Last Nuclear ‘Monster Weapon’ Gets Dismantled

[n2doc]

By Spencer Ackerman



In the 1960s, the skies above the United States were patrolled by agents of the apocalypse. Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses circled the North American continent, 24 hours a day, cradling two megabombs in their bellies. Those B-53 bombs each weighed 10,000 pounds. Were one to drop on the White House, a nine-megaton yield would destroy all life out into suburban Maryland and Virginia.

It was the ultimate Cold War weapon, the one that Major Kong would have ridden into Armageddon at the end of Dr. Strangelove. And on Tuesday, it will no longer exist.

Out at the Energy Department’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, the last of America’s B-53s is in storage. Come Tuesday, it will be dissected: The 300 pounds of high explosives will be separated from its enriched uranium heart, known as a “pit.” The pit will be placed into a storage locker at Pantex, where it will await a final, highly supervised termination.

“It’s the end of the era of monster weapons, if you will,” says Hans Kristensen, who directs the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of the American Scientists.


First brought into the U.S. nuclear stockpile in 1962, the B-53 was so big because it was so dumb. With poor precision mechanisms for finding a target — “Its accuracy was horrendous,” Kristensen says — what it lacked in smarts it made up in strength. The nukes that vaporized Hiroshima were a mere 12 kilotons; the B53 provided nine megatons — 9,000 kilotons — of destructive power.

more

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/b53-dismantled/

[TheWraith]

1. Kicked and recommended. Good reading.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt to have a long-time supporter of nuclear reduction in the White House.

[Kennah]

2. This looks like an "Our dick is bigger" weapon

[-..__...]

5. If you want to put it that way...

the Soviets were the Kings of the Cocks of the nuclear club by a long shot...

Tsar Bomba (Russian: Царь-бомба) is the nickname for the AN602 hydrogen bomb, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Also referenced as Kuz'kina Mat (Russian: Кузькина мать, Kuzka's mother), in this usage meaning "something that has not been seen before".

Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb was originally designed to have a yield of about 100 megatons of TNT (420 PJ); however, the bomb yield was reduced to 50 megatons in order to reduce nuclear fallout. This attempt was successful, as it was one of the cleanest (relative to its yield) nuclear bombs ever detonated. Only one bomb of this type was ever built and it was tested on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.<1><2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

All and all it really was just show dick size, show of power and muscle flexing since outrageously high yield nuclear weapons have no appreciable strategic value.

[AngkorWot]

6. Wiki's got a lot of really cool stuff on these old nuclear weapons

just from an engineering/scientific standpoint.

Like the high altitude tests they did over the south pacific.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

7. If this was our largetst... Russia's dick was WAY bigger.

The AN602 (aka: The "Tasr Bomba") was a 50,000-100,000 kilotons.

By comparison the US bomb in the OP achieved 9,000 kilotons

[krispos42]

8. Well, there's a certain loss of efficiency with bigger nukes.

You need 4x the boom to destroy twice the area, I believe.

Or maybe it's 8x... Hmmm... I wonder how that would work, actually. The surface of the earth can me thought of as a 2D area, but the bomb explodes in three dimensions.

Well, anyway, you make up for a lack of accuracy with more firepower.

Also, the bomb shelters that were underground... the command-and-control centers and weapons bunkers and headquarters, you needed to hit them pretty much dead-on to destroy them unless you had a big nuke.

Later on some genius figured out you get more destruction with three smaller nukes scattered a few miles apart around a city than one big one in the middle. That's why ICBMs have multiple warheads... you can pepper an urban area with a half-dozen scattered nukes, entirely destroying the city, or target a half-dozen smaller, more military targets.

It look a lot of technical expertise to make nukes that could fit a half-dozen in an ICBM (I guess the geometry was really weird) but they did it.

[Swede]

3. Close only counts in horseshoes,handgrenades and hydrogen bombs.

:shrug:

[Worship Money]

4. Ugh, they're ALL monster weapons

[unkachuck]

9. and not a moment too soon.....

"It's the end of the era of monster weapons,..."

....it's been more and more difficult for me to crawl under the table....does this mean I don't have to duck-and-cover any longer?

[gordianot]

10. They still do duck and cover drills at school if in vicinity of nuclear power plants.

Followed by school evacuation drills. Almost gone but not quite.

[jmowreader]

11. If it wouldn't cause the end of all life on earth...

I'd say the perfect way to "destroy" this bomb would be to drop the fucker on Bush's pig farm. Preferably with Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Grover Norquist locked inside.

But, of course, we can't do that.