Some of the essays that I post are historical, some are technical and some are topical. Last night a story on the Rachael Maddow show on MSNBC caught my attention. I have blogged in the past about the problems at the Minot nuclear missile base in North Dakota. However, the problems discussed in the MSNBC story were not the fault of the missile command or the personnel of the missiles installation.
Minute Man missile silos were constructed in North Dakota during the Cold War. At the time, there was little in the way of farming, population or infrastructure in that part of North Dakota. In addition, the location was selected because the shortest route for U.S. missiles to strike Russia was over the North Pole.
The western half of North Dakota is located over part of the Bakken oil field. Recently there has been intense activity in drilling oil wells in North Dakota. The oil that is extracted has to be moved to market and a great deal of the oil is shipped out of North Dakota on trains.
Oil trains have been derailing, exploding and causing big fires for years but the huge increase in oil shipments in the past few years has also increased the number of accidents and the attendant publicity. The crude oil from North Dakota is especially flammable and when these oil trains derail, there have been huge explosions that have killed people and required evacuation in populated areas. There really is no easy way to put out the fires that result and often the burning rail cars and pools of oil are just left to burn out. For years, the U.S. transportation department has been trying to get the shippers to retire the old dangerous single walled tank cars in favor of safer double walled tank cars. Even derailments of the new type of cars are disastrous.
Normally, the U.S. military requires that any buildings or farms have to be at least one thousand and two hundred feet from a missile silo. However, the breaking story on MSNBC pointed out five missile silos in North Dakota that were less than that distance from rail lines that carry Bakken crude oil shipments. The U.S. military has submitted lists of concerns to North Dakota state officials about the proximity of the rail lines to the silos.
If one of these trains derailed and exploded near a missile silo, the resulting fire could spread to the missile installation. In addition to the damage that that would be caused to the silo and the missile, as well as the danger to the personnel, there is the possibility that such a fire could set off the propellant for the missile. The resulting explosion could release radioactive materials from the warhead and rain down radioactive fallout over the area, posing a threat to the environment, animals , and people living in the area.
As the report pointed out, this should not just be a concern of location authorities but a concern that must be addressed by the federal government at the national level. This problem should have been address long before now.
