Jay Davis, the former director of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency from 1998 to 2001 has spoken out against an editorial in Nature that called for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program (RRW) to be abandoned.
Davis points out that although the plutonium pits that are at the heart of the US nuclear warheads have a predicted lifetime of 40 to 80 years, "the thousands of non-nuclear components in the pit's environment are less stable" and that some parts and materials no longer exist due to environmental and safety regulations.
"The proposed RRW was designed using nuclear systems that were more robust and had higher margins against failure, thus relaxing the stress on new non-nuclear systems intended for replacement and future production."
"It is not a stalking horse for nuclear testing but would increase military and congressional confidence in weapons performance," he says.
Davis also points out that the US is not the only nuclear power planning or working on modernizing its stockpile—the UK, France, Russia, and China all have programs in place to do so.
Gerald E. Marsh, who wrote a piece on non-proliferation for the American Physical Society's Forum on Physics and Society two years ago, argues an opposing view.
"Existing nuclear weapons are already very reliable and their safety features are adequate," he says, and the concern over having an untested weapon in the stockpile will increase the pressure to conduct a nuclear test, he adds.
Paul Guinnessy
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