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UK's nukes may go off accidentally due to design fault, MoD admits

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, June 26, IRNA
UK-Nuclear Arms
More than 1,700 British nuclear warheads have design flaws that could conceivably cause multiple explosions one after another, according to a recently declassified Ministry of Defence (MoD) safety manual.

The manual, drawn up by the MoD's internal nuclear-weapons regulator, argues that the standard single-point design might not be enough to prevent an defect known as "popcorning," the New Scientist magazine reported in its headline article Thursday.

The weekly said that the "single-point safe" meant that a sudden knock at a single point, such as a warhead being dropped from a crane while being unloaded from Britain's Trident nuclear-armed submarines, should not detonate the plutonium core.

In the worst case scenario, the effects of a popcorning accident would be dire as people a kilometer away would receive a radiation dose of 100 sieverts - 16 times the lethal dose.

The manual stated that warheads should be capable of resisting multiple simultaneous impacts as this "would contribute to the prevention of popcorning and should be a design objective." As a result, it also recommended replacing the highly sensitive explosive that surrounds the warheads' plutonium cores. Less- sensitive explosives are available, but were said to be heavier and bulkier, so the warheads would have to be redesigned.

The disclosure of the design fault comes as Britain is preparing to replace its submarine-based nuclear arsenal, despite warning that it will breach the country's obligations to disarm under the Non- Proliferation Treaty.

The New Scientist reported that the MoD played down the safety warning saying that popcorning was just a "theoretical possibility" and "a scenario that is not credible." Any risk is mitigated by the way in which missiles are handled, transported and stored, it said.

But some nuclear-weapons specialists were quoted saying that an accident can still happen. Philip Coyle from the Center for Defense Information in Washington pointed out that people sometimes forget safety procedures.

Coyle was also cited referring to the mystery of when US nuclear weapons were unknowingly flown from North Dakota to Louisiana last August the example of last August.

Stefan Michalowski, a senior scientist at the OECD in Paris, was said to have expressed concern about the risks of an extreme event such as a firefight with direct gunshots.

"The explosion of a boatload of missiles in a port would be an unimaginable catastrophe," Michalowski said, adding it would be "a very, very scary thought."
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