Difference between revisions of "Timeline of nuclear risk"

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| 1962 || October 27 || || "October 27, 1962 Soviet Sub Captain Decides to Fire Nuclear Torpedo During Cuban Missile Crisis. This may be the closest call of all. eleven US Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph had cornered the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba, in International waters outside the US “quarantine” area. What they didn’t know was that the temperature onboard had risen past 45ºC (113ºF) as the submarine’s batteries were running out and the air-conditioning had stopped. On the verge of carbon dioxide poisoning, many crew members fainted. The crew had had no contact with Moscow for days and didn’t know whether World War III had already begun. Then the Americans started dropping small depth charges at them which, unbeknownst to the crew, they’d informed Moscow were merely meant to force them to surface and leave." ||  
 
| 1962 || October 27 || || "October 27, 1962 Soviet Sub Captain Decides to Fire Nuclear Torpedo During Cuban Missile Crisis. This may be the closest call of all. eleven US Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph had cornered the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba, in International waters outside the US “quarantine” area. What they didn’t know was that the temperature onboard had risen past 45ºC (113ºF) as the submarine’s batteries were running out and the air-conditioning had stopped. On the verge of carbon dioxide poisoning, many crew members fainted. The crew had had no contact with Moscow for days and didn’t know whether World War III had already begun. Then the Americans started dropping small depth charges at them which, unbeknownst to the crew, they’d informed Moscow were merely meant to force them to surface and leave." ||  
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| 1973 || || || "The results for sensitive assis�tance increasing exploration are due entirely to three cases: Iran, Iraq, and Taiwan, which received assistance in 1984, 1976, and 1975"<ref name="Stulberg"/> ||
 
 
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| 1973 || October 24 || || "False Alarm During DEFCON 3. During the Arab-Israeli war, the U.S. went to high alert as a way of warning the U.S.S.R. not to intervene. " ||
 
| 1973 || October 24 || || "False Alarm During DEFCON 3. During the Arab-Israeli war, the U.S. went to high alert as a way of warning the U.S.S.R. not to intervene. " ||
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| 1975 || || || {{w|Taiwan}} receives nuclear assistance from {{w|France}}.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=KROENIG |first1=MATTHEW |title=Exporting the Bomb: Why States Provide Sensitive Nuclear Assistance |journal=The American Political Science Review |date=2009 |volume=103 |issue=1 |pages=113–133 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27798489 |issn=0003-0554}}</ref><ref name="Stulberg"/> In the same year, the {{w|CIA}} reports, “Taipei conducts its small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so.”<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mizokami |first1=Kyle |title=China's Greatest Nightmare: Taiwan Armed with Nuclear Weapons |url=https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-greatest-nightmare-taiwan-armed-nuclear-weapons-80041 |website=The National Interest |access-date=9 August 2022 |language=en |date=12 September 2019}}</ref> || {{w|Taiwan}}
 
| 1975 || || || {{w|Taiwan}} receives nuclear assistance from {{w|France}}.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=KROENIG |first1=MATTHEW |title=Exporting the Bomb: Why States Provide Sensitive Nuclear Assistance |journal=The American Political Science Review |date=2009 |volume=103 |issue=1 |pages=113–133 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27798489 |issn=0003-0554}}</ref><ref name="Stulberg"/> In the same year, the {{w|CIA}} reports, “Taipei conducts its small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so.”<ref>{{cite web |last1=Mizokami |first1=Kyle |title=China's Greatest Nightmare: Taiwan Armed with Nuclear Weapons |url=https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chinas-greatest-nightmare-taiwan-armed-nuclear-weapons-80041 |website=The National Interest |access-date=9 August 2022 |language=en |date=12 September 2019}}</ref> || {{w|Taiwan}}
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| 1976 || || || {{w|Iraq}} receives nuclear assistance.<ref name="Stulberg"/> || {{w|Iraq}}
 
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| 1978 || || || The {{w|United States Congress}} passes the [[w:Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978|Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act]] to put further restrictions on US nuclear exports.<ref name="Smetana"/> || {{w|United States}}
 
| 1978 || || || The {{w|United States Congress}} passes the [[w:Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978|Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act]] to put further restrictions on US nuclear exports.<ref name="Smetana"/> || {{w|United States}}

Revision as of 10:51, 9 August 2022

This is a timeline of nuclear security.

Sample questions

The following are some interesting questions that can be answered by reading this timeline:

Big picture

Time period Development summary More details
2000s "many countries began expressing a newfound interest in nuclear energy during the early 2000s."[1]

Full timeline

Year Month and date Event type Details Country
1956 November 5 False Alarms during the Suez Crisis.
1959 "The World Bank has long had a policy of not loaning funds for new nu�clear power plant construction. The last nuclear project it financed was a re�actor in Italy in 1959. The Bank adopted a more official policy proscription against loans for nuclear plants in 1996, though the it has supported mod�ernization of existing nuclear plants and supporting orders to advance the decommissioning of facilities and improve safety."[1]
1960 The first Israeli nuclear reactor goes on line, with the second in 1962.[1] Israel
1961 November 24 "On this evening, communication links between Strategic Air Command headquarters (SAC HQ) and NORAD went dead. The result was that SAC HQ lost communication with three Ballistic Missile Early Warning Sites (BMEWS) around the world, all of which were supposed to run on independent telephone and telegraph lines."
1962 August 23 "US Bomber in Soviet No-Fly Zone"
1962 October 24 "Soviet Satellite Explodes During Cuban Missile Crisis"
1962 October 25 "Bear Triggers Nuclear Alarm"
1962 October 26 "US F102A Fighters vs Soviet MIG interceptors"
1962 October 26 "Unannounced ICBM Launch during Cuban Missile Crisis A Titan-II ICBM was launched from Florida into the South Pacific. But no one alerted the Moorestown Radar site."
1962 October 26 "Easy-access Codes. With nuclear foreces on high alert because the Cuban Missile Crisis was escalating, work was accelerated at the Malmstrom Air Force Base to prepare the Minuteman-1 missiles for full deployment. In the rush, proper handover procedures and safety checks were skipped. The result was that one of the silos and missiles were ready to go with no armed guards to cover their transport to separate storage. All of the launch equipment and codes were placed together in the silo, which would have allowed a single operator to launch a fully armed missile."
1962 October 27 "October 27, 1962 Soviet Sub Captain Decides to Fire Nuclear Torpedo During Cuban Missile Crisis. This may be the closest call of all. eleven US Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph had cornered the Soviet submarine B-59 near Cuba, in International waters outside the US “quarantine” area. What they didn’t know was that the temperature onboard had risen past 45ºC (113ºF) as the submarine’s batteries were running out and the air-conditioning had stopped. On the verge of carbon dioxide poisoning, many crew members fainted. The crew had had no contact with Moscow for days and didn’t know whether World War III had already begun. Then the Americans started dropping small depth charges at them which, unbeknownst to the crew, they’d informed Moscow were merely meant to force them to surface and leave."
1973 October 24 "False Alarm During DEFCON 3. During the Arab-Israeli war, the U.S. went to high alert as a way of warning the U.S.S.R. not to intervene. "
1974 Using a reactor provided by Canada for “peaceful” purposes, India conducts a test of a nuclear explosive device. Nuclear materials were supplied by the United States, and the Canadian reactor was used to produce plutonium for the nuclear explosive. This case can be seen as an example of how early civilian nuclear assistance could lead to the foundation of nuclear weapon programs.[1] India
1974 August 1 “In his last weeks in office during the Watergate crisis, President Richard M. Nixon was clinically depressed, emotionally unstable, and drinking heavily. U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to route “any emergency order coming from the president”—such as a nuclear launch order— through him first (Schlosser 2013, p. 360).”
1975 Taiwan receives nuclear assistance from France.[2][1] In the same year, the CIA reports, “Taipei conducts its small nuclear program with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so.”[3] Taiwan
1976 Iraq receives nuclear assistance.[1] Iraq
1978 The United States Congress passes the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act to put further restrictions on US nuclear exports.[4] United States
1979 Peak of the nuclear power sector’s growth in the world. At this time, there are 233 power reactors being simultaneously under construction, a number had fallen to 120 by 1987.[1] Worldwide
1980 March 15 "“The Soviet Union launched four submarine-based missiles from near the Kuril Islands as part of a training exercise. Based on data from a U.S. early warning sensor, one of the launches appeared to have a trajectory aimed at the United States. This led the United States to convene officials for a threat assessment conference (Comptroller General of the United States 1981).”"
1982–1983 India smuggles Chinese heavy water through German nuclear-materials broker Alfred Hempel, who manages to ship 60 tons of heavy water to Bombay.[5][1] India
1981 The Israeli Air Force destroys the unfinished Iraqi Osirak reactor during the Operation Opera.[6] This attack would be widely viewed to be a stopgap measure, delaying but not preventing Iraqi nuclear aspirations.[1]
1981 "Peaceful nuclear programs also could be a source of international conflict. Because nuclear technology can be used for both civilian and military pur�poses, uncertainty about a country’s intentions could raise the risk of preven�tive military action. This danger is best illustrated by Israel’s 1981 “bolt from the blue” bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor known as Osiraq. Iraq procured this civilian facility from France and placed it under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards designed to detect diversions of key materi�als to a military program. The Israelis, however, feared that Saddam Hussein intended to use this plant to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, and it chose to take military action to limit Iraq’s capacity to build the bomb. Israel took similar action in September 2007 when it destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria, although this facility was not under IAEA safe�guards and it is unclear whether its purpose was military or civilian."[1]
1982 South Africa develops and builds its first nuclear explosive device,[7] with its scientists having been trained by the United States as a result of government-backed programs.[1] South Africa
1983 "Centrifuges are “self�disassembling” machines that require a number of high-precision parts and careful trial-and-error experiments in order to operate correctly. Those who adopted centrifuges have spent on average 19.6 years in the pool, with a single success (Pakistan). Gaseous diffusion is a much better choice; if the United States were in the pool, the average number of years in the pool would be 9.0, with two successes. Even this number is deceptively high, since Argentina announced its facility in 1983, although it is unclear at what level, if any, it worked at (Montgomery and Mount 2010)."
1983 November 2 — November 11 "Soviets Misinterpret US Nuclear War Games NATO conduced a massive command post exercise simulating a period of conflict escalation November 2-11 1983. This culminated with a simulation of the highest military alert status, DEFCON 1, and a coordinated nuclear attack against the Soviet Union."
1984 India buys beryllium from a German company.[8][1] Beryllium is a neutron reflector used in nuclear weapons.[9] It is a substitute for gold or natural uranium reflectors in early devices, with the purpose of saving much weight and money.[10] India
1984 Iran receives nuclear assistance.[1] Iran
1986 "The nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 had a devastating effect on nu�clear industries around the world. To account for the decline in demand for nuclear power following this disaster, a dichotomous variable, Chernobyl, is included and coded 1 if the year is after 1986 and coded 0 otherwise."[1]
Early 1990s ". According to Lyudmila Zaitse�va’s research, the early 1990s saw many nuclear smugglers apparently moving directly from the former Soviet Union to Western Europe by road or rail."[1]
1992 "the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, begun in 1992 and intended to de�commission weapons of mass destruction; improve the physical security and materials, protection, control, and accounting features of Russian and other former Soviet states’ nuclear facilities; and turn underemployed Russian nu�clear scientists toward productive ends, has consumed more than US$10 bil�lion and to date has only partially achieved its"[1]
1995 "While nuclear traffickers could in theory use tunnels underneath borders or move over water, through the mountains and jungle, in practice they often try to smuggle their goods through minor border checkpoints, as when in 1995 customs officials caught a man trying to smuggle HEU through a land checkpoint in Bulgaria (IAEA 2007). That is, smugglers use the roads (and therefore border checkpoints) that are built by governments to facilitate travel and therefore have to deal with the state directly, but they try to minimize the chance of being caught by crossing the border at points where state security measures might be lackadai�sical or officials might be more easily bribed."[1]
1996 "The World Bank has long had a policy of not loaning funds for new nu�clear power plant construction. The last nuclear project it financed was a re�actor in Italy in 1959. The Bank adopted a more official policy proscription against loans for nuclear plants in 1996, though the it has supported mod�ernization of existing nuclear plants and supporting orders to advance the decommissioning of facilities and improve safety."[1]
2001 September 11 "We now know, for example, that al Qaeda considered flying airplanes into nuclear facilities in the United States as part of the 9/11 attacks (Holt and Andrews 2007)."[1]
2007 "In 2007, members of the original group of nuclear winter scientists collectively performed a new comprehensive quantitative assessment utilizing the latest computer and climate models. They concluded that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could kill as many people as died in all of World War II and seriously disrupt the global climate for a decade or more, harming nearly everyone on Earth."[11]
2007 "This is not to minimize the supply-side problems that will exist in fighting illicit trafficking in a nuclear renaissance (or resurgence). The small number of new point sources for nuclear material in low-state-capacity countries does not warrant complacency. The strange case of the armed attack on the Pe�lindaba nuclear facility in South Africa in 2007, for example, highlights that even single points have security weaknesses and can be subject to concerted attacks"[1]
2007 July "In July 2007, just before Russian President Vladimir Putin vacationed with American President George W. Bush at the Bush home in Kennebunkport, Maine, Russia successfully tested a new submarine-based missile. The missile carries six nuclear warheads and can travel over 6000 miles, that is, it is designed to strike targets in the United States, including, almost certainly, targets in the very state of Maine Putin visited. For his part, President Bush’s administration adopted a nuclear posture that included plans to produce new types of weapons, begin development of a new generation of nuclear missiles, submarines and bombers, and to expand the US nuclear weapons complex so that it could produce thousands of new warheads on demand."[11]
2007 August 29 — August 30 “Six nuclear-armed cruise missiles were mistakenly loaded onto a B-52 bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Although there were multiple instances when the crew should have verified that the cruise missiles were not armed, no one followed required protocol to check for live weapons. The plane sat overnight on the tarmac at Minot, unguarded. It then flew 1,500 miles to a base in Louisiana where it sat unguarded for another nine hours until a maintenance crew there realized that the weapons were live. In total, there were 36 hours during which no one in the Air Force realized that six live nuclear weapons were missing (Schlosser 2013, p. 473). In response to the incident, retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, commander of U.S. Strategic Command from 1996 to 1998, said, “I have been in the nuclear business since 1966 and am not aware of any incident more disturbing” (Warrick and Pincus 2007).”
2007 September "Peaceful nuclear programs also could be a source of international conflict. Because nuclear technology can be used for both civilian and military pur�poses, uncertainty about a country’s intentions could raise the risk of preven�tive military action. This danger is best illustrated by Israel’s 1981 “bolt from the blue” bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor known as Osiraq. Iraq procured this civilian facility from France and placed it under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards designed to detect diversions of key materi�als to a military program. The Israelis, however, feared that Saddam Hussein intended to use this plant to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons, and it chose to take military action to limit Iraq’s capacity to build the bomb. Israel took similar action in September 2007 when it destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria, although this facility was not under IAEA safe�guards and it is unclear whether its purpose was military or civilian."[1]
2008 Research According to Hastings, when smuggling goods, illicit nonstate actors face a trade-off between the security and efficiency of the route.[1]
2009 The United States and South Africa sign an agreement on cooperation on nuclear energy research and development related to pebble bed modular reactor and Generation IV technologies that do not include a conditionality clause.[1] United States, South Africa
2009 "The Obama administration in 2009 effectively mothballed the permanent disposal site of Yucca Mountain by reducing funding of the site to almost negligible levels (Farrell 2010)."[1]
2016 March 18 – June 15 "19 airmen from the 90th Missile Wing at F. E. Warren Air Force Base are under investigation for illegal drug use. The base operates 150 nuclear missiles, and the airmen who are being charged were responsible for ensuring the security of the weapons."

Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

Base literature

  • The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security, by Adam N. Stulberg and Matthew Fuhrmann.[1]
  • Nuclear Deviance: Stigma Politics and the Rules of the Nonproliferation Gameby Michal Smetana,[4]


The initial version of the timeline was written by FIXME.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

Feedback and comments

Feedback for the timeline can be provided at the following places:

  • FIXME

What the timeline is still missing

Timeline update strategy

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 Stulberg, Adam N.; Fuhrmann, Matthew (23 January 2013). The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-8530-3. 
  2. ↑ KROENIG, MATTHEW (2009). "Exporting the Bomb: Why States Provide Sensitive Nuclear Assistance". The American Political Science Review. 103 (1): 113–133. ISSN 0003-0554. 
  3. ↑ Mizokami, Kyle (12 September 2019). "China's Greatest Nightmare: Taiwan Armed with Nuclear Weapons". The National Interest. Retrieved 9 August 2022. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Smetana, Michal (1 August 2019). Nuclear Deviance: Stigma Politics and the Rules of the Nonproliferation Game. Springer. ISBN 978-3-030-24225-1. 
  5. ↑ Milhollin, Gary (10 June 1990). "Asia's Nuclear Nightmare: The German Connection". Washington Post. Retrieved 9 August 2022. 
  6. ↑ Tucker, Spencer C. (20 August 2014). Persian Gulf War Encyclopedia: A Political, Social, and Military History: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-61069-416-2. 
  7. ↑ "South Africa: from nuclear armed state to disarmament hero". ICAN. Retrieved 7 August 2022. 
  8. ↑ Perkovich 1999: 242, 250, 271
  9. ↑ "Smuggling of Beryllium | Iran Watch". www.iranwatch.org. Retrieved 9 August 2022. 
  10. ↑ "Beryllium use at Los Alamos" (PDF). cdc.gov. Retrieved 9 August 2022. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Bostrom
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