HMS Illustrious in Portsmouth Harbour Aircraft Carrier, April 2009. Wikicommons/Peter Trimming. Some rights reserved.An earlier column in this series looked at the unknown or neglected history of accidents involving nuclear weapons. Much of the secrecy that shrouds nuclear issues, above all their actual targeting, is the result of deliberate supprerssion by governments with the collusion of the media. Accidents, though, seem to occasion their added element of secrecy, probably because of the particular embarrassment arising when a supposedly ultra-safe and reliable system comes unstuck (see "North Korea: a catastrophe foretold", 29 September 2017).
The excellent Chatham House study Too Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy (April 2014) examines incidents where nuclear weapons came uncomfortably close to actual use. Among many examples, one of the most remarkable is a collision between two ballistic-missile submarines during the night of 3-4 February 2009.
"[The] United Kingdom’s HMS Vanguard and France’s FNS Le Triomphant, two nuclear-powered, ballistic missile-carrying submarines (SSBNs), collided in the Atlantic Ocean”, says the study. It acknowledges that there was very little risk of an accidental nuclear detonation, but finds it difficult to say why the collision took place. A few details emerged through freedom-of-information requests, but these raised even more questions than were answered.
