Perhaps the rule should be that countries that don’t show the utmost care for nuclear weapons shouldn’t be allowed to have any. Oops, that’s us, according to the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Air Force said Friday it has punished 70 airmen involved in the accidental, cross-country flight of a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber following an investigation that found widespread disregard for the rules on handling such munitions.
“There has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base,” said Maj. Gen. Richard Newton, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations.
Newton was announcing the results of a six-week probe into the Aug. 29-30 incident in which the B-52 was inadvertently armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown from Minot in North Dakota to Barksdale in Louisiana without anyone noticing the mistake for more than a day.
The missiles were supposed to be taken to Louisiana, but the warheads were supposed to have been removed beforehand.
I've visited a few nuclear-related museums in the last 2 weeks, as the unauthorized transport was revealed.
I spent time at the Uranium mining museum in Grants, New Mexico (center of U.S. Uranium mining from the 1940's through the 1980's).
I enjoyed the Stafford Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma (and met the multi-record-setting astronaut himself) and examined a few different nuclear warheads (sans plutonium, I expect). This museum gives the Smithsonian Air and Space museum a run for its money in everything but size. They had to pop the warhead off of the Titan missile to fit it inside.
I also spent a couple of days at the Bradbury Museum in Los Alamos, NM. There I found out that the U.S. repository of de-commissioned plutonium "pits" is in Amarillo, Texas, where I'd spent a night.
I've posted pix and comments about my trip here.