The Nuke Factory in your back Yard:
How the U.S. quietly turned a civilian atomic power site into a so-called bomb facility — and what it means for the global arms race
The production of nuclear weapons hides in plain sight all around the US (and around the world). Here, in South Carolina, employees of WesDyne (a subsidiary of Westinghouse) make an essential part of the tritium triggers used in nuclear bombs and missiles. Locals are clueless to the war chest (and its dangers) in their midst. Production at the plant has gone unreported even, in at least one case, "omitted entirely from a key report on the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile sent annually to international observers."
From the article: "For years, locals believed employees here worked solely on uranium fuel used in civilian nuclear power generation. But somewhere inside the 2-million-square foot complex, a small team of specialists, working on a federal contract for more than a decade, have quietly been assembling special stainless steel rods that are essential in the production of tritium, a radioactive isotope used in the trigger mechanisms for nuclear bombs and missiles. It’s the amount of tritium that’s released in the explosion of a nuclear weapon that determines the intensity of its devastating blast."
