US, critics split on whether tech made nuke shipments safer

RENO, Nev. -- The plutonium core for the first atomic weapon detonated in 1945 was taken from Los Alamos National Laboratory to a test site in the New Mexico desert in the backseat of a U.S. Army sedan. Officials put other bomb parts inside a metal container, packed it into a wooden crate and secured it in the steel bed of a truck under a tarp, the U.S. Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration says in a historical account. Grainy black-and-white photos show special agents and