Scientists map U.S. nuclear arsenal

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have devised a Web-based, three dimensional mapping tool that shows the known locations of more than 10,000 U.S. nuclear warheads.

Using satellite pictures and dynamic graphics available from Google Earth, the map allows users to "fly" onscreen across a sprawling network of litary facilities in 12 U.S. states and Europe," said the Federation of American Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council in a statement Thursday.

Scientists from the two groups pieced together "information from declassified documents, official statements, news reports, conversations with current and former officials, and other publicly available sources" to map the location of the warheads, said the statement.

The information is being published in the November/December issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in an effort to highlight the huge size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

"Fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons at military bases stretching from Washington's Puget Sound to Turkey," said Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Nuclear Information Project. Kristensen, who has been tracking nuclear weapons for more than 25 years, added, "The stockpile is down considerably from its peak, but it is still far in excess of national security needs, much of it on high alert, and dismantlement of excess weapons is happening at a snail's pace."

The highest concentration of nuclear weapons is at the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific in Bangor, Wash., which is home to more than 2,300 warheads -- probably the most nuclear weapons at any one site in the world. At any given moment, nearly half of these warheads are aboard ballistic-missile submarines in the Pacific.