50 facts about US nuclear weapons

An interesting site about nuclear weapons :

www.brook.edu...

It makes the mind boggle reading some of those statistics. What surpised me was that in 1998 the US was still spending $35 billion on nuclear weapons and weapons related programs.

True....how can that be possible.

Russia has just as many nuclear subs and almost as many nukes, as well as all sorts of nuclear facilities, yet their nuclear related spending is much much much smaller.

In fact the pentagon gives Russia a couple of billion a year to make sure they don't sell nukes to terrorists, is that not right?

Originally posted by rogue1
It makes the mind boggle reading some of those statistics. What surpised me was that in 1998 the US was still spending $35 billion on nuclear weapons and weapons related programs.

$35 billion really isn't that much when you consider the cost includes everything from maintaining the facilities nuclear weapons are kept at (missle silos and such), the maintenance of the warheads them selves, and of course money to upgrade existing weapons and make new ones.

Also, testing of nuclear weapons is done exclusively on computers now, so that price is the price of a few supercomputers.

I like #28 . Amount of silver in tons once used at the Oak Ridge, TN, Y-12 Plant for electrical magnet coils: 14,700.

Those plants were massive Y-12 itself is 811 acres/1.3 square miles. I watched a show on them on the history channel. Normally you would use copper for the coils but that was in short demand thanks to WW2. So what did they do? The Army "borrowed" close to 15,000 tons of silver bullion from the United States Treasury to use.


[edit on 17-10-2005 by ShadowXIX]

Originally posted by Manincloak
True....how can that be possible.

Russia has just as many nuclear subs and almost as many nukes, as well as all sorts of nuclear facilities, yet their nuclear related spending is much much much smaller.

In fact the pentagon gives Russia a couple of billion a year to make sure they don't sell nukes to terrorists, is that not right?

Russia does not have as many nuclear subs as the US. They have 39 total subs in service according to globalsecurity.rg.

The US has more then 39 Los Angeles attack subs alone, not to mention our ballistic missle fleet and 3 Sea Wolf attack subs.

This of course doesn't include the US aircraft carriers, each of which have TWO nuclear reactors.

The US also has nearly FIVE TIMES the number of nuclear warheads as Russia. As this indicates, Russia can not support more then 3,500 nuclear warheads according to START2, and more realistically can not afford to keep more then 2,500 nuclear warheads. The US of course has over 10,000.

Also take into account the VASTLY superior maintenance quality of US weapons, in stark contrast to the suspect (at best) Russian maintenance.

The other aspect is that the accounting figures for the USSR is suspect to say the least.

Some serious and staggering amounts of money and weapons to keep our world at a relative state of normal. I wish I had the intrest of 1/1000 of .1 % of what our govt. has spent on these tests and materials since it's nuclear program began.

Number 44 is a classic!

44. Number of U.S. nuclear bombs lost in accidents and never recovered: 11

I don't know if this number is fact or fiction, but this is dumb beyond belief. A country that lost 11 friggin nuclear bombs is not in position to call other countries like Iran evil doers. Or maybe they kept secret its recovery, that would explain it, or they managed to get the bombs stolen or something? Losing bombs of that magnitude is surreal. *Slap self in face to get out this silly dream*


[edit on 17-10-2005 by ufia]

Originally posted by ufia
Number 44 is a classic!

44. Number of U.S. nuclear bombs lost in accidents and never recovered: 11

I don't know if this number is fact or fiction, but this is dumb beyond belief. A country that lost 11 friggin nuclear bombs is not in position to call other countries like Iran evil doers.

Excuse me? There are a lot of things wrong about losing a nuclear weapon, but being evil is not one of them.

Or maybe they kept secret its recovery, that would explain it, or they managed to get the bombs stolen or something? Losing bombs of that magnitude is surreal. *Slap self in face to get out this silly dream*

Well, there is actually only one reason to worry, and it isn't the weapons falling into the wrong hands. Nuclear weapons require a great deal of maintenance, technical know how, etc to be of any use to someone who happend to come across it or even aquire it.

In addition, even assuming you could theoretically upkeep it and knew all the security messures to set it off, you would still need to transport it. These bombs were all lost a few decades ago - most in the 50's if my memory serves me right - and thus, they were pretty damn big, and weighed in the 500+ pound range.

More over, most of these weapons were lost in deep water, hence why they were unrecoverable. Thus, it would be virtually impossable for someone without the US Navys extensive resources to recover.

The real problem here is there was a single bomb lost in North Carolina somewhere (again, if my memory serves me it was in a swamp). Well, it's been about 50 years, and that bomb could be rusting. Hence, the water could become contaminated with radioactive material.

BTW, if you think that 11 is bad, you may cry to know how many times that number Russia lost in the 90's alone.

Originally posted by ufia
I don't know if this number is fact or fiction, but this is dumb beyond belief. A country that lost 11 friggin nuclear bombs is not in position to call other countries like Iran evil doers.

Hmmm, lost as it 'Where did it go?" is not what they mean. Lost as in the terms of accidents. Submarines sink, aircraft crash etc. Some of the bombs lost include a hydrogen bomb when a B-52 crashed with a refuling aircraft near Palomares Spain etc etc etc.

Accident happen its not easy to retrive objects sometimes. Its also easy to decry the fact that aircraft and ships were armed with nukes. We sit here debating this subject in abstract terms, but to the people who lived through the cold war, the possibility of Nuclear war was a real one and we had to be ready for it.

Some more info on lost nukes
www.lutins.org...
www.cdi.org...

lot more stuff out there if you look, I remember being a bit shocked when I first heard about some of this stuff a few years ago, but accidents do happen, and if something can go wrong, it usually does.

www.marginalrevolution.com...

Concerning yesterday's post on missing nuclear weapons Gerald Hanner wrote to say:

I once flew with one of the people involved in that lost nuke in South Carolina. It was being carried by a B-47, and they were on their way to a forward-deployed base in England to pull alert. For takeoff the weapon (no one in the business calls them "bombs") is not pinned into the release mechanism so that it could be released if there was an aircraft emergency after takeoff. Since the "pit" was not installed in the weapon there was no chance of a nuclear detonation. In any case, after a safe takeoff the copilot went back to the bomb bay to place a safety pin in the release mechanism; the pin would not go into the slot it was designed for. After calling back to their departure base to discuss the problem, someone on the ground suggested jiggling the release mechanism a bit to properly align the parts. The copilot did. The next transmission from the aircraft was, "#! We dropped it!" The weapon released and went right through the closed bomb bay door; those were heavy dudes back then. You've read the rest of the story.

Dave Walker of Lockjaw's Lair wrote to report on a still-missing nuclear weapon in North Carolina.

It was just after midnight on January 24, 1961. A B52G Stratofortress (one of the greatest airplanes ever to cast a shadow on this fine Earth, IMHO) suffered structural failure in its right wing near Faro, NC. The plane carried two MK39 hydrogen bombs.

The two weapons were jettisoned from the plane. One parachuted safely to the ground, receiving minimal damage. The other plummetted to Earth, partially breaking up on impact. Part of the weapon, however, was never found. The lost portion was the uranium-containing part, as well. Crews dug to a depth of 50 feet in the boggy field, but could never retrieve the warhead. To this day, the lost weapon continues to lie in this field.

Radioactivity tests have come up negative, and the Air Force has purchased an easement on the property to prevent anyone digging. If you'd like to read further on the case of the lost warhead, check out this link.

• 10 March 1956
  A B-47 with two nuclear weapons aboard disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea after flying out of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. An exhaustive search failed to locate the aircraft, its weapons, nor its crew.
  
• 28 July 1957
  A C-124 Globemaster transporting three nuclear weapons and a nuclear capsule from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to Europe experienced loss of power in two engines. The crew jettisoned two of the weapons somewhere east of Rehobeth, Del., and Cape May/Wildwood, New Jersey. A search for the weapons was unsuccessful and it is a fair assumption that they still lie at the bottom of the ocean.
  
• 5 February 1958
  A B-47 carrying a Mark 15, Mod 0, nuclear bomb on a simulated combat mission from Homestead Air Force Base in Florida collided with an F-86. After three unsuccessful attempts to land at Hunter Air Force Base in Georgia, the B-47 crew jettisoned the nuclear bomb into the Atlantic Ocean off Savannah. The Air Force conducted a nine-week search of a 3-square-mile area in Wassaw Sound where the bomb was dropped, but declared on April 16 that the bomb was irretrievably lost. The bomb was rediscovered in September 2004.
  
  CNN - Sept 13, 2004
  
  A group led by retired Air Force Lt. Col. Derek Duke of Statesboro, Georgia, said in July that it had found a large object underwater near Savannah that was emitting high levels of radioactivity, according to an Associated Press report.
  
  The group said it used radiation and metal detection equipment to search an area in Wassaw Sound off Tybee Island where the bomb reportedly was dropped, the AP reported....
  
  .... An Air Force investigation concluded in 2001 that the bomb is probably harmless if left where it is. It also said a recovery operation could set off the conventional explosives in the bomb that would put the recovery crew at risk and do serious environmental damage.
  
  The 7,600-pound, 12-foot-long thermonuclear bomb contained 400 pounds of high explosives as well as uranium.
  
  The Air Force insists the bomb was being used for practice and did not contain the plutonium trigger needed for a nuclear explosion.
  
  www.cnn.com...
  
  
• 24 January 1961: B-52 crashed and dropped two 20-megaton nuclear weapons near Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five of six interlocking safety triggers on the bomb failed. One weapon never recovered; Air Force purchased easement where lost.
  
• 5 December 1965
  An A-4E Skyhawk strike aircraft carrying a nuclear weapon rolled off an elevator on the U.S. aircraft carrier Ticonderoga and fell into the sea. Because the bomb was lost at a depth of approximately 16,000 feet, Pentagon officials feared that intense water pressure could have caused the B-43 hydrogen bomb to explode. It is still unknown whether an explosion did occur. The pilot, aircraft, and weapon were lost.
  
  The Pentagon claimed that the bomb was lost "500 miles away from land." However, it was later revealed that the aircraft and nuclear weapon sank only miles from the Japanese island chain of Ryukyu. Several factors contributed to the Pentagon's secretiveness. The USS Ticonderoga was returning from a mission off North Vietnam; confirming that the carrier had nuclear weapons aboard would document their introduction into the Vietnam War. Furthermore, Japan's anti-nuclear law prohibited the introduction of atomic weapons into its territory, and U.S. military bases in Japan are not exempt from this law. Thus, confirming that the USS Ticonderoga carried nuclear weapons would signify U.S. violation of its military agreements with Japan. The carrier was headed to Yokosuka, Japan, and disclosure of the accident in the mid-1980s caused a strain in U.S.-Japanese relations.
  
  
• 22 January 1968
  A B-52 crashed 7 miles south of Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, scattering the radioactive fragments of three hydrogen bombs over the terrain and dropping one bomb into the sea after a fire broke out in the navigator's compartment. Contaminated ice and airplane debris were sent back to the U.S., with the bomb fragments going back to the manufacturer in Amarillo, Texas. The incident outraged the people of Denmark (which owned Greenland at the time, and which prohibits nuclear weapons over its territory) and led to massive anti-U.S. demonstrations. One of the warheads was reportedly recovered by Navy Seals and Seabees in 1979, but a recent (August 2000) report suggests that in fact it may still be lying at the bottom of Baffin Bay.
  
• 21 May 1968
  The U.S.S. Scorpion, a nuclear-powered attack submarine carrying two Mark 45 ASTOR torpedoes with nuclear warheads, sank mysteriously on this day. It was eventually photographed lying on the bottom of the ocean, where all ninety-nine of its crew were lost. Details of the accident remained classified until November 1993, when Navy reports revealed that the cause of the sinking was an accidental detonation of the conventional explosives in one of Scorpion's warheads.

www.lutins.org...

Originally posted by Manincloak
True....how can that be possible.

Russia has just as many nuclear subs

My dad was on a Nuclear sub as a sonar tech, He said that when they were looking at some of Russia's northern fleet he said many were all jacked up and warped. so they probably had as many subs as us but many are in disarray

mod edit to correct BB code

[edit on 17-10-2005 by DontTreadOnMe]

Most Russian subs are lying disused and unserviceable in Ports, they cannot afford to run most of them, its rather a potential hazard both with the ease of terrorist access, and also environmentally. You can probably spot some of them on Google Earth.

Originally posted by R988
Most Russian subs are lying disused and unserviceable in Ports, they cannot afford to run most of them, its rather a potential hazard both with the ease of terrorist access, and also environmentally. You can probably spot some of them on Google Earth.

this was quite some time before Google Earth like around early 90's to mid, he also said that his job was to look at satelite photos and then figure out what they sound like. Although your idea of Googleing (?) them might be fun

Originally posted by American Mad Man
The US also has nearly FIVE TIMES the number of nuclear warheads as Russia. As this indicates, Russia can not support more then 3,500 nuclear warheads according to START2, and more realistically can not afford to keep more then 2,500 nuclear warheads. The US of course has over 10,000.

Wow what are you smoking buddy, cause I want some!


Russia - 8,500 plus 11,000 in non-operational stockpiles

U.S - 7,000 plus 3,000 in reserve

Arms Control Association (2004)

If I recall correctly, the first nuclear bomb to be lost was over British Columbia. There was a big show on the Discovery channel a few months ago. After the crash, a small squad of American soldiers went up into the mountains and destroyed the wreck (for the most part) and assumably took the weapon with them.

www.mysteriesofcanada.com...

[edit on 21-10-2005 by Kinote]

34. Number of islands in Enewetak atoll vaporized
by the November 1, 1952 "Mike" H-bomb test: 1

Chuck Hansen, U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History, Orion Books, 1988, pp. 58-59, 95

Number of islands vaporized?! What the?!

Originally posted by phixion

Number of islands vaporized?! What the?!

Reason #84,677,863,934,568,634,568,365 not to mess with the US.