News Review Special Edition

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International Developments, October 1 - November 15, 2002

US Moves to Enhance Stockpile Stewardship Programme

To a backdrop of consistent speculation casting doubt on the Bush administration's long-term commitment to maintaining the US nuclear testing moratorium, the Department of Energy is moving to strengthen the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) designed to provide confidence in the existing stockpile in the absence of underground tests. On November 19, a Department press release announced the award of a $290 million "multi-year" contract to the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation to "build the two fastest supercomputers in the world". The press release elaborated: "Named Purple and BlueGene/L, IBM plans to deliver both systems in Fiscal Year 2005 to the Department's National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Advanced Simulation and Computing [Initiative] (ASCI) program for the science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program. Purple and BlueGene/L will be housed at the Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. ... Both [supercomputers]...will be a shared resource for all three national defense laboratories: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. ASCI Purple will have a peak performance of 100 trillion calculations per second, equivalent to 25,000 high-end personal computers. Once online, Purple will be the primary supercomputer for the ASCI program and a production resource to stockpile stewardship. BlueGene/L, using low-cost, low-power processors and a radically different architecture, will have a peak performance of 360 trillion calculations per second. As a computational sciences research and evaluation computer, BlueGene/L will significantly enhance ASCI simulations in specific areas and determine this novel architecture's applicability to future production stewardship computing."

Speaking on the day of the announcement, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham commented: "The continued success of the Stockpile Stewardship Program requires advanced computing and experimental capabilities to gain unprecedented understanding of the health of the US nuclear deterrent and effects of aging and parts replacement over time." NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks remarked (November 19): "This is a vital step in providing the resources to develop high-fidelity, three-dimensional simulations to predict the behaviour of aging nuclear weapons for our national security. The combination of meeting nuclear stewardship demands and enabling scientific and computational research at unprecedented scales is truly significant."

The flames of speculation over long-term US testing plans were fanned again on November 18 when the Reuters news agency published the text of an October 21 memorandum from Edward Aldridge, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, to members of the US Nuclear Weapons Council (NWC). Aldridge told the Council - consisting of representatives from the Defense and Energy Departments and the Joint Chiefs of Staff - that it would "be desirable to assess the potential benefits that could be obtained from a return to nuclear testing with regard to weapon safety, security and reliability." The memorandum continued: "We will need to refurbish several aging weapons systems, but the limitations of the nuclear weapon complex will not permit us to perfectly replicate the original designs. We must also be prepared to respond to new nuclear weapon requirements in the future..." Specifically, Aldridge suggests that the nuclear weapons laboratories "readdress the value of a low-yield testing program" - a recommendation certain to bolster suspicions that the Defense Department is keen to push for the development of so-called 'mini-nukes', designed to destroy hardened underground facilities.

Commenting on the Aldridge memorandum, Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association (ACA) in Washington, told Reuters (November 18): "I think this is yet another sign that some in the Pentagon are trying to move the White House toward a resumption of testing."

Reports: Transcript - President Bush signs two defense appropriation bills October 23, Washington File, October 23; US official wants review of nuclear test-freeze, Reuters, November 18; Secretary Abraham announces $290 million contract to build two world-leading supercomputers, US Department of Energy Press Release, PR-02-242, November 19.

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