Morbius said:
Clearly the net result is still that whether because of treaty or domestic political consensus, nuclear weapons development in the US has ceased. Stockpile integrity assurance is ongoing, but not new weapons design. The possibility of nuclear shaped charges for instance, which would allow even very deeply buried targets to be held at risk, is left unexplored, as is the potential for nuclear devices that can function without a a-bomb trigger.
Imho, the retreat from aggressive nuclear research has robbed the country of the knowledge and skills needed to effectively address current problems, notably our energy situation, while wasting our most educated technical talents rebuilding museum pieces.
etudiant,
I would have to strongly disagree with your contention that nuclear weapons development has ceased, as well as your characterization that the weapons scientists are "rebuilding museum pieces".
An instructive analogy would be to look at the current and past offerings of airliners from their manufacturer Boeing. I would ask that you compare the Boeing 737-100 model first built in 1966 to the current Boeing 737-900ER. The Boeing 737-100 had low-bypass P&W JT8D engines with 14,500 lbs of thrust, while the Boeing 737-900ER has modern high-bypass turbofans engines, the CFM56-7 series with 27,300 lbs of thrust.
If you looked into the cockpit of a Boeing 737-100, you would see 1960s vintage avionics with analog gauges. If you look into the cockpit of a Boeing 737-900ER, you would see a 21st century "glass cockpit" with digital display screens and advanced 21st century avionics which resemble what one would see in the latest Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 models.
The Boeing 737-100 has 650 cubic feet of cargo capacity, while the Boeing 737-900ER has 1,835 cubic feet. The range of the Boeing 737-100 was 1540 nautical miles while the Boeing 737-900ER has a range of 5,510 nautical miles.
All in all; the Boeing 737-900ER is a
VERY DIFFERENT and
MUCH MORE ADVANCED aircraft than is the Boeing 737-100; yet they are both members of the Boeing 737 family. Boeing didn't change the family number, but that's about all they didn't change.
The Boeing 737-900ER is every bit as modern an aircraft as its Boeing 777 stablemates. Do you really think one could intelligently characterize a Boeing 737-900ER as a "rebuilt museum piece 737"? I wouldn't think so.
Your statement about "nuclear shaped charges" demonstrates that you understand very little about shaped charges as well as nuclear explosives. LLNL which designs nuclear weapons, also designs coventional shaped charges as used in military weapons. Here's an article from LLNL that can give you some background:
https://www.llnl.gov/str/Baum.html
One doesn't need shaped charge technology to attack deeply buried targets with nuclear warheads. The shaped charge approach really isn't appropriate or needed. The nuclear weapons designer has various techniques to "couple" the blast into a shockwave in the ground material, and that shockwave will take care of destroying deeply buried targets. For example, consider the B61-11:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b61-11.htm
The B61-11 can penetrate and detonate below the Earth's surface, creating a massive shock wave capable of destroying underground targets. In tests the bomb penetrates only 20 feet into dry earth, even when dropped from altitudes above 40,000 feet. But even this shallow penetration before detonation allows a much higher proportion of the explosion to transferred into ground shock relative to a surface burst.
I also wouldn't lump the current R&D efforts in the area of nuclear weapons in with the R&D efforts for energy research into one "zero sum game" and imply that efforts in the weapons arena neccessarily detracts from efforts in energy research.
In fact, the nuclear weapons research and nuclear energy research are carried out at separate laboratories, managed by differing parts of DOE, and with different budgets. For example, nuclear weapons research is carried out by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, which are managed by the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) in the Dept. of Energy using funds allocated by Congress for the nuclear weapons mission. Nuclear reactor and nuclear energy research was carried out by Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories, managed by the DOE Office of Science with funds allocated by Congress for energy R&D.
The action that really killed the Government's nuclear energy R&D was when the Clinton Administration terminated the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) work at Argonne National Lab back in 1994 as detailed in this 1998 interview with Argonne Associate Director, Dr. Charles Till:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html
The decision was made in the early weeks of the Clinton administration. It was tempered somewhat in the Department of Energy in that first year. Congress then acted to keep the program alive in that first year. And then in the second year of the Clinton administration, the decision to really reinforce the earlier decisions was made final, and the Administration put a very considerable effort into assuring successfully that the IFR would be canceled.
and
Let me answer the question this way. Nuclear power for very many years was not a party proposition. There was bipartisan support for the development of nuclear power. That changed in and around the 1976. It was certainly changed dramatically during the Carter Administration, from '76 to '80. The Reagan administration was supportive of nuclear power development, but not madly so. They supported a continued effort, probably at a level of something like 10 or 20% of the effort that had been carried out in the country a decade or so before. That was also true of the Bush administration. The Clinton administration, I think, firmed up quite an anti-nuclear power position. The position of the administration is that present day reactors are supported, but that there is no need for any further nuclear reactor development or improvement. And the implications of that are that nuclear power then will be a passing thing.
President Clinton made good on his campaign promise to the anti-nuclear wing of the Democratic Party to terminate "unneccessary" nuclear energy research. When one does that, one devastates the scientific infrastructure that had been built up over the preceeding decades. If you terminate the research for even one year, you destroy the infrastructure since the scientists that the USA painstakingly assembled in laboratories such as Argonne had to disband and go find jobs elsewhere. Even if the minority party were able to reconstitute the funding the next year; that doesn't mean it reconstitutes the program. The disbanded scienctists aren't going to come back with no guarantee that they won't be out of jobs the next year.
Scientists and engineers used to be able to go to work in the federally-funded R&D enterprise of the DOE national laboratories, or NASA, or any of a number of defense and civillian contractors, as well as Universities; and those scientists could count on spending a career advancing their profession.
Now it seems that the scientists and engineers who are the "seed corn" for our evolving development are the first thing the politicians cut off when money gets tight. They also expect that scientists can work on the newest "fad" that fits the politician's fancy. If last year's fad was solar power and this year's fad is wind turbines, and next year's fad is geothermal; then it's all the same to the politicians, if they even support it at all.
Rather than support scientists and engineers, which I would consider as
investing in the future of the Nation, the politicians prefer to give money away as a more efficient way of
buying the votes that the politicians so ravenously desire.
Believe me; nuclear weapons research and defense development are
NOT the reason for the lack of energy research.
Greg