Mystery ingredient "Fogbank" threatens our most important missiles, the Tridents

[Bill]

The good news is that nukes degrade, even the best of the best. They don't last all that long, after a few decades, they become unreliable.

The bad news is that a shortage of a mystery ingredient threatens the most important US & UK missile, the submarine launched Trident.

So, we may have to set up a totally new system that builds warheads without "Fogbank", or maybe a system to manufacture new "fogbank".

I wonder what "Fogbank" really is?

http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19726464.700?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19726464.700

PLANS by the US and UK governments to prolong the life of Trident nuclear weapons have hit a serious snag because of a dangerous and mysterious ingredient codenamed Fogbank. As a result, politicians are likely to come under pressure to fund the design of new warheads instead.

Both countries want to refurbish the ageing W76 warheads at the tip of Trident missiles, to make them safer and more reliable. But now their programmes face delays due to manufacturing problems at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. A new $50 million plant built to replace a facility that had been demolished has run into teething troubles, suggests a series of hints from the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which runs Y-12.

[Smurf-Herder]

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:RqxHf-js_fUJ:www.banthebomb.org/newbombs/fogbank%2520material.doc+nuclear+weaponn+%22fogban k%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

"The material called Fogbank is used in the interstage of the 100 Kiloton W76 warhead. The interstage channels energy from the Primary to the Secondary of the thermonuclear weapon."

In 1995 and 1996 studies were carried out into Fogbank, see below. Between 1996 and 1999 the Dual Validation of the W76 warhead took place. This initiated the W76 Life Extension Programme. The requirement for remanufacturing Fogbank was probably identified at this time.

The initial proposal was to build a pilot purification facility in building 9805-1.4 This building was listed as the Deuterium Production Plant.

The NNSA budget for FY 2000 said that, rather than build this pilot plant, they would “restart the existing Special Materials Facility in Building 9404-11”.

Could it be Deuterium?

Used to to amplify or modulate the yield?

Maybe instability as it gets old distorts it's ability to evenly distribute or direct the energy exchange; so you get a nuclear fizzle, or a dud, instead of a blast.

From the name, I get the feeling it's a manmade gas layer, surrounding the core.

[Smurf-Herder]

How To Make an H-Bomb
http://www.ccnr.org/Howard_Morland.html

"An H-bomb is a three-stage weapon: fission, fusion, and then fission again. The first stage, called the "trigger" (the black ball at the top), is a small plutonium bomb similar to the one dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. The energy release at this stage is mainly due to nuclear fission -- because the atoms of plutonium are split. Tritium is often added to the centre of the plutonium core to "boost" the fission explosion with some additional fusion energy. Boosted or not, however, the only importance of this first-stage explosion is to irradiate and heat the material in the central column to 100 million degrees celsius so that a much more powerful fusion reaction can be started there.

The second stage explosion is due to nuclear fusion in the central column. The main fusion reaction involves concentrated deuterium and tritium (both heavy isotopes of hydrogen) -- which become spontaneously available when neutrons from the first stage explosion bombard a solid material called "lithium deuteride" located in the central column. When this hydrogen-rich mix is heated to 100 million degrees, the deuterium and tritium atoms "fuse" together, releasing enormous amounts of energy. This is the "H" or "thermonuclear" part of the bomb.

Then comes the third stage. The fusion reaction gives off an incredible burst of extremely powerful neutrons -- so powerful that they can split or "fission" atoms of uranium-238 (called "depleted uranium") -- which is impossible at lower energy levels. This third stage more than doubles the power of the explosion, and produces most of the radioactive fallout from the weapon.

Unlike fission bombs, which rely only on nuclear fission, and which can achieve explosions equivalent to thousands of tons of TNT ("kilotons"), the power of an H-bomb or thermonuclear weapon has no practical limit -- it can be made as powerful as you want, by adding more deuterium/tritium to the second stage."

[Smurf-Herder]

We better make sure ours work, because we know China and Russia are constantly building and maintaining theirs; with no publicity worries for their governments. It totally destabilizes MAD if we can't trust ours to work; and they (Russia and China) know that.

The production run went from 1978-1987, with over 3000 in service that need to be refurbished and only a 30 year lifespan, which starts ending this year; already a year behind refurbishment schedule.

The W76 Warhead
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W76.html

"The first W76 warheads are approaching the end of their originally planned 30 year service life in 2008. This led to the initiation of the W76-1/Mk-4A life extension program in 2000 to refurbish the warheads for decades of further service. The first W76-1 is planned for delivery in September 2007 with completion in 2017."

"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 overhaul to forestall such decay is scheduled to go from 2007 to 2017. In all, it is expected to cost more than $2 billion, say experts who have analyzed federal budget figures.

Questions also surround the weapon's basic design. Four knowledgeable critics, three former scientists and one current one at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which designed the W-76, have recently argued that the weapon is highly unreliable and, if not a complete dud, likely to explode with a force so reduced as to compromise its effectiveness."

They apparently were designed as "disposable nukes".

http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2006/Mar/wirtzMar06.asp

"The SSP program has worked reasonably well to date, but scientists and engineers have encountered a fundamental limitation in terms of extending the life of existing U.S. nuclear warheads. The last generation of U.S. nuclear warheads, which were designed in the early 1980s, was built to optimize yield-to-weight ratios. Because it was assumed that these weapons would only be in the stockpile for ten to twenty years before being replaced by a new generation of weapons, and because it was assumed that nuclear testing could be undertaken to guarantee their performance, they were constructed with high tolerances and relatively small performance margins."

It wouldn't be good if we look like we could be shootin' blanks.