Puget Sound’s ticking nuclear time bomb

Editor's Note: This is a guest editorial by Glen Milner, a member of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action. It was originally published at Crosscut.com on January 10, 2017. 

In September of 1980, routine maintenance work on a U.S. Air Force Titan II missile near Damascus, Arkansas, became a life-and-death crisis. The trouble started when a 21-year-old airman accidentally dropped a socket from his wrench, which then fell 70 feet and pierced the missile’s side, releasing a rush of explosive fuel.

The W53 warhead on the Titan II missile at Damascus was the most powerful weapon in the U.S. arsenal at the time and was equal to three times the firepower of all the bombs used in World War II, including the two atomic bombs. The initial explosion catapulted the 740-ton silo door away from the missile silo and ejected the second stage and the nuclear warhead. Once clear of the silo, the second stage exploded. The warhead safety devices performed as designed and it did not explode.

This scene, which is described in horrifying detail in Eric Schlosser’s 2014 book, “Command and Control,” is now the centerpiece of a PBS American Experience documentary of the same name. The film aired on on KCTS 9 public television (Crosscut’s sister organization) January 10. If you missed it, you can stream it, and find bonus videos and articles, on the PBS website here.  

“Command and Control” shows what can happen when the weapons built to protect us threaten to destroy us, and it speaks directly to Puget Sound citizens: Locally, we face a similar threat in Hood Canal with the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the United States at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.

An accident at Bangor involving nuclear weapons occurred in November 2003when a ladder penetrated a nuclear nose cone during a routine missile offloading at the Explosives Handling Wharf. All missile-handling operations at the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific (SWFPAC) were stopped for nine weeks until Bangor could be recertified for handling nuclear weapons. Three top commanders were fired but the public was never informed until information was leaked to the media in March 2004.

The Navy never publicly admitted that the 2003 accident occurred. The Navy failed to report the accident at the time to county or state authorities. Public responses from governmental officials were generally in the form of surprise and disappointment.

A major danger at Bangor is the possibility of an accident involving Trident rocket motor propellant while loading and unloading the nuclear-equipped D-5missiles at the Explosives Handling Wharf. Trident propellant is more volatile than TNT and is capable of detonating upon impact. Propellant in one missile has the explosive force equal to 155,000 pounds of TNT. An accident at the Explosives Handling Wharf at Bangor could result in an explosion equal to 3.7 million pounds of TNT involving up to 24 D-5 missiles on one SSBN submarine.

Get More Articles Like This

The result of such an explosion likely would not cause a nuclear detonation. Instead, plutonium from the approximately 108 nuclear warheads on one submarine could be spread by the wind.

There is no weapons system in the U.S. arsenal with the operational risks of a Trident submarine. Consider the nuclear reactor on each submarine; the complexity of 25,000 parts in just one D-5 missile; and routine loading operations for explosive missiles and warheads on the Hood Canal waterfront.

Robert Kenner, director of “Command and Control,” states, “Opinions range widely on whether we should have nuclear weapons, but while we have them we can all agree that safety should be paramount. Given how devastating the consequences of an accident could be, we must strive for the lowest possible probability.

Our Sponsors

“After an accident, everyone will be asking why we didn’t do something,” he adds. “We need to be asking these questions before it’s too late.”

Watching the documentary may help viewers decide whether nuclear weapons are worth the risk.

Eric Shclosser: Time for "honest appraisal of the risks and benefits of...Trident"

Journalist Eric Schlosser broke new ground with his 2013 book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. Through his careful and exhaustive research on nuclear weapons for this book Schlosser has become a respected voice regarding nuclear weapons safety and policy.

In the article below in The Herald Scotland, Schlosser says (among other things) that "There should be an honest appraisal of the risks and benefits of having Trident..." Although Schlosser was speaking to a Sottish audience, he was obviously speaking to the subject of Trident on both sides of the Atlantic. Both are relics of the Cold War, and supporters justify their continued existence (and the building of replacement fleets) using Cold War rationale.

We can only hope that Schlosser will continue to travel and speak on the topic, bringing it to the forefront of public discourse on both sides of The Pond so that we can have an open and honest dialogue about why we need to continue spending trillions of dollars on weapons that we can never use and that present such huge risks to humanity.

Note: Text in the article highlighted in BOLD is my emphasis.

*********************

Eric Schlosser: there should be an honest appraisal of the risks and benefits of Trident

Teddy Jamieson
Senior Features Writer
Herald Scotland, heraldscotland.com
Tuesday 25 November 2014

On the morning of September 19 this year Scotland woke to find that, among other things, it was still a nuclear state.

The choice to stay within the United Kingdom meant that Faslane remains home to Britain's nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future.

But with the Trident missile programme up for renewal in 2016 the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser believes it should remain a live issue. "I have to say whether you support them or you oppose them, nuclear weapons should be an issue of great concern and interest in Scotland and I hope there's a very vigorous debate about them because they're in your backyard," Schlosser told Herald Scotland.

A british Trident submarine at its home port, Faslane, Scotland

Anyone who has read Schlosser's latest book, Command and Control; The Story of Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Safety, can understand why. Schlosser who made his name with Fast Food Nation, his expose of the fast food industry in the United States, has spent the last six years looking at the record of nuclear weapons in the United States since their invention until the present day. Between 1950 and 1968 alone he discovered at least 1,200 nuclear weapons were involved in significant accidents. A single safety switch prevented the detonation of a hydrogen bomb in Faro, North Carolina, in 1961. And that record of accidents continues to the present day.

"There's this mentality that because it hasn't happened it can't happen and that's just a fallacy," Schlossser says. "You could say because of the laws of probability it is more likely to happen now than ever before."

Schlosser, who is based in New York, is travelling to Vienna this week to talk at an international conference on nuclear weapons. Speaking from his home he said that the message he intends to give is that nuclear weapons are complex, dangerous machines, "and, like all machines, they go wrong".

"It seems that human beings are much better at creating these systems than controlling them, understanding them or knowing what to do when they go wrong."

The American military is currently struggling with aging nuclear weapons and poor morale among those looking after them.

 A U.S. Trident submarine 

Last week Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has now stepped down, announced that The Pentagon will have to spend $10bn to make emergency fixes to its nuclear weapons infrastructure which is also suffering from broken and missing equipment, poor leadership and inadequate training and staffing.

"There's been incredible complacency in the management of nuclear weapons," Schlosser argues. "They're just not glamorous for the military any more. There's an acknowledgment within the United States military that they pretty much have no use except for deterring an attack on the United States. The military doctrine of the United States right now is whenever possible, as much as possible, to minimise civilian casualties and nuclear weapons are the exact opposite of that."

And America, he points out, has more experience than most in dealing with nuclear weapons. As such it represents best practice. "And yet still we've come close again and again and again. That tells you something about the challenge of managing it."

With India and Pakistan increasing their nuclear capabilities and fears that Iran could develop nuclear weapons through its nuclear power programme we should be worried. Schlosser is not convinced that a deal in the talks with Iran - which have just been extended after failing to meet the deadline - can ever be reached, especially with a very conservative US Congress now in place.

But if Iran does progress to join the nuclear club that raises issues beyond the inevitable escalation of tensions in the Middle East, he points out. "Being a new nuclear weapons state means not having very much experience of this technology meaning a much greater risk of a catastrophic accident."

That doesn't describe Scotland, of course, but Schlosser believes Trident itself is problematic. "It was built for a very specific purpose during the cold war and certain choices that were made make it potentially more dangerous as a weapons system; specifically the type of rocket fuel used in the third stage of the missile and the type of conventional explosive used in its warhead. If you have a fire and an explosion you can have a fair amount of plutonium scattered and you might even have a nuclear yield at some level.

"There should be an honest appraisal of the risks and benefits of having Trident and not just a boilerplate denial that these things are perfectly safe, because they're not.

"If you were going to make the Trident missile today you would not design it the way that it is and it would be a safer weapons system so you could argue one or two things. Get rid of them or load them very carefully and unload them very carefully and protect them from any terrorist activity very carefully."

###

Source URL for original article: http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/eric-schlosser-there-should-be-an-honest-appraisal-of-the-risks-and-benefits-.1416918630

Schlosser's book Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, published by Penguin Books, is available at public libraries and booksellers everywhere.

Trident is "an accident waiting to happen"

Eric Schlosser, who will talk about his new book on nuclear weapons in Seattle on October 1st, published a provocative article in The Guardian just the other day.

Nuclear weapons: an accident waiting to happen focuses primarily on British nuclear weapons -  specifically the country's four Trident submarines and nuclear armed missiles they carry.  The following paragraph asks questions not only absent from the British public debate on Trident, but the public debate in the U.S. as well:

The public debate about Britain's Trident submarines and their missiles has focused mainly on the long-term costs and economic benefits of replacing them, the number of jobs that might be gained or lost, the necessity of round-the-clock patrols. Some fundamental questions have been largely absent from the discussion. How would this cold war missile, due to remain in service for another 30 years, actually be used in a 21st-century conflict? What targets would it destroy and in what circumstances? Whom is it supposed to kill? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, do the British people face a greater chance of being harmed by their own nuclear weapons, through an accident or a mistake, than by a surprise attack?

Ahhhh yes!!!  We must not forget the monumental risks imposed by Trident (on both sides of The Pond).  Schlosser discusses issues specific to Trident later on in the article:

The safety of the Trident D5 missile has long been a source of concern. In December 1990, the Panel on Nuclear Weapons Safety, a group of eminent physicists appointed by the US Congress, warned that its unusual design posed significant risks. To save space, the multiple warheads weren't mounted on top of the missile; they surrounded its third-stage rocket engine. And the "high-energy" class 1.1 propellant used in that rocket engine was far more likely than other propellants to explode in an accident. "The safety issue of concern here," the panel found, "is whether an accident during handling of an operational missile – viz, transporting and loading – might detonate the propellant which in turn could cause the HE [high explosives] in the warhead to detonate, leading to dispersal of plutonium, or even the initiation of a nuclear yield." 

The decision to use the more energetic rocket fuel and the more unstable high explosive was made during the early 1980s, to increase the range of the Trident D5 missile and decrease the weight of its warheads. The first British Trident submarine went on patrol four years after these safety risks were discovered, and the Trident D5 missile is supposed to remain in service until 2042. The risk of explosion and plutonium dispersal is greatest when the warheads are being loaded on to the sub, unloaded from the sub, or transported by road between Scotland and the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, Berkshire.

Glen Milner of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo, Washington has attempted to focus the public's attention on the risks of Trident for many years.  "Milner has extensively researched the rocket propellant used in the D5 and has spoken out publicly on its risks.  He was cited in a Crosscut.com article earlier this year about the Navy's plan to double its missile handling capacity at its Bangor Trident submarine base on Hood Canal in Washington State.

That same article cited a 1986 accident involving Trident rocket motors.  More recently at the Bangor submarine base (November 2003) "a ladder left inside a submarine's missile tube punctured a missile's nose cone and came within inches of a nuclear warhead." (source: Kitsap Sun newspaper)  A close call indeed.  The construction of a Second Explosives Handling Wharf near the existing wharf greatly increases the probability of a major disaster should there be an accidental detonation at one wharf if two submarines are being simultaneously loaded/unloaded.

The public (in both the UK and US) should be concerned, and indeed outraged, that any (token) public discussion is NOT engaging the truly important questions about why (in the US) we should spend nearly $100 billion - and some consider this a conservative estimate - just to build twelve new Trident submarines.

Beyond the very real risks of accidents, Trident is an archaic Cold War first-strike weapons system that just doesn't seem to want to go down without a fight.  Speaking of "fighting",  just (to use Schlosser's questions) How would this cold war missile, due to remain in service for another 30 years, actually be used in a 21st-century conflict? What targets would it destroy and in what circumstances? Whom is it supposed to kill? 

Questions, questions, questions... Any answers???

###

Editor's Note: Eric Schlosser will talk about his most recent book, Command and Control Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, at the Seattle Public Library on Tuesday, October 1st at 7:00 PM.  There will be a meditation in preparation for the event at 6:25 PM just outside the library, sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Seattle Chapter. More information by clicking here.
 
Nuclear weapons: an accident waiting to happen, By Eric Schlosser, in The Guardian, Friday, September 13, 2013

Click here to read a recent (September 16th) interview with Schlosser. Q&A: Author Says DOD Underreported Nuclear-Weapon Accidents, by Rachel Oswald in Global Security Newswire, September 23, 2013

Watch a YouTube video of Schlosser at the New America Foundation.  In the Q&A period he speaks directly to the weakness in the design of the Trident II D-5 missile relating to the warheads encircling the third stage rocket motor containing very high energy "sensitive" propellant.  Skip ahead to approximately the 52 minute mark to catch this reference.