US decommissions massive Cold War nuke

The US has begun decommissioning its last B53 bomb, one of the largest thermonuclear devices ever built for its Cold War arsenal. The 12-foot device entered active service in 1962, and over 300 were built in all, with two variants: the B53-Y1, designed to create lasting fallout, and the relatively clean B52-Y2. The nine- …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Oh no it hasn't

"has made the world safer and for which everyone involved should be proud"

Huge bombs that had to be flown to their target on big vulnerable bombers and so

1, would never be used and 2, wouldn't get there anyway

Are being replaced by tiny, no fallout, would be perfectly reasonable to use against a hardened bunker in a certain middle eastern country starting with I.R.A. - type bombs. It wouldn't be a nuclear war - it would just be a "fission enhanced bunker penetrating, people friendly munition" or some such (extra points for making the acronym KITTEN).

Then of course it would be convenient to use against a cave complex in Afghanistan, then against a wedding party, then ....

[Christoph]

"Fun-Sized Mobile Agony and Death Dispenser" as Agatha might say.

[Daniel B.]

Wasn't that the Castle that used that term?

It does look like something Agatha and/or Gil would build, though!

[tony72]

Your backronym, Sir

I agree with everything you say, but without the sarcasm. If the country you mentioned crossed the line, their leaders were sitting in a bunker, and Uncle Sam has a nuke that can take them out while only irradiating a few thousand acres of mostly-uninhabitable desert in the process ... well I say do it.

Anyway, KITTEN; best I can come up with at this time of the night - "Keep In Tactical Tract Explosive (Nuclear)". How's that?

[That Awful Puppy]

@tony72

Crossed which line, exactly? Doing stuff that displeases the almighty Uncle Sam? Running their country the way they see fit, however f-ed up it might be? Joining the nuclear club without Merkin blessing?

And then you wonder why most of the world considers Americans to be violent buffoons.

(NB: I know quite a few Americans who are anything but violent buffoons, but then again, they seem to be not quite as obnoxiously loud as the Murrikah-f*k-yeah eejits.)

[peyton?]

Who is "they"?

'Running their country the way they see fit, however f-ed up it might be?'

Does this refer to the foreign government, or its people. There is a difference.

[That Awful Puppy]

"Does this refer to the foreign government, or its people. There is a difference."

Actually, there isn't. If the vast majority of the population were utterly dissatisfied with their government, there would have been a revolution already. You know, like the one they had in 1979.

[Anonymous Coward]

Different situation

@ That Awful Puppy

The Shah was weak, he had lost the plot, there was a lot of in-fighting in government.

It's a lot harder now. The uprisings have been put down hard.

I have visited the country with my wife - we are not muslim and we did think we were complying with the dress code - some of her hair was protruding outside of her head scarf and from out of nowhere someone came up and challenged her - apparently these religious police are a law unto themselves (this was in Isfahan). Argue and you end up in jail.

[blem wit]

The left socialized this title

Disclaimer: I am not merkin. I am braziian, but a conosseir of all things geopolitical.

Nevermind the fact that financing, training and aiding Hezbollah, Hamas and a miriad of other smaller jihadist armies.

Nevermind a pivotal role on the smuggling of russian and chinese arms and missiles into latin america dictatorships.

Nevermind promising to wipe Israel off the map, while building a nuke.

Nevermind a history of oppression demonstrating they have no qualms about meeting protests for obviously (admitted by an ayatolah) faked elections with hot lead. Massacrating its own civil population.

Nevermind that and a really really long list that could go on, the merkins are the thugs.

Yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaders...

... tend to live in the capital. High population density.

"take them out while only irradiating a few thousand acres of mostly-uninhabitable desert in the process "

7 million people live in Tehran. Many tried and failed in their attempts at an uprising.

Who's line is it anyway ?

[Yag]

yeah, sure...

As the command bunker would be unconveniencely placed in the middle of the desert instead of several hundred meters below the capital city?

Human shield - the ultimate anti-nuke against PR-challenged countries.

[Pisnaz]

Kinetic Impact Tungsten Tipped Encampment (or Enemy) Neutralizer

[fch]

will anyone think of the babies ...

Bombs Are Best In All Situations !

there's something very human about violence :(

[Anonymous Coward]

@Yet Another AC

We are (EU/UK/USA) are going to great lengths to not have a war with Iran, with extreme provocation.

Iran are supplying all the know how for roadside IEDs in 'stan and Iraq, yet we don't do anything about it.

Iran kidnap hikers and other citizens from near their land, yet we don't do anything about it.

Iran kidnap our sailors, we don't start a firefight and we don't do anything that isn't diplomatic to get them back. This would normally be an act of war.

I could go on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good justification...

US supplied money and arms to the IRA.

US Supplied arms & training to the mujahideen (much of which aka the Taliban) during the Russia / Afgan war

Supported Iraq (a certain Sadam Hussain) in the Iran / Iraq war.

So can we drop one on the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diplomacy

Nothing wrong with dimploacy.

I don't agree with your take on the Navy incident. We strayed into Iranian waters, the crew were listening to their iPods. They went on TV (didn't appear to resist much) and generally tarnished the reputation of a once great Navy.

Kidnapping muppets who strayed into their area - sheer opportunism.

They will be punished through diplomacy. Best way to do it.

Always keep the moral high ground.

[SkippyBing]

@AC 14:00

We didn't stray into Iranian waters, even if you take the Iranian definition of their territorial waters into account, which aren't recognised in International Law, we were outside their waters.

They apparently tried the same trick against an Australian boarding team who responded with 'strong language' which sufficiently discouraged the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

[Dave Bell]

On that incident, it would be tempting to suggest that the offending mariners might have been better treated by the Iranians that they might have been by the Portsmouth Plods, but on what I hear, the average RN sailor tends not to riot in bars.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinetic Impact Toughened Target Enhanced* Neutraliser.

Our warfighters can look forward to distributing some collateral damage with these bad boys sometimes soon, and the press won't understand a word of it. Just like the use of 'non target specific incendiaries' back in '91.

*Because you can't say 'nuclear'. That would be scary.

[alexh2o]

Kiloton Impeded Tactical Thermonuclear Explosive Neutraliser (KITTEN)

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

FLUFFY

Fuzed Laydown Ultimate Fission/Fusion Yield?

[C-N]

Icons

Where is my Buck Turgidson Icon? I need it!

[Herbert Meyer]

better yet...

Where are the handholds for Major Kong ?

[Tiny_Lewis]

25 megatons? Pah.

We had the 7.62mm SLR - the Ulster Widow Maker. Killed Death Stars at 300metres.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Here's hoping someone sneezes during dismantling.

Fracking Yanks.

Considering that the "Cold War" was mainly hype generated by the MIC, as opposed to "making the world safe for democracy" it would just be fitting.

[kain preacher]

Just to be clear

You are hoping that some sneezes so the bomb goes off killing thousands of people ?

[Anonymous Coward]

@kain preacher

"You are hoping that some sneezes so the bomb goes off killing thousands of people ?"

Well, that's exactly what it was designed to do. (Millions, maybe). What's that you say - if it went off in America it would kill the wrong people? Oh, I see.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Tom Welsh

You're saying that it'd be ok for this device to kill Americans, because it's was designed to be used outside of America? Really?

Even by the Reg's commentators' standards of rabid anti-Americanism that's pretty low.

A terrible weapon is being dismantled, having not been used - this is a good thing, not a call to say I hope it goes off and kills a bunch of people.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC

"You're saying that it'd be ok for this device to kill Americans, because it's was designed to be used outside of America? Really?"

No. Really no. If you were able to read, you could see that in my post I nowhere said it would be OK for this "device" (as you euphemistically call it) to kill Americans.

I merely pointed out that it was specifically designed to kill people. Millions of them.

I have said what I have said.

I have not said what I have not said.

[IsJustabloke]

I think you'll find that anybody killed with the thing would be the "wrong" kind of people

[Anonymous Coward]

@Destroy All Monsters

"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster."

[John 104]

Get stuffed

The UK are no golden child either in world history.

[Nights_are_Long]

@ The first post - So your thinking is we are getting "The FatMan" from Fallout 3?

Either way I am mixed on this, Hopefully they have it kept in a Museum as a warning from the past that fearing the other is not always a smart thing to do AND as a Terrifiying historic relic.

But small nukes just make no sense to me, the whole point of a Tactical Nuclear weapon was to clear a area of the enemy not just to blow the living shit out of a bunker, that was the whole point of the higher payload ICBM's they are massive and designed not only to knock out the supporting infrastructure but to collapse the bunker in on it's self.

[Bill B]

museum piece

I agree... we should keep at least one just in case the apes take over

[HooHah!]

@Bill B.: "I agree... we should keep at least one just in case the apes take over"

Who do you think are in charge?

"Darwin was wrong. Man is still an ape." -- Inherit the Wind.

[ian 22]

Nuclear made feasible

Global warming meets nuclear winter... And they cancel out!

Now we can have our long postponed nuclear war and eat it too!

[Winkypop]

Where's the Kaboom?

There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!

[John Smith 19]

May I be ther first say

Oh ere it's a *big* one.

On a slightly more technical note I always wondered how long one of these things could go without going back to the factory for servicing.

It seems very hard to believe this has been sitting on a shelf for nearly 50 years.

[observer144]

There is a shelf-life. The fission components (i.e. uranium and plutonium) have half-lives. This usually impacts just the pit (the core of the fission weapon), but might also impact the tamper and the casing and "spark plug" of the fusion side of the device too.

Those typically need to be replaced or remanufactured to filter out and purify the metals.

Over time, the half-life will degrade the weapon to the point where it will not go critical, thus rendering it into a dirty, but conventional bomb.

[Zog The Undeniable]

Technically the enriched uranium is just the first stage of the warhead - for it to be a thermonuclear device, you need to fuse hydrogen isotopes (whether contained in the bomb already, or made on the fly from other light elements) into helium. Having said that, a lot of the early thermonuclear devices in fact generated the bulk of their explosive power from fission and the fusion was just the icing on the cake.

Will there now be a load of cheap enriched uranium on eBay to power Sizewell B?

[Tom 7]

Dr Strangelove was right.

Something about winning if they just had one man left alive at the bottom of a mine.

I don't think bunker busters can get down the 1000's of meters miners can.

[Thomas 18]

Not sure there's much to eat at the bottom of a mine

Except other miners.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Tomas 18

It would be very easy, animals could be bread und SLAUGHTERED.

Also, we must not allow a mineshaft gap.

[Loyal Commenter]

It vould be qvite simple mein Fuhrer, err Mr President...

[Anonymous Coward]

Spelling

Surely that should be BUTTERED.?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think bunker busters can get down the 1000's of meters miners can".

But the pressure waves probably can. It's not really a matter of depth at all, just whether there is any door or whatever that can block the blast. Also, perhaps, what alternative paths there are for it to dissipate.

It would be no consolation to be sitting at the bottom of a mile, six miles down, when your environment suddenly turns into a fair replica of the surface of Venus.

[Nigel 11]

Bunker busting

I suspect that a bunker more than 2km underground in hard rock not prone to collapses cannot be busted. The USA put SAC HQ under a mountain for this reason. Iran has done the same with its A-bomb factories.

If you're going to try, you need to make sure that the explosive shockwave is well-coupled to the rock rather than the atmosphere. That's why a third of a megatonne detonated a few meters underground is an adequate (probably much "improved") replacement for this multimegatonne monster.

As for environment turning into "a fair replica of Venus" you've been reading too many Z-grade apocalypse-SF stories. Nature has several times inflicted far worse on the planet than our bombs ever could. The Chixulub impact was about 100 Teratonnes, several orders of magnitude more than the combined arsenals of the USSR and USA at the height of the cold war. It might have wiped out the dinosaurs - if not it helped them depart the stage. It would certainly have put the human race back to the stone age if we'd been around at the time. In the big picture, it was a fairly routine mass extinction event - nothing like as bad as the big one 200Myears earlier.

[IE User]

Sure, no more use for it now that Jobs is gone

No one else bidding $40B

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinetic Impact Triggers The Enormous Nuke?

[Anonymous Custard]

Hmm, small tactical nuclear weapons...

So what next, the 10 megaton fission-enhanced hand grenade?

The only way to make the world safer is to get rid of the lot of them, including the military types worldwide who deem them necessary.

[Nigel 11]

Nuclear artillery

They did make a nuclear shell, called the "Davy Crockett". I think that even during the cold war, they soon realized that a weapon that included the people firing it in its deadly blast radius was rather pointless.

The trouble with getting rid of all nukes, is that it leaves the field clear for whatever evil megalomaniac decides to hold the world to ransom by building a few of his own in secret. Human nature being what it is, our best hope is for some number of hopefully stable countries to have fairly small nuclear arsenals, and for everyone to know that any power which is first to use one, will be on the receiving end of all the rest. We're not there yet, but closer than we were 50 years ago.

[Yag]

even worse...

The "davy crockett" was not an artillery shell, but a hand held grenade launcher rifle... with a nuclear warhead...

Well, it was the 50s you know...

[Dave Bell]

Look it up, guys.

It used the W54 warhead, with a yield of 20 tons TNT. and there were two different launchers. with a maximum range of 2.5 miles. Using the short-range launcher would have been a tad hairy because the effects seems to have depended on the immediate radiation effects (it wasn't a neutron bomb, but the idea was similar).

It was about as small as you could make a nuke, and the scary thing seems to be that they were controlled by Sergeants. (Who probably have more maturity than the average 2nd Lieutenant, but they're still not officers.)

[/dev/null]

Ignite?

Bombs don't "ignite" (apart from incendiary bombs), they "detonate".

[Loyal Commenter]

The commencement of a nuclear fusion reaction is generally referred to as ignition, not just in thermonuclear warheads, but also when collapsing interstellar gas clouds reach the required temperature to form a new star, or when accreted matter onto a white dwarf star reaches a high enough temperature and density to cause a type Ia supernova.

[Wombling_Free]

eh?

I thought it was 'critical', as in "at the point the weapon goes critical..."

Hmmm, that B53 looks like a classic Teller-Ulam - so there will be a couple of pounds of plutonium (yukky stuff to get on your pants), a good smatter of beryllium, a fair bit of lithium, a whole lot of styrofoam (it was invented for this you know - and comprises a good proportion of the plasma fireball) and a 'sparkplug' of uranium. Oh, don't forget a tiny bit of tritium in the core, too, which is why old bombs don't work so well - it decays too quickly. You know a weapon is a bit mental when it uses enriched U235 pretty much as a fuse; it is 'only' there to generate a massive gamma & xray pulse! Actually its fascinating how thermonukes work - they do real alchemy on the fly - transmuting Li into deuterium in a buggeringly short time (1/1,000,000th of a second or something)

Not a whole lot of radiation danger in dismantling it - the Pu will get reused (which is why they are dismantling it, methinks!) - the really big danger is the 500kg or so 50-year-old Torpex lenses surrounding the Pu core and Be pit. Care to point a power drill at possibly unstable old high-explosive?

Why, yes, Mr.FBI man, I do know a good deal about how to build a nuculumular barm... I learned most of it in High School I'll have you know... we even theorised how we could build a small dirty nuke from stuff we had lying around at school (this is in the mid 80's - our intended target was the Catholic school down the road)

[Archie The Albatross]

Ectually.....

Nukes are neither ignited nor detonated, they are "initiated".

I understand it stings rather more than somewhat.

[dwieske]

too bad

that Bill Clinton cancelled the IFR reactor project (after a very generous donation from the anti-nuke lobby)....else these warhead could be used to provides decades of carbon free power, while being reduced to shortliving isotopes. And FYI: the smallest nuke was shot from....a bazooka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_%28nuclear_device%29

[Anonymous Coward]

Easier than an IED?

The later nukes has pit deformation and protective mebranes along with other security features, you could probably make them safe with a couple of screwdrivers and a small bang would result designed to damage itself as much as possible.

These early ones, did they have PAL etc or something to stop induviduals denotating them on a whim. I can't image it would be easy to make safe but easier then an IED or something with countermeasures.

[Nigel 11]

For the appropriate value of "safe"

Yes, once the electrically-operated detonators are disconnected, any nuclear bomb is probably incapable of generating a nuclear chain reaction, and certainly incapable of generating any yield in excess of a few kilotonnes.

If you are the person dismantling it, or even the person a few kilometers downwind, this consideration is quite academic. There's a lot of painstaking work to go before you can think of it as safe. A nuclear bomb it may be no longer, a bomb it most certainly remains.

[tmTM]

eh?

"The bomb is being decommissioned in Texas – but very, very carefully, because most of the original designers are dead and plans for the device could be incomplete"

They've done 300 of these things now, why hasn't anyone thought to take pictures when dismantling the 299 other ones to show how it's done??

[John H Woods]

time to call ...

... iSuppli!

[Steven Raith]

and the build cost is....

...probably $500 in parts, minus the nuke.

Just hit it with a hammer a few times, it'll be reet...

Steven R

[rcomm]

Unboxing is a relatively new phenomenon...?

[F111F]

Idiot Journalists...

apparently didn't understand that the disassembly plans were created for the FIRST one, not the last one... This one only took an hour or so to render safe and dismantle.

[Ben Bawden]

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the War Room!

Only The Register could describe a nuclear weapon as "relatively clean"

[Return To Sender]

"Today, we're moving beyond the Cold War nuclear weapons complex that built it and toward a 21st century Nuclear Security Enterprise"

Does this mean moving in to the (mushroom) cloud?

[Ru]

Always with the Tsar Bomba

The Tsar wasn't really a practical device in the same way that the B53 was. Too big, too heavy, required *removing some of the fuel tanks* of the plane intended to carry the damn thing.

No, it was just an experiment. The B53 was the real deal.

[Robert Ramsay]

Heh

"The bomb is being decommissioned in a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) facility in Amarillo, Texas – but very, very carefully, because most of the original designers are dead and plans for the device could be incomplete."

Sounds like most people will be singing "Is the way OUT of Amarillo?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if there will be any "lets sneak up behind him and bang an inflated paper bag" type lunacy going on? My guess is that it would be hard to resist.

[observer144]

"While the B53 may have been one of the largest US bombs, it's a lightweight compared to the thenSoviet Unions AN602, or Tsar bomb, which is thought to be the largest nuclear device ever exploded. The Tsar had a nominal yield of 100 megatons, later halved, and would have created a 2.3km fireball from its ignition point testing showed."

Hey Reg, what's with the passive syntax?

1. "which is thought to be the largest" - no, it WAS the largest. That is not in dispute.

2. "and would have crreate" - no, it did create a fireball that size. It was tested and they know how big it was. What's with the passive tense talking about something that already happened?

[KrisMac]

...President Obama's vision of a world without nuclear weapons...

...has Barack been talking to th Pakistani's lately? I'm not sure that they 100% agree with his perspective...

[MacroRodent]

Breathing

> "...the B53-Y1, designed to create lasting fallout, ..."

I wonder why even a Cold War weapons designer would intentionally want to create lasting fall-out? It would have been as much problem for friends as for enemies. (Unless he was Dr Strangelove making a real Doomsday Bomb).

[Anonymous Coward]

Far Side cartoon

http://cafewitteveen.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/sunday-morning-far-side-blast-from-the-past/

[Peter Clarke 1]

Planetary Defence System

So what are we going to use against the ELE comet/asteroid thats rushing towards us as we speak? Bruce Willis is gonna be mighty disappointed with the mini-nukes we've still got in stock. I guess it's a moot point until we get a successor to the Space Shuttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Hand me my copy of Threads, I just need a reminder about why we needed these beasts!

[Anonymous Coward]

publicity stunt

OK then..

One nuke down, innumerable (classified) to go.

A short list of a-bomb toting nations, also known as "The Nuclear Club":

US of A

Ye Olde Soviet Union, now Russia

People's Republic of China

United Kingdom (the only non-republic here, funnily the most democratic of this list)

France

India

Pakistan

Israel

People's Republic of North Korea

Pacifist, stable nations them all. Respectful of human rights, committed to non-violence. All run by open, transparent, fair governments.

---

(I'm not British by the way, just a citizen of a country not belonging to The Club)

[Anonymous Coward]

can we get an iFixit essay?

Pretty please?

Time to dig up that old Dr Strangelove DVD for another spin..