U.S. Navy Conceals Nuclear Weapons Production in California
March 4th, 2010I thought Pantex was the only facility where this type of work was done. If anyone is in a position to call BS on this Indymedia piece, let me know.
Via: Indymedia:
A U.S. nuclear weapons assembly plant in California is off limits to any kind of photography, information gathering, or reporting. Local residents are unaware of the plant’s existence and its potential radiological hazards.
The United States Navy and Lockheed Martin have been concealing the assembly and movement of nuclear warheads in the densely populated San Francisco Bay Area for decades… It is internally identified as a Naval Industrial Reserve Ordnance Plant (NIROP), one of several across the country.
Inside a single sprawling industrial building of approximately 100,000 square feet at the corner of 5th Avenue and Mathilda Avenue in Sunnyvale, California individual W88 nuclear warheads are assembled for the Trident II (D5) submarine-launched missile. Labeled externally by Lockheed Martin’s designation simply as Building 181, the facility contains loading docks shielded from view from streets for trucks to load and unload their sensitive cargoes away from the eyes of the public or even from aircraft and reconnaissance satellites. Once loaded onto unmarked trucks, often under cover of darkness, the warheads may be moved to or from any of a number of nuclear weapons laboratories around the country or to the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Support Base in Georgia, just north of Jacksonville, Florida. That is where they are loaded onto Trident II missiles at the submarines’ home base.
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Aerial photographs reveal the below-ground ramps along the western wall and near the south eastern corner of Building 181. From ground level, the declining ramps are concealed by privacy slats in the chain link security fence. Nowhere else does the chain link perimeter fence contain privacy slats, indicating that there was a deliberate decision to specifically conceal the below-ground ramps and the loading docks that they lead to.
Meanwhile, numerous high-resolution video cameras track anyone who attempts to look too closely at Building 181, at any activity inside the perimeter fence, or even anyone approaching the perimeter fence from the public streets.
Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, which has operated the property continuously since acquiring it, apparently sold the property to the U.S. Navy at the latter’s request on December 27, 1957. With the intent to use the building for the engineering and assembly of advanced nuclear warheads, the Navy deemed it necessary to buy the property in order to enforce provisions of U.S. Code Title 18 applicable only to U.S. government property to prevent photography and data collection about the facility. Confounding measures were also taken, such as deliberately mislabeling the street address as “1233 North Mathilda” when the actual recorded street address is 1235 North Mathilda Avenue. Nevertheless, the change in ownership did not alter Lockheed Martin’s exclusive custody of the property and use of its facilities.
Research Credit: ottilie
