nuclear-news

As the Global Security Newswire notes: In one case, officials incorrectly approved two components to be added to a variant of the W-76 nuclear warhead. The error, they said, cost between $20 million and $25 million, and held up preparation of new parts by an extra 12 months.

The United States never “treated the maintenance of original nuclear weapons [records] as a priority” during or after the Cold War…The auditors argued, though, that “recapturing the department’s original nuclear weapons data in a configurable format can potentially save tens of millions of dollars.”

Even worse—yes, there’s a “worse”—the investigation found that lax security at the Los Alamos National Laboratory “had given system access to approximately 30 nuclear weapons designers regardless of whether they were assigned to a nuclear weapon project.” Translation: Saboteurs could potentially tamper with existing weapons designs.