Livermore Picked to Develop New U.S. Reliable Replacement Warhead

A team of U.S. Energy and Defense department experts has selected the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to lead the development of a new U.S. nuclear warhead, the Energy Department announced today (see GSN, Feb. 22).

The announcement ended a competition between Livermore and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to design a warhead to replace current U.S. nuclear weapons.  The Energy Department has said it has fading confidence in the existing stockpile of warheads, none of which has been tested in an explosion since 1992.

Plans call for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program to develop a new warhead that would not require explosive testing.  Livermore’s design was selected because it used concepts that had been better validated by past testing than the Los Alamos design, according to the department.

“Higher confidence in the ability to certify the Livermore design without underground nuclear testing was the primary reason for its selection,” says a release from the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  “That design was more closely tied to previous underground testing.”

The selection decision was made by the five-person Nuclear Weapons Council, a group of four senior Defense Department officials and NNSA acting chief Thomas D’Agostino.

“The RRW design concept utilizes modern technology that was not available during the Cold War when our nuclear weapons were designed and built,” D’Agostino said in the release.  “This will permit significant upgrades in safety and security features in the replacement warhead that will keep the same explosive yields and other military characteristics as the current ones.  RRW will take advantage of today’s science to ensure the long-term confidence in the future stockpile.”

While losing the direct competition, the Los Alamos design was “highly innovative and will be developed in parallel with the Livermore effort,” the release says.  “As they mature, the features may be introduced into the RRW design as it progresses” (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, March 2).

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