Nuke experiment called success

Monday, July 14, 2003 | 9:47 a.m.

Government scientists said they reached a major milestone in testing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile during an experiment last week at the Nevada Test Site.

The National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office and scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California fired a gas gun at 5 miles per second targeted at a plutonium disc.

The shock struck a small amount of nuclear material and, on impact, was measured by diagnostic equipment.

This is a way to understand properties of nuclear weapons in storage without full-scale underground nuclear testing, National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks said after the experiment.

Underground nuclear tests at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, were halted in 1992. Since then a series of experiments have been conducted 1,000 feet beneath the Test Site.

The high-powered gas gun, named JASPER, for Joint Actinide Shock Physics Experimental Research, has a 90-foot-long barrel that is capable of about 24 experiments per year over a 10-year expected life span.

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