If It Ain't Broke: The Already Reliable U.S. Nuclear Arsenal
UCS Senior Scientist Dr. Robert W. Nelson has written a new article criticizing the federal government's proposal to develop a new family of nuclear warheads—the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). In the article published in the April, 2006 edition of Arms Control Today, Dr. Nelson argues that the program threatens to reorient the primary post-Cold War mission of U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories from stockpile maintenance to the development of new replacement warhead designs. Calling the program "premature and inherently risky," Dr. Nelson says that the program will unnecessarily lead to the development of new nuclear warhead designs and therefore renewed demands that the United States resume underground nuclear explosive testing.
