Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program; Maintaining Confidence in the Safety and Reliability of the Enduring U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile
Washington, DC: United States, Department of Energy, Office of Defense Programs, 1995. Presumed first edition/first printing. Wraps. iii, [1], 20 pages. Boxes. Figures. Glossary. No dust jacket as issued. This report outlines the Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program. It summarizes the technical issues that needed to be addressed and the enhanced capabilities and facilities needed for the program. The program strategic included the preparation of a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement under the National Environmental Policy Act to address the environmental impacts associated with the proposed program and a range of reasonable alternatives. In the judgment of the Department of Energy, the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program was essential if the nation was to properly safeguard its nuclear weapons and maintain and unquestioned nuclear deterrent. Stockpile stewardship refers to the United States program of reliability testing, viability, certification, and the maintenance of its nuclear weapons without the use of nuclear testing. Because no new nuclear weapons have been developed by the United States since 1992, even its youngest weapons are at least 32 years old (as of 2025). Aging weapons can fail or act unpredictably in a number of ways: the high explosives that compress their fissile material can chemically degrade, their electronic components can suffer from decay, their radioactive plutonium/uranium cores are potentially unreliable, and the isotopes used by thermonuclear weapons may be chemically unstable as well. Since the United States has also not tested nuclear weapons since 1992, this leaves the task of its stockpile maintenance resting on the use of simulations (using non-nuclear explosives tests and supercomputers, among other methods) and applications of scientific knowledge about physics and chemistry to the specific problems of weapons aging (the latter method is what is meant when various agencies refer to their work as "science-based"). It also involves the manufacture of additional plutonium "pits" to replace ones of unknown quality, and finding other methods to increase the lifespan of existing warheads and maintain a credible nuclear deterrent. Most work for stockpile stewardship is undertaken at United States Department of Energy national laboratories, mostly at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the Nevada Test Site (NTS), and the Department of Energy's other productions facilities, which employ around 27,500 personnel and cost billions of dollars per year to operate. Nuclear weapon related facilities have been deemed necessary under the program since President Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996,[5][6] but the United States Senate never ratified the CTBT. Later, President Barack Obama initiated a wide range and a broad effort to modernize the United States nuclear weapons program, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will require approximately $494 billion to complete. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Nuclear Weapons, Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, SSMP, Nuclear Testing, Enhanced Surveillance, Dismantlement, Contained Firing, Hydrotest, Aboveground experiments, Nondestructive Evaluation, Tritium Production
[Book #63252]
Price: $75.00