By Dr. Ludwig De Braeckeleer
Monday, June 26, 2006
In the FY2006 Defense authorization bill, the atomic Energy Defense act (division D of Public Law 107-314) was amended by inserting after section 4204 (50 U.S.C. 2524) the following new section:
"SEC. 4204a.
RELIaBLE REPLaCEMENT WaRHEaD PROGRaM.
(a) Program Required.--The Secretary of Energy shall carry out a program, to be known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which will have the following objectives:
(1) To increase the reliability, safety, and security of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile. […] "
US nuke makers have welcomed the news with great excitement. Scientists from Los alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have engaged in an intense competition to design the first new american nuclear weapon in 20 years.
"I have had people working nights and weekends. I have to tell them to go home. I can't keep them out of the office. This is a chance to exercise skills that we have not had a chance to use for 20 years," said Joseph Martz, head of the Los alamos design team.
Bruce Goodwin, associate director for nuclear weapons at Livermore, describes a similar frenzy in his laboratory. "Our nuke experts are extremely excited," he said.
The W76 is the warhead used on the submarine-launched Trident missile. The W76 was introduced in 1979 and has maximum explosive power estimated at ten times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Sceptics argue that the (www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w76.htm) W-76 is unreliable and, unlikely to detonate at its nominal yield. The W-76 is the most likely first candidate for replacement by the new Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW).
Surprisingly, the Defense Department did not initiate the program. Instead, the scientific community was the main driving force for developing the new weapon. Congress had a major role in supporting the initiative. Nevertheless, the program easily won wide support within the military as well as the Bush administration.
Reps. Ellen O. Tauscher of alamo, John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina and Ike Skelton of Missouri, all Democrats closely involved in nuclear weapons issues, have given their conditional support to this program.
They will go along with the policy set up by Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), who spearheaded the program in Congress, if the program leads to a reduction in the total number of U.S. nuclear weapons. Moreover, they oppose the restart of nuclear tests.
In the past, many proposals for new nukes have failed politically. The neutron bomb, the bunker-busting and the "robust nuclear Earth-penetrator," all failed to gain political approval. US Lawmakers feared that they would be used in pre-emptive strikes.
Last year, the Congress has approved the construction of the new bomb, largely because it is not intended for a new military mission.
"Given that there is no immediate need for a new RRW warhead, Democrats strongly believe that the National Nuclear Security administration should utilize designs and components that are already understood or have already been proven through testing. The RRW program should be used as a reason not to resume nuclear testing, " declared Rep. John Spratt (D-SC).
"The RRW program is simply a concept at this stage, and I intend to keep a close eye on its study," added Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Ca). "Congress will not be in a position to know if the RRW program can meet the ambitious objectives set forth in this legislation until the administration spells out the details of its plan. "
Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) noted, "This bill will produce a full accounting of the objectives, methods, and costs of the RRW program, but I will reserve final judgment until this forthcoming information can be evaluated."
"The ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty should be the logical end-result of a successful RRW program, yet the majority adamantly refused to include this as an objective of the program, " said. Rep. Tauscher.
The new weapon should be more reliable, safer and more secure. US nukes are based on a two steps design. a primary device - a Plutonium fission device - ignites a secondary process- a thermonuclear reaction. Should the first step fall short of its expected power, the bomb would release only a fraction of its nominal power.
In order to ensure the reliability of the first step, one may expect the new design to incorporate more explosives, plutonium and tritium to ensure the ignition of the secondary device.
Safety will be improved by insuring that a single explosive trigger can not lead to nuclear explosion. Similar guaranties will be sought against accidental fire.
Security will surely be one of the most important issues. US nuclear scientists will try hard to ensure that the weapon can be ignited solely through totally safe encrypted codes and that all attempts to circumvent them will result in the bomb being disabled. any stolen or lost weapon would therefore be unusable. Moreover, it could be located by satellite and rapidly retrieved.
"We are setting the goal of absolute control – that you always know where the weapon is and what state it is in and that you have absolute control over its state," said John B. Woodard, executive vice president at SaNDIa. "People will say you can break the bank achieving that goal, but it is the right goal to set," he added.
Influent veterans of nuclear arms development strongly opposed the RRW program. according to them, building these new weapons will trigger another arms race with Russia and China. Moreover, it fully undermines the US arguments to stop nuclear developments in Iran and North Korea.
Even worse, it would likely restart nuclear tests. The last U.S. underground test was conducted in Nevada in 1992. The US has since imposed a moratorium on new testing.
"Without a single test, doubts about the new bomb's reliability would eventually grow", said Sidney Drell, former director of Stanford University's Linear accelerator Center and a long-time advisor to the Energy Department.
"If anybody thinks we are going to be designing new warheads and not doing testing, I don't know what they are smoking," Drell said.
"I don't know of a general, an admiral, a president or anybody in responsibility who would take an untested new weapon that is different from the ones in our stockpile and rely on it without resuming testing," Drell argues.
"If the U.S. breaks the moratorium on testing, then Russia, China, India and Pakistan, if not Britain and France, probably would conduct tests as well," said Philip Coyle, former assistant secretary of Defense and former deputy director of Livermore.
Physicist Richard Garwin helped design the first hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s. "We don't need the RRW. No science will be able to keep these political doubts away," Garwin said.