March 17, 2014

NNSA WEAPONS CHIEF NOTES LOOMING CHALLENGES FACING LOS ALAMOS

By ExchangeMonitor

The Obama Administration’s “3+2” strategy for modernizing the nation’s nuclear stockpile ovrt the coming decades is expected to bring a more extensive workload to the weapons complex, and especially at Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Nuclear Security Administration chief Don Cook said yesterday. Speaking at the lab’s second “Primer” conference to commemorate its 70th anniversary, Cook said the lab was facing a “massive challenge” as it will be tasked with ramping up production on plutonium pits, from 10 pits in 2019, to 20 in 2020 and 30 by 2021 while aiding in the development of interoperable warheads that are expected to help reduce the number of families of nuclear weapons as a path to future efficiencies. Three interoperable warheads would be used on ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The challenges facing the lab “exceed anything this lab has been called upon to do in the last 20 years,” Cook said. Among the major scientific tests for Los Alamos, he said, the first would be to take the nuclear weapons pits designed for “conventional high explosives” and wrap “insensitive high explosives” around them, making the weapons safer under a greater range of potential hazards, all while carrying out the prescribed life extension upgrades and refurbishments on a demanding schedule.

Cook also noted there would need to be some new investments for “repurposing” the lab’s Plutonium Facility and making maximum use of the recently completed Radiological Laboratory, with the addition of several underground modules. The lab has proposed a “modular” approach to strengthening its plutonium capabilities that would replace the deferred Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility project. “I don’t know if there would be two, or three [modules],” he said, adding that safety challenges and seismic risks at PF-4 could be reduced by relieving the facility of some of the old programmatic requirements from the Cold War work there and moving radiological material into more suitable spaces.

The conference, which mimicked the first “Primer” set of lectures by theoretical physicist Robert Serber in April 1943 on what was known at the time about building an atomic bomb, continues today with a classified session, including a keynote speech by Vic Reis, the architect of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, and a Director’s Roundtable, featuring Los Alamos Director Charlie McMillan and three former LANL directors.

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