USA IS HOLDING ON TO NUKES TO DEFEND EARTH AGAINST ASTEROIDS

 

The United States is holding on to a stockpile of enriched uranium for use in nuclear warheads to destroy asteroids in 'planetary defense,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 

Auditors were examining how the National Nuclear Security Administration was progressing in removing excess capacity, when the agency gave them a unique reason for extra material. 

A stockpile of components called canned subassemblies, the steel capsule within a nuclear bomb that contains the highly enriched uranium were slated to be decommissioned in 2015.

The NNSA told investigators that they'd be holding onto them indefinitely.

'CSAs associated with a certain warhead indicated as excess in the 2012 Production and Planning Directive are being retained in an indeterminate state,' read a report by investigators, 'pending a senior-level government evaluation of their use in planetary defense against earthbound asteroids.' 

• Quartz writes that the 'pending' evaluation means there is contingency planning for an asteroid striking Earth happening in the highest levels of government. 

Jay Melos, a geophysicist at Purdue University who studies impact cratering, theorized that the plan may be 'an excuse for keeping the nuclear arsenal together.'  
Melos and other researchers believe more effective tools can be developed that redirect asteroids.In 2005, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft launched an impactor that successfully collided with the Tempel I comet and knocked it slightly off course.

As for earthbound asteroids, nuclear scientists may be looking to use nuclear weapons to destroy small-sized asteroids like the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, before they enter Earth's atmosphere.

The 65-foot-diameter asteroid became a meteor once it entered Earth's atmosphere and crashed through the frozen surface of Lake Chebarkul.

More than 1,000 people were injured by the blast, mostly due to glass shattering in the explosion.

Source: Daily Mail