Building safer nukes

[Eddo36]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/l...1,3406819.flash

 

Rival U.S. Labs in Arms Race to Build Safer Nuclear Bomb

The new warhead could help reduce the nation's stockpile, but some fear global repercussions.

By Ralph Vartabedian

Times Staff Writer

 

June 13, 2006

In the Cold War arms race, scientists rushed to build thousands of warheads to counter the Soviet Union. Today, those scientists are racing once again, but this time to rebuild an aging nuclear stockpile.

 

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are locked in an intense competition with rivals at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area to design the nation's first new nuclear bomb in two decades.

 

The two labs have fiercely competed in the bomb trade with technologies as disparate as Microsoft's and Apple's.

 

The new weapon, under development for about a year, is designed to ensure long-term reliability of the nation's inventory of bombs. Program backers say that with greater confidence in the quality of its weapons, the nation could draw down its stockpile, estimated at about 6,000 warheads.

 

Scientists also intend for the new weapons to be less vulnerable to accidental detonation and to be so secure that any stolen or lost weapon would be unusable.

 

By law, the new weapons would pack the same explosive power as existing warheads and be suitable only for the same kinds of military targets as those of the weapons they replace. Unlike past proposals for new atomic weapons, the project has captured bipartisan support in Congress.

 

But some veterans of nuclear arms development are strongly opposed, contending that building new weapons could trigger another arms race with Russia and China, as well as undermine arguments to stop nuclear developments in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere.

 

And, the critics say, It would eventually increase pressure to resume underground nuclear testing, which the U.S. halted 14 years ago.

 

Inside the labs, however, emotions and enthusiasm for the new designs are running high.

 

"I have had people working nights and weekends," said Joseph Martz, head of the Los Alamos design team. "I have to tell them to go home. I can't keep them out of the office. This is a chance to exercise skills that we have not had a chance to use for 20 years."

 

A thousand miles away at Livermore, Bruce Goodwin, associate director for nuclear weapons, described a similar picture: The lab is running supercomputer simulations around the clock, and teams of scientific experts working on all phases of the project "are extremely excited."

 

 

***

 

 

The program to build the new bomb, known as the "reliable replacement warhead," was approved by Congress in 2005 as part of a defense spending bill. The design work is being supervised by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the Energy Department.

 

The laboratories submitted detailed design proposals in March that ran more than 1,000 pages each to the Nuclear Weapons Council, the secretive federal panel that oversees the nation's nuclear weapons. A winner will be declared this year.

 

If the program is implemented, it would require an expensive remobilization of the nation's nuclear weapons complex, creating a capacity to turn out bombs at the rate of three or more a week.

 

Proponents of the project foresee a time when nuclear deterrence will increasingly rest on the nation's capacity to build new bombs, rather than on maintaining a massive stockpile.

 

The proposal comes as Russia and the United States have agreed to further reduce nuclear stockpiles. The Moscow Treaty signed in 2002 by President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin calls for each country to cut inventories to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012.

 

Without the reliable replacement warhead, U.S. scientists say the nation will end up with old and potentially unreliable bombs within the next 15 years, allowing adversaries to challenge U.S. supremacy and erode the nation's so-called strategic deterrent.

 

The new bomb "is one way of ensuring that our capability is second to none," said Paul Hommert, a physicist who heads X Division, the Los Alamos unit that built the first atomic bomb during World War II. "Not only today, but in 2025."

 

But critics say the program could plant the seeds of a new arms race.

 

The existing stockpile will be safe and reliable for decades to come, according to defense experts and nuclear scientists who have long supported strategic weapons. They say that rather than making the nation safer, the program will squander resources, broadcast the message that arms control is dead and even undermine the reliability of U.S. weapons.

 

The new bomb would have to be built and deployed without testing. The U.S. last conducted an underground test in Nevada in 1992 and has since imposed a moratorium on new testing.

 

But without a single test, doubts about the new bomb's reliability would eventually grow, said Sidney Drell, former director of Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center and a longtime advisor to the Energy Department.

 

"If anybody thinks we are going to be designing new warheads and not doing testing, I don't know what they are smoking," Drell said. "I don't know of a general, an admiral, a president or anybody in responsibility who would take an untested new weapon that is different from the ones in our stockpile and rely on it without resuming testing."

 

If the U.S. breaks the moratorium on testing, then Russia, China, India and Pakistan, if not Britain and France, probably would conduct tests as well, said Philip Coyle, former assistant secretary of Defense and former deputy director of Livermore. Those countries would gain more information from testing than would the U.S., which has invested heavily in scientific research as an alternative to testing.

 

Physicist Richard Garwin, who helped design the first hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s and remains a leading authority on nuclear weapons, opposes the new bomb and is worried it would lead to new testing. "We don't need it," he said. "No science will be able to keep these political doubts away."

 

Linton F. Brooks, chief of the National Nuclear Security Administration, disagrees, saying warheads based on modern technology and advanced electronics would be more reliable.

 

"We are more likely to face a problem if we stick with the existing stockpile," Brooks said. "It is easy to overstate the degree to which the current stockpile [has been] tested."

 

The stockpile includes thousands of weapons held in reserve in case a defect is discovered. Each year, some of those weapons are disassembled for inspection. The U.S. could significantly reduce the reserve if it had greater confidence in the reliability of its warheads, Brooks said.

 

That confidence involves not only whether a weapon will explode, but whether it will do so with the intended force. In every U.S. nuclear weapon, a primary blast must be strong enough to trigger a secondary thermonuclear reaction. If the first stage falls short, the weapon has half the power.

 

 

***

 

 

The driving force for developing the new weapon has come from the scientific community and members of Congress. Although the Defense Department did not initiate the program, it has won wide support within the military as well as the Bush administration.

 

Democrats who are closely involved in nuclear weapons issues, including Reps. Ellen O. Tauscher of Alamo, John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina and Ike Skelton of Missouri, have also given the program support, according to their spokesmen.

 

The support of Tauscher and the other lawmakers is conditional on a reduction in the total number of U.S. nuclear weapons and an absence of testing

[LoneWolf16]

Oxymoron.

[Craigboy2]

Oxymoron.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's what I was thinking.

[thepixiesrock]

Well,you both of course, would be wrong. A safe nuke would be less vulnerable to accidental detonation and so secure that any stolen or lost weapon would be unusable. That's a safe nuke. An unsafe nuke is one that could be set off easily and accidentally detonated, and able to be used if stolen.

 

It's almost like you fellas didn't even read any of what Eddo quoted for us.

[LoneWolf16]

Well,you both of course, would be wrong.  A safe nuke would be less vulnerable to accidental detonation and so secure that any stolen or lost weapon would be unusable.  That's a safe nuke.  An unsafe nuke is one that could be set off easily and accidentally detonated, and able to be used if stolen. 

 

It's almost like you fellas didn't even read any of what Eddo quoted for us.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The title itself is an oxymoron. Moron.

[thepixiesrock]

Again, no it isn't. You can have a nuke safer than another nuke, as I already stated. Did you even read what I posted?

[LoneWolf16]

Again, no it isn't.  You can have a nuke safer than another nuke, as I already stated.  Did you even read what I posted?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I hate you sometimes.

[thepixiesrock]

That may be, but I stand by my initial statement.

 

No oxymoron.

[LoneWolf16]

Safe - Not causing or leading to harm or injury.

 

Nuclear warheads are designed to harm and injure. To make one "safe" or "safer" is the oxymoron, as it denies its only purpose.

Edited June 15, 2006 by LoneWolf16

[thepixiesrock]

Safer is a relative term, and it is being compared to Nukes that can go off by accident.

[LoneWolf16]

True enough, but that's the article, not the title. The title explains nothing, yet makes a statement that appears ludicrous without additional detail.

 

My initial comment came from the title itself, not the article.

[thepixiesrock]

Had the title read "Safe Nukes" and you did not put any thought or prior knowledge at all into the title, then sure, oxymoron. Fine.

 

The title, however, reads "Safer nukes" the fact that it says safer automatically shows that it is being compared to something. When you use a word such as that, and you are comparing the safeness of something, even if it is deadly, it isn't an oxymoron. One is safer than the other. It doesn't contradict itself.

[astr0creep]

LoneWolf, stop your nitpicking and admit that you were wrong.

[Atreides]

pixies wins.

[LoneWolf16]

LoneWolf, stop your nitpicking and admit that you were wrong. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Shut up, Astro, I'm trying to delay the inevitable.

 

Ok, my initial assessment was a tad bit off. It was late. I was tired. I saw "safe", which is part of the word safer, and "nuke". The two words seemed awfully wrong together. I responded with what would make sense with those two words.

 

I'm sorry. It probably will happen again.

[astr0creep]

LoneWolf, stop your nitpicking and admit that you were wrong. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Shut up, Astro, I'm trying to delay the inevitable.

 

Ok, my initial assessment was a tad bit off. It was late. I was tired. I saw "safe", which is part of the word safer, and "nuke". The two words seemed awfully wrong together. I responded with what would make sense with those two words.

 

I'm sorry. It probably will happen again.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

For the record, my first thought when reading the title was the same as yours. I glanced over the quote and then Pixies' argument made me cry with its cold hard calculated truth.

 

:">

[Dark_Raven]

Oxymoron.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That it is.

[Surreptishus]

Whats happened here is that some people have become confused by Eddo posting a topic that is not asinine or crass.

[thepixiesrock]

Eddo knew this would happen.

[Pidesco]

Hey, this is his second proper topic. There was the one about LIGO a few days back.

[thepixiesrock]

He is luring us into a false sense of saecurity.

[Judge Hades]

There is no such think as a "safer" nuke. Win it explodes it explodes, killing anyone unlucky enough to be in its blast radius and causing cncer in those caught in the fallout. The purpose of a nulear missile is to wipe out life. Not just kill, but to wipe out life itself even after detonation. They are ugly weapons that are the pinnacle of human achievement.

 

If humanity was smart we would never have developed these useless weapons.

[alanschu]

Here's another one pixies.

[Judge Hades]

I just don't see the point of wasting money on making a better nuke. We don't even use the one's we do and if we do then its over. We need to either use what we have or get rid of them, not stupidly waste more money on buildingand fine tuning more.

[themadhatter114]

I just don't see the point of wasting money on making a better nuke.  We don't even use the one's we do and if we do then its over.  We need to either use what we have or get rid of them, not stupidly waste more money on buildingand fine tuning more.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What I don't understand is, if we're replacing the old ones...shouldn't we just go ahead and use them? What better way to ensure that no one steals them?