nuclear-news

To make matters worse, the high-speed prang occurred just as the bystander filming was being told off by federal police for capturing the incident.

Uploaded to YouTube overnight, the video shows the intimidating convoy of at least ten vehicles and the semi, as well as several helicopters, barrelling through an unnamed town on what looks to be a US interstate highway.

Apparently making the classic amateur mistake of taking his eyes off the road, the armoured vehicle smashes into the back of the semi, then brakes sharply, sending his incompetence rippling through the convoy.

Although the precise nature of the truck’s cargo cannot be verified, a Mother Jones report published early this year indicates that a US government agency called the Office of Secure Transportation is tasked with transporting radioactive material, bombs and weapon components around the US in operations considered “open secrets”.

Assuming this is footage of one such operation, it wouldn’t be the first time the agencies involved have humiliated themselves – in 1996, a driver transporting two nuclear weapons flipped his rig in a freak ice storm in Nebraska.

There were two similar incidents in Tennessee and Montana in 2003, while in 2004 a truck leaked, according to Mountain Xpress, “less than a pint” of liquefied yellowcake uranium in North Carolina.

Although the OST and the agencies it collaborates with try and keep operations dark, it is widely known the practice is common in Britain and has attracted much controversy, particularly after a badly botched emergency exercise in 2012, which the Ministry of Defence conceded had “major difficulties”.