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Background on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
FCNL (Anti-Nuke" Site, but other info on this new weapon is via WP) ^ | FR Post 3-13-03 | Editorial Staff

Posted on 03/13/2003 2:29:25 PM PST by vannrox

More on New Nuclear Weapons Development
Date Last Reviewed: 5/1/02

Background on the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator"

In its FY2003 budget request, the Bush administration is asking for $15.5 million for a study of the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP). The RNEP would be designed to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets such as bunkers containing chemical and biological weapons.

Because of its lower yield and earth penetrating capability, the RNEP is considered to be a more "usable" nuclear weapon than large yield, "strategic" nuclear weapons. However, reports by scientists indicate that the RNEP is far from being a "clean" weapon. If detonated in an urban setting, 10,000 to 50,000 people would receive a fatal dose of radiation within the first 24 hrs. This does not take into account traumatic injuries arising from the extreme pressures of the blast or thermal injuries arising from the heat of the explosion. Nor does the casualty estimate consider the consequences of fires and the collapse of buildings from the seismic shock that the explosion would produce.

Moreover, proceeding with the production of RNEPs would significantly undermine the global non-proliferation regime because the obvious targets for these weapons are non-nuclear weapon states. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) prohibits the use of nuclear weapons against such states.

The U.S. introduced an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon in 1997, the B61, modification 11. The B61-11 modified a nuclear explosive from an earlier bomb by putting it into a hardened steel casing with a new nose cone to provide ground penetration capability. The deployment was controversial because of official U.S. policy not to develop new nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy and the national weapons labs have consistently argued, however, that the B61-11 was merely a "modification" of an older delivery system because it used an existing warhead.

According to Rob Nelson of the Federation of American Scientists, "The earth-penetrating capability of the B61-11 is fairly limited...Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Even so, by burying itself into the ground before detonation, a much higher proportion of the explosion energy is transferred to ground shock compared to a surface bursts. Any attempt to use it in an urban environment, however, would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast would simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area." (For more information, visit http://www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n1/weapons.htm)

The development of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator would also have disastrous consequences for the international arms control regime. A nuclear weapon designed for battlefield use would increase the perception that nuclear weapons were as usable as any other part of the U.S. conventional weapons arsenal and that the U.S. was preparing to use them. If the U.S. proceeds with these weapons, other nations with far less conventional capability will seek to deter a U.S. attack by developing their own weapons of mass destruction, most likely chemical or biological weapons.

The U.S. and other nuclear weapon states pledged in 1995, not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states (with certain exceptions), as an inducement for those non-nuclear weapon states to agree to extend, indefinitely, the NPT. Therefore, the development or testing of these weapons would be a de facto repudiation of these assurances. To quote Rep. Markey in his letter, "the RNEPs may offer marginal military benefits at best while imposing major costs and risks."

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TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Philosophy; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: iraq; korea; north; nuclear; science; technology; terror; war; weapon
Sounds like a good idea to me!
1 posted on 03/13/2003 2:29:25 PM PST by vannrox
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To: vannrox
The RNEP would be designed to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets such as bunkers containing chemical and biological weapons.

And Iraqi or N.Korean dictators hiding like rats in tunnels....

BWAH, HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 posted on 03/13/2003 2:32:58 PM PST by Capitalist Eric
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To: vannrox


Labs told to design burrowing bombs


Mercury News

The Pentagon and the Energy Department have directed the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories in Livermore and Los Alamos to compete for the chance to design a hydrogen bomb that could destroy targets underground.

To the dismay of arms-control proponents, the Bush administration is advocating such weapons -- which would slam into the earth at high speed and then explode underground -- as a means of attacking command bunkers or biological and chemical weapons facilities possibly buried in such places as Iraq, Iran or North Korea.

Work on preliminary designs for the weapon -- known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator -- begins next month at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Alameda County and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Scientists at both labs will propose modifying weapons rather than designing a new bomb from scratch.

New vs. redesigned

That distinction plays a role in arms-control debates in the post-Cold-War era. Arms-control advocates say designing and building new weapons provokes other nations to follow suit, at a time when the fear of ``rogue state'' nuclear weapons is growing. The Bush White House, like the Clinton administration before it, says it has no plans for new nuclear weapons designs. But critics charge that extensively modifying a weapon for a new purpose is equivalent to a new design.

``If I take my Honda into the shop and it comes out a Ferrari, that's not a modification, it's a new car,'' said Marylia Kelley of Livermore, who leads Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment.

She and other opponents argue that producing such weapons blurs the line between nuclear and conventional weapons, increasing the chances that nuclear weapons will be used.

Proponents maintain that nuclear weapons could reach some buried targets that could not be destroyed by conventional bombs. Energy Department officials also say the preliminary design contest will help maintain the skills of scientists at the labs, 10 years after explosive testing of weapons in Nevada came to an end.

Lawrence Livermore's candidate is the B83, a hydrogen bomb designed for the B-1 bomber. Los Alamos will work on the B61, which already has been modified 11 times, including for earth-penetrating use.

The initial design work, officially called feasibility studies, was requested by the Nuclear Weapons Council, a coordinating body of military and Energy Department officials.

The Air Force, which would drop the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator from its airplanes, is also involved in the studies, which are to begin in April after Congress is notified.

``They would lay out the relative advantages or disadvantages of each,'' including cost, said Lisa Cutler of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the Energy Department. The decision to actually convert the weapons and build the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator has not yet been made, she said.

Lawrence Livermore officials said they could not comment on its feasibility study, the second step in the seven-step process to design and produce a nuclear weapon. Modification of the weapon would keep the nuclear explosives portion of the bomb largely intact. But the bomb's casing and interior supports would be strengthened.

Shift in strategy

The Bush administration nuclear weapons policy, laid out in January in the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review, de-emphasizes strategic nuclear weapons but promotes the development of ``advanced concept'' battlefield weapons such as the earth penetrator.

Earth-penetrating weapons are built long and thin to smash through earth and rock at high speed. In some non-nuclear tests the weapon's exterior casing has melted from the friction. In tests to date, weapons have penetrated only a few dozen feet.

The B83 is 12 feet long and 18 inches in diameter. It was developed at Livermore in the 1980s and has the advantage of already being built to withstand impact. It was designed as a ``lay down'' bomb, one that is dropped from an airplane at low altitude and high speed. It is constructed to smash into buildings, knock down trees or careen into cars, and still work. Its detonation is delayed to provide the plane time to clear the area; otherwise, the crew would be flying a suicide mission.

Livermore scientists have studied the B83 as a potential earth-penetrating weapon since the 1980s. Both the B83 and the B61 have a feature known as ``dial-a-yield'' in which the bombs' explosive power, or yield, can be adjusted. The maximum yield is more than a megaton, the equivalent of a million tons of TNT, a mountain of conventional explosives. At high yield, the B83 would produce an explosion more than 2 million times more powerful than the ``bunker buster'' bombs the Air Force has used against Taliban and Al-Qaida caves in Afghanistan.

Variable yield

The B83 at high yield would be perhaps 100 times more powerful than ``Little Boy,'' the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945. But by disabling some features, the yield can be reduced dramatically, by some accounts to only 300 tons.

Despite their potential for low yield, modification of large bombs like the B83 and the B61 would apparently not be affected by a 1994 law prohibiting work on nuclear earth penetrators with yields less than 5,000 tons. That law blocked the development of so-called mini-nukes, but modification of weapons might be allowed.





3 posted on 03/13/2003 2:35:13 PM PST by vannrox (The Preamble to the Bill of Rights - without it, our Bill of Rights is meaningless!)
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To: vannrox
I'm not trying to minimize the actual radioactive damage this thing might do, but this seems a worst case scenario on all evaluations. First of all, I doubt seriously we'd use it in the middle of a city full of people just to destroy chemical or biological weapsons.

This sounds like a page from an anti-nuke sight. If not, it's in serious need of a rewrite IMO.

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4 posted on 03/13/2003 2:39:25 PM PST by DoughtyOne (Don't just sit there, use the links on the Graphic Teaser.)
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To: vannrox
"The earth-penetrating capability of the B61-11 is fairly limited...Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet.

That's if dropped into permafrost = ice. Doubtful there would be a command bunker under the permafrost.

5 posted on 03/13/2003 2:41:34 PM PST by RightWhale (Theorems link concepts: Proofs establish links)
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To: vannrox
Sounds like a good idea to me!

Would make a good book...Tom Swift and his Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. "Let's test my new Penetrator!", the young inventor said stiffly to his pal Bud Barclay.

6 posted on 03/13/2003 2:54:29 PM PST by Starwind
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To: vannrox
Robust

Nice marketing. Sounds warm. Earthy. I'd buy one. Does it come appointed with Rich Corinthian Leadthair ?

7 posted on 03/13/2003 3:09:01 PM PST by RedQuill
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To: RightWhale
That's if dropped into permafrost

A quick trip down google indicates that current technology is not capable of delivering air dropped, low yield ordinance deep enough to insure containment by natural overburden.

Outside of the obvious problem of scale, the path of the ordinance provides a natural vent.

Sorry.

8 posted on 03/13/2003 4:24:02 PM PST by Amerigomag
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To: RedQuill
It's what's called "Mercedes Leather."
9 posted on 03/13/2003 5:26:08 PM PST by billorites
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To: Starwind
"Let's test my new Penetrator!", the young inventor said stiffly to his pal Bud Barclay.

Yes, I saw that on a Danish Scouting Webpage.

10 posted on 03/13/2003 5:29:07 PM PST by billorites
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To: vannrox
Great idea if we can use it as a "recovery" technique to get at that hard-to-get oil.
11 posted on 03/14/2003 12:37:55 AM PST by jammer
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