[SystemSafety] USAF Nuclear Accidents prior to 1967

Dick Selwood dick at ntcom.co.uk
Sun Sep 22 15:02:27 CEST 2013


Nancy said "The fact that there was one near miss (and note that it was 
a miss) with nuclear weapons safety in the past 60+ years is an 
astounding achievement."

The article in the Guardian that Peter cites makes it clear that there 
were several near-misses

d



On 22/09/2013 10:53, Peter Bernard Ladkin wrote:
> While we're indulging in second thoughts....
>
> On 9/21/13 8:10 PM, Nancy Leveson wrote:
>> I'm not really sure why people are using an incident that happened 54 
>> years ago when engineering was
>> very different in order to make points about engineered systems today.
>
> John Downer pointed out on the ProcEng list yesterday evening that 
> Schlosser also wrote an article for the Guardian a week ago in which 
> he pointed out the relevance of his historical discoveries for the 
> present, namely concerning the UK Trident deterrent.
>
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/14/nuclear-weapons-accident-waiting-to-happen 
>
>
> So he seems to think it is currently relevant.
>
> For those who don't know, Trident is a US nuclear multiple-warhead 
> missile carried on British-built and UK MoD-operated submarines, one 
> of whom is always at sea. The maintenance and docking base is in 
> Scotland, at Faslane on the West Coast. Scotland is to vote on 
> independence from GB (which will become LB if so) next year, and the 
> putative government has said it will close the base at Faslane. 
> Further, the Trident "so-called British so-called independent 
> so-called deterrent" (Harold Wilson) replacement will cost untold 
> amounts of money (we have been told, but no one quite believes what we 
> have been told :-) ). Many senior politicians and a large proportion 
> of the concerned public think that money would not so be well spent.
>
> It is obviously relevant to all these deliberations to assess how 
> dangerous the old kit really is. Given recent events which have shown 
> US and UK government agencies concerned with national security in a 
> light which has resulted in many citizens losing their trust, I would 
> think any technical assessment such as this, independent of government 
> agencies, of matters relevant to renewing or revoking Trident is a 
> welcome contribution to the debate.
>
> PBL
>
> Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of 
> Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
> Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de
>
>
>
>
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