Why nuclear weapons degrade over time

 "A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.

When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. 

And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Nearby Radiological Emergency

This past week there was a radiological emergency at the Hanford Reservation.  The event caused a site-wide alert to shelter-in-place.  Very exciting.

Plutonium 238

Good news!  Oak Ridge National Laboratory has begun manufacturing a new supply of Plutonium 238.

Below, a pellet of Pu-238 glowing orange from internal heating due to alpha decay.
"Plutonium pellet" by Department of Energy (via Wikipedia)

Broken Arrows - USAF wins the trophy

"Broken Arrow" is the military term for an accidental event involving a nuclear weapon, but which does not create the risk for a nuclear war.  The 'accidental event' typically involves losing and/or damaging the weapon.

There have been 32 officially recognized "Broken Arrow" events in the United States since the dawn of nuclear weapons, as of Sept 2013.  Some of these events have been relatively minor, but others have been massive radiological accidents.  One accident with a large Hydrogen Bomb nearly made North Carolina uninhabitable... not that you would have seen THAT in the newspapers when it happened.  Apparently the news media were just as compliant in the 1950's as they are today.

I will go over a few of the more interesting Broken Arrow events.  Not surprisingly, most of these involve military aircraft crashing with weapons on board, as well as the intentional or inadvertent jettisoning of nuclear weapons.  All of these event descriptions are courtesy of Wikipedia.

Nuclear Experiments on Humans

“It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such work should be classified `secret’.”

April 17, 1947 Atomic Energy Commission memo from Colonel O.G. Haywood, Jr. to Dr. Fidler at the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee

In the early days of Nuclear Energy, the US government (and by extension, the US Military), had a monopoly on man-made radioactive materials.  There was a great deal of curiousity about these new materials, and what their effect on the human body might be. 

Odd Quirks About Nuclear Reactors - Criticality Accidents

One quirky thing about nuclear reactors:  If you are not careful - particularly with Plutonium - it is possible to create a reactor unintentionally.  That is, you can inadvertently assemble enough fissile material to start a chain reaction, outside of the safe confinement of a shielded reactor vessel.

Nuclear Weapons - Uranium Enrichment

As stated in the previous post, the Manhattan Project took a two-pronged approach to accumulating enough fissile material to build the first bomb: Uranium Enrichment and Plutonium Production.

We talked about Plutonium Production in that post.  This post is about Uranium Enrichment - increasing the isotope fraction of U-235 from naturally occuring Uranium, which is mostly U-238.

Nuclear Weapons - Plutonium Production

After the CP-1 Reactor successfully proved the concept of a self-sustaining fission reaction, the US accelerated its development of nuclear weapons.  The Manhattan Project took a two-pronged approach to generating enough material to build the first bomb: Uranium Enrichment and Plutonium Production.  This post is about Plutonium Production.

The post about Uranium Enrichment is linked here.