Fergie's Tech Blog

Trident Warheads: Road Crash Could Set Off Nuclear Blast

Rob Edwards writes in NewScientist:

Trident nuclear warheads damaged in a vehicle pile-up or a plane crash could partially detonate and deliver a lethal radiation dose, according to a newly declassified report from the UK Ministry of Defence obtained by New Scientist. The MoD has also revealed that an attack by terrorists on a nuclear weapons convoy could produce an even more disastrous outcome. "The consequences of such an incident are likely to be considerable loss of life," says a senior MoD official.

Trident warheads are regularly transported to weapons facilities in the US and the UK, where they are inspected to make sure that ageing materials don't render them unreliable or unstable. The MoD has always insisted that an accidental nuclear explosion could not happen in transit, because a warhead's plutonium core must be compressed symmetrically by conventional explosives. Bombs are designed to be "single point safe" so a knock at a single point should not trigger all the explosives around the core.

But according to the report, extreme accidents could result in a nuclear explosion.

posted by Fergie @ 7/05/2006 11:26:00 AM