America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons may not work

OPINION:

The Senate and House are currently engaged in a critically important debate over nuclear weapons testing. The decision reached may preserve or destroy America. We must resume nuclear weapons testing.

Here’s the situation. Our thousands of nuclear weapons were designed, tested and built in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s to win the Cold War. None of these weapons has been tested since 1992, over a quarter century ago. Nor has a single new weapon been designed, tested or built during this same period.

The tens of thousands of active nuclear weapons scientists in our three nuclear weapons labs have never designed, tested and built a nuclear weapon.

Nuclear weapons are the most complex systems ever created by man. The detonation of a nuclear weapon is so complex that there are many activities and processes occurring in the initial millionth of a second which we do not understand. The heart of a nuclear weapon is made of plutonium, and many aspects of its aging process are still unknown to us. 

During our half-century of active nuclear weapons testing (1945-92), we conducted more than a thousand tests. A great many of these were failures. I doubt that any test was ever conducted in which unexplainable events did not occur. Our best and most experienced weapons designers were noted for telling of many cases where the designs in which they had the most confidence were the ones in which the most complete failures occurred.

All of our nuclear weapons were designed and built when the nuclear weapons age was in its adolescence. Decades of recently-gained knowledge was not included. Also, these weapons were all built under wartime conditions, when speed was essential, shortcuts were taken and there was no time for accurate record-keeping. For example, as designers made last-minute design changes in the weapon under test, these changes may not have been recorded in the weapon’s final “as-built” documentation.

All these weapons were designed to have an estimated 20-year lifetime. As a result, all the weapons in today’s stockpile are long past the end of their design life. Some have gone through relatively recent “life extension” programs, which may have resulted in unintended critical design changes being made.   

How did we get into this awful mess? The Cold War ended in 1991 and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. No major threats were apparent. Our national leaders — supported by the American people — established an unannounced “nuclear freeze.” Nuclear budgets were slashed. Nuclear testing was prohibited. New weapons were outlawed. Nuclear research and development was denied. Nuclear infrastructure improvements were canceled.

These were serious over-reactions, of course; and if we had reassessed them as our nuclear threats grew, we could have recovered. But we kept on making terrible nuclear policy decisions. 

One of the worst was to insist on a zero-yield test policy. Russia and China, refused, of course, so they have tested and produced generations of advanced, low-yield nukes. Another incredibly bad one was to bring nuclear terrorism into the world by refusing to use conventional military force to stop North Korea’s and Iran’s early nuke development. Our hand-wringing didn’t work.

But our worst decision — by far — was to believe we could develop a computer program to replace testing in determining stockpile reliability. The scientists who spent decades designing and testing nukes in the Cold War warned against this fatal mistake. From a lifetime of observing test failures they knew there would always be too many unknowns in the nuclear detonation process.

As the years and decades passed, the arms controllers and anti-nuclear activists gained control, They approved computer simulations as the equivalent of nuclear testing, and put us on the road to disaster.

Last year, however, new data appeared. The National Academy of Sciences published a scientific paper written by two senior nuclear scientists at the Los Alamos Lab, who had been active in Cold War testing. They describe exactly why we cannot be confident of the reliability of our stockpile. Our nukes may not detonate! This is an issue far beyond partisan politics. Our nation’s survival is at stake. 

The president must take action. He must assemble a team of surviving Cold War nuclear weapons designers and testers to work with today’s computer specialists in resolving the “unknown unknowns” that are at stake.

And that’s not all. Another very bad nuclear policy decision of the past decades has been to let our nuclear test site in Nevada deteriorate.

I estimate that recovery will take about five years and cost some $2 billion. An immediate start must be made on this, in any case.  

• Robert R. Monroe, a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral, is the former director of the Defense Nuclear Agency.