America is making a super-nuke

President Obama's Department of Energy (DOE) is constructing a new nuclear weapon three times as powerful as the atom bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Called the B61-12, the new bomb will be the most expensive our government has ever made: The DOE plans to construct 400 of these weapons at a total cost of $11 billion. The B61-12 is just 12 feet long, but it explodes with the force of up to 50,000 tons of TNT. It is also guided by technology in the tail section, an innovation that some experts believe is a violation of the Obama administration's 2010 pledge (p. 15) not to make new types of nukes.

This August will mark 70 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events which remain the only time nuclear weapons have been used in combat, and which claimed the lives of some 130,000 people, mostly civilians.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up