Once we’re Our Own Biggest Nuclear Threat [Nukes]

Last year, two men were handcuffed and detained after a drunken bar incident. Not unremarkable to your average road warrior. Except these two men were federal agents, and their cargo was nuclear weaponry. That’s terrifying. And it’s happened before.

That could possibly be probably the most egregious of the alcohol-induced incidents that have plagued America’s Office of Secure Transportation the previous few years, however’s faraway from an isolated incident. In 2007, an agent was arrested for public intoxication during a secure transportation mission, and there had been an entire sixteen incidents involving those entrusted with transporting our nuclear arsenal from 2007 to 2009 alone.

The Energy Department ‘s National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees OST, points to the indisputable fact that its agents have never been found drunk driving, and that there’s no systemic problem. But when the folk who are driving nuclear materials inside the morning have become drunk enough to be detained/arrested the night before, that’s a difficulty. And systemic integrity is okay for accounting firms, but a single mistake in nuclear transportation is potentially catastrophic.

And that’s just two years of alcohol-specific missteps. In 2008, we sent electrical fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan . In 2007, six nuclear warheads were transported from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, to Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base-by mistake. It’s a pattern of mistakes where there’s zero room for error.

So why does this happen? And how do we fix it? Double checking our shipping labels could be a pleasant start. But for the more immediate concern, the inside track that drinking is a big temptation for folk driving incredibly dangerous materials over long distances, there is probably not a very easy answer. There’s no job that carries with it any such unique combination of stress and boredom, which these agents experience in high enough quantities to drive anyone to the bottle.

That doesn’t make it right! Nevertheless it’s something we’ve been combating as far back as the early days of missile defense:

Even more important, its day-by-day success hinged on the dedication of pilots, mechanics, radar operators, and all the other anonymous personnel who fought off the acute cold weather and endless hours of boredom to stand guard against an enemy they hoped would never come.

That’s what it was like for life as a SAGE operator inside the 1950s. And not too far flung from what secure transporters face today.

The OST already has a ” zero tolerance” policy for alcohol incidents. But when the results are so potentially severe, the focal point has to be on prevention more than discipline. There are enough threats to America’s nuclear arsenal as it’s; the very last thing we’d like is to count the folks who handle it among them. [ NPR via Gawker ]

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This post is tagged: barksdale air force base, dangerous materials, minot air force base, national nuclear security, national nuclear security administration, nuclear security administration, public intoxication