Weapons Laboratory Research Articles

Nuclear security agency and weapons labs at odds

Micromanagement by NNSA is blamed for adding hundreds of millions of dollars in labs’ extra costs.

Los Alamos looks to cut its workforce

Tight budgets have forced the nuclear weapons lab to institute a voluntary separation plan.

Discussions in scientific nuclear diplomacy

Although I recognize the sincere and meaningful contributions Sig Hecker made to nuclear arms control (“Adventures in scientific nuclear diplomacy,” PHYSICS TODAY, July 2011, page 31), let’s not forget that his recent diplomatic overtures were of the type that US weapon laboratories formidably and systematically opposed during the cold war and were met with considerable controversy, some of which is still relevant to current nuclear policy options.Hecker’s personal contributions are extraordinary, and they reflect a relaxation of the national and international postures that evolved during and immediately after the cold war. Nevertheless, I am reminded of the difficulties and contentiousness created or stimulated by American nuclear weapons laboratories during the cold war decades.In fact, because of risky US administration policies at the time, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individuals had to counterbalance the militant practices and political supporters of the weapons labs. Public-interest physicists Frank von Hippel, with the Federation of American Scientists, and Tom Cochran, with the Natural Resources Defense Council, particularly, should receive credit for organizing unprecedented meetings with many previously inaccessible Soviet officials and scientists; the meetings largely preceded those involving Hecker. The NGOs had a significant influence on the origins and form of the ensuing Nunn–Lugar legislation, which provided US support to the Soviet Union to dismantle, securely transport, and safeguard against proliferation of nuclear weapons.As a matter of record, a colleague and I actually preceded Hecker in earlier lab-to-lab visits to the sensitive Russian facilities of Chelyabinsk and Arzamas; we also conferred with such luminaries as Yuri Trutnev, Boris Litvinov, Victor Mikhailov, Vadim Simonenko, and Evgeny Avrorin. In fact, we were told privately that the iconic Tsar Bomba design was rated at a horrendous 150 megatons, three times the nominal test yield.Many of us who were personally associated with such unofficial diplomacy placed our professional positions, funding, and security clearances at considerable risk because of interference from the US nuclear weapons laboratories and other powerful cold war institutions.The interests of the US weapons labs were often a major hindrance to cold war progress, and the labs’ intransigence and monied influence sometimes led to setbacks from negotiated nuclear-arms stability, both before and immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It might be an understatement to note that the Los Alamos weapons lab was not particularly supportive of alternative initiatives involving the Department of Energy’s nonweapons laboratories, other government agencies, or individuals working through outside channels.It’s good to see that those problems have lessened considerably and that personal contacts by scientists, citizens, and all levels of government can help keep a lid on nuclear proliferation and excessive armaments.© 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Discussions in scientific nuclear diplomacy

The R&D of nuclear weapons in the US has become a profit-making business, managed at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories by a for-profit entity led by Bechtel Corp. So it may seem fitting that nuclear diplomacy also be conducted more by private individuals. Could observations made by such individuals—in North Korea, say, and at that country’s behest—inadvertently renew fears of North Korean nuclear aggression and lead to political pressure for more US weapons R&D? In that context, Sig Hecker fails to mention that he was a signatory to a 2010 letter, also signed by nine other former directors of our nuclear weapons labs, criticizing the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review for being too restrictive of continuing R&D on nuclear weapons. Is Hecker really describing a new form of “scientific nuclear diplomacy,” or is he advocating for more politicization of the already difficult politics of nuclear weapons?© 2012 American Institute of Physics.

The assault on Los Alamos National Laboratory: A drama in three acts

Since the late 1990s, nuclear weapons scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory have faced an unanticipated threat to their work, from politicians and administrators whose reforms and management policies—enacted in the name of national security and efficiency—have substantially undermined the lab’s ability to function as an institution and to superintend the nuclear stockpile. Morale and productivity have suffered at Los Alamos—and at the nation’s other weapons lab, Lawrence Livermore. The institutional decline of Los Alamos has occurred in three distinct phases: beginning with an overreaction to the Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee’s downloading of secret computer codes, exacerbated by the heavy-handed leadership of Admiral Pete Nanos, and continuing under new management by a for-profit company that focuses more on personal bonuses than on scientific achievement. The author writes that security lapses at Los Alamos are not, as media and government officials have portrayed them, the result of a culture of arrogance and carelessness. More likely, they are symptoms of structural flaws in the workplace, but it is easier to stereotype and scapegoat scientists than to address these structural problems.

Lawrence Badash

Lawrence Badash

A nature-inspired camouflaging approach to protect nuclear secrets

Nuclear weapons laboratories face a frequent challenge when they have to grant access to classified information (secrets) on a need-to-know (NTK) basis. Currently such access decisions are subjective – leading to risks of releasing classified information to non-deserving information-seekers. This paper suggests a nature-inspired simulation model ‘Discerning Nuclear Intentions (DiNI)–NTK’ based on the phenomenon of camouflaging (mimicry) in order to lend objectivity to NTK decision-making. The model uses a combination of information vulnerability and characteristics – factors that help assess possible ‘camouflaging’ intentions of the information-seeker and then accordingly make an informed NTK decision. Based on a live indictment of a nuclear physicist and his wife who were formerly employed in a nuclear weapons laboratory, DiNI–NTK is tested with estimated parameter values and the output of the model has provided the correct non-disclosure decision. This model can be used to inform NTK-based classified information access decisions in an objective manner.

Weapons labs to thrive as Obama trims nukes

Weapons labs to thrive as Obama trims nukes

The Forsaken: The Unfinished Business of Making Plutonium in Russia

For Nadezhda Kutepova, the path to becoming a human rights lawyer started in her hometown in the Southern Russian Urals. I met Kutepova in the summer of 2009 while doing research on Ozersk, a closed city specially built in the 1940s for workers of the vast Soviet plutonium plant called Maiak. One thinks of a nuclear site as being staffed with highly educated scientists and technicians, gingerly and knowledgeably running complicated machinery to irradiate uranium and process it into plutonium. But unlike a weapons lab, a plutonium plant is a vast factory employing thousands of blue-collar workers who push carts, run bulldozers, measure solutions, plumb, build, scrub, repair, and guard doors. And like most factories, the plutonium plant polluted liberally. In fact, plutonium production is the messiest stop on the vast assembly line of nuclear weapons production.

U.S.–RUSSIAN NUCLEAR COOPERATION AND THE CTBT

Post-Cold War “lab-to-lab” collaborations on unclassified scientific issues between U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons laboratories set the stage for bilateral cooperation in materials control and other nuclear areas. They also became the major element in a cooperative process initiated by a Presidential Decision Directive to ensure Russia's compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. These collaborations have always been highly favored by leaders of the Russian nuclear weapons complex—the same leaders who oversee Russia's participation in various government-to-government programs. This article reviews these collaborations and examines the possibility that U.S. rebuffs of Russian proposals and the U.S. failure to keep promises of expanded collaboration could contribute to Russia's reluctance in major programs and even lead to a return to nuclear testing by Russia. The author argues that a renewed U.S. commitment to the process should be an immediate goal of the Obama administration and is an essential step in re-engaging Russia to solve the nuclear problems remaining from the Cold War. Steps for doing so are recommended.

US weapons labs determined to retain funding

US weapons labs determined to retain funding US weapons labs determined to retain funding

New agency is proposed to run weapons labs

New agency is proposed to run weapons labs

US nuclear weapons labs may move to DoD

US nuclear weapons labs may move to DoD

Recovering Public Memory: Politics, Aesthetics and Contempt

It's the weekend – leisure time. It's the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the 'total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the organization and management of production' in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily 'treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness, in their new role as consumers.' But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of 'political economy': 'the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the 'perfected denial of man'.' (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the 'perfected denial' of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our working practices and private identities.

This Jaguar's Built for Speed

Oak Ridge National Laboratory's upgraded supercomputer, dubbed Jaguar, has broken the petaflops barrier. Jaguar's ability to perform 1.3 quadrillion calculations per second leaves it second only to the Road Runner at Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab in California, and Jaguar's accessible to

Weapons labs to use fewer and more efficient sites and workforce

Weapons labs to use fewer and more efficient sites and workforce

The Chinese nuclear tests, 1964–1996

A combination of intellectual rigor, technical sophistication, hard work, and intelligence gathering brought China into the world’s nuclear club in record-shattering time.

US election: Questioning the candidates

Barack Obama accepted Nature's invitation to answer 18 science-related questions in writing; John McCain's campaign declined. Obama's answers to many of the questions are printed here; answers to additional questions (on topics including biosecurity, the nuclear weapons laboratories and US participation in international projects) can be found at http://www.nature.com/uselection. Wherever possible, Nature has noted what McCain has said at other times on these topics.

BROADER AGENDA FOR WEAPONS LABS

TOP OFFICIALS at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories are planning a shift in research focus that will result in 50% of the labs’ work being unrelated to nuclear weapons. That reduces nuclear-weapons-related work by 20 to 30% of current levels at most of the labs. The labs expect that the majority of the new research will come from projects within other parts of the federal government, explained Thomas P. D’Agostino, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). He was joined last week by the directors of Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and Los Alamos National Laboratories, as well as the head of the Nevada Test Site, in briefing reporters in Washington, D.C., and in testifying before a House Armed Services subcommittee. The officials stressed what they called a new vision for NNSA. In a statement, they described NNSA as “moving from an outdated, Cold War-era nuclear weapons complex of today to a smaller, safer, more secure, ...

WEAPONS LABS’ NEW DIRECTIONS

THE FOCUS on nuclear weapons science and engineering at the Department of Energy’s three nuclear weapons laboratories—Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories—will be transformed, say officials in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversees DOE’s nuclear weapons work. NNSA will aggressively seek national-security-related but nonweapons contract work, David H. Crandall, NNSA assistant deputy administrator for research, development, and simulation told C&EN in an interview on Nov. 14. Earlier, NNSA officials announced that the workforce of the three weapons labs will be cut by 20–30% over the next 10–20 years and that the size of the facilities will be reduced by one-third. “We fundamentally do not see the weapons budget account growing over time,” Crandall said. “We do see, however, the importance of the labs and their science base as essential to the nation, but we are going to have to look at our role in a different way. I don’t think the ...