nuclear testing OR what??

[marylia <marylia@igc.org>]

Dear Career-pro friends. I received the following note after my posting
about the FY '99 DOE budget request for nuclear weapons. Then, later, I got
a second copy of the note - this time from the list serve - indicating it
went out to you all. So, if you are interested in my quickly penned
response on the question of: "isn't it better to design new nuclear weapons
via high tech means than exploding bombs in Nevada" please read on...
Peace, Marylia

Hi. Thanks for your note. To answer the question you posed (below)
regarding the continued design of nuclear weapons via the DOE "Stockpile
Stewardship" program, here is my belief: We, as a nation, are not limited
to a false choice of ASCI (and the rest of the proposed "Stockpile
Stewardship" program) OR nuclear testing.

Nuclear testing's primary goal was always to test new bomb designs, and the
ASCI/stockpile stewardship goal remains the continued advancement of
nuclear weapons design capability. Instead of pursuing this path, the
nation could embark on a program of curatorship of the existing arsenal
using existing means, (e.g. the DOE's stockpile surveillance and evaluation
program-- which is the program that does most of the REAL, physical,
stewardship of the existing arsenal, and always has) along with a modest
remanufacture capability for parts. That way, the existing nuclear arsenal
is kept both "safe" and "reliable" but without enhancing capabilities to
introduce design changes into the nuclear arsenal.

This approach would be (1) cheaper, (2) environmentally preferrable
overall- if the remanufacturing were kept to the minimum needed for
curatorship, (3) simpler and better understood from a scientific and
engineering perspective, and thus more certain of success, (4) beneficial
in terms of the global acceptance of a comprehensive test ban treaty (a
number of countries' have already publicly complained about the weapons
design capability of the U.S. "stockpile stewardship" program and its
international impact on the treaty), and (5) much more in keeping with the
nation's nonproliferation objectives as a whole.

Therefore, the "curatorship" approach is preferrable to both "stockpile
stewardship" as DOE currently defines it AND/OR resuming underground
nuclear testing.

(By the way, I personally, and Tri-Valley CAREs organizationally, worked
for 15 years to get the comprehensive test ban treaty, we now don't want to
see it circumvented by other means, e.g. the new "stockpile stewardship"
facilities being built. Further, our group's goals are not oriented toward
keeping nuclear weapons "reliable" forever, we favor world-wide abolition
of nuclear arsenals. It is possible for those who do not favor abolition,
however, to still support a "curatorship" approach to nuclear weapons and
to oppose the current DOE plans for "stockpile stearrdship" as well as to
oppose further full-scale nuclear testing.)

Peace, Marylia

You wrote:
I don't know enough about the overall DOE nuclear budget or
>Livermore's to comment on them, but with respect to the Accelerated
>Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI), isn't it preferable from an
>environmental point of view to model nuclear bomb explosions on a computer
>rather than actually detonate them as we used to do?