Today, two hydrogen bombs and a uranium core lie in yet undetermined locations in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia, in the Puget Sound off Washington, and in swamplands near Goldsboro, North Carolina.

I've read about this before, but it's always fun to read again.  

Everything I've seen on this says the bombs and core are "unretrievable", and I have to imagine that no expense was spared trying to locate the three nuclear devices.  Still, damn.  That's got to be some sort of Bin Laden wet dream...

Jim

ETA:  Sorry, I forgot to Give you the Link. (History Channel)

WTF?

Do you have a cite for this?

Quoted: WTF?

It happened years ago. All seperate incidents.

Quoted: Do you have a cite for this?

You've never heard about this?

Quoted: Do you have a cite for this?

Here's info on the Georgia nuke.

www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=5252

See link now added to first post.

I first learned of some of these when I was in nuclear weapons school many years ago.

There are several more weapons related accidents as well.  You can look them up on the web if you just take your time.  Most are in the public domain...but not all.

The scariest for me was the Goldsboro accident.  In that one, a B-52 bomber suffered a fire caused by a major leak in a wing fuel cell and exploded in mid-air 12 miles (20 km) north of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Goldsboro, North Carolina. The explosion caused the two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs to release. One bomb fell free and inert.  The Mk 39 was a VERY big bomb.  Here is a list of all American nukes.  Scroll down to see the Mk 39 details.  

Mk-39 Nuclear Weapon

In the other Mk 39 bomb, three of the four arming devices activated, causing it to carry out many of the steps needed to arm itself, such as the charging of the firing capacitors and critically the deployment of a 100-foot retardation parachute.  The parachute allowed the bomb to hit the ground with little damage. The fourth arming device — the pilot's safe/arm switch — was not activated and so the weapon did not detonate. (Hey...that's why they're there!  )

The "free fall" bomb plunged into a farmer's muddy field at around 700 miles per hour and disintegrated.  

Some bomb pieces were found about 20 feet down, but others are believed to have plunged down to over 150 feet into the water-logged soil.  Most of the weapon including the primary core and tritium neutron generator bottle was recovered but several parts including the secondary [thermonuclear] stage including the uranium core was not.

The Air Force purchased the land, dug a wide hole, filled it in with tons of fresh concrete, put a flag pole in the center, and fenced it off to prevent its disturbance.  It even has the appropriate signage about USAF property and keep out!  .  They test it for contanimation but its been clean so far.

Suffice to say that a 3-4 MT detonation off the NC coast would have killed a lot of folks and ruined a lot of property.

Here is a fairly comprehensive list of nuclear weapons accidents.

Nuclear Weapons Accidents

There are also some pretty bad reactor and research accidents in our past.  Possibly the saddest for me was the Louis Slotkin accident at Los Alamos in 1946.  He fried himself by playing around with Mother Kali during a silly experiment.  I met with Dr. Edward Teller once and he gave me some cool details of Slotkin's foolish and tragic death.

The SL-1 accident was pretty gruesome too.  When the reactor core exploded, the rescue & recovery crew found one of the techs pinned to the concrete roof by one of the core rods.    I can just imagine how that happened too...

Anyway...Bin Laden can't get to the bomb remnants...and even if he could, he very likely doesn't have the wherewithall to turn the pieces that might be there into a working weapon.

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