NMT Team Profile: Applied Weapons Research and Development-A Work Profile

The Applied Weapons Research and Development (R&D) Team, NMT-5, (Weapons Component Technology Group) is involved in research to improve the fabrication, performance, and surveillance of plutonium components within nuclear weapons systems. The six staff members, six technicians, and one postdoctoral fellow who comprise this team help fulfill the Laboratory's mission to reduce the nuclear danger by maintaining the downsized nuclear weapons stockpile and ensuring that it remains safe, secure, and reliable. The team also supports the Lab mission through research in weapons dismantlement, disposition of excess nuclear material, and remediation of nuclear waste.

A key concern of stockpile maintenance is stockpile aging. Plutonium weapons components will not remain functional forever. The question is, how and when will they fail? The assessment of the performance of aging weapons warrants a major effort of the Applied Weapons R&D Team to characterize fundamental and derived properties of plutonium metal and alloys as a function of their age. The goal is to identify, quantify, and model important property changes. Unlike chemical reactions, processes driven by radioactivity are not amenable to accelerated aging techniques. Fundamental processes that might alter the geometry or density of a component include chemical corrosion, in-growth of decay products, and structural change of the metal. Studies characterize derived properties of new plutonium, define those properties for aged material, and determine how rapidly materials are changing with age. Fundamental property results must then be correlated with derived properties used in predictive calculations and compared to results from aboveground experiments. It is hoped that enhanced techniques for pit surveillance will ultimately result from this work.

Stockpile stewardship also involves the maintainence of a viable weapons manufacturing capability. Team members are involved in several projects with the aim of decreasing waste, increasing efficiency, and reducing operational hazards. For example, the team is currently designing and procuring a production-scale supercritical fluid cleaning system that uses and recycles nonhazardous carbon dioxide solvent to clean plutonium components before pit assembly to prevent corrosion during weapon storage and deployment. Reflectance Fourier transform infrared methods are under development for verifying component cleanliness.

Efforts to enhance the safety of nuclear weapons are actively pursued. For example, an aqueous nitrate technology for thermally applying thin coatings of erbium oxide to metals and other substrate materials is being developed for possible application in fire-resistant pits and in reusable crucibles and molds for manufacturing and recovery processes. Other studies identify and address safety concerns posed by reactive and pyrophoric materials during the maintenance and disassembly of weapons.

Dismantlement of retired weapons and recovery of plutonium are essential for reducing the nuclear danger. These efforts form the starting point for any proposed plutonium disposition strategy. Recent studies have demonstrated that a recycle hydride-dehydride concept is a safe, rapid and efficient method for separation (> 99.95%) of plutonium from other materials. The potential for using this technology to extract plutonium from U.S. and Russian weapons components has generated widespread interest, including reciprocal U.S./Russian tours of laboratory facilities. NMT Division has submitted this technology as an entry to the 1995 "R&D 100" competition. (See article this issue.) Storing surplus nuclear material safely before disposition is yet another aspect of reducing the nuclear danger. The team recently conducted several technical assessments related to interim and long-term storage of plutonium. In addition to identifying material forms suitable for storage, they have evaluated problem situations with stored materials, contributed to a DOE assessment of storage issues and vulnerabilities, and played a key role in defining the DOE criteria for safe storage of metal and oxide. The scope of this activity has recently expanded because of increased interaction with the Laboratory's Russian counterparts. Research into promising technologies for storage continues as well. During the past year, substantial progress has been made in developing and evaluating acoustic resonance spectroscopy as a method for nondestructive surveillance of stored containers.

Lastly, the team is directly involved in waste minimization and remediation research, primarily through the development of a plasma-based decontamination process. The technology is under development in joint collaboration with the Chemical Science and Technology and Physics Divisions where fundamental aspects and potential applications of the process are being investigated.

Team members are Team Leader Joe Baiardo, WRD&T Project Leader John Haschke, Tom Allen, Barbara Cort, Larry Cox, Bart Flamm, Marty Reisfeld, John Ward, Joel Williams, Paul Watson, Chuck Radosevich, Fidel Vigil, Gary Isom, Bob Pruner, Ben Jacquez, and Trish Wright. Former team member Joe Martz is Group Leader of NMT-5.

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