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Reactor Operators Want to Run for 80 Years, but Federal Laboratory Hid “Critical gaps” in Knowledge About How Reactors Age 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022
By Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times, Nov. 1, 2021 
Editor’s note: This is an excerpted version of the article. 

Federal regulators have embarked on a new era of relicensing that could eventually enable … US nuclear power plants to operate for as long as 80 years.

Researchers have conducted years of experiments to learn more about how different parts of the power plants age when exposed to a harsh mix of pressures, water chemistry and radiation.

Despite all this testing, questions remain about the long-term wear, beyond the 60 years for which plants are licensed. So the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that conducts relicensing contracted with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland to develop a kind of road map for future study.

That report was published online in 2017 by the PNNL federal laboratory. It detailed a series of “critical gaps” in knowledge, and proposed an ambitious research plan to help fill them in by studying parts pulled from shuttered nuclear power plants.

This report got a chill reception at the NRC.

Some commission staff thought some of the report’s wording was inaccurate or misleading and could lead readers to believe “we should not be issuing renewed licenses” to run for up to eight decades, according to emails and other documents obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

“I think the entire report needs to be scrubbed for text that points to gaps and, if issued, we need a stronger basis for why we will grant renewed licensing … before harvesting [of parts from shutdown reactors] and testing is completed,” wrote one NRC staffer.

The report was substantially revised by the NRC, which in 2019 released a toned-down version of the report that deleted all seven references to critical gaps in knowledge.

The rocky path of this study through the federal regulatory commission offers an unusual window into the launch of a licensing renewal that is expected to determine the fate of most of the current generation of US nuclear power plants. …

Most of these reactors … are licensed to operate for up to 60 years past their initial startup date.

Without license extension to operate for an additional 20 years, almost all of them would have to shut down during the first half of the 21st century, a pivotal period in the struggle to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases driving climate change….

Scott Burnell, a spokesperson for the NRC, said that relicensing involves a thorough safety review, and that NRC officials are convinced there already “is sufficient information to appropriately manage the aging of the plants.”

Burnell said the 2017 PNNL report was a draft document, although there were no markings to indicate that, and that the report underwent the “normal editing process.” ….

2017 report posted online, then removed 

Paul Gunter obtained the NRC documents detailing the internal criticisms of the PNNL report. He is an activist with Beyond Nuclear, a group working for a world “free of nuclear power and nuclear weapons.”

Gunter for years has watchdogged the relicensing of nuclear power plants, and more recently has been a vocal critic of the NRC’s proposal to consider up to 80 years of operation for US nuclear power plants.

“This is pushing to the extreme,” said Gunter.

Gunter during an online search went to the PNNL website, and found a copy of the 2017 report. He was encouraged by the authors’ recommendations, and cited the study at a Sept. 26, 2018, meeting about relicensing convened by the NRC. “I started asking questions and their jaws dropped, and they said, ‘We can’t be talking about this,’ ” Gunter recalls.

Soon after Gunter cited the report at the meeting, he said the report was pulled down from the PNNL as well as Department of Energy and International Atomic Energy Agency websites that had also posted the document.

Troubled by the effort to keep the 2017 report from public view, Gunter’s organization then filed a federal Freedom of Information Act request to gain access to NRC documents related to the study.

These documents show how NRC’s own research staff had questions about how important structures would hold up over 80 years of operations. A 2013 project description stated that “understanding and managing” how things degrade is “unquestionably a key need for continued safe and reliable” reactor operations, and “also an area with very significant uncertainties.”

One of the most challenging areas involves embrittlement of metal in reactor pressure vessels that are bombarded by neutrons during the fission process. Extreme embrittlement could result in reactors having to reduce power production or shut down all together.

The aging of reactor internals and concrete, and deterioration of cables, also are concerns, according to NRC documents Gunter obtained. …

As of October, the NRC has approved operations of up to 80 years for six reactors. Applications for nine others are under review.

The NRC earlier this year also considered, then put on hold, a public discussion about possibly licensing reactors for as long as 100 years. …

— Seattle Times reporter Rebecca Moss contributed to this report. 

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Congress Forces Weapons Spending the Pentagon Wanted Cancelled 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

Writing in Roll Call October 18, John Donnelly analyzed federal spending on weapons unwanted by the Pentagon. A report made public in early October shows that Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord attempted to save about $1 billion in weapons spending, but was stopped by the Appropriations and the Armed Services Committees in both the Senate and the House.

These four committees have repeatedly kept hundreds of millions of tax dollars gushing into the coffers of the world biggest weapons contractors — for weapons declared unnecessary by the military. The committees can even refuse to reject the savings recommendations without saying why. Donnelly wrote, “None of the four defense panels provided CQ Roll Call an explanation for forcing the Pentagon to keep spending money on particular initiatives.”

“The Pentagon had said it does not need the $500 million-plus that was appropriated for the fighter jets, helicopters, ships, vehicles, and bombs made by four of its top five contractors” (Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman). But, Roll Call reports, “Congressional Appropriations and Armed Services committees, for reasons that none of them would divulge, insisted that the military spend the money anyway.”

Last year’s political contributions by some of the companies whose contracts were saved by congress, were: Lockheed: $5,055,874; Northrup Grumman: $5,269,016; General Dynamics: $3,378,838; and Boeing: $464,629, according to OpenSecrets online whose researchers also found that the top 20 weapons contractors contributed $47 million to federal candidates, parties, and outside groups in 2020. Capitol Hill arm-twisting by the top 20’s 675 registered lobbyists (1.2 for each member on the hill) totaled more than $87 million in 2021.

Some of the rejected savings were: 

M $60 million for Air Force F-35 fighter jet procurements, and going to Lockheed Martin

M $2 billion a year for the last seven years on F-35s that the Pentagon did not order

M $15 million for Lockheed Martin’s CH-53K helicopter program

M $194 million for Boeing’s Grey Wolf helicopters

M $18 million for procurement and modifications for Boeing’s Super Hornet fighter jet

M $15 million for modifications to Boeing’s Super Hornet and Growler planes

M $73 million for an unrequested Expeditionary Sea Base ship made by General Dynamics

M $66 million on unneeded “General Purpose Bombs,” mostly made by General Dynamics

M$59 million for a Northrup Grumman bomb fuse

In a related case, Boeing won a $1.62 billion contract in September to repair guidance systems on the Air Force’s 400 Minuteman III ICBMs. The 18- year contract will run simultaneously with a $2.6 billion deal for Northrup Grumman for the Minuteman III’s replacement rocket, dubbed the G.B.S.D. — emphasis on the BS.

The swamp was further described in a November 9 piece by Joe Cirincione titled “How the nuclear game is rigged to maintain the status quo,” which notes that the same giant weapons contractors also build nuclear weapons. “To protect those contracts, these arms firms deploy a small army of lobbyists in Washington, run a revolving door that shuttles officials between top policy jobs and top contractor jobs, disperse contracts to nearly every congressional district, contribute generously to lawmakers on the key committees that oversee their programs, are major advertisers in all the publications covering national security, and have flooded Washington think tanks over the past 20 years with grants to mute criticism of their programs.”

—Rollcall online, “Congress Blocks Cuts to Top Contractors Weapons Budgets,” Oct. 18; William Hartung, “Profiteers of Armageddon,” Inkstick.com, Oct. 12; Opensecrets.org; and Responsible Statecraft, Nov. 9, 2021

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 To Avoid Armageddon, Don’t Modernize Missiles — Scrap Them

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022
Daniel Ellsberg, Norman Solomon, The Nation
Land-based nuclear weapons are world-ending accidents waiting to happen

The single best option for reducing the risk of nuclear war is hidden in plain sight. News outlets don’t mention it. Pundits ignore it. Even progressive and peace-oriented members of Congress tiptoe around it. And yet, for many years, experts have been calling for this act of sanity that could save humanity: Shutting down all of the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Four hundred ICBMs dot the rural landscapes of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Loaded in silos, these missiles are uniquely—and dangerously—on hair-trigger alert. Unlike the nuclear weapons on submarines or bombers, the land-based missiles are vulnerable to attack and could present the commander in chief with a sudden use-them-or-lose-them choice. “If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them. Once they are launched, they cannot be recalled,” former Defense Secretary William Perry warns.[1]

“The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision.”

The danger that a false alarm on either side — of the sort that has occurred repeatedly on both sides — would lead to a preemptive attack derives almost entirely from the existence on both sides of land-based missile forces, each vulnerable to attack by the other; each, therefore, is kept on a high state of alert, ready to launch within minutes of warning. The easiest and fastest way for the US to reduce that risk — and, indeed, the overall danger of nuclear war — is to dismantle entirely its Minuteman III missile force. Gen. James E. Cartwright, a former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been commander of the Strategic Command, teamed up with former Minuteman launch officer Bruce G. Blair to write in a 2016 op-ed: “By scrapping the vulnerable land-based missile force, any need for launching on warning disappears.”[2]

“These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world,” said former Pentagon head William Perry, Sep. 30, 2016, a fact demonstrated by out-of-control ICBMs reported on by this Casper, Wyoming Star-Tribune story from Oct. 28, 1987

But rather than confront the reality that ICBMs — all ICBMs — are such a grave threat to human survival, the most concerned members of Congress have opted to focus on stopping new ones from taking the place of existing ones. A year ago, the Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion “engineering and manufacturing development” contract for replacing the current Minuteman III missiles with a new generation of ICBMs named the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent.[3]

Northrop Grumman was the only bidder for GBSD after Boeing decided to drop out of the competition.

Current projections peg the overall cost over the next five decades at $364 billion. Northrop Grumman calls the GBSD “the modernization of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.” But if reducing the dangers of nuclear war is a goal, the top priority should be to remove the triad’s ground-based leg — not modernize it.

Many arms-control advocates, while understanding the inherent dangers of ground-based nuclear missiles, have largely stuck to opposing the GBSD. Instead of challenging ICBMs outright, a coalition of organizations has concentrated on aiming a fiscal argument at Capitol Hill, calling the GBSD program a “money pit” that would squander vast amounts of taxpayer dollars. But the powerful chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, executed a deft end run around that strategy in early summer when he declared that “Minuteman extension, as it is currently being explained to us, is actually more expensive than building the GBSD.”

The same Congressman Smith said less than a year earlier, “I frankly think that our [ICBM] fleet right now is driven as much by politics as it is by a policy necessity. You know, there are certain states in the union that apparently are fond of being a nuclear target. And you know, it’s part of their economy. It’s what they do.”

Senators from several of the states with major ICBM bases or development activities—Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, [Nebraska, Colorado,]and Utah — continue to maintain an “ICBM Coalition” dedicated to thwarting any serious scrutiny of the land-based weaponry. Members of the coalition have systematically blocked efforts to reduce the number of ICBMs or study alternatives to building new ones. They’re just a few of the lawmakers captivated by ICBM mega-profiteers. In a report issued this year by the Center for International Policy, nuclear weapons expert William Hartung gives readers a detailed look “Inside the ICBM Lobby,” showing how ICBM contractors get their way while throwing millions of dollars at politicians and deploying battalions of lobbyists on Capitol Hill.[4]

As the recipient of the sole-source contract to build the proposed new ICBMs, Northrop Grumman has joined with other top contractors to block efforts to reduce spending on these dangerous and unnecessary systems — or even simply to pause their development.

When opponents of the GBSD decline to challenge the currently deployed Minuteman III missiles, the effects are counterproductive if their ultimate goal is to get rid of ICBMs. Tacit acceptance of the Minuteman missile force while attempting to block the GBSD sends a message that the ICBM status quo isn’t so bad. Such a tactical path might seem eminently pragmatic and realistic. But sooner or later, the extraordinary dangers of keeping any ICBMs in place must be faced, exposed, explained to the public — and directly challenged.

Getting trapped in an argument about the cheapest way to keep ICBMs operational in their silos is ultimately no-win. The history of nuclear weapons in this country tells us that people will spare no expense if they believe that spending the money will really make them and their loved ones safer — we must show them that ICBMs actually do the opposite. Unless arms-control and disarmament groups, along with allied members of Congress, change course and get serious about addressing the fundamentals of why ICBMs should be eliminated, they’ll end up implicitly reinforcing the land-based part of the triad.

“First and foremost,” former Defense Secretary Perry wrote five years ago, “the United States can safely phase out its land-based [ICBM] force, a key facet of Cold War nuclear policy.[5] Retiring the ICBMs would save considerable costs, but it isn’t only budgets that would benefit. These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”

Contrary to uninformed assumptions, discarding all ICBMs could be accomplished unilaterally by the United States with no downside. Even if Russia chose not to follow suit, dismantling the potentially cataclysmic land-based missiles would make the world safer for everyone on the planet. Frank von Hippel, a former chair of the Federation of American Scientists and a cofounder of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, wrote this year: “Eliminating launch on warning would significantly reduce the probability of blundering into a civilization-ending nuclear war by mistake. To err is human. To start a nuclear war would be unforgivable.”

Better sooner than later, members of Congress will need to face up to the horrendous realities about intercontinental ballistic missiles. They won’t do that unless peace, arms-control, and disarmament groups go far beyond the current limits of congressional discourse — and start emphasizing, on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots, the crucial truth about ICBMs and the imperative of eliminating them all.

— Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released The Pentagon Papers, the US military’s account of activities during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times. The release awakened the American people to how much they had been deceived by their own government about the war. Ellsberg has continued as a political activist, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events.

— Norman Solomon is the Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, the author of War Made Easy, and a cofounder of RootsAction.org.

— This article originally appeared in the Oct. 17, 2021 edition of the Nation. Copyright (c) The Nation.

___ 

Notes, not original with the authors, added by the editor:

[1] William J. Perry, “Why It’s Safe to Scrap America’s ICBMs,” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/opinion/why-its-safe-to-scrap-americas-icbms.html

[2] “End the First-Use Policy for Nuclear Weapons,” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/opinion/end-the-first-use-policy-for-nuclear-weapons.html

[3] “Northrop Grumman receives $13.3 billion contract to develop next-generation ICBM,” Space News online, Sep. 8, 2020; https://spacenews.com/northrop-grumman-receives-13-3-billion-contract-to-develop-next-generation-icbm/

[4] “Inside The ICBM Lobby: Special Interests or The National Interest?” https://3ba8a190-62da-4c98-86d2-893079d87083.usrfiles.com/ugd/3ba8a1_89fe183f8a164e22a2fa29d4d6381d7b.pdf

[5] Wm. Perry, note 1

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Ignoring Outcry, Mockery, Japan Intends 2023 Start of Fukushima Wastewater Dumping

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

On October 18, Japan’s Prime Minster Fumio Kishida said there would be no postponement of its plan to pollute the Pacific Ocean with 1.27 million metric tons of radioactive cooling water from Fukushima’s destroyed reactors. Kishida said releasing the “heavily diluted” waste water would begin in the spring of 2023. The dispersal is expected to continue for decades as the accumulation of radioactive cooling water increases by 150 tons every day. The water becomes severely contaminated after being poured over large volumes of roiling, not, melted uranium and mixed uranium/plutonium fuel under Fukushima-Daiichi’s three destroyed nuclear reactors.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi was openly mocked with laughter by the dignitaries at COP26 on November 4. The adamantly pro-nuclear Grossi had said before the large audience, “No one died from radiation at Fukushima,” provoking the laughs. “I don’t know why you’re laughing, it’s a fact,” he griped. Earlier Grossi warmed up the crowd with this thigh-slapper: “We control this activity so it does not cause any harm.” Grossi’s job is difficult since under its United Nations Statute, the IAEA has only one objective: “The Agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy … throughout the world.”

Japan’s April decision to further pollute the Pacific caused an uproar in dozens of Pacific rim of countries. South Korean officials denounced Kishida’s declaration the same day, saying that it represents a “grave threat” to the marine environment. South Korea continues to ban seafood imports from the Fukushima region and has repeatedly condemned the dumping plan, which a senior South Korean foreign ministry official said, “could affect our people’s health and security as well as the ocean environment.”

Alternatives to the ocean dumping include long-term tank storage, more thorough filtering, or evaporation, and in 2019 Japan’s own ministry of economy and industry recommended including evaporation in its list of waste water options.

China’s Global Times reported in October that Liu Jiangyong, vice dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, asked if the wastewater will be processed and will have no impact on the marine environment and food web as the Japanese government claimed, why can’t the water be recycled on land? Japan can’t answer any of these questions, said Liu. The ideal plan would be for Japan to process the wastewater to a safe level and recycle it, rather than dump it into the sea, said Liu.

A June letter to Japan’s permanent mission to the United Nations signed by a group of 70 groups, including Nukewatch, warned: “The dumping of radioactive water into the Pacific is also a violation of international law. The 1972 Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter and the London Protocol prohibit dumping of any concentration of radioactive material into the sea.”

In May, three human rights experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Council issued a statement that expressed “deep regret” at Japan’s dumping plan and “reminded Japan of its international obligations to prevent exposure to hazardous substances, to conduct environmental impact assessments of the risks that the discharge of water may have, to prevent transboundary environmental harms, and to protect the marine environment.”

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), operators of the Fukushima complex, announced August 24 it would construct a tunnel underwater to release the 1.27 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Tepco said it would start building at least one 8-foot diameter half-mile-long tunnel in March 2022 by hollowing out bedrock on the seabed near the No. 5 reactor at Fukushima, Japan Times reported.

Critics around the world immediately denounced the plan as an attempt to avoid any oversight, monitoring, or independent inspection of the radioactive materials in the waste water.

“…to dump it into an ocean, where we share the same tides, current, and fish, it is a level up from urgent for us,” said Henry Puna, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, noting that even basic concerns had not yet been addressed. “Currently we are not satisfied there will be no harm to our Blue Pacific,” he told Civil Beat in September.

A regional collective of young activists called Youngsolwara Pacific has condemned the dumping plan and Japan’s lack of consultation. Likewise, a senior South Korean foreign ministry official told China’s Global Times in October that, “Japan’s decision was made without enough consultations with neighboring nations.” Talei Luscia Mangioni, a researcher at Australian National University and Youngsolwara Pacific member, said “… this is an act of transboundary harm. ” And it is typical, she said, considering the history of nuclear powers that “have treated the Pacific as a sacrifice zone.”

In Iitate village 24 miles from Fukushima’s meltdowns, Nobuyoshi Ito, a former computer engineer, has been measuring the radioactive properties in the food and soil for nearly a decade. Mr. Ito always carries a monitor and is constantly recording radiation levels, “trying to determine what is and isn’t safe to eat, and where it is and isn’t safe to go,” CBS News reported last August. While the town’s evacuation orders are gone, Ito says people — especially children — shouldn’t return. “It will take 300 years to restore the village to its original state, and it will continue to emit radiation for 300 years,” he said.

On September 22, the United States lifted its weak restrictions on imported food stuffs from Japan, and food products free of inspection now include even rice harvested in Fukushima. According to Japan’s farm ministry, the US is the 3d-largest importer of its food products and were worth $1.09 billion in 2020. Fourteen countries continue to maintain their food import bans. FDA officials say they’d determining a “very low risk” to US consumers from radioactive contaminants in the foods. — JL

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Nuclear-Powered Submarine Wrecks: Routine, Deadly, Toxic

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

USS Connecticut Smashes into Undersea Mountain

US Navy officials report that its nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut struck an underwater mountain in the South China Sea on October 2, echoing the disastrous crash of the USS San Francisco in 2005 south of Guam. US military officials told CBS News that two Connecticut crew members suffered “moderate” injuries and several sustained minor bumps and bruises. The Navy said the sub’s nuclear reactor was not damaged.

A month after the crash, Connecticut’s three top officers were fired “due to loss of confidence.” As we go to press, the Pentagon had not yet explained why the 23-year-old Connecticut struck an underwater mountain, or revealed the extent of damage to the vessel. China’s government has accused the US of a “lack of transparency and responsibility” regarding the accident. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said November 2, “We once again urge the US to give a detailed account of the accident,” the AP reported.

Some 52 US conventional diesel-powered Navy submarines were lost at sea during WWII, according to The Lost 52 Project. Beginning with the USS Nautilus in 1951, the submariners’ risk-taking with their own lives and with the ocean’s biological integrity was compounded by the switch to nuclear reactors for propulsion.

300-Year Oceanic Hazard

The Aug. 25, 2000 New York Times report about long-lived radioactive materials leaking from sunken nuclear reactors (then onboard the Russian sub Kursk), noted a fact that applies to all the lost reactors: “The two of most concern — strontium-90 and cesium-137 — have half-lives of about 30 years, and will take about 300 years to decay away.”

USS Thresher

USS Thresher was a nuclear-powered attack submarine that sank on April 10, 1963 during deep-diving tests, killing all 129 crew and shipyard workers onboard. Thresher was the third of four submarines that would sink with more than 100 people aboard.

USS Scorpion

The nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sank with all hands on May 22, 1968. The Scorpion was one of four submarine disappearances that year, the others being Israel’s sub Dakar, France’s sub Minerve, and the Soviet sub K-129.“Neither vessels’ reactors [on the Thresher and Scorpion], nor the nuclear weapons on board the Scorpion, have ever been recovered,” the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported Sept. 17, 2021.

Komsomolets

Forty-two crew members died when the experimental Soviet sub Komsomolets sank 5,577 feet to the bottom of the Norwegian Sea following a five-hour-long onboard fire April 7, 1989. While part of the crew abandoned ship in rubber rafts, some of the crew stayed on fighting the fire and shutting down the sub’s nuclear reactors. Researchers said July 10, 2019, that the sub is still emitting radiation, Reuters reported.

Kursk

In August 2000, after explosions destroyed forward parts of the sub, Russia’s nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed Kursk sank in the Barents Sea, only 354 feet down. All 118 crew members died after the failure of repeated rescue attempts.

HMS Tireless

On May 12, 2000, the British fast-attack submarine Tireless suffered reactor accident, spilled radioactive coolant into the Mediterranean, and conducted a lengthy, risky, experimental, and unlawful repair operation in the densely populated area of Gibraltar. News reports at the time said Tireless came within “a few minutes” of a reactor meltdown when high-pressure coolant began gushing out of the system. Docking the damaged, contaminated sub at Gibraltar for six months of repair work violated Royal Navy regulations, and reactor failure resulted in the recall of all 12 of Britain’s Trafalgar Class subs.

K-159

Nine crew members died when the Russian submarine K-159 sank in 2003 while being towed through a violent storm in the Barents Sea. Environmentalists said that the danger of radioactive contamination from the sub’s two propulsion reactors was “much higher than official statements suggested.”

USS San Francisco

On Jan. 8, 2005, the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine San Francisco, running at top speed, smashed into an undersea mountain 500 feet down, killing one sailor and leaving 98 battered and bloodied after being hurled through the air by the crash. Several were knocked unconscious and many were bleeding from head wounds. After the crash, “blood was everywhere,” one account read. “There was so much blood on the instruments and on the control room floor,” Chief Petty Officer Danny Hager said, “that the place looked like a slaughterhouse.”

HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant

On the night of Feb. 3, 2009, France’s Le Triomphant, and Britain’s HMS Vanguard, both carrying nuclear weapons, collided while submerged in the Atlantic. Both vessels were damaged although the 250 crew members aboard were uninjured, the New York Times reported. All nuclear-armed subs are shrouded in extreme secrecy, so very little is known about the extent of the damage, but Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said then the collision “could have released vast amounts of radiation and scattered scores of nuclear warheads across the seabed.”

Losharik

On July 1, 2019, fourteen Russian sailors were killed by toxic fumes when a fire broke out aboard the nuclear-powered research submarine Losharik which was operating in the Arctic. —JL

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