For the past year, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories have been engaged in a competitive feasibility study to develop conceptual designs for a Reliable Replacement Warhead that would be deployed on ballistic missiles and would support existing military requirements.
On Wednesday, Joe Martz, of the principal associate director for nuclear weapons program (PADNWP), RRW program director, will discuss the progress of the Los Alamos team's effort at a Classified Director's Colloquium scheduled to begin at 1:10 p.m. in the Administration Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3. The talk is open to Q-cleared employees only with Sigmas 1-10; no foreign nationals may attend.
The four primary goals of the Los Alamos RRW design are to develop a reliable replacement for the current Cold-War-era stockpile of nuclear weapons that will be certifiable without nuclear testing; greatly improve safety and use control; enable a responsive, efficient and more environmentally-friendly manufacturing infrastructure; and demonstrate capability as deterrent - through the training and mentoring of future weapons designers. The feasibility study is a competition between the Los Alamos-Sandia/New Mexico team and the Livermore-Sandia/California team.
The Los Alamos preliminary design data package was delivered on March 31, which began an intensive, inter-lab peer review now under way. This colloquium will provide an overview of the proposed New Mexico design, highlighting features that address each of the goals of the feasibility study.
For information about the Director's Colloquium series, go to http://stbblue.lanl.gov/colloquium/ online.
