The U.S. Navy in August received the first W-76 warheads refurbished for continued use on submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported yesterday (see GSN, June 25).
"I can now confirm that the first refurbished W-76s were delivered to the Navy in August," said National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Damien LaVera. The number of warheads delivered to the military was not made public.
The semautonomous Energy Department agency announced in February that the "first refurbished W-76 nuclear warhead had been accepted into the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile by the Navy" (see GSN, Feb. 24). The Navy later indicated it had received no such weapons.
Parts for the weapons were completed in summer 2008 at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which experienced problems replicating a component of the original weapon known as "Fogbank." The warhead parts were then delivered to the Pantex Plant in Texas for assembly (Frank Munger, Knoxville News Sentinel, Nov. 5).