"A PRIMER IN THE HISTORY OF NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS: "BROKEN ARROWS" - accidents which threaten nuclear devastation - 36 known by 1991 - none of which were acknowledged willingly. Almost without question more have not surfaced.
1) July 27, 1956, RAF Lakenheath, Cambridgeshire. Great Britain. US B-47 crashes upon landing. Three Mark-6 bombs come within a few degrees of detonation." Pure poo-poo. What you mean is that the chemical explosives surrounding the core might have detonated. That does not equate to a NUCLEAR detonation. This is the kind of rhetorical trickery that really annoys me. By the way, how did we get on the subject of nuclear WEAPONS? Another rhetorical shift, perhaps made necessary by the lack of excitement in commercial nuclear power? Yeah. Marc de Piolenc 2) 1950, Fairfield-Suisum USAFB, California, USA. A US aircraft crashes. Nuclear bomb on board explodes during the fire, killing 19 men. Pentagon only admits the accident in 1981. Base renamed to Travis AFB, after General Travis who died in explosion. 3) March 10, 1956. US B-47 fails to meet refueling tanker and crashes into the Mediterranean. Two capsules of nuclear material for bombs presumably lost. 4) 1957. A Mark-17 nuclear bomb accidentally dropped near Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Believed to be the same as the Mark-17 dropped on Bikini Atoll, Marshal Islands, 1954, yielding 1,200 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. Fortunately, when the 20 ton explosive trigger detonated, the nuclear device failed to ignite. 5) 1961, Goldsboro, North Carolina, USA. A 24 megaton bomb, approximately 1,900 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, was accidentally dropped over Goldsboro. Five of six safety devices were destroyed upon impact, leaving only one safety device between an "incident" and devastation across half the Eastern Seaboard. 6) January 17, 1966, near Polomares, Spain. A US B-52 collides with a jet. The conventional explosive detonation devices scatter the plutonium of 2 of the 4 bombs over an enormous area. 7) January 21, 1968, near Thule, Greenland. Another B-52 collision results in the plutonium cores of all four bombs on board being scattered over a greater land mass than the Polomares, Spain accident. Effects of plutonium contamination are still being realized to date, despite "intensive cleanup" and "removal of soil to the US," now considered to be largely fictitious measures. 8) December, 1964, Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, USA. A Minuteman nuclear missile sparks a tremendous explosion when a retrorocket accidentally fires. 9) 1960, McGuire AFB, New Jersey, USA. A Bomarc missile explodes in its silo. Plutonium contamination is so severe that the entombment area is covered by 500,000 square feet of concrete. Depth of concrete undetermined. 10) 1980. (Site unknown.) Titan nuclear missile launches itself after a workman drops a wrench down the silo. The wrench punctures a fuel tank, resulting in an explosion that sets the rocket in motion. Fortunately, the warhead did not explode when the rocket crashed one quarter of one mile distant. 11) April 10, 1963, off the Cape Cod Coast, Massachusetts, USA. The nuclear submarine USS Thresher implodes and sinks in 8,500 feet of water. 129 lives lost. 12) May 27, 1968, 400 miles southwest of the Azore Islands. The nuclear submarine USS Scorpion sinks in 10,000 feet of water. Two ASTOR nuclear torpedoes lost. Ninety-nine crewmen dead. ................. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Small business owners... Tell us what you think! http://us.click.yahoo.com/vO1FAB/txzCAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
