A fire in a Wyoming missile silo last spring exposed more problems in the oversight of the nation’s nuclear ICBM arsenal but posed no threat of nuclear detonation or radiation release, the Air Force Space Command said Thursday.
The command, based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, released an accident investigation report Thursday on the fire, which caused more than $1 million in damage. No previous announcement of the incident had been made.
The Air Force has been under fire for months for failure to properly safeguard nuclear weapons.Other incidents led to the firing of the service’s top civilian and military leaders and discipline for 17 officers.
The fire was May 23 at a silo 42 miles east of Cheyenne, where the Minuteman III missile is stored, ready for firing in an unmanned, underground launch facility. The command said it waited for the investigation to be completed before releasing a report.
An Air Force Space Command spokeswoman said the fire, caused by a faulty battery charger in a storage room, extinguished itself from a lack of fuel and was discovered later by repair crews looking for wiring problems on the cables connected to the missile.
“This was no danger to the public and no danger of release or launch,” said the spokeswoman, Maj. Laurie Arellano.
The problems revealed by the investigation include unclear instructions on the installation of parts for the battery charger, quality assurance issues, and the use of duct tape on cables, the command said.
The Minuteman III carries a city-leveling warhead that contains plutonium, beryllium and uranium.
The warhead has an estimated maximum explosive yield of 330 kilotons, the equivalent of more than 30 of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
Experts said the risk of the fire causing a nuclear catastrophe was miniscule but still possible.
