US Nuclear Accidents: Silly Promises, Serious Consequences
By Rick Wayman
Our nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal suffered yet another frightening mishap a few weeks ago. Six nuclear-armed cruise missiles were “accidentally” strapped to the wing of a B-52 bomber and flown across the country from North Dakota to Louisiana, leaving the weapons unsecured and unaccounted-for over a 36 hour period.

Nuclear-armed flights occurred regularly in the US during the first couple of decades of the Cold War. The practice was stopped with good reason: planes armed with nuclear weapons had accidents in the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, New Mexico, South Carolina, North Carolina, Japan, Spain and Greenland.

In one of the many aviation accidents, an American B-47 bomber had a mid-air collision with another military aircraft off the coast of Florida in 1958. The B-47 dropped the nuclear weapon it was carrying into the Atlantic Ocean. It remains missing to this day, and the military considers it irrevocably lost.

Finally, in 1968, the US realized the catastrophic risk of flying airplanes armed with mankind’s most destructive weapon, and banned all flights by nuclear-armed aircraft.

The militaries of Nuclear Weapon States continued to be plagued by nuclear mishaps.  While these mistakes and accidents have varied in scope and danger, they highlight the inescapable fact that human error or mechanical failure can cause a nuclear catastrophe.

The latest incident only confirms that human beings, imperfect by nature, are still prone in the 21st century to make serious mistakes with nuclear weapons.

The US maintains an arsenal of approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, thousands of which are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired at a moment’s notice.

We are assured time and time again by our military leaders that mistakes involving nuclear weapons cannot happen because of extensive “safety” procedures to ensure the safe handling of nuclear weapons. Clearly, these measures are not foolproof. Do we have to suffer a catastrophic accidental launch of a nuclear weapon before our leaders realize this?

Only a few days ago, a Patriot missile was “accidentally” launched in Qatar by the US military. What if this missile had been nuclear-armed?

Would it have indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of people instantly upon impact? This is quite possible.

Would the early warning system of Russia or another Nuclear Weapon State have detected this launch and automatically set off a counter attack? We shouldn’t even have to ponder this question, but the sheer numbers of nuclear weapons in the world (about 26,000) and their high-alert status make such a scenario possible.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that it “would be silly” to promise that a nuclear accident will never happen again. Silly? There’s nothing silly about living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation.

The US, which fancies itself a force for making the world a safer place, should be the first to promise that a nuclear accident will never happen again. The only way to fulfill this promise is to immediately take all nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert and initiate negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament, as required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the US signed 39 years ago.

Mistakes and accidents are part of human nature. We simply cannot risk a catastrophic nuclear exchange due to human error.  There is perhaps no clearer reason for the US to bring all Nuclear Weapon States together, today, to de-alert all nuclear arsenals and lead the world to complete nuclear disarmament.


Rick Wayman is Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org)

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