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"Goldsboro Revisited or: How I learned to Mistrust the H-Bomb"

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By now I suppose you’ve all seen the news. Don’t know how your news outlet of choice is covering this, but personally I found this coverage… well, I guess there really are no words for it…


You can also watch it on their site:

How the U.S. Narrowly Avoided a Nuclear Holocaust 33 Years Ago, and Still Risks Catastrophe Today | Democracy Now!

Here they also offer this segment, as well as everything else they do as:

Transcript, audio, mp3 Download, MPEG-4 Video Download, MPEG-4 Video Torrent (and more).


And there’s also this:

US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina - secret document | World news | The Guardian


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A qoute:

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us some of those accidents, some of those near misses and how things are being handled today.

ERIC SCHLOSSER: Yeah, I mean, one of the most significant near misses occurred just three days after John F. Kennedy was inaugurated. A B-52 bomber broke apart in the sky over North Carolina, and as it was breaking apart, the centrifugal forces affecting the plane pulled a lanyard in the cockpit, which released one of the hydrogen bombs that it was carrying. And the weapon behaved as though it had been released over the Soviet Union, over an enemy target deliberately. It went through all of its arming stages, except one. There was one switch that prevented it from detonating in North Carolina. And that switch, later, was found to be defective and would never be put into a plane today. Straight electricity in the bomber as it was disintegrating could have detonated the bomb.


Source:

How the U.S. Narrowly Avoided a Nuclear Holocaust 33 Years Ago, and Still Risks Catastrophe Today | Democracy Now!
 
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I guess I'm not seeing the connection to this report and how the world generates electricity. Nuclear technology can be used for good or bad, but mishandled warheads doesn't necessarily imply that nuclear generation plants are unsafe.

(I'm not arguing that nuclear plants are safe, just disputing whether this news adds any information to that debate.)
 
I guess it’s possible that I have misunderstood the “Energy, Environment, and Policy” part. I thought it was ok to post topics on just the Environment and Policy part…

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And the thread title is likely not the best. I just went for something that felt ‘catchy’ at the time – the first one that came to mind. Nuclear weapons and risk assessment for example, would have been more accurate…
 
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The news about the Goldsboro accident was spooky. I grew up 100 miles from Goldsboro, and in fact was born a few weeks after the accident. If this bomb had gone off my hometown probably would have been destroyed if not by the blast, by the fallout, and I wouldn't be here typing this. Spooky.
 
I guess it’s possible that I have misunderstood the “Energy, Environment, and Policy” part. I thought it was ok to post topics on just the Environment and Policy part…
I don't think Robert was saying your post was improper for this sub-forum. I think he's saying he (personally) doesn't understand how it informs the discussion on energy policy.
 
And I was trying to say that I never meant it as a contribution to the discussion on energy policy…

I just thought I could share this coverage since I personally found it to be ‘rather informative and eye opening’ (to say the least).

If I remember correctly, I think this (underlined) was my take-away (this far):

(And apologies in advance for the long quote…)

[…]

NERMEEN SHAIKH: You’ve also said that the command-and-control structure system in place for nuclear weapons has actually weakened since the end of the Cold War. Is that right?

ERIC SCHLOSSER: One of the things that has happened and one of the problems the Air Force is having is once the Cold War ended — and during the Cold War, having control of nuclear weapons was a high prestige occupation in the Air Force and the Navy, but since the Cold War, it has been seen as a career dead-end. So, there have been all kinds of management issues, underinvestment — and I’m not saying we should be building hundreds and hundreds of new bombers or — but if you’re going to have nuclear weapons, no expense should be spared in the proper management.

AMY GOODMAN: How many do we have?

ERIC SCHLOSSER: And what I was going to say was, some of the systems we have right now are 30, 40 years old. We’re still relying on B-52 bombers as our main nuclear bomber. Those are 60 years old. They haven’t built one since the Kennedy administration. The Titan II missile that I write about it some length in my book, one of the problems and one of the causes of the accident [*] was that it was an obsolete weapon system. Secretary of Defense McNamara had wanted to retire it in the mid-1960s and it was still on alert in the 1980s.
And again with nuclear weapons, the margin of error is very, very small. […


*…/ ”NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thirty-three years ago today, the United States narrowly missed a nuclear holocaust on his soil that would have dwarfed the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb blast that killed approximately 140,000 people. The so-called Damascus accident involved a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile mishap at a launch conflict outside Damascus, Arkansas. During a routine maintenance procedure, a young worker accidentally dropped a nine pound tool in the silo, piercing the missile skin and causing a major leak of flammable rocket fuel. Sitting on top of that Titan II was the most powerful thermonuclear warhead ever deployed on an American missile. The weapon was about 600 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. For the next nine hours, a group of airmen put themselves at grave risk to save the missile and prevent a massive explosion that would’ve caused incalculable damage.

AMY GOODMAN: To find out what happened next, we turn to a shocking new book called, "Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety." In it, author Eric Schlosser reveals how often the United States has come within a hairs breath of a domestic nuclear detonation or an accidental war. Drawing on thousands of pages of recently declassified government documents and interviews with scores of military personnel and nuclear scientists, Schlosser shows that America’s nuclear weapons pose a grave risk to human kind. We are joined by Eric Schlosser, author of a number of books, including the best-selling "Fast Food Nation." Welcome to Democracy Now! So, talk about that story 33 years ago today.

ERIC SCHLOSSER: Thirty-three years ago, during a routine maintenance procedure, a tool was dropped and it set in motion events that could have led to the destruction of the state of Arkansas and it just so happened that Bill Clinton was the governor at the time. Vice President Mondale was in the state at the time. And it is one of those events that literally could have changed the course of history. So, the book is a minute by minute account of this nuclear weapons accident. It’s unfolding, but I use that narrative as a way to look at the management of our nuclear weapons really from the dawn of the nuclear era to this day. […


Source:

How the U.S. Narrowly Avoided a Nuclear Holocaust 33 Years Ago, and Still Risks Catastrophe Today | Democracy Now!
 
Something similar and maybe more disturbing also happened in 1958 over Florence, SC as well. Where an atomic bomb was dropped and exploded on US soil. Fortunately the nuclear material was not loaded into the bomb, but was stored on the plane that dropped the bomb. I've known about the SC one for a decade or so. I have even been to the crater site, it is only about a 1/2 mile walk from the roadside.

Scary stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Bluff,_South_Carolina
 
I don't think Robert was saying your post was improper for this sub-forum. I think he's saying he (personally) doesn't understand how it informs the discussion on energy policy.

Exactly. Sorry for the confusion in roles: when I put on my tinfoil moderator's hat, I start the post with "[moderator's note:]". Otherwise, it's just me talking FWIW.