Nation’s Largest Nuclear Weapon Disassembled in Amarillo

The last of America's nuclear behemoths, the B53 nuclear bomb, has been dismantled in the Texas Panhandle. Technicians worked through Tuesday to remove the uranium from the bomb at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo. The bomb was leftover from the Cold War arms race, beginning it's service in 1962. 600 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, it was the last of the larger nuclear weapons commissioned at the time.

Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman watched the final steps of dismantling the weapon. He says it's "a milestone accomplishment" and a step toward President Barack Obama's mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The decommission of the B53 leaves the  B83 as the nation's largest nuclear bomb at 1.2-megatons. The B53 was 9 megatons.

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Information gathered in part from the Associated Press