with the number of nuclear weapons in the world now, and how old a lot are, how is it possible we’ve never accidentally set one off?

Question

Title says it. Really curious how we’ve escaped this kind of occurrence anywhere in the world, for the last ~70 years.

In: Engineering

Answer 1

To set off a nuclear weapon requires a lot of things to go *correctly* rather than something to go wrong, or be caused by accident. A poorly-maintained old nuclear weapon is less likely to go off than one that is well-maintained. An improper nuclear detonation would be more like a fizzle than a massive explosion, making it more akin to a dirty bomb with conventional explosives.

The problem is not so much that we could accidently set one off, but that we might improperly blow one up, causing an incredibly toxic and localised hotspot of contamination plus plumes of radioactive material, possible groundwater contamination and almost certain uninhabitability without intensive and expensive remediation.