Gun at Test Site to help evaluate nuclear weapons

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 1998 | 10:20 a.m.

The Nevada Test Site will host a $43.6 million project to study aging nuclear weapons without an atomic explosion, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and U.S. Department of Energy officials announced today.

The National Shock Compression Facility will house a double-barreled gun used to place nuclear weapons materials under stress, but without the atomic punch. The United States has had a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing since 1992.

The project, planned for the southeast end of the sprawling Test Site, will allow Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories to conduct about 25 experiments a year.

Hot gases from burning gunpowder will drive a piston down a pump, compressing gas. The weapons materials in the experiment are placed at the end of the barrel and react to the shock.

The process simulates the high energy of a nuclear explosion so scientists can study materials such as plutonium without the material vaporizing in an atomic blast.

This project expands research capabilities to six times the current experiment rate by allowing federal scientists to conduct up to four subcritical tests a year.

The announcement also offers a unique partnership with the University of Nevada System. For UNLV, it means a center to study solid materials.

At the University of Nevada, Reno, physicists will use equipment from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., to watch the behavior of nuclear fluids called plasmas.

"This agreement marks the beginning of a true partnership between the University of Nevada System and the DOE's stockpile stewardship program," Reid said, describing the new facility as "cutting edge."

"I think it's really a step in the right direction to make sure the nuclear arsenal is safe and reliable," Reid said.

As ranking member on the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, the senator secured about $10 million for building the gas gun.

Reid, DOE's Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs Vic Reis with Gerry Johnson, DOE's Nevada Operations Office manager, announced the gas gun project at DOE's office in North Las Vegas this morning.

Richard Jarvis, chancellor of the University of Nevada System, inked a cooperative agreement with the DOE and the national laboratories to allow the institutional partnership.

The project, however, won't boost Test Site employment. DOE spokesman Derek Scammell said the facility will generate less than 100 jobs. Instead, existing researchers from the national labs will come to the Test Site for experiments, he said.

As part of ensuring the safety of nuclear weapons without testing them, the DOE needs to expand scientific knowledge of critical materials, such as plutonium, under extreme conditions including high pressure, extreme temperatures, total strain and a strain rate that relates to nuclear weapons, Reis said.

Construction of the project is expected to begin early in 1999 and experiments could begin two years later. The experimental program is expected to last 10 years.

It will cost between $6 million and $10 million to prepare the gun for the first experiment, DOE officials said.

The project will use Area 27 in the southeast corner of the Test Site, located about 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas. This area was used to assemble nuclear weapons before they were placed underground.

Of eight sites at other federal locations across the country, the Nevada Test Site was evaluated in depth along with Ancho Canyon at the Los Alamos laboratory.

While the study indicated initial capital costs for development of the facility were lower at Ancho Canyon, project costs over a decade were comparable.