We almost lost Arkansas

[Big Dad]

Seen the American experience on PBS was about a nuclear accident I either had never heard about or forgot ?

Wow, still awful, still bad but, lucky that ended as well as it did, that was a close one

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/15/493792864 ... ly-avoided


The end of the program, they cited that we have had in excess of 1,000 "non-reported" accidents since they developed it and we have built 100,000 nuclear weapons

Not a matter of if , its when they claim

tune in, watch it ..stayed up way past bed time

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/e ... ryID=2543#

http://www.salon.com/2016/09/14/the-nig ... lmost-was/

[Broncojohnny]

Salon.com is a leftist propaganda website

[BP]

Ever heard of Pantex? They currently maintain and dismantle nuclear weapons for the DOD. I don't have the details since it's classified but there was a tool failure of some sort back in March of 2005 and the technicians doing the work applied too much pressure to part of the warhead and nearly detonated it. This was a W56 warhead, 1.2 Megaton. Some reports say only the non nuclear part was at risk, I guess it depends on the state of assembly.

[Strychnine]

Ever heard of Pantex? They currently maintain and dismantle nuclear weapons for the DOD. I don't have the details since it's classified but there was a tool failure of some sort back in March of 2005 and the technicians doing the work applied too much pressure to part of the warhead and nearly detonated it. This was a W56 warhead, 1.2 Megaton. Some reports say only the non nuclear part was at risk, I guess it depends on the state of assembly.

I've been there - in one of the very very outer portions. Even then to get to the front office I had to drive down a straight road that had staggered jersery barriers setup to force you to drive in a slow zigzag... and at the end of the road, facing you the whole time, was a .50 on top of a Humvee.
Couldn't even have a cellphone in the front office. Had to stay in the car. I heard some stories about the security there that freaked me out a bit, in terms of what they can do.


I knew I'd never go back so I snapped a pic of my visitor badge

[Gasser64]

I knew I'd never go back so I snapped a pic of my visitor badge

Why did you go? Work purposes?

[KBScobravert]

A lot of time photos of visitors badges poses a security risk. That photo isn't complete but had they seen you, it would have probably been an awkward conversation.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

[Strychnine]

Why did you go? Work purposes?

Yeah

A lot of time photos of visitors badges poses a security risk. That photo isn't complete but had they seen you, it would have probably been an awkward conversation.

It was 5 yrs ago, and I posted the pic before, so I'm not too worried now, but yeah, that could have been awkward lol

[Big Dad]

Link

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2543#

made a crater

[Big A]

Blowing the lid off of an already man-made hole is hardly "making a crater."

[KBScobravert]

Yeah



It was 5 yrs ago, and I posted the pic before, so I'm not too worried now, but yeah, that could have been awkward lol

Certainly they change their visitor badge design on a routine basis. Not that there was probably any value in trying to go through the efforts to reproduce some of the security features like the hologram, all for a "uncleared" visitor access.

I'm sure I wouldn't want to have conversations with their security teams if they have a serpentine approach entry control point covered by a mounted .50cal and don't let you enter the building with cell phones (walk through metal detector, i'm sure?).

Access control is a sizable portion of my job here in Africa.

[Big Dad]

Blowing the lid off of an already man-made hole is hardly "making a crater."

call it whatever you want Bill Nye

It was a large boom

from the article

At about 3:00 a.m., the two men returned to the surface to await further instructions. Just as they sat down on the concrete edge of the access portal, the missile exploded, blowing the 740-ton launch duct closure door 200 feet into the air and some 600 feet northeast of the launch complex.

[sdun]

there was a silo in Terrell during the cold war. I went in in around 10 years ago. The Gov. closed it in the early 70s. It was 3 big underground buildings with 3 or 4 missles in each. When they left them they sprayed everything with cosmolene. The guy that bought the property said they were full of water when he first bought it. He had pumped the one we went in dry and was planning on building a house in one and living there. The squirrel cage fan was about 6ft tall that would evac the smoke after one was fired so they could load the next one. I moved the blade and it freewheeled for about a minute, that was after it sat still under water for years. By far the coolest place that I have seen.

[jw33]

This week PBS has had some great shows (NOVA "The Nuclear Option" and "The Bomb") about nuclear weapons/power. The above Command and Control episode repeats tonight @0200 FYI. I agree with the thought that it is only a matter of time before someone somewhere sets off a weapon by or as a result of an accident. It also make you wonder with all that the public knows about the United States accidents what has happened in Russia/China. There is no telling what kind of near misses they have had over the past 50-60 years with their nuclear arsenal.

Pantex probably has some of the most secure facilities on the planet. Next level area 51 type shit with 9th level ninjas ready to party whenever. That is where the United States services/maintains virtually all of our nuclear weapons. I believe they store the plutonium pits from dismantled and obsolete weapons there among other "hard-to-get" components. I've had this idea about the most crazy terrorist attack that you could conceive and it would involve a temporary takeover of Pantex. Imagine if some lunatic group was able to somehow over-run their security and get into the area where they stored the pits and then set one off in place? It would probably be a relatively small low yield result, but you would have just detonated a fission bomb on US soil killing 10K+ in an instant, the clean-up alone would cost billions, and it would cripple our nuclear weapons stockpile for years.

[Strychnine]

Pantex probably has some of the most secure facilities on the planet. Next level area 51 type shit with 9th level ninjas ready to party whenever.

i was there when i was with Cummins. I was the only application engineer handling natural gas engines in TX/OK and they have water wells on site with NG engines running the pumps...

Technically i was the guest of one of their contractors. At one point during the day i was told a story... They had a guy out there a few weeks earlier who made a call from his cell phone while on site. This well was not near a building, it was way out in a field. Anyway, the guy was talking to his brother in law about some plans for the upcoming weekend. They said about 15 min later they were visited by some "security" guys whose first questions were about who he was talking to on the phone and what plans he was making for the weekend.

[ram57ta]

I agree with the thought that it is only a matter of time before someone somewhere sets off a weapon by or as a result of an accident.
Pantex probably has some of the most secure facilities on the planet. Next level area 51 type shit with 9th level ninjas ready to party whenever. That is where the United States services/maintains virtually all of our nuclear weapons. I believe they store the plutonium pits from dismantled and obsolete weapons there among other "hard-to-get" components. I've had this idea about the most crazy terrorist attack that you could conceive and it would involve a temporary takeover of Pantex. Imagine if some lunatic group was able to somehow over-run their security and get into the area where they stored the pits and then set one off in place? It would probably be a relatively small low yield result, but you would have just detonated a fission bomb on US soil killing 10K+ in an instant, the clean-up alone would cost billions, and it would cripple our nuclear weapons stockpile for years.

Considering I live roughly 20 miles from the largest Nuke storage facility in the world...I am more worried about something happening here. The entire current stockpile of US nuclear weapons that are not deployed are stored right here in the heart of Albuquerque in an underground bunker at Kirtland AFB...and at least to the naked eye it doesn't seem like its that well secured....of course there is probably much more security around it that is hidden.