"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, except our mode of thinking."
-- Albert Einstein
"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that one way or another."
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer, in an interview in 1965
On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 am Mountain War Time, the first nuclear bomb was detonated at the Trinity Site at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
We've come a long way since then. Between 1945 and 1990, the U.S. produced approximately 70,000 nuclear warheads; it is now estimated that 10,350 warheads remain (see this series of articles). Also, a recent poll showed that 66% of Americans oppose nuclear proliferation, and think that no country should have nuclear weapons.
However, the U.S. government may not agree, at least when it comes to our country.
There's more below the fold.
Recently, nuclear experts have been debating the fate of the
W76 warhead, which is a thermonuclear, or fusion, bomb:
According to Richard L. Morse, a Los Alamos physicist who directed work on advanced bomb designs, the controversy centers on the weapon's uranium radiation case. In some places it is amazingly thin, said to be "not much thicker than a beer can," though with plastic backing for strength. The case must remain intact for microseconds to reflect the X-Rays that ignite the thermonuclear secondary. If the case even deformed significantly or shattered prematurely, the secondary would not ignite.
The Rayleigh-Taylor instability could perturb the expanding plasma of the hot radiation case, creating ripples that blocked ignition of the thermonuclear fuel. Quite minute variations in the case led to the onset of turbulence, frustrating efforts to eliminate the problem.
The controvery began soon after the moratorium on nuclear testing, and work soon focused on an alternative design with a thicker radiation case. By 1995, a joint effort began with the Navy and the nuclear weapons complex. In March 2004, Morse and four critics [three former weaponsn lab employees and one who currently works at Los Alamos] discussed their concerns in a meeting with Los Alamos and federal officials. Lab officials deny there is a problem with the W-76, citing the successful tests of the device at the Nevada Test Site. But the W-76 remains a candidate for redesign.
Words are fine, but pictures are better. Here's the general design of the weapon (click the image to enlarge):
The following diagram shows how the fission bomb (the part at the top) provides the energy to start a fusion reaction:
So you're thinking "what's the big deal? It'll only cost a few billion to fix this problem... right? We're used to defense spending. No biggie." (that was sarcasm, by the way)
Well, arms control experts are arguing that the W76 overhaul and potential replacement could lead the way to new weapons. The UK Guardian reports:
Democrats and American arms control groups warned yesterday that a new Bush administration scheme to replace ageing nuclear warheads
could be used as a cover for the eventual construction of a "black arsenal" of new weapons.
The plan, known as the reliable replacement warhead programme (RRW), was unveiled this week by Linton Brooks, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Instead of maintaining the old stockpile by monitoring the warheads and replacing occasional spare parts, RRW would entail the design, production and deployment of a new generation of warheads. These would not require testing, and therefore would not break the US moratorium on nuclear tests.
Mr Brooks said the new warheads would be used in existing cold war era weapons. The construction of a warhead production facility would also maintain the expertise and infrastructure for the US to respond flexibly to new threats.
"We need to maintain the capability to respond to potential future requirements," he said.
Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, a California Democrat and one of the party's leading voices on military issues, alleged that the administration was using the scheme as a cover for developing a range of "smaller and more usable" weapons which were blocked last year by Congress.
(Bold emphasis mine)
The "smaller and more usable" weapons are the low-yield nuclear weapons known as "bunker busters", the funding for which was blocked by Congress last year. Their proposed use would be for - you guessed it - destroying underground caches of chemical or biological weapons, kind of like the ones that were supposedly in Iraq.
We visited the Trinity Site on April 3, a few weeks ago. Visiting the birthplace of the first (nuclear) weapon of mass destruction gave new meaning to the Oppenheimer and Einstein quotes at the beginning of this post.
What would they think of George W. Bush and his administration's proposals for new nuclear devicies?