Timeline of nuclear risk

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."

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."
1960			". Israel has two nuclear reactors that are theo�retically utilized for research purposes only. The first went on line in 1960 and the second in 1962, meaning that both were producing nuclear energy prior to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons—whether that is coded as 1966, 1967, or 1973 (depending on the source)"
1960	October 5		A radar alert from Thule, Greenland is sent to NORAD, announcing the detection of dozens of Soviet missiles launched for the United States.
1961	January 24		H-bombs Dropped on North Carolina.
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			"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"
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			" Most sig�nificant, in 1974, India conducted a test of a nuclear explosive device using technology it imported from Canada for “peaceful” purposes." "Nuclear tech�nology, materials, and know-how are dual-use in nature, meaning that they can be used for the production of electricity or nuclear weapons. India, for example, used nuclear materials supplied by the United States and a reactor provided by Canada to produce plutonium for a nuclear explosive that was tested in 1974; this early civilian nuclear assistance was the foundation upon which New Delhi built its nuclear program in the 1990s." ||
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. 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.”	Taiwan
1978			The United States Congress passes the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act to put further restrictions on US nuclear exports.	United States
1979			"In 1979, at the peak of the nuclear power sector’s growth, 233 power reactors were simultaneously under construction. By 1987, that number had fallen to 120."
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).”"
Early 1980s			India buys beryllium from a German company.	India
1981			The Israeli Air Force destroys the unfinished Iraqi Osirak reactor during the Operation Opera. This attack would be widely viewed to be a stopgap measure, delaying but not preventing Iraqi nuclear aspirations.
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."
1982			South Africa develops and builds its first nuclear explosive device, with its scientists having been trained by the United States as a result of government-backed programs.	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			"Had the Germans not had such lax export controls, India could have been denied one or both—since India had to smuggle Chinese heavy water through a German source in the early 1980s and simply bought beryllium from a German com�pany in 1984 (Perkovich 1999: 242, 250, 271)."
1984			"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"
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."
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."
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"
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."
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."
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)."
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."
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"
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."
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."
2008			"When smuggling goods, illicit nonstate actors face a trade-off between the security and efficiency of the route (Hastings 2008)."
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.
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)."
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.
• Nuclear Deviance: Stigma Politics and the Rules of the Nonproliferation Gameby Michal Smetana,

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

• Dead Hand
• Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
• Missile Technology Control Regime
• Multilateral export control regime
• Wassenaar Arrangement
• Nuclear Suppliers Group
• 13 steps
• Nuclear disarmament
• Anti-nuclear movement
• Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
• Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
• Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism
• New Agenda Coalition
• Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
• Zangger Committee
• Nuclear War Survival Skills
• Nuclear holocaust