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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: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Friday May 15 2020, @12:32PM (4 children)

    by looorg (578) on Friday May 15 2020, @12:32PM (#994591)

    The problem is that they are only a deterrent if everybody knows that they actually do work. If that somehow becomes in doubt that creates uncertainty and nobody likes that. They need to maintain the capability that they do work, and will launch when the command comes, otherwise people can get stupid ideas. If they somehow start to estimate that say half, two-thirds, four-fifths or whatever fraction of them are now duds then that makes it more tempting to gamble compared to say assured nuclear death and destruction.

    Perhaps use a couple of them to nuke Mars (or the Moon?) to kickstart the terraforming processing? Alternatively there is always the option to just nuke some country we (or the once with the nukes) can all agree on isn't needed anymore ...

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday May 15 2020, @02:17PM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Friday May 15 2020, @02:17PM (#994623) Journal

    The problem is that they are only a deterrent if everybody knows that they actually do work.

    Knows is probably too strong a word. They work if everyone believes they will explode.

    Sadly, the real answer to the question is a hugely complex Fortran 77 program, which cannot be modified while the test-ban treaty is in effect because modifying it will potentially introduce bugs. This one program completely subsidises the Fortran compiler industry (I learned, back when I worked on a Fortran compiler). The DoE group responsible is the worst customer because it takes them six months to declassify a reduced test case, and by the time they've reduced it to not contain classified information it often doesn't trigger the bug.

    --
    sudo mod me up
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday May 15 2020, @06:58PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday May 15 2020, @06:58PM (#994736)

    If only 1/4 of the US or Russian nuclear arsenal are functional, that's still more than enough to render Earth uninhabitable by humans. According to some professional estimates, even India and Pakistan deciding to go nuclear would be enough to do it, not because of the radiation but because nuclear winter means plants don't grow, and plants don't grow means livestock don't eat and die, and no plants + no livestock means people don't eat and die.

    I agree that what really matters is that all the world leaders who might be tempted to start WW III believe that enough nukes work to create MAD.

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    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2020, @07:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2020, @07:44PM (#994742)

    If that somehow becomes in doubt that creates uncertainty and nobody likes that.

    This statement is more true that it sounds.

    I heard a fairly convincing argument that war itself is the manifestation of uncertainty. If Country A knows absolutely that Country B will fight over this piece of land, and knows absolutely Country B will defeat them in that fight, they'd probably hand it over without a fight. Wars happen when Country A thinks B is bluffing, or is weaker than they appear, or whatever.

    Now this is too simplistic a model to 100% hold (for example, Country A doesn't want to get a reputation it can be bullied, Danegeld is only a short-term issue, and if Country B won't want to expend too many resources and leave them vulnerable to Country C). But the general idea holds... a major source of war is uncertainty.