Plutonium Study Could Undermine U.S. Plans for New Warheads

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A new U.S. study has determined that plutonium, one of the key elements in the core of a nuclear bomb, degrades at a much slower rate than previously thought (see GSN, April 27).

The findings could undercut Bush administration justifications for developing a new generation of nuclear warheads as well as a multibillion-dollar revamping of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, experts said.

The lifespan of plutonium cores was thought to be between 45 and 60 years.  However, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories found that plutonium pits at the heart of U.S. nuclear warheads should last for at least 85 years.

Some pit types used by the United States could last for more than a century, and there are steps weapons technicians could take to bring projected stability up to 100 years for others, according to the report produced by a group of academics and nuclear scientists known as the JASONs.

Many of the more than 5,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. stockpile are decades old, designed and tested during the Cold War.  The Bush administration has drafted plans to create new nuclear weapons and components as part of what it calls the Reliable Replacement Warhead program.

The plan is to design new thermonuclear warheads that are more reliable and safer than weapons in the current stockpile, which are constantly being refurbished and certified by the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  There are also plans to modernize the nuclear weapons production complex by the year 2030 to support this effort.

NNSA officials said today that the plutonium study would affect neither the RRW program nor the transformation of the nuclear complex.  The administration is forging ahead with its plans.

Teams from both Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore have presented competing Reliable Replacement Warhead designs, and the Nuclear Weapons Council is scheduled to select one soon (see GSN, Sept. 26).  In addition, the Senate version of a fiscal 2007 appropriations bill that sets funding for the nuclear laboratories provides for a second design competition in the coming year.

This new study, however, could erode the administration’s argument for an expensive program that some experts say is unneeded.

“I think it could very well be huge in terms of the transformation of the nuclear complex,” said Charles Ferguson, a nuclear policy expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.  Those plans will have to be re-evaluated in light of this new scientific insight, he said.  “If it turns out that the plutonium’s going to stay pretty well intact for a long time, what’s the rush?”

NNSA chief Linton Brooks told the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee in March that additional funding was needed for a planned plutonium pit production facility capable of producing 125 triggers a year.  He cited uncertainties in the then-current life expectancy of plutonium — no more than 60 years.

The recent findings would seem to ease those concerns.  A senior agency official, though, told the San Francisco Chronicle that there is an urgent need to modernize nuclear production facilities and design new weapons.

“The infrastructure is falling apart,” said Thomas D’Agostino, NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs.  “The choice I have to make is right now.”

Brooks suggested that despite the newfound longevity of the plutonium components, unreliable elements in the current stockpile and other reasons are cause to press ahead with a weapons redesign.  D’Agostino has called the RRW program the “enabler” for the transformation of the weapons production facilities.

“It is now clear that although plutonium aging contributes, other factors control the overall life expectancy of nuclear weapons systems,” Brooks said in a prepared statement.  Thousands of other, non-nuclear components also age and contribute to the reliability of the weapons, NNSA officials said

“We’ve never said we’re doing RRW only for plutonium aging,” said NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes.

A weapons redesign reduces the possibility that an underground nuclear test would be needed to ensure the safety of the arsenal and the continued viability of the weapons, Wilkes said.  The current weapons, he said, were not built with constant refurbishments in mind nor were they designed for security concerns in an age dominated by fears of terrorism.

While the current arsenal is secure, any new designs would have more comprehensive safeguards to prevent their use if they were ever obtained by terrorists or a rogue nation, he added.

Robert Nelson, a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he expects arguments favoring the program to change in light of the study but not to go away.

“The NNSA has obviously been preparing for this,” he said.

The study findings undercut justifications for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, and without the new warheads the need to invest billions into the weapons production complex goes away, Nelson argued. 

“If the pits in the original weapons aren’t aging, then we don’t need to replace them. … This report forces them to come up with a different reason,” he said.

It becomes hard to justify the Reliable Replacement Warhead program and nuclear weapon complex reconfiguration, which the Energy Department estimates will cost more than $150 billion combined, Nelson said.

“This confirms that our existing stockpile does not require new pit manufacturing,” Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who had requested the plutonium study, said in a statement.  “I hope the Senate Armed Services Committee holds a hearing on the findings of this report early next year so that we can determine whether we need the new Reliable Replacement Warhead.”

Representative David Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that controls nuclear weapons spending, has been a backer of new warhead designs.  Still, he said the study could affect the RRW program, which was funded at about $25 million in both fiscal 2006 and 2007.

“We don’t need to charge off here and waste a lot of money,” he told National Public Radio.

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