The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Technical Issues for the United States (2012) / Chapter Skim
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1 SAFETY, SECURITY, AND RELIABILITY OF THE U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE
1 SAFETY, SECURITY, AND RELIABILITY OF THE U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE
Pages 15-34
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From page 15... ...
NUCLEAR WEAPONS STOCKPILE For the U.S. nuclear weapons program, the primary concern related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
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From page 16... ...
nuclear-weapon complex and are properly focused on this task. The measures that are most important to maintaining and bolstering stockpile confidence are: • maintaining and bolstering a highly motivated and competent workforce in the nuclear-weapon laboratories and production complex, • intensifying stockpile surveillance, • enhancing manufacturing/remanufacturing capabilities, • increasing the performance margins of nuclear-weapon primaries, • sustaining the capacity for development and manufacture of the non nuclear and nuclear components of nuclear weapons, and • practicing "change discipline" in the maintenance and remanufacture of the nuclear subsystems.
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From page 17... ...
Second, there is increased interest in incorporating additional safety and security features in stockpile weapons, including those requiring changes to the nuclear explosive packages. Further, there have been substantial upgrades of the security posture at sites within the nuclear weapons complex to guard against potential terrorist threats (with concomitant budgetary and operational impacts on the conduct of work)
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These facilities are old and at risk of being shut down from time to time for safety reasons. Their replacement has been delayed due to budget pressures and the fact that the appropriate direction, scale, and scope of the future nuclear weapons program was not yet settled.
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The follow-on to the expired START I Treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation will reduce deployed strategic nuclear warheads on each side to 1,550. The Nuclear Posture Review, the third since the end of the Cold War and first to be unclassified, includes new 7 QMU requires the quantitative ("Q")
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Elaborating on the fifth objective, the NPR states that, as long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States will sustain safe, secure, and effective nuclear forces, which will continue to play an essential role in deterring potential adversaries and reassuring allies and partners around the world. BOX 1-2 Options for Extending the Life of Nuclear Warheads Under any life-extension plan for a warhead, components outside of the nuclear explosive package (NEP)
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;12 • Design, modeling and simulation, including the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program at the DOE nuclear weapons laboratories; and 9 Although the difference between a tactical and strategic weapon can be somewhat arbitrary, defined by treaty language or delivery capability, and all nuclear weapons can be viewed as strategic in the sense that they alter the nature of the conflict, this report will continue to distinguish between and utilize the terms strategic and tactical.
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for tritium production; and SNL and the Kansas City Plant for non-nuclear components. The DOE nuclear weapons laboratory directors and the STRATCOM Commander rely on the SSP to provide the information underpinning their conclusions in the annual assessments of the nuclear weapons stockpile.
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. MESA was constructed at Sandia National Laboratories to provide advanced simulation tools, microsystems, and nanotechnology capabilities for weapons engineering and related national security projects.
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-- Even during the nuclear weapon testing era, computer simulation of nuclear weapons performance was the primary way in which nuclear weapons were designed. In the absence of nuclear-explosion testing, advanced computing serves as the means for putting all of the nuclear weapons information together to evaluate the impact of a surveillance finding, assessing the impact of a proposed refurbishment or modified design, and comparing experiments on facilities such as NIF or DARHT with calculations made with weapons codes (testing the merits of both the code and the designer)
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From page 25... ...
Advanced architecture machines tend to have great speed but much less flexibility in the kinds of problems on which that speed is effective. Thus, existing computers at LLNL and LANL, and two new computers planned for LLNL in the next two years, can carry out valuable, special-purpose calculations (often focused on basic weapons science issues)
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From page 26... ...
The two sites responsible for production activities with special nuclear materials, Y-12 and the plutonium complex at LANL, rely on facilities that in some cases date from the early days of the Cold War, and it is both expensive and difficult to maintain them at modern safety and security standards. As was mentioned earlier in this chapter, NNSA has detailed modernization plans to build replacement facilities, but replacement of the main facilities has been delayed due to budget pressures and the fact that the appropriate direction, scale, and scope of the future nuclear weapons program was not yet settled.
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From page 27... ...
Changes in the assessed performance of a design could lead to modification of certified performance characteristics, modification of change-out intervals for limited-life components, or a decision to remove the weapon from the stockpile. Deliberate physical changes are made when necessary and are made in the course of LEPs, which take place for a given NEP only once every few decades.
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From page 28... ...
These topics are addressed further in Chapter 3. The discussion in the above sections leads to the following finding and recommendation: Finding 1-4: Provided that sufficient resources and a national commitment to stockpile stewardship are in place, the committee judges that the United States has the technical capabilities to maintain a safe, secure, and reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons into the foreseeable future without nuclear-explosion testing.
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Both are essential to maintaining the capability to render judgments about stockpile issues. • Maintain a vigorous surveillance program that is systematic; is statistically based where possible; and continuously reflects lessons learned from annual surveillance, LEPs, fixing problems, and science-based analysis.
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From page 30... ...
NNSA currently assesses that it has the capability to conduct a test to meet very limited technical objectives within 18 months of a request to do so, but only if some "domestic regulations, agreements and laws" were to be waived.21 With greater confidence, NNSA assesses that it could conduct a test and achieve specific technical objectives within 36 months 19 Discussion of required lead times is based on Nuclear Test Readiness: Report to Congress (U.S.
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remains within the required 24-36-month required time window for highly diagnosed and authorization-driven hypothetical nuclear tests." The committee also heard the view that investing annually in maintaining aging test diagnostic equipment and other testrelated capabilities may not be the best possible use of funds. If events led to a decision by the United States to resume testing, presumably the crisis would be severe enough to justify the identification of funding specifically to support testing.
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From page 32... ...
Recommendation 1-2: To maintain a test readiness posture of 24-36 months, NNSA should: • Preserve the Nevada Test Site's ability to host a nuclear-explosion test; • Support the containment capability unique to underground nuclear-explosion testing; • Maintain seismic data necessary to meet U.S. obligations under the Threshold Test Ban Treaty should testing resume; • Maintain the radiochemistry laboratory infrastructure and drill-back capability;26 • Support fast readout requirements and prompt diagnostic equipment; • Maintain a library that includes testing methods, containment rack designs, procedures, processes; and other relevant information; • Maintain nuclear-certifiable emplacement cranes; • Maintain field-test neutron generators; • Establish a process for obtaining waivers from health and environmental regulations if required, but, given the frequency with which laws change, not seek such waivers in advance.
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From page 33... ...
In addition, the DOD maintains direct technical responsibility for handling nuclear warheads and for the interface of the warheads to the control systems of the various delivery vehicles. An example of the demanding nature of this activity is the Mk-21 fuze required for the W87 warhead in the Mk-21 re-entry vehicle on the Minuteman ICBM.
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