Britain's nuclear warheads could be triggered .......

[STEED]

WHAT!!!

Britain's nuclear warheads could be triggered by road crash: New Scientist
LONDON, July 5 (AFP) Jul 05, 2006
Britain's Trident nuclear warheads could be partially detonated in a road pileup or plane crash, unleashing lethal doses of radiation, the British weekly New Scientist said on Wednesday.

The warheads, designed to produce a blast equivalent to up to 100,000 tonnes of TNT, are deployed aboard Royal Navy submarines but are regularly transported to weapons facilities in Britain and the United States for checks.
The Ministry of Defence has always insisted that these transit operations are safe because a warhead's plutonium core must be compressed symmetrically by conventional explosives in order to deliver a nuclear blast.
Bombs are designed to be "single-point safe," meaning that a knock on a single point should not trigger all the explosives around the core.
But a report to be published in this Saturday's New Scientist, citing what it says is a newly-declassified defence ministry document, says that extreme accidents could result in a partial nuclear explosion, an event called an "inadvertent yield".
The report estimates the annual risk of an "inadvertent yield" in Britain at 2.4 per billion, New Scientist says. Most of the risk would come from the possibility of a plane smashing into a convoy.
Even though the Ministry of Defence in this document quantifies the risk as "tolerable", it also acknowledges that if such an incident happened there would be "potentially high off-site consequences," inflicting radiation doses of up to 10 sieverts to people in the vicinity, New Scientist says.
According to British health standards, people exposed to four sieverts of radiation have a 50-percent risk of dying, while six sieverts is lethal.
The document concludes that contingency plans for responding to an "inadvertent yield" are adequate, although it does not spell them out, according to the New Scientist report.
Reacting to the report, a Ministry of Defence spokesman told AFP: "A nuclear bomb-type explosion is not possible because the warheads are transported unarmed.
"Britain's safety record on nuclear transportation is second-to-none."




http://www.spacewar.com/2006/060705181031.k62pku04.html

[snowsub]

Well then just drive safely around them then :rotfl:

Seriously, you'd have to be blind not to notice a truck with hazard symbols all over it escorted by armed soldiers.

But I suppose some people would be thinking "get out of my way, I pay my taxes.... lookout comming thr....Boom!"

[The Avon Lady]

Obviously, the concern here is not obnoxious drivers.

All you need is someone on the ground to convey the transport's location to someone at an airfield, ready to takeoff in a fuel and explosive laden private jet or similar.

Or someone or several people waiting along the transportation route with a serious shoulder supported AT launcher.

Doesn't take much imagination.

[Iku-turso]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

Obviously, the concern here is not obnoxious drivers.

No,but left-sided traffic is.

[The Avon Lady]

Originally Posted by Iku-turso

No,but left-sided traffic is.

You mean American tourists on UK roads.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

You mean American tourists on UK roads.

:rotfl: :rotfl:

[micky1up]

absolute crap many things have to get triggered in the correct order for a detonation i could probably find a scientist who could tell you black was white


and you clear dont know the world of difference between a nuke weapon and a nuclear power plant if your going to protest get your basic facts right at least and the basic fact is no major superpowers have attacked each other directley since ww2 and nukes have stopped that from happening

[SUBMAN1]

Are we even having a serious discussion about this? 1 in 2.4 billion? On top of that, you will only get a partial detonation (Impossible to achieve a real thermonuclear detonation, this would just be a fizzle and very small and insignificant). And to top it off - you need to be standing near the trucks to get your 10 sieverts.

So lets analyze this statistically. You have a few shipments/transports each year would mean we all have to be alive for approximately 800,000,000 years with current road and plane transportation before something statistically might even happen!

So, lets get off the anti nuke demostrators hype, and get on with a real conversation.

-S

PS. Lets talk about antimatter bombs (a real weapon) since nukes suck and are puny anyway.

[SUBMAN1]

One more thing - if we aren't safely sending our puny nukes through matter transporters in 800 million years time, we deserve to get a fizzle to maybe knock us on the head and get on with some real science.

-S

PS. THe point is, if our tech hasn't advanced enough to have us leave the planet - we are already in the stone age and not going anywhere anyway.

[Godalmighty83]

sounds like a lot of 'ifs' and 'coulds' and 'mays' to me.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Godalmighty83

sounds like a lot of 'ifs' and 'coulds' and 'mays' to me.

I think a proper definition would be a statistical impossibility, hyped up by the anti nuke left.

-S