A detailed account of the nuclear weapon accidents in the Soviet Union has never been published. The absence of a free press no doubt contributed to the many large-scale industrial accidents and widespread environmental devastation that occurred in the Soviet bloc. Chelyabinsk-65, the site of a nuclear weapon facility in central Russia, has been called “arguably the most polluted spot on the planet.” A massive explosion there in 1957 contaminated hundreds of square miles with highly radioactive fallout. Countless accidents occurred at the plant, and tens of thousands of people were exposed to harmful levels of radiation. Soviet nuclear technology was, for the most part, inferior to that of the West. But the authoritarian rule of the Soviet Union was especially well suited to the demands of nuclear command and control. Unlike the president of the United States — who predelegated the authority to use nuclear weapons not only to SAC generals and Air Force fighter pilots but also to NATO officers in Europe — the leadership of the Communist Party and the Soviet general staff strictly retained that sort of power. Locks of various kinds were placed on Soviet weapons, and the permission to unlock them came only from the top. According to Bruce Blair, a leading command-and-control expert, Soviet safeguards against unauthorized use were “more stringent than those of any other nuclear power, including the United States.”
The rigidly centralized command structure, however, made the Soviet Union quite vulnerable to a decapitation attack. Despite all the underground bunkers and secret railways built in and around Moscow, Soviet leaders constantly worried about their ability to retaliate after an American first strike. Instead of loosening their control of nuclear weapons and shifting authority further down the chain of command, they automated the decision to use nuclear weapons. In 1974, little more than a decade after the release of Dr. Strangelove, the Soviet Union began work on the “Perimeter” system — a network of sensors and computers that could launch intercontinental ballistic missiles without any human oversight. Completed in 1985, it was known as the “dead hand.” The Soviet general staff planned to activate Perimeter if an American attack seemed imminent. The system would retaliate automatically, firing long-range missiles if it detected nuclear explosions on Russian soil. Perimeter greatly reduced the pressure to launch on warning at the first sign of an American attack. It gave Soviet leaders more time to investigate the possibility of a false alarm, confident that a real attack would trigger a computer-controlled, devastating response. But it rendered American plans for limited war meaningless; the Soviet computers weren’t programmed to allow pauses for negotiation. And the deterrent value of Perimeter was wasted. Like the doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove, the system was kept secret from the United States.
In March 1991, three months after the Drell panel submitted its report to Congress, Bob Peurifoy retired from Sandia. He had no more tolerance for the bureaucratic warfare and petty slights, the disrespect from Sandia’s upper management. More important, his goals had been achieved. Congress, the weapons laboratories, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy all agreed that the safety of America’s nuclear weapons had to be improved. Weak link/strong link devices were put into every nuclear weapon. And other safety technologies — insensitive high explosives, nuclear cores encased in a fire-resistant shell — were to be included in every new design. The changes in the stockpile that Peurifoy had sought for decades, once dismissed as costly and unnecessary, were now considered essential. Building a nuclear weapon without these safety features had become inconceivable.
Sidney Drell regards Bob Peurifoy as one of the leading, though largely unacknowledged, figures in the history of nuclear technology. He thinks that Peurifoy’s achievements rank alongside those of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, who pioneered the safe use of nuclear propulsion for the U.S. Navy. And yet Peurifoy told me, on many occasions, that he regrets not having been braver, especially about the safety problems with the Mark 28 bomb. He’d chosen to work within the system, despite his strong opposition to many of its practices. Although he was critical of the way in which official secrecy has been used to cover up mistakes, he’d honorably obeyed its code. As we sat in the sunroom of Peurifoy’s modest home, with a lovely view of the Texas hill country, talking for hours about his work to improve nuclear weapon safety, his wife, Barbara, listened attentively. Despite a close, loving marriage that had lasted for sixty years, he’d kept these details to himself, never sharing the weight of that dark knowledge with Barbara or their children.
