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Presentation Overview: Nuclear Weapon Accident Response Overview; Nuclear Weapon Accident Definition; Nuclear Weapon Incident Definition; Nuclear Accident/Incident Flag Words; Guiding Documents; U.S. Nuclear Weapon Accidents; Response Forces
This presentation covers the following: 1. Review of nuclear physics, 2. Fission weapons (WW2 and aftermath), 3. Weapon Effects, 4. Fusion physics, boost, and the hydrogen bomb, 5. Weapon development history – 1950’s, 6. Project Plowshare, 7. Modern weapons: the “Triad”, and 8. Thoughts on current situation and conclusions.
What do Galileo, Husky Pup, Turquoise and Barracuda have in common? They are names of nuclear weapons tests conducted at what is now called the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). Over 1,000 U.S. nuclear tests were conducted at various sites between 1945 and 1992, and each of the tests was inaugurated with a name, as documented in the Lab’s vast weapons test collections housed in the National Security Research Center (NSRC). To protect the classified information about nuclear weapons and maintain security, nuclear weapons tests were assigned names. This has been true from the beginning with Trinity, the first atomic bomb test in 1945. Lab Director J. Robert Oppenheimer later said the test name may have been inspired by his love of poetry.
Weapons Research Services are the principal stewards of data, information, and knowledge for the Weapons program. Empower the NNSA weapons mission through excellence in data stewardship, knowledge access, information assurance, and mission software. Lead the digital transformation of NNSA’s Weapons program data, information, and knowledge towards a more agile future.
The Titan 4 Space Launch Vehicle Program is one of many major weapon system programs that have modified acquisition plans and operational procedures to meet new, stringent environmental rules and regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) mandate to reduce the use of ozone depleting chemicals (ODC's) is just one of the regulatory changes that has affected the program. In the last few years, public environmental awareness, coupled with stricter environmental regulations, has created the need for DOD to produce environmental life-cycle cost estimates (ELCCE) for every major weapon system acquisition program. The environmental impact of the weapon system must be assessed and budgeted, considering all costs, from cradle to grave. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has proposed that organizations consider Conservation, Cleanup, Compliance and Pollution Prevention (C(sup 3)P(sup 2)) issues associated with each acquisition program to assess life-cycle impacts and costs. The Air Force selected the Titan 4 system as the pilot program for estimating life-cycle environmental costs. The estimating task required participants to develop an ELCCE methodology, collect data to test the methodology and produce a credible cost estimate within the DOD C(sup 3)P(sup 2) definition. The estimating methodology included using the Program Office weapon system description and work breakdown structure together with operational site and manufacturing plant visits to identify environmental cost drivers. The results of the Titan IV ELCCE process are discussed and expanded to demonstrate how they can be applied to satisfy any life-cycle environmental cost estimating requirement.
Since the introduction of nuclear weapons, there has not been a single instance of accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation, but there have been numerous accidents and “close calls.” As the understanding of these environments has increased, the need for a robust nuclear weapon safety philosophy has grown. This paper describes some of the methods used by the Nuclear Weapon Complex today to assure nuclear weapon safety, including testing, modeling, analysis, and design features. Lastly, it also reviews safety’s continued role in the future and examines how nuclear safety’s present maturity can play a role in strengthening security and other areas and how increased coordination can improve safety and reduce long-term cost.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons requires States Parties to designate a “competent international authority or authorities” for negotiating and verifying the irreversible elimination of nuclear-weapons programs. Ensuring that such an authority or authorities is able to be fit for purpose when required to meet these tasks will be crucial for both the future implementation and legitimacy of the Treaty. To address this challenge, this article proposes the early creation of a two-part organizational structure, comprising an implementation support unit and a dedicated scientific and technical advisory body, to begin the process of institutionalizing the treaty, and build the technical basis for meeting its verification goals should a nuclear-weapon-possessing state decide to join. The article then discusses how such two-part structure could be scaled-up as a standing international organization tasked with the coordination of an ad hoc inspectorate, which would also cooperate and complement the work of existing nuclear verification organizations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency. This evolutionary and adaptive strategy to institution building could empower the new Treaty by supporting the emergence of a new regime complex for nuclear disarmament, while taking into account the initially limited financial and technical resources of its member states.
In this paper, we present a multi-scale study examining the impact of a regional exchange of nuclear weapons on global climate. Our models investigate multiple phases of the effects of nuclear weapons usage, including growth and rise of the nuclear fireball, ignition and spread of the induced firestorm, and comprehensive Earth system modeling of the oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. This study follows from the scenario originally envisioned by Robock et al. (2007a), based on the analysis of Toon et al. (2007), which assumes a regional exchange between India and Pakistan of fifty 15-kiloton weapons detonated by each side. We expand this scenario by modeling the processes that lead to production of black carbon, in order to refine the black carbon forcing estimates of these previous studies. When the Earth system model is initiated with 5 × 10 9 kg of black carbon in the upper troposphere (approximately 9 to 13 km), the impact on climate variables such as global temperature and precipitation in our simulations is similar to that predicted by previously published work. However, while our thorough simulations of the firestorm produce about 3.7 × 10 9 kg of black carbon, we find that the vast majority of the black carbon never reaches an altitude above weather systems (approximately 12 km). Therefore, our Earth system model simulations conducted with model-informed atmospheric distributions of black carbon produce significantly lower global climatic impacts than assessed in prior studies, as the carbon at lower altitudes is more quickly removed from the atmosphere. In addition, our model ensembles indicate that statistically significant effects on global surface temperatures are limited to the first 5 years and are much smaller in magnitude than those shown in earlier works. None of the simulations produced a nuclear winter effect. We find that the effects on global surface temperatures are not uniform and are concentrated primarily around the highest arctic latitudes, dramatically reducing the global impact on human health and agriculture compared with that reported by earlier studies. Lastly, our analysis demonstrates that the probability of significant global cooling from a limited exchange scenario as envisioned in the previous studies is highly unlikely, a conclusion supported by examination of natural analogs, such as large forest fires and volcanic eruptions.
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons calls for states to meet regularly to consider measures for the verified, time-bound and irreversible elimination of nuclear weapon programs. Key to this effort is mapping a comprehensive set of nuclear weapon program indicators and further developing international capacity to monitor them. Distinct from the deadlocked Conference on Disarmament, this new forum will have an opportunity to examine and elaborate disarmament verification concepts. One relevant concept is a Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation International Monitoring System (NDN-IMS), elaborated from a proposal most recently noted by the United Nations Open-ended Working Group (A/71/371). As a flexible framework, an NDN-IMS, could help unite diverse technologies and mechanisms around the purpose of disarmament verification in ways that support the existing nonproliferation regime and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Elements could include satellite imagery from new constellations, wide area environmental sampling, and civil society reporting.
After decades of difficult negotiations, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was adopted in 1993 and entered into force on 29 April 1997, banning the development, production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons (CW). As the CWC celebrates the 25th anniversary of its entry into force, it can document considerable success, much of it attributed to the CWC implementing body—the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). However, facing a volatile international security environment and an everchanging chemical industry, the OPCW must transform to meet its mission and remain an exemplar for multilateralism. As the next CWC review conference approaches in 2023, a next-generation OPCW 2.0 can be effective and credible only if it reinforces international norms against CW, anticipates future challenges posed by advancements in science and technology (S&T), incorporates more qualitative elements into the verification and compliance system, and keeps pace with technological change.
The Nuclear Security Enterprise, managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration - a semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy - has been associated with numerous assessments with respect to the estimating, management capabilities, and practices pertaining to nuclear weapon modernization efforts. This report identifies challenges in estimating and analyzing the Nuclear Security Enterprise through an analysis of analogous timeframe conditions utilizing two types of nuclear weapon data - (1) a measure of effort and (2) a function of time. The analysis of analogous timeframe conditions that utilizes only two types of nuclear weapon data yields four summary observations that estimators and analysts of the Nuclear Security Enterprise will find useful.
Why do we have nuclear weapons? What is in the US stockpile, how is it deployed and controlled, and how it has changed over the years? What is in the “nuclear weapons complex” and what does each lab and plant do? How do the DOE/NNSA Design Labs interact with the Intelligence Community? How does the US stockpile, NW complex, and NW policy compare with those of other countries? What is easy and hard about designing nuclear weapons?
This presentation provides an overview of the processes of the nuclear weapon life cycle, joint nuclear weapon life cycle responsibilities, key players in the life cycle process, joint nuclear weapon life cycle phases, the Phase 6.X process, and refurbishment activities.
Western philosophical and moral principles incline strategic thinkers in democratic societies to reject the notion that information can be used as a weapon or a domain of warfare instead of a tool of freedom and truth. International law suggests that the vast majority of societies and governments agree that freedom of information and truth are crucial to healthy societies. In practice, however, there are also governments that perceive them as both a form of strategic deception and as a vulnerability that can be exploited through information operations. An increasingly common dimension of Russian strategy against the United States and its NATO allies and partners is information confrontation [informatsionnoe protivoborstvo], or IPb. Russia actively pursues a strategy of exploiting perceived vulnerabilities of these democratic societies by carrying out informational-technical (e.g., cyber) and informational-psychological operations below the threshold of open military conflict in order to exacerbate pre-existing societal, political, and military divisions, thereby degrading NATO cohesion. The literature on IPb suggests that a key element of this strategy is an effort to create confusion and sow doubt in the existence of truth. Russia has also applied these operations alongside traditional military means of armed conflict in NATO partner states, Georgia and Ukraine, in order to slow down the decision-making processes in those countries as well as throughout the international community. In Georgia and Ukraine, Russia has employed both aspects of IPb to challenge the Westphalian international order and achieve a fait accompli with a limited use of military force. The body of literature dedicated to understanding the role of IPb in Russian strategy has yet to explore its relationship to U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. This topic merits study for at least three reasons. First, Russian strategic thinkers and official strategic documents identify NATO as threat and assign an increased role for asymmetric, indirect, and non-military (including informational) measures in conflict resolution. Second, Russia has historically used IPb against the Alliance with mixed success. In this regard, Soviet active measures [aktivnie meropriyatiya] operations targeting societal, political, and military divisions about NATO nuclear posture in the late 1970s and early 1980s are illuminating. Finally, current Russian practice reflects an effort to propagate disinformation about U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons. This study seeks to contribute to the body of literature on IPb by analyzing the evolution of Russian strategic thought on and practice of IPb in relation to U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons in Europe. It explores the following questions: How and under which conditions does Russia employ IPb in an effort to achieve preferred strategic outcomes related to NATO nuclear force structure? What insights about contemporary Russian IPb efforts can be gained from studying Soviet active measures campaigns against NATO nuclear force posture?
Topics covered include: Our Science; Guiding Principle of Los Alamos; LANL the Design Laboratory; Weapons Mission; Science, Engineering and Computations; Future Weapons Program R&D; NNSA; Aging Weapons; A Final Thought; and, Questions and Answers.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have integrated the GRANTA materials database with the MatCal calibration engine to calibrate material models from characterization data. GRANTA is gaining acceptance across the NNSA Tri-lab complex and is being populated with weapons-specific test data by Sandia experimentalists. To use that data to create material models for use by weapons systems analysts, MatCal has been enabled import calibration data and test conditions from GRANTA to quickly and reproducibly produce a calibrated set of parameters for a given constitutive model. The team is currently working to store the parameters characterizing material behavior in GRANTA to make them accessible by all weapons analysts.
ALDX is one of seven technical Directorates at the Laboratory and resides within the Weapons Program. The Weapons Physics Directorate stewards a number of critical capabilities to meet its mission. Our mission is to sustain the resilience of the US nuclear stockpile and help shape a globalized nuclear world. Sustaining the aging stockpile poses scientific challenges to assess and certify the stockpile without testing. We are helping to solve major technical challenges in the nuclear global security regime. Geopolitical realities demand the Laboratory’s excellence in providing solutions to national security problems. High Performance Computing at Los Alamos opens the doors to many sophisticated modeling techniques. We use many experimental facilities to probe weapons physics. The diverse skill set required to execute ALDX’s mission has benefited greatly from the Postdoc program.
We learned why we don’t need plutonium to make new pits in an earlier edition of Pits 101, but why do we need new pits from a national security standpoint? A plutonium pit, or the core of a nuclear weapon, is like a weapon’s battery. The pits that Los Alamos will make in coming years will be like new batteries for nuclear weapons in the existing stockpile. Pit production is mandated in order to meet Department of Defense (DOD) requirements by our primary customer, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy. NNSA’s mission is to “deliver safe, secure, reliable warheads for an effective nuclear deterrent.” As Marv Adams, head of NNSA Defense Programs, describes, it’s a mission that is simple to state, but challenging to deliver.