Order Code RL32929
CRS Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable
Replacement Warhead Program
Updated March 9, 2006
Jonathan Medalia
Specialist in National Defense
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress

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Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable
Replacement Warhead Program
Summary
Most current U.S. nuclear warheads were built in the 1980s, and are being
retained longer than was planned. Yet warheads deteriorate and must be maintained.
To correct problems, a Life Extension Program (LEP) replaces components.
Modifying some components would require a nuclear test, but a test moratorium is
in effect. Therefore, LEP rebuilds these components as closely as possible to original
specifications. Using this approach, the Secretaries of Defense and Energy have
certified stockpile safety and reliability for the past nine years without nuclear testing.
In the FY2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act, Congress provided $9 million
to initiate the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. RRW will study
trading off key Cold War features such as high yield and low weight to gain features
more valuable now, such as lower cost, greater ease of manufacture, and increased
long-term confidence. It plans to make these improvements by redesigning warheads
without adding military capability. Representative David Hobson, RRW’s main
sponsor, views RRW as part of a comprehensive plan that would also modernize the
nuclear weapons complex, avoid new weapons and nuclear testing, and permit a
reduction in non-deployed weapons. The FY2006 budget request was $9.4 million;
Congress appropriated $25.0 million. The FY2007 request is $27.7 million.
RRW supporters assert LEP will become harder to sustain for the long term as
small changes accumulate, making it harder to certify warhead reliability and safety
and perhaps requiring nuclear testing. Supporters believe RRW will enable design
of replacement components for existing warheads that will be easier to manufacture
and certify without nuclear testing, and will permit the military to eliminate many
non-deployed warheads it maintains, at high cost, to hedge against potential warhead
or geopolitical problems. Skeptics believe LEP and related programs can maintain
the stockpile indefinitely. They worry that RRW’s changes may reduce confidence
and make a return to testing more likely. They question cost savings; even if RRW
could lower operations and maintenance cost, its investment cost would be high.
They are concerned that RRW could be used to build new weapons that would
require testing. They note that there are no military requirements for new weapons.
At issue for Congress is which approach — LEP, RRW, some combination, or
something else — will best maintain the nuclear stockpile indefinitely. RRW also
bears on other issues of interest to Congress: new weapons development, nuclear
testing, restructuring the nuclear weapons complex, cost of nuclear programs, and
nuclear nonproliferation. Congress has supported the RRW program, and NNSA and
others have begun to implement it; a competition to design an RRW is underway.
New updates to this report include opponents’ views of RRW, possible
questions for opponents, why DOD procedures to maintain warheads are costly (see
“Will RRW Save Money?”), several policy options for Congress, final action on the
FY2006 request, the FY2007 request, and details on implementing RRW. This
report will be updated.

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Contents
Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Issue Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Congress, Nuclear Policy, and RRW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Need to Maintain Nuclear Warheads for the Long Term . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Solution So Far: The Life Extension Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Is LEP Satisfactory for the Long Term? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
RRW and the Transformation of Nuclear Warheads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Yield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Performance, Schedule, and Cost Tradeoffs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Skill Development and Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Skeptics’ Views of RRW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Opponents’ Views of RRW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Issues and Questions for Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Are the Surveillance Program and LEP Sufficient to Maintain
the Stockpile? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Is RRW Needed in Order to Provide New Military Capabilities? . . . . 24
Might RRW Permit a Reduction in Warhead Numbers? . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Will RRW Save Money? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
How Might RRW Affect the Nuclear Weapons Complex? . . . . . . . . . 30
Might RRW Undermine U.S. Nonproliferation Efforts? . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Might LEP or RRW Lead to Nuclear Testing? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Might RRW Enable an Increase In Inherent Warhead Security? . . . . . 36
Might RRW Enable an Increase In Warhead Safety? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Might RRW Reduce Adverse Consequences of Aging? . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Might RRW Enable Reduced Use of Hazardous Materials? . . . . . . . . 39
Policy Options for Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Congressional Action on the FY2006 RRW Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
The FY2007 RRW Request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Implementing RRW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Appendix: Nuclear Weapons and the Nuclear Weapons Complex . . . . . . . . . . 54

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Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable
Replacement Warhead Program
Background
Issue Definition
Nuclear warhead components deteriorate with age. Without periodic
maintenance, warheads might not detonate as intended or might fail to meet safety,
security, and other requirements. Congress is considering alternate ways to maintain
the nuclear stockpile for the long term. The current method, the Life Extension
Program (LEP), replaces deteriorated components. Some components, such as the
outer casing or certain electronics, can be modified confidently without nuclear
testing. For current weapons, modifying components that directly produce a nuclear
explosion would require testing, but a nuclear test moratorium, in effect since 1992,
forecloses that route. Instead, LEP replaces such components with ones that are
newly produced using original designs and, insofar as possible, original materials.
As discussed below, Congress created a program, Reliable Replacement
Warhead (RRW), in the FY2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act, P.L. 108-447, to
study a new approach to maintaining warheads over the long term. RRW would
redesign components to be easier to manufacture, among other characteristics. (See
“Implementing RRW,” below, for the current relationship between study and design.)
The Nuclear Weapons Council, a joint Department of Defense (DOD)-Department
of Energy (DOE) organization that oversees nuclear weapons activities, views RRW
as the foundation of a plan to transform the nuclear weapons enterprise to one with
a smaller yet more capable production base and far fewer spare warheads. At issue
for Congress is how best to maintain the nuclear stockpile and its supporting
infrastructure for the long term. A decision on this issue is important because,
through it, Congress may affect the characteristics of U.S. nuclear forces; their ability
to carry out their assigned missions; perceptions of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation
policy; the capabilities and modernization of the nuclear weapons complex; and the
nuclear weapons budget.
Many find RRW to be confusing because it is a new program and descriptions
of it have changed. To provide a clearer understanding of what RRW seeks to
achieve, this report (1) describes the current LEP and difficulties ascribed to it by its
critics; (2) shows how post-Cold War changes in constraints may open opportunities
to improve long-term warhead maintenance and reach other goals; (3) describes
RRW and its pros and cons; and (4) presents issues, questions, and options for
Congress. The report tracks action on the FY2006 and FY2007 requests, and
describes implementation of RRW. A brief appendix describes nuclear weapon
design and operation, and the nuclear weapons complex. This report does not

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consider the larger questions of the desirability of retaining U.S. nuclear weapons or
the strategic uses and values of such weapons.
A note on terminology: RRW is in the early stages of study. It has not
produced any hardware. This report refers to “RRW components” and “RRW
warheads” as shorthand for components that might be developed under RRW, and
warheads incorporating RRW components.
Congress, Nuclear Policy, and RRW
Congress has been involved with nuclear weapons issues since the Manhattan
Project of World War II,1 addressing issues ranging from strategy and doctrine to
force structure and operations.
In the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for FY2001 (P.L.
106-398), section 1041, Congress directed the Administration to undertake a Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR). This review, which the Administration presented to
Congress in January 2002, set forth a new view of the role of nuclear weapons in
U.S. defense policy.2 It recognized that the strategic relationship with Russia had
changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War, and that new and poorly-defined
threats could emerge. Accordingly, it called for a change in the nuclear posture from
one based on countering a specific threat from the Soviet Union to one that would
have a set of capabilities to counter a range of potential future threats, such as the
increasing use by potential adversaries of hardened and deeply buried facilities.
These capabilities were unified in a “New Triad.” Beginning in the early 1960s, the
United States had a “triad” of nuclear forces — bombers, land-based intercontinental
ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The New Triad
included (1) offensive strike capabilities, which combined the “old” nuclear triad
with precision strike conventional forces; (2) missile defenses; and (3) an industrial
infrastructure, nuclear and nonnuclear, responsive to DOD’s needs.
The Administration has indicated that it welcomes a dialog with Congress on
broad nuclear policy.3 At the same time, Congress has tended to focus on several
1 Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson, Jr., A History of the United States Atomic Energy
Commission: Volume I, The New World, 1939/1946 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1962), pp. 289-290, discusses the handling of appropriations for the
project.
2 The NPR was prepared in classified form; DOD provided unclassified briefing slides and
an unclassified briefing on it. For the briefing, see J.D. Crouch, Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security Policy, U.S. Department of Defense, Special Briefing on
the Nuclear Posture Review, Jan. 9, 2002, at [http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2002/
t01092002_t0109npr.html]. For the slides, see U.S. Department of Defense, “Findings of
the Nuclear Posture Review,” Jan. 9, 2002, at [http://www.defenselink.mil/news/
Jan2002/020109-D-6570C-001.pdf]. See also CRS Report RL31623, U.S. Nuclear
Weapons: Changes in Policy and Force Structure, by Amy Woolf.
3 In a prepared statement to Congress, General James Cartwright, USMC, said: “And
finally, as an element of our role as steward of the nation’s strategic nuclear capabilities, we
(continued...)

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specific issues. In the FY2005 budget cycle, for example, it focused on the Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), often called the “bunker buster,” a study to
determine if an existing nuclear bomb could be modified to penetrate the ground
before exploding to increase its effectiveness against buried targets. Congress also
considered the Advanced Concepts Initiative (ACI), a program to study nuclear
weapon-related technologies.4
In debate on FY2005 defense authorization bills, the House and Senate defeated
amendments to terminate RNEP and ACI, leaving the full amount requested, $27.6
million for RNEP and $9.0 million for ACI, in the FY2005 National Defense
Authorization Act (P.L. 108-375). In contrast, the House Appropriations
Committee’s energy and water bill eliminated funding for both programs at the
urging of Representative David Hobson, Chairman of the House Appropriations
Committee’s Energy and Water Development Subcommittee. That subcommittee
has jurisdiction over the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which
operates the nuclear weapons program. This position was not challenged on the
House floor. The Senate Appropriations Committee did not report an energy and
water bill for FY2005. Conferees on the FY2005 Consolidated Appropriations Act
(P.L. 108-447), which included energy and water provisions, followed the House
position on RNEP and ACI and, at the urging of Representative Hobson, transferred
all ACI funds to RRW, a new program created by the bill. The entire description of
RRW in the conference report was a “program to improve the reliability, longevity,
and certifiability of existing weapons and their components.”5
3 (...continued)
need you to ... [c]onsider a new national dialogue on nuclear policy.” Statement of General
James E. Cartwright, USMC, Commander, United States Strategic Command, before the
Senate Armed Services Committee, Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Strategic Forces and
Nuclear Weapons Issues in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year
2006, Apr. 4, 2005, pp. 15-16. NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks, in a prepared statement
to Congress, said, “The Administration is eager to work with the Congress to forge a broad
consensus on an approach to stockpile and infrastructure transformation.” “Statement of
Ambassador Linton F. Brooks, Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration,
U.S. Department of Energy, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee
on Strategic Forces,” Apr. 4, 2005, p. 7. (Hereafter cited as Brooks statement to Senate
Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005.)
4 For history and technology of these programs, see CRS Report RL32130, Nuclear Weapon
Initiatives: Low-Yield R&D, Advanced Concepts, Earth Penetrators, Test Readiness, by
Jonathan Medalia. For the current situation with RNEP, see CRS Report RL32347, “Bunker
Busters”: Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator Issues, FY2005 and FY2006, by Jonathan
Medalia.
5 U.S. Congress, Committee of Conference, Making Appropriations for Foreign Operations,
Export Financing, and Related Programs for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2005,
and For Other Purposes, report to accompany H.R. 4818, 108th Cong., 2nd Sess., 2004,
H.Rept. 108-792, reprinted in U.S. Congress, Congressional Record, Nov. 19, 2004, Book
II: H10556.

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Consistent with congressional action, NNSA requested $9.351 million for RRW
for FY2006.6 Like the description in the conference report, the request took a narrow
view of RRW, stating that the program “is to demonstrate the feasibility of
developing reliable replacement components that are producible and certifiable for
the existing stockpile. The initial focus will be to provide cost and schedule efficient
replacement pits [see Appendix] that can be certified without Underground Tests.”7
Based on such statements, and on discussions with adherents of various points
of view, it appears that RRW can be described as follows:
RRW is a new congressionally-mandated program. Under it, the National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will conduct a two-year study
beginning in FY2005 to determine if a new philosophy for refurbishing nuclear
warheads to reflect current constraints and opportunities can lead to a process for
manufacturing warheads and certifying their performance. It appears that this
process has as its direct goal the manufacture, within a decade, of new-design
replacement warhead components using best modern manufacturing practices to
give future nuclear weapon designers and manufacturers increased confidence,
without nuclear testing, in their ability to maintain warheads so that they will
perform as intended over the long term. Other goals include increased ease of
manufacture and certification, increased responsiveness to possible future
military requirements, reduced life cycle cost, reduced likelihood of nuclear
testing, increased weapon safety and security, and increased responsiveness to
environmental, safety, and health concerns.
To achieve these goals, RRW would make several key tradeoffs, sacrificing
(assuming Department of Defense approval) warhead characteristics important
during the Cold War but less so now, such as weight, size, yield, and efficiency.
The main difference between RRW and the current approach to stockpile
maintenance, the Life Extension Program (LEP), is one of an underlying
philosophy. Under RRW, NNSA would make changes to weapon components,
including those in the nuclear explosive package in an effort to attain the
foregoing goals. Under LEP, NNSA makes changes chiefly to maintain
weapons, and in particular minimizes changes to the nuclear explosive package.
Most of the changes under RRW probably could be made under LEP. However,
they probably would not be because LEP strives to hold changes to a minimum.
6 To clarify a point of confusion, the FY2006 NNSA budget request shows an aggregate
request for FY2006-FY2010 of $97.1 million. NNSA had insufficient time between
December 8, 2004, when P.L. 108-375 was signed, and Feb. 7, 2004, when the budget
request was sent to Congress, to prepare a detailed program and cost estimate. Further,
Congress had directed that NNSA transfer ACI funds to RRW for FY2005. Accordingly,
NNSA relabeled the ACI budget line as RRW. Thus the $97.1 million should be viewed as
a placeholder, not an estimate. Note: budget figures are from U.S. Department of Energy,
Office of Management, Budget, and Evaluation/CFO, FY2006 Congressional Budget
Request, vol. I, National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/ME-0046, Feb. 2005, p. 68.
(Hereafter cited as Department of Energy, FY2006 Congressional Budget Request, vol. I.)
NNSA provided information on the change from ACI to RRW.
7 Department of Energy, FY2006 Congressional Budget Request, Vol. I, p. 82.

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Supporters anticipate that RRW will offer a path to two larger goals:
replacing a large nuclear weapons stockpile with fewer but more reliable
weapons, and restructuring the nuclear weapons complex into one that is smaller,
safer, more efficient, more responsive, and less costly. Skeptics question
whether some of the tradeoffs and goals are feasible, necessary, or worth
potential costs and risks.
The Need to Maintain Nuclear Warheads for the Long Term
Nuclear warheads must be maintained because they contain thousands of parts
that deteriorate at different rates. Some parts, such as tritium reservoirs and neutron
generators,8 and materials, such as tritium, have well-known life limits, while the
service life of other parts may be unknown or revealed only by multiple inspections
of a warhead type over time. A 1983 report arguing that maintenance requires
nuclear testing stated:
Certain chemically reactive materials are inherently required in nuclear weapons,
such as uranium or plutonium, high explosives, and plastics. The fissile
materials, both plutonium and uranium, are subject to corrosion. Plastic-bonded
high explosives and other plastics tend to decompose over extended periods of
time. ... portions of materials can dissociate into simpler substances. Vapors
given off by one material can migrate to another region of the weapon and react
chemically there. ... Materials in the warhead electrical systems ... can produce
effluents that can migrate to regions in the nuclear explosive portion of the
weapon. ... The characteristics of high explosives can change with time. ... Vital
electrical components can change in character ...9
A 1987 report, written to rebut the contention of the foregoing report that
nuclear testing is needed to maintain nuclear weapons, nonetheless agreed that aging
affects weapon components:
It should also be noted that nuclear weapons engineering has benefitted
from a quarter century of experience in dealing with corrosion, deterioration, and
creep since the time that the W45, W47, and W52 [warheads] entered the
stockpile in the early sixties (just after the test moratorium of 1958-1961). ...
Most of the reliability problems in the past have resulted from either an
incomplete testing program during the development phase of a weapon or the
aging and deterioration of weapon components during deployment.10
8 U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Weapons: Capabilities of DOE’s Limited Life
Component Program to Meet Operational Needs, GAO/RCED-97-52, Mar. 5, 1997,
available at [http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/gao/rced97052.htm].
9 “Some Little-Publicized Difficulties with a Nuclear Freeze,” Prepared by Dr. J.W.
Rosengren, R&D Associates, under Contract to the Office of International Security Affairs,
U.S. Department of Energy, October 1983, p. 5-6; reprinted in U.S. Congress. Senate.
Committee on Foreign Relations. Nuclear Testing Issues. 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate
Hearing 99-937, 1986, pp. 167-168.
10 Ray Kidder, Stockpile Reliability and Nuclear Test Bans: Response to J.W. Rosengren’s
Defense of His 1983 Report, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCID-20990, Feb.
1987, pp. 4-5.

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Some feel that deterioration, while a potential problem, has been overstated. A
scientific panel writing in 1999 stated,
there is no such thing as a “design life.” The designers were not asked or
permitted to design a nuclear weapon that would go bad after 20 years. They did
their best on a combination of performance and endurance, and after experience
with the weapon in storage there is certainly no reason to expect all of the
nuclear weapons of a given type to become unusable after 20 or 25 years. In fact,
one of the main goals of SBSS [Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship, an earlier
term for the Stockpile Stewardship Program, discussed below] is to predict the
life of the components so that remanufacture may be scheduled, and results to
date indicate a margin of surety extending for decades. ... Until now, clear
evidence of warhead deterioration has not been seen in the enduring stockpile,
but the plans for remanufacture still assume that deterioration is inevitable on the
timescale of the old, arbitrarily defined “design lives.”11
The deterioration noted above pertained to warheads designed in the 1950s and
early 1960s that are no longer deployed. Newer warheads correct some of these
problems. As knowledge of warhead performance, materials, and deterioration
increases, the labs are able to correct some problems and forestall others. Still other
aging problems have turned out to occur at a slower pace than was feared. In
particular, it was long recognized that plutonium would deteriorate as it aged, but it
was not known how long it would take for its deterioration to impair warhead
performance. Now, studies are underway to find out, and the current best estimate
is that it would take at least 45 to 60 years.
Any consequences of deterioration problems that arose during the Cold War
were limited in their duration because warheads had little time to age. The United
States introduced generation after generation of new nuclear “delivery vehicles” —
bombers, missile submarines, and land-based missiles — each of which would
typically carry a new-design warhead tailored to its characteristics and mission. A
warhead for a new missile, for example, might have to withstand a higher
acceleration, have a higher explosive yield, and be constrained to a specific volume.
New warheads were usually introduced long before the warheads they replaced
reached the end of their service lives. Two trends concerning deterioration have
emerged since the end of the Cold War: (1) Stockpile Stewardship and other tools,
described below, have greatly increased NNSA’s understanding of warhead
deterioration and how to deal with or prevent it. Also, by maintaining the current set
of warhead designs for many years, design and production errors have been subjected
to systematic identification and elimination and (2) Nuclear warheads have much
more time to age, as warheads expected to remain in the stockpile for at most 20
years are now being retained indefinitely. However, understanding of deterioration,
while improving, is not perfect; surprises may still occur. As a result, deterioration
remains a concern.
Nuclear warheads must be maintained so that the United States, its friends and
allies, and its adversaries will be confident about the effectiveness of U.S. nuclear
11 Sidney Drell, Raymond Jeanloz, et al., Remanufacture, MITRE Corporation, JASON
Program Office, JSR-99-300, Oct. 1999, pp. 4, 8.

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forces. Yet warheads are hard to maintain not only because of deterioration, but also
because they were designed to an exacting set of constraints. They had to meet so-
called Military Characteristics set forth by DOD in consultation with DOE that
specified safety parameters, weight, size, and yield, as well as the conditions a
warhead would encounter in its lifetime, such as temperature and acceleration.
Design compromises were made to meet these constraints. For example, beryllium
was used in warheads even though it is toxic and hard to machine, and more
energetic explosives were sometimes used despite an increased safety risk. Design
was usually done with little consideration for ease of manufacture. Ambassador
Linton Brooks, NNSA Administrator, has said that to meet the various requirements,
especially maximizing yield while minimizing size and weight, “we designed these
systems very close to performance cliffs.”12 That is, designs approached the point at
which warheads would fail.13
A consequence of this design approach was that warhead components could be
hard to replicate. Indeed, according to Ambassador Brooks, “it is becoming more
difficult and costly to certify warhead remanufacture. The evolution away from
tested designs resulting from the inevitable accumulations of small changes over the
extended lifetimes of these systems means that we can count on increasing
uncertainty in the long-term certification of warheads in the stockpile.”14
At issue is whether warheads can be maintained despite the absence of nuclear
testing by replacing deteriorated components with newly-made ones built as close as
possible to the original specifications. This debate has been going on for decades.
In a 1978 letter to President Carter, three weapons scientists argued that the United
States could go to great lengths in remanufacturing weapon components:
it is sometimes claimed that remanufacture may become impossible because of
increasingly severe restrictions by EPA or OSHA to protect the environment of
the worker. ... if the worker’s environment acceptable until now for the use of
asbestos, spray adhesives, or beryllium should be forbidden by OSHA
regulations, those few workers needed to continue operations with such material
could wear plastic-film suits ... It would be wise also to stockpile in appropriate
storage facilities certain commercial materials used in weapons manufacture
which might in the future disappear from the commercial scene.15
12 U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces,
Strategic Forces/Nuclear Weapons Fiscal Year 2006 Budget, hearing, Apr. 4, 2005.
13 For example, if designers calculated that a certain amount of plutonium was the minimum
at which the warhead would work, they might add only a small extra amount as a margin of
assurance.
14 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 3.
15 Letter from Norris Bradbury, J. Carson Mark, and Richard Garwin to President Jimmy
Carter, Aug. 15, 1978, reprinted in U.S. Congress, House Committee on Foreign Affairs and
Its Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Security and Science, Proposals to Ban
Nuclear Testing, H.J.Res. 3, 99th Congress, 1st Sess., hearings, (Washington: GPO, 1985),
p. 215.

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However, in a 1987 report, three scientists at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory stated:
! Exact replication, especially of older systems, is impossible.
Material batches are never quite the same, some materials become
unavailable, and equivalent materials are never exactly equivalent.
“Improved” parts often have new, unexpected failure modes.
Vendors go out of business ...
! Documentation has never been sufficiently exact to ensure
replication. ... We have never known enough about every detail to
specify everything that may be important. ...
! The most important aspect of any product certification is testing; it
provides the data for valid certification.16
Clearly, if components could be remanufactured to identical specifications,
using identical materials, indefinitely, then warheads could be maintained in this
manner as long as needed, with little in the way of scientific advances required.
Further, Ambassador Brooks reportedly said, “It’s entirely possible that we could go
on for some considerable length of time just the way we are.”17 But NNSA holds
that a more comprehensive program is needed.
The Solution So Far: The Life Extension Program
With the end of the Cold War, the nuclear weapons complex, like the rest of the
defense establishment, faced turmoil. Budgets and personnel were reduced, design
of new weapons ended, and a test moratorium began. For a time, the chief concern
of DOE’s nuclear weapons management was survival of the nuclear weapons
complex.
To address this concern and set a course for the nuclear weapons enterprise,
Congress, in the FY1994 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 103-160),
Section 3138, directed the Secretary of Energy to “establish a stewardship program
to ensure the preservation of the core intellectual and technical competencies of the
United States in nuclear weapons, including weapons design, system integration,
manufacturing, security, use control, reliability assessment, and certification.” Since
then, the Clinton and Bush Administrations have requested, and Congress has
approved, tens of billions of dollars for this Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP),
which is presented in NNSA’s budget as “Weapons Activities.”18
16 George Miller, Paul Brown, and Carol Alonso, Report to Congress on Stockpile
Reliability, Weapon Remanufacture, and the Role of Nuclear Testing, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, UCRL-53822, Oct. 1987, p. 25. For an opposing view, see R.E.
Kidder, Maintaining the U.S. Stockpile of Nuclear Weapons During a Low-Threshold or
Comprehensive Test Ban, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCRL-53820, Oct.
1987, esp. pp. 6-9.
17 James Sterngold, “Upgrades Planned for U.S. Nuclear Stockpile,” San Francisco
Chronicle, Jan. 15, 2006, p. 16.
18 See CRS Report RL32852, Energy and Water Development: FY2006 Appropriations,
(continued...)

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SSP uses data from past nuclear tests, small-scale laboratory experiments, large-
scale experimental facilities, examination of warheads, and the like to improve
theoretical understanding of the science underlying nuclear weapons performance.
In turn, it uses this knowledge to improve computer “codes” that simulate aspects of
weapons performance, revealing aspects of this performance and filling gaps in the
nuclear weapons laboratories’ understanding of it. Such advances enable scientists
to analyze data from past nuclear tests more thoroughly, “mining” it to extract still
more information. Theory, simulation, and data reinforce each other: theory refines
simulation, simulation helps check theory, theory and simulation guide researchers
to look for certain types of data, and data help check simulation and theory.
A key task of the weapons complex is to monitor warheads for signs of actual
or future deterioration. This work is done through a program that conducts routine
surveillance of warheads in the stockpile by closely examining 11 warheads of each
type per year to search for corrosion, gases, and other evidence of deterioration. Of
the 11, one is taken apart for destructive evaluation, while the other 10 are evaluated
nondestructively and returned to the stockpile.19 In addition, an Enhanced
Surveillance Program (ESP) supports surveillance; its goal “is to develop diagnostic
tools and predictive models that will make it possible to analyze and predict the
effects that aging may have on weapon materials, components, and systems.”20
When routine surveillance detects warhead problems, the nuclear weapons
program applies knowledge gained through SSP to fix problems through the Life
Extension Program (LEP). It attempts “to extend the stockpile lifetime of a warhead
or warhead components at least 20 years with a goal of 30 years”21 in addition to the
originally-anticipated deployment time.
A warhead’s components may be divided into two categories: those that are part
of the nuclear explosive package, and those that are not. As described in the
Appendix, the nuclear explosive package is the part of the warhead that explodes, as
distinct from the more numerous components like the outer case or arming system.
Because components outside of this package can be subjected to extensive
experiments and nonnuclear laboratory tests, they can be modified as needed under
LEP to incorporate more advanced electronics or better materials. In sharp contrast,
“package” components cannot be subjected to nuclear tests because the United States
has observed a moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992. As a result, LEP seeks to
replicate these components using original designs and, insofar as possible, original
materials. In this way, it is hoped, components will be close to the originals so that
they can be qualified for use in warheads. Because nuclear explosive package
18 (...continued)
coordinated by Carl Behrens, section on Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship.
19 Information provided by NNSA, May 9, 2005.
20 Katie Walter, “Enhanced Surveillance of Aging Weapons,” Science & Technology
Review, Jan./Feb. 1998, p. 21.
21 Department of Energy, FY2006 Congressional Budget Request, vol. I, p. 75. Also, see
pp. 75-76 for a weapon-by-weapon description of LEP activities planned for FY2006.

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components cannot be tested while other components can be, long-term concern
focuses on the former.
Warheads contain several thousand components. While not all need to be
refurbished in an LEP, some are difficult to fabricate. As a result, the LEP for a
particular warhead is a major campaign with extensive preparatory analysis and
detailed work on many components that can take many years. For example, NNSA
describes the LEP for the W76 warhead for Trident submarine-launched ballistic
missiles as follows in its FY2007 request:
The W76 LEP will extend the life of the W76 for an additional 30 years with the
FPU [first production unit] in FY 2007. Activities include design, qualification,
certification, production plant Process Prove-In (PPI), and Pilot Production. The
pre-production activities will ensure the design of refurbished warheads meets
all required military characteristics. Additional activities include work associated
with the manufacturability of the components including the nuclear explosive
package; the Arming, Firing, and Fuzing (AF&F) system; gas transfer system;
and associated cables, elastomers, valves, pads, cushions, foam supports,
telemetries, and miscellaneous parts.22
Stockpile stewardship has made great strides in understanding weapons science,
in predicting how weapons will age, and in predicting how they will fail. Most
observers agree with the following assessment by Ambassador Brooks in
congressional testimony of April 2005:
today stockpile stewardship is working, we are confident that the stockpile is safe
and reliable, and there is no requirement at this time for nuclear tests. Indeed, just
last month, the Secretary of Energy and Secretary of Defense reaffirmed this
judgment in reporting to the President their ninth annual assessment of the safety
and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. ... Our assessment derives
from ten years of experience with science-based stockpile stewardship, from
extensive surveillance, from the use of both experiments and computation, and
from professional judgment.23 [original emphasis]
Is LEP Satisfactory for the Long Term?
In the turmoil following the end of the Cold War, it is scarcely surprising that
the method chosen to maintain the stockpile — a task that had to be performed in the
face of the many changes affecting the weapons complex, and the many unknowns
about its future — was to minimize changes. Now, with SSP well established,
NNSA feels that it is appropriate to use a different approach to warhead maintenance,
one that builds on the success of SSP and challenges the notion underlying LEP that
changes must be held to a minimum.
22 U.S. Department of Energy. Office of Chief Financial Officer. FY2007 Congressional
Budget Request, vol. 1, National Nuclear Security Administration. DOE/CF-002, Feb. 2006,
p. 79.
23 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 2.

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Advocates of RRW recognize that LEP has worked well and concede that it can
probably maintain warheads over the short term. Their concern is with maintaining
reliability of warheads over the long term. They assert that LEP is not suited to the
task because it will become harder to make it work as the technology under which
current warheads were created becomes increasingly archaic and as materials,
equipment, processes, and skills become unavailable. They maintain that if the labs
were to lose confidence that they could replicate nuclear explosive package
components to near-original designs using near-original materials and processes, the
United States could ultimately face a choice between resuming nuclear tests or
accepting reduced confidence in reliability. Instead, for example, the three nuclear
weapons laboratories (Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia) argue that a “vision of
sustainable warheads with a sustainable [nuclear] enterprise can best be achieved by
shifting from a program of warhead refurbishment to one of warhead replacement.”24
Advocates of RRW note further that while the current stockpile — most units
of which were manufactured between 1979 and 1989 — was designed to deter and,
if necessary, defeat the Soviet Union, the threat, strategy and missions have changed,
leaving the United States with the wrong stockpile for current circumstances.
Ambassador Brooks said that current warheads are wrong technically because “we
would [now] manage technical risk differently, for example, by ‘trading’ [warhead]
size and weight for increased performance margins, system longevity, and ease of
manufacture.” These warheads were not “designed for longevity” or to minimize
cost, and may be wrong militarily because yields are too high and “do not lend
themselves to reduced collateral damage.” They also lack capabilities against buried
targets or biological and chemical munitions, and they do not take full advantage of
precision guidance.25 Furthermore, LEP’s critics believe the stockpile is wrong
politically because it is too large:
We retain “hedge” warheads in large part due to the inability of either today’s
nuclear infrastructure, or the infrastructure we expect to have when the stockpile
reductions are fully implemented in 2012, to manufacture, in a timely way,
warheads for replacement or for force augmentation, or to act to correct
unexpected technical problems.26
Finally, they believe the stockpile is wrong in terms of physical security because it
was not designed for a scenario in which terrorists seize control of a nuclear weapon
and try to detonate it in place. New use control technologies would permit NNSA
to reduce the cost of “gates, guns, guards.”27
24 K. Henry O’Brien et al., Sustaining the Nuclear Enterprise — A New Approach, published
jointly by Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories, UCRL-AR-
212442, May 20, 2005, p. 3.
25 Ibid., pp. 2-3.
26 Ibid., p. 3.
27 Ibid., p. 4.

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RRW and the Transformation of Nuclear Warheads
The U.S. nuclear stockpile was designed within Cold War constraints,
requirements, and opportunities. While the requirement for warheads to be safe and
reliable remains constant, many other constraints have changed — indeed, inverted
— over the past 15 years, and new opportunities and requirements have emerged as
well. As a result, RRW advocates claim, it is both necessary and feasible to
transform the stockpile to reflect these changes.
With RRW, NNSA hopes to revisit tradeoffs underlying the current stockpile
so it could adapt to changes over the past 15 years and meet possible future
requirements. While RRW would change many tradeoffs significantly, the changes
would, in NNSA’s view, work out well: NNSA would trade negligible sacrifices to
secure major gains. For example, NNSA would consider relaxing constraints on
explosive yield and yield-to-weight, assuming DOD approved. So doing would
enable NNSA to move to simpler designs, which would be essential in an
environment without nuclear testing. NNSA would strive to minimize the use of
hazardous materials, and relaxing constraints on yield and on yield to weight would
make it easier to do so. The balance of this section presents some Cold War warhead
requirements, how they have changed, and implications of these changes.
Efficiency. A major characteristic of warheads for ballistic and cruise missiles
was a high “yield-to-weight ratio” — that is, maximizing a warhead’s explosive force
(yield) for a given weight.28 Reducing weight let each missile carry more warheads
to more distant targets; increasing yield gave each warhead a better chance of
destroying its target; and increasing yield-to-weight enabled these goals to be met at
the same time. For example, the W88 warhead for the Trident II submarine-launched
ballistic missile used a conventional high explosive (CHE) that was more sensitive
to impact than an alternative, insensitive high explosive (IHE), used on many other
warhead types. IHE provided greater safety, but CHE packed substantially more
energy per unit weight. A missile could carry the lighter CHE warheads to a greater
distance, so that a submarine could stand off farther from its targets. Increased ocean
patrol area forced the Soviet Union to spread out its antisubmarine assets, improving
submarine survivability. Hard-to-manufacture designs, hazardous materials, and
other undesirable features were deemed acceptable design tradeoffs to maximize
yield-to-weight. Now, ballistic missiles carry fewer warheads than they did during
the Cold War due to reduced targeting requirements. As a result, it is possible to
revisit the Cold War tradeoffs, redesigning warhead components to give greater
emphasis to other characteristics at the expense of yield, weight, or both. For
example, with a missile’s carrying capacity divided among fewer warheads, each
28 Bombs were less constrained in weight because bombers carry heavier loads than missiles.

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CRS-13
warhead can be somewhat heavier,29 and the added permissible weight might be
allocated to design features that made a warhead easier to manufacture.
Yield. During the Cold War, DOD required a substantial yield for its strategic
warheads. Yield compensated for inaccuracy in attacking targets such as missile
silos, which were hardened to withstand all but near misses or direct hits. Yield was
also important for attacking targets covering large areas, such as shipyards or
petroleum refineries. Now, high yield is much less important. There are likely to be
fewer area targets in the future. Precision guidance enables conventional bombs to
score direct hits on targets, and similar technology could apparently be used to make
missile-delivered nuclear warheads more accurate, permitting lower yield. Indeed,
some argue that the United States needs some lower-yield warheads.30 In this view,
lower-yield warheads would create less of the unintended damage that might prevent
the United States from using them. Such warheads, some argue, would be a better
deterrent precisely because their use would be more credible.
Nuclear Testing. Between 1945 and 1992, the United States conducted over
1,000 nuclear tests, most of which were for weapons design.31 These tests provided
confidence that a weapon incorporating hard-to-manufacture components was made
correctly, that a weapon would work at the extremes of temperatures to which it
might be exposed, and that the design was satisfactory in other ways. Testing also
enabled the labs to validate changes to existing warhead designs. With the
congressionally-imposed U.S. nuclear test moratorium in October 1992,32 the United
States can no longer rely on tests to validate designs. While there are no military
requirements for nuclear weapons with new or modified military capabilities,33 any
future weapon would have to be more conservatively designed than those that could
be tested, such as by increasing the yield of the weapon’s primary stage (see
29 Ballistic missiles carry warheads inside reentry vehicles (RVs). An RV is a streamlined
shell that protects its warhead from the intense heat and other stresses of reentering the
atmosphere at high speed. RVs are designed to carry a specific type of warhead on a
specific missile; the maximum stress that the RV encounters is carefully studied. Increasing
warhead weight significantly would increase these stresses, possibly causing the RV to fail
and the warhead to burn up, fail, or miss its target by a wide margin.
30 Bryan Fearey, Paul White, John St. Ledger, and John Immele, “An Analysis of Reduced
Collateral Damage Nuclear Weapons,” Comparative Strategy, Oct./Nov. 2003, pp. 313-315.
These lower-yield weapons are not necessarily the very low yield “mini-nukes” debated in
Congress in recent years.
31 The United States conducted 1,030 tests, of which 883 were weapons related. (The
United Kingdom conducted another 24 tests at the Nevada Test Site.) U.S. Department of
Energy, Nevada Operations Office, Office of External Affairs, United States Nuclear Tests,
July 1945 through September 1992, DOE/NV-209, rev. 14, Dec. 1994, p. viii.
32 The moratorium was begun pursuant to Section 507 of P.L. 102-377, FY1993 Energy and
Water Development Appropriations Act, signed into law Oct. 2, 1992.
33 Brooks stated, “We must preserve the ability to produce weapons with new or modified
military capabilities if this is required in the future. Currently the DOD has identified no
requirements for such weapons, but our experience suggests that we are not always able to
predict our future requirements.” Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee,
Apr. 4, 2005, p. 6, emphasis added.

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Appendix) to increase confidence in its ability to ignite the secondary, and by staying
within design parameters that past nuclear tests have validated. This conservatism
also applies to modifications of components.
Performance, Schedule, and Cost Tradeoffs. Performance has always
been the dominant consideration for nuclear weapons. Weapons must meet standards
for safety and reliability, and meet other military characteristics. During the Cold
War, schedule was also critical. With new missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft
entering the force at a sustained pace, warheads and bombs had to be ready on a
schedule dictated by their delivery systems. As a result, “our nuclear warheads were
not designed ... to minimize DOE and DOD costs.”34 Now, reducing cost has a
higher priority. Cost reduction is also more feasible: performance is still dominant,
but no external threat drives the schedule.
Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H). During much of the Cold War,
the urgency of production and the limited knowledge of the ES&H effects of
materials used or created in the nuclear weapons enterprise resulted in the use of
hazardous materials, dumping contaminants onto the ground or into rivers, exposing
citizens to radioactive fallout from nuclear tests, and the like. Now, ES&H concerns
have grown within the nuclear weapons complex, reflecting their rise in civil society
at large, leading to a strong interest in minimizing the use of hazardous materials in
warheads and their production.
Skill Development and Transfer. During the Cold War, the design of
dozens of warhead types, the conduct of over 1,000 nuclear tests, and the production
of thousands of warheads exercised the full range of nuclear weapon skills. Now,
with no design or testing, no new-design warheads being produced, and with
warheads being refurbished at a slower pace than that at which they were originally
produced, some have raised concern that weapons complex personnel are not
adequately challenged. In this view, skill development and transfer can no longer be
simply a byproduct of the work, but must be an explicit goal of the nuclear weapons
program.
RRW and the Transformation of the
Nuclear Weapons Enterprise
Supporters see RRW as the basis for much more than addressing warhead
issues. Representative Hobson was, as noted, the prime sponsor of the effort to
establish RRW. Consequently, it is important to understand his intent for the
program. He expressed concern about the direction of nuclear policy. In introducing
the FY2005 energy and water bill (H.R. 4614) to the House, he emphasized the need
to redirect the nuclear weapons complex:
much of the DOE weapons complex is still sized to support a Cold War
stockpile. The NNSA needs to take a ‘time-out’ on new initiatives until it
34 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 3.

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completes a review of its weapons complex in relation to security needs, budget
constraints, and [a] new stockpile plan.35
At a National Academy of Sciences symposium in August 2004, he expressed
concern about Administration nuclear policies and programs:
I was not comfortable with the Administration’s emphasis on new nuclear
weapons initiatives in the fiscal year 2004 budget request and repeated in the
fiscal year 2005 request. I view the Advanced Concepts research proposal, the
Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study, and the effort to reduce the nuclear test
readiness posture to 18 months as very provocative and overly aggressive
policies that undermine our moral authority to argue that other nations should
forego nuclear weapons. We cannot advocate for nuclear nonproliferation
around the globe and pursue more useable nuclear weapon options here at home.
That inconsistency is not lost on anyone in the international community.36
He saw RRW as a key part of his effort to redirect U.S. nuclear strategy, reshape
the nuclear weapons stockpile and complex to support that strategy, undertake
weapons programs consistent with that strategy, and reject those inconsistent with it.
I think the time is now for a thoughtful and open debate on the role of nuclear
weapons in our country’s national security strategy. There is still a basic set of
questions that need to be addressed and let me talk about some of those. How
large a stockpile should we maintain, should we have a set of older weapons with
many spares or should we have a smaller stockpile of more modern weapons?
What design and manufacturing capabilities do we need to maintain the DOE
nuclear weapons complex? And where should these complexes be located? And
finally, is this the best use of our limited, financial resources for national
defense? ... until we have this debate and develop a comprehensive plan for the
U.S. nuclear stockpile and the DOE weapons complex, we’re left arguing over
isolated projects such as the robust nuclear penetrator or the RNEP study....37
Representative Hobson also stated:
The Reliable Replacement Warhead concept will provide the research and
engineering problems necessary to challenge the workforce while at the same
time refurbishing some existing weapons in the stockpile without developing a
new weapon that would require underground testing to verify the design. A more
robust replacement warhead, from a reliability standpoint, will provide the
35 Congressional Record, June 25, 2004, p. H5085.
36 Rep. David Hobson, “Remarks by Chairman David Hobson — House Appropriations
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, [to the] National Academy of Sciences,
Committee on International Security and Arms Control, Symposium on ‘Post-Cold War U.S.
Nuclear Strategy: A Search for Technical and Policy Common Ground,’” Aug. 11, 2004, p.
3; available at [http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cisac/Hobson_Presentation.pdf].
37 Congressman David Hobson, “U.S. Nuclear Security in the 21st Century,” address to the
Arms Control Association, Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2005. (Transcript as delivered.)

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stockpile hedge that is currently provided by retaining thousands of unnecessary
warheads.38
Thus while the FY2005 omnibus appropriations conference report and NNSA’s
FY2006 budget request presented a program of narrow scope, Representative Hobson
envisioned that RRW could be much more consequential. NNSA Administrator
Brooks agreed. In testimony of April 2005, he presented an expansive view of the
transformation of the nuclear weapons enterprise, with RRW as its pivot point.
Let me briefly describe the broad conceptual approach for stockpile and
infrastructure transformation. The “enabler” for such transformation, we believe,
is the RRW program. To establish the feasibility of the RRW concept, we will
use the funds provided by Congress last year and those requested this year to
begin concept and feasibility studies on replacement warheads or warhead
components that provide the same or comparable military capabilities as existing
warheads in the stockpile. If those studies suggest the RRW concept is
technically feasible, and if, as I expect, the Department of Defense establishes
a requirement, we should be able to develop and produce by the 2012-15
timeframe a small build of warheads in order to demonstrate that an RRW system
can be manufactured and certified without nuclear testing.
Once that capability is demonstrated, the United States will have the option to:
• truncate or cease some ongoing life extension programs for the legacy
stockpile,
• apply the savings from the reduced life extension workload to begin to
transform to a stockpile with a substantial RRW component that is both easier
and less costly to manufacture and certify, and
• use stockpile transformation to enable and drive consolidation to a more
responsive infrastructure.39
DOD, the “customer” and potential user of nuclear weapons, sets requirements
for types and characteristics of nuclear weapons. Representatives of the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, the armed services, and NNSA participate in the Nuclear
Weapons Council, which under 10 U.S.C. 179 coordinates their efforts in this area.
Clearly, if RRW is to progress, it would need the participation and support of DOD,
the services, and NNSA. A first step in that direction occurred in March 2005 when
the council, by unanimous vote, fully supported the RRW concept. At the same time,
RRW remains subject to congressional approval, rejection, or modification.
Steve Henry, Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters,
provided the following statement. It is the first detailed statement of DOD’s position
on RRW:40
38 Congressman David Hobson, “U.S. Nuclear Security in the 21st Century,” address to the
Arms Control Association, Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2005. (Remarks as prepared for
delivery.)
39 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 6.
40 Statement provided to the author May 3, 2005.

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President Bush said, “I am committed to achieving a credible deterrent with
the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national
security needs, including our obligations to our allies. My goal is to move
quickly to reduce nuclear forces.”41 To achieve this goal, we must have
confidence in the safety, security, and reliability of the weapons not just for
today, but for the long term and with the goal to reduce the likelihood of
resumption of nuclear testing.
Our current path does not adequately meet the President’s guidance. The
current stockpile was built in the 80’s. These weapons are optimized for yield-
to-weight and were expected to remain in the stockpile for only about 20 years.
Under the current life extension program, these weapons would be refurbished
to extend their life for more than 30 years beyond their original design life.
Although any change to a weapon component is reviewed extensively, there
remains an uncertainty on the potential impact of cumulative changes.
Fundamentally, the life extension program would continue the reliance on Cold
War legacy designs that use toxic and high risk materials and provide only
limited opportunity to enhance safety and security with 21st century technology.
Additionally, in some cases, the life extension program would require the
reconstitution of expensive weapons production processes that were discontinued
more than a decade ago. Under the current path, the DOD would continue to
depend on non-deployed warheads to hedge against technical failures and against
geopolitical changes.
It is in the best interest of the United States to pursue an alternate path. In
concept, a reliable replacement warhead (RRW) could provide that path. Ideally,
RRW would sustain the military capabilities of the existing stockpile but may
require relaxing some of the Cold War design requirements in order to use
replacement components. These components would be designed to increase
margins, provide for ease of manufacture and certification, and would reduce the
potential for failure due to design and manufacturing flaws and material aging
issues. These RRW characteristics would improve our ability to ensure
long-term confidence in the stockpile and reduce the likelihood of resumption of
nuclear testing, therefore potentially reducing the number of warheads needed
to hedge against technical surprises. Under the RRW concept, incorporation of
modern safety and security technology would be feasible. RRW could be the
enabler for the transformation to an efficient, responsive infrastructure, which
may help reduce the number of warheads needed to hedge against geopolitical
changes. As an example of how it would make manufacturing easier while
increasing safety within the nuclear weapons complex, it could eliminate the
need for many of the exotic and hazardous non-nuclear materials.
RRW would, in concept, offer other advantages as well, such as the
opportunity to exercise and transfer expertise. However, if we want to move
from our current path to RRW, we must do it soon because experienced nuclear
weapon designers with test experience are rapidly retiring.
The U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), a component of DOD, is the
military command that operates and, at the President’s direction, would use U.S.
strategic nuclear forces. It provided the following statement on RRW:
41 President George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President to Students and Faculty at National
Defense University,” Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., May 1, 2001.

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“STRATCOM will be participating in the joint RRW Project Officers Group, or
POG, with the NNSA, the Navy, and the Air Force, and STRATCOM’s position on
RRW will be based on the results of the RRW POG process.”42
DOD’s Quadrennial Defense Review includes the following statement on RRW:
The Department is working with the Department of Energy to assess the
feasibility and cost of the Reliable Replacement Warhead and, if warranted,
begin development of that system. This system could enable reductions in the
number of older, non-deployed warheads maintained as a hedge against
reliability problems in deployed systems, and assist in the evolution to smaller
and more responsive nuclear weapons infrastructure.43
RRW is linked to transforming the nuclear weapons complex. A DOE task force
endorses the immediate initiation of the modernization of the stockpile through
the design of the Reliable Replacement Warhead. ... [while meeting] military
requirements, the RRW family of weapons will be designed for: 1) production,
2) utilization of readily available materials that do not pose undue hazards to the
Complex workforce, and 3) reduced production, maintenance, and disposition
costs over the weapon life-cycle. The Task Force recommends that a new version
of the RRW, incorporating new design concepts and surety features, initiated on
planned five-year cycles. This family of weapons will form the basis of the
sustainable stockpile of the future.44
To produce RRWs, the task force would consolidate nuclear production activities at
one site, contract out more production of nonnuclear components, and consolidate
certain redundant experimental facilities. Consolidation, it is argued, would permit
savings, such as in operations and security. Because RRW would be designed in part
for ease of manufacture, it would in theory increase cost savings and would permit
a simpler and safer nuclear weapons complex. In the task force’s view, this
infrastructure, combined with easier-to-produce RRWs, would be more responsive
to DOD’s needs.
Skeptics’ Views of RRW
Because the RRW program is new, not clearly defined, and may hold benefits
as well as costs, some who are in the process of shaping their views on RRW and its
implications are skeptical but not critical of the program.
42 Information provided by STRATCOM to the author, Apr. 29, 2005.
43 U.S. Department of Defense. Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Feb. 6, 2006, p. 49.
44 U.S. Department of Energy, Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, Nuclear Weapons
Complex Infrastructure Task Force, Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Comple of
the Future, Final report, July 13, 2005, p. 13. Available at [http://www.seab.energy.gov/
publications/NWCITFRept-7-11-05.pdf]. See also CRS Report RL33256, Nuclear Weapons
Complex Reconfiguration: Analysis of an Energy Department Task Force Report, by
Jonathan Medalia.

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The House Armed Services Committee’s report on the FY2006 defense
authorization bill included a statement of additional views by most Democratic
members of the committee. According to the statement, “Democrats are willing to
explore the concept of the RRW program, but do not yet embrace it.” In their view,
RRW would merit support only if it
! Truly reduces or eliminates altogether the need for nuclear testing;
! Leads to dramatic reductions in the nuclear arsenal, including
complete dismantlement of the weapons and safe disposal of
fissile components;
! Does not introduce new mission or new weapon requirements,
particularly for tactical military purposes;
! Reduces the reliance of the U.S. on nuclear weapons and
deemphasizes the military utility of nuclear weapons;
! Significantly reduces the cost of maintaining our nuclear weapon
complex, to include avoiding the need to build a modern pit facility;
! Increases nuclear security and decreases the risk of unauthorized or
accidental launch and/or detonation; and
! Leads to ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty.45
Similarly, a letter drafted by Representative Tauscher and others to
Representatives C.W. Bill Young and David R. Obey, Chairman and Ranking
Member, respectively, of the House Appropriations Committee, and signed by at
least 51 Members of Congress, states that RRW “was added in the Omnibus
Conference last year to replace Advanced Concepts. The scope and direction of this
program must be clearly defined so that this program does not simply replace the one
Congress canceled last year.” Further, “We are also concerned that shifting funding
from the cancelled Advanced Concepts program into the Reliable Replacement
Warhead program may result in new nuclear warheads moving forward without any
established need or compelling justification.”46
Robert Peurifoy, a former Vice President of Sandia National Laboratories, feels
RRW has been oversold. He sees little difference between RRW and LEP; if a
component can be manufactured with materials different than the original under
RRW, for example, why couldn’t that be done under LEP? He notes that that the
labs, using development, production, and stockpile data, have repeatedly certified the
reliability for the nuclear explosive package of warheads at 100 percent; how, he
asks, can that be improved upon? If stockpile stewardship, including LEP as one of
its tools, can maintain warheads for nine years without testing, why can it not do so
indefinitely? The lack of a military requirement for new-design warheads for many
years, and the questionable rationales presented for such warheads in the public
45 U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2006, H.Rept. 109-89, on H.R. 1815, 109th Congress, 1st session, 2005,
p. 512.
46 Letter provided by Representative Tauscher’s office, used by permission. For full text,
see [http://www.ananuclear.org/markeys%20letter.html].

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debate, in his view, undermines the need for a “responsive” infrastructure, as there
will likely be few if any events requiring a response.47
Raymond Jeanloz is a Professor of Earth and Planetary Science and of
Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a long-time member of
scientific panels reporting on nuclear-weapon issues. His view depends on what
RRW is. He supports a version of RRW that would build on the success of the
Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) to improve manufacturing practices, lower
costs and increase performance margins, as these enhancements would support the
Administration’s decision to significantly reduce the size of the U.S. stockpile. This
RRW would stay within the design parameters that have been validated by nuclear
testing. In contrast, he opposes an RRW that would move beyond those parameters
in order to create new weapons, as that approach could lead to new weapons that are
less reliably validated, that require testing, and that would counter U.S.
nonproliferation efforts. In particular, he believes that new designs would undermine
U.S. attempts to convince other nations not to develop nuclear weapons by showing
them that the United States still feels the need for new weapons. Whichever form of
RRW emerges, Jeanloz is concerned about the lack of clarity regarding the program
and its cost.48
Sidney Drell, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Stanford University, and James
Goodby, who held several Administration positions in arms control, including
Special Representative of President Clinton for the security and dismantlement of
nuclear weapons from 1995 — 1996, both have a view of RRW that depends on how
technologically ambitious the program is:
One direct way to simplify the process of certifying the reliability and
effectiveness of the warheads and to sustain this confidence over a longer period
of time is to increase their performance margins. An example of this is to further
enhance the explosive energy provided by the primary stage of a nuclear weapon
above the minimum required to ignite the secondary, or main, stage of a nuclear
weapon. A straightforward way to do this that requires no explosive testing to
validate is by adjusting the boost gas fill in the primary during scheduled
maintenance or remanufacturing activities. This is an example of an existing
process for maintaining long-term high confidence in the arsenal. It is already
available, has high merit, and should continue to be implemented.7 This approach
is the appropriate focus of effort for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW)
program currently being funded at the U.S. national weapons laboratories.
Turning the RRW program into an effort to develop new-warhead designs
by altering the nature of the high explosives or the amount of nuclear fuel in the
primary without testing, as some have suggested, would be a mistake. It takes an
extraordinary flight of imagination to postulate a modern new arsenal composed
of such untested designs that would be more reliable, safe, and effective than the
current U.S. arsenal based on more than 1,000 tests since 1945. A comprehensive
and rigorous stockpile maintenance program confirms and sustains this high
47 These views are drawn from discussions and emails between Mr. Peurifoy and the author,
Mar.-Apr. 2005.
48 These views are drawn from discussions and emails between Professor Jeanloz and the
author, Mar.-Apr. 2005.

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CRS-21
confidence. If testing is resumed, the damage to the broader nonproliferation
regime, and thus to U.S. security interests, would far outweigh any conceivable
advantages to be gained from the new designs.49
Opponents’ Views of RRW
As the RRW program has developed, opponents have emerged. They raise a
number of concerns. In their view, RRW could lead to nuclear testing; it would run
counter to a U.S. commitment under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; it would
be costly, as it would require building perhaps thousands of warheads and could
require reconfiguring the nuclear weapons complex; it would demonstrate the
continuing value that the United States places on nuclear weapons, undermining U.S.
efforts to tell other nations that they should not develop such weapons; and it could
lead to new weapons capable of performing new military missions. Robert Civiak
was a budget examiner for the DOE budget at the Office of Management and Budget;
he prepared a study of RRW for Tri-Valley CAREs, an antinuclear group. He states:
[RRW] is the holy grail of the weapons labs — a guarantee of jobs designing
new nuclear weapons in perpetuity.
Thus far, funding for the RRW program has been rather modest — $9 million in
2005 and $25 million in 2006. If left unchecked, however, the weapons labs
would grow the RRW program into a multi-billion-dollar effort to redesign the
entire stockpile. Nuclear weapon designers would alter the military
characteristics of existing weapons and would add new weapons with new
capabilities and new missions. Expensive new facilities would also be needed
to build the replacement warheads.
A broad RRW program would significantly harm our national security, primarily
because U.S. pursuit of an RRW would disrupt international cooperation in
nonproliferation. ... the Department of Defense (DOD) would likely demand that
any new warhead, which the RRW program might create, undergo full nuclear
explosive tests before DOD accepts it into the stockpile.50
According to Nuclear Watch New Mexico, an antinuclear group,
Nuclear Watch New Mexico fears that NNSA’s and LANL’s embrace (no doubt
echoed by the Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories as well)
of the RRW Program is a Trojan horse. Congress, when it reprogrammed
Advanced Concepts money, sought to create a program that would help ensure
the safety and reliability of the U.S.’s nuclear weapons on into the future.... We
fear that, if left unchecked, the NNSA and the labs will turn the program into a
49 Sidney Drell and James Goodby, What Are Nuclear Weapons For? Recommendations for
Restructuring U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces, Arms Control Association, Apr. 2005, pp. 19-
20. (Footnote in original is as follows: 7. Executive Summary, JASON Report on Nuclear
Testing, JSR-95-320, Aug. 1, 1995.)
50 Robert Civiak, “The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: A Slippery Slope to New
Nuclear Weapons,” a report from Tri-Valley CAREs, Jan. 2006, p. 1. Available at
[http://www.trivalleycares.org/TVC_RRW_FNL.pdf].

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CRS-22
pending fourth generation of nuclear weapons of mini-nukes and other exotic
designs.51
Stephen Schwartz, editor and coauthor of Atomic Audit: The Costs and
Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, writes, “if the RRW program
proceeds it will almost certainly gradually supersede stockpile stewardship,
transforming, its advocates hope, the arsenal and the weapons complex into a more
modern, more agile, and less expensive operation. ... But a real debate on the future
role of U.S. nuclear weapons would consider whether there should even be a role for
such weapons ... A decision now to stop relying on nuclear deterrence could reap
tremendous savings.”52 And Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control
Association, holds that
the rationale for [RRW] is dubious, the scope is vague, and it is potentially
dangerous. Congress must carefully define the scope and direction of the
program. Why? New replacement warheads are not necessary to preserve
existing U.S. nuclear-weapon capabilities. ... Worse still, if weapons scientists
get the green light to build more rugged nuclear weapons and the program is
given carte blanche, the weapons labs may, in the end, be able to achieve their
controversial new nuclear weapons research ambitions denied with the defeat of
[the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator]. ... Finally, replacing existing, well-proven
nuclear warhead designs with “new” and “improved” replacement warheads or
warhead components could, if carelessly pursued, increase pressure to conduct
nuclear explosive proof tests.53
Issues and Questions for Congress
RRW, as a new program with far-reaching implications, raises many possible
issues for Congress. Some of them are noted here, along with possible questions that
Members may wish to ask of NNSA and of skeptics.
Are the Surveillance Program and LEP Sufficient to Maintain the
Stockpile? Skeptics hold that LEP works now, can work indefinitely, and should
improve over time. A 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences stated:
we see no reason that the capabilities of those mechanisms [for maintaining
confidence in the stockpile] — surveillance techniques, diagnostics, analytical
and computational tools, science-based understanding, remanufacturing
capabilities — cannot grow at least as fast as the challenge they must meet.
(Indeed, we believe that the growth of these capabilities — except for
remanufacturing of some nuclear components — has more than kept pace with
the growth of the need for them since the United States stopped testing in 1992,
51 Nuclear Watch New Mexico, The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: A Trojan
Horse?, Apr. 8, 2005, p. 2.
52 Stephen Schwartz, “Warheads Aren’t Forever,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
September/October 2005, p. 63.
53 Daryl Kimball, Nuclear Bunker-Buster (As We Know It) Is Dead, Oct. 26, 2005, available
at [http://www.armscontrol.org/subject/usnw/20051026_RNEP_Funding.asp].

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CRS-23
with the result that confidence in the reliability of the stockpile is better justified
technically today than it was then.)54
Skeptics argue that SSP can accommodate minor variance in components made
with LEP. Variation has always been present in nuclear weapons production. During
the Cold War, when thousands of warheads of a given type were made over a period
of years, small changes were inevitable: materials would vary from one batch to the
next, vendors would reformulate materials slightly, processes were not completely
defined, and minor design or process changes were made. Even when nuclear testing
was available, it was impossible to test all variations because the number of possible
combinations of variables was so large. Despite these limitations, weapons were
certified for use in the stockpile, indicating that some variance is acceptable.
RRW supporters argue that LEP will have increasing difficulty in maintaining
weapons over the long term. Regarding testing, they recognize that it was impossible
to test all possible variations affecting warheads, but argue that such testing was
unnecessary because much variation fell within design parameters validated by
nuclear tests. At the same time, testing was available to address uncertainties and to
provide confidence in larger changes.
Possible Questions to NNSA. Might LEP succeed over the long term?
Ambassador Brooks has emphasized that “stockpile stewardship is working,” but
expressed concern that there will be increased uncertainty in U.S. ability to certify
warheads for the stockpile over the long term.55 But at what point will LEPs be
unable to sustain confidence in nuclear weapons? What is the basis for that
calculation? What is the evidence that LEP will be unable to maintain warheads over
the long term?
New warheads: Ambassador Brooks sees RRW as the enabler for transforming
the nuclear weapons stockpile and infrastructure, and said, “as part of the
transformation of the stockpile, we must preserve the ability to produce weapons with
new or modified military capabilities if this is required in the future.”56 Why is RRW
needed for this purpose? Could the labs design, and the plants produce, a new
warhead in which they had high confidence without testing by using existing
capabilities?
Certification difficulties: Ambassador Brooks has argued that “it is becoming
more difficult and costly to certify warhead remanufacture.”57 What assurance is
there that this trend will continue, and not level off or decline? Even if the trend
were to continue, there is also a gain in the labs’ ability to understand, detect, and fix
54 National Academy of Sciences. Committee on Technical Issues Related to Ratification
of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Technical Issues Related to the Compre-
hensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Washington, National Academy Press, 2002, p. 5.
55 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 2, 3.
56 Ibid., p. 6.
57 Ibid., p. 3.

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CRS-24
stockpile problems. Are certification difficulties growing faster than advances that
facilitate certification?
Possible Questions to Skeptics. Might LEP fail over the long term? A
key argument for RRW is that LEP looks unsustainable for the long term, whether
for technical or cost reasons. In this view, LEP locks the nuclear weapons complex
into maintaining components, materials, and processes that become increasingly
removed from current technology, so that multiple LEPs will inevitably lead to the
accretion of slight differences in weapons components over time that will undermine
weapon reliability. Why is this problem not likely to cause the LEP process to fail
over time?
RRW vs. LEP: Even under LEP, nonnuclear components can be modified
significantly because they do not require nuclear testing. Some modifications to
nuclear explosive components are inevitable under LEP. RRW nuclear explosive
components would arguably stay within design parameters validated by nuclear
testing. How much difference is there between RRW and LEP? Is RRW simply an
extension of LEP?
Would proceeding with LEP preclude RRW? An argument for proceeding with
RRW promptly is that the W76 and W80, which constitute the bulk of deployed
warheads, will be undergoing LEPs soon. Refurbishing them with LEP, in this view,
would lock NNSA into LEP and the current nuclear weapons complex for a decade
to do the LEPs, and another two or three decades while these warheads remain
deployed. This result, it is claimed, would preclude RRW. What should one make
of this argument?
An acceptable RRW: RRW is in the process of being defined. Is there a variant
of RRW that skeptics would support? What changes to RRW in its current form
would they see as essential? What limitations on the program would they
recommend?
Possible Questions to Opponents. Longevity of current warheads: One
criticism of RRW is that it is not needed because current warheads will be effective
for many years. How confident can opponents be in this assessment? What are the
consequences if they are wrong? Given that it would take many years to design,
develop, and produce large numbers of new warheads to replace current versions if
they encounter problems, would it make sense to hedge against that contingency by
beginning now on RRW?
Is RRW Needed in Order to Provide New Military Capabilities?
Ambassador Brooks maintains that the current stockpile may be wrong from a
military perspective. He argues that yields are too high, there is potential for too
much collateral damage, we lack the capability to destroy buried facilities or facilities
containing chemical or biological weapons, warheads could be more accurate, and
they are not geared for small-scale strikes. He has said, “we must preserve the ability
to produce weapons with new or modified military capabilities if this is required in

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CRS-25
the future.” He views RRW as the “enabler” for transforming the stockpile.58
Examples of warheads that might benefit from modifications to the nuclear explosive
package to tailor radiation outputs include those to create electromagnetic pulse to
destroy electronic equipment, and those to destroy chemical or biological agents.
RRW skeptics would challenge the need for new military capabilities. They
maintain that current weapons possess a vast range of capabilities that should suffice
for the limited contingencies in which the United States might use them.
Ambassador Brooks does not claim that new capabilities are needed, only that they
might be in the future. Further, they argue, many of Ambassador Brooks’s examples
are irrelevant to RRW. Accuracy depends mainly on the reentry vehicle and the
missile’s guidance. The ability to conduct small strikes depends on command and
control. There may be various ways to reduce the yield, and collateral damage, of
existing weapons. Unmodified weapons can generate electromagnetic pulse, as has
been known since around 1960.59 Even modified nuclear weapons may be unable to
destroy chemical or biological agents in buried facilities.60 Accordingly, opponents
challenge the new-capabilities argument as a rationale for RRW.
Possible Questions to NNSA. Stockpile needs: Ambassador Brooks has
stated that the current stockpile “may also be the wrong stockpile from a military
perspective.”61 While there are no current requirements for new warheads, what
potential future military requirements could be met only with RRW? Why is the
current stockpile wrong from a military perspective, given the wide range of yields
available in its weapons?
Possible Questions to Skeptics. New weapons: Some argue that the
United States should not build new nuclear weapons, and express concern that RRW
may permit new weapons. But what, exactly, is a new weapon? Various criteria
might be set forth, but none seem precisely applicable. One criterion might be a
weapon that requires testing, but testing an existing weapon to fix a problem would
not create a new weapon. Another criterion might be a new mission, but the Robust
Nuclear Earth Penetrator, if it is ultimately deployed, would have the same mission
as the B61-11 earth penetrator deployed in the 1990s, which replaces a much larger
58 Ibid., pp. 3, 6.
59 U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Compiled
and edited by Samuel Glasstone and Philip Dolan (Washington: GPO, 1977), p. 514.
60 A National Academy of Sciences report stated, “An attack [on a chemical or biological
weapons facility] by a nuclear weapon would be effective in destroying the agent only if
detonated in the chamber where agents are stored,” and that the uncertainty of survival of
an earth penetrator weapon increases with a depth of penetration greater than 3 meters.
National Academy of Sciences. National Research Council. Division on Engineering and
Physical Sciences. Committee on the Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other
Weapons. Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons (Washington: National
Academies Press, 2005); prepublication copy, pp. 9-1 and 9-2. By this reasoning, a nuclear
attack on a chemical or biological weapon facility buried at a moderate depth would
probably fail.
61 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 3.

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CRS-26
bomb for that mission, the B53, deployed decades earlier. And couldn’t the nuclear
weapons complex build a new weapon using LEP?
Possible Questions to Opponents. New weapons for new missions:
Opponents hold that RRW could enable the United States to build new weapons for
new missions. In this argument, even though NNSA plans to develop RRWs that do
not have added military capability and are not intended for new missions, the
capability to design and manufacture new nuclear explosive packages necessarily
gives NNSA the ability to build more-capable weapons for new missions. Yet a
decision to proceed with a new warhead would need to be approved by Congress and
the President. Would that provide sufficient assurance against such weapons? If not,
is that sufficient reason to forgo the RRW program? Is there any other way to ensure
that the capability acquired through RRW will never be used for this purpose?
Might RRW Permit a Reduction in Warhead Numbers? The United
States retains many reserve warheads. Some are for surveillance, as described in
“The Solution So Far: The Life Extension Program,” above. Some hedge against a
potential need for more deployed weapons, which is important because the United
States has been unable to produce weapons for the stockpile since shortly after the
Rocky Flats pit production plant closed in 1989. (See Appendix.) Others hedge
against the failure of some weapons; for example, NNSA retains at least two warhead
types for each delivery system — W62, W78, and W87 for land-based missiles, W76
and W88 for submarine-launched missiles, B61 and B83 bombs for aircraft, and W80
and W8462 for cruise missiles. In that way, the failure of one warhead type would not
compel the withdrawal of an entire class of delivery systems. Still others insure
against an inability by NNSA to maintain the stockpile with LEP. While all units of
a given warhead type age at the same rate, individual units differ slightly, so may fail
at different times or for different reasons.

In the view of DOD and NNSA, RRW would permit a reduction in warhead
numbers. Current warheads could be replaced with fewer warheads designed, under
RRW, to provide higher confidence in long-term sustainability. RRW would also be
linked to a production complex that could manufacture at least small numbers of
warheads to respond to new military requirements, permitting a further reduction in
stockpiled warheads.
RRW supporters believe that RRW creates an additional path, beyond that
offered by LEP, for increasing confidence in warheads. They state that, under LEP’s
approach of minimizing changes to the nuclear explosive package, problems can only
be resolved by attempting to reduce uncertainties through technical analyses, while
RRW also provides the option of increasing margins by redesigning components to
compensate for uncertainties.63
62 The W84 is not in the active stockpile.
63 The weapons labs are developing a technique, quantification of margins and uncertainties
(QMU), to evaluate how changes affect weapon performance. The idea is to identify key
segments of a weapon’s performance (e.g., high explosive detonation), the minimum and
maximum values required for each segment to perform as intended, the range of uncertainty
(continued...)

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CRS-27
Skeptics endorse stockpile reductions, but would question the need for RRW to
meet this goal. They argue that other means can maintain confidence in warheads.
For example, tritium gas, which is used to boost a weapon’s yield (see Appendix),
decays radioactively, so changing a weapon’s tritium more frequently could
compensate for uncertainties introduced by slight changes in weapon components
under LEP.64 This change can be made under LEP with no impact to the nuclear
explosive package. Skeptics also point out that RRW would not address some
reasons given for a reserve stockpile, so that RRW by itself would not permit large
reductions.
RRW supporters agree that changing tritium more frequently could forestall
some problems, but note that so doing cannot solve others. For example, a slight
asymmetry in the implosion wave might cause the primary to fail, or a failure of the
radiation case would prevent the secondary from detonating.
Possible Questions to NNSA. Warhead reductions: President Bush has
said, “I am committed to achieving a credible deterrent with the lowest possible
number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs...”65
Ambassador Brooks indicated that RRW could help meet this goal.66 What fraction
of nondeployed warheads could be eliminated from the stockpile under RRW? How
would RRW would permit this reduction? What changes would have to be made,
such as streamlining the nuclear weapons complex or rebuilding warheads, under
RRW to permit such reductions? What is the schedule for such reductions? If no
schedule is available, when might it be? Would DOD find it acceptable to replace
the current nondeployed stockpile with fewer RRW warheads rather than replacing
existing warheads unit for unit with RRW warheads?
63 (...continued)
associated with those values, and the design margins. Under QMU, the labs could have
confidence in the warhead if margin exceeds uncertainty at each segment. QMU could be
used with LEP or RRW. For more on QMU, see David Sharp and Merri Wood-Schultz,
“QMU and Nuclear Weapons Certification: What’s under the Hood,” Los Alamos Science,
no. 28, 2003, pp. 47-53; and D.H. Sharp, T.C. Wallstrom, and M.M. Wood-Schultz, Physics
Package Confidence: ‘ONE’ vs. ‘1.0’, NEDPC [Nuclear Explosives Design Physics
Conference] 2003, LAUR-04-0496.
64 “In certain cases, slight changes in the attributes of a nuclear weapons component, such
as those introduced by using new technologies, can be rendered unimportant by increasing
the margin of performance of the weapon. By margin of performance, we mean the
difference in primary yield which is expected from a normal weapon and the minimum
primary yield which will drive the secondary to essentially full yield. The margin available
to a specific weapon changes with time and circumstances, notably because primary yield
is so sensitively dependent on the amount of tritium available in the gas system.... There are
various means to enhance the margin without resorting to underground tests ... But it seems
clear that the most significant opportunity to enhance margin lies in the gas supply system.
... one obvious means is to shorten the tritium refill cycle so that large excursions in the
amount of tritium do not occur.” Drell, Jeanloz, et al., Remanufacture, pp. 23-24.
65 President George W. Bush, Remarks by the President to Students and Faculty at National
Defense University, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., May 1, 2001.
66 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 6.

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CRS-28
Possible Questions to Skeptics. Tritium and warhead reductions:
Improving warheads’ tritium supply to compensate for any erosion of confidence
addresses only one problem. Others unrelated to tritium can reduce confidence as
well. To what extent would improvements to tritium supply, by themselves, increase
confidence enough to permit a reduction in warhead numbers? What would be the
basis for this judgment?
Possible Questions to Opponents. Costs, risks, and benefits of warhead
reductions through RRW: NNSA claims that RRW would permit a reduction in
number of nondeployed warheads to hedge against warhead failures. Further, in this
view, a responsive infrastructure would permit a reduction in nondeployed warheads
retained to hedge against adverse geopolitical developments, as this infrastructure
could produce warheads in time to respond to such developments, and could do so
more readily for RRWs than for current warheads. What are the flaws in this
argument? What are its costs and risks? If the argument is correct, what is the
balance between these costs, risks, and benefits of RRW? If the United States
forgoes RRW and some current warheads must be withdrawn from service because
they became unreliable, would the resulting force structure be acceptable?
Will RRW Save Money? Supporters claim that RRW would save money for
the following reasons. Using fewer hazardous materials in components and
production processes would reduce the cost of handling, worker and environmental
protection, and waste disposal. Components designed for ease of production could
be produced with less equipment, in less time, and on less floor space. Components
less sensitive to minor variations in dimensions and materials would have fewer
production units rejected, reducing the waste stream and effectively increasing
capacity. Use of more advanced warhead use-control features would permit a
reduction in the cost of physical security. Increasing warhead safety would reduce
the risk of plutonium dispersal in a fire, and the resulting cost. Reducing stockpile
size would lower security and maintenance expenses.
Skeptics favor holding down costs, but not at the expense of confidence in the
stockpile. They place more confidence in LEP, and would rather use it even if it
costs more than RRW. They also anticipate that RRW would entail high transition
costs for development of warhead components and production processes,
construction of new nuclear weapons complex facilities, and modification of large
numbers of warheads. Posited savings from RRW in operations and maintenance,
corrected for inflation, would have to exceed these up-front investment costs for the
cost argument to be valid. With RRW at a preliminary stage, skeptics doubt that
RRW supporters have nearly enough data to make cost comparisons.
RRW may offer DOD potential cost and other benefits. For example, the Air
Force must expend much effort to remove missile warheads for maintenance.67 If
67 An Air Force officer who formerly commanded a Minuteman III ICBM squadron detailed
the activities needed to maintain warheads on those missiles. Since warheads cannot be
worked on while a missile is in its silo, the missile’s forward section, including warheads
and their protective shroud, must be removed from the missile and transported to
(continued...)

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CRS-29
RRW proves able to reduce maintenance requirements, as its proponents hold, it
would lower the operating tempo and reduce the number of personnel needed, saving
money and effort. Fewer operations would also reduce the vulnerability of missiles
and warheads, wear on equipment, and risk to personnel.
Possible Questions to NNSA. Cost: Ambassador Brooks has stated that
he thinks RRW would save money.68 Implementing RRW would entail large
investments to develop warheads using RRW, revise the nuclear weapons complex,
produce perhaps thousands of warheads designed with RRW, decontaminate and
decommission existing nuclear weapons complex facilities, and eliminate existing
warheads. At the same time, a smaller complex, more efficient production, simpler
maintenance, and longer intervals for major overhauls of warheads could yield long-
term savings. What is the basis for claiming that the long-term savings would
outweigh the investment costs? Counting costs beginning now, how many years
would it take before investment and operating costs for RRW were less than those
for LEP? If no answer is currently available because of limited data and analysis,
when does NNSA anticipate that the program will have advanced enough to provide
an answer?
Possible Questions to DOD. Savings: Is there an estimate of the
operational savings that RRW might permit? RRWs might have added use-control
features designed in; would such features permit a reduction in the level of security
that DOD applies when removing warheads from missiles for maintenance?
67 (...continued)
maintenance buildings on the base. Removing this section requires much effort. The blast
door, a large reinforced-concrete slab weighing some 100 tons, must be opened.
Technicians suspended in the launch tube ensure the missile is in a safe configuration and
separate the front section from the missile. A tractor-trailer truck drives over the silo and
winches the missile’s front end up into the truck. When that truck moves away, a similar
truck drives over the silo and lowers a replacement front end to minimize the time that the
missile is off line. The front end is attached, the silo is closed, and the trucks return to base.
Because of the increased vulnerability of missile and warheads to terrorist attack while the
launcher door is open, this operation requires heavy security throughout: helicopter coverage
overhead, a large convoy, and security personnel patrolling the area around the roads. The
drive can be as long as 140 miles each way. Several dozen people are involved, and the
operation may take as much as 16 hours. Some warhead maintenance is performed on base;
in other cases, warheads are sent to nuclear weapons complex facilities using DOE
transportation assets.
This operation entails large supporting costs. Top leadership at the base must sign off
each time, and many units at the base, including operations, maintenance, security, and
transportation, are involved. Equipment for use with nuclear weapons is specially designed,
certified, and inspected. Personnel involved with nuclear weapons are certified through the
Personnel Reliability Program, which requires extra background and health checks, and
continuous monitoring of the health and reliability of such personnel. Even a cold may keep
a person off duty temporarily. Because of the greater demand for personnel with security
clearances since 9/11, the screening process has slowed considerably, creating shortages.
68 Ibid.

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CRS-30
Possible Questions to Opponents. Cost: RRW will entail large
investment costs for design, Complex reconfiguration, and production, but once the
investment is made operating costs should, by design, be low. In contrast, some
argue that LEP, over time, is likely to incur substantial and rising costs as it becomes
ever more difficult to operate and maintain weapons using tedious methods and
obsolete technologies. Some of these costs may be less obvious, as in the Air Force
example above. Is there a basis for believing that LEP’s operating costs will not rise?
Or that LEP’s costs over the next, say, three decades will be less than those of RRW?
How Might RRW Affect the Nuclear Weapons Complex? A responsive
infrastructure, including the nuclear weapons complex, is an element of the New
Triad.69 Responsiveness includes (1) flexibility, the ability to switch rapidly from
work on one warhead type to work on another in case a defect is found that requires
a prompt fix; (2) timeliness, the ability to modify warheads or make new-design
warheads if needed in time to respond to potential threats, if called for by DOD; and
(3) capacity adequate to make fixes in a reasonable time to a warhead type with many
deployed units, or so that it could work on several warhead types simultaneously.
A responsive infrastructure, RRW supporters believe, requires new-design
components. Components that are designed for ease of manufacture and that
minimize the use of hazardous materials would permit the plants to use simpler
production processes and produce at a faster rate. Conversely, by increasing
confidence, RRW could enable DOD to shift its hedge against potential weapon
problems from maintaining many inactive warheads to a more responsive
infrastructure, thereby reducing the number of nondeployed warheads and the size
of the complex needed to support the stockpile.
Skeptics would question whether an LEP infrastructure would be much less
responsive than an RRW infrastructure. New-design nuclear explosive package
components fully supportable by nuclear test data could be done under LEP or RRW.
Skeptics maintain that the remaining subset of components, new-design nuclear
explosive package components not fully supported by test data, would involve
considerable equipment and skill to produce even under RRW. Worse, they fear,
such components might introduce problems, and correcting them would absorb much
of the capacity of the infrastructure, reducing its responsiveness. Finally, they assert,
responsiveness can be gained in ways other than component design, such as by
investment in equipment, facilities, and R&D on manufacturing. Skeptics, however,
do not oppose all manufacturing improvements. Some improvements could produce
components to tighter tolerances, reducing variations that might raise questions about
reliability. Skeptics see a smaller stockpile as the best way to assure responsiveness
by easing the burden on the production complex.
69 Crouch, “Special Briefing on the Nuclear Posture Review,” Jan. 9, 2002. While the Cold
War “old triad” had three types of nuclear weapons — intercontinental ballistic missiles;
missile submarines and submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and bombers and bomber-
delivered weapons — the “New Triad” of the Nuclear Posture Review consists of offensive
strike capabilities (the “old triad” plus nonnuclear forces), missile defense, and a responsive
infrastructure (including but not limited to the nuclear weapons complex), all supported by
command, control, intelligence, and planning. See ibid., and U.S. Department of Defense,
Findings of the Nuclear Posture Review, Jan. 9, 2002.

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Skeptics may find the nuclear weapons complex under RRW, as described
below by NNSA Administrator Brooks, to be troubling:
Establishing a responsive nuclear infrastructure will provide opportunities for
additional stockpile reductions because we can rely less on the stockpile and
more on infrastructure (i.e., ability to produce or repair warheads in sufficient
quantity in a timely way) in responding to technical failures or new or emerging
threats.70
If we can establish a responsive infrastructure and demonstrate we can produce
replacement warheads on the same time scale in which geopolitical threats
emerge — and if we can demonstrate that we can respond quickly to technical
problems, then I believe we can go much further in reducing nondeployed
warheads in order to meet the President’s stated vision of the smallest stockpile
consistent with our nation’s security requirements.71
Skeptics take these statements as evidence that RRW would entail a substantial
production capacity and the ability to design weapons and start production quickly,
thereby enabling the buildup of a larger stockpile if desired. They believe that
sufficient manufacturing processes could be upgraded under LEP, and reject the
implication that only RRW could deliver a more efficient and responsive complex
to support a smaller stockpile.
RRW advocates, however, maintain that the United States needs a nuclear
weapons complex as Ambassador Brooks described because it addresses
contingencies that could well arise. The United States may need to (1) design and
produce new or modified warheads quickly to meet new threats; (2) rebuild several
warhead types at the same time; (3) conduct a large-scale, rapid rebuild to correct a
defect in a type of warhead deployed in large numbers, and (4) rebuild a smaller
stockpile on a continuing basis to avoid issues that could cause uncertainty in
performance. Substantial capacity is needed to meet any of these goals, let alone all
of them simultaneously. However, they argue that this capacity does not mean that
the United States will build a large stockpile; the President and Congress would
decide on stockpile size.
Possible Questions to NNSA. Capacity: As noted, Ambassador Brooks
has implied that a new nuclear weapons complex might need to be able to produce
warheads at a substantial rate. What capacity does NNSA envision? Transforming
the nuclear weapons infrastructure could cost many billions of dollars. Could we
attain the needed capacity by using that money to upgrade the existing infrastructure
under LEP?
70 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 3.
71 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Strategic Forces/Nuclear Weapons, Apr. 4,
2005.

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Infrastructure responsiveness: Ambassador Brooks saw “a responsive
infrastructure as essential to reducing total stockpile numbers and associated costs.”72
Why is the current infrastructure not responsive? What steps would make it
sufficiently responsive, and what would they cost? Would the savings from reducing
stockpile numbers outweigh the costs of building a responsive infrastructure? Could
the United States secure sufficient responsiveness at a fraction of the RRW
investment cost by upgrading the existing nuclear weapons infrastructure?
Training: Ambassador Brooks stated, “We are losing expertise” because this
nation has not fielded a new warhead in 20 years or modified one in 10 years, yet
current weapons staff with skills sharpened by nuclear testing are retiring.73 He fears
that if training “is disconnected from real design work that leads to engineered
systems,” the next generation may “understand the theory, but not the practice, of
warhead development,” which could threaten future ability to maintain the stockpile.
What are the advantages of training designers using RRW rather than LEP?
Possible Questions to Skeptics. RRW and beyond: Ambassador Brooks
views RRW as a key to transforming the nuclear weapons enterprise.74 It would
support a new stockpile, permit a smaller stockpile and greater confidence in its long-
term sustainability, permit a new nuclear weapons complex, reduce costs, and reduce
the prospect of nuclear testing, to name a few. Can this view be justified? Are these
larger goals unreasonable? Can RRW be the basis for reaching them?
Possible Questions to Opponents. Need to modernize the complex.
Many production facilities of the nuclear weapons complex are old. The DOE task
force referenced earlier “found the production side of the Complex operating from
World War II era facilities, lacking in modern-day production technology and striving
to optimize performance with antiquated equipment and facilities.”75 The complex
will have to maintain or build whatever warheads are in the stockpile. Will the
current complex need to be modernized even to conduct LEPs? If not, why not? If
so, would it be less costly to modernize a complex intended to produce warheads
designed in part for ease of manufacture than to modernize a complex to support
current warheads? If the complex is modernized but RRW does not proceed, could
a modernized complex support decades-old warheads, or would such modernization
introduce changes when replicating components?
Might RRW Undermine U.S. Nonproliferation Efforts? Skeptics oppose
RRW to the extent that it entails a substantial production capacity, facilitates the
development of weapons with new military capabilities, or leads to testing. They are
concerned that a program of that sort may appear to run counter to the U.S.
commitment in Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) to “pursue
negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear
72 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 5.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons
Complex of the Future, p. 1.

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arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament...” Further, a statement by
China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to the 2000 NPT
Review Conference reiterated “our unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of
a complete elimination of nuclear weapons...”76 In this view, reaffirming the value
of nuclear weapons through programs such as RRW would make it harder for the
United States to achieve its nonproliferation objectives diplomatically. Member
states of the NPT, meeting in New York in May 2005 to review treaty
implementation, have criticized the United States, though not by name, for nuclear
weapon programs, which they see as inconsistent with Article VI of the treaty.77
RRW’s supporters counter that RRW will increase confidence in the reliability
of weapons and in the ability to certify them over the long term. As a result, RRW
will reduce the probability that the United States will resume nuclear testing and will
permit a substantial reduction in the U.S. nuclear stockpile, both of which could have
a positive effect on nonproliferation. In addition, some may take the view that an
RRW program that facilitated the development of nuclear weapons with new military
missions could help dampen proliferation by strengthening deterrence.
Possible Questions to NNSA. Capacity and the NPT: In Article VI of the
NPT, the parties agreed to negotiate toward nuclear disarmament. The parties to the
treaty met at U.N. Headquarters in May 2005 for a five-year review of the NPT; some
participants criticized U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies as running
counter to Article VI. How does NNSA square a new nuclear weapons infrastructure
that could produce substantial numbers of new-design replacement warheads quickly
with Article VI?
Sustainability and the NPT: RRW warheads would, by design, be easier to
maintain over the long term. Other nations might infer from the replacement of the
current stockpile with RRW warheads that the United States is preparing to retain
nuclear weapons for the indefinite future, and might view that action as inconsistent
with nuclear disarmament. On the other hand, Article VI calls for negotiations for
effective measures relating to nuclear disarmament, and it could be argued that a
longer-lived stockpile has no bearing on the course of any such negotiations. What
is NNSA’s view on the relationship, if any, between stockpile sustainability and NPT
obligations?
Possible Questions to Skeptics. RRW and nuclear proliferation: An
argument against RRW is that, by replacing the current stockpile with thousands of
76 Statement by the Delegations of France, the People’s Republic of China, the Russian
Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United
States of America, introduced in Statement to the 2000 NPT Review Conference, by H.E.
Hubert de la Fortelle on behalf of the U.N. permanent five nuclear weapon states, May 1,
2000, available at [http://www.ceip.org/programs/npp/npt2000p5.htm].
77 See, for example, the statement of Ambassador Wernfried Koeffler, Head of Delegation,
Austria, to the 2005 NPT Review Conference, “Our concern that nuclear weapons are still
central to strategic planning is increased by reports of intentions to develop new nuclear
weapons or alter their design for new uses. Even the affirmation that only concepts are being
studied is not reassuring,” p. 4.

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CRS-34
warheads designed to be more sustainable over the very long term, and replacing the
current nuclear weapons complex with a new complex designed to sustain RRW
warheads, other nations may infer that the United States plans to keep its warheads
indefinitely. That could be viewed as contradicting U.S. commitments under Article
VI of the NPT. On the other hand, it could be argued that the United States must
maintain its warheads, that RRW is a better way than LEP to do this, and that a
decision to eliminate U.S. warheads is a separate debate from RRW. How may RRW
affect U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts?
Possible Questions to Opponents. Link between RRW and proliferators:
An opponent of RRW argues that “U.S. pursuit of an RRW would disrupt
international cooperation in nonproliferation. That would diminish pressure on Iran
and North Korea to forego their nuclear weapons programs and would disrupt efforts
to eliminate clandestine trafficking in nuclear materials and equipment.”78 Given that
Iran and North Korea have been pursuing their nuclear programs for decades, how
can opponents be sure that there is a direct link between RRW and the nuclear
programs of these nations? What grounds are there for believing that a halt to RRW
would influence these nations to halt their nuclear programs? Many nations have an
interest in halting nuclear proliferation; how would RRW lead them to take a less
aggressive stance toward eliminating “clandestine trafficking in nuclear materials and
equipment”?
Might LEP or RRW Lead to Nuclear Testing? Almost all participants in
the RRW debate prefer to avoid nuclear testing. P.L. 109-163, the FY2006 National
Defense Authorization Act, declares (Section 3111) that an objective of RRW is “To
further reduce the likelihood of the resumption of underground nuclear weapons
testing.” (Nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space, and under water is banned by
the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.) The Administration has continued the nuclear
test moratorium, though it has asserted it would test if required.79 That has not been
needed because DOD has no requirement for nuclear weapons with new or modified
capabilities, and because the Secretaries of Defense and Energy have been able to
certify the stockpile without testing.80 Because the Bush Administration does not
support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,81 it has not spelled out arguments
against testing. It could be, however, that because testing could cause massive
protests domestically and internationally, part of the rationale for avoiding testing is
political. Further, most nations would likely view resumed U.S. testing as a clear
78 Robert Civiak, “The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program,” p. 1.
79 Brooks testified, “We believe the nation must be prepared to carry out an underground
nuclear test in the event of unforeseen problems that can’t be resolved by other means.”
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Services, Strategic Forces Subcommittee,
FY2006 budget request from the Department of Energy on Atomic Energy Defense
Activities, hearing, Mar. 2, 2005.
80 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Strategic Forces/Nuclear Weapons, Apr. 4,
2005.
81 The treaty would ban nuclear explosions. It was opened for signature in 1996 but has not
entered into force. The U.S. Senate rejected it in 1999. See CRS Issue Brief IB92099,
Nuclear Weapons: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, by Jonathan Medalia.

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breach of U.S. obligations on behalf of nuclear disarmament and could lead to the
unraveling of the nuclear nonproliferation regime and to testing by others.
NNSA argues that RRW would reduce the need for testing. Ambassador
Brooks has said, “not only is the reliable replacement warhead program not designed
to foster a return to nuclear testing, it is probably our best hedge against the need
sometime in the future to be faced with the question of a return.”82 Components
could be designed to be less sensitive to minor changes in materials and processes
and to permit looser tolerances. As a result, uncertainties that might prompt a nuclear
test on current weapons might be acceptable with RRW components.
Skeptics endorse a continuation of the nuclear test moratorium, and fear that
changes under RRW that NNSA claims would reduce the need for testing could
actually increase it. Small changes to the nuclear explosive package that were within
the parameters validated by past nuclear tests could be done under LEP. It is as yet
unclear if changes made under RRW would be within these parameters; changes of
greater magnitude could undermine confidence in the warhead and lead to testing.
Possible Questions to NNSA. RRW and reduced nuclear testing:
Ambassador Brooks has anticipated that RRW will reduce the need for nuclear
testing.83 How will RRW achieve this goal? Does NNSA have plans for how it
might respond if severe design flaws were discovered in RRW weapons? Would
new-design components stay within the design parameters validated by past nuclear
tests? What would be the process for validating new design components that are not
within design parameters validated by previous tests without a resort to testing? What
evidence is there that DOD would accept RRWs into the stockpile without testing?
Possible Questions to Opponents. Likelihood of testing with LEP or
RRW: Opponents express concern that RRW could lead to testing. One said,
“replacing existing, well-proven nuclear warhead designs with ‘new’ and ‘improved’
replacement warheads or warhead components could, if carelessly pursued, increase
pressure to conduct nuclear explosive proof tests.”84 Said another, “once an RRW
is developed, it is likely that military planners in the DOD will require a nuclear test
before they accept it into the stockpile. ... A Machiavellian might say that lab experts,
who claim they can develop an RRW without testing, are attempting a bait and
switch trick.”85 NNSA’s position is that testing is more likely to be required in the
future with current warheads because the complex designs are vulnerable to small
changes that result from aging or from remanufacturing replacement components.
What is the basis for thinking that testing would be more likely with RRW than with
current warheads?
82 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Strategic Forces/Nuclear Weapons, Apr. 4,
2005
83 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 5.
84 Kimball, Nuclear Bunker-Buster (As We Know It) Is Dead.
85 Civiak, The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program, p. 9.

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Increasing confidence that testing would not be needed with RRW: Given that
RRWs are to be much simpler than that of current warheads, outside experts who
oppose a return to nuclear testing might, after reviewing proposed designs, computer
models, experimental data, and associated documentation, be able to judge with high
confidence whether or not the design required testing. Would a judgment favorable
to RRW convince opponents that RRW would not need testing?
Might RRW Enable an Increase In Inherent Warhead Security? There
are two aspects to warhead security — access control and use control. The first is a
matter of physical protection and is the responsibility of DOD or DOE. The second
is ensuring that anyone who gains unauthorized access to a warhead cannot detonate
it. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, both have increased in importance. For example,
NNSA’s FY2002 request for Safeguards and Security was $448.9 million, while the
FY2006 request is $708.5 million. Use control has always been part of warhead
design. In the earliest days, fissile materials were reportedly kept separate from
bomb casings, in part for control.86 For many years, weapons have used permissive
action links, which require a code to activate the weapon. Now, with a higher threat
of terrorist attack, RRW supporters claim that further modifications to the weapon
for use control are in order. Ambassador Brooks, discussing RRW, stated:
We now must consider the distinct possibility of well-armed and competent
terrorist suicide teams seeking to gain access to a warhead in order to detonate
it in place. This has driven our site security posture from one of “containment
and recovery” of stolen warheads to one of “denial of any access” to warheads.
This change has dramatically increased security costs for “gates, guns, guards”
at our nuclear weapons sites. If we were designing the stockpile today, we would
apply new technologies and approaches to warhead-level use control as a means
to reduce physical security costs.87
Skeptics say that physical security and existing use-control features have proven
quite sufficient to protect warheads against theft by terrorists. Further, warhead
vulnerability has been reduced since the end of the Cold War by withdrawing
thousands of tactical nuclear weapons from Europe and from Navy ships, and by
reducing the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads sharply. General James
Cartwright, USMC, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, said, “I am comfortable
that we have the [nuclear] weapons protected and that we are moving to a posture
that will improve that protection in light of the changing threat.”88 Skeptics also
question if DOE and DOD would reduce physical security even if enhanced-security
warheads were deployed. At any rate, in this view, Russian nuclear warheads and
materials are at much higher risk, so U.S. programs to secure them would be a better
investment than improvements to U.S. warheads.
86 Thomas Cochran, William Arkin, and Milton Hoenig, Nuclear Weapons Databook,
Volume I, U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1984), p. 6.
See also ibid., pp. 30-31.
87 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 4.
88 Testimony at Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Strategic Forces/Nuclear
Weapons, Apr. 4, 2005.

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Skeptics question the merits of redesigning warheads to incorporate new use-
control features. So doing might reduce confidence in the warheads, at high cost, and
for little potential benefit. According to Robert Peurifoy, a former Vice President at
Sandia National Laboratories, “Use control features were originally intended to delay
the unauthorized use of a nuclear weapon by friendly forces, including U.S.
custodians. It has now magically transformed in the minds of many to the prevention
of unauthorized use by terrorists. I don’t believe this can be done.”89
Possible Questions to NNSA. Physical security: Ambassador Brooks has
stated, “We now must consider the distinct possibility of well-armed and competent
terrorist suicide teams seeking to gain access to a warhead in order to detonate it in
place.”90 How likely is this threat? Is it a threat mainly to the few U.S. warheads
located overseas? If so, would it be militarily acceptable to withdraw those warheads
to the United States? Is it a threat to warheads in this nation? Would permissive
action links prevent terrorists from operating a warhead they seized? Could the
United States achieve a given level of security at less cost by adding physical security
(guards, gates, guns) rather than by rebuilding the stockpile? If NNSA built
enhanced-security warheads through RRW, would it and DOD reduce physical
security? Would the gain in security from redesign and replacement outweigh the
technical risk? What plans does NNSA have to incorporate enhanced security
features on RRW warheads? Could it backfit some security enhancements onto
existing warheads? Might we compare the cost and effectiveness of increasing
security by building RRW warheads, by retrofitting existing warheads, and by
increasing physical security?
Possible Questions to Skeptics. RRW and use control: Current warheads
have some use-control features, but additional ones could not be incorporated into
their physics packages because so doing would stray too far from design parameters
validated through nuclear testing. In contrast, it is argued that RRW would let the
labs incorporate enhanced use-control features into the physics packages of new-
design weapons, thereby reducing the risk that terrorists could seize weapons and
detonate them in place. The argument continues that these new designs would let
NNSA and DOD reduce the cost of guns, gates, and guards. Are use-control features
in current weapons adequate? Is enhanced use control a valid argument for RRW?
Would designing such features into a warhead significantly increase the technical risk
of the design? Is it realistic to expect that NNSA and DOD would reduce physical
security of warheads with enhanced use control features?
Might RRW Enable an Increase In Warhead Safety? While the United
States has taken steps to increase the safety of its warheads against lightning, fire,
impact, etc., not all warhead types incorporate all existing safety features. Some use
conventional high explosive (CHE) rather than insensitive high explosive (IHE); the
latter will not detonate in various accidents, while the former can, possibly scattering
plutonium. Some warheads lack fire-resistant pits, which are designed to increase
the time and temperature that a warhead exposed to fire will contain plutonium.
89 E-mail from Robert Peurifoy to the author, Mar. 26, 2005.
90 Brooks statement to Senate Armed Services Committee, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 4.

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RRW advocates make the following argument. The technology of current
warheads is frozen in the 1980s, and LEP perpetuates that technology. The only way
to move beyond it is to use new-design components that incorporate current
advances. Since the United States will retain its stockpile for an indefinite time, the
cost of the safety gains would be amortized over many years. To enhance safety, the
RRW program may consider ways to modify warhead components, including those
in the nuclear explosive package, to increase fire resistance.
Skeptics believe that warheads are quite safe, and that safety has improved over
the years thanks to safer designs and improved handling procedures. They are
concerned that some safety changes to the nuclear explosive package would go
beyond what is supported by nuclear test data and could jeopardize reliability. For
example, it is critically important to the performance of the primary stage of a nuclear
weapon (see Appendix), and thus of the secondary, that the pit implode with
reasonable symmetry. A vast amount of effort has gone into developing such pits
and determining the bounds of “reasonable.” Because IHE is significantly less
energetic than CHE, more IHE must be used to obtain the same implosive force. But
using a larger amount of less energetic material would alter the implosion wave,
necessitating other adjustments in order to use the same pit.
Some safety-related changes would, skeptics believe, offer little value. For
example, the W88 or W76 warheads for Trident missiles could be candidates for
backfitting with IHE. They use CHE because the Navy sought to maximize yield-to-
weight. Using IHE on the W88 would have reduced range by 10 percent, or warhead
yield by “a modest amount,” or the number of warheads the missile could carry from
eight to seven.91 A 1990 study expressed concern about the safety of CHE.92 Sidney
Drell, the panel chairman and lead author of the study, however, stated in 2005 that
further studies revealed that the CHE in the W88 would not detonate even if
subjected to a harder knock than was realized in 1990, and that little would be gained
by substituting IHE in the warhead because the missile itself used a very energetic
propellant that is relatively easy to detonate. An accident that caused the propellant
to detonate could break apart the warheads, scattering plutonium, regardless of the
explosive used on the warhead. Unless the missile was redesigned to use a less
energetic propellant, which would be very costly, replacing CHE with IHE in the
warheads would produce little gain in safety. Further, because CHE and IHE are very
different in terms of energy density, burn characteristics, etc., Drell believes that
there is no way that IHE could be substituted for CHE without nuclear testing.93
Possible Questions to NNSA. Costs vs. benefits of added safety. Current
warheads have an excellent safety record, and design changes over the course of the
Cold War and improved operational procedures have continually enhanced safety.
Are current warheads safe enough? Are there any technical risks to enhanced-safety
91 U.S. Congress. House Committee on Armed Services, Report of the Panel on Nuclear
Weapons Safety, Committee Print No. 14, 101st Congress, 2nd session, p. 28, by Sidney Drell,
Chairman, John Foster, Jr., and Charles Townes.
92 Ibid., p. 32.
93 Information provided by Sidney Drell to the author, Mar. 16, May 3, and May 4, 2005.

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CRS-39
RRW designs? What would be gained by replacing CHE SLBM warheads with IHE
warheads if Trident II missiles continue to use their current highly energetic
propellant? Given that IHE requires more volume than CHE for a given amount of
explosive energy, could Trident II missiles accommodate IHE warheads?
Questions to Opponents. Value of enhanced safety. The chance of a low-
probability event occurring increases over time. Even though current warheads have
an excellent safety record, why wouldn’t it make sense to improve safety as much as
possible given that the United States will retain a nuclear arsenal for the foreseeable
future? What are the costs and risks of efforts to improve safety through RRWs?
Might RRW Reduce Adverse Consequences of Aging? RRW
supporters hold that the effects of aging can be reduced. Materials less sensitive to
aging can be used, processes can be better characterized so they can be repeated more
precisely, and new components can be designed to use such materials and processes.
Skeptics feel that RRW advocates have overstated the problem and minimized
the ability of LEP to cope with it. They feel that LEP can continue to correct aging
problems, as it has for many years. They hold that changes in materials must be done
with extensive study to determine if the material will work as did the original, but
assert that distinguishing the “large” changes of RRW from the “small” changes
made under LEP is largely a matter of semantics as long as the changes are made
under the condition that they will not require the resumption of nuclear testing.
Questions to Critics. New materials, longer warhead life, and need for
testing. Could new materials be incorporated more readily into warheads of new
design than retrofitted into existing warheads? If not, why not? If so, could it
reasonably be expected that such materials, chosen in part for their longevity, would
give RRWs longer service lives than current warheads? Would such warheads
reduce the risk that aging problems could require nuclear tests to correct?
Might RRW Enable Reduced Use of Hazardous Materials? During the
Cold War, warheads used many types of hazardous material (hazmat) to save weight,
or because a particular material was the standard way to solve a design problem.
Hazmat requires special handling: glove boxes, other layers of containment,
filtration of air vented into the atmosphere, disposition of scrap material and
contaminated solvents, special training, compliance with environmental and safety
regulations, and the like. This burden was deemed acceptable during the Cold War.
Now, though, regulations ban some industrial solvents that were used to produce
current warheads, and hazmat reduction would arguably reduce cost, simplify
production, and improve worker safety. RRW advocates believe that advances in
knowledge of weapons, materials, and processes over the past quarter-century make
it possible to design components that minimize hazmat usage.
Skeptics agree that reduction of hazmat is a worthy objective, but question if it
is worth the costs and risks. They expect that redesign, validation, and production
of components would require extensive testing and study, and would run the risk that
a different material, especially in the nuclear explosive package, could impair
reliability. They are concerned that new materials might impair reliability if they
decomposed in an unanticipated manner. They hold that improved knowledge of

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existing components and materials reduces the advantage of eliminating hazmat.
Some skeptics would retain existing components, materials, and processes to the
extent possible, even if that meant retaining hazmat, on grounds that that is the surest
way to retain confidence in reliability. They would consider having dedicated
production lines if needed to produce some materials and would consider filing for
waivers to hazmat regulations if needed to continue using such materials. Others
would consider redesign of some components outside the nuclear explosive package
to eliminate hazmat if it could clearly be demonstrated, on a case by case basis, that
the benefits were substantial and the uncertainties minimal.
Possible Questions to NNSA. Risks and benefits of hazmat reduction. Are
there technical risks to including it as a design goal? Do we know enough about how
materials not previously used in nuclear warheads might interact with other materials
to have confidence in low-hazmat RRWs? Is there an estimate of the overall savings
anticipated from hazmat reduction? Can NNSA provide a detailed example of the
various ways in which avoiding hazmat in a specific instance would save money?
Policy Options for Congress
RRW is a new program with no specific, tangible product yet defined. In
deciding how to proceed on RRW, Congress has a number of options available to it.
Decide Whether and How to Proceed. As with any program, Congress
could choose to continue RRW as requested or terminate it. Several options exist
between those extremes. Congress could allow NNSA to pursue RRW and LEP as
complementary programs. It could limit RRW to modification of components and
bar the program from considering new-design warheads. It could bar RRW from
making warhead changes that would increase military capability or that could
reasonably be expected to lead to nuclear testing. It could delay a decision on such
choices pending the outcome of the FY2005-FY2006 RRW study.
Clarify the Scope of RRW. Because RRW is a new program, its scope is in
the process of being defined. Congress might wish to help focus and shape the
program by asking NNSA to answer a number of questions to better define it.
! What design changes does NNSA envision making in warheads or
their components with RRW that could not be made with LEP?
! If NNSA proceeds with LEPs for W76 and W80, would that
preclude transformation of the nuclear weapons complex for
decades? If so, when must a choice between LEP and RRW be
made?
! Will RRW involve the construction of one or more new sites for the
nuclear weapons complex outside existing sites? Will it involve
construction of new facilities at existing sites? What upgrades to
facilities are envisioned to foster a responsive infrastructure?

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! Will RRW lead to the closing of any existing nuclear weapons
complex sites?
Establish a Panel to Review Proposed RRW Designs. A finding by
the RRW design study that one or more designs can meet RRW program goals could
have far-reaching results — a shift to RRW, design and production of many new-
design warheads, retirement of current warheads, and reconfiguration of the nuclear
weapons complex. But how could Congress have confidence that the RRW design
would meet the various military requirements, would not require testing, would not
add military capability, and so on, all at the same time? One possible approach
would be to have an outside panel review the design or designs. The panel could be
composed of experts familiar with nuclear warhead design but not on the staff of the
weapons labs, including some who favor and some who oppose a resumption of
nuclear testing. The postulated simplicity of RRW designs should make it easier for
these experts to conduct a meaningful review.
Provide More Specific Congressional Guidance on RRW. As noted,
Congress mandated a number of objectives for the RRW program in the FY2006
National Defense Authorization. However, questions remain as to what Congress
would find acceptable. Clarifying the answers would help NNSA and DOD plan for
RRW. Questions might include:
! If NNSA, DOD, and perhaps a panel of outside experts accept the
design of the first RRW, would Congress be willing to suspend
LEPs in order to make funds and facilities available to accelerate
production of RRWs, at the risk that the warheads scheduled to
undergo LEPs might develop a defect before they could be replaced
by RRWs?
! Is a reduction in physical security (guards, fences, etc.) because of
new use-control features designed into RRWs acceptable?
! Is it acceptable if RRW entails new designs?
! If production of RRWs requires a reconfigured nuclear weapons
complex, would extra funds be provided for the purpose, would
other NNSA programs be reduced to offset reconfiguration costs, or
is there some other alternative?
! If RRW is not to perform new military missions, how can Congress
define such missions and enforce its intent?
Provide More Specific Congressional Guidance on the New-
Weapon Issue. Congress has set forth what the nuclear weapon labs fear may
prove to be contradictory requirements for RRW.
Committees have directed that RRW should improve existing weapons and not
develop new ones:

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The [Senate Appropriations] Committee recommends $25,351,000 for RRW to
accelerate the planning, development and design for a comprehensive RRW
strategy that improves the reliability, longevity, and certifiability of existing
weapons and their components.94 [emphasis added]
The [House Appropriations] Committee’s qualified endorsement of the RRW
initiative is based on the assumption that a replacement weapon will be designed
only as a re-engineered and remanufactured warhead for an existing weapon
system in the stockpile. The Committee does not endorse the RRW concept as
the beginning of a new production program intended to produce new warhead
designs or produce new weapons for any military mission beyond the current
deterrent requirements. The Committee’s support of the RRW concept is
contingent on the intent of the program being solely to meet the current military
characteristics and requirements of the existing stockpile.95
H.R. 1815, the FY2006 National Defense Authorization Bill as passed by the
House, contains the following passage on RRW in Section 3111:
Program Required- The Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the Secretary
of Defense, shall carry out a program, to be known as the Reliable Replacement
Warhead program, to develop reliable replacement components that are
producible and certifiable for the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. [emphasis
added]
H.R. 1815 as signed into law (P.L. 109-163) contains related language in
Section 3111:
Program Required- The Secretary of Energy shall carry out a program, to be
known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which will have the
following objectives: ... (6) To use the design, certification, and production
expertise resident in the nuclear complex to develop reliable replacement
components to fulfill current mission requirements of the existing stockpile.
At the same time, Congress has spelled out benefits it hopes to gain if RRW
works as NNSA anticipates, such as lower cost, enhanced ability to manufacture and
certify warheads, reduced use of hazardous materials, reduced numbers of non-
deployed warheads, and restructuring of the nuclear weapons complex.96
Yet the three nuclear weapon labs appear to believe that the path to meeting the
many simultaneous requirements needed to achieve these benefits is with new-design
replacement warheads that meet RRW criteria and without the Cold War constraints
that were imposed for current designs. According to a tri-lab report, “The goal of this
approach [of which RRW is an example] is to achieve a more affordable, sustainable,
and responsive enterprise. In order to transform the enterprise in this way, the
94 U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Energy and Water Development
Bill, 2006, S.Rept. 109-84, to accompany H.R. 2419, 109th Cong., 1st Sess., 2005, p. 155.
95 House Appropriations Committee, Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill,
2006, p. 130.
96 For further detail, see “Congressional Action on the FY2006 RRW Request,” below.

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warhead designs that drive the enterprise must change. Warhead designs can be
developed that emphasize manufacturability, certifiability, and increased safety and
security, and enable enterprise transformation.”97 Similarly, as noted, Ambassador
Brooks reportedly said that obtaining the advantages of RRW would likely require
redesigning the physics package. In addition, two limits imposed on the design of an
RRW are that the warhead offer no new military capability and not require nuclear
testing for certification and long-term maintenance.
At issue for Congress: are new-design replacement warheads within such limits
acceptable if that is the only way to obtain RRW’s potential advantages? This
seeming dilemma may hinge on one’s definition of a “new” warhead, an issue that
has been contentious in Congress.98 While it is too early to say what design the
current RRW study will produce, the design will in all likelihood involve far more
than modifying a few components. Design criteria for RRWs differ from those of the
Cold War, all nuclear and nonnuclear components of a warhead will be subject to
change, tradeoffs between components may be made, and design features of some
components may require changes in other components. A new replacement warhead
design may therefore be the only way to attain the benefits that Congress seeks from
the RRW program. Some argue that a new replacement warhead design of this sort
is acceptable because warheads built under the RRW approach would not provide
added military capability, so would not be classed as new warheads. Others are
concerned that any new design, including one to replace a currently-deployed
warhead, constitutes a new warhead. Another possible interpretation is that the
requirement that RRW not produce new weapons but only new components could be
interpreted as permitting new warheads if warheads are seen as components of
weapon systems (e.g., missiles).
Congressional Action on the FY2006 RRW Request
As noted, the FY2006 request for RRW was $9.351 million, and the request
document provided little detail on the program. The House Appropriations
Committee reported the FY2006 Energy and Water Development Appropriations
Bill, H.R. 2419, on May 18, 2005 (H.Rept. 109-86). The bill passed the House, 416-
13, on May 24 with no amendments to the Weapons Activities section. In its report,
the committee offered a “qualified endorsement” of RRW “contingent on the intent
of the program being solely to meet the current military characteristics and
requirements of the existing stockpile.” (p. 128) (Page numbers in this section refer
to H.Rept. 109-86.) It did not endorse RRW if it produces new weapons for new
military missions. (p. 128)
The committee saw RRW as part of a new Sustainable Stockpile Initiative,
under which DOE would “develop an integrated RRW implementation plan that
97 O’Brien et al., Transforming the Nuclear Enterprise, p. 6.
98 As an example of how contentious “new weapons” are, see the debate on the amendment
by Senator Feinstein to delete funds from H.R. 2419, the FY2006 Energy and Water
Appropriations Bill, for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, in Congressional Record, June
30, 2005, pp. S7781-S7794.

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challenges the [nuclear weapons] complex to produce a RRW certifiable design
while implementing an accelerated warhead dismantlement program and an
infrastructure reconfiguration proposal that maximizes special nuclear material
[essentially, highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium] consolidation.”
(p. 128)
The committee focused on RRW throughout its discussion of Weapons
Activities, linked RRW to many Weapons Activities programs, and used the potential
of RRW as the rationale to reduce or delay several requested programs. Its many
actions and statements on RRW include the following:
! “The RRW weapon will be designed for ease of manufacturing,
maintenance, dismantlement, and certification without nuclear
testing, allowing the NNSA to transition the weapons complex away
from a large, expensive Cold War relic into a smaller, more efficient
modern complex. A more reliable replacement warhead will allow
long-term savings by phasing out the multiple redundant Cold War
warhead designs that require maintaining multiple obsolete
production technologies to maintain the older warheads.” (p. 128)
! “The Committee directs the Secretary of Energy to establish a
Federal Advisory Committee on the Reliable Replacement Warhead
initiative...” (p. 128)
! A rebaselined LEP, an RRW program plan, and a dismantlement
plan would provide “reliable nuclear deterrence” with a stockpile
after 2025 that is significantly smaller than the stockpile level
planned for 2012. As a result, “the current Life Extension Plans will
be scoped back to lower levels and the resources will be redeployed
to support the Sustainable Stockpile Initiative.” Accordingly, the
committee recommended reducing the budget request for Directed
Stockpile Work, a major category of Weapons Activities that
directly supports weapons in the stockpile, by $137.3 million to
$1,283.7 million. (p. 129)
! The committee recommended increasing RRW funding from $9.4
million to $25.0 million “to accelerate the planning effort to
initiative a competition between the NNSA weapons laboratories to
develop the design for the RRW re-engineered and remanufactured
warhead.” (p. 130)
! The committee recommended eliminating the $4.0 million requested
to study the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, in part because it
“threatens Congressional and public support for sustainable
stockpile initiatives that will actually provide long-term security and
deterrent value for the Nation.” (p. 131)
! Test Readiness is a program to enable the resumption of nuclear
testing at Nevada Test Site should that be deemed necessary. Last
year, the committee opposed a move to reduce the test readiness

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CRS-45
posture (the time between a presidential decision to test and the
conduct of the test) from 24 to 18 months, this year, it added RRW
to the rationale against an 18-month posture: “The initiation of the
Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program designed to provide
for the continuance of the existing moratorium on underground
nuclear testing by insuring the long-term reliability of the nuclear
weapons stockpile obviates any reason to move to a provocative 18-
month test readiness posture.” (p. 132) Accordingly, it recommended
reducing Test Readiness funds from $25.0 million to $15.0 million.
! The committee noted that “Congressional testimony by NNSA
officials is beginning to erode the confidence of the Committee that
the Science-based Stockpile Stewardship is performing as
advertised.” Accordingly, it “redirects ASCI [Advanced Simulation
and Computing] funding to maintain current life extension
production capabilities pending the initiation of the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program” and recommended reducing
funding from $660.8 million to $500.8 million. (pp. 133-134)
! The committee recommended eliminating the $7.7 million requested
for the Modern Pit Facility (see Appendix). It recommended that
“NNSA focus its efforts on how best to lengthen the life of the
stockpile and minimize the need for an enormously expensive
infrastructure facility until the long-term strategy for the physical
infrastructure of the weapons complex has incorporated the Reliable
Replacement Warhead strategy...” (p. 134)
! The committee recommended eliminating the $55.0 million
requested for construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research
Facility Replacement (CMRR) at Los Alamos. “Construction at the
CMRR facility should be delayed until the Department [of Energy]
determines the long-term plan for developing the responsive
infrastructure required to maintain the nation’s existing nuclear
stockpile and support replacement production anticipated for the
RRW initiative.” (p. 136)
The House Armed Services Committee reported the FY2006 National Defense
Authorization Bill, H.R. 1815, on May 20 (H.Rept. 109-89). The bill passed the
House, 390-39, on May 25 with no amendments concerning RRW. The committee
recommended providing the amount requested for RRW. The report stated: “The
committee firmly believes that the nation must ensure that the nuclear stockpile
remains reliable, safe, and secure and that national security requires transforming the
Cold War-era nuclear complex. Thus, the committee supports the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program. To clearly articulate the congressional intent
underlying this program authorization, the committee further states the key goals of
the program.” (H.Rept. 109-89, p. 463) In Section 3111 of H.R. 1815, the committee
required the Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, to
carry out the RRW program, and spelled out its objectives for RRW:

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(b) Objectives- The objectives of the Reliable Replacement Warhead program
shall be —
(1) to increase the reliability, safety, and security of the United States nuclear
weapons stockpile;
(2) to further reduce the likelihood of the resumption of nuclear testing;
(3) to remain consistent with basic design parameters by using, to the extent
practicable, components that are well understood or are certifiable without the
need to resume underground nuclear testing;
(4) to ensure that the United States develops a nuclear weapons infrastructure
that can respond to unforeseen problems, to include the ability to produce
replacement warheads that are safer to manufacture, more cost-effective to
produce, and less costly to maintain than existing warheads;
(5) to achieve reductions in the future size of the nuclear weapons stockpile
based on increased reliability of the reliable replacement warheads;
(6) to use the design, certification, and production expertise resident in the
nuclear complex to develop reliable replacement components to fulfill current
mission requirements of the existing stockpile; and
(7) to serve as a complement to, and potentially a more cost-effective and reliable
long-term replacement for, the current Stockpile Life Extension Programs.
The committee’s report (pp. 464-465) described these objectives in more detail.
Section 3111 of H.R. 1815 also required the Nuclear Weapons Council to submit an
interim report on RRW by March 1, 2006, and a final report by March 1, 2007. The
final report is to: assess characteristics of warheads to replace existing ones; discuss
the relationship of RRW within SSP and its impact on LEPs; assess the extent to
which RRW, if successful, could lead to a reduction in warhead numbers; discuss
RRW design criteria that will minimize the likelihood of nuclear testing; describe the
infrastructure needed to support RRW; and summarize how funds will be used.
Of the committee’s 28 Democratic members, 23 signed a statement of additional
views (H.Rept. 109-89, pp. 511-512). According to the statement, “Democrats are
willing to explore the concept of the RRW program, but do not yet embrace it.” They
felt that, to merit support, RRW must reduce or eliminate the need for nuclear testing,
lead to dramatic reductions in the arsenal, avoid introducing new mission or weapon
requirements, deemphasize nuclear weapons’ military utility, increase nuclear
security, and “[lead] to ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty.” On the latter point, they maintained that a successful RRW program
should erase the main rationale against the treaty, uncertainty about the reliability of
the nuclear arsenal. Therefore, “[w]e believe strongly that ratification of the CTBT
[Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty] is the logical end result of a successful RRW
program...”

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The Senate Armed Services Committee reported the FY2006 National Defense
Authorization Bill, S. 1042, on May 17.99 It recommended providing the amount
requested for RRW. It noted that NNSA Administrator Brooks had presented several
goals for RRW in his testimony to the committee on April 4:
! increasing warhead security and reliability;
! developing replacement components that can be manufactured more
easily, using materials that are more readily available and more
environmentally benign;
! developing replacement components that provide high confidence in
warhead safety and reliability;
! developing these components on a schedule that would reduce the
need to conduct a nuclear test to address a reliability problem;
! reducing the cost and increasing the responsiveness of the
infrastructure; and
! increasing confidence in the stockpile enough to permit reductions
in non-deployed warheads.
“The committee supports these goals and this modest investment in feasibility
studies.” It required NNSA’s Administrator to submit a report to the congressional
defense committees by February 6, 2006, “describing the activities undertaken or
planned for any RRW funding in fiscal years 2005, 2006, and 2007.” The bill passed
the Senate, 98-0, on November 15. The reporting requirement was superseded by a
similar requirement in the conference bill.
The defense authorization conference bill, as reported (H.Rept. 109-360)
December 8, included the House provision on RRW with a few changes, such as
having the required reports prepared by the Secretaries of Energy and Defense rather
than by the Nuclear Weapons Council. The revised provision became section 3111
of the conference bill. Conferees stated:
The conferees support the goal of continuing to ensure that the nuclear weapons
stockpile remains safe, secure, and reliable. The conferees believe that the
Reliable Replacement Warhead program is essential to the achievement of this
goal and support its establishment with the objectives as defined in the provision
[section 3111], and as further described in the committee reports of the
Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives
for fiscal year 2006.100
99 Material in this paragraph is from U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services,
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, report to accompany S. 1042,
109th Congress, 1st sess., S.Rept. 109-69, (Washington: GPO, 2005), p. 482.
100 U.S. Congress. Committee of Conference, National Defense Authorization Act,
conference report to accompany H.R. 1815, 109th Congress, 1st session, H.Rept. 109-360,
(continued...)

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The measure was signed into law (P.L. 109-163) January 6, 2006.
The Senate Appropriations Committee reported H.R. 2419 on June 16.101 It
endorsed RRW and recommended increasing its funding above the FY2006 request.
The Committee recognizes that RRW is early in its development and will not
significantly alter the near-term plans for stockpile support such as LEPs, but
NNSA is encouraged to move aggressively to incorporate benefits from RRW
into the stockpile as soon as possible.
The Committee recommends $25,351,000 for RRW to accelerate the
planning, development and design for a comprehensive RRW strategy that
improves the reliability, longevity and certifiability of existing weapons and their
components.102
The bill passed the Senate, 92-3, on July 1, with no change to the RRW provision.
Conferees on the energy and water bill reported H.R. 2419 (H.Rept. 109-275)
on November 7. The House agreed to the conference bill, 399-17, on November 9,
and the Senate agreed to it, 84-4, on November 14. The President signed it into law
(P.L. 109-103) November 19. The bill provides $25.0 million for RRW. Conferees
wanted the nuclear weapons complex to use various resources “to support a Nuclear
Weapons Council determination in November 2006.”103 This determination would
be a decision on which design to use for the first reliable replacement warhead.
Conferees also emphasized goals and requirements of the RRW program:
The conferees reiterate the direction provided in fiscal year 2005 that any
weapon design work done under the RRW program must stay within the military
requirements of the existing deployed stockpile and any new weapon design must
stay within the design parameters validated by past nuclear tests. The conferees
expect the NNSA to build on the success of science-based stockpile stewardship
to improve manufacturing practices, lower costs and increase performance
margins, to support the Administration’s decision to significantly reduce the size
of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.104
In sum, Congress supported RRW in various ways in the FY2006 budget cycle.
Both Armed Services Committees recommended fully funding the request, both
Appropriations Committees recommended a sharp increase in RRW funding, and
100 (...continued)
2005, p. 900.
101 U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Armed Services. Energy and Water Appropriations
Bill, 2006, S.Rept. 109-84, to accompany H.R. 2419. 109th Congress, 1st sess., 2005.
102 Ibid., p. 155.
103 U.S. Congress. Committee of Conference, Making Appropriations for Energy and Water
Development for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2006, and for Other Purposes,
H.Rept. 109-275, to accompany H.R. 2419. 109th Congress, 1st sess., 2005, pp. 158-159.
104 Ibid., p. 159.

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CRS-49
Congress appropriated $25.0 million, reduced to $24.75 million by a rescission.105
The four committees saw RRW as a way to achieve a wide range of goals for the
nuclear weapons program, spelled out many of these goals in legislation and in
committee reports, and required several reports to track the status of RRW.
The FY2007 RRW Request
NNSA’s FY2007 budget document106 evidences a program that has gained
momentum in the past year. The request for RRW is $27.7 million, up from $24.8
million for FY2006. (p. 71) (Page numbers in parentheses in the next few paragraphs
refer to NNSA’s FY2007 budget document.) Outyear budgets are: FY2008, $14.6
million; FY2009, $29.7 million; FY2010, $29.6 million; and FY2011, $28.7 million.
(p. 72) The FY2006 budget request document contained few references to RRW
because the program received its first funding just two months before that document
was released. In contrast, the FY2007 document contains 30 or more references to
RRW that show many sites and programs linked to RRW. Programs are discussed
below; sites include Kansas City Plant (p. 620), Livermore (p. 627), Los Alamos
(p. 635), Pantex (p. 646), Sandia (p. 651), and Y-12 (p. 665). What emerges is a
program that is drawing on many resources of the Complex beyond the program’s
own budget. This is in accord with a directive in the FY2006 energy and water
conference report:
The conferees expect that the laboratories and plants will also utilize the existing
resources in the Directed Stockpile, Campaigns, and Readiness in Technical Base
and Facilities accounts [the three largest accounts of the Stockpile Stewardship
program] where applicable to further the RRW design options to support a
Nuclear Weapons Council determination in November 2006.107
Examples of how various programs expect to support RRW include the
following.
! “During the period FY 2007-2011, the Science Campaign will
endeavor to make significant progress toward providing the
experimental data and certification methodologies necessary to
support the current stockpile workload and future requirements that
will include the Reliable Replacement Warhead and reflect an
evolving stockpile.” (p. 96)
! Within the Dynamic Materials Properties program of the Science
Campaign, “A second principal effort is to characterize the reaction
105 “The FY 2006 [amount] includes an across-the-board rescission of 1 percent in
accordance with the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006, P.L. 109-148.” U.S.
Department of Energy, Office of Chief Financial Officer, FY2007 Congressional Budget
Request, vol. 1, National Nuclear Security Administration, DOE/CF-002, Feb. 2006, p. 71.
106 Department of Energy, FY2007 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1.
107 Committee of Conference, Making Appropriations for Energy and Water Development
for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2006..., H.Rept. 109-275, pp. 158-159.

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CRS-50
kinetics and dynamics of high explosives, with special emphasis on
improving the modeling of insensitive high explosives that will be
used in replacement warheads to provide improved safety and
surety.” (p. 100)
! Within the Engineering Campaign, Enhanced Surveillance
deliverables in the outyears are planned to support Reliable
Replacement Warhead components assessment” (p. 116) and the
Enhanced Surety program “will support studies such as the Reliable
Replacement Warhead.” (p. 118)
! “Only through ASC [the Advanced Simulation and Computing
Campaign] simulations can National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA) determine the effects of changes to current
systems as well as margins and uncertainties in future and untested
systems, such as the RRW.” (p. 176)
! Within the Pit Manufacturing and Certification Campaign,
“Additional personnel will be hired and additional equipment
procured to support manufacture of existing pit types (or a RRW
pit),” and Los Alamos and Livermore “will continue planning and
development of integral experiments in FY 2007 in support of
certification of reliable replacement warhead pits.” (p. 191)
The budget document offers many details of the proposed program.
The Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC) approved the Reliable Replacement
Warhead (RRW) Feasibility Study which began in May 2005, and is expected to
take 18 months to complete. The goal of the RRW Study is to identify designs
that will sustain long term confidence in a safe, secure and reliable stockpile and
enable transformation to a responsive nuclear weapon infrastructure. The Joint
DOE/DOD RRW Project Officer’s Group (POG) was tasked to oversee a
laboratory design competition for a RRW warhead with the FPU [first production
unit] goal of FY 2012. The POG will assess technical feasibility including
certification without nuclear testing, design definition, manufacturing, and an
initial cost assessment to determine whether the proposed candidates will meet
the RRW study objectives and requirements. At the end of the study, the POG
will establish the preferred RRW design options and recommendations to the
NWC Standing and Safety Committee (NWCSSC) and NWC. ...
In FY 2007 specific activities include: with NWC approval, proceed with
detailed design and preliminary cost estimates of RRW concepts to confirm that
RRW designs provide surety enhancements, can be certified without nuclear
testing, are cost-effective, and will support both stockpile and infrastructure
transformation. (83)
Further, “The RRW budget will increase when the RRW option is selected and starts
development and production engineering activities.” (76)

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Implementing RRW108
With Congress, NNSA, and DOD having launched the RRW program, the next
step is implementation. How are NNSA and DOD implementing RRW? The
Nuclear Weapons Council approved the formation of a DOD/DOE Project Officers’
Group, or POG, for the RRW program on March 23, 2005. According to NNSA, the
POG is composed of representatives of NNSA, the nuclear weapon labs (Los
Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia), the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
the U.S. Strategic Command, the Navy, the Air Force, and Lockheed Martin Space
Systems Company.109 There are also observers from the Office of the Chief of Naval
Operations, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and three nuclear weapon plants
(Kansas City, Pantex, and Y-12).110 In practice, POGs do not take votes, so members
and observers participate on an equal footing. The Nuclear Weapons Council tasked
the POG to conduct an 18-month design competition, which started with the first
POG meeting in May 2005. According to NNSA, in the competition, two teams —
Los Alamos and Sandia New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore and Sandia
California — would each provide warhead designs consistent with RRW program
objectives. The council set out the terms of reference for the designs in a
memorandum to the POG. DOD requested that the study be done as a competition
between the two teams rather than as a collaboration, according to NNSA.
The designs would initially focus on a submarine-launched ballistic missile
(SLBM) replacement warhead, NNSA indicates. This is consistent with a statement
in a House Armed Services Committee report: “the committee encourages the
Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to focus initial Reliable
Replacement Warhead efforts on replacement warheads for Submarine Launched
Ballistic Missiles.”111 Because of this SLBM focus, the Navy is the POG chair, and
the Air Force is co-chair.
In the study competition, the two teams will develop and possibly demonstrate
pit fabrication processes, and will assess design of nuclear and nonnuclear
components for ease of manufacture, ease of certification, compatibility with military
platforms, and enhanced safety and reliability, among other things. The two teams
are working closely with the three plants to ensure that the plants can provide
components consistent with RRW program objectives, including those on
manufacturing and responsive infrastructure, according to plant staff.
108 NNSA staff provided most of the information in this section, and lab and plant staff
provided some of the information, June and July 2005.
109 Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin
Corporation, and its predecessor organizations have developed and manufactured all U.S.
SLBMs. This company is on the POG to provide expertise on compatibility of candidate
SLBM replacement warhead designs with their delivery system, Trident II missiles.
110 The Savannah River Site, another nuclear weapons plant, is not involved in the POG
because it does not design warhead components; its role is to supply tritium for warheads.
111 U.S. Congress, House Committee on Armed Services, National Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2006, H.Rept. 109-89, to accompany H.R. 1815, 109th Cong., 1st Sess.,
2005, p. 464.

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Details of the 18-month effort are being developed. According to lab staff, one
approach is to look at warheads that could be used on SLBMs and intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs). For example, in this approach, the first warhead produced
under RRW (here called RRW-1) would be an SLBM warhead but would potentially
be compatible with ICBMs as well, and RRW-2 would be designed as an ICBM
warhead but would be compatible with SLBMs. In this way, the two warheads would
be each other’s backup: if one failed, the other could be deployed on both missile
types. This approach would permit two warhead designs to replace four current
warhead types (W76 and W88 for SLBMs, W78 and W87 for ICBMs) now in the
stockpile, and would meet objectives set forth in the House Appropriations
Committee’s energy and water report: “A more reliable replacement warhead will
allow long-term savings by phasing out the multiple redundant Cold War warhead
designs that require maintaining multiple obsolete production technologies to
maintain the older warheads.”112 Further in the future, according to lab staff, this
approach might be applied to bomber-carried weapons (bombs and air-launched
cruise missiles), possibly permitting the replacement of four types of such nuclear
weapons (B61 and B83 gravity bombs, and W80 and W84 cruise missile warheads)
with two RRW types. However, it is too soon to say if this cross-platform approach
will work. It may prove impossible to add another layer of constraints —
incorporating design features to enable a warhead to work on two missile-delivered
or two bomber-delivered weapon types — and still meet its other requirements.
As of February 2006, according to Los Alamos and Livermore staff, the status
of RRW is as follows. The two design teams have nearly completed their conceptual
designs, with each team having several such designs. The two teams are fully
confident that their designs will meet military requirements, will not require nuclear
testing to certify, and will meet other criteria including ease of manufacturing,
reduction in the use of hazardous and exotic materials, and significantly enhanced
safety, security, and use control features. Each team will release one or more of its
designs to the other team at the end of March, and also to the POG and NNSA. Over
the subsequent few months, the labs, POG, and NNSA will review and analyze
candidate design concepts. In August 2006, the labs will complete documentation
of the design concepts and the associated reviews and assessments for the POG. The
POG will then complete its review of the designs for the Nuclear Weapons Council.
In November 2006, the Council is to make a decision on an RRW design. It could
choose one design, both, a blend of the two, or ask for further study.
As noted, the FY2006 appropriation of $25.0 million exceeded the requested
$9.4 million. NNSA and lab staff stated that the added funds would accelerate
progress in determining RRW’s feasibility in the 18-month study. Specifically, the
funds would enable more nonnuclear experiments and computer models,
investigation of a broader range of design options for each candidate warhead, more
confidence in the designs, more mature designs, and more development and
demonstration of manufacturing processes. Regarding the latter point, NNSA said
that it might allocate some of the added funds to Los Alamos and Livermore to help
112 U.S. Congress, House Committee on Appropriations, Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Bill, 2006, H.Rept. 109-86, to accompany H.R. 2419, 109th Cong., 1st Sess.,
2005, p. 130.

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demonstrate pit manufacturing processes, and some to the plants if needed to
evaluate methods to manufacture components more easily and at lower cost.
Assuming the Nuclear Weapons Council approves an RRW design, the labs and
plants would conduct a detailed design definition and a cost study for the selected
design.113 The POG would then evaluate the results of the design and cost study to
establish a recommendation to the Nuclear Weapons Council on whether to proceed
further with the design. If the council approves, and if the Administration and
Congress decide to proceed, then the labs, working with the plants, and working with
DOD to ensure that the warhead is compatible with the Trident II missile,114 would
conduct development engineering for RRW-1. The Nuclear Weapons Council may
select more than one design for a cost study and design definition because different
designs might offer different advantages, such as compatibility with ICBMs and
SLBMs or ease of manufacture and certification. According to NNSA, only one
design would proceed to development engineering. RRW-2, an ICBM replacement
warhead, would follow a similar course, and might use one of the designs initiated
in the RRW-1 competition.
According to NNSA, DOD would like to have the first production unit of RRW-
1 completed around FY2012. Because of the need to continue with LEPs until more
RRW development work is completed, NNSA estimates that FY2015 may be a more
achievable date. NNSA believes that it could meet an accelerated schedule, but at
the expense of reprioritizing other planned stockpile stewardship activities.
RRW is involving plants as well as labs. The three plants involved in RRW
(Kansas City, Pantex, and Y-12) will work with the labs and NNSA to identify
options for manufacturing processes and infrastructure transformation, such as
steering the labs away from hard-to-manufacture designs. According to NNSA, the
plants’ input has started because the labs have already provided early design
information. The contribution of the plants will change over time as the designs
become more mature, at which time the designers would be in a position to accept
detailed recommendations on manufacturing from the plants. The results of this
work, NNSA states, will be incorporated in the design and cost study. This role of
the plants is in keeping with numerous congressional statements that
manufacturability and issues that flow from it, such as affordability and reduction of
hazardous materials, are central goals of RRW. Pit manufacture is an exception.
Absent a pit manufacturing facility, all pit manufacturing development activities for
RRW will be done at Livermore and Los Alamos, not at the plants, but the plants are
contributing manufacturing expertise to that effort.
113 For a description of the phases of development of nuclear weapons other than new ones,
such as refurbishments, modernizations, and life extensions, see U.S. Department of
Defense and Department of Energy. Nuclear Weapons Council, Procedural Guideline for
the Phase 6.X Process, Apr. 19, 2000.
114 The last Trident I missile was decommissioned in October 2005. Journalist 1st Class
Mary Popejoy, “USS Alabama Offloads Last of C4 Trident Missiles,” Navy Newsstand,
[http://www.news.navy.mil/search/print.asp?story_id=20913&VIRIN=&imagetype=0&p
age=1]. As a result, RRW-1 would be deployed only on Trident II missiles.

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CRS-54
Appendix: Nuclear Weapons and the Nuclear
Weapons Complex
This report refers to nuclear weapons design, operation, and production
throughout. This Appendix describes key terms, concepts, and facilities as an aid to
readers not familiar with them.
Current strategic (long-range) and most tactical nuclear weapons are of a two-
stage design.115 The first stage, the “primary,” is an atomic bomb similar in concept
to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It provides the energy needed to trigger the
second stage, or “secondary.”
The primary has a hollow core, often called a “pit,” made of fissile plutonium
(isotope number 239). It is surrounded by a layer of chemical explosive designed to
generate a symmetrical inward-moving (implosion) shock front. A system injects
“boost gas” — a mixture of deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen) gases —
into the pit, and there is a neutron generator. When the explosive is detonated, the
implosion compresses the plutonium, greatly increasing its density and causing it to
become supercritical, so that it creates a runaway nuclear chain reaction. Neutrons
drive this reaction by causing plutonium atoms to fission, releasing more neutrons.
But the chain reaction can last only the briefest moment before the force of the
nuclear explosion drives the plutonium outward so that it can no longer support a
chain reaction. To increase the fraction of plutonium that is fissioned — boosting the
yield of the primary — the neutron generator injects neutrons directly into the
fissioning plutonium. In addition, intense heat and pressure cause the deuterium-
tritium mixture to undergo fusion. While the fusion reaction generates energy, its
purpose is to generate a great many neutrons. A metal “radiation case” then channels
the energy of the primary to the secondary.
The secondary contains lithium deuteride and other materials. The energy from
the primary implodes the secondary, causing fusion reactions that release most of the
energy of a nuclear explosion.
The primary, radiation case, and secondary comprise the “nuclear explosive
package.” Thousands of other “nonnuclear” components, however, are needed to
create a weapon. These include a case for the bomb or warhead, an arming, firing,
and fuzing system, use-control devices, and more.
Nuclear weapons were designed, tested, and manufactured by the nuclear
weapons complex, which is composed of eight government-owned contractor-
operated sites as well as the federal agency, the National Nuclear Security
Administration (a part of the Department of Energy) that manages the nuclear
weapons program. The sites include the Los Alamos National Laboratory (NM) and
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (CA), which design nuclear explosive
packages; Sandia National Laboratories (NM and CA), which design the nonnuclear
115 U.S. Department of Energy, Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for
Stockpile Stewardship and Management, DOE/EIS-0236, Sept. 1996, summ. vol., p. S-4.
This page contains further information on nuclear weapon design and operation.

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components that turn the nuclear explosive package into a weapon; Y-12 Plant (TN),
which produces uranium components and secondaries; Kansas City Plant (MO),
which produces many of the nonnuclear components; Savannah River Site (SC),
which processes tritium from stockpiled weapons to remove decay products; Pantex
Plant (TX), which assembles and disassembles nuclear weapons; and the Nevada
Test Site, which used to conduct nuclear tests but now conducts other weapons-
related experiments that do not produce a nuclear yield. These sites are now involved
in disassembly, inspection, and refurbishment of existing nuclear weapons.
Pit production is the most controversial aspect of nuclear weapons production.
It is closely linked to RRW, which might enable greater capacity by simplifying
components and making manufacturing processes more efficient. Rocky Flats Plant
(CO) used to produce pits, but that work was suspended in 1989 due to safety
concerns, and subsequently halted permanently. Since 1989, the United States has
not made any pits that have been certified for use in stockpiled warheads, and has
therefore been unable to make entire new warheads, excepting a few built shortly
after Rocky Flats closed using pits that that plant had already made. Los Alamos has
established a small-scale pit production plant at its plutonium building, Plutonium
Facility-4 (PF-4) at Technical Area 55 (TA-55). PF-4 has produced several pits, but
Los Alamos is not expected to complete the work needed to certify them for use in
the stockpile until the end of FY2007. Also in FY2007, Los Alamos is expected to
demonstrate a capability to manufacture 10 pits per year. NNSA plans to produce 10
pits per year at PF-4 between FY2008 and FY2011, and plans to complete work in
FY2012 to increase pit production capacity at Los Alamos to 30-40 pits per year.116
Los Alamos believes that it would be physically difficult to expand PF-4’s
capacity enough to support the stockpile. NNSA had proposed gaining sufficient
capacity by building a new Modern Pit Facility (MPF), able to produce perhaps 125
pits per year, to become operational around 2021.117 Others challenged the need for
MPF, arguing that if pit lifetime proves longer than anticipated, or if future stockpile
size declines more than anticipated, the smaller capacity of an expanded PF-4 would
suffice, though it is not clear if these critics believe 30-40 pits per year is the right
capacity. For FY2006, Congress eliminated funds for MPF,118 and NNSA states that
funding for MPF “is zero for FY 2006 and beyond.”
116 Department of Energy, FY2007 Congressional Budget Request, vol. 1, pp. 188, 190.
117 Information provided by NNSA, May 10, 2005.
118 Committee of Conference, Making Appropriations for Energy and Water Development
for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2006, ..., H.Rept. 109-275, p. 162.

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