Big Ideas Lab - Stockpile Modernization

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

In the mid-1990s, global treaties and a U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing marked a turning point in reducing the nuclear threat. As Cold War tensions eased, U.S. nuclear test and production sites fell silent for the first time since 1945. But, as the years passed, a new threat to U.S. nuclear deterrence emerged—one that no technology has ever escaped: time.To address this, the U.S. government launched the Stockpile Stewardship Program. This groundbreaking initiative shifted the focus from building new weapons to using cutting-edge science and technology to maintain the nation’s nuclear stockpile. By leveraging advanced, science-based methods, the program ensures the safety, security, and reliability of its aging weapons—all without the need for nuclear testing.Today, we’re taking you behind the scenes of a key component of the Stockpile Stewardship Program: modernization. We’ll explore how this effort works, why it’s essential, and what it means for the future of national security.-- Big Ideas Lab is a Mission.org original series. Executive Produced by Lacey Peace. Sound Design, Music Edit and Mix by Daniel Brunelle. Story Editing by Daniel Brunelle. Audio Engineering and Editing by Matthew Powell. Narrated by Matthew Powell. Video Production by Levi Hanusch. Guests featured in this episode (in order of appearance): Derek Wapman, Associate Deputy Director for Stockpile Modernization at LLNLPeter Raboin, Program Manager for the W80-4 Life Extension Program at LLNLJuliana Hsu, Program Manager for the W87-1 Warhead Modification Program at LLNLBrought to you in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

What if there is a bombing, a bombing that comes without warning? From 1947 to 1991, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a tense geopolitical standoff that shaped much of the modern world. Find cover immediately. Don't look at the flesh. Known as the Cold War, two superpowers built vast arsenals of nuclear weapons designed to deter one another from launching a first strike. Shed your outer garments. They may have radioactive particles on them.

The world, held in a delicate balance by these nuclear deterrents, managed to avoid the catastrophic consequence of nuclear war. Wait for the all clear. With the Cold War's end, many assumed that the nuclear arms race had come to a halt. But what happened next was just as critical. While new nuclear weapons were no longer being produced in the United States, the challenge shifted to ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the weapons that remained. That's where the modern story of the U.S. nuclear stockpile begins. An effort known as Stockpile Stewardship.

Weapon systems are really chemistry experiments on a show. And they have been around for quite a long time. What is your job then? Welcome to the Big Ideas Lab, your weekly exploration inside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hear untold stories, meet boundary pushing pioneers, and get unparalleled access inside the gates. From national security

challenges to computing revolutions, discover the innovations that are shaping tomorrow, today. In the mid-90s, a series of treaties were introduced to reduce the worldwide nuclear threat. Since then, the United States has observed a unilateral moratorium on nuclear explosive testing. With the end of the Cold War and the cessation of testing, US nuclear weapon tests and production sites grew quiet for the first time since 1945.

As the years passed, a new threat to U.S. nuclear deterrence emerged, one that no technology has ever escaped. Time. Originally, the weapons systems that we put into the stockpile, they were supposed to be in about 20 years. And then they would be coming out because new systems would be developed and made and put into the stockpile. That all ended at the end of the Cold War in 1992. Derek Wattman is the Associate Deputy Director for Stockpile Modernization at Lawrence Livermore

National Laboratory. We're continually assessing the health of the systems. So you're looking at our parts degrading because some chemical reaction. So they won't perform or won't perform as designed. Have they completely broken? Is there something that is going to make them no longer safe or no longer secure?

It was with these concerns in mind that the U.S. government, in collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories established a rigorous and ongoing effort to monitor and modernize the U.S. nuclear stockpile. And then there was a transition into the scientific stockpile stewardship program in the 1990s. The stockpile stewardship program represents a critical shift in how the US approaches its nuclear arsenal. Instead of building new weapons,

the program uses science-based methods to monitor and assess the aging weapons in the stockpile, ensuring their safety without the need for nuclear testing. Congressionally mandated nuclear posture review. Operationally deployed. We go through what we call an annual assessment process. And every year, it's an ongoing continual thing.

By regularly evaluating these systems and upgrading components where necessary, the US ensures that its arsenal remains a credible deterrent against modern threats. These aging systems have long surpassed their original intended lifespans, yet remain safe, secure, and effective in a rapidly changing world. There are several ways scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore approach stockpile modernization. The first is by upgrading and retrofitting a weapon system with the latest technology.

For many years, the systems supporting these powerful weapons relied on technology more commonly associated with an earlier era. For instance, until 2019, the DoD's Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile System, an essential component of America's nuclear deterrent, still utilized 8-inch floppy disks in its launch control centers. This hardware, first introduced in the 1970s, remained in use well into the 21st century. The software supporting these systems was built on outdated technology, with much of the command and control infrastructure for nuclear warheads still relying on legacy systems.

However, the shift to modern digital storage represented a significant leap forward, underscoring the need for critical infrastructure to catch up with technological advancements. Another method of stockpile modernization is life extension. These life extension programs, or LEPs, extend the service life of the existing weapon. This may involve refurbishing or replacing parts. Peter Raboan, program manager for one of the

labs life extension programs, gives us an inside look at the LEPs. Most weapons had original lifetimes on the order of about 20 years. They were mostly built in the mid 80s and so around the year 2000 life extension programs really began in earnest and we've been working our way through all of the legacy systems that are in the US stockpile. The W80 warhead, for example, entered the LEP process in 2016, more than 30 years after its introduction. Through these programs, aging components are replaced and the warheads are re-certified, ensuring they remain reliable and safe for an additional

20 years or more. This methodical work is essential to maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent. The W80's turn came up in 2016. So at that point, the weapon was already in its mid-30s. And so that's a long time to expect a nuclear weapon to operate with high reliability, high safety. So the idea is to bring it back out of the stockpile, tear it down, rebuild it, replace those materials which have aged, and replace them with newer materials, and basically then,

after refurbishment, recertify that weapon. We know what nuclear weapons can do in terms of aging and still performing and so now we have lifetime requirements on the order of 30 plus years and so it's designing a weapon to last, this time with the intent of making it last 30 years as opposed to having been fortunate that the designs of 20 years Did manage to survive out to 40 plus years two of the weapons currently undergoing intense modernization programs at Lawrence Livermore are the W80-4 warhead and the W87-1 warhead

The W80-4 will be updated so that it can be paired with a new long-range standoff nuclear-capable cruise missile, the first warhead to be paired with a new delivery system since the end of nuclear testing in 1992. Production of the new W80-4 is a more typical life extension program because there are major components, mainly the nuclear components within the 80, which we are reusing. And so in that sense, we are refurbishing the design, but still using quite a number of the original components of the 80-1. So if you think about that, a weapon made in the early 80s, it's going to have some

parts in it that are going to last for essentially about 70 years. The W87-1 on the other hand is undergoing what's called a modification program. It will be paired with the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. This is the first complete rebuild of a nuclear warhead in that same quarter century time frame. The 87 modification program on the other hand, it's all new parts, but with a lot of design reuse and so they will be making newer versions of the old design. Now there are still lots of areas in refurbishment where the designs can change. It's not 100% refurbishment, but it's pretty close.

An example of that is really for the first time we're using advanced manufacturing, so we're going to have some AM parts that are in the 80-4 and I believe also for the 87. With those advanced manufacturing capabilities, we're able to do some stuff that couldn't be done in the original 80s. The basic design is the same, but the way in which we did the manufacturing has been modernized and improved. Another big hurdle will be reestablishing the capability to manufacture plutonium pits or the cores of nuclear weapons. A pit is that amount of fissile material

that enable the fission energy to be produced. Juliana Hsu is the program manager for the W87-1 Warhead Modification Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It's a very critical component in a nuclear weapon. Pit production is something that the nation's been trying to reestablish for quite some time. When Rocky Flats shut down in the early 90s, we were without a pit production agency.

And Los Alamos has some pit bill capability as a design agency, be able to make a few pits. But it was decided at that time that they could become a design agency, be able to make a few pits. But it was decided at that time that they could become a production agency. So they did make some pits for the W88. But we haven't been in what's called rate production, meaning that you can make some consistent quantity of pits per year.

To be a robust production agency, you need to be able to make pits consistently over time. After the Cold War, the production of nuclear weapons came to a halt, and the U.S. went into preservation mode. Now, decades later, facilities like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are tasked with reestablishing and mastering these systems to ensure the stockpile remains secure and effective. So the end of the Cold War,

what ended up happening is that the whole complex shrunk considerably. The scientific stockpile institution program was intended to really preserve the intellectual capital at the design laboratories because there wasn't a production demand for making parts and making systems and putting them into the stockpile.

We were out of that cycle completely. It was preserve what you have, and then we have to have that intellectual capital in order to assess that the systems that we do have, that they're safe, secure, and they're gonna perform if you ever have to use the things. And as a consequence, a lot of the focus went off the a consequence, a lot of the focus

went off the production plants and a lot of the capability that the production plants had either shrank or just completely disappeared. Rebuilding and replacing aged materials followed by the refurbishment and recertification of nuclear weapons ensures that these systems can continue to perform reliably for an additional 30 years or more.

This shift towards designing weapons with longer lifespans reflects an ongoing battle against the relentless passage of time, not only in maintaining the physical hardware, but also in preserving the critical expertise needed to sustain these systems. The other aspect is the human side of the equation is that when I came a long time ago, hiring was going on. But the number of us that were hired was like a drop in an ocean because you had a very experienced cadre of people, engineers, scientists, technicians, administrative staff, operations people just keeping the plant, the facility functioning at the laboratory. This is true at Los Alamos, Sandia, all the plants. You had very experienced people, people from there who had been there probably since, in

some cases, from the 1950s and 1960s. That's not the case today at all. As the weapons age, so too does the workforce that once brought them to life. During the peak of nuclear development, labs like Los Alamos and Livermore were filled with experts whose deep experience was integral to sustaining the nuclear arsenal. Now as many of these pioneers retire, the gap in expertise grows more pronounced, making the need for developing new talent increasingly urgent. The situation for Livermore, it's not any different than any of the other sites, is that certainly within engineering, 50% of the people that we've hired have less than

five years experience. And what compounds the challenge is that the number of senior people who are experienced, particularly putting things into the stockpile, is not very large. And every site is challenged in this regard. Now, part of it is just the nature of how the program kind of evolved in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.

These internal challenges come at a time when the global landscape is becoming increasingly volatile. As the U.S. grapples with the loss of experienced scientists and the need for modernization, it also faces growing external pressures from nuclear powers like China and Russia. The evolving capabilities of these adversaries underscores the critical importance of maintaining a robust and credible nuclear deterrent. We have been basically doing life extension programs for the deterrent about three decades now and also the warhead was designed much longer before that. As the world evolved, our adversaries had increased their capabilities and so for our deterrent to continue to work, we also

need to modernize our capabilities. And since the cessation of testing, what's happened is that we haven't been modernizing either our delivery platforms or the warheads. So it's been a long time coming and then with the world as it is today, it's not getting any safer. In 2023, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States issued a critical report warning that the nation is on the brink of facing two formidable nuclear peers, Russia and China. The report emphasized that maintaining a fully operational and ready nuclear arsenal is not just important, but an absolute priority for national security.

It's a consensus report, a mix of liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, is disconcerting in a lot of ways. And so it's really a motivator. Our nuclear deterrent is very important for the safety of the country, for the nation. We have to make sure our nuclear deterrent works, our warhead works, and we have the platform to deliver them. For any of us who are doing this, they are the absolute last resort that everything else has failed. And it is really intended that we have some way of protecting the country and our allies. You've got this almost perfect storm of a lot of challenges coming together all at one

time, particularly now when you look at the geopolitical threat that the country is under and how that is driving things in a very, very different way. The passage of time can turn even the most powerful weapons into significant liabilities if they are not properly maintained. As weapons like the W80 and W87 approach their original service lives, the necessity for programs and people to extend the life of and modernize these weapons grows. And as other global powers continue to expand

and modernize their own nuclear capabilities, the US must not fall behind. We're recognizing there's an urgency, recognizing what we need to do to have a viable deterrent. And my hope is that we keep at it. And if it were easy, we would be doing it. Even though at the moment it feels hard, we'd be better for it. Despite the countless challenges, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is committed

to its core mission of stockpile stewardship, ensuring that our nuclear deterrent remains a cornerstone of our national security for generations to come. Thank you for tuning in to Big Ideas Lab. If you loved what you heard, please let us know by leaving a rating and review. And if you haven't already, don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to keep up with our latest episode. Thanks for listening.