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International Herald Tribune Experts in U.S. debate over aging warheads By William J. Broad The New York Times Monday, April 4, 2005 Scientists question costly overhaul plan For more than two decades, a compact, powerful warhead called the W-76 has been the centerpiece of the United States' nuclear arsenal, carried aboard the nuclear submarines that prowl the oceans. But in recent months it has become the subject of a fierce debate among experts inside and outside the government over its reliability and its place in the nuclear arsenal. The government is readying a plan to spend more than $2 billion on a routine 10-year overhaul to extend the life of the aging warheads. Meanwhile, some weapons scientists say the warheads have a fundamental design flaw that could cause them to explode with far less force than intended. One of the scientists, Richard Morse, said he had been "disinvited" from evaluating the warhead after raising questions and left Los Alamos. Although the government has denied that assertion, officials have disclosed that Washington is nevertheless considering replacing the W-76 altogether. "This is the one we worry about the most," said Everet Beckner, who oversees the arsenal as director of defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Some arms-control advocates oppose the 10-year overhaul program, saying it could produce not only refurbishments, but also deadly new innovations. They like the replacement option even less, saying it could prompt the government to conduct underground detonations that would undo the global ban on nuclear testing and start a new arms race. Moreover, some argue that nuclear weapons are dinosaurs that have little use in U.S. military strategy and that it makes no difference if the W-76 is ineffective. "That's why people are so passionate about this," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. The W-76, developed in the early 1970s, is packed in clusters of as many as eight atop hundreds of missiles in a dozen nuclear submarines. Experts say that of 5,000 active warheads in the U.S. arsenal, 1,500 are W-76s aboard submarines. Each W-76 is meant to be about seven times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The importance of the W-76 is rising as the U.S. nuclear force relies more on submarines and less on bombers and land-based missiles. "It's by far the most numerous" warhead, said Hans Kristensen, a weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in Washington that monitors nuclear trends. "It's the workhorse in terms of targeting." Several factors lie behind the current worries and repair plans. The W-76 is one of the arsenal's oldest warheads. As warheads age, the risk of internal rusting, material degradation, corrosion, decay and the embrittling of critical parts increases. The $2 billion overhaul to forestall such decay is scheduled to last from 2007 to 2017. But four knowledgeable critics, including Morse - three former scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which designed the W-76, and one who is there now - have recently argued that the weapon is highly unreliable and, if not a complete dud, is likely to explode with a force so reduced as to compromise its effectiveness. Federal officials, while denying that, disclosed in interviews that the warhead was being considered for a new program that would replace old warheads with more reliable ones. Congress and future administrations would have to approve a replacement. Officials would give no estimate for that endeavor's cost or duration. But they said that they had carefully weighed the W-76's problems and the alternatives for fixing them. The W-76, and its troubles, were born during the cold war, when U.S. bomb makers sought to win the arms race with designs that made nuclear arms lightweight, very powerful and in some cases so small that a dozen or more could fit atop a slender missile. Where most nuclear powers had to make do with weapons that were ponderous, if dependable, the W-76 epitomized the American edge. It was a hydrogen warhead - known as thermonuclear because a small atom bomb at its core worked like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. Standing shorter than a person, it had undergone an extraordinary degree of miniaturization. "It was the tightest design we had," said one top nuclear scientist who did not want his name used for fear of retaliation for releasing confidential information. "They crammed in everything with a shoehorn." -- ----------------- R. A. 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