FY 2016 Mid-Year Review Production Support & Management, Technology, and Production (MTP); Feb 23rd -25th, 2016
Washington DC: National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Defense Programs, 2016. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus. Three Ring Binder. Unpaginated, with about 1.5 inches of material. This binder contains Tabs 1 through 7 on Management, Technology and Production (CNS Pantex, CNS Y-12, NSC KC, LANL, LLNL, SNL, and SRS) and Tabs 8 through 13 on Production Support (CNS Pantex, CNS Y-12, NSC KC, LANL, SNL, and SRS), Pencil notes on table of contents (precedes Tab 1). Handwritten notes observed on several pages. Under MTP at Tab 4 LANL there is an additional sheet, unpunched, laid in entitled LANL FY 17 Budget Scenarios: Current Core & Transitional Scope. This work is a compilation of vuegraph presentations. While unmarked on the cover, there is some material marked Official Use Only which it is understood not longer applies since that limitation was almost certainly due to the pre-decisional nature of then upcoming budget decisions. Such decisions were made a number of years ago, such that there can be no fiscal or policy sensitivities remaining. Stockpile stewardship refers to the United States program of reliability testing and 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 27 years old (as of 2020). Aging weapons can fail or act unpredictably in a number of ways: the high explosives that condense 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 confident nuclear deterrent.
Most work for stockpile stewardship is undertaken at United States Department of Energy national laboratories, mostly at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Nevada Test Site, and Department of Energy productions facilities, which employ around 27,500 personnel and cost billions of dollars per year to operate.
The Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program is a United States Department of Energy program to ensure that the nuclear capabilities of the United States are not eroded as nuclear weapons age. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Nuclear Weapons, Defense Programs, NNSA, Nuclear Security Administration, Production Support, MTP, Manufacturing, Technology and Production, Stockpile Stewardship and Management
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