Has tech made moving nukes safe enough? Depends on whom you ask

John Locher / AP In this July 14, 2018, photo, people leave the south portal of Yucca Mountain during a congressional tour near Mercury. Several members of Congress toured the proposed radioactive waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. By Scott Sonner, Associated Press Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019 | 2 a.m. RENO — The plutonium core for the first atomic weapon detonated in 1945 was taken from Los Alamos National Laboratory to a test site in the New Mexico desert in the backseat of a U.S. Army sedan. Officials put other bomb parts inside a metal container, packed it into a wooden crate and secured it in the steel bed of a truck under a tarp, the U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration says in a historical account. Grainy black-and-white photos show special agents and armed military police accompanying the shipment nearly 75 years ago. “Nuclear materials transportation has evolved since then,” the department posted online last year. Today, radioactive shipments are hauled in double-walled steel containers inside specialized trailers that undergo extensive testing and are tracked by GPS and real-time apps. But whether shipping technology has evolved enough to be deemed safe depends on whom you ask. The… Read full this story

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