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Stockpile Stewardship at 20 Years Stockpile S&TR July/August 2015 Stockpile Stewardship In the two decades since it was established, at 20 Years the nation’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program has served as a highly effective tool for maintaining confidence in the U.S. nuclear deterrent. 6 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory S&TR July/August 2015 Stockpile StewardshipStockpile OLLOWING the collapse of the Soviet weapons laboratories (Livermore, Los FUnion and the end of the Cold War, the Alamos, and Sandia national laboratories), United States took a series of bold steps to DOE officials, and congressional leaders. strengthen nuclear nonproliferation. These The new approach relied on advanced steps included halting underground nuclear scientific understanding through a testing, ceasing the development of new combination of theoretical advances, nuclear weapons, reducing the size of the nonnuclear (including subcritical) existing nuclear stockpile, and beginning to experiments, supercomputer simulations, close nonessential elements of the nuclear and enhanced stockpile surveillance—not weapons production complex. In September on additional nuclear testing—to predict, 1996, President Clinton formally announced identify, and correct stockpile problems. his decision to seek a Comprehensive A key architect of the fledgling Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and program, DOE’s Assistant Secretary for directed the Department of Energy (DOE) Defense Programs Vic Reis, addressed to take the required actions for sustaining Livermore employees in October 1995 confidence in the stockpile without nuclear to discuss the ambitious effort. Reis told testing. Thus, the Stockpile Stewardship employees the “awesome responsibility” and Management Program was formally for decisions regarding the safety and established to maintain the safety, security, reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent stockpile “has been put right back where it without full-scale testing. belongs—with the labs.” Details of the program were arrived at The new program posed significant following months of close consultation challenges for the DOE weapons between the directors of the three DOE laboratories. Weapons typically were (left) Kevin Vandersall, a researcher in Livermore’s High Explosives Applications Facility (HEAF), inspects equipment and diagnostics prior to an energetic materials experiment. HEAF is home to some of the best- equipped high-explosives research and testing laboratories in the world. (Photograph by George A. Kitrinos.) (right) The Laboratory conducted many highly complex underground nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site (now the Nevada National Security Site) prior to the commencement of the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 7 Stockpile Stewardship S&TR July/August 2015 designed for a 20-year service life and (NNSA) national security laboratories— an x-ray computed tomography system to most often were replaced before then to provide the U.S. president an annual detect aging defects on critical components with newer designs. For more than four assessment of the safety and reliability in nuclear weapons. Developed by decades, nuclear testing had provided of the stockpile for more than two Livermore scientists and located at the means to assure confidence in the decades with no identified need for an NNSA’s Pantex Plant in Texas, this high- stockpile. Bruce Goodwin, associate- underground nuclear test. Verdon says, resolution imaging system assembles two- director-at-large for Global Security “This work is a remarkable achievement dimensional (2D) digital radiographs into a Research, described the challenge as given the major shift in methods and three-dimensional (3D) tomographic image analogous to maintaining a 40-year-old the many uncertainties at the start of that scientists analyze to discover any car. “New parts cannot be obtained, and the program.” He notes, however, that the anomalies. Since its installation in 2009, in some cases you can’t make replacement program faces continuing challenges as the rate and quality of surveillance efforts parts because they require materials that weapons age. have increased dramatically. Researchers are environmentally prohibited or are no are continuing to develop more efficient longer available,” he says. “You have to Enhanced Surveillance scintillators for converting x rays to light ensure that the car runs, but you’re not A central focus of the Stockpile and to increase the speed of tomographic allowed to start it.” Nevertheless, “it has Stewardship and Management Program image reconstruction. to work with 100 percent reliability.” was to enhance routine surveillance of As a complement to existing The weapons laboratories now had weapons with a combination of predictive x-ray diagnostic tools such as to understand in far greater detail how aging models and nondestructive testing CoLOSSIS, Livermore researchers materials’ aging processes might affect to forecast and detect age-related material are building a prototype high-energy weapons performance years into the changes at an early stage. For example, (10-megaelectronvolt) neutron imaging future and to use this information for plastics break down, metals corrode, and facility. The machine, scheduled for anticipating when serious issues might coatings deteriorate in response to long- completion in 2019, is designed to detect initially arise. To succeed in the radically term exposure to radiation, fluctuating cubic-millimeter-scale voids, cracks, and reworked assignment, weapons scientists temperatures, and other environmental other defects in heavily shielded or low-Z and engineers required more advanced conditions. Advanced computational materials such as plastics and polymers. nonnuclear experimental capabilities. models show how materials outgas; It will be capable of producing 2D Toward this end, the National Ignition polymers slowly change their chemistry; radiographic and 3D tomographic images. Facility (NIF) was built at Lawrence gas bubbles form, grow, and diffuse; Livermore, and some of the Laboratory’s explosives recrystallize and interact with Plutonium Aging Gracefully other facilities, such as the Contained binders; materials interact with atmospheric Since the end of nuclear testing, Firing Facility (CFF) at Site 300 and gases, such as water vapor, hydrogen, scientists have been particularly concerned and the High Explosives Applications and oxygen; and how long-term radiation about how plutonium ages because Facility (HEAF), were significantly exposure changes materials. (See the article unexpected changes in the element’s upgraded. A series of progressively beginning on p. 22.) chemical structure (or phase) could more powerful supercomputers was also Physical chemist Bill McLean, compromise weapons performance. In acquired. These computational machines enhanced surveillance campaign manager, particular, scientists worried about the integrated existing nuclear test data and says, “With a shrinking stockpile, damage accumulated over decades as increasing amounts of scientific data on disassembling and discarding assets to find plutonium-239 decays and self-irradiates. stockpile materials’ performance and potential problems is not always practical.” In response, Livermore scientists launched aging characteristics. They also served as Stockpile stewardship has enabled the experiments at the Laboratory’s Superblock, a surrogate test platform using far more development of new nondestructive a city-block-long assemblage of actinide accurate predictive models. surveillance technologies to identify research facilities. (Complementary efforts Charlie Verdon, principal associate potential safety or reliability problems such were conducted at Los Alamos National director for the Weapons and Complex as corrosion, cracks, and compositional Laboratory.) The ongoing experiments Integration (WCI) Principal Directorate, changes without the need for destructive involve samples of plutonium-239 taken notes that stockpile stewardship has dismantlement. from old weapons and from plutonium-239 enabled the three directors of the DOE One important surveillance tool, called artificially aged to 200 equivalent years at weapons laboratories—now DOE CoLOSSIS (Confined Large Optical present. The tests showed no significant National Nuclear Security Administration Scintillator Screen and Imaging System), is changes in pertinent physical properties 8 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory S&TR July/August 2015 Stockpile Stewardship Samples of naturally and artificially aged plutonium, each 2 or 3 centimeters long, are measured in dilatometry experiments to check for changes in the samples’ volumes over time. Sample holder Plutonium sample such as density and strength. As a result, scientists determined the minimum lifetime for plutonium in existing weapons is at least 85 years. (See S&TR, December 2012, pp. 11–14.) Chemist Pat Allen, the enhanced surveillance deputy program leader who also leads plutonium aging studies, notes samples of plutonium-239 to obtain data use projectiles moving at 8 kilometers that Livermore researchers have gained on its dynamic behavior. These tests are per second to impact plutonium targets a tremendous amount of knowledge about called subcritical experiments because the fabricated at the Superblock. the aging mechanisms of both uranium and configuration and quantities of explosives “We’re just beginning to understand plutonium as well as their static properties.
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