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posted by martyb on Friday May 15 2020, @11:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-Earth-shattering-kaboom dept.

How Do We Know the Nukes Still Work?:

Though the treaty explicitly banning all nuclear weapons tests has not yet entered into force, the United States has not detonated a nuclear weapon since 1992. The American nuclear strategy still relies on the nuclear weapons working, but without full-scale tests, the Department of Energy's National Labs now operate the Stockpile Stewardship program, which relies on theory, simulations, and experiments to deliver annual weapons assessments to the federal government.

[...] "The [Stockpile Stewardship program] has gone through a number of administrations, and the Defense Department hasn't said that we have to go back to testing," Victor "Vic" Reis, former assistant secretary of energy for defense programs at the Department of Energy and one of the program's architects, told Gizmodo. "We understand enough of what's happening with the current stockpile of weapons—they're safe and reliable."

Reis teamed up with senior scientists and military personnel to draft a program that could validate the performance of the weapons and simulate the effects of aging on the weapons and their safety—what he called Science Based Stockpile Stewardship. [...] However, there wasn't nearly enough computing capacity to run all of the required simulations. Fortunately, Reis had previously been the director of DARPA and convinced a manager there to lead what would become the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, a program that would significantly increase the computing power available to the weapons labs. Today, the Stockpile Stewardship program operates on a three-pillared approach, combining theory, simulation, and experiment, and runs mainly out of those three labs as well as the Nevada National Security Site.

[...] Understanding how the weapons age is a crucial component to the simulations. "There's a whole aspect of what happens to various materials and how they interact with metals, or with components of the devices themselves, that's all aging. We have no data on what happens when something is 40 years old," Irene Qualters, associate laboratory director for simulation and computation at Los Alamos National Lab, told Gizmodo.

[...] Reis told Gizmodo that he thinks the strategy should last at least another generation. The U.S. has found an effective workaround to true nuclear testing—it's not quite as showy as nuking ships in the Pacific, but scientists each year report to Congress with 100 percent confidence that the nuclear arsenal is reliable.

"But beyond 20 to 25 years, who knows," Reis said. Future politicians will eventually have to decide what to do about the aging nuclear arsenal.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 15 2020, @12:00PM (5 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 15 2020, @12:00PM (#994586) Journal

    1. Build new ones using the same designs that were tested decades ago.
    2. Build new ones and test them.

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2020, @12:19PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2020, @12:19PM (#994589)

    If only there were some desolate place where no people lived, where we could test them - like - oh - maybe Saudi Arabia?

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 15 2020, @04:01PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 15 2020, @04:01PM (#994670) Journal

      New Jersey.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2020, @04:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2020, @04:50PM (#994692)

      China.

      Wait, do you mean before or after WW3?

  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday May 15 2020, @05:15PM (1 child)

    by Sulla (5173) on Friday May 15 2020, @05:15PM (#994704) Journal

    I was recently reading about the Minuteman III production that is going on now to replace our old rockets and I am not sure how they got through procurement. Yes they are cheap, but what do they do to protect the environment? Had we instead decided to go with the Falcon 9 we would have partially reusable nuclear launch vehicles ready to send the next payload toward the red menace. Of course the Minuteman III costs 9m per rocket for something that will hopefully never be used verses however much the Falcon 9 costs.

    While It would be a good idea to test them, its really not practical. Underground tests cause issues, above ground tests cause issues, tests in space could cause issues. The goal is to never have to use them because your bluff game is so good, so just get gud at bluffing.

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    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 15 2020, @10:37PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 15 2020, @10:37PM (#994794) Journal

      Had we instead decided to go with the Falcon 9 we would have partially reusable nuclear launch vehicles ready to send the next payload toward the red menace.

      Falcon 9 would be terrible to use for nuclear weapon delivery due to its cryogenic propellant, liquid oxygen. Either you fuel the rocket right before you launch (where there's a good chance you lose the vehicle before it's ready to launch), or you have to keep topping off to compensate for the boil off (on a vehicle that would need to be redesigned for perpetual fueling over months or years).

      I believe the current state of the art is the MX missile, which is a solid propellant vehicle. You can leave that in a silo for years without degradation of its ability to launch.