Posted 6/20/2004 05:55:00 PM by Douglas

Amarillo. Home of Pantex and very little else.

It's a peaceful picture of remote Texas Panhandle countryside. The amber wheat fields, the grazing cattle, the smattering of farmhouses.

Then there's the nuclear plant.

Growing up in the shadows, or at least the mushroom cloud, of Pantex was eerily normal. Something about those sodium vapor lights visible from U.S. 287 that mom always pointed out when we drove by made it seem all too ordinary. Of course, in the height of the 80s cold war, it was the topic of many discussions, even before The Day After tried to scare the crap out of a whole new generation too young to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. One thing was sure, though. We were right in the middle of it and we were toast. If those red bastards tried to nuke us, Amarillo was first, we were the first target on their list.

Now it's a different story. Now the nuclear warheads at Pantex are being dismantled, with limited success.

In January, technicians used duct tape to secure broken pieces of an explosive component to a nuclear warhead. Nothing exploded, and no one was hurt. Last fall, technicians taking apart an old warhead accidentally drilled into its radioactive core, forcing evacuation of the building.

So it's come to this. It's truly incredible that such a massive endeavour as the American nuclear weapons program has been reduced to a 2-reeler of the Keystone Cops.