The idea, at least at first, was to make the U.S. nuclear arsenal more stable, while reducing maintenance costs. Now, it looks like a new Energy Department initiative is going to be used to build a whole new class of nukes, pumping up the American stockpile.
The Washington Post reports that by November, the Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration “plans to select the design of a new generation of nuclear warheads that would be more dependable and possibly able to be disarmed in the event they fell into terrorist hands.“
Nearly 16 years after the last new nuclear weapon was assembled at the Pantex Plant and 14 years after the last full-scale underground nuclear weapons test at the Nevada Test Site, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories are competing again to design the next generation of warheads “which will be larger and more stable than the existing ones but slightly less powerful.“
Intriguingly, these new weapons may incorporate new “use control” technology rendering them totally unusable in the event of theft, according to senior NNSA officials. How this would improve upon the already highly secure electronic locks — known as Permissive Action Links or PALs — now safeguarding all deployed warheads, was not explained.
This effort is part of the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which was initially created in late 2004 by Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), chairman of the House Energy and Water Development appropriations subcommittee, as an effort to curtail more controversial and, in his view, unnecessary weapons programs like the now-canceled Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator — a nuclear bunker-buster. The original legislative justification for the program was simply to “improve the reliability, longevity, and certifiability of existing weapons and their components.“
But the RRW has itself now become controversial, as officials discuss using it to create entirely new weapons and capabilities, eventually replacing every weapon in the stockpile. The effort has even become the linchpin of an ambitious and expensive 25-year plan to overhaul the nuclear weapons production complex, and with it the nuclear arsenal.
“We should not fail to take advantage of this opportunity,” NNSA director Linton Brooks told the nation’s nuclear lab chiefs in 2004. “We are now free to explore a range of technical options that could strengthen our ability to deter or respond to new or emerging threats without any concern that some ideas could inadvertently violate a vague and arbitrary limitation. I expect your design teams to engage fully.“
I described the genesis and raised some serious questions about the program in an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last year. And the current issue of Arms Control Today features a piece by Robert Nelson, a physicist and senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which effectively demolishes the three myths underlying the RRW: That stockpile reliability is degrading; that warheads can be re-designed without compromising safety or requiring nuclear testing; and that the RRW will reduce pressure to resume nuclear testing in the future.
Other experts weigh in here on whether plutonium aging poses a serious threat to the long-term viability of the arsenal. Hobson has taken note. At a hearing before his subcommittee in late March, he warned NNSA officials not to overreach. “This is not an opportunity to run off and develop a whole bunch of new capabilities and new weapons,” he said. “This is a way to redo the weapon capability that we have and maybe make them more reliable, make them better mission capable.” Later this year, we may find out whether the NNSA and the weapons laboratories were listening.
– Stephen I. Schwartz
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Backdoor to New NukesLeave a Reply |
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New nukes are gonna be needed no matter how may hippies and peaceniks ball about the idea. Some people need to grow up and realise we live in an atomic world with many other countries playing with nukes why not America? Hell i guess some people would rather go back to clubs or bows and arrows then use a weapon that can anhilate your enemys in one hit. Eneamy life is precious and your own troops life’s are not? Just hope they use some on the iranians instead of going the lame conventional route with its inevitable loss of life on our side, but then thats wrong i guess cos its not PC, rofl.
Thats my favorite nuclear explosion photograph; it looks like Satan playing a guitar to me. He is standing up and blasting the most powerful riff known to man: the nuclear riff!
More than one thing going on here. It’s harder to come up with tritium these days, and the current arsenal depends on tritium for both boost gas and for the initiator. The problem is, that tritium has a fairly brisk decay rate, and has to be removed and filtered about once a year.
The recent problems at the Savannah River plant where the filtering is done didn’t help.
They want a new set of weapons that don’t need tritium. It takes too much maintenance, and we don’t produce tritium much anymore. It’s a pain in the butt to deal with. It would be nice to be rid of it, instead of going back into production. Given the current anti-nuclear sentiment, they’d probably have to do it ‘under the table’ or buy it from Canada. Far easier to be done with it.
Next, there is a new twist recently. It allows some new weapons that you couldn’t have done previously, namely, very small yield weapons with very low residuals. Lots of interest there.
Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
– Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ch. LXXI)
EDWARD GIBBON
English historian
Good Morning Folks,
I’m in agreement with ShepUK. Nuclear weapons are a fact of life in the world and the United States as the worlds super power must keep in font of this technologly.
Those that think that the nclear genie can be stuffed back into the bottle are delusional in their thinkng. The test on Jne 2ed. is non-nuclear and designed to improve the U.S’s. sisulmation software and to developethe techno;ogly for low yeld nuclear weapons.
If it comes to a nuclear showdown the avaibability of of 5mt. or smaller weapons would cause a great deal less loss of life and damage.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Yeah! Lets spend a ton of money a something we are never going to use. And stop acting like nukes have a use in war. If it comes to nukes the war IS over.