"Even the small Type 21 frigate, two of which were lost in the Falklands/Malvinas war in 1982, was nuclear-capable." HMS Antelope of the Royal Navy was one of those destroyed. Wikicommons/ Dmgerrard. Some rights reserved.Several recent columns in this series have discussed the risk of nuclear war. Four trends have pushed the issue up the international agenda: North Korea's tests, Trump’s nuclear posture review, Russia’s development of new weapons, and rising tensions in Nato-Russia relations. A recurrent theme in these columns is the widespread myth that nuclear weapons are solely about deterring attack through the threat of an overwhelming response.
This has been termed deterrence through “mutual assured destruction” (MAD, in the perhaps appropriate acronym). The notion seems very far removed from the practice of developing many kinds of nuclear weapons for small-scale use. Yet the latter, precisely, has been the international norm. And it has had an important consequence: the storage, transport and deployment of these diverse nuclear arsenals make for a greater risk of accidents.
A column looking at Britain’s experience of nuclear accidents has drawn particular attention (see "Nuclear weapons: playing with fire", 9 March 2018). One somewhat unexpected reaction warrants further examination. This relates to its description of one of the worst accidents, in January 1987, when a nuclear-weapon transporter truck overturned onto its side of an icy road while carrying two WE177 tactical nuclear warheads from Portsmouth to the Royal Navy armaments depot at Dean Hill.
