WASHINGTON -- The United States should consider a three-pronged strategy -- including warhead replacement -- to successfully maintain its aging nuclear arsenal, a senior U.S. nuclear complex official last week (see GSN, May 14).
(Jun. 24) -
Workers handle a W-56 nuclear warhead in 2006. A U.S. nuclear official last week called for a three-pronged strategy to maintain the nation's strategic arsenal (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration photo).
"We can best manage risk if given the opportunity to apply a spectrum of options: warhead refurbishment, warhead component reuse and warhead replacement to our life extension strategy," John Harvey, the U.S. National Nuclear Safety Administration's policy planning director, said Friday during a breakfast discussion on Capitol Hill.
"Technically, I think it makes sense for the country to have that spectrum of options approach, but politically we have to consider those issues as well," he said.
The three-part "spectrum" approach was detailed in the final report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. The report, released in May, endorsed using alternatives to refurbishment on a case by case basis, including the redesign of an existing weapon. "Such redesign can be done without introducing new military characteristics while improving safety and security, etc.," the commission's report states.
The last effort to replace portions of the U.S. nuclear-weapon stockpile came in the form of the controversial Reliable Replacement Warhead.
The Bush-era program was intended to create new nuclear-warhead designs that were more secure, more dependable and cheaper to maintain than existing weapons. Critics said the initiative undermined U.S. efforts to promote nuclear nonproliferation at the global level. Congress gave the effort no funding in the last two budgets (see GSN, Dec. 19, 2008).
Harvey on Friday never mentioned the seemingly scrapped program. He also did not offer details on a possible warhead redesign program or how such a program would influence the agency's Stockpile Stewardship Program. That effort is aimed at extending a warhead's service life in the absence of underground explosive testing.
As of January 2009, the U.S. arsenal stood at 5,200 nuclear warheads, of which no more than 2,200 strategic warheads can be deployed under the mandate of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.
The present refurbishment strategy involves replacing aging warhead components with nearly identical parts to keep the weapon from degrading. "It's like the tuneup of a car," said Harvey, who has led the agency's policy planning staff since 2001. While refurbishment has "worked reasonably well so far" it cannot provide the "sole, long term" basis for ensuring the stockpile remains a functioning deterrent, he told the audience.
In previous decades, nuclear weapons would be detonated to ensure they were in working order. The United States has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty but has voluntarily suspended underground nuclear blasts.
Incremental changes to the warheads through refurbishment take them "farther from the underground nuclear test base from which they were originally certified" for deployment, the policy chief said. To combat the aging process and manage risk involved in working with older technology, the United States should also apply warhead replacement and reuse to its nuclear-weapon life extension strategy, he argued.
In warhead replacement, nuclear components would be swapped with "modern designs that are more easily manufactured; provide increased performance margins; forgo no longer available or hazardous materials; improve safety security and control of warheads; and offer the potential for further overall stockpile reductions," according to Harvey.
Warhead reuse refers to the use of existing surplus nuclear components from other warheads and, in certain cases, could involve manufacturing new parts, he said.
Each approach would require initial warhead certification and annual assessments of safety and reliability that would be carried out "without underground nuclear tests," according to Harvey.
He said modernization of the nuclear stockpile and its supporting infrastructure is consistent with the nonproliferation agenda Obama laid out in his April 5 speech in Prague. More reliable weapons would enable reductions in the number of operationally deployed warheads as the country would not require a large reserve, he said.
Modernization would be consistent with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and a potential fissile material cutoff pact, as upgraded warheads would reduce the need for test blasts and would not require additional weapon-grade substances, Harvey said. The program would also conform to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty because a "credible" U.S. deterrent would reduce incentives for allies to acquire their own arsenals, he added.
In addition, it would provide the potential for further reductions beyond the follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty being hammered out by Washington and Moscow, he said.
An ability to rebuild a nuclear arsenal, if needed, is the "ultimate hedge" to mitigate the security risk if the United States eliminates its nuclear weapons stockpile and discovers other countries have not, according to Harvey.
Veteran nuclear physicist Richard Garwin said he agrees with the strategic commission's recommendation that there be a case by case consideration of the three warhead life-extension options. However, he argued that advances in computer modeling mean that refurbishment remains a viable option for sustaining the arsenal.
"I think that a properly conducted [life extension program] results in a nuclear weapon that is at least as good as new, and that should be good for another 30 years or more," Garwin wrote in an e-mail message to Global Security Newswire.