SS & M is a scientific and technical challenge perhaps as formidable as the Manhattan Project.

—Dr. Victor Reis, assistant secretary of defense programs at the DOE

IN THE LAST SIX years, the nuclear weapons laboratories—Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California—have embarked upon the largest scientific endeavor ever attempted. This new project, the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, nicknamed Manhattan II, was ostensibly instituted to ensure the proper functioning of the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons post-cold war. But this benign description disguises the truth. Nuclear scientists are actually designing, developing, testing, and constructing new nuclear weapons at an annual cost of 5 billion dollars over the next ten to fifteen years.

Authorization of Manhattan II was the price the department of energy exacted in 1995 for nominally agreeing to extend the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Officially, the U.S. played a key role in convincing 180 other nations to sign the extension, which reads in part:

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.¹

In 1996, five nuclear weapons nations—Russia, France, England, China, and the U.S. (excluding India, Pakistan, and Israel)—and forty-four other countries with the potential to construct nuclear weapons, also agreed to abide by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The CTBT preamble states:

. . . (T)he cessation of all nuclear weapons test explosions and all other nuclear explosions, by constraining the development and qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons and ending the development of advanced new types of nuclear weapons, constitutes an effective measure of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation in all its aspects . . .

These were noble ideals on the part of the international community and appropriate in the post-cold war era. However, the treaties provoked a major battle for power and control within the U.S. nuclear establishment. In a seemingly irreconcilable irony, the nuclear labs and their overseer, the department of energy, would allow America to be party to a ban on nuclear testing only if the labs were granted funding to expand their nuclear weapons operations. Thus, violation of both international treaties designed to control the spread of nuclear weapons was built into acceptance.

Technically known as the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, the new effort was abbreviated to SS & M (amusingly reminiscent of the acronym for sexual sadomasochism, and thus very much in keeping with all the other sexual language of the nuclear labs). According to the labs, the SS & M program is designed to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. But, as a February 1996 publication from the DOE makes clear, the labs’ real mandate goes far beyond safety and reliability: “Ability to design new warheads will be retained by DOE at its defense programs (DP) laboratories: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Sandia National Laboratory (SNL).”²

SS & M’s real agenda is as follows:

• To expand the scientific knowledge and understanding of nuclear weapons physics and engineering by creating and outfitting a host of new sophisticated experimental facilities

• To model the behavior of exploding nuclear weapons using the world’s fastest computers

• To refurbish and modernize all the weapons in the stockpile by replacing components with updated versions and, in some cases, by designing and manufacturing completely new nuclear weapons ³

At the height of the cold war, the U.S. spent an average of 3.8 billion dollars a year on nuclear weapons design, testing, and manufacture. Now, twelve years after the end of the cold war, it is spending 5 billion dollars annually over a ten- to 15-year period on a project that will violate both the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.⁴ ^d America is engaged in “vertical proliferation”—building more nuclear weapons—which encourages other nuclear countries to do the same. And America is triggering “lateral proliferation,” in which nonnuclear nations, emulating its example, will almost certainly develop their own nuclear weapons. Among the side effects of such a wrongheaded effort are the health problems faced by tens of thousands of nuclear industry workers each year and the environmental hazards created by waste products and abandoned sites, discussed at the end of this chapter.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF SS & M

STOCKPILED WEAPONS

Nuclear weapons are extremely complex systems composed of more than 5000 parts. Fundamentally they consist of a primary and a secondary mechanism. The primary is usually a hollow sphere of plutonium or highly enriched uranium in some cases, surrounded by conventional explosives. Tritium is injected into the sphere to boost the explosive yield of the primary. The conventional explosives initiate the chain reaction by compressing the plutonium into a critical mass.

The intense flux of gamma and X rays derived from the explosion of the primary are then reflected and directed into the secondary mechanism composed of uranium, lithium, and deuterium compounds. This induces nuclear fusion. The fusion reaction in the secondary mechanism determines the size of the explosion. Hydrogen bombs are cheap to make—cheaper by far than the cost of deploying troops. They can also be very large—50 megatons or the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT. (The Hiroshima bomb that destroyed a city was a 13,000-ton equivalent.)

Over the years, the U.S. has built 70,302 nuclear weapons using sixty-five different designs. From 1945 to 1991 the U.S. conducted 1030 tests, while the Soviet Union exploded 715, France 210, China 45, England 45, and India 5.⁵

JUSTIFICATION FOR SS & M

SS & M is ostensibly designed to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S.’s aging stockpile of nuclear weapons. Safety is typically defined as a certified guarantee that a bomb will not inadvertently explode should it be involved in an accident—for example, dropped from a crane, or enveloped in a fire. Safety is not affected by aging of the bomb. In fact, weapons actually become safer as they age because the metals corrode, adhesives degrade, and component parts crack, making them less likely to explode by accident. DOE also found no evidence that aging will make the chemical explosive more sensitive.

Reliability is a guarantee that bombs will explode as programmed. ⁶ A recent DOE study conducted by the JASONS (a group of distinguished scientists who work for the Mitre Corporation and who advise the DOD and DOE on issues of national security) determined that even if the DOE did nothing to detect and repair defects in bomb components, fewer than 2 percent of the stockpiled warheads would fail to function in the first thirty years after manufacture. They also found no evidence to suggest that the rate of failure would increase for older weapons.⁷ In fact, since 1970, no defects have been found in the stockpile of nuclear weapons when they were subjected to underground testing. Since 1991, no U.S. weapon has been retired because of aging.

Many experts concur that 100 hydrogen bombs would suffice to guarantee American deterrence. So even if the present stockpile of over 10,000 bombs were left untouched, only some would degrade, over a long time, and the degradation could easily be detected by physical examination of the weapons. The defective bombs could then be removed from the arsenal.⁸

THE TRUE AGENDA

The Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program is not necessary for reasons of either safety or reliability. Contrary to the DOE’s alleged motivations, the scientists involved know that testing has little impact on either of these issues. (Indeed, if weapon designs are altered as a result of SS & M research without the benefit of full-scale testing, safety could actually be compromised.⁹ So the Manhattan II project stands to endanger the very issue of safety that it is said to protect.) In fact, the real agenda of SS & M is nuclear weapons development, and internal DOE documents make that incontrovertibly clear. According to the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program released by the DOE’s office of defense programs on February 29, 1996, for example, the SS & M program is designed to “maintain a surge capability to rebuild a larger stockpile.”

NEW WEAPONS DESIGNS AND MODIFICATIONS

Actually, the scientists have already made a new nuclear weapon, violating the NPT. This is the B61-11 earth-penetrating “bunker buster,” the first new weapon produced since 1989, designed to have a variable yield of 300 tons to over 300 kilotons. Twelve feet long and weighing 1200 pounds, this bomb is to replace the old B53, with a 9-megaton yield. It has a casing made of uranium 238 (depleted uranium), which is 1.7 times more dense than lead.¹⁰ Because of its weight it supposedly can burrow 15 to 20 feet into the earth before exploding. It is, the scientists say, “a new way to hold at risk robustly defended, deeply buried targets,” ¹¹—for example, Saddam Hussein’s bunker. (This is one glaring example of excess. Any nuclear weapon exploding at ground level will gouge out a huge crater in the earth. It doesn’t need to “burrow.” Furthermore, the construction of such small nuclear weapons may make their use “thinkable,” breaking the traditional fire wall between conventional and nuclear war.)

Two new bombs are on the drawing board. One is another updated version of the B-61 equipped with wings, which flies after being dropped from a plane, allowing the plane itself to escape from the close proximity of the nuclear explosion. This bomb is called BIOS (bomb impact optimization system).¹² The other is a new warhead for the Trident missiles, but this is cloaked in secrecy.

The labs are also designing new weapons for the Mark 5 missile of the Trident submarine. One will utilize an existing plutonium pit and the other will require a new pit design. (New pit manufacturing is a medically dangerous process exposing workers to carcinogenic doses of plutonium.) Los Alamos National Lab plans to manufacture between 80 and 500 new pits annually—which signifies the addition of 80 to 500 new nuclear weapons per year.¹³

These new Trident weapons are designed to foil the intent of START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) II, which was specifically designed to eradicate first-strike weapons capable of destroying missile silos, or “hard targets.” Most of America’s hard-target weapons are deployed in ground-based intercontinental missiles, as are the Russian weapons. But by upgrading the Trident missiles to extreme accuracy, the U.S. will retain its hard-target capability after seeming to comply with START II. No wonder the rest of the world views America’s nuclear policies with cynicism.

In October 2000 Congress passed an authorization bill for research and possible development of a “user friendly” mini-nuke. Designed to be less than 5 kilotons in size, it will exert a one-mile radius of blast destruction. (The Hiroshima bomb at 13 kilotons experienced a blast radius of one and a half miles.) ¹⁴ Stephen Younger, associate laboratory director for nuclear weapons at Los Alamos National Laboratory, wrote that these low-yield weapons offer the “advantage” of “reduced collateral damage”—but only by half a mile. Younger enthused in a paper titled “Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century” that mini-nukes would not require testing because they could use enriched uranium instead of plutonium and be triggered by a well-known “gun assembly” mechanism—which was deployed in Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb. (Enriched uranium combined with the gun assembly is a tried-and-true design and does not need to be tested.) Like the bunker buster, mini-nukes would most likely be regarded as weapons on the battlefield to be used to “defeat hardened and deeply buried targets,” thus again crossing the fire wall between conventional and nuclear weapons.

Years ago, the military used Davy Crocketts, similar tactical nuclear weapons small enough to be carried into the battlefield on the shoulders of soldiers. Congress was so worried about these weapons that they banned them under a 1994 defense authorization act. But in 2000, championed by leading Senate Republicans, mini-nukes were authorized¹⁵ and another new weapon was spawned under the guise of testing for safety and reliability.

Since the September 11 attack, there have been numerous suggestions both from within and without the Bush administration to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has categorically failed to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in this war, and Andrew Card, White House chief of staff, said, when asked about the possible use of nuclear weapons, “I’m not going to talk about the operations that might be considered by the defense department and the president. But we’re going to do everything we can to defend the United States.”¹⁶ Specific nuclear weapons suggested for use in this war are bunker busters, mini-nukes, and neutron bombs.¹⁷ The latter suggestion, made by Sam Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb, was received sympathetically by some in the Washington establishment.¹⁸

Other nuclear weapon “upgrades” are being contemplated by the labs. DOE has elaborate plans to replace each of the thousands of parts in every nuclear weapon on a regular schedule, including the plutonium pit. Parts will be refurbished and modernized with new components of new design.¹⁹ A large arsenal of a variety of modernized nuclear warheads, many of low to moderate yield, will be fitted to an array of faster, stealthier, long-range delivery platforms (planes and missiles). These “platforms” will be equipped with sophisticated electronics, and fully integrated into the U.S. military’s vision of a twenty-first century battlefield—a battlefield dominated by satellite surveillance, remotely deployed sensor arrays, and precision weaponry.²⁰ All of this seems to lose sight of the fact that when the first nuclear weapons are detonated, the “battlefield” will disappear.

THE FACILITIES

Twenty-five thousand people are employed in nuclear facilities located in seven states, researching, testing, and producing nuclear weapon components under the guise of SS & M. These facilities include Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Labs in California, Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs in New Mexico, the Pantex plant in Texas, the Kansas City plant, the Y-12 plant in Tennesee, the Savannah River plant in South Carolina, and the Nevada Test Site (NTS). All of these facilities were used in the past during the cold war to design, test, and build nuclear weapons. They are ostensibly used to support SS & M, but most are currently being upgraded for the new surge in sophisticated nuclear weapons production.

Broadly speaking, the facilities are devoted to a number of related endeavors, including:

• Learning more about the behavior of plutonium: stereoscopic views of imploding plutonium pits are being created, and experiments are being conducted to simulate “virtually” the behavior of this critical nuclear element

• Experimenting with fusion: machines such as the X-1, which can induce fusion, are being built; laser-powered fusion is being explored; and different “igniters” are being tested

• Testing nuclear weapons: subcritical tests that are difficult to detect are being conducted; facilities to resume full-scale testing are being built as the U.S. plans to abandon the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty within months of September 2001; and virtual testing via elaborate computer models is being undertaken

• Building new nuclear weapons: the next generation of upgrades to nuclear weapon components—including the design, integration, prototyping, fabrication, and qualification of microsystems for weapon components—is being manufactured

LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE BEHAVIOR OF PLUTONIUM

Hydrodynamic and High-Explosive Test Facilities

The term hydrodynamic applies to the motion of plutonium in the pit just before it reaches critical mass. As we’ve seen, it is compressed by conventional explosives under extremely high pressures in millionths of a second, and it apparently acts like a liquid under pressure. Now, high-energy X rays are being tested that will penetrate deep inside the imploding pit, produce visual images, and take electrical and optical measurements. The scientists will then produce images of the exploding plutonium.

Six of these hydrodynamic measuring facilities are already operational. Two new highly sophisticated operations are under construction or planned: a dual-axis radiographic hydrodynamic test facility (DARHT), and an advanced hydrotest facility (AHF). One DARHT has recently been completed at the Los Alamos Lab to provide stereoscopic images of imploding plutonium pits. Equipped with separate beam lines, the machine will take pictures from two directions. A second axis will be added to give stereoscopic viewing (3-D) of imploding pits. This will produce four images of the pit over a period of four nanoseconds.

And as a follow-on to the DAHRT, the AHF will utilize proton radiography to penetrate deeper into the pit. Four axes are planned to provide 3-D images from multiple directions, each axis producing twenty images in rapid succession. AHF will be constructed at Los Alamos or the Nevada Test Site.

Pulse-Powered Facilities

Virtual experiments are currently being conducted to simulate the behavior of plutonium without actually using the element. Short, intense bursts of electrical energy are focused onto targets to induce extremely high temperatures and/or pressures approaching conditions within a nuclear explosion—millions of degrees centigrade and pressures many times above atmospheric pressure. These experiments are designed to test the basic physics of matter at high energy density. The data is used to improve and test computer codes which model nuclear weapons behavior. Seven of these plutonium testing facilities are already operational. A new one is planned.

Joint Actinide Shock Physics Experimental Research (JASPER)

This is to be a two-stage gas gun able to shoot projectiles that travel at 8 to 15 kilometers per second onto plutonium and uranium targets. Operated by the Lawrence Livermore Lab and under construction at the NTS, it is designed to examine the properties of these and other such materials at high pressures, temperatures, and strain rates.

EXPERIMENTING WITH FUSION

Machines that can induce fusion are being built, laser-powered fusion is being explored, and different “igniters” are being tested.

X-I Machine

This machine, to be constructed at a Sandia National Labs facility, is expected to produce temperatures greater than 3 million degrees Kelvin and enough X-ray energy and power to implode fusion capsules of deuterium and tritium to achieve high-yield fusion. The Sandia scientists believe that this machine could be built for “just” 1 billion dollars.

Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF)

A major DOE program is being designed to study and produce laser-powered, inertial confinement fusion. Multiple intense laser beams are to be focused on targets of tritium and deuterium in order to heat and compress these elements until they fuse to induce an enormous amount of energy. Already fusion has been produced in a primitive fashion, but not actual “ignition,” which simulates the actual energy released in the sun and stars. Five such facilities are already in operation at the labs, but this seems not to be enough.

National Ignition Facility (NIF)

This stadium-sized facility is presently under construction at Lawrence Livermore Lab. Designed to be the world’s most energetic laser, it was initially pegged to cost 1.2 billion dollars, but it has incurred huge cost overruns—and an enormous degree of controversy. Completion is now estimated at 4 billion dollars. The lifetime cost over thirty years, including disassembly and cleanup, could approach 10 billion dollars.

Saddled with a history of technical mismanagement, aborted and inadequate peer reviews, endless R and D requirements, and spiraling costs, this facility is one of the more expensive components of the SS & M program.²¹^, ²² Diagnostic costs have not yet been included in the cost estimates.²³

The NIF will consist of 192 separate laser beams. When focused on a single target, the combined energy released in bursts of just threebillionths of a second will be 1.8 million joules (a measurement of energy). The laser beams will be fired simultaneously to converge on a tiny BB-sized pellet containing the thermonuclear fuel of tritium and deuterium. For a brief instant, temperatures will reach 100 million degrees centigrade, and the pressure will be 100 billion times earth’s atmosphere—conditions existing in the center of the sun.

But there is work to be done. A suitable material for ignition-capable targets has yet to be found. Also, when each laser beam is converted to ultraviolet light (third harmonic), it severely damages the expensive optic components, causing them to explode after only a few dozen experiments.

If successful, the national ignition facility could stimulate the development of a pure fusion bomb. If there are no fission products involved in the production of nuclear weapons, their construction cannot be detected by satellites or other technical means. This means that arms-control verification will be nullified.

Ted Taylor, a highly regarded physicist and former bomb designer at Los Alamos, believes the NIF laser could provide the scientific “means” to move the U.S. to the next level of weapons development. If successful, he says, the United States will have unleashed an entirely new threat to the planet’s safety.

The NIF laser has absolutely nothing to do with safety and reliability of nuclear weapons. According to Bob Puerifoy, a retired vice president of Sandia National Labs, who for thirty-nine years has been designing, testing, and evaluating nuclear weapons, “NIF is worthless . . . [it] can’t be used to maintain the stockpile, period.”

When Edward Teller was asked what role NIF would have in maintaining the nuclear stockpile, he said “none whatsoever.”

Also, five facilities that are used to split atoms—be they nuclear reactors or accelerators—already exist at the nuclear weapons labs; a sixth is about to be built.

TESTING NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Article 1 of the CTBT states, “each state party undertakes not to carry out any nuclear weapons test explosion or any other nuclear explosion and to prohibit any such nuclear explosion at any place under its juristiction or control.” Yet subcritical tests that are difficult to detect are being conducted by the U.S. (and probably by other countries as well), facilities to resume full-scale testing are being built, and virtual testing via elaborate computer models is being undertaken.

Nevada Test Site (NTS)

In 1995, DOE awarded a five-year 1.5-billion-dollar contract to Bechtel Corporation to manage the Nevada Test Site for the possible resumption of full-scale underground nuclear testing. Lockheed Martin, as previously noted, has also been involved in the NTS. In the meantime, DOE conducts four underground nuclear tests a year using small subcritical quantities of plutonium. High explosives compress the plutonium and its physical properties are collated and observed when it is “shocked.” This data is then incorporated into computer models of nuclear weapon performance.

Since 1996, nine subcritical tests have taken place at the NTS, under DOE code names such as rebound, oboe, bassoon , and holog. Clearly these tests violate the letter and the law of the CTBT. Difficult to detect because of their size, they complicate seismic verification of the CTB treaty.²⁴

It is known that Russia and France are also conducting subcritical tests. Other countries will inevitably follow suit.

The Nevada Test Site is a huge facility. There are more than 1100 support buildings and labs, dozens of holes ready for future underground tests, and extensive equipment and personnel on the ready for the resumption of full-scale nuclear testing. DOE is in the process of renovating 37 miles of roads, and it is currently replacing an electrical supply substation and other electrical facilities.

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Subcritical tests are also being conducted at the Los Alamos National Lab. This program, code named appaloosa, is conducted in utmost secrecy, using an eight-foot diameter, two-inch thick, single-use vessel made of special steel developed for submarine hulls.

According to researcher Greg Mello from the Western States Legal Foundation, these Los Alamos tests probably serve several purposes, but one is the unique capability to conduct detailed implosion studies of full primaries using plutonium 242. According to Mello, the tests are the closest thing to an actual nuclear explosion without an actual nuclear detonation. That seems to be the plan for newly manufactured W-88 pits, and for the W-76 replacement warhead, both of which are newly designed bombs.²⁵

BUILDING NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND UPGRADING FACILITIES

Camouflaged by “stockpile management” jargon, the next generation of upgrades to nuclear weapon components—including the design, integration, prototyping, fabrication, and qualification of microsystems for weapon components—is being manufactured, and with it, what amounts to brand-new nuclear weapons.

Accelerated Strategic Computer Initiative (ASCI)

A massive undertaking is underway at all three nuclear weapons labs to develop computers with enormous speed and memory capacities far greater than available today.

The computers will be used to model precisely the behavior of an exploding nuclear weapon through all its stages in order to develop extremely complex nuclear weapons codes for virtual testing of nuclear weapons. They will also be used for weapons design, production and accident analysis, for certification, and for the prototyping of manufacturing techniques.²⁶

Existing facilities include the ASCI Red Terascale computer, the world’s fastest computer, at Sandia Labs; the ASCI Blue Mountain computer, the third fastest computer in the world, at Los Alamos; and the ASCI Blue Pacific computer at Lawrence Livermore Lab, running at 80,000 times the memory of the average personal computer.

The Red Terascale and Blue Mountain computers recently simulated a 3-D explosion in the secondary component of a hydrogen bomb for the first time, and the Blue Pacific simulated a 3-D explosion in the primary plutonium trigger for the first time.²⁷ So the nuclear establishment is already well on its way into this series of experiments. And more sophisticated computers are planned.

The ASCI Option White TeraOPS computer is currently being built jointly by IBM and the Lawrence Livermore Lab at a cost of 110 million dollars. This will be the world’s fastest, most powerful computer. A 30-TeraOPS computer is planned for Los Alamos Lab and a 100-TeraOPS computer for Lawrence Livermore. Each lab, evidently, must have its own.

All of these supercomputers will be manufactured by Intel Corporation, Silicon Graphics Corporation (and its subsidiary, Cray), and IBM.

Other R and D Test Facilities

There are nine major operational facilities at the nuclear weapons labs that work with and on plutonium, tritium, uranium, beryllium, silicon-based microelectronics devices, chemical facilities, flight-test facilities, and high-explosive facilities. All are related to the development of nuclear weapons.

Two more facilities are planned—the first is a chemistry and metallurgy research building (CMR) at Los Alamos, to be constructed for research and experimentation in analytical chemistry, metallurgy, and plutonium and uranium chemistry. The price? One billion dollars. This building will be equipped with hot-cells and glove boxes to handle and machine the plutonium metal with lathes. In all, Los Alamos plans to manufacture 80 to 500 new plutonium pits per year for the equivalent number of hydrogen bombs.²⁸

The second is a microsystems and engineering sciences applications (MESA) facility, destined for construction at Sandia. MESA will be used to manufacture the next generation of upgrades to nuclear weapon components, including the design, integration, prototyping, fabrication, and qualification of microsystems for weapon components. The facility will cost 400 million dollars.

Manufacturing Facilities

There are seven huge nuclear weapons complexes, apart from the nuclear weapons labs, which have been operational for decades.

Over many years these facilities have become extremely polluted. They include the Kansas City plant (KCP); the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Pantex plant in Texas; the Savannah River plant (SRP) in Aikin, South Carolina; the TA-55 plutonium facility at Los Alamos; the nonnuclear manufacturing facilities at Los Alamos; and the neutron generator facility (NGF) at Sandia Labs.

Seven more facilities are planned for the production of ever more hydrogen bombs. These include a tritium extraction facility (TEF) at Savannah River, new uranium enrichment facilities at Y-12, a storage site for enriched uranium, and two other sites to manufacture plutonium pits for bombs. The largest will be the large-scale-pit production facility at Los Alamos at a cost of 3 billion dollars.

It is hard to pretend that any of these activities, let alone all of them, are being undertaken in the name of safety and reliability of already-existing weapons that have been stockpiled.

HAZARDS OF SS & M

COMPUTER CHAOS

In some cases, work that is taking place at these facilities may actually jeopardize the reliability and safety of existing weapons. For many years, for example, computer calculations bridged the gap between partial experimental measurements gained from actual nuclear tests and incomplete theoretical understanding of the bomb mechanism. These calculations provided a working predictive capability for the design and production of many generations of nuclear weapons. Obviously, as computers became increasingly sophisticated, fewer actual nuclear tests were needed. Computer codes thus became an integrated compendium of the diverse scientific and engineering knowledge relevant to the construction and function of nuclear weapons, even becoming the principal design tools for specific weapons. The goal of the SS & M program is to construct a three-dimensional, full-physics, full-system computer simulation of the explosion of a nuclear weapon. The problem is that as more new and sophisticated data is fed into these supercomputers, the old nuclear codes derived from nuclear testing become confused. In other words, new data erodes the predictive capability of the old nuclear weapon performance codes. Any change in the proven design of a hydrogen bomb undermines its reliability. Therefore, the greater the number of changes induced by a massive array of experiments, the greater will be the incentive to resort to full-scale underground testing.

ACADEMIC STRATEGIC ALLIANCES PROGRAM (ASAP) AND INTERNATIONAL ACCESS TO WEAPON DESIGN

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of SS & M is its real potential to put sensitive nuclear weapons data into the hands of nonnuclear nations. By developing alliances with a number of universities and offering their students and staff access to previously confidential material, this program could give foreign nationals free access to U.S. nuclear weapons design for the first time. This situation will expedite the ability of nonnuclear countries to design and build advanced nuclear weapons. (The department of energy actually acknowledges the problem. A 1995 report titled “The National Ignition Facility and the Issue of Nonproliferation,” states that “a modern, sophisticated proliferator with access to ICF computer codes and today’s computer workstations would have far more tools for designing a secondary [the major component of a hydrogen bomb] than the U.S., U.K., or U.S.S.R. had in the 1950s, or France or China in the 1960s.”)²⁹ This potentially dangerous situation has been alleviated somewhat since the concern at Los Alamos about a potential Chinese spy, Wen Ho Lee, who in December 1999 was charged with downloading sensitive nuclear weapons codes onto insecure computers. He was later cleared of virtually all charges. Since September 11, however, there will almost certainly be stringent conditions imposed upon the ASAP program to prevent foreign students gaining access to sensitive nuclear weapons data.³⁰

On July 31, 1997, the DOE announced the award of multimillion-dollar, multiyear contracts to five universities. The purpose was to study basic science, computer science, mathematics, and engineering research for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.³¹ Thus nongovernment academic scientists are to be involved in the development of nuclear weapons for the first time since the Manhattan Project.³²

The lucky campuses are as follows: the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Utah. In all, a total of fourteen universities and colleges are already participating to some degree in the ASAP. Each university is to receive 20 to 30 million dollars over a five-year period, possibly to be extended for another five years at another 20 to 30 million dollars.

The universities are establishing “centers of excellence” operating as partners with the nuclear weapons labs in the accelerated strategic computer initiative. This exercise is classified as “level one” funding. Levels two and three are in the pipeline. The schools will work in close collaboration with Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia on R and D activities in specific areas related to nuclear weapons development as follows:

• The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) will develop a “virtual shock tube,” a computer simulation of the detonation of high explosives and the effect of the ensuing shock waves on specific test materials related to nuclear weapons—plutonium and uranium.

At this stage it is not clear whether data from this virtual shock tube could be incorporated into the labs’ supercomputers as a nuclear weapons code. A bomb code would also need to include— critically—fission and fusion nuclear processes, plus the energy released in the explosion.

Caltech will investigate the combined simulations of high explosives with shocked materials (including plutonium and other materials used in nuclear weapons); it will also investigate the physical dynamics at material interfaces of these metals, plus shock-induced compressible turbulence and the mixing within these test materials.

The Caltech program is ambiguous. On the one hand it will be required to produce unclassified research material and to educate foreign students; on the other, it must produce data relevant to the explosion of nuclear weapons. This means that foreign nationals will have free access to the design of nuclear weapons—previously a closely guarded secret. This posture will obviously induce a conflict of interest for the university and the labs if lateral proliferation of nuclear weapons is to be avoided.³³

• The University of Chicago plans to simulate thermonuclear processes that operate within the sun and stars. This research could be complementary to the Caltech program.

• Stanford University is to research the dynamics of gas turbine engines, specifically examining turbulence within gaseous and solid states, with specific reference to materials incorporated in thermonuclear weapons.

• The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will conduct research on solid rocket propellants used in missiles. This program will concentrate on broad simulation issues of multicomponent, multiphenomena, and multiscale systems for solid rocket boosters.

Rocket propellants are complex materials that have many innate problems. The new information will therefore be very useful in new nuclear war planning as well as for the missile defense shield.

• The University of Utah will compile data on fires and explosions specifically related to nuclear weapons accidents.

Scientific Goals of the Academic Strategic Alliances Program

Overall the academic strategic alliances program has been allocated five major goals by the department of energy:

1. Establish and validate the practices of large-scale modeling, simulation, and computation as a viable scientific methodology in key scientific and engineering applications supporting DOE science-based stockpile stewardship goals and objectives

2. Accelerate advances in critical basic sciences, mathematics, and computer science areas, in computational science and engineering, in high-performance computing systems, and in problem-solving environments that support long-term ASCI needs

3. Leverage other basic science, high-performance computing systems, and problem-solving environments research in the academic community

4. Establish technical coupling of academic strategic alliances program efforts with ongoing ASCI projects in DOE laboratories

5. Strengthen training and research in areas of interest to ASCI and SBSS (science-based stockpile stewardship) and strengthen ties among Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Los Alamos National Lab, Sandia National Labs, and universities³⁴

This last proviso is specifically meant to recruit a new generation of intelligent young people into the “art” of bomb making. Some programs will be designed so that professors and students may never discover the ultimate applications of their research unless they become intimately involved in classified nuclear weapons work.³⁵

The chancellor of the University of Illinois, Michael Aikin, enthusiastically endorsed the notion of SS & M when he wrote, “The national importance of simulation of the science-based stewardship program cannot be overestimated, and it is an area in which we are willing and highly able to contribute. . . . I believe that multidisciplinary research and training partnerships embodied in the DOE academic strategic alliance program and our [Illinois’s] proposed center are critical to the development of national defense policy and preparedness, and we are excited about the prospects of working in this enterprise.”³⁶

The ASAP gives university students unprecedented access to the supercomputers of the weapons labs. It also plans to make available to the public more classified information than ever before. It’s worth repeating that although foreign nationals will be prohibited from working in this area, it will not prevent the drift of valuable weapons information into foreign hands, for crucial nuclear design programs will be shared with a wide array of weapon and nonweapon scientists, and the computers will run on standard lines. Therefore information from ASCI will be difficult or impossible to keep secret. This leaky situation will expedite the ability of nonnuclear countries to design and build advanced nuclear weapons.³⁷

ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARDS OF SS & M

Plutonium—named after Pluto, the god of hell—remains radioactive and biologically dangerous for 500,000 years. It is acknowledged to be the most carcinogenic substance known to humans—hypothetically one pound, if uniformly distributed, could induce lung cancer in every person on earth. The proliferation of nuclear labs and facilities under the SS & M umbrella poses a relentlessly frightening list of health and environmental issues to human beings working or living near the nuclear plants. Plutonium also causes mutations in the genes of the reproductive cells—the eggs and sperm—posing a genetic risk to all future generations, a kind of random compulsory genetic engineering.

But plutonium is not the only danger. The waste from nuclear weapons production contains other deadly radioactive elements, which bio-accumulate thousands of times at each step in the food chain. Because radioactive elements are tasteless, odorless, and invisible, it is impossible to know whether exposed food is contaminated or not. Cesium 137 concentrates in meat and causes cancers of the muscle; strontium 90 concentrates in milk and induces bone cancer and leukemia; radioactive iodine concentrates in vegetables and milk and migrates to the thyroid gland inducing thyroid tumors and cancer. Tritium combines with water molecules and is incorporated into the actual genetic structure. It is a potent carcinogen. Many of these elements also remain radioactive for hundreds of years, well beyond our lifetimes.

These materials and others compose nuclear waste—the detritus from weapons production and the generation of nuclear power. Vast quantities of concentrated high-level waste in liquid and solid form lie scattered around the weapons facilities. Indeed, all the DOE weapons-manufacturing plants scattered across the nation are super-fund sites leaking and leaching the most extraordinarily dangerous radioactive and toxic chemical contaminants into soil, rivers, lakes, seas, and water supplies.

One particularly vivid example of an intensely polluted DOE site is the old Rocky Flats plant, which from 1953 to 1989 manufactured approximately 70,000 plutonium pits—that is, an average of five pits per day. During a 7.7-million-dollar “cleanup,” several men were delegated to excavate 171 drums of uranium from a trench in the ground that hadn’t been touched for forty years. One of the men was directed to scoop out an unmarked barrel with a backhoe. It had rotted and uranium sludge oozed from the barrel. Suddenly, there was a blue flash and the ooze burst into flame. The fire had to be extinguished by a dump of sand. As the Denver Post wrote, “one drum down, 1,099,956 to go.”

The government is attempting to detoxify this nuclear bomb plant, the first such attempt in the history of the nuclear age.

Included in the challenges:

1. To find 1100 pounds of plutonium that were “lost” in the ducts of the plant, drum, and glove boxes (used to machine the plutonium). This is enough plutonium to build 150 Nagasaki-sized bombs. It is also more than enough to reach critical mass (10 pounds is critical mass) and produce a large nuclear explosion, thereby obliterating much of Denver and Boulder, either by blast and/or fallout.

2. To “clean” thirteen “infinity” rooms—so radioactive that monitoring instruments went off-scale. One room in the plant is so hot that managers welded the door shut in 1972. Another room was filled with plutonium-fouled machinery and entombed in concrete.

3. To ship 16,000 pounds of plutonium by truck through Denver to South Carolina. On top of the plutonium shipments, three additional truckloads of radioactive waste must be shipped out per day in order to comply with the 2006 cleanup deadline. The cleanup is costing 2 million dollars a day, and it is two years behind schedule. It will cost twice as much to raze Rocky Flats as it cost to construct the new Denver airport.

A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences notes that two thirds of the government sites involved in nuclear weapons production will never be decontaminated. Long-term stewardship will be required for 100 of the 144 sites, and many will remain dangerously radioactive for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years. These areas will become—or are now denoted—“national sacrifice zones.”

In fact, the federal government lacks the technology, money, or management techniques to prevent the spread of contamination. Many radioactive-contaminated plumes in underground water streams have already migrated well beyond the plant boundaries and it is impossible to police the waste properly. For instance, the DOE erected no fishing signs at a creek near the Oak Ridge National Lab, but children stole the signs. This occurred in this generation. What will happen long after we are forgotten?

The NAS report also said that any known barriers for radioactive waste, such as concrete and steel, would fail, and that most of what is now known about the behavior of contaminants in air, soil, and water might “eventually be proven wrong.” ³⁸^, ³⁹ Even the department of energy finally agreed in October 2000 with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, that official government data on the volume and radioactivity of buried plutonium and similar materials were “inconsistent and contradictory.”

The amount of plutonium and other man-made radioactive elements—from the manufacture of nuclear weapons—that has been released into the soil or buried in flimsy containers such as cardboard boxes is 10 times greater than original estimates.⁴⁰ The DOE itself admitted that “there is little or no information on volumes of soil potentially contaminated by leaching of buried solid wastes, nor is there information on hazardous waste components known to have been commingled with the radioactive components.” Some of these wastes are explosive materials, making retrieval difficult. This buried waste comprises 30 percent of the nation’s radioactivity.⁴¹

The DOE surveyed production and dumping records at only six sites—Hanford, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Los Alamos National Lab, Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee, the Savannah River site in South Carolina, and the Nevada Test Site.⁴²

There is new evidence to show that plutonium moves through the soil at a rate much faster than previously predicted. For instance, the Snake River aquifer lies 590 feet below the Idaho facility. Plutonium that was originally buried twenty feet below the surface has now been found at 240 feet. At this rate it will take only twenty-five years to reach the aquifer and enter the Snake River. Americium, a decay product of plutonium but even more deadly, has already entered the river.⁴³

The department of energy has admitted for the first time that 4 tons of plutonium were released into the soil at the Nevada Test Site. Vast quantities of fission products were also released, some of which are moving rapidly in water systems toward populated areas nearby.⁴⁴

Fires at Nuclear Weapons Labs

In a freak of nature—possibly related to the phenomenon of global warming—the contaminated grounds of three of the nation’s major nuclear weapons facilities caught fire during the year 2000—at Los Alamos, Hanford, and Idaho.

A total of 6.4 million acres burned throughout the U.S., 3.5 million acres above the ten-year average.

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LAB. On May 4, 2000, a fire set by park rangers during protective burn-off in forests near the lab swept through a total of 48,000 acres and burned 7500 acres or one-third of the lab facility. At temperatures of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, the fire consumed decommissioned contaminated buildings dating from the Manhattan Project, the machine shop for the main research and development facility (DARHT), and storage areas. In all, it destroyed or damaged 112 lab structures and disrupted the operation of 237 facilities. It burned more than 600 waste-disposal and contaminated sites, plus several contaminated canyons running through the lab.

Los Alamos waste areas are contaminated with the deadliest materials—plutonium 238 and 239, americium 241, tritium, uranium, strontium 90, cesium 137, beryllium, and organic carcinogenic compounds (PCBs and solvents). For many years the preferred storage container for much of the lab’s waste was the cardboard box. Over 2120 potentially radioactively contaminated sites at the lab could now release radiation. During the fire, the department of energy failed to deploy airborne monitoring systems to measure smoke contaminants, nor did it attempt to monitor possible localized “hot spots.”

Firefighters were not equipped with radiation monitors, nor were they carefully protected as radiation workers are—in fact, they were mostly unaware of the dangers they faced. Fires at nuclear facilities present special dangers, first because they disrupt safety systems leading to loss of power and important means of ventilation, and second because the contaminated vegetation has been converted to ashes, and strong winds sweep radioactive elements into the air to be carried great distances. Flash floods sweep vast quantities of radioactive elements from the canyons at Los Alamos into watersheds. These water sources drain into the Rio Grande River, where they pollute drinking and irrigation supplies through New Mexico and Mexico.

Three particular Los Alamos canyons are at risk:

1. The Parajito Canyon—code-named TA-18. Facilities here include a defunct and contaminated Omega West reactor, nuclear weapons test facilities (Kivas) that contain “high-energy burst assemblies,” and a vault containing large amounts of plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The White Rock community lies directly downstream.

2. The Los Alamos Canyon—code-named TA-41, TA-2. Dangerous facilities in this canyon include the defunct and contaminated Omega West reactor. Placed at the bottom of the canyon, it is vulnerable to slope instability, mudslides, and rock falls.

3. The Pueblo Canyon, which contains the Diamond Road crossing and utility facilities for the town of Los Alamos.

Other radioactive canyons—recipients of decades of wastedumping—include: Mortandad Canyon, DP Canyon, and Acid Canyon. Some of these radioactive canyons are surrounded by communities of Native Americans.

Seventy-seven other waste-disposal sites and contaminated areas at Los Alamos are located on potential floodplains.

Following only a modest postfire rainfall in September 2000, the concentration of cesium 137 in suspended run-off mixed with clay and soil in the water was 5 to 20 times higher than prefire levels, plutonium was 5 to 10 times, and strontium 90 was 2 to 5 times higher.

Flash floods inundate the region almost every year.⁴⁵^, ⁴⁶^, ⁴⁷

HANFORD NUCLEAR RESERVATION. On July 28, 2000, a wildfire near Richland, Washington, sparked by a fatal car collision, burned 190,000 acres, including parts of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

An eight-foot wall of fire came to within 400 yards of 330 50-gallon barrels of waste containing uranium powder and chips, and other toxic and hazardous waste material. A single drum, if ignited, could send flames 20 to 30 feet into the air, releasing all the radioactive and toxic contents.⁴⁸

The fires also passed through an area of known radioactive dump sites. The firefighting operation was hampered by lack of adequate maps detailing radioactively contaminated nuclear sites.⁴⁹ The fires burned through highly contaminated B/C cribs (storage sites) in the 200 West area, which probably contain more radioactivity than the entire Los Alamos inventory.

Plutonium was detected in air monitors around the area, but the monitoring was inadequate. Because federal officials misjudged the seriousness of the fire, the plutonium measurements were incomplete; the most reliable testing by the EPA was performed after the fires ended. Levels measured at that time were still 100 times the normal amount. It is unknown what the measurements were during the height of the blaze.

Plutonium could potentially enter the lungs of people hundreds of miles away depending on wind direction. One millionth of a gram of inhaled plutonium is a carcinogenic dose.⁵⁰

IDAHO NATIONAL ENGINEERING & ENVIRONMENTAL LABORATORY. In July 2000, a fire burned 49,000 acres in and around the Idaho National Lab, producing higher-than-normal levels of radioactivity in the air. The fire entered a test reactor area. Evacuation from the facility was ordered.

Another fire in September at the same labs consumed 8000 acres and resulted in an accident that officials admitted was very dangerous. One chamber of an incinerator that was used to “burn” mixed radioactive and toxic waste containing plutonium continued to burn overnight without supervision after worker evacuation. Lab officials claim that workers shut down the incinerator before they left, but one chamber reignited because of the fire. Safety procedures required that the incinerator be attended at all times, but they were not followed. Operated by Bechtel—a DOE contractor—the incinerator has since been closed.⁵¹

It is evident that radioactive material should never be subjected to incineration, as it is transferred unchanged into the air to be dispersed by the wind.

OTHER NUCLEAR FACILITIES. Several major nuclear weapons facilities were closed over the past ten years, leaving behind large quantities of unguarded, unstable nuclear materials, including 189 tons of combustible, highly enriched uranium at the Oak Ridge Y-12 weapons plant in Tennessee, stored in old wooden buildings. If a wildfire ignited the uranium metal, water used to fight the fire would generate hydrogen, converting the blaze to a small holocaust.⁵²

The department of energy recently admitted for the first time that four tons of plutonium had been injected into the Nevada Test Site over a period of four decades. Vast quantities of deadly fission products accompany the plutonium. This material is moving rapidly through underground water systems toward communities that reside nearby.⁵³

Government Compensation

Thousands of people who once worked in nuclear weapons production plants are, for the first time, to receive compensation from the federal government. These people mined, milled, and enriched uranium, operated nuclear reactors, reprocessed deadly radioactive materials, machined plutonium, uranium, and thorium, and handled radioactive waste. Many have already died, others are now dying of cancers and diseases related to their radioactive and toxic chemical exposure. Yet for sixty years the government stubbornly denied a link between work exposure in the nuclear weapons complex and subsequent disease processes. Very few nuclear workers, if any, were informed of the medical dangers implicit in their work. Rather, the emphasis was on the cold war-related emergency production of nuclear weapons. This was a national security imperative, and the health of the workers was a secondary consideration.

Finally, Congress has offered a one-time 150,000-dollar payment plus free health care to those who have suffered. The total cost to the government is estimated at 1 billion dollars over the next five years, compared with the billions doled out by Congress to the military corporations, the Pentagon, and the nuclear labs.

Another, possibly larger group of people exposed during the forties and fifties were employed by more than 200 private companies across the nation. Ranging from mom-and-pop machine shops to large chemical firms, these facilities were quietly converted to the production of nuclear weapons components. In total ignorance, workers handled tons of dangerous uranium, thorium, polonium, beryllium, and other toxic and radioactive substances.

Most of the factories were located in the industrial belts of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, around the Great Lakes, and through the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, as well as in the cities of Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland. In all these facilities, many thousands were exposed to levels of radiation hundreds of times higher than the arbitrary limits imposed at the time, limits that have since been shown to be many times too high. Workers in the most dangerous jobs were exposed to lung doses of 130 rems or higher—ten times that accepted today. (A rem is a biological measurement of radiation.)

No dose of radiation is safe, and radiation is biologically cumulative—each dose adds to the risk of cancer development years later. Some of these workers were so contaminated they were 200 percent more likely than unexposed people to die of radiation-induced cancer. Government reports documenting the medical risks were classified and hidden.

The new Congressional compensation bill applies specifically to government employees, excluding those who were privately employed. Many of the private nuclear companies have shut down, and records have been displaced or lost. The surrounding communities are largely unaware of the permanent radioactive and toxic contamination of their environments—a medically tragic legacy of this secret weapons work. As a single example—one of many—the Harshaw Chemical Company in Cleveland pumped 350 to 500 pounds of radioactive uranium dust from its stacks.

In light of this ongoing danger, the SS & M program will perpetuate and make worse an already catastrophic environmental and health problem. There is no cold war. There are no enemies except terrorists, and they will not be stopped by the use of nuclear weapons. We the people must demand that the labs cease to function: They are killing us all to make the bombs to kill us all better.