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Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

wikileaks.org

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Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#41

Post by TeMPOraL »

codecamper wrote: post #22
pizza wrote: post #10

This part was just great: Just weeks after passing out of training I had a draft for HMS Victorious. My work mates started calling me a terrorist robot because I remembered everything and I have a Northern Ireland accent. This reputation would have undoubtedly made it difficult for me to gather information. I needed to create distance between them, and create a knew persona; I aimed for mixture of dumbness and eagern…

This is the scariest thing I've read in a while. Plutonium itself inside of nuclear warheads is unstable?

Worst that could happen is a toxic leak, I guess. Nuclear reactions are hard and they're enabled by some really high-precision engineering. Anything gets out of callibration, and your city-leveler turns into a very toxic but otherwise weak explosive.

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#42

Post by AlphaSite »

onion2k wrote: post #33
arethuza wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if your expectation is that missiles work 100% of the time - which nobody really expects an individual component of any weapons system to work 100% of the time and is explicitly allowed for in the way nuclear weapons are targeted.

I don't expect anything to work 100% of the time. I do expect a missile to fail in a way that wouldn't mean accidentally obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country though. I would also expect a politician to mention that failure mode is a possibility when politicians are considering spending £30b on renewing it.

I think that's an argument for replacement, rather than continuing with what we have at the moment? If the failure rate becomes too high they may need replacement.

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#43

Post by cletus »

XorNot wrote: post #29
codecamper wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the scariest thing I've read in a while. Plutonium itself inside of nuclear warheads is unstable?

Is it? This is completely unverifiable information (it's outside his area of expertise - operators are not nuclear physicists). He's extremely vague about what the danger is supposed to be (i.e. wikipedia has some notes on aging - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_allo... - it's not like there's a danger of an uncontrolled nuclear detonation.) Frankly: this is wikileaks. I'm giving it the side-e…

It was certainly news to me but it does seem to be well known.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_plutonium

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#44

Post by nothrabannosir »

XorNot wrote: post #29
codecamper wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the scariest thing I've read in a while. Plutonium itself inside of nuclear warheads is unstable?

Is it? This is completely unverifiable information (it's outside his area of expertise - operators are not nuclear physicists). He's extremely vague about what the danger is supposed to be (i.e. wikipedia has some notes on aging - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium%E2%80%93gallium_allo... - it's not like there's a danger of an uncontrolled nuclear detonation.) Frankly: this is wikileaks. I'm giving it the side-e…

The quote about plutonium comes from Jeremy Bernstein, on edge.org:

Jeremy Bernstein

Professor Emeritus, Stevens Institute of Technology; Former Staff Writer, The New Yorker

- https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10660

and:

Bernstein studied at Harvard University, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1951, masters in 1953, and Ph.D. in 1955, on electromagnetic properties of deuterium, under Julian Schwinger. As a theoretical physicist, he worked on elementary particle physics and cosmology. A summer spent in Los Alamos led to a position at the Institute for Advanced Study.[2] In 1962 he became a faculty member at New York University, moving to become a professor of physics at Stevens Institute of Technology in 1967, a position that he continues to hold as Professor Emeritus.[3] He has held adjunct or visiting positions at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, CERN, Oxford, the University of Islamabad, and the Ecole Polytechnique.[4]

He was also involved in Project Orion, investigating the potential for nuclear pulse propulsion for use in space travel.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bernstein#Education_and...

I didn't check wikipedia's references, but it looks to be worth more than the side-eye.

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #19
dingaling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the test and its result was orthogonal to the issue before Parliament. It's like an executive team discussing whether to adopt a mobile-first strategy and then someone blurts 'but Galaxy 7 phones caught fire!'.

If the missles don't work I would argue that is pertinent information! Its all well and good discussing a strategy but if its based on a range of options where some are proven to work and some are apparently not working but its being covered up so they appear to work its subverted the entire process of oversight of government.

The question is, whether they were covering it up a real problem there, or they just wanted to avoid some idiot higher-up completely overblowing the importance of a single incident. I can somewhat understand their thinking if the latter was the case, given that overblowing stuff way beyond their importance is what politicians do as a part of their jobs.

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#46

Post by TeMPOraL »

loafa wrote: post #35
lostlogin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the invaded stay occupied?

If you're talking about Crimea then... well yeah, wasn't that going to happen anyway? Not sure why Trump gets the blame for things that already happened on Obama's watch.

Because politics. Nobody cares about facts or things making some sort of sense. All that matters is a good soundbite.

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#47

Post by grw_ »

biaib wrote: post #40
arethuza wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your thinking about the "Tsar Bomba" that wasn't really a weapon and it was exploded in 1961: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba [NB And making really big H-bombs isn't that difficult or indeed very useful other than for bragging rights - which was the point of this device].

I think he was talking about this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

I think it's more likely to be this: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2015/11/18/r...

Interestingly, it appears to be propaganda only intended for internal consumption in former USSR.

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#48

Post by rys »

arethuza wrote: post #34
onion2k wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect anything to work 100% of the time. I do expect a missile to fail in a way that wouldn't mean accidentally obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country though. I would also expect a politician to mention that failure mode is a possibility when politicians are considering spending £30b on renewing it.

Personally I'm actually against the UK having nuclear weapons - but I can't get too excited about this particular incident. Missiles will go wrong, Trident actually has a fairly reasonable level of success and probably is far more reliable than equivalent weapons from other countries. It's a political mess not a military/technical one.

"probably" isn't a good enough standard when the weapon system can end hundreds of thousands of lives and is paid for by the taxpayer. And really it's the second thing that people are upset about. If renewing Trident cost a few hundreds of millions say, it'd likely be a non-issue. But it doesn't, so it isn't. That it might be unsafe is worth investigating given what's on the line.

Re: Trident whistleblower: nuclear 'disaster waiting to happen' (2015)

#50

Post by arethuza »

AlphaSite wrote: post #42
onion2k wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect anything to work 100% of the time. I do expect a missile to fail in a way that wouldn't mean accidentally obliterating tens of thousands of people in the wrong country though. I would also expect a politician to mention that failure mode is a possibility when politicians are considering spending £30b on renewing it.

I think that's an argument for replacement, rather than continuing with what we have at the moment? If the failure rate becomes too high they may need replacement.

It's just the submarines that are being replaced - not the missiles. The UK draws Trident missiles from a pool owned by the US and missiles are picked at random for use in UK boats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_nuclear_programme#Trid...

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