Word: titans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Michio Kaku '68, associate professor of nuclear physics at City College of New York, spoke of the recent mishap that killed one person at a Titan II nuclear missile site in Arkansas. He recited a list of nuclear weapons and power plants that have problems, including a reactor in Florida that malfunctioned whenever a toilet flushed and one in California that was installed backwards...
...radio exchange would have been ludicrous had it not taken place between two members of an Air Force team searching frantically for a nine-megaton warhead, 450 times the yield of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The warhead was blown from the Titan II missile that exploded into flames near Damascus, Ark., two weeks ago. Despite pleas by nearby residents for reassurance that there was no danger of toxic fumes or radiation, the Air Force was determined to keep secret for a time the embarrassing fact that the warhead had been lost and then found a short time later...
Mississippi Democrat John C. Stennis, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged that the U.S. "seriously explore" alternatives to the Titans. But Pentagon officials maintain that the U.S. cannot afford to do so. Although the Titans are not as accurate as the country's main land-based nuclear missiles, the 1,000 solid-fuel Minutemen, a Titan warhead is about 54 times as big as one of the three warheads on a Minuteman III. Titans make up one-third of the land-based U.S. megatonnage...
...Titans' targets are secret, but experts believe that they are aimed at Soviet nuclear missile command centers and perhaps other targets like submarine bases. Explained a defense analyst: "For example, you might know that a Soviet command and control center is in a Soviet mountain, but not exactly where. Titan II's large warhead could be used to dig up the mountain...
...incidents reopened the debate over the safety of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, particularly of the 54 liquid-fuel Titan II missiles, which date from 1963; 18 of them are based in Arkansas, the rest in Arizona and Kansas. Air Force Secretary Hans Mark, a rocketry expert, insists that the Titans are not obsolete and are "a perfectly safe system to operate," despite 40 mishaps in ten years, two of them resulting in deaths or injuries. At the very least, Democratic Senator David Pryor of Arkansas demanded, the Air Force should set up a more effective warning system for Titan...