Within a year of Peurifoy’s retirement, the nuclear weapon community that had long ignored, dismissed, and opposed him became outspoken in defense of his cause. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was being discussed at the United Nations. The treaty prohibited the sort of underground nuclear detonations that the United States and other countries needed to develop new weapons. A ban on these tests was, in many respects, a ban on new weapons — since no military would place its faith in a warhead or bomb that had never been proven to work. During a Senate debate on the treaty in August 1992, the opponents of a test ban came up with a novel rationale for continuing to detonate nuclear weapons.
“Why is testing of nuclear weapons so important?” asked one senator, a close ally of the Pentagon and the weapons laboratories. “It is so important because nuclear weapons, even today’s nuclear weapons, represent a great danger to the American public and to the world because of the lack of safety of their devices.” He then put a list of Broken Arrows into the Congressional Record. Another senator opposing the treaty claimed that “we already know that science and technology cries out for safety modifications.” A third attacked the Department of Energy for its negligence on safety issues over the years, warning: “A vote to halt nuclear testing today is a vote to condemn the American people to live with unsafe nuclear weapons in their midst for years and years — indeed, until nuclear weapons are eliminated.”
In 1996 the United States became the first country to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and since then more than 180 other nations have signed it, too. But the U.S. Senate voted against ratifying the treaty in 1999. Once again, the treaty’s opponents argued that nuclear tests might be necessary to ensure that the American stockpile remains safe and reliable. During the administration of President George W. Bush, the Pentagon and the weapons laboratories supported the development of a new nuclear weapon, the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). It would be safer, more secure, and more reliable than current weapons, the administration promised. The RRW would also be the first “green” nuclear weapon — designed to avoid the use of beryllium, a toxic environmental contaminant.
Bob Peurifoy has been bemused by the newfound passion for nuclear weapon safety and security among his former critics. He sees no need for more weapon tests, supports the test ban treaty, and thinks it would be highly irresponsible to add a new weapon like the RRW to the stockpile without having detonated it first. The plans to develop new warheads and bombs, Peurifoy says, are just “a money grab” by the Pentagon and the weapons laboratories. The yield-to-weight ratio of America’s nuclear weapons became asymptotic — approached their mathematical upper limit — around 1963. New designs won’t make detonations any more efficient. And a study by JASON scientists concluded that the cores of existing weapons will be good for at least another hundred years. Although the boosting gas and neutron generators within the weapons deteriorate with age, they can be replaced through programs currently managed by the Department of Energy. Harold Agnew, the former head of Los Alamos who championed one-point safety and permissive action links, agrees with Peurifoy. Agnew says that the idea of introducing a new weapon without testing it is “nonsense.” And he opposes any additional tests.
The only weapons in today’s stockpile that trouble Peurifoy are the W-76 and W-88 warheads carried by submarine-launched Trident II missiles. The Drell panel expressed concern about these warheads more than twenty years ago. Both of them rely on conventional high explosives, instead of insensitive high explosives. The Navy had insisted upon use of the more dangerous explosive to reduce the weight of the warheads, increase their range, and slightly increase their yield. The decision was unfortunate from a safety perspective, because the multiple warheads of a Trident II don’t sit on top of the missile. They surround the rocket motor of its third stage, as a space-saving measure. And the Navy chose a high-energy propellant for the rocket motor that’s much more likely to explode in an accident — simply by being dropped or struck by a bullet — than other solid fuels. A Trident submarine has as many as twenty-four of these missiles, each carrying between four to five warheads. An accident with one missile could detonate the third-stage propellant, set off the high explosives of the warheads, and spread a good deal of plutonium around the ports in Georgia and Washington State where Trident submarines are based.
