URL: http://www.abqjournal.com/north/opinion/797466north11-10-02.htm
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Sunday, November 10, 2002
OTHER VOICES: Guest Commentary
Why Make More
Plutonium Pits?
By Greg Mello Director of Los Alamos Study Group
The Department of Energy has proposed building a
new factory for the manufacture of plutonium pits, the cores of the
first stage of nuclear weapons. Why?
The U.S. has today roughly 24,000 plutonium pits. About 10,600
are in nuclear weapons; there are also some 14,000 pits in storage near Amarillo. Of the pits in storage, approximately 5,000 have
been earmarked for reuse; the other 9,000 pits may work just fine as
well.
Officials at the nuclear labs say pits last for a
minimum of 45 to 60 years, and probably decades
longer, if not longer still. Since the oldest pits in the stockpile
were made in about 1970, these oldest pits could begin to fail in 2015
at the earliest, using the most conservative information available publicly.
By that time, over two-thirds of the weapons in the U.S. arsenal will no longer be deployed. The recent U.S.-Russian
agreement will remove some 6,446 warheads of varying ages from deployed
status by the end of 2012, not counting any reductions in tactical weapons
that may also take place. The pits in those inactive weapons represent
a "hedge" against pit aging in the remaining deployed weapons,
which will by then consist of 2,200 strategic weapons and no more than
1,160 tactical weapons.
This is a huge pit reserve, and a quite modern one
too — and all the pits in it are fully tested and certified already,
unlike the ones that would be made in a new factory.
Even if this somehow weren't enough, Los Alamos could make more than enough pits. For several years
now, Los Alamos has been paid princely sums to create, in part of
its existing plutonium facility, a manufacturing capacity for 50 pits
per year, or 80 pits/year with multiple shifts, a
capacity that Los Alamos once said it already had.
The lab space involved is modest, and these manufacturing
rates could be doubled within the existing facility by retiring obsolete
and unnecessary projects.
Aside from being completely unnecessary, DOE's
proposed factory raises other troubling issues. In 1970, the United States ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT),
the cornerstone of the world's nonproliferation regime. Article VI obligates
nuclear-weapon states "to pursue negotiations in good faith on
effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at
an early date and to nuclear disarmament."
There are two important norms here: "do not
improve nuclear weapons," and "do not possess them" —
whether it is continuous non-possession (by most countries), or eventual
non-possession (by the five countries recognized as nuclear-weapon states
in the treaty). Our obligation to disarm was emphasized by the International
Court of Justice in 1996, which unanimously ruled, "There exists
an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations
leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective
international control." The U.S. recommitted itself to this principle as recently
as May 2000 when, along with the other nuclear-weapons states, it agreed
to "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to
accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to
nuclear disarmament to which all States and parties are committed under
Article VI." The proposal to build a new pit factory is an affront
to these obligations, especially given the huge pit reserve, much of
it modern, and the known minimum longevity of pits.
Taking these and other facts in hand, one can only
conclude that the primary purpose of this facility is to make types
of pits that do not now exist — that is, new weapons. These new weapons
would likely have to be tested in full-up nuclear explosive tests, a
reality that senior officials at the labs and DOE have recently begun
to unveil to the public.
The new facility is supposed to cost $2 billion to
$4 billion to build, but there will also be operating costs, plus the
costs of waste disposal, security, transportation, and final decommissioning
and cleanup, among other costs. It would not be surprising if the total
life-cycle cost reached $30 billion or more.
At Rocky Flats, which made pits from 1952 to 1989,
cleanup will cost very roughly $10 billion, not including long-term
monitoring and care.
Even after spending this much, the widespread soil
contamination at the site will probably never be cleaned up. While the
proposed new plant likely would not be as contaminating and dangerous
as "Rocky" was, this cannot be guaranteed. New (or newly appreciated)
hazards such as terrorism and sabotage have risen as risk factors, even
as other risks have purportedly declined. The hazard from terrorist
attack at such a facility cannot be easily bounded, and the steps necessary
to prevent terrorism and sabotage will make such a facility a poor place
to work, not even considering the intrinsic medical and moral hazards
of working there.
For all these reasons and more, attempts over the
last decade to construct a new plutonium pit factory have been highly
controversial, both in New
Mexico and nationally. They should be. DOE's plan
is neither "modern" nor smart, and if allowed to go forward
it will gravely damage our national security, in every way that phrase
can be interpreted.
Mello is director of the Los Alamos Study Group and
visiting fellow with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.
****************
No Need for a Large-Scale Pit Facility: Existing Los Alamos Facilities
Are Adequate
Remarks and Press Advisory, Thursday, October 24, 2002
Contact: Greg
Mello, 609-258-5276 or 609-497-2708
The National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA) of Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed building
and operating a large-scale facility for the manufacture of plutonium “pits,” the cores of the primary stage of nuclear weapons.
Tonight, DOE will conduct a public hearing in Los
Alamos regarding the scope of the environmental impact
analysis it must do in order to select a site for this facility, which
it calls the “Modern Pit Facility” (MPF).
1. Background
The first pit was made at
Los Alamos for the Trinity test in 1945. From that date until 1952, when the Rocky Flats
Plant near Denver, Colorado
was opened, all U.S.
pits were made at Los Alamos. After that date, Los Alamos
and (beginning in 1952) what is now Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
also made pits for at least four decades.
[1]
Rocky Flats was shut down
in 1989 after a joint EPA/FBI raid, prompted by reports of what turned
out to be massive violations of environmental and other laws. This raid was preceded by one of the largest
sustained campaigns of public protest in the history of the United
States, involving tens of thousands of people over roughly a two-decade
period, which involved many issues, including environmental, ethical,
and national security concerns.
In 1992, after three years
of attempting to fix the physical, environmental, and institutional
problems at the site, DOE shut down “Rocky.”
Since then, cleanup has been underway at that site.
Source removal, building decontamination and demolition, and
cleanup is expected to cost very roughly $10 billion, not including
long-term monitoring and other post-closure care.
[2] Cleanup will not, even if all goes well, address
much of the widespread soil contamination at the site. While future facilities are unlikely to be as
contaminating and dangerous as the Rocky Flats Plant, this cannot
be guaranteed. New or newly
appreciated hazards (e.g. terrorism and sabotage) have risen as risk
factors even as others have purportedly declined.
Prior attempts to construct
a new plutonium pit factory to replace the Rocky Flats Plant have
been highly controversial, both in New Mexico
and nationally, for more than a decade.
[3]
In
New Mexico, they have
been the subject of litigation, protest, analysis, Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) requests and associated litigation, and lobbying by members
of our own organization and by others. Thus the present hearing takes place against
a backdrop of political struggle, which it is sure to intensify. Its subject, namely the role of weapons of mass
destruction in our national life, ranks as one of the most politicized
issues in the last 6 decades.
This struggle has been,
not least, a struggle for accurate information, without which hearings
such as this have little meaning.
While some information has kindly been provided, the key pieces
of the puzzle, and therefore the whole pattern, have not been.
They are not available now.
Therefore this momentous issue is being brought before the
public in what could only be described as a misleading fashion.
As will be discussed below,
one crucial category of information that has not been fully available
is relates to the past, current, and future potential for pit manufacturing
at Los Alamos.
None of the needed information would in any way enable terrorists,
or aid the enemies of the United States,
and we urge the DOE to reopen a dialogue with the public in these
matters.
The requirement to hold
the present hearing stems from the settlement of a lawsuit organized
by the Los Alamos Study Group (Study Group) and the Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC) in 1997, in which a total of some 39 plaintiffs
eventually took part. An important part of that lawsuit concerned
the environmental impacts of pit manufacturing then proposed for Los
Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
It was specifically alleged
by the plaintiffs that DOE had, in addition to its declared pit manufacturing
plan, a secret contingency plan to construct a large-scale pit manufacturing
facility, which would have much greater environmental and policy impact,
and which would complement DOE’s smaller, then-current plan in the
fullness of time.
As tonight’s hearing confirms,
DOE did have such a plan.
These allegations can be
found in an affidavit dated April
6, 1998, at http://www.lasg.org/technical/pit-affidavit.htm
(see especially paragraphs 30-38).
Other pertinent affidavits are also available at this web site
and at the offices of the Los Alamos Study Group and the NRDC (call
Tom Cochran at 202-289-6868). Together, these affidavits analyze deficiencies
in DOE’s environmental impact analysis for pit production. They will be submitted to the record of this
hearing, since the questions raised then were never satisfactorily
answered.
In response to these allegations,
DOE agreed in settlement to conduct a “supplemental analysis” if it
were to change its pit production plan.
Tonight’s hearing, and the analysis that will follow, is the
legally required result.
In the past 10 years DOE
and now NNSA have had several different plans for producing plutonium
pits (see note 3). Our friend
Jay Rose, who is leading the present analysis, will remember at least
some of them. Perhaps Mr. Rose and all of us can sit and have
tea together when this plan, like the others, is just a memory.
Almost half of DOE’s large
projects are never built, and of those that are, many have serious
problems and some never achieve their original purpose.
Between 1980 and 1996, DOE cancelled some 31 out of 80 major
projects, on which more than $10 billion had already been spent. As of the end of this period, only 15 projects
out of 80 had yet been completed (see GAO, RCED-97435R).
We believe the Modern Pit Facility is likely to be one of those
projects, because, like so many DOE projects, there is no real “mission
need.” It is very important
to understand this mission need, which usually receives only cursory
treatment in proceedings such as these, and the analysis of alternatives
in relation to it. This last,
as the pertinent federal regulations state, is the heart of the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process.
Of particular interest,
quoting from the Federal Register Notice of Intent for this process
(on 9/23/02, at p. 59579), is the “reasonableness
of upgrading the existing facilities at LANL to increase pit production
capacity.”
We will submit, in addition
to these remarks and the unanswered questions now pending for several
years, other comment by mail.
2. Higher Laws
It’s important to recall that the purpose
of this facility is to manufacture a particularly violent and cruel
type of weapon of mass destruction (WMD).
It’s also important to know that the United
States has agreed to eventually end
its possession of these weapons in binding treaty and domestic law.
The present proposal, being advanced by the executive branch
with general and tentative but not specific line-item approval by
Congress, is in strong tension with generally accepted social norms
as well as with both international law and treaties, which the United
States has ratified.
This recollection is particularly salient
because our country is poised to enter a war of aggression, the first
such in its history,
[4]
under color of eliminating another nation’s ability
to produce WMD. Production of WMD is the purpose of the MPF.
Nuclear weapon lethality
exceeds that of the worst chemical weapons, on a warhead by warhead
or pound for pound basis, by approximately two orders of magnitude.
[5]
It also exceeds the effects of all known biological
weapons as well, save smallpox. The
destructive effects of nuclear weapons – blast, heat, and radiation
-- are virtually total near the detonation point, and create a large
and not fully predictable area of total killing, within a much large
zone of increased likelihood of sickness and early death.
These lethal effects cannot by their nature discriminate between
military and civilian populations, and one of them, residual radiation,
persists for fairly long periods of time.
Nuclear weapons are explicitly
proscribed by numerous international laws and resolutions and, implicitly,
by the laws of war taught to U.S.
military officers.
[6]
Analysis by the Study Group and others
[7]
shows that not even the smallest proposed "mini-nuke" can meet the required legal tests, and over large areas of the world,
nuclear weapon use is per se illegal by prior agreement.
[8]
In fact, such use anywhere
would likely be a war crime of high degree, and could be prosecuted
as such. Under established principles of international humanitarian
law, willful ignorance or blind obedience in such matters does not
by themselves constitute a plausible defense against the assignment
of responsibility for crimes carried out with such weapons.
Not only is the use of nuclear
weapons barred by law in all important cases, but their very possession
into the indeterminate future is not fully supported by law. In 1968, the United
States signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT). In 1970 the treaty was ratified, making it part of what
our Constitution calls the "supreme law of the land," a
far weightier category than the executive branch initiative we are
discussing tonight. Our nuclear disarmament commitment is spelled
out in Article VI, which reads in full:
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes
to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating
to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under
strict and effective international control.
[9]
There are two important
norms here: “do not improve nuclear weapons,” and “do not possess
them” – whether it is continuous non-possession (by most countries),
or eventual non-possession, by the five countries recognized as nuclear
weapon states in the treaty. It cannot be emphasized too much that these
norms were sponsored, advanced, and ratified by the full government
of the United States, and continue to be advanced and supported in
each and every international gathering reviewing the operation of
this treaty. It is a cornerstone of global and U.S.
national security.
It could be argued that
to fulfill this commitment we have only to try, and not necessarily
to succeed, to end the arms race (now unilateral) and to disarm. The
U.S.
used that argument before the International Court of Justice in 1996;
it was unanimously rejected. The Court instead ruled that:
There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith
and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament
in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.
[10]
In May of 2000, 155 NPT
signatories (including the U.S.
and the other nuclear weapons states) formally reaffirmed the Article
VI commitment:
[To implement Article VI of the NPT, we commit
to:]...An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon States to
accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading
to nuclear disarmament to which all States and parties are committed
under Article VI.
[11]
We
believe that the facility in question tonight is not needed for many
years hence, if ever, and therefore is an affront to these requirements. It is, in essence, be
illegal.
By
contrast, the alternative we propose would be compatible with all
these commitments as well as with the temporary maintenance
of today’s very large nuclear arsenal.
It is also compatible with the indefinite maintenance
of the arsenal proposed by President Bush, should our country fail
to fulfill these treaty requirements.
This
better alternative would also provide the opportunity to negotiate
measures to prevent rapid buildup of the Russian and Chinese arsenals,
improving U.S.
security in this way as well.
And
most germane to the present hearing, it would minimize environmental
impacts, and both the risks and consequences of accident, sabotage,
and terrorist attack.
3.
Small is … Less Ugly
The U.S.
has today roughly 10,600 nuclear weapons, of some 9 types and 15 variants.
[12]
In addition, there are some 13,000 to 15,000
plutonium pits in storage at the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant near
Amarillo, Texas,
of which very roughly 5,000 have been reserved for possible future
use in the U.S.
stockpile. (It is possible
that others there could also be used, but we do not know this of a
certainty.) Although the exact numbers are classified, we
can therefore state without fear of being greatly wrong that there
are some 23,600 to 25,600 plutonium pits in the U.S.
today, which have varying ages, construction methods, designs, and
storage pedigrees. Approximately
15,000 of these and possibly many more are either in use today or
viewed as useable by DOE.
According to cognizant LANL
and Livermore officials,
plutonium pits last for a minimum of 45-60 years,
and possibly much longer.
[13]
The oldest pits in the stockpile were made at
some time in the late 1960s, and the newest in 1989.
[14]
Therefore the oldest pits in the stockpile could
begin to fail circa 2015 at the very earliest, using the most conservative
of the publicly available figures.
The mission of the MPF is, nominally, to produce pits to replace
those which fail, either by producing pits of existing design or pits
of new design – or, as congressional budget requests and other documents
say, both. (This latter mission is deeply problematic,
but it is not the main subject tonight.)
While pits are not fully
fungible between different weapons, there is a degree of interchangeability
in some cases, and some of these cases already have been the subject
of nuclear tests.
[15]
That is, some pit reuse options are “mature
designs” which could be readily certified, according to the DOE. For example, one such option has been prepared
for the W76 Trident I warheads, of which the U.S.
has approximately 3,200, making it the most numerous type of warhead
in the arsenal.
[16]
These W76 warheads will reach 45 years of age
some time after 2023.
President Bush and President
Putin of Russia have negotiated and signed an instrument – hardly a treaty – called
the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT).
(It is “sort” of a treaty; see http://www.lasg.org/ChrisPaineTestimony.htm.)
In this agreement, the U.S.
agrees to reduce its deployed strategic weapons to 2,200 weapons by
December 31, 2012. Given that about 2,010 weapons in the current
arsenal are tactical weapons, of which only approximately 1,160 are
active, this means that some 6,446 warheads of varying ages will be
removed from deployed status by the end of 2012 under SORT, not counting
any reductions in tactical weapons that may also take place.
We propose that, after consultation
with his advisors, Secretary Abraham convey to President Bush the
wisdom – strategic as well as political -- of renaming the pits in
those 6,446 reserved weapons, plus an additional 850 already-retired
tactical weapons, or 7,296 pits in all, a “hedge” against aging in
the remaining arsenal, which will then consist of 2,200 deployed strategic
weapons and no more than 1,160 tactical weapons.
In addition, the circa 5,000 war reserve pits in Amarillo
would still be available, plus, as a final hedge, the 8,000 to 10,000
other pits in Pantex, some of which may (we do not know) be
of robust and durable, if older, design.
This is a lot of pits --
enough, as we used to say, to blow up the world many times over.
It is so many pits, in fact,
and of so many kinds and ages, that any outside observer might question
just why it is that the most hawkish advisors to the DOE – and here
I include Mr. John Foster and Mr. Harold Agnew, among others -- have
pushed so hard for the MPF.
I think we all know.
But what
about Los Alamos? Los Alamos has had a
program to make pits since 1944, and its pits have worked indistinguishably
from those made at Rocky Flats and at Livermore,
at least throughout the late 1970s and mid-1980s if not also at all
other times, accordingly to analyses conducted at congressional request
by Dr. Ray Kidder.
[17]
So what is the capacity
of the LANL facilities today? It
has been variously described.
According to documents submitted to the court
in the aforementioned case, LANL had the capacity to make 12 pits
per year in 1992.
[18]
As of February 29, 1996, DOE said “current pit production capacity
is limited to that at the LANL TA-55 development facility--10 to 20
pits per year.”
In the Stockpile Stewardship
and Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement SSM PEIS
(p. 3-4, note "a"), DOE states that a pit-making capacity
of "up to 50 per year" is "inherent with the facilities
and equipment required to manufacture one component for any stockpile
system."
We are now supposed to believe
that LANL will make its first certified pit in 2007, at a cumulative
cost last estimated at $1.741 billion, and that the LANL facility
will then have a capacity of approximately 10 pits per year at that
time.
[19]
This is most assuredly understated.
Upon information and belief, it does not include the plutonium
isotope pits prepared for testing at the DARHT, Phermex, LANSCE, and
planned follow-on facilities including the Advanced Hydrotest Facility,
as part of programs such as “Appaloosa,” nor, upon information and
belief, does it include all the pits prepared for underground subcritical
tests in Nevada.
The planned scale of these
programs is substantial -- so substantial that the LANL Comprehensive
Site Plan 2000 says that they create a programmatic justification
for floor space equal to three-fourths of PF-4, TA-55.
[20]
The actual floor space dedicated to pit production
is, upon information and belief, modest relative to the total active
floor space at PF-4.
[21]
In fact, pit production floor space could be
doubled within PF-4, if desired, albeit at sacrifice to other programs.
We believe that LANL’s PF-4
could actually build more than 50 pits per year (with a 3-shift capacity
of 80 pits/yr), an alternative already analyzed
in the SSM PEIS. Upon information
and belief, LANL could double this rate if a) national security depended
upon it (which it never will, but that is the assumption in the MPF
program) and b) LANL had the manufacturing lines and equipment prepositioned.
What is essential is for
LANL to get out of the nuclear weapons design business and into the
stockpile maintenance business.
Instead, what the superhawks
are pushing on LANL – perhaps without a full understanding in all
parts of the LANL community – is a future in which new pit designs
are brought forward for certification and manufacture.
These designs would need to be tested in full-up explosive
tests in Nevada, as
LANL’s Don McCoy and Livermore’s
Mike Anastasio told the San Francisco Chronicle in an article
published this week.
[22]
A few members of the old guard are pushing nuclear
testing, and this MPF is an integral part of that plan.
Upon information and belief,
the proposed MPF facility is to be sized to produce approximately
125 new pits per year. This
is far too large, but it might be, with a careful review and vetting
of competing missions, attainable or almost attainable within PF-4.
The capacity for material
processing throughput need not be limiting at this scale; in the 1980s
this facility processed up to approximately 3 times this much metal
in some years.
[23]
The overall rate-determining
steps in pit manufacture are almost certainly manufacturing the fissile
material parts (plutonium in most cases and highly enriched uranium
in the case of the B83 bomb), and assembling the whole.
Other process rates are readily improved if "lacking," either at LANL or other DOE sites.
Parts of the CMR building may be available for non-nuclear
use; the main shops could be used; the Sigma Complex is already designated
to be so used; the Kansas City Plant; and Oak
Ridge -- are all available to make non-nuclear
parts.
The
CMR Replacement
Building need not figure
prominently in this plan, and no Category I nuclear material space
need be provided within it. In
fact, were this building designed, built,
and certified as a light nuclear lab, unsuited for kilogram quantities
of nuclear material, with future changes both locally and internationally
transparent, the worst features of the current push to create tomorrow’s
environmental problems would be avoided.
The
decision to build this building, by the way, is a connected action
under NEPA.
In
sum, Los Alamos can do the key part of the
pit production mission, if desired, within it’s
existing building PF-4. The true scale of the effort required is by
no means clear from the information provided, even using DOE’s stockpile
assumptions -- which we believe to be out of step with U.S. security
interests, as well as U.S. domestic and treaty law, which express
deep and lasting norms against weapons of mass destruction in our
society.
A strong interpretation
of the SORT treaty, in which pits released from the deployed stockpile
are simply re-named “surplus,” would even more clearly remove
any need for new construction, and save bundles of money in other
parts of the stockpile management program as well.
[24]
To assert that PF-4 and other existing buildings
cannot meet this mission need without analysis, as in the notice of
intent, does not rise to the legally required standard.
[1]
Uranium pits, such as for the 620 high-yield B83
bombs in the arsenal today, may have been made at the Y-12 Plant in
Tennessee. We do not know.
[2]
The Kaiser-Hill contract amount for 1997 until
expected closure in 2006 is $7 billion, including everything (Leroy
Moore, Rocky Mountain
Peace Center,
personal communication). Adding
$3 billion, give or take a billion, for spending for the years
1992 – 1996 gives the ballpark figure cited above.
[3]
To oversimplify, in January of 1991, DOE released
its recommendations for a reconfigured weapon complex, called “Complex-21.” After a firestorm of protest, this plan was
withdrawn in favor of a smaller version, which also
[4]
Congressional Research Service, “U.S. Use of Preemptive Military
Force,” Richard
F. Grimmett, RS21311,
September 18, 2002, available
at http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RS21311.pdf.
[5]
See for example “Ballistic Missiles and Weapons
of Mass Destruction: What is the Threat?
What Should Be Done?,” Steve Fetter, International Security, Vol. 16, No.
1, Summer 1991.
[6]
See for example Nuclear Weapons and International
Law in the Post Cold War World, Charles J. Moxley,
Jr. , Austin & Winfield, Publishers,
2000.
[7]
Rob Nelson, “Low Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear
Weapons,” Science and Global Security, provides part of the picture
10:1-20, 2002.
[8]
Nuclear weapon free zones cover most of the southern
hemisphere.
[9]
The text of the treaty is available at http://www.unog.ch/disarm/distreat/npt.pdf.
[10]
Available at http://www.lasg.org/worldfrm_a.html.
[11]
Available at http://www.acronym.org.uk/npt/npt18.htm#poa. For initial press reaction see "5 Atom
Powers Agree to Scrap Arsenals", International Herald Tribune, May 22, 2000. "Pressure grows on
nuclear powers to disarm", Financial Times, May 23, 2000. "5 Nuclear Powers Agree on Stronger
Pledge to Scrap Arsenals", New York Times, May 22, 2000.
[12]
These and other stockpile details are as estimated
by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
They are available in pertinent detail at http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/020213a.asp
[13]
This is a large subject; the “45-60” year minimum
is quoted from two official laboratory sources by the Congressional
Research Service, “Nuclear Warhead ‘Pit’ Production Issues,” by Jonathan
Medalia, RS20956, July 26, 2000. Raymond Jeanloz co-directed a JASON study on
aging and surveillance for the DOE (“Signatures of Aging,” MITRE Corporation,
January 1998). Jeanloz subsequently
wrote:
Thus, crucial primary-stage components
that were initially subject to concern have been shown through the
SSP [stockpile stewardship program] to be robust as they age. Indeed,
there is now consensus among specialists that the Pu
pits in the US stockpile are stable over periods of at least 5060 years, with the
most recent studies suggesting a far longer period. More important
than the indications of benign aging is the demonstration that the
materials are now becoming understood in sufficient detail, and surveillance
methods are becoming sensitive enough, to ensure that any signs of
degradation will be observed in time to apply the necessary repairs
or refurbishment.
(Physics Today,
December 2000, 53:12, on line at http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-53/iss-12/p44.html.)
[14]
Stockpile history is from Chuck Hansen, “Swords
of Armageddon,” Chukelea Publications, current update.
[15]
See, for example, James Tyler, “Innovative Warhead
Design ‘Pit Reuse’,” presentation to the National Security Panel of
the Galvin Panel, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), [date
– 1993?]. See also Greg Mello, “That Old Designing Fever,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Jan/Feb 2000, pp. 51-57. The
relevant programs were called PRESS (“Pit Reuse for Environment, Safety,
and Security”) at LLNL and MAST (“Multiple Application Surety Technologies”)
at LANL.
[17]
Ray Kidder, "Maintaining the U.S. Stockpile of Nuclear Weapons During a Low-Threshold
or Comprehensive Test Ban," October 1987, UCRL-53820, LLNL. "During
the past decade [1977-1986], new boosted primaries have been designed
and developed by the weapons laboratories...performed satisfactorily
the very first time they were tested, the observed yield in no case
falling short of that expected by more than...The one new primary
that failed was of a more complex, less predictable design than the
others. This primary was subsequently
redesigned, tested, and failed again. None of the primaries in the
existing stockpile employ... [New paragraph] This experience demonstrates
that the ability of the weapons labs to predict the performance of
newly designed, as yet untested, boosted primaries of the kind currently
in stockpile is indeed impressive -- there were no significant surprises.
This could hardly have been the case had these primaries
been sensitive to differences that inevitably exist between the weapon
configuration calculated and the weapon tested." (p. 25, emphasis added)
[18]
This
and the next two citations are found in Mello, 4/6/98 affidavit, op. cit. 50 pits per year comes
with an option to build up to 80 pits per year using multiple labor
shifts.
[20]
Available from the Study Group.
[21]
There is about 59,600 sq. ft. of Category I laboratory
space in PF-4, TA-55, of which 15,300 were to be directly dedicated
to pit production (see: “Alternatives for Increasing the Nuclear Materials
Processing Space at Los Alamos for Future Missions,” Drew Kornreich and Nelson DeMuth, LA-UR-97-1000). Pit production also has indirect space costs,
but these are shared with other programs.
A minimum of some 9,000 sq. ft. of Category I floor space is
dedicated to what appear to be obsolete and unnecessary programs,
plus several 1,000s of sq. ft. of support space for these programs.
In short, the pit production space at TA-55 could be doubled
if necessary.
[22]
James Sterngold, “Resurgence for nuclear labs: scientists designing
weapons for terror war, planning underground tests,” San Francisco Chronicle,
October 22, 2002.
[23]
Los Alamos Science, [date1, date2]
[24]
While not specific to this treaty, see the stockpile
reduction option in: Greg Mello,
Bill Weida, and Andy Lichterman, “The Stockpile Stewardship Charade,”
Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 1999, National Academy of Sciences, at http://www.nap.edu/issues/15.3/mello.htm.
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