines from a weapon parachute. "Speculate something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary," the document reads, the primary or secondary referring to parts of the weapon.
By April, a decision had been taken to send a Star III submarine to the base to look for the lost bomb, which had the serial number 78252. (A similar submarine search off the coast of Spain two years earlier had led to another weapon being recovered.)
But the real purpose of this search was deliberately hidden from Danish officials.
One document from July reads: "Fact that this operation includes search for object or missing weapon part is to be treated as confidential NOFORN", the last word meaning not to be disclosed to any foreign country.
"For discussion with Danes, this operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point," it continued.
'Failure'
But the underwater search was beset by technical problems and, as winter encroached and the ice began to freeze over, the documents recount something approaching panic setting in.
US 'abandoned nuclear bomb'
As well as the fact they contained uranium and plutonium, the abandoned weapons parts were highly sensitive because of the way in which the design, shape and amount of uranium revealed classified elements of nuclear warhead design.
But eventually, the search was abandoned. Diagrams and notes included in the declassified documents make clear it was not possible to search the entire area where debris from the crash had spread.
We tracked down a number of officials who were involved in dealing with the aftermath of the incident.
One was William H Chambers, a former nuclear weapons designer at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who once ran a team dealing with accidents, including the Thule crash.
"There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components," he told the BBC, explaining the logic behind the decision to abandon the search.
The US was flying so-called Chrome Dome missions over Greenland
"It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them."
The view was that no-one else would be able covertly to acquire the sensitive pieces and that the radioactive material would dissolve in such a large body of water, making it harmless.
Other officials who have seen classified files on the accident confirmed the abandonment of a weapon.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the investigation, referring back to previous official studies of the incident.
But the crash, clear-up and mystery of the lost bomb have continued to haunt those involved at the time - and those who live in the region now - with continued concerns over the environmental and health impact of the events of that day in 1968.
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17931 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 22-10-2012 13:03 Post subject: |
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More on the Palomares case, a proper clean up is demanded.
| Quote: | Palomares bombs: Spain waits for US to finish nuclear clean-up
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18689132
By Gerry Hadden
PRI's The World
On a sunny morning in 1966 two US Air Force planes collided and dropped four nuclear bombs near the village of Palomares in southern Spain. There was no nuclear blast, but plutonium was scattered over a wide area - and Spain is now asking the US to finish the clean-up.
The US government calls nukes that go astray "Broken Arrows" and on 17 January 1966, Palomares got four of them.
Overhead, at 31,000ft, an American B-52G bomber collided with a KC-135 tanker plane during routine air-to-air refuelling and broke apart. Three of the bomber's H-bombs landed in or around Palomares, the fourth landed about five miles offshore in the Mediterranean.
Manolo Gonzalez says he was standing outside when he heard a tremendous explosion.
"I looked up and saw this huge ball of fire, falling through the sky," he says. "The two planes were breaking into pieces."
Watch video of Palomares at the website of PRI's The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International and WGBH in Boston
http://www.theworld.org/2012/06/spain-palomares-bomb/
Gonzalez saw one half of the flaming bomber crash to the ground near the local elementary school - where his wife was teaching.
"I went flying across town on my scooter," he says. "The plane had just barely missed the school itself."
In fact, no-one on the ground was killed that morning. Local people call it the only positive part of this story.
The American airmen weren't so lucky. All four men on the refuelling plane died and three of the seven men on the B-52 were killed (the four others managed to eject safely).
Navy personnel examine weapon number four, recovered from the sea-bed, 1966
There was only one telephone in Palomares in 1966, and no running water. But the skies over that poor region of southern Spain were being criss-crossed daily by the world's most modern war machines.
It was the height of the Cold War. In an operation code-named Chrome Dome, the US had between 12 and 24 nuclear-armed B-52 bombers in the air 24 hours a day, in an attempt to deter a Soviet first-strike.
There were different flight paths for the B-52s in different parts of the world. The B-52 involved in the Palomares accident was flying the southern route, in a loop from its base in North Carolina around the Mediterranean. The tanker aircraft had taken off from a nearby base in southern Spain to refuel it before the return journey to the US. It was then that disaster struck.
The outcome would have been immeasurably worse if the bombs had been armed. Fortunately they weren't, so there was no nuclear explosion.
In theory, parachutes attached to the bombs should have borne them gently down to earth, preventing any contamination - but two of the parachutes failed to open.
Within days of the crash, the beach in Palomares became a base for a big military operation involving some 700 American airmen and scientists.
The clean-up operation
700 US airmen and scientists employed to search for bombs and clean up
Three inches of topsoil removed, sealed in 4,810 barrels and shipped to storage facility in US
20 ships, including mine-sweepers and submersibles, deployed by US Navy to find missing bomb in sea
Cost of sea search over $10m
Yearly health checks thereafter on residents, monitoring of soil, water, air and local crops
Their goal - to find the nukes, and secure them.
The two that fell to earth unsupported by parachutes blew apart on impact, scattering highly toxic, radioactive plutonium dust - a major hazard to anyone who might inhale it.
"What they decided to do was remove the contaminated dirt from the most contaminated areas," says science writer Barbara Moran, author of The Day We Lost the H-Bomb.
They literally scraped up the first three inches of topsoil, sealed it in barrels, and shipped it to a storage facility back in the US.
"They did have a plan in place," Moran says. "But it was supposed to happen on a nice flat piece of ground in the US, not on foreign soil where nobody spoke English and there were all these farmers and goats walking around."
As the clean-up got under way, the US and Spanish governments set out to convince the world there was no danger. US Ambassador Biddle Duke even came down from Madrid for a swim, in front of TV cameras.
When asked by a reporter on the scene if he'd detected any radioactivity in the water, Duke replied with a laugh: "If this is radioactivity, I love it!"
While two of the bombs ruptured on impact, another landed safely. These three were located within 24 hours.
But there was huge consternation about the fourth, which drifted out to sea as it descended, and became known as the "lost" H-bomb.
The US Navy deployed more than 20 ships, including mine-sweepers and submersibles, in an attempt to find it.
"The design of these bombs was top secret," says Barbara Moran. "When they were searching, there were Soviet spy ships circling around - and the Soviets had submersible technology."
Four months later, as the land clean-up was winding down, the missing bomb was finally hoisted on board a US warship from a depth of 2,850ft (869m). Barbara Moran says the US Navy calculated the total cost of its sea search at over $10m - the most expensive salvage operation in US Navy history to that date.
In Palomares itself, the US and Spain agreed to fund yearly health-checks on residents, and to monitor the soil, the water, the air, and local crops.
Over the years since there's been no evidence that anyone has fallen ill as a result of the accident. The food and water remain clean.
Tomatoes were an important agricultural product in Palomares in the 1960s
So almost everyone has forgotten about Palomares. Except the people of Palomares. That's because the US clean-up operation missed some areas of contamination. Jose Maria Herrera is a local journalist who's been investigating the accident since the 1980s. He stood recently on a ridge overlooking one of three fenced-off areas which is still contaminated, totalling some 100 acres (40 hectares).
"That crater there is where one of the bombs fell," he says. "You could extract at least half a pound of plutonium from the soil there today."
Actually, just how much plutonium is still out there is hard to determine, because the US has never said how much the bombs were carrying to begin with. But Spanish investigator Carlos Sancho estimates that between 15 and 25 pounds (7 and 11kg) of the material ended up in the soil. Sancho, who runs the Palomares section of the Spanish Department of Energy, insists it does not pose health risks.
The 007 connection
In December 1965, a month before the accident, James Bond film Thunderball was released.
"The film's plot had strong similarities to what subsequently happened in real life", says author Barbara Moran. "Bond's mission was to find atomic bombs that had been lost at sea. All the news stories at the time were making the connection. Much of the movie was shot underwater with Sean Connery battling baddies in weird submersibles trying to get the bombs...
"In the movie, they had all this really awesome underwater technology that got the bomb. But in real life, it was much harder to first locate, and then recover the bomb from the sea bed."
"The earth there can't be moved because the plutonium is latent in the soil," he says. "If we disturb the soil the plutonium could be dispersed."
So Palomares is like a sleeping dragon. You can't walk in the fenced-off area, and you can't farm it or build on it. The message from the Department of Energy is: "Let the plutonium lie and there's no problem." Yet local people say that in itself is a problem.
Local barman Andres Portillo says the damage is to the town's image. "Every time the story hits the media, it hurts tourism," he says. "A lot of people don't want to come here because they think the quality of life must be low, that cancer rates are higher, when that's not the case at all."
Some here say that without the negative publicity, Palomares could be every bit as popular as its more famous neighbour, Marbella.
So the community finds itself trapped. When residents complain, the accident makes headlines again and there's a drop in the number of visitors, and a drop in the prices farmers get at market for their produce.
But now, 46 years after the accident, there are indications that Spain and the US may be closing in on a permanent solution. Earlier this year, Spain's foreign minister Jose Garcia-Margallo met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then with reporters.
"Secretary Clinton has said this will be resolved before her mandate is up," Margallo said. "'I am personally committed,' she said."
Though the US State Department quickly released a statement saying that no such commitment had been made, serious talks are under way, says a spokesman for the US embassy in Madrid. As to when an agreement might be reached - over who pays for the second clean-up, how it will be done, and where the contaminated soil will be stored - that's still up in the air.
So the residents of Palomares wait. As they have for nearly half a century. And, from time to time, they allow themselves to dream.
Palomares Deputy Mayor Juan Jose Perez says he hopes he can turn the tragedy into something positive. He'd like to build a museum explaining how it all happened.
"Maybe even in the shape of a B-52 bomber," he says. "We could offer guided walking tours through the affected areas."
But he says for any of that to happen, this story first needs an ending.
For him, a fitting end would be for the US to come back and finish the job.
Additional reporting by Rob Hugh-Jones.
Listen to more on this story at PRI's The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International, and WGBH in Boston. |
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| Zoffre Joined: 23 Nov 2002 Total posts: 620 |
| Posted: 21-09-2013 08:57 Post subject: |
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Sounds like this was a closer call than anyone wants to admit 
| Quote: | US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina – secret document
Exclusive: Journalist uses Freedom of Information Act to disclose 1961 accident in which one switch averted catastrophe
A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.
The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.
Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.
Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".
Writing eight years after the accident, Parker F Jones found that the bombs that dropped over North Carolina, just three days after John F Kennedy made his inaugural address as president, were inadequate in their safety controls and that the final switch that prevented disaster could easily have been shorted by an electrical jolt, leading to a nuclear burst. "It would have been bad news – in spades," he wrote. (And the understatement of the Year Award goes to...  )
Jones dryly entitled his secret report "Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb" – a quip on Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical film about nuclear holocaust, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The accident happened when a B-52 bomber got into trouble, having embarked from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in Goldsboro for a routine flight along the East Coast. As it went into a tailspin, the hydrogen bombs it was carrying became separated. One fell into a field near Faro, North Carolina, its parachute draped in the branches of a tree; the other plummeted into a meadow off Big Daddy's Road.
Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.
The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.
"The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy," he said. "We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did." |
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961 |
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