Problems continue with efforts to refurbish the W76. According the LA Times, when the NNSA said in February
[the] first refurbished W76 nuclear warhead had been accepted into the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile by the Navy
what they actually meant was that
a federal council had decided to accept the final design of the weapon and therefore it was technically a part of the stockpile.
Technical interpretation of words aside, the important thing is that
No delivery was ever made. The warhead is in pieces inside a production cell at the Energy Department’s Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, according to an engineer at the facility.
You’d think after a couple of months the Navy would get fed up when the UPS package tracker reads “Amarillo, TX” day after day. In all seriousness, this should start to raise some more eyebrows. Former LLNL Deputy Director Philip Coyle’s remarks were pretty reserved:
I wouldn’t say the deterrent has been affected at all . . .It is, however, a reminder that expertise about nuclear weapons is a precious thing and needs to be maintained.
but the experiences of the B61 and W76 refurbishment have shown that while many consider the LEP and SSP successful programs, problems will arise. Are they fixable? Probably. But as costs overruns add up and delays continue to lengthen, the daunting task of refurbishing large parts of the arsenal become increasingly difficult, particularly when reliability demands will be even higher as number rare reduced. In many respects, this is a personnel issue. All facets of the nuclear world, but particularly the technical side, need the best at the brightest folks devoting their time and brainpower to figure out how to tackle these very complex problems that lie ahead. The drive to find these people has inevitably turned to younger people who will fill-in for the quickly retiring generation. Examples include Joe Cirincione’s talk at the Elliot School and Douglas Shaw’s recent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article. These efforts to invigorate nuclear enthusiasm are important but it should be explicitly stated there has to be an emphasis on the science side. While there is a great deal of thinking that needs to be done about understanding how nuclear weapons should work in the security environment, how to negotiate new arms control treaties, etc., most of this is irrelevant if we lose the technical capabilities to maintain a safe, secure, and effective deterrent for the time being while working on the hard science to figure out how to effectively pursue drastic reductions, perhaps ultimately leading to zero. The best and the brightest scientists need to feel that working on nuclear weapons is not a fading and irrelevant field that provides much less job security than working on hip issues like climate change. Nukes are back on the agenda in a big way but personnel needs to reflect that.