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Center for Unconventional Weapons Studies (CUWS) Outreach Journal Issue No. 1312 27 April 2018 // USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1312 // Feature Report “Sustaining the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent: The LRSO and GBSD”. Written by Mark Gunzinger, Carl Rehberg, and Gillian Evans. Published by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments; April 11, 2018 http://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/CSBA6318-GBSD_LRSO_Report_web.pdf Executive Summary The ability to launch a retaliatory strike in response to a nuclear aggressor has long underpinned the strategic deterrence posture of the United States. Since the 1960s, a complementary set of capabilities known as the nuclear triad has enabled this strategy. The United States developed this triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), long-range bombers, and nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) during the Cold War primarily to deter nuclear attacks by the Soviet Union. The U.S. ICBM force of approximately 400 Minuteman III missiles deployed to underground launch silos located in five states continues to provide the capability to respond rapidly to a nuclear first strike on the United States. Dispersing this force across such a large area makes it more difficult for an enemy to launch a preemptive nuclear strike with high confidence that it will destroy all operational U.S. ICBMs. The U.S. nuclear-capable bomber force, which now consists of B-52Hs and B-2s, is the most visible and flexible leg of the triad and is survivable once generated. During a crisis or conflict, these bombers could be used to signal U.S. resolve, disperse to distant locations to avoid a potential attack, and hold at risk a wide variety of targets. The Navy’s fleet of Ohio-class SSBNs, which can sortie and disperse at sea, is the most survivable leg of the triad and provides the redundancy that helps assure the United States has a second- strike capability. Although the Soviet Union is a relic of the past, the continued threat of nuclear attack by a great power or a rogue state is a major reason why every U.S. administration since the end of the Cold War has validated the need to maintain a safe, secure, and credible triad. Russia maintains a stockpile of approximately 4,300 nuclear warheads and continues to adhere to military doctrine that indicates in might be willing to use nuclear weapons to coerce an adversary and prevail in a conventional conflict. Both Russia and China are funding multiple programs to modernize their nuclear arsenals, and the proliferation of nuclear weapon and missile technologies has allowed North Korea to fast-track the development of an offensive nuclear capability. Today, a total of nine states have nuclear weapons, and it is possible that additional aspirants, such as Iran, could field nuclear weapons in the not-too- distant future. To deter these threats and promote stability in an increasingly uncertain security environment, the United States will continue to need a triad that provides “flexible, adaptable, and resilient” capabilities and forces. twitter.com/USAF_CUWS | cuws.au.af.mil // 2 // USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1312 // TABLE OF CONTENTS US NUCLEAR WEAPONS America's Nuclear Headache: Old Plutonium with Nowhere to Go EPA Letter: Several Studies Needed Before MOX Alternative Can Move Forward B-21 Bomber Finishes Preliminary Design Review, and Air Force Official is 'Comfortable' with Progress US COUNTER-WMD Experts Say AI Could Raise the Risks of Nuclear War Air Force to Start Transforming Tankers into WC-135 ‘Nuke Sniffers’ This Year SLU Expert Discusses Future of Testing and Treating Chlorine Gas Attacks Inside the Secret U.S. Stockpile Meant to Save Us All in a Bioterror Attack Raytheon Tapped for Air and Missile Defense Radar Program Here’s Why Putting a Missile Defense System in Space Could Be a Bad Idea US ARMS CONTROL Trump and France’s Macron Disagree on the Iran Deal. Here’s Why Europe Wants to Keep It. Top UN Official Warns of Rise in Threats of Nuclear Weapons Being Used US and Russian Nuclear Arsenals Set to Be Unchecked for First Time Since 1972 For Nuclear Weapons Reduction, a Way to Verify without Revealing ASIA/PACIFIC Key Steps in North Korea’s Weapons Development North Korea's Kim Jong Un: No More Need to Test Missiles, Nukes Three Things to Watch from the PACOM’s (Likely) Next Commander EUROPE/RUSSIA Eurofighter Doesn't Expect U.S. to Use Nuclear Certification to Tilt German Jets Bid Russia Ramps Up Pressure on Trump to Honor Iran Nuclear Deal MIDDLE EAST Pulling Out from N-Deal to Burden Dire Consequences on US: Zarif International Inspection Vehicles Arrive at Site of Syria Chemical Weapons Attack COMMENTARY Reagan’s Missile Defense Wisdom Extends to Today’s GMD Capability North Korea Is Not De-Nuclearizing North Korea’s Nuclear Test Freeze: Practical as Much as Political America’s Endangered Nuclear Deterrent: The Case for Funding Two Critical Capabilities Why Does Russia Build So Many Doomsday Weapons? Denuclearization Again? Lessons from Ukraine’s Decision to Disarm twitter.com/USAF_CUWS | cuws.au.af.mil // 3 // USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1312 // US NUCLEAR WEAPONS Reuters (New York, N.Y.) America's Nuclear Headache: Old Plutonium with Nowhere to Go By Scot J. Paltrow April 20, 2018 AMARILLO, Texas (Reuters) - In a sprawling plant near Amarillo, Texas, rows of workers perform by hand one of the most dangerous jobs in American industry. Contract workers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pantex facility gingerly remove the plutonium cores from retired nuclear warheads. Although many safety rules are in place, a slip of the hand could mean disaster. In Energy Department facilities around the country, there are 54 metric tons of surplus plutonium. Pantex, the plant near Amarillo, holds so much plutonium that it has exceeded the 20,000 cores, called “pits,” regulations allow it to hold in its temporary storage facility. There are enough cores there to cause thousands of megatons of nuclear explosions. More are added each day. The delicate, potentially deadly dismantling of nuclear warheads at Pantex, while little noticed, has grown increasingly urgent to keep the United States from exceeding a limit of 1,550 warheads permitted under a 2010 treaty with Russia. The United States wants to dismantle older warheads so that it can substitute some of them with newer, more lethal weapons. Russia, too, is building new, dangerous weapons. The United States has a vast amount of deadly plutonium, which terrorists would love to get their hands on. Under another agreement, Washington and Moscow each are required to render unusable for weapons 34 metric tons of plutonium. The purpose is twofold: keep the material out of the hands of bad guys, and eliminate the possibility of the two countries themselves using it again for weapons. An Energy Department website says the two countries combined have 68 metric tons designated for destruction - enough to make 17,000 nuclear weapons. But the United States has no permanent plan for what to do with its share. Plutonium must be made permanently inaccessible because it has a radioactive half-life of 24,000 years. “A MUCH MORE DANGEROUS SITUATION” Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy group based in Washington, says solving the problem of plutonium storage is urgent. In an increasingly unstable world, with terrorism, heightened international tensions and non-nuclear countries coveting the bomb, he says, the risk is that this metal of mass annihilation will be used again. William Potter, director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told Reuters: “We are in a much more dangerous situation today than we were in the Cold War.” Washington has not even begun to take the steps needed to acquire additional space for burying plutonium more than 2,000 feet below ground - the depth considered safe. Much of America’s plutonium currently is stored in a building at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina - like Pantex, an Energy Department site. Savannah River used to house a reactor. Local opponents of the storage, such as Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch, contend the facility was never built for twitter.com/USAF_CUWS | cuws.au.af.mil // 4 // USAFCUWS Outreach Journal Issue 1312 // holding plutonium and say there is a risk of leakage and accidents in which large amounts of radioactivity are released. The Energy Department has a small experimental storage site underground in New Mexico. The department controls the radioactive materials - plutonium, uranium and tritium - used in America’s nuclear weapons and in the reactors of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. In a Senate hearing in June 2017, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the Energy Department has been in talks with New Mexico officials to enlarge the site. Environmental groups there have strongly opposed expansion. Under an agreement with Russia, the United States was to convert 34 metric tons of plutonium into fuel for civilian reactors that generate electricity. The fuel is known as MOX, for “mixed oxide fuel.” Plutonium and uranium are converted into chemical compounds called oxides, and mixed together in fuel rods for civilian nuclear power plants. The two metals are converted into oxides because these can’t cause nuclear explosions. But the U.S. effort has run into severe delays and cost overruns. The alternative method is known as dilute-and-dispose. It involves blending plutonium with an inert material and storing it in casks. The casks, however, are projected to last only 50 years before beginning to leak, and so would need to be buried permanently deep underground. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nukes-plutonium-specialreport/americas-nuclear- headache-old-plutonium-with-nowhere-to-go-idUSKBN1HR1KC Return to top Aiken Standard (Aiken, S.C.) EPA Letter: Several Studies Needed Before MOX Alternative Can Move Forward By Colin Demarest April 18, 2018 The U.S.
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