U.S. Redesigning Atomic Weapons -NYT

[Rose Siding]

Worried that the nation's aging nuclear arsenal is increasingly fragile, American scientists have begun designing a new generation of nuclear arms meant to be sturdier and more reliable and to have longer lives, federal officials and private experts say.

The officials say the program could help shrink the arsenal and the high cost of its maintenance. But critics say it could needlessly resuscitate the complex of factories and laboratories that make nuclear weapons and could possibly ignite a new arms race.

So far, the quiet effort involves only $9 million for warhead designers at the nation's three nuclear weapon laboratories, Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia. Federal bomb experts at these heavily guarded facilities are now scrutinizing secret arms data gathered over a half century for clues about how to achieve the new reliability goals.

The relatively small initial program, involving fewer than 100 people, is expected to grow and produce finished designs in the next 5 to 10 years, culminating, if approval is sought and won, in prototype warheads. Most important, officials say, the effort marks a fundamental shift in design philosophy......

http://nytimes.com/2005/02/07/science/07bomb.html?hp&ex=1107752400&en=8a98a0e3bb90c1d8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[ckramer]

1. Let's all major in nuclear physics - great job security!

[Rush1184]

2. So.... We bombed Iraq because we thought they might have nukes...

and now we build more.

Hmmm... We are definitatly not hypocrits...

or maybe we are.

[Swamp Rat]

3. Insane! n/t

:crazy:

[Freedom_from_Chains]

4. Well seeing how we are most likely

going to have an increased need for them in the not to distant furture. it makes sense to be upgrading them now.

[AuntiBush]

19. Yeah. We're gonna' Need them now!

Sadly, sadly so! I need to change my signature line to "Never in my lifetime did I ever think..." I mean, it's the most disgusting, dispicable, horrifically unreal lie after lie, thiving from the American people - they've ruined our country and it's like there isn't a damn thing anyone seems to either noth be able to do about it, or not care too.

Quoting Sting, "I hope they love their children, too!"

:nuke: <--- :scared: for all of us!

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

5. They can't wait to try out the new

Weapons of World Destruction
A guy with the emotional development of a 6th grader and an IQ of 85 has his finger on the button.
What do you think will happen when the world goes against this Connecticut raised priviliged Brat who ALWAYS got his way?

Any speculation?

[struggle4progress]

6. "I would mention briefly today two particular issues, which are ...

... of deep concern to all men: disarmament and the establishment of true equality among men. Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose ... Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions. This very Organization itself is the greatest such institution, and it is in a more powerful United Nations that we seek, and it is here that we shall find, the assurance of a peaceful future ..."

Haile Selassie
Speech to the United Nations
New York City, NY
October 4, 1963

http://www.bobmarley.com/life/rastafari/war_speech.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. Tell me Jeeves..... have you seen

Osama been forgotten around? Huh Jeeves??? Seen him around?? I've got a score to settle with him... I'll take him, dead or alive...

[Heyo]

8. This deal with the nukes...

...makes me think of like if you have a gun in your house. (which I don't)...

You hope you never need it, but you have it there in case you do, and if you do, you expect it not to jam or misfire and cost you your life.

This goes beyond the current US political and geopolitical situation. It existed before Bush and will long after. I think it is very important that the stockpile is reliable. They do need to be kept up, under high security and safely maintained, because if (God forbid) the day comes they would ever have to be used, they need to work... and work right.. the first try... no ifs, ands or buts.

Not a pleasant thought, but I stand firmly behind this one philosophy when it comes to a nuclear arsenal:

It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

You don't want to get caught with your pants down. :dunce:

Heyo

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

9. sorry, does not wash... old nukes work just a well as new ones

this is just a corporate welfare program.

and how is this like a gun? a gun is a surgical tool, you can even use it in a survival situation.

nukes are anything but surgical, and the MAD theory of the last 60 years is still in the back of the minds of the idiots in charge of this country, and I do not doubt for one second that we have possibly the first leader in the nuclear age who has not lost ANY sleep over having to push the button.

[Zynx]

17. Nukes *do* degrade, so they *do* need to be replaced

Each nuke is a percision instrument composed of electronic switches, chemical explosives and radioactive material. It is not going to remain viable forever. The estimated lifespan is 15-20 years or so.

[diamond14]

25. it's the PLUTONIUM that keeps on reacting.....even under sealed

and gaseous Tritium conditions, the Plutonium just keeps on reacting....


although many look at the PHYSICS of Plutonium (nuke bombs and such)...it's the CHEMISTS who study the Chemical Properties...Plutonium is a unique human-created element, that just keeps on reacting...Plutonium reacts with all elements in the Periodic Table, except the noble gases....Plutonium is pyrophoric (it reacts on contact with air, causing many ghastly fires at nuclear manufacturing facilities)...


the CHEMICAL reactivity is the main reason that ROCKY FLATS (just outside Denver, Colorado) is such a disaster....a U.S. Federal Judge order the facility shut down for violations of EPA laws (im 1989), and the IDIOTS shut it down without working the Plutonium through the manufacturing process...Plutonium remains in all the piping and plumbing REACTING with every type of metal/plastic/liquid/air).....


ALL nuclear-bomb Plutonium has to be re-worked minimally every two or three years, because the surface becomes PITTED from the chemical reactions...and the PITTED surface will NOT push together uniformly for a nuclear explosion....this is EXPENSIVE, DANGEROUS AND totally stupid stuff done continuously by OUR military for the benefit of their WAR-PROFITEERS (who are exempt from ALL LAWS, including EPA environmental laws, OSHA, Fire Safety)

[oneighty]

26. Gun type (Hiroshima)

uranium bombs are very simple very rugged very long lived and some are very small in both size and yield.

180

[diamond14]

27. Uranium does NOT WORK nearly as well as Plutonium.....

Uranium is a natural metal that is MINED from the earth....


but it doesn't work too well....and THAT is why the military created PLUTONIUM, a human-created element...it works much better....




Herb Lehr, a member of the Manhattan Project's Special Engineering Detachment, holding the assembled plutonium core for the world's first atomic bomb in a special shock-absorbing case about 6:00 p.m. on July 12, 1945. The core was about the size of an orange and weighed some 13.5 pounds (6.1 kilograms).

[oneighty]

28. Uranium gun type weapons

are far eaiser to produce.

Federation of Nuclear Scientists

180

[Heyo]

32. Guns and nukes

"and how is this like a gun? a gun is a surgical tool, you can even use it in a survival situation."

First off, a gun is not exactly a surgical tool. I get what you mean by that, though and you are sort of right.

How is it like a gun? I will explain. WHat I said/meant was that nuclear weapons possessed by a country are like a gun possesed by and individual in a household in this sense: you have it, you may not like it but you have it anyway, you hope you never have to use it but you have it there in case you do. What most ties it together for me, is the statement I made that it is better to have and not need, than to need and not have. That statement is true of both guns and nukes IMHO.

Also, old ones may not work as well or may not work at all. The tritium and deuterium can decay and seriosly reduce the fusion yield, or the second stage might not go off at all. The fission primary will still be powerful but it may not get the job done.

Heyo

[reprobate]

14. Not a pleasant thought? That's MADNESS

We are still the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons. To even think about using them in todays world is insanity. It would be the end of the world, or at least the end of civilization in America.

Even if we were struck first, to retaliate with nukes would make us the target of every nuclear power in the world.

But that may just be what Captain Courageous wants.

[jbnow]

21. I would agree to

"It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it." about things we might need...

But why do we "need" working nukes? Our bombs seem quite destructive enough, how many do we need to kill at a time?
It's not as though the nukes could stop incoming nukes.

Do you think our aging stockpile make other countries feel we are not a threat, couldn't retaliate?

Talk about hostile countries having weapons of mass destruction. What country does not think of us that way? (With or without new nukes)

[diamond14]

23. For $ 5 TRILLION dollars, we have a real NIGHTMARE of a mess

AND way way too many nuclear bombs, all as part of a useless military boondoggle....with a 24,000-year radioactive environmental disaster all over America, poisoning AMERICANS forever....and bush* is going this route AGAIN with his new perpetual WARS and war-profiteers (same ones who created THIS nightmare)....


"Today, even though the nuclear arsenal is substantially smaller, we still have the equivalent of 120,000 to 130,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs."


http://www.brookings.org/fp/projects/nucwcost/schwartz.htm

Atomic Audit
The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940
Stephen I. Schwartz
Brookings Institution Press 1998
c. 700pp.

Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons to deter and if necessary fight a nuclear war. Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union's military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing "a bigger bang for a buck"—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation.

Based on four years of extensive research, Atomic Audit is the first book to document the comprehensive costs of U.S. nuclear weapons, assembling for the first time anywhere the actual and estimated expenditures for the program since its creation in 1940. The authors provide a unique perspective on U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear weapons, tracking their development from the Manhattan Project of World War II to the present day and assessing each aspect of the program, including research, development, testing, and production; deployment; command, control, communications, and intelligence; and defensive measures. They also examine the costs of dismantling nuclear weapons, the management and disposal of large quantities of toxic and radioactive wastes left over from their production, compensation for persons harmed by nuclear weapons activities, nuclear secrecy, and the economic implications of nuclear deterrence.

[James T. Kirk]

10. They should restart nuclear tests to determine reliability of old ones.

"Originally, the roughly 10,000 warheads in the American arsenal had an expected lifetime of about 15 years, officials say. The average age is now about 20 years, and some are much older. Experts say a costly federal program to assess and maintain their health cannot ultimately confirm their reliability because a global test ban forbids underground test detonations."
http://nytimes.com/2005/02/07/science/07bomb.html?hp&ex=1107752400&en=8a98a0e3bb90c1d8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

If the old ones were found to be good, we wouldn't need new ones as much.

[Matriot]

11. Uhhhhh, there's something we're missing here

What are we going to do with all the old radioactive waste?:shrug:

[WindRavenX]

12. hush

what, do you hate America or something?
:P
Shouldn't be working on getting rid of all n-bombs? You know, instead of making bigger, more dangerous ones?

[Matriot]

16. Who said they're going to bigger????

The old nukes were designed for massive destruction. We produce smaller ones to control the devastation to a limited area our gov't would feel more comfortable using them as opposed to what we have now. Obviously, the gov't doesn't care about the ecological damage to the earth.

I'm just giving points to ponder. What do we do with the old waste? Obviously our gov't has plans to use these new nukes. Why else would they want to make them?

As to testing the nukes, last time I checked Bikini Island is still available. Can we use radioactive oil? No we can't. Plus the conflict in Iraq has to be guerilla warfare. So we won't be nuking the middle east anytime soon.

So what country is the target for these new nukes? Our military is not enough to take over the world. Who did Bush piss off and continues to piss off? We forgetting Korea? We're still pissing N. Korea off about its nuke program and not working with them. Who's N. Korea's ally? China maybe? Come on, think think. US troops are pulling out of S. Korea not building up. Units in Korea are deploying to Iraq and getting reassigned to Posts in the US once when their deployments in Iraq are done.

Think about it, the only country left that could kick our asses is none other but. . . drum roll please . . . China!!!! Are you scared yet? Because I'm shitting bricks. Oh you want time frame??? Let's see, deployments from Korea to Iraq are still scheduled in 2006 time frame. So we're looking at 2007 time frame for it all to hit the fan.

With all this talk of starting more wars with other countries in the middle east is to deflect from what is really going to happen. If what I say is true and happens we can all kiss our democracy goodbye.

God, I just put myself in a major depression.

[Kool Kitty]

18. Bikini Island is still available to

use as a testing ground for nukes? Do you think that we should be doing above-ground nuclear testing? We shouldn't have them at all. How the hell can we tell these other countries that they better not develop them, when we are making new smaller weapons, so that we can use them? Are these people insane, or just the biggest hypocrites that ever walked the earth? Why are we the only ones allowed to have these horrendous weapons?

[diamond14]

20. PHOTOS...the pentagoons TOOK OUT AN ISLAND entirely....

the ULTIMATE in environmental damage...VAPORIZE the whole island....and the coral reefs...gone....TOTAL INSANITY....this is the military mind and it should scare every American....


LOOK AT THESE PHOTOS...frightening....


http://www.brookings.org/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWCOST/WEAPONS.HTM


The mushroom cloud formed by the "Mike" test of an experimental thermonuclear device rises above Enewetak Atoll, November 1, 1952. The "Mike" device used liquid deuterium and required extensive cryogenic cooling equipment. It weighed 164,000 pounds (74,546 kilograms) and had a yield of 10.4 megatons.




The above photograph shows five of forty named islands comprising Enewetak Atoll before the "Mike" test (the gray areas surrounding the islands are coral reefs). The test completely vaporized the island of Elugelab as well as portions of Sanil and Teiter (below), leaving a crater 164 feet (50 meters) deep and 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) wide.

[Heyo]

33. One underground test...

... of a random selection from the stockpile, which would measured the weapon's yield, would go a long way in telling us how reliable the aging stockpile really is.

Heyo

[Kool Kitty]

38. Where would you suggest that this weapon be

tested, since we are all downwind?

[Heyo]

42. Didn't really suggest it, per se...

... just sayin. :shrug:

:dunce:

Heyo

[Conservativesux]

13. Send it to Crawford, Texas !

[diamond14]

22. PHOTO...here's what the military has ALWAYS done with radioactive waste

the entire DOE complex remains HEAVILY CONTAMINATED, with little effort being made by OUR military to clean it up....we have truly POISONED ourselves in our hatred...Rocky Flats (Colorado), PanTex (near Amarillo, TX), Paducah (Kentucky), Mound (Illinois), Hanford (Washington), Los Alamos AND Sandia (New Mexico), Lawrence Livermore (California), Oak Ridge (Tennesee), Savanah River and much much more...truly POISONED OURSELVES....






Until 1970, solid low-level and transuranic waste at the Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear weapons facilities (shown here is Hanford Reservation, circa 1950s) was frequently disposed of in cardboard boxes. Once filled, this unlined trench would have been covered with dirt, leaving the cardboard to deteriorate and allowing the waste to contaminate the soil and leach into the groundwater.

http://www.brookings.org/fp/projects/nucwcost/photos.htm

[NickB79]

24. Recycle it and use it for the new ones?

Enriched uranium and plutonium wouldn't have gone through enough of their half-lives to be totally unusable from the old bombs. You might need to re-enrich the material, but it should still be fissionable. The main thing that needs to be replaced are the triggers and explosives wraps needed to detonate the bomb.

[ConcernedCanuk]

15. Heck, I don't believe the Military ever STOPPED developing nukes

.
.
.

I think we're just getting primed(brainwashed) to accept the arrival of new and better stuff that already exists.

And I also would not be suprised to learn later that some of this stuff was used in the thousands of tons of munitions the US rained on Baghdad in the early part of the Iraq Invasion tryig to kill ONE MAN(and missed).

It was weeks after the initial "shock'n awe" before there was any personell in there, and who the heck would be able to find what was dropped where in all that mess?

They got stuff already that the world knows nothing about.

That's My Canuk Opinion anyhoo . . .

[Thor_MN]

29. We can't have Iran's "incident" matching the signature of any US devices

Can we?

[Rex]

30. Yes, let us all hide behind stockpiles of worthless weapons.

Waste trillions, and for what? Would anyone be stupid enough to have an all out nuclear exchange? Reagan lined his buddies pockets with defense contracts work billions. Now Bush Jr. will do the same.

[diamond14]

36. yes, it was reaguns that lined his war-profiteers pockets against the

invisible enemy 'communism'...and NOW, bush* substitutes the word "terrorism' to create ANOTHER invisible enemy and STEAL all the taxpayers money to make MORE useless weapons for his BLOATED war-profiteers while OUR soldiers serve as cheap CANNON FODDER...





Vehicles created for the DELIVERY OF NUCLEAR BOMBS....

Air-Launched Cruise Missile (AGM-86B)


Air-Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCMs) being loaded aboard a B-52 bomber at Griffiss Air Force Base, New York, in December 1981. The open warhead compartment on one missile is clearly visible.


Starting in 1978, 1,787 ALCMs were manufactured, at a cost of $6.3 billion (excluding their nuclear warheads). Each ALCM carries a W80-1 warhead with a yield of either < 1-5 kilotons or 150 kilotons. under a secret program begun in 1988, several hundred alcms have been converted to carry conventional warheads (at an additional cost of $260,000 per missile). these conventional versions were first used against iraq during the 1991 gulf war and in a subsequent attack on september 4, 1996.

[Rose Siding]

31. Knight Ridder: Budget includes funds for study of nuclear bunker buster

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is trying to resurrect a controversial study into whether a nuclear weapon could be designed to burrow deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers.

Congress killed the study last year, partly out of concern that it undercut U.S. efforts to curb other countries' development of nuclear weapons.

Under the administration's proposed 2006 federal budget, the Department of Energy would spend $4 million on the so-called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study, while the Department of Defense would contribute $4.5 million.
...
While the amounts are small compared with proposed overall defense spending in 2006 of about $440 billion, which includes the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons budget, the attempt to restart the study could ignite a bruising fight with Congress.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/10840970.htm

[localroger]

34. What this is about

In the beginning, there was the atomic bomb. Those early atomic bombs had cores of Plutonium or U-235, either of which remains usable for tens of thousands of years, and initiators of beryllium and polonium which remained usable for a few months.

Later there was the Cold War, and the Russians got the bomb partly because of espionage and partly because it just ain't that hard to build them if you're a big country. And Ed Teller had seen this coming, and had prodded and pushed for a muchbiggerbetter bomb, and this was the H-bomb, misnamed for the fusion reaction that is only the second of the five main reactions that drive it to potentially indefinite yields.

The H-bomb requires an A-bomb to trigger it, but more importantly it requires an A-bomb with special characteristics, because the H-bomb is set alight by the light of the A-bomb; the H-bomb apparattus must absorb the early gamma rays, compress itself, and react to completion before the blast wave from the A-bomb gets to it and blows it apart. I have likened this hat trick to using a stick of dynamite as a camera flash and managing to somehow throw it away before the blast destroys the camera.

There is exactly one way to speed up an atomic explosion (and also miniaturize it so that the device is smaller than the early Fat Man device): You boost it with tritium. Tritium fuses easily in the heart of an atomic bomb adding copious neutrons to the reaction and speeding it along. You get more of those early gamma rays faster, but the blast wave still crawls along at a few times the speed of sound.

Tritium also has a very short half-life of about 12 years. You can overboost a bomb to increase its shelf life but at some point comparable to (and usually much less than) the life of a human the bomb that could level a city will just become a "dirty bomb" that "fizzles." "Fizzle" is actually a technical term among bomb people. A fizzle can ruin your whole day by spreading unreacted plutonium all over the landscape, but it does not knock down a city.

You don't need tritium to build atomic weapons but it's been a long time since we built weapons that don't need it. And tritium has to be made in nuclear reactors. Only a few are geared up to do it, all of them dangerous and old. I'm not sure of the current situation but back in the early 90's there were no reactors in the US capable of producing tritium *at all*. However we have a huge oversupply of nukes and last I heard the bomb guys were just harvesting it and re-concentrating it for reuse.

I doubt if there was ever a time when nuclear weapons didn't need periodic servicing. The early ones needed initiators to be replaced almost monthly; the development of neutron generating vacuum tubes stopped that, but that was almost concurrent with the introduction of boosting. So instead of needing a constant supply of polonium we needed a constant supply of tritium. The reactor requirements are very similar, and nothing like what you use to generate commercial electricity.

Apparently this initiative is to find an alternative to tritium for boosting miniature and thermonuclear weapons. Good luck with that, fellas; I know enough physics to know that there aren't many potential solutions. Most of them have been tried or modelled and abandoned for good reasons. Tritium is expensive, and we've been using it since 1950 for a good reason.

[StandardBushHater]

35. We should give it up and destroy all our nukes

We don't need them. Nobody has any interest in destroying us anyway. Let's melt them into plows and provide food for the world.

[diamond14]

37. WELCOME to DU !, StandardBushHater.....thanks for joining us....

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:


:hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:



:toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast: :toast:

[Skittles]

39. I.......................ER...............................

caution please

[Pallas180]

40. cheezus - talk about the military industrial complex being in control -

what an understatement -

they're robbing the funds from every social program ever invented in order to feed the killing machine.

[MsMagnificent]

41. Neo CON's: 'Nuclear weapons are not off the table"

How convenient! The CON'S keep on bringing up the possibility of us using Nuclear weapons, and the timing is JUST RIGHT that there would happen to be a very good reason to conduct more & advanced research and construction of nuclear weapons.

What a coincidence!

Reasons as good as the one's going into war with Iraq, WMD's,for example.

These reprobates will cook up anything they want... no matter what the truth is.

Our use of nuclear weapons is suicide for every American man, woman and child! We may think we're the only superpower left, but alongside of China there will be the huge possibility for other countries to form an alliance that will vastly outnumber us.
DON'T LET THAT MADMAN DO IT! DON'T LET HIM GET AWAY WITH IT...
AGAIN!

PLEASE!