US's most powerful nuclear bomb being dismantled

I'm on the fence with this one..

was it to old school...

was it out dated ...

bomb

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. The completion of the dismantling program is a year ahead of schedule, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, and aligns with President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the number of nuclear weapons.

Ahhh...but then there is this..

The B53's disassembly ends the era of big megaton bombs, he said. The bombs' size helped compensate for their lack of accuracy. Today's bombs are smaller but more precise, reducing the amount of collateral damage, Kristensen said.

feelin better now..sorta..not..

Since the B53 was made using older technology by engineers who have since retired or died, developing a disassembly process took time. Engineers had to develop complex tools and new procedures to ensure safety.

yep...

lost all the tools to take it apart or put it together...

lemme check my notes here..

Hmmm

nope.. can't find those damn tools to fix this big azz bomb...

phew...

thank goodness no one knows where we are gonna keep all those old explosive pieces..

ooops..

Workers in Texas separated the roughly 300 pounds of high explosives inside from the special nuclear material — uranium — known as the pit. The work was done outside of public view for security reasons, but explosives from a bomb taken apart earlier were detonated as officials and reporters watched from less than a mile away.

source

I hope they don't cut the wrong wire and send America back to the dark ages. Great find. S&F

I lived in Amarillo for a year at
one time - knowing that bomb
and others were there gave
me anxiety and nightmares.
I hope they know what their
doing.

And right, why now - really -
lost those papers, huh -
yea right

Feeling overly sarcastic tonight , so I'm going with they had a garage sale of used tools . File cabinets also , oops there must have been some files still in them . Microfiche is at the McDonalds with the film we left there .

Guess they never expected to have to take the thing apart .

I guess a 50 year old mega nuke has probably reached its shelf life.Not to worry we have many more accurate models to go around.

is that a joke. a nuclear bomb designed to reduce collateral damage. the whole point of a nuclear bomb is to inflict maximum damage and are aimed at cities.

Anything 50 yrs old or older shall not be in service.

They should have shot it at the moon. It would be cool to watch a nuke slam into the moon and detonate.

reply to post by TupacShakur


Not allowed as it's banned! War cannot be declared upon The Moon!

Originally posted by TupacShakur
They should have shot it at the moon. It would be cool to watch a nuke slam into the moon and detonate.

right, until you realize how the moon controls the tides on earth and helps keep us from getting too wobbly. I guess you were kidding though.

I wouldn't want to be in the same room with that thing let alone touch it and dismantle it.

reply to post by baddmove


I cannot fathom a reason why we would ever need a "precise" nuclear bomb.. the idea with a nuke is to wipe out entire regions/metro areas and leave the country essentially without any means of government or industry, as well as reduce population as much as possible. Would we blow up only a few blocks of a city now? Maybe leap frog and drop a nuke every other street? Ridiculous.

I would bet we have a bigger better bomb that we have not revealed to the public, or some other means of weaponry to reduce a city to ashes.

Actually I personally think that the military would be more inclined to use biological warfare over nukes anyways..

They should dismantle all nukes or they just look like freakin hypocrites telling Iran etc off ... maybe they are

The nuke was designed to " bust bunkers" by producing an earthquake so the news said and yeah the technicans and designers are long since gone.

Russian Roulette dismantling that thing good luck to them they gonna need it.

The 1.5-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II killed as many as 140,000 people.

The last of the nation’s biggest nuclear bombs, a Cold War relic 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

Its so sad that someone would even consider dropping bomb that is so big, imagine how many lives it would take if one 600 times smaller could take 140 000 lives

reply to post by baddmove

good,every one of them should be dismantled....

What about the other 5999 modern and more powerful nukes that US have stock pilled
until they create a new bigger war to use their big toy

reply to post by Viking9019


You could stay in the same city, as for me I don't want to be in a 50 mile radius of that thing.

reply to post by Ben81


They are next to be dismantled.

reply to post by baddmove


that ]B-53 megaton bomb might be the biggest in the USA arsenal...but is still smaller that the old Soviet 100 MegaTon bomb that the Russians still have in active duty (just an educated guess as i have no insider info about Russian Nukes)

i would think that Nutron bombs which leave infrastructure undestroyed and the EMP bombs which would disable all electronics in a tens of miles radius would be the type of warheads favored now instead of the city Doomsday bombs of the cold-war era

i find the fanfare about dismantling the monster bomb kind of wry, as there are now at least 50 much smaller cruise-missile types of tactical nukes already deployed...the defense budget will remain intact, this is just the first reminder that the whole nuclear arsenal older than 20 years old will need replaced up till 2039-2040 when TEOTWAWKI takes place