By Robert Farley
Over the past week, several news outlets have reported a new Eric Schlosser book that describes the loss of a 4 megaton nuclear bomb near Goldboro, North Carolina in 1961. Although many of the details were already known, the latest information indicates that several safety protocols on the device dropped from a B-52 failed to operate, leaving far too little a margin of error for a nuclear device in a populated area.
Renewed discussion of this event has helped bring problems of nuclear accident preparedness back to the fore. The Goldboro incident is one of afamily of near-nuclear accidents, situations in which a nuclear weapon came far too close to unintentional release. The Cold War experience of the United States and the Soviet Union with nuclear safety suggests a uncomfortable truth: There is a far greater likelihood that North Korea will accidentally drop a nuclear weapon on itself than on South Korea, Japan, or the United States. Managing this problem requires input from all the stakeholders, including China, and may eventually demand a rethinking of the Western position on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Read the full story at The Diplomat