Will Atomic Test Moratorium Inaugurate Nuclear Dark Age?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 14, 1998 | by Sean Paige

With an aging U.S. atomic arsenal frozen in time by a nuclear-test moratorium, the Department of Energy, or DOE, is betting billions of dollars that its Stockpile Stewardship Plan, or SSP, can confirm the safety and reliably of the weapons through computer modeling alone.

But as the scientists and technicians who designed, manufactured and tested the weapons in real-world conditions retire or are lost to attrition, worry grows that important experience and expertise is being irretrievably lost.

To forestall this possible nuclear dark age -- which could find the United States with an arsenal it doesn't know how to manage, maintain or reconstitute if necessary -- DOE facilities are supposed to be archiving all relevant data and interviewing weapons experts before they retire or expire. While some of DOE's far-flung facilities are doing so, busily picking the brains behind the bombs, the agency's inspector general, or IG, in a recent report warned that the efforts lacked uniformity and that the department "had not developed a coordinated, integrated program to preserve the knowledge base of the downsized nuclear-weapons complex." DOE officials generally concurred with the report's finding, the IG indicates, and pledged to present a more comprehensive approach to the "knowledge-capture" activities early next year.

Only time will tell whether databases, taped depositions and number-crunching supercomputers can ever substitute for hands-on experience and collective human memory, or whether the whole high-tech Hail Mary will, in a word, bomb.