According to Wikipedia, this warhead (9.1 megatons) was apparently never tested, although an experimental TX-46 predecessor design was detonated 28 June 1958 as Hardtack Oak, which detonated at a yield of 8.9 Megatons.
From The National Nuclear Security Administration
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today
The dismantlement of the 1960s-era weapon system is consistent with President Obama’s goal of reducing the number of nuclear weapons. In his 2009 speech in Prague, the President said “We will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same.” The dismantlement of the last remaining B53 ensures that the system will never again be part of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
The elimination of the B53 by Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is consistent with the goal President Obama announced in his April 2009 Prague speech to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. The President said, “We will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same.” The dismantlement of the last remaining B53 ensures that the system will never again be part of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
As a key part of its national security mission, NNSA is actively responsible for safely dismantling weapons that are no longer needed, and disposing of the excess material and components.
Fact Sheet
B53 highlights:
- The B53 bomb is a 1960s-era system and was introduced into the stockpile in 1962.
- NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories designed the B53 bomb.
- The B53 served a key role in the U.S. nuclear deterrent until its retirement in 1997.
- The B53 supported the B-52G strategic bomber program.
- The B53 was built at Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Burlington, Iowa.
- The Pantex Plant, Amarillo, Texas, dismantled the B53 bomb.
- Y-12 will dismantle the remaining nuclear portion of the B53 bomb.
- The B53 is one of the longest-lived and highest-yield nuclear weapons ever fielded by the United States.
- The B53 is about the size of a minivan and weighs about 10,000 pounds.
- Dismantlement process utilized the rigid Seamless Safety for the 21st Century (SS-21) process in dismantling the B53.
- NNSA’s SS-21 process fully integrates the weapon system with the facility, tooling, operating procedures, and personnel involved in the dismantlement program to form a safe, efficient, and effective operating environment.
- The B53 dismantlement program was safely completed 12 months ahead of schedule.
- The DoD played a role in staging the weapon prior to dismantlement.
- The B53 dismantlement program involved more than 130 engineers, scientists, and technicians from Pantex, Y-12, Los Alamos National Laboratory (physics designers and weapon response), Sandia National Laboratories (weapon system), and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (weapon response subject matter expert).
The dismantlement process includes: retiring a weapon from active or inactive service; returning and staging it at NNSA’s Pantex Plant; taking it apart by physically separating the high explosives from the special nuclear material; and processing the material and components, which includes evaluation, reuse, demilitarization, sanitization, recycling, and ultimate disposal.
In other news, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Kenji Watts, was said to be less concerned than before by the reduction in whimpering observed.
DirkH says:
October 25, 2011 at 12:38 pm
“They have expanded their mission statement; they now want to stop all nuclear energy and all genetic manipulation when it leads to the spreading of new organisms. This might of course change any time , but that’s how I interpret their current FAQ.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/faq/
Would you stop such a successfull extortion machine?”
Well since these eco-loons have tendency to reference fantasy character for support you have to figure they have to be unilaterally crazy to deny the future children the possible outcome of spawning new hero organisms with the help of nuclear power. I mean OMFG how can they do that to kids’s imagination?
:-()
It’s a sad day for democracy, freedom, justice and liberty. [/sarc]
Older and cruder technology atomic bombs are larger, some of them, even the first ones made, were very large.
The first two dropped were kinda like this one, very large, one even called “fatman” it was so large.
High tech modern bombs are much smaller.
Very big, crude bombs are much harder to deliver.
We know that any bombs North Korea has must be crude.
One reason we know this is that the first one they detonated was only 1 kiloton, only 10% of the power of the first atomic bomb ever detonated.
In other words, it was a dud.
Conclusion, North Korea has no deliverable nuclear bombs.
Any bombs they may have (if they even have any) will be too large for any missile, and may even be too large for any aircraft they have.
An aircraft that large is easily spotted and shot down (I don’t think they even have any aircraft that large).
The hype about North Koreas nuclear bombs, and how that is a threat to us, and how therefore we should play nice with them because they are a nuclear power, is false.
Actually, the B-52 (all models) could carry two of them. I flew B-52s, but I’ve never actually seen a live Mark 53–just the one in the Air Force Museum.
About those “newer B-52s”: there hasn’t been a new or nearly new B-52 since the 60s. I thought they were old when I started flying them in the ’80s–and I was right.
About whether the B-1 or B-2 could carry these, my guess is they could not. Of course, if I had any actual knowledge, I wouldn’t be posting about it.
Umm, the Davy Crocket bomb was not, in fact, the smallest atomic bomb we had, we hade one that fit inside a LAW, a single man man portable rocket launcher.
It could blow up maybe 2 city blocks or so.
The Law has a range shorter than that (200 meters).
Needless to say, they recently retired these things, since for obvious reasons no one wanted to use one…
Too bad, I like the idea of the nuclear hand grenade
Wasn’t it actually used once?
As a fan of US nuclear power, it’s kind of sad to see this beast retired. But the reality of nuclear weapons is that radius of destruction increases at an exponent less than 1 in relation to yield (I think it’s 2/3), so you can get more bang with several smaller weapons over one bigger one.The remaining bombs of this model were all designed as bunker busters, that would detonate on the surface and destroy underground installations, while later bunker buster nukes are designed to penetrate the surface before detonating, to deliver more power against the target.
“More Soylent Green! says:
October 25, 2011 at 11:02 am
The yield of the B53 is a reported 9 megatons, or the equivalent of 9 million tons of TNT.”
Let us for the moment assume that Dr. Trenberth’s missing heat could be concentrated into one of these bombs. If the bomb went off in the middle of the Pacific, it would yield about 4 x 10^13 kJ of heat. This in turn would heat a km^3 of ocean water about 10 degrees C. So in the middle of the ocean at a depth of several km below the surface near the equator, the temperature would go from 4 C to 14 C. Since the surface temperature of the ocean at the equator is about 28 C, the heat in this km^3 of water could never “break through” to the air. (Thank you to the person who raised this point in a different post!) I do not agree that his heat is in the middle of the ocean, but even if it were, I do not see how it could remotely affect us.
The design of that device predates transistors, it would be interesting to see how the control and timing circuits were built, how they were powered, and the measures taken to guarantee that all the components remained stable for 50 years. Maybe there was a team of old timers who fluffed these babies every once and awhile.
The bomber at the start is a Martin B-57 (I don’t think we bought any of the original British A/C). But it must have been inserted for effect as it was classified as a medium bomber (If they still used light, medium and heavy terms in that era) back in those days and I know it could not carry one of these B-53s, if not due to weight, most certainly due to size vs. the bomb bay in the B-57.
For some pics and a detailed description of the Russian 50 Megaton bomb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_bomba
Early on the Russians had supposedly alloted two 25 megaton warheads per US missile silo to insure that at least one would destroy the intended target. Imagine, if you will, at least one 25 Megaton dirt digging H-bomb going off per silo with the silos scattered throughout many (mostly) western states. Afterwards, not much of any area west of the Mississippi would be very habitable but (hopefully) a significant portion of the silos would be operative enough for a counterstrike.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/67xx/doc6714/78-CBO-012.pdf
One of the most logistically interesting H-bombs was the Mark 16 which used cryogenic Deuterium, weighed around 40,000 lbs and was to be carried by the B-36 but was rapidly replaced by the Mark 17, 25 megaton unit. These early weapons initially lacked safe arming with the potential for accidental detonation and parachutes which insured a suicide mission:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16_nuclear_bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_17_nuclear_bomb
The B 57 is a version of the English Electric Canberra bomber. Two Canberras flew in the England to New Zealand air race, and came in first and second. A Vickers Valian talso flew in the race. The Valiant was one of the trio of British Vee bombers, the other two being the scimitar winged Handley Page Victor; which eventually was relegated to aerial tanker service. The best known of the three was the incredible Avro Vulcan Delta winged bomber that featured in a James Bond movie.
The British high altitude V bomber contribution to NATO, was eventually scrapped when Gary powers was shot down over the Soviet Union, in his U-2 spy plane, proving that high altitude bombers were no longer invulnerable..
The Canberra is not a big plane, so no way could it carry one of those B53 bombs.
I was on a B-52 Crew that tested the low level delivery tactic for this bomb using drag chutes. We dropped an unarmed version with in 15 yards of the target at Eglin AFB after flying a simulated nuclear combat mission. We went out to the target range and it was standing on it’s nose with the parachutes draped over it. E-77 proved that it could be delivered accurately from a B-52 flying at low altitude under the soviet radar. Never thought I would see one again, but the picture brought back memories.
I should have added that the England to NZ air race was in 1960. Some very interesting aircraft were entered, but never flew in the race. There was a P-82 twin mustang entered but did not fly, and also a De Havilland Hornet, the fastest ever prop fighter (son of Mosquito), but it didn’t fly either. None of those exist today, but I think there are a couple of twin Mustangs still surviving.
George E. Smith.
After the Powers incident, the Vulcan did still contribute to the British nuclear deterrent. The Valiant was retired because design flaws meant it could not fly the new low/high/low profile. The Victor was relegated because, although it could fly the profile, it’s flight envelope was inferior to the Vulcan.
DaveE.
SOYLENT GREEN says:
October 25, 2011 at 1:32 pm
The Russian Tsar 100mt Bomba was designed to be exploded in high orbit and set fire to 100,000 square miles.
10 Megatons? A firecracker. We need GIGATONS and more to take out or shift the orbit of incoming asteroids or other space junk, Too small of a blast and you have multiple large chunks impacting!!! The capability to deliver it at over 1au would be good too to give us a second chance if the first shot isn’t successful!!
But it would only take one high altitude nuke detonation in the midwest to send most of the US back in to the stone ages. The EMP would take out electronics for thousands of square miles.
I remember Bush Sr. announcing the retirement of the poseidon subs.
My reaction was “So what, the Tridents are online now.”
According to wikipedia:
The Trident II-D5 can carry up to 4-475kt MIRVs or 8-100kt MIRVs.
Each boat can carry up to 24 missles.
More smaller warheads spaced out will yield greater destruction than a single big “bomba”.
(Each boat could carry up to 45Mt.)
There are 14 active boats carrying them.
Do the math.
Not pretty.
Would not having them while those who hate us did have them make us safer?
However, there were a number of men in power on both sides of the pond that wanted to unleash hell and get it over with.
However, we can neither confirm or deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons on board any US ship or station.
Am I the only person here who thinks it might actually be good news?! After all I think we still have enough nukes to destroy civilization 10.9 times over (instead of 11.0). Cheers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_B-57_Canberra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra_bomber
Jim G says:
October 25, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Supposedly the largest bomb tested by the US was planned to yield 5 megatons but actually yielded 15 while the Soviets lit off a 50 megaton bomb in 1961, capable of 100 megatons if so fueled. I have heard that the US had one, or planned one, never tested that if detonated could change the axial tilt of the planet. Such power, as noted by one comment above, could be useful, particularly in the event of a need to deter a large impact, had we the time and delivery capability. I, for one, never throw much away that might be useful in the future.
A bomb that could tilt the earth Axis? The Tōhoku earthquake shifted the Earth axis somewhere between 10 and 25 cm. The earthquake released about 9,320 gigatons, 600 million times the Hiroshima bomb.
So a bomb in the US-arsenal that could shift the earth axis, I don’t think so.
Horseman says: October 26, 2011 at 12:10 am
Am I the only person here who thinks it might actually be good news?! After all I think we still have enough nukes to destroy civilization 10.9 times over (instead of 11.0). Cheers!
You know how much I love this website. And I love the humour here too. Yet I too am disappointed by the overall tone on this thread. It reminds me too much of 10-10. I think we can do better, if we think again.
Sure, we need defenc/se. And sure, those weapons can be dismantled mainly because we now have weapons that act more neatly and less overall destructively while achieving similar military tactical ends.
But if we depend on defenc/se at the totally materialistic level, we run the risk of annihilation of this beautiful planet.
We have to look higher. Not naively, but with all our inner powers, which importantly include the essence and spirit of Scientific Method. Used to be called prayer, but today we need more science-friendly, psychologically-aware approaches not limited by religious dogmas. If people here would stop dissing the UFO phenomenon the same way the warmistas diss us, we could gradually tease out the evidence – woven into the whole vast fabric of information, disinformation, dis-disinformation, fear, ignorance, hype, etc – evidence of UFOs’ overall beneficial intent, and, most importantly, deep concern at our development of nuclear weapons.
Sifting the evidence for the UFO realm of reality is a huge process, rather bigger than what I had to work through in countering each of of the myriad, peer-review-referenced SkS “debunks” of climate skeptics, as I turned from warmist to skeptic myself. That took me several weeks’ concentrated study, just to turn sides.
To start this process of reopening the enquiry into the UFO realm of dissed reality (and there are other such realms), all one needs is the intent to stay courteous and to examine the evidence, the whole evidence, and nothing but the evidence – oh, and to write it all up in clear, simple, laymans English, and not hijack threads. Ah, maybe I need to start a “Beyond WUWT” blog… but oh dear, the time needed… yet these issues are important.
Ah, the good old days. Sigh.
Actually, I’ve never seen a B53, though the propane tank at the Galva surface station was about that size. I neither confirm nor deny being familiar only with the B28, which is a bunch smaller, but you could carry more of them. ‘Tis a strange feeling to pat one of those puppies on the nose.
Any target buried deeply enough to need a B53 would be too well defended to reach with a big bomber.
I understand Pantex had to do a lot of research before dismantling the bomb because everyone who knew how the thing was put together was long departed.
We’re going to need to resume some nuclear testing before long, as the shelf life of the current warheads is running out, and there are still a few places around the world where they could be usefully applied.
Russ, After reading Failsafe many years ago, I never quite understood the low attack profile as a strategy for US forces (which did not intentionally plan suicide missions). Would the chutes give you enough time to get away?
@Legatus
“The hype about North Koreas nuclear bombs, and how that is a threat to us, and how therefore we should play nice with them because they are a nuclear power, is false.”
++++++++
Agreed. Their abilities are far more about PR than actual ability. A little birdie told me they are very backward in the nuke department and may simply be setting off things they are given by a neighbour to make them look powerful. It seems to be smoke and mirrors. They know more about fishin’ than fission.