1971allchaos

US's most powerful nuclear bomb being dismantled

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — The last of the nation's most powerful nuclear bombs — a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War.
The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility

First put into service in 1962, when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighed 10,000 pounds and was the size of a minivan. According to the American Federation of Scientists, it was 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II.

And the rest of the US. citizens complain about their nieghbor's clothes lines , being in plain site.....

lazn

Dropping it of the coffee table ain't gonna set it off, heck even if dropped from a great height it's just going to make a thud noise.

To get a nuclear fusion explosion you need a fission one first, and to get that you need an explosion large enough to force the fissionable materials together with a fair bit of force.

I mean we dropped a Hydrogen bomb by accident just off the coast of Georgia (the US state, not the country): 1958 Tybee Island mid-air collision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RWhisen

That weapon is an antique and while still a powerful and formidable weapon, it lacks sophistication which is buzz word for dependability. While it may be the most powerful SINGLE weapon ever produced, the article is somewhat misleading in that it does not mention the combined explosive power of today's multiple warhead weapons. Needless to say a 10,000 pound weapon is difficult to deliver even with the limited anti-aircraft capabilities of the most poor country but they aren't really necessary with cruise and ballistic missiles taking the lead on this.

mboe794

Yep. I'm pretty sure it would need to be "armed" first. And they aren't even designed to explode on impact. Supossed to go off at a certain altitude (couple hundred feet maybe) triggered by a complex chain of events within the bomb. Just hitting something ain't gonna do it.

Old Yeller

try a match.

1971allchaos

I should have listed the whole article.
Humor is that the article goes on like a movie (Space Cowboys). No engineer left of the original design team, or producer.. They are having to design tools to dismantle the thing..

RWhisen

I read that article but it also stated that another was dismantled a short time ago as well. What did they use to take it apart, sticks and chunks of rock?

mikstr

Still here in no small part thanks to the fact that that **** was never used....

7moore7

Good point, at least the problems being dealt with are how to take some bits of bomb apart and not how to live in a nuclear winter

mikstr

Amen. Figuring if that one had gone off, it wouldn't have been alone (more from our side and a whole bunch from theirs), a good chance the Earth would now be a lifeless planet....