NNSA Chief Sees Opportunity, Challenge in Merging Two Warhead Updates

NNSA Chief Sees Opportunity, Challenge in Merging Two Warhead Updates

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20100914_7078.php

By Elaine M. Grossman

Global Security Newswire

Technicians in 1990 perform maintenance on a U.S. Minuteman 3 ICBM, a ballistic missile that can carry the W-78 nuclear warhead. The National Nuclear Security Administration hopes to study how the W-78 and another warhead, the W-88, might be refurbished using a single set of common replacement parts, NNSA head Thomas D'Agostino said last week (U.S. Air Force photo).

WASHINGTON -- The head of U.S. nuclear security said he sees both benefits and hurdles in a possible effort to overhaul two different nuclear warhead designs using a single update package (see GSN, Dec. 24, 2009).
The Obama administration has requested that Congress appropriate $26 million in fiscal 2011 to study what it would take to initiate a joint program to refurbish the W-78 warhead, used on Air Force Minuteman 3 ICBMs, and the W-88 warhead, which sits atop Navy Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
"There are opportunities to potentially have fewer life extensions" by combining efforts that typically cost billions of dollars for each warhead design, Thomas D'Agostino, who leads the National Nuclear Security Administration, told reporters last week.

See Full Article...

Related articles by Zemanta

• Turning Russian Nukes into U.S. Energy (time.com)
• Debating START Treaty Ratification (politics.usnews.com)
• Material for 16,000 Nuclear Warheads Eliminated by Megatons to Megawatts (eon.businesswire.com)
• NNSA administrator on the next generation of computational scientists (insidehpc.com)