4 ms·
Yep, all of the nuclear weapons in the world are slowly decaying into obsolescence. They actually used to test fire them underground up until the early 90s to
by qbasic_forever 4y ago
Yep, all of the nuclear weapons in the world are slowly decaying into obsolescence. They actually used to test fire them underground up until the early 90s to make sure older weapons were still working as expected. But underground weapon testing was banned and as I understand they just rely on computer simulations and non explosive tests to verify the weapons still in the active stockpile are working.
I'm not sure what the plans are for making new weapons in a few decades as the current ones decay into uselessness--there's likely some kinda provision in nuclear weapon treaties.
- matthewdgreen 4y agoThe US is already rebuilding many of its warheads. The process is ongoing but is estimated to take 30 years or so and cost about $1tn. It will presumably not require actual weapons tests, just component tests and simulations. I would assume that other nuclear-armed nations are doing the same things, if they have the financial resources (not all of them necessarily do.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renovation_of_the_nuclear_weapon_arsenal_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renovation_of_the_nuclear_we...
- killjoywashere 4y agoIndeed, this is actually the motivation for the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore. The accomplishment of demonstrating net-positive fusion was announced with an "atoms for peace" spin, but it really signaled to other nuclear powers we can do quite a bit of R&D without mesoscale detonations.