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Count Down

The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons

Sarah Scoles . . 2024 . . Beaverton Lib 355.8251

264 pages including references and index. I lost interest around page 70. Perhaps I will try again after I read the other thousand books in my incoming pile.

The focus is on stockpile maintenance. Electronics upgrades, new circuit technology replacing old unavailable devices, But the main problem is radioactive decay of the "pits", the vaguely described balls of plutonium/uranium/?? that radioactively decay into inert or fission damping elements. Very slow decay; the pits probably work fine, like the last US weapons tested in 1992, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty signed by Clinton in 1996, but not ratified by the Senate, or by China, Russia, US, Iran, and Israel .

The subject matter is necessarily vague, because the most "interesting" information is classified. Hence my loss of interest. Some pointers to other books and documents that I might read someday.

• p37 Nuclear Rites by Hugh Gusterson, a 1996 ethnography of scientists at LLNL.

• p37 Nuclear Matters Handbook revised 2020

• p45 William James Essays in Radical Empiricsm

• p56 Alex Larzelere Delivering Insight

• p57 W93 nuclear warhead

• p58 El Capitan exascale supercomputer at LLNL

• p60 LLNL(?) QSCOUT quantum computing testbed based on trapped ions, five qubits in 2023

• p144 Cobalt Magnet nuclear security exercise

References

• AIP FY22 Budget Outlook: National Security Administration

• Baker & Silbernagel The Vega Subcritical Experiment (SCE) at the Nevada National Security Site U1a Complex

• Jack Beyrer 2021 White House Gives in to Liberal Push to Stall Nuclear Modernization

• Joseph Choi 2021 US discloses size of nuclear stockpile for first time since 2018

• DOE NUCLEAR MATTERS HANDBOOK 2020 [REVISED]

• The core debate Annabella Farmer 2022 March 23

• Advanced nuclear reactors no safer than conventional nuclear plants, says science group 2021 March 18

• The Nuclear Detonation Detection System on the GPS satellites 1993 July 27

• 10. World nuclear forces

• What “Stranger Things” Didn’t Get Quite-So-Right About the Energy Department Paul Lester 2016 August 5

• The Bomb in the Backyard

• Groups Fire Back at Feds’ Move to Dismiss Plutonium Pit Lawsuit

• Trump’s Troubling Nuclear Plan

• W87-1 Modification Program fact sheet

• Nuclear Thread Initiative: Innovating Verification: New Tools & New Actors to Reduce Nuclear Risks

• My Journey at the Nuclear Brink William J. Perry

• Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo George H. Quester

• Underground Bases and Tunnels: what is the government trying to hide? Richard Sauder 2014

• A World Free of Nuclear Weapons By George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn 2007 Jan 4

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