The Albuquerque "Broken Arrow" Nuclear Accident

For any engineer interested in nuclear weapons, I highly recommend this three-part series produced by Sandia National Laboratory on their development of Permissive Action Link, the warhead’s electrical isolation and cryptological module that ensures US nuclear weapons will detonate if any only if authorized by the President.<p>It’s fascinating how they thought about bad path scenarios like thermal damage causing carbon tracking of PCBs potentially defeating the control system.<p>It is called “Always&#x2F;Never: The Quest for Safety, Control, and Survivability”<p>Part 1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;DQEB3LJ5psk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;DQEB3LJ5psk</a><p>Part 2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;sb2qo5m_hTY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;sb2qo5m_hTY</a><p>Part 3: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0a1exo_vU_k" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;0a1exo_vU_k</a>

I suspect I have the same &quot;nuclear archaeologist cyber-friend&quot; as the author.<p>I sent a Twitter &quot;friend&quot; (who labelled himself a nuclear anthropologist instead of archeologist) a copy of a book called &quot;100 Suns&quot; by Michael Light, which is a coffee table sized book full of photos of nuclear tests. The book is eerily beautiful: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.michaellight.net&#x2F;suns-intro" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.michaellight.net&#x2F;suns-intro</a><p>In return (and entirely unexpectedly) he send me a small package with a handful of small pieces of that Mark 17 bomb casing he collected in Albuquerque - just like that last pic in the article. They&#x27;re sitting on a shelf with my piece of Trinitite and my pieces of Maralingite (sand fused to glass by an atomic test in the 50s&#x2F;60s at Maralinga in South Australia)<p>I have some weird internet friends who know my weird interests...

There have been many broken arrows¹. Each one is a terrifying and fascinating story and it&#x27;s one of my favorite Wikipedia rabbit holes which I think everyone should be at least somewhat familiar with. At least to appreciate the real, terrible costs of developing, and then maintaining these weapons, in a high alert operational state, continuously for many decades. The fact that most of these accidents were classified and hidden from the public, for 20 or 30 years, is troubling. The military (correctly) assumed that they would lose a lot of public support had the truth been known at the time.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_military_nuclear_incident_terminology#Broken_Arrow" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_military_nuclear...</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_military_nuclear_accidents" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_military_nuclear_accid...</a>

Tangentially related, I am reminded of this quote from the fun-yet-silly film &quot;Broken Arrow&quot; (1996):<p>Giles Prentice: A Broken what? Secretary Baird: Broken Arrow. It&#x27;s a Class 4 Strategic Theatre Emergency. It&#x27;s what we call it when we lose a nuclear weapon. Giles Prentice: I don&#x27;t know what&#x27;s scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there&#x27;s actually a term for it.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0115759&#x2F;quotes&#x2F;?item=qt0352487" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0115759&#x2F;quotes&#x2F;?item=qt0352487</a>

If you like reading about this sort of stuff, the book &quot;Command &amp; Control&quot; is a <i>fascinating</i> read on the US nuclear weapons history, close calls, etc. It&#x27;s dense, but well worth the read for a view into nuclear weapons &quot;incidents&quot; (to include some weapons losses, I don&#x27;t recall if this story is in that book or not) during the cold war.

You mean the awesome 1996 classic action flick with Travolta and Slater, Broken Arrow? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0115759&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt0115759&#x2F;</a>

The number of near-miss incidents like this, combined with the fact that we&#x27;re still here standing, makes a pretty strong case for some kind of many-worlds &quot;anthropic principle&quot; &#x2F; &quot;quantum immortality&quot; effect, IMO.

&gt; “Do you have hot cargo aboard?” Meyer’s laconic response was, “Not anymore”.<p>Spoken like a capable engineer.

Further reading, from Richard Rhodes:<p>&quot;The Making of the Atomic Bomb&quot; (1986) The best book I ever read. Covers all of modern physics. Written in a &quot;physics for musicians&quot; style, and I don&#x27;t mean that in a condescending way. It&#x27;s praise. Besides the tech, there is lots on politics, espionage, international relations, and military history, including sections on the German, Soviet, and Japanese activities before and during WWII.<p>&quot;Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb&quot; (1995) Great explanations of how the fission-fusion-fission process works, all in millionths of a second. I still can hardly believe how Rhodes is able to explain some of the most complicated technical concepts and processes in ordinary language. A truly amazing writer.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Richard_Rhodes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Richard_Rhodes</a>

If the plutonium core was removed, as indicated in the blog, why was the impact crater radioactive?