<i>US to dismantle most powerful N-bomb</i>
The last of the United States' most powerful nuclear bombs - a weapon hundreds of times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima - is being disassembled nearly half a century after it was put into service at the height of the Cold War. The final components of the B53 bomb will be broken down Tuesday at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility.
The completion of the dismantling program is a year ahead of schedule, according to the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, and aligns with President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the number of nuclear weapons.
First put into service in 1962, when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the B53 weighed 10,000 pounds and was the size of a minivan. According to the American Federation of Scientists, it was 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II.
The B53 was designed to destroy facilities deep underground, and it was carried by B-52 bombers.
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