Aging Nuclear Stockpile Good For Decades To Come 160
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.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fixing the bombs fixes them!" (Score:2, Insightful)
Glad to hear that guys. Way to go. Good work telling everyone that fixing things fixes them.
Not atypical (Score:5, Insightful)
Many programs which require significant development, and then get shelved into "production" with no push to advance or modernize fall prey to this. NASA maned spaceflight vehicles is a prime example.
If you only need to do research and development once every 25-50 years you end up starting nearly from scratch every time you decide to upgrade. Now, I'm not advocating some kind of special nuclear bomb advancement program. Still, by the time somebody wants to "replace" these, there will be nobody left who actually worked on them tom begin with. Humans are particularly bad at passing this kind of knowledge over extended time gaps.
Re:Good... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:honestty (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, having a nuke can tell others "don't send your nukes my way or I'll respond in kind, and we will both lose". It also deters conventional war because you wouldn't want to go to war with an enemy who has nukes and may use them if the war goes badly.
Not having nukes can invite an attack from an enemy who does have them ("I'll drop my nuke on you, and what you'll do about it?"), also conventional war becomes more possible.
Re:Not atypical (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, as unpolitically correct as it may be, an active nuclear weapons program might be necessary. Complete disarmament is all well and good, and a slow loss of weapons and skills to age could be one way to accomplish that. But complete disarmament isn't worthwhile without permanent disarmament also, and I don't see how that's possible. The knowledge and technology exists, and as the general level of technology in this world increases it will only become easier to build nuclear weapons. Without permanent disarmament (which would be impossible without some form of world government), you have to accept one of these possibilities:
1. A hostile power is nuclear armed and you are not.
2. You are now racing a hostile power to rearm yourself... except they have a headstart, since you only found out they've been building weapons after their program has progressed considerably. And that in turn gives them an incentive to use their weapons before you finish yours...
3. Abandon disarmament and proactively maintain a deterrence force.
Look, the technology to build nuclear weapons is never going to go away. Until we find a technology to neuter these devices without playing deterrence/MAD games, then a continued nuclear weapons program is essential. Otherwise we are locked in a cycle of decay, and panicked rebuilding. I'd rather things be as boring as possible, even if that means the occasional underground bang.
Re:Easy solution (Score:3, Insightful)
What's your number? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Story.crash.sequence.jpg [wikipedia.org]
What about the Foam? (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife and I toured the museum of stuff that blows up (Bradbury museum?) at Los Alamos on our honeymoon (the site does say "news for nerds", right?).
One of the displays said that special styrofoam-like stuff that holds reactive parts of some in-stockpile nuclear weapons in place has a service life of 10 years, but the weapons using it are 25 or more years old. Meanwhile, they've lost the recipe to make more foam.
I wonder if they're able to refurbish these nukes (and what happens as the foam ages if not).
Re:NPT (Score:4, Insightful)
The NPT was one of the silliest, most useless treaies ever invented. It was signed by people who either had more nukes than they knew what to do with (sort of situation the USA was in), had too little funding to build any more (eg UK) or lacked the funding or will to ever try to get them.
Noone who actually wanted to develop nukes paid the slightest bit of attention to it.
All it did was to get people to keep on doing whatever they were doing anyway.
Useless, pointless and silly.
Butnot as silly as disarming a deterrant when people are actively trying to develop one.
Re:honestty (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yes. You're right. President Obama's concern would be the spotted owl. Just like Nixon didn't launch them because he was worried about their effect on magnetic media.
You sir, are an ass.
Re:God forbid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What if nobody knew? (Score:3, Insightful)
#1 there's no strategic advantage to nto knowing whether your nukes work or not. so, this study needs to be done.
#2 in case you haven't noticed, keeping secrets is not exactly what our government is good at. in fact we're horrible at it. if our nukes were paper tigers, word would eventually get out. and if the rest of the world were to suddenly realize that our nukes didn't work, that would probably be horrendously destabilizing revelation, with potentially cataclysmic consequences.
Re:God forbid (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What if nobody knew? (Score:5, Insightful)
> I call this phenomenon "Tom Clancy Syndrome", it's a state of believing that the US military is not
> only better in every way than everyone else anywhere, but that this doesn't give rational people any
> reason to seriously reconsider their half-baked world domination plans.
ROTFL! I think you just hit the nail on the head!
There is a real tendency for people to look back at history for patterns and, lo and behold, if you look hard enough for a pattern, and are willing to ignore enough facts, then, you sure can find patterns.
I think the reality is that people hate war. The world over, nobody really likes getting into wars. Oh, there may be some gung ho kids, or guys who don't know much esle. There are excitement junkies etc. However, in the end, nobody really likes the result. The sacrifice, the bloodshed etc.
Sure, we can be talked into liking it. We can like it in context. Who didn't love that we fought WWII and liberated europe? Who didn't want to see Bin Ladens head on a pike after 9/11? Who can't understand fighting off an invading force?
But there is a difference between being willing to do something, and wanting it to happen.
The trend, that I see, is actually very anti-war. War seems like it was much more popular when it was out of the way. When it took days for the real effects of a battle to get out. When stories of bravery were all that were heard.
The faster information moves.... the less people seem to like war. Nothing eroded support for the Viet-Nam conflict like pictures and stories coming right home from the front lines. Stories of collective punishments, stories of rapes and murders, villages burned, families massacred. This is war, this has always been war. No matter how good we get (and we are much better than ever before by any standard), war is ALWAYS a travesty.
I dare say the internet is the pacifier. The faster information moves, the less freedom troops have to loot, pilliage, and generally act atrociously. The more we see, the less we support. The more apparent the hell, the less apt we are to create it.
I think we should be doing as much as possible to make SURE that EVERY country ends up with their forces as hamstrung by public opinion and internet fueled information leaks as our own is. When any member of the public, in any country can tune in and watch the carnage from any conflict in the world, in real time as heads explode and body parts fly... I predict that the closer to that point we get, the less desire for conflict we will see.
That is, until someone starts buying ad space on soldiers uniforms and they start just fighting for the ad dollars....
er... actually... lets not give them any ideas.
Re:God forbid (Score:3, Insightful)