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Aging Nuclear Stockpile Good For Decades To Come
pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Jason panel, an independent group of scientists advising the federal government on issues of science and technology, has concluded that the program to refurbish aging nuclear arms is sufficient to guarantee their destructiveness for decades to come, obviating a need for a costly new generation of more reliable warheads, as proposed by former President Bush. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and other Republicans have argued that concerns are growing over the reliability of the US's aging nuclear stockpile, and that the possible need for new designs means the nation should retain the right to conduct underground tests of new nuclear weapons. The existing warheads were originally designed for relatively short lifetimes and frequent replacement with better models, but such modernization ended after the US quit testing nuclear arms in 1992. All weapons that remain in the arsenal must now undergo a refurbishment process, known as life extension. The Jason panel found no evidence that the accumulated changes from aging and refurbishment posed any threat to weapon destructiveness, and that the 'lifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss of confidence.' But the panel added that federal indifference could undermine the nuclear refurbishment program (as this report from last May illustrates). Quoting the report (PDF): 'The study team is concerned that this expertise is threatened by lack of program stability, perceived lack of mission importance and degradation of the work environment.'"
Y2K was mostly a result of the radical shift in the nature of software development brought about by the IBM 360 and other computers which included a new feature of backward compatibility. Prior to that time it was safe to assume that programs would only live until they needed to be re-written to run on the next generation of computer. So as a result, we had many programs living well past retirement age. This then lead to a sane design decision from the 1950's getting us into trouble 40 years later.
Now we have a similar situation with Nukes. The Test Ban Treaty radically changed the nuclear weapons development environment, and as a result our nukes are now well past their retirement age. They were meant to be replaced, but haven't been.
It is important to note that in both cases, the eventual cost are still WELL below the development and other costs which were avoided.
My background: ex-ICBM launch officer and part of a team which designed some support equipment
My comment: Bingo. The issue isn't so much the warhead "baby", it's everything else which helps it go boom when, where how, and under whose authority it should go boom.
Almost every device becomes inefficient over time. Material stress, physical degradation and decreased efficiency over time are why you don't see many automobiles manufactured in 1947 still being used as daily transportation. The same applies to supersonic air delivery systems and support equipment.
Intellectually simplistic or downright stupid comments such as the ones which claim we have X number of nukes needed to destroy all life on the planet are lazy and/or suicidal. The same could be said about salt as the US possess far more salt than is necessary to kill every mammal on the planet many times over.
BTW, great nations can lose tens of millions of dead, many cities, and still recover as did the Soviet Union.
Actually it might even be easier for a country to recover from a few nuclear bombs than it was for the Soviet Union to recover from WW2. The deaths suffered by the Soviet Union (or France in WW1 for a Western example) were disproportionately incurred by young males. It created a demographic imbalance that took at least a generation to correct. The fallout from this affected everything from the economy to romance.
The loss of a few major urban areas would probably result in as many (or more) causalities but they'd cut across all demographic groups in a much more equal fashion than either of the World Wars.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.