End of Cold War-era nuclear bomb

25 October 2011 Last updated at 13:46 ET

The huge B53 bears the distinctive design of an air-delivered bomb

The last of America’s most powerful Cold War-era nuclear bombs – the B53 – is being destroyed in Texas.

Experts will separate around 300lb (136kg) of high explosives from the bomb’s uranium “pit”.

Weighing 10,000lb, the B53 is the size of a minivan and said to be 600 times more destructive than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

It was first put into service at the height of the Cold War in 1962, and remained in the US arsenal until 1997.

The bomb was designed to hit targets deep underground, and was carried by B-52 bombers.

The first B53s were destroyed in the 1980s but several remained in service until 1997, when they were all retired.

‘Significant milestone’

A dismantling program had to be specially designed for the B53s, which were made with older technology and by scientists who have since retired or died.

The US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said the program, which will be completed after the final bomb has been dismantled, is a year ahead of schedule.

The head of the NNSA, Thomas D’Agostino, called the decomissioning of the last B53 a “significant milestone”.

“The world is a safer place with this dismantlement,” he said.

“The B53 was a weapon developed in another time for a different world. Today, we’re moving beyond the Cold War nuclear weapons complex that built it toward a 21st Century nuclear security enterprise.”

After disassembly, the uranium pits from the bomb will be temporarily stored at the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, where Tuesday’s dismantling was carried out.

The plant is the only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility in the US.

The plant is likely to be involved with future disassembly projects as older weapons are retired from the US arsenal.

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