I completely disagree with this.
I subjectively make my statement based on that data I have available to ME*
Objective would be I have failure data in front of me.
Now, I personally have heard of far fewer B-52 accidents in my lifetime, and the plane is almost double mine, and as such, I deem it safe as heck.
Also, guess what - B-52s carry nukes not passengers.
How many nukes have gone off for a B-52 crash vs how many lives have been lost via commercial crashes?
Also, I come from a nuke family, and an air force family. My grandfather was one of the designers of Hanford and my brother was head of the tenth medical wing and flight surgeon to the joint chiefs, and my dad best friend was sec of energy... in charge of nukes...
I assume you're talking about lifespan? The B-52 may have been in the air for a long time (though only 15 years longer than the 737), but it has also been flying in much smaller quantities; there have only ever been ~750 B-52s built, while there have been over 10K 737s built. And in addition, a commercial airliner is usually in the air for a much higher percentage of its lifespan than any military airplane.
So for example, the 737-600/700/800/900 series has had 9 accidents (6 full-loss equivalents)... over 100 million flights.
Accident rate info for the B-52 is harder to come by, especially since a lot of the "accidents" are complications from battle damage in Vietnam, but I'm seeing 10 peacetime full-loss incidents just among those that have their own Wikipedia pages:
> that they have been carrying nukes about for the past 50 years and that we havent seen a singular nuclear accident with them.
As other commenters have noted, this is more a testament to the phenomenal safety of nuclear weapons; they've been blown off the top of exploding ICBMs, hit the ground and the water at high speeds in crashing bombers, and generally gone through a LOT of abuse without going off.
IIRC atomic explosions are intrinsically difficult things to set off. I suppose the lensing explosive might go off and blow around nasty chunks, particulates, metal vapour perhaps, without actually producing a nuclear explosion of any sort.
Yup - though there are still safety problems, especially when it comes to inputs that might set off the trigger circuitry e.g. a lightning strike might have set off some early weapons. See Eric Schlosser's Command and Control for a history of nuclear weapons safety.
(BTW - even a fizzle can have the force of a pretty large conventional bomb. e.g. the first North Korean nuclear test, which probably fizzled, had a yield of something like 1kt TNT-equivalent, and the failed attempts to make a uranium hydride bombs still yielded something like 200t TNT-equivalent.)
> As other commenters have noted, this is more a testament to the phenomenal safety of nuclear weapons
Exactly, there were numerous nuclear accidents with B-52s, but due to the safety of nuclear warheads, no explosions. Googling the phrase “b-52 nuclear accidents” shows a long list of them.
Objective would be I have failure data in front of me.
Now, I personally have heard of far fewer B-52 accidents in my lifetime, and the plane is almost double mine, and as such, I deem it safe as heck.
Also, guess what - B-52s carry nukes not passengers.
How many nukes have gone off for a B-52 crash vs how many lives have been lost via commercial crashes?
Also, I come from a nuke family, and an air force family. My grandfather was one of the designers of Hanford and my brother was head of the tenth medical wing and flight surgeon to the joint chiefs, and my dad best friend was sec of energy... in charge of nukes...
So, I stand by my words.