Planning needed for US nuclear weapons

Jim Dawson’s Issues and Events piece “Future of US Nuclear Weapons a Tangle of Visions, Science, and Money” (Physics Today, February 2007, page 24 ) piqued my interest. I agree with Bruce Tarter, the former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whom Dawson quotes: If the proposed new bomb, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, is to survive 12 Congresses and as many as four administrations, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) had better have a detailed plan in place. The fact that the House of Representatives voted in June to halt funding for the RRW is no surprise.

Look at what’s happening with the Yucca Mountain repository because of the lack of a detailed plan. Is the nuclear waste going to be buried hot or cold? Are titanium drip shields going to be used or not? Are the canisters going in tunnels, or will they be buried en masse on the repository floor? No one knows. Congress’s interest in the repository was flagging long before Nevada’s Harry Reid assumed the helm in the Senate. Look for Yucca Mountain to suffer the same fate as the RRW.