Do challenges in plutonium pit fabrication for a new ICBM pose the risk of a return to nuclear weapons testing in Nevada?
“As America’s Nuclear Arsenal Upgrades, Usual Testing is Scrapped”
Walter Pincus in The Cipher Brief, June 14, 2023
OPINION — “U.S. [nuclear] warheads were designed and manufactured until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, we have not designed any new nuclear components. When the warheads needed repair, we remanufactured the existing designs and reused components that we were not able to manufacture. That’s no longer an option. For the [new] W87-1 [warhead], every part will be newly manufactured using well-established design knowledge.”
That was physicist Juliana Hsu, the W87-1 program manager at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as quoted in the laboratory’s magazine, Science & Technology Review (S&TR) of December 2022.
One W87-1 thermonuclear warhead will have the explosive power of 475 kilotons, the equivalent of 475,000 tons of TNT or roughly twenty times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
The first W87-1 warheads are to be carried in an advanced version of the Mark21A reentry vehicle and delivered by the new Air Force Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). The first nine Sentinel ICBMs are scheduled to be deployed and go on alert in 2030. The remaining of a total planned force of 400 deployed missiles is expected to be completed by the end of 2036.
full article: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/fine-print/as-americas-nuclear-arsenal-upgrades-usual-testing-is-scrapped