Comments on Dark Roasted Blend: The Thermonuclear "Oops" List

Your "glowing" test area is nothing more than a br...

2008-04-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

Your "glowing" test area is nothing more than a broad, largely empty desert valley with some roads and an old farm house. Of course, if you know the history of it, it really is amazing, but at first glance it is nothing much to look at.

jim, no one has said that losing nukes is "no bigg...

2008-02-25T22:03:00.000-08:00

jim, no one has said that losing nukes is "no biggie". Most of these are reasonable comments pointing out that fears of a nuclear explosion from dropping a warhead are unfounded.

And before you cast stones, you should get your own facts straight. Regarding Chernobyl, you say "The immediate death toll from that ONE accident is unknown, but indirect deaths from carcinomas likely number in the millions."

Rubbish. While certainly a horrible tragedy that should never have happened, the death toll is estimated to be less than 10,000.

Wow ... as scary as the article itself is, I can't...

2007-12-19T21:26:00.000-08:00

Wow ... as scary as the article itself is, I can't believe the sheer naivete of the comments here. The people who've said either that losing nukes is no biggie, or that nuclear power is safe, need to do more research &/or seek professional help.

Nukes are not candy. Once lost, they can easily fall into the hands of unsavoury folks ... or simply leak extremely dangerous & long-lived isotopes into the environment. Explode, no - but they can still kill.

We have yet to invent a foolproof storage system for n-waste, & I doubt any such system is even physically possible. Wind, tidal & solar are all cheap & clean alternatives. We have no excuses left for continuing to neglect them in 2007.

Go tell former residents of Chernobyl how "safe" nuclear power is - they'll be relieved to hear it - the ones not dead of cancer yet, that is. The immediate death toll from that ONE accident is unknown, but indirect deaths from carcinomas likely number in the millions.

We need to avoid use of a technology that's both deadly & obscenely expensive, while we still can.

Don't forget the Palomares incident..http://en.wik...

2007-08-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Don't forget the Palomares incident..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomares_H-Bomb_Incident

Thanks to all of you great folks for your fun and/...

2007-07-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all of you great folks for your fun and/or informative comments on my little piece on nuclear weapon boo-boos. I especially appreciate the technical info that’s been put out, especially since I’m a writer and not an engineer. Avi is quite correct to place an amendment to the piece about how unlikely an actual nuclear detonation is. I also just learned (thanks Jon) that the supposedly “tick, tick, ticking” bomb that was dropped on North Carolina was recovered – though that it impacted at 700 mph doesn’t make me feel any better.

However (and didn’t you know this was coming) I still feel the spirit of the piece is still very much intact. I am not anti-government, anti-military, anti-nuclear, anti-America, or anti-much-of-anything: I just wanted to share with folks who are into odd and unusual history that there have been a considerable number of pants-staining mistakes made regarding the most dangerous device ever created.

Or, to put it in bad movie language: “I don't know what's scarier, losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it,” from Broken Arrow, starring the world’s favorite Scientologist, John Travolta.

In a follow-up piece I’ll be talking about something REALLY scary: screw-ups involving biological and chemical weapons.

Ciao,

M.Christian

Thank you for these great comments. I've updated t...

2007-07-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Thank you for these great comments. I've updated the article, see above.

As JJ said, it is extremely difficult for a nuclea...

2007-07-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

As JJ said, it is extremely difficult for a nuclear or thermonuclear weapon to go off accidentally. Unless every segment of the explosive shell is triggered simultaneously to create a uniform implosion wave that smoothly compresses your fissionable core to supercriticality, you're going to just get a messy conventional explosion that tosses fissionable material around. (Worst case is a fizzle where you get momentary criticality and a yield equivalent to a few tons.) Any weapon that's been sitting underwater for any length of time is going to be in much too bad a shape to have any meaningful risk of fission detonation.

This refers to implosion weapons, of course -- uranium-gun weapons are more rugged and mechanically straightforward, but they're also inefficient and have not been a part of the US arsenal for many decades.

Accidental detonation of a fusion weapon is even more vastly unlikely, since it requires a clean and efficient detonation of the fission primary to reach the temperatures necessary to initiate a fusion burn in the deuterium fuel.

Two other points: David Kraft, if only we had safe thermonuclear energy! So far the only way anyone's figured out to get more energy out a fusion reaction than you put in is a bomb, and the practical applications are limited. We've got plenty of (more or less safe) nuclear power, but no thermonuclear.

And, regarding leaking safeguard technology to the Soviets: certainly sounds plausible enough. I know that after PAL (Permissive Action Link) technology was developed in the US to prevent unauthorized launch or detonation of weapons, it was quite intentionally leaked to the Soviet Union, and to China when they began to develop their arsenal. The idea was to minimize the chance of a rogue military commander launching his weapons at the U.S. without authorization.

You couldn't be more wrong on the story about two ...

2007-07-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

You couldn't be more wrong on the story about two bombs landing in waterlogged famrland. A quick internet search reveals thatwhile two weapons were lost when the plane malfunctioned, the second one is not out there going "tick tick tick". In fact, they found the impact crater the bomb made and recovered a substantial portion of the material from the bomb after digging up to 22'. Heavy rainfall forced the abandonment of the recovery and the Air Force bought the land to prevent further digging. See this link for a factual description of events, it's much than this bullshit.
http://www.ibiblio.org/bomb/hansen_doc.html

this article shows a complete lack of understandin...

2007-07-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

this article shows a complete lack of understanding of how nuclear warheads work, as well as a blatant misuse of the word "thermonuclear" (that only applies to fusion, not fission). It's completely inaccurate to imply that any of those had a chance of going off.

Number of accidental nuclear explosions: 0This is ...

2007-07-11T07:55:00.000-07:00

Number of accidental nuclear explosions: 0

This is like saying a society is violent and dangerous because people get angry, even if the murder rate is zero.

BTW: Bombs decay and become non fissionable over time, especially if they are banged around and older than 15 years. So the fear mongering over the one's out there isn't even founded in reality.

I worked with one of the guys on the crew at the s...

2007-07-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

I worked with one of the guys on the crew at the silo near Little Rock, AR, and he tells a bit of a different story.

Basically, someone dropped a huge wrench from the top of the silo, and as it bounced between the wall and the missile, it punctured the fuel tank. As the rocket fuel leaked out, the tank lost pressure and the rocket finally lost its support, crumpled, and exploded.

But this didn't happen suddenly. The leak took hours and hours to hit that critical drop in pressure. They evac'd the silo and everyone near it, but said nothing to the people living just miles away.

Still just as scary, though...

You make a good point--accidents do happen.But you...

2007-07-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

You make a good point--accidents do happen.

But your post is alarmist. It's clear that you're trying to maximize fear. I don't think that's very responsible, and it shows a clear misunderstanding of the technologies you discuss.

The public's fear of the atom is reminiscent of the fear of electricity in the late 19th and early 20th century. Why don't you write a post about the dangers of electricity and associated accidents?

We're not going to be driving hydrogen cars tomorrow. Get used to the fact that harnessing the power of the atom is the most promising way forward /right now/.

"Luckily for the crew they managed to drop their b...

2007-07-11T02:47:00.000-07:00

"Luckily for the crew they managed to drop their bombs, which fell 8,000 feet, landing with a bang off the coast of British Columbia"

So that's why BC Bud grows so fast... :p

Great entry, and I don't think it's spreading of fear as much as it is sharing of information. Thank you.

My dad dropped a nuclear bomb while loading it on ...

2007-07-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

My dad dropped a nuclear bomb while loading it on a plane on a Turkish runway during the Vietnam War. It rolled down the runway before they caught up to it. The officer who saw it said not to tell any one, because such accidents make it all the way to the president.

Great stuff! It's staggering to think about all th...

2007-07-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

Great stuff! It's staggering to think about all these near-misses...

The only way to set off a fission bomb is for the ...

2007-07-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

The only way to set off a fission bomb is for the outer shell of conventional warheads to all detonate within a few microseconds of each other. This just wont happen in the case of a drop or some other mishap. These devices require finely tuned electronic circuits to initiate simultaneous detonation.

I like your government-bashing energy, but please use it somewhere where the government is actually at fault.

I do kinda hate to break it to you, but a drop, co...

2007-07-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

I do kinda hate to break it to you, but a drop, collision, or even explosion won't create the nuclear fission/fusion explosion that is the worry about nuclear weapons. The basic idea of a fission explosion is wrapping a sphere with explosives so the sphere will implode quickly enough that it will explode. Thermonuclear added more stages to create a bigger secondary explosion. But the difficultly in creating a spherical implosion is what prevents the average terrorist from making one. The Rosenburgs were executed when they passed secrets dealing with this to the Russian. That same difficulty is what prevents an accidental nuclear explosion.
Don't spread FUD. There are very legitimate fears you sort of addressed: Random weapons-grade materials and pre-made bombs missing, and the possibility of the conventional explosives spreading radioactive particles that really could cause alot of death. Plutonium has a lethal toxicity easily ranked in the parts per billion.
So there is definately legitimate concerns - just don't blow them to far out of porportion. I'd hate to see you have to get sued to pay alot of people's laundry bills.

...that's one way to look at things

2007-07-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

...that's one way to look at things

you are my FUD-bitch, you spread the Fear, Uncerta...

2007-07-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

you are my FUD-bitch, you spread the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt and I reap the rewards of blowing more carbon with less efficiency.

Lets see a page about all the poor little children that died before we discovered polio vaccines.

How about a page about how many people die in car accidents every year oh, 40,000+ is to overwhelming for you.

Get a life and appreciate what we DO have - safe thermonuclear power, safe lands to live in from having thermonuclear warheads.

Very cool, Anonymous! Wish I had that info when I...

2007-07-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

Very cool, Anonymous! Wish I had that info when I did the piece -- would have been a great addition. I, for one, am packing my beans and heading for the hills .. and that's NOT taking into account the technological 'expertise' of countries like Russia, France, Pakistan, India (shudder)

there is a small addendum to that story of the 5 f...

2007-07-10T03:15:00.000-07:00

there is a small addendum to that story of the 5 failed safeties (out of six) .. unfortunately i never could find independent confirmation except in the book of a very respected austrian journaillist ... but perhaps a blogger can help ..

that incident prompted the US government to start a masive research project to improve the safeties in nuclear devices .. the results of this research project were quickly incorporated in the existing bombs .. AND .. here it comes:

the results were also supposedly leaked to the government of the CCCP because of the fear that a similar accident in russia could perhaps start an accidental war ..

i couldn't decide whether to laugh out loud or tak...

2007-07-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

i couldn't decide whether to laugh out loud or take a good long drink... maybe both.

Funniest blog entry in a long time!

I think I need to go do some laundry...

2007-07-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

I think I need to go do some laundry...