It really seems as if the weapon designers at the nation’s three nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia, never really believed that nuclear testing would ever end.\u00a0 If so, they were singularly blind to the consequences.\u00a0 Instead of taking the approach apparently adopted by the Russians\u00a0of designing and testing robust warheads that could simply be scrapped and replaced with newly manufactured ones at the end of their service life, they decided to depend on a constant process of refurbishing old warheads, eliminating the ability to make new ones in the process.\u00a0 When our weapons got too old, they would be repeatedly patched up in so-called Life Extension Programs, or LEPs.\u00a0 Apparently it began to occur to an increasing number of people in the weapons community that maintaining the safety and reliability of the stockpile indefinitely using that approach might be a bit problematic.<\/p>\n
The first “solution” to the problem proposed by the National Nuclear Security Administration\u00a0(NNSA), the semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for maintaining the nuclear stockpile, was the Reliable Replacement Warhead <\/a>(RRW).\u00a0 It was to be robust, easy to manufacture, and easy to maintain.\u00a0 It was also a new, untested design.\u00a0 As such, it would have violated the spirit, if not the letter, of Article VI of\u00a0the Non-proliferation Treaty<\/a>\u00a0(NPT).\u00a0 If it had been built, it would also very likely have forced violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the U.S. has signed, but never ratified.\u00a0\u00a0It was\u00a0claimed that\u00a0the RRW\u00a0could be built and certified without testing.\u00a0 This was very probably nonsense.\u00a0 There have always been more or less influential voices within NNSA, the Department of Defense (DoD), and the weapons labs, in favor of a return to nuclear testing.\u00a0 That would not have been a good thing then, and I doubt that it will be a good thing at any foreseeable time in the future.\u00a0 In general, I think we should do our best to keep the nuclear genie bottled up as long as possible.\u00a0 Fortunately, Congress agreed and killed the RRW Program.<\/p>\n That didn’t stop the weaponeers.\u00a0 They just tried a new gambit.\u00a0 It’s called the “3+2 Strategy.”\u00a0 There are currently four types of ballistic missile warheads, two bombs, and a cruise missile warhead in the U.S. arsenal.\u00a0 The basic idea of 3+2 would be to reduce this to three “interoperable”\u00a0ballistic missile warheads and two air delivered weapons (a bomb and a cruise missile), explaining the “3+2.”\u00a0 In the process, the conventional chemical explosives that drive the implosion of the “atomic bomb” stage of the weapons would be replaced by insensitive high explosives (IHE).\u00a0 The result would supposedly be a safer, more secure stockpile that would be easier to maintain.\u00a0 The price tag, in round numbers, would be $60 billion.<\/p>\n I can only hope Congress will be as quick to deep six 3+2 as it was with the RRW.\u00a0 The 3+2 will require tinkering not only with the bits surrounding the nuclear explosive package (NEP), but with the NEP itself.\u00a0 In other words, its just as much a violation of the spirit of Article VI of the NPT as was the RRW.\u00a0 The predictable result of any such changes will be the “sudden realization” by the weapons labs somewhere down the line that they can’t certify the new designs without a return to nuclear testing.\u00a0 There’s a better and, in the long run, probably cheaper way to maintain the stockpile.<\/p>\n In the first place, we need to stop relying on LEPs, and return to manufacturing replacement weapons.\u00a0 The common argument against this is that we have lost the ability to manufacture critical parts of our weapons since the end of testing, and in some cases the facilities and companies that supplied the parts no longer exist.\u00a0 Nonsense!\u00a0 The idea that a country responsible for a quarter of the entire world’s GDP\u00a0has lost the ability\u00a0to reproduce the weapons it was once able to design, build and test in a few years is ridiculous.\u00a0 We are told that subtle changes in materials might somehow severely degrade the performance of remanufactured weapons.\u00a0 I doubt it.\u00a0 Regardless, DOE has always known there was a solution to that problem.\u00a0 It’s called the Advanced Hydrodynamic Facility, or AHF.<\/p>\n Basically, the AHF would be a giant accelerator facility capable of producing beams that would be able to image an imploding nuclear weapon pit in three dimensions and at several times during the implosion.\u00a0 Serious studies of such a facility were done as long ago as the mid-90’s, and there is no doubt that it is feasible.\u00a0 In actual experiments, of course, highly enriched uranium and plutonium would be replaced by surrogate materials such as tungsten, but they would still determine with a high degree of confidence whether a given remanufactured primary would work or not.\u00a0 The primary, or “atomic bomb” part of a weapon supplies the energy that sets\u00a0off the secondary, or thermonuclear part.\u00a0 If the primary, of a weapon works, then there can be little doubt that the secondary will work as well.\u00a0 The AHF would be expensive, which is probably the reason it still hasn’t been built.\u00a0 Given the $60 billion cost of 3+2, that decision may well prove to be penny-wise and pound-foolish.<\/p>\n The whole point of having a nuclear arsenal is its ability to deter enemies from attacking us.\u00a0 Every time people who are supposed to be the experts about such things question the reliability of our stockpile, they detract from its ability to deter.\u00a0 I think a remanufacturing capability along with the AHF is the best way to shut them up, preventing a very bad decision to resume nuclear testing in the process.\u00a0 I suggest we get on with it.<\/p>\n