How Did the CIA Lose a Nuclear Device? (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0180390241
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/15/1541213/how-did-the-cia-lose-a-nuclear-device
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/13/world/asia/cia-nuclear-device-himalayas-nanda-devi.html?rsrc=flt&unlocked_article_code=1.8U8.aaxE.5UdUqoLrkEpJ&smid=url-share
The mission originated from a cocktail party conversation between General Curtis LeMay and National Geographic photographer Barry Bishop, who had summited Everest in 1963. China had just detonated its first atomic bomb in October 1964, and the CIA wanted to intercept radio signals from Chinese missile tests by placing an unmanned listening station atop the Himalayas. Barry Bishop recruited elite American climbers and coordinated with Indian intelligence to haul surveillance equipment up the mountain.
Captain M.S. Kohli, the Indian naval officer commanding the mission, ordered climbers to secure the equipment and descend when the blizzard struck. Jim McCarthy, the last surviving American climber, recalled warning Kohli he was making a mistake. "You can't leave plutonium by a glacier feeding into the Ganges!" he recalled. "Do you know how many people depend on the Ganges?" When teams returned in spring 1966, the entire ice ledge where the gear had been stashed was gone -- sheared off by an avalanche. Search missions in 1967 and 1968 found nothing.
The device remains buried somewhere in the glaciers that feed tributaries of the Ganges River.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/12/13/world/asia/cia-nuclear-device-himalayas-nanda-devi.html?rsrc=flt&unlocked_article_code=1.8U8.aaxE.5UdUqoLrkEpJ&smid=url-share
SNAP (Score:3)
Since the article is somewhat vague about it, a SNAP generator is a thermal generator mostly used to power satellites. It uses the heat from nuclear decay to generate power. It's not a nuclear reactor. If you've seen The Martian, that tube with fins that Watney digs out of the ground is what a SNAP generator looks like. They used to be top-secret classified, but just about everyone knows how to make one nowadays. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_for_Nuclear_Auxiliary_Power
Pretty sure the article is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Radiothermal generators use plutonium 238. This is a strong alpha emitter, it is highly active with a half-life of 87 years and heats itself red hot. Plutonium 238 is not used in nuclear weapons, it seems that perhaps the author mixed up their isotopes in their rush to put a hysterical spin on the story. Plutonium 239 has a 24,000 year half-life and would be worthless in a RTG.
Re: (Score:2)
The article looks correct to me. It clearly says that the Pu238 is not suitable for an explosive device and that the danger is from ingestion. It does say however, that the device also contains Pu239.
Space probes also (Score:2)
This is how NASA powers some space-probes. Further from the sun, solar panels often can't do the job such that RTG's are used. But currently there's a shortage of P238 because the USA changed the way it processes nuclear material, and thus doesn't have it as a by-product like we used to. It now has to be explicitly manufactured, requiring expensive setups. We used to buy it from Russia for a while, but since the war that's part of the sanctions.
It's not lost (Score:2)
They just don't know where in the glacier it fell.
Related tidbit (Score:5, Interesting)
A subsequent mission did install a similar listening station and RTG. But each time they visited it thereafter, the RTG had buried itself deeper into the surrounding snow. So the thinking now is that the one on Nanda Devi, after falling in an avalanche, gradually melted its way down deeper into the glacier until it hit rock.
Re: (Score:2)
I forgot to mention: the subsequent mission installed on a different, easier-to-access peak.
Re: (Score:3)
Which would mean its casing is currently being (or already has been) abraded by the bedrock and all the bits and pieces of gravel and larger detritus that typically lies at the bottom of a glacier and get churned around as the glacier slowly flows downslope. From there, it'll be seeping into the glacial runoff water and, as TFS notes, eventually make its way into the River Ganges.
Of course, if you've actually seen (or smelled) the Ganges once it gets deeper into India, combined with what other purposes t
Re: (Score:1)
It might even improve the Ganges by killing bad bacteria.