I'm missing what was the way of testing for equivalency. Seems a crucial step in understanding the overall story.
I'm wondering if adding extra checks can hamper future efforts at production, because you are going to nail down your tests today. Then in the future some crucial part of the process is technically impossible due to upstream shortages. You didn't understand your wiggle room when you locked down your tests (potentially).
OhMeadhbh•1h ago
OhMeadhbh•1h ago
So if we decided to use such a weapon, and it fizzled, everyone would probably notice that it fizzled. And I suspect the first thing on everyone else's minds would be "Hmm... America's nukes aren't as powerful as they've been claiming." And sure... you don't want to get smacked with a uranium or plutonium bomb, but if you're some other nuclear power (France or Russia, perhaps) and you HAVEN'T detonated a bomb, everyone else in the nuclear club won't know if your bombs are crap or if you actually knew what you were doing with respect to maintaining your stockpile.
So... you know... just one more reason to not detonate nuclear devices in the middle east.
anovikov•1h ago
Ongoing work on rebuilding plutonium cores in the US is driven by their predicted deterioration with age (as helium caverns accumulate in them), making their behaviour less predictable (even if not knowingly worse).
And new nukes are built every year, just in low (~10 a year) quantities - fully from scratch. In addition to refurbishment work for much larger numbers of them.