Posted on 06/29/2008 5:04:28 PM PDT by Coffee200am
London, June 26 (PTI) A design defect in UK's nuclear weapons could cause warheads to detonate one after another in a chain reaction if they were accidentally dropped, according to Britain's nuclear-weapons safety manual. According to the declassified nuclear-weapons safety manual, drawn up by Britain's Ministry of Defence internal nuclear-weapons regulator, more than 1,700 warheads are affected by the problem, which would cause them set off a chain reaction known as "popcorning" if they were accidentally dropped, The Daily Telegraph said. The manual, seen by the New Scientist, says that warheads should be capable of resisting multiple simultaneous impacts which "would contribute to the prevention of popcorning and should be a design objective".
The safety manual argues that the present standard single-point design might not be enough to prevent "popcorning", the British daily said.
The London-based newspaper quoted a Defence Ministry spokesman as saying that popcorning was only "a theoretical possibility" and in fact it was "a scenario that is not credible".
However, experts say an accident could still take place. Stefan Michalowski, a senior scientist at the OECD in Paris, who researched warhead safety in the 1990s, is concerned about the risks of an extreme event such as a firefight with direct gunshots.
The Financial Times of London earlier this month reported that the US was unable to locate hundreds of sensitive nuclear missile components in Pentagon's inventory.
A US probe found that nuclear missile nose cones were inadvertently shiped to Taiwan. These events have raised concerns about nuclear safeguards, particularly in the light of the troubling revelation that an US air force bomber flew across the country with six nuclear warheads onboard without any security checks.
I call BS... “popcorning” ? What !?
Nonsense...
A nuclear detonation requires a very controlled precise chain of events...it cannot happen by accident.
Sure. Don't you recall that the Brits hired Orville Redenbacher as a nuke bomb consultant back in the 70s?
-—I think my byline applies to nuclear “explosives”, too-—
modern nukes are like any other complex machine - high maintenence.
And that's even if it happens at all from what I remember. A dirty nuke round? Yea I can see that a possibility but not a true nuke. Sounds like a scaremonger story to me.
I wouldn’t drop them then.
It has never happened. In 6+ decades. How many hotwater heaters in peoples basements have exploded in that time? Tomorrow’s ‘hidden dangers’ expose on wwbs news at 11...
The precise timing of the multiple chemical explosives segments is an absolute requirement for the chain reaction to occur as a big boom.
Multiple warheads being ruined by chemical explosions? Yeah, I suppose that could happen. And yeah, the immediate vicinity would be pretty hot. But a city killing disaster? Nahhh.
Nice vaccine, this article.
I can imagine the story headline If the terrorists set a nuke off in the U.K.:
“Earthquake causes damage in nuke facility causing one to fall an accidentally explode. Popcorning to blame”
“Oh mother, don’t be so sentimental! Things explode every day.”
Mmmmmmm, really, really big nuclear popcorn.....if it happens near a cheddar cheese factory, I’m THERE!
And to paraphrase and superimpose here another great Freeper response, "Angelina Jolie and Catherine Zeta Jones could accidentally find their way to my house with some baby oil and a six pack of Michelob."
This whole article is crap. I could accidentally hit the Megamillions lotto jackpot too. Odds are significantly against it though.
True just pick your target lol.
The odds go up if you actually, like, ummm, buy a ticket!
It COULD happen tomorrow!
>>>I call BS... “popcorning” ? What !?
Maybe BS, maybe not. The US has already decided that our nukes are not as safe and reliable as they might be.
“The US military also plans to replace all 5,045 of its still-active nuclear warheads by 2012 — an unbelievably costly program.”
US nukes apparently have a rather robust design given the number of incidents where they have been involved in plane crashes, mid air collisions between bombers and even a failed missile test at the Pacific test range where in a declassified film, the Thor missile explodes on the pad and the warhead can be clearly seen rocketing off through the fire ball. No US nuke has apparently exploded unintentionally.
Not to mention the one that got launched THROUGH a silo cover when the missile cooked off due to a dropped wrench puncturing a fuel tank.
(I think Darks knew the bunny that dropped the wrench)...
Titan II Silo Accident in Damascus Arkansas, September 19, 1980.
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