Department of Energy FY 2012 Congressional ... - The FIRE Place

Sandia also conducts operations at California and the Tonopah Test Range (TTR). The NNSA
operations at TTR will reduce footprint, upgrade equipment with mobile capability, and conduct NNSA
flight tests in a campaign mode. No Category I/II SNM will be used in future flight tests. The SNL’s
Science, Technology, and Engineering program conducts a large variety of research and development
programs that support five key areas: (1) Nuclear Weapons, (2) Nonproliferation and Assessments,
(3) Military Technologies and Applications, (4) Energy and Infrastructure Assurance, and (5) Homeland
Security.
ACTIVITIES:
Directed Stockpile Work (DSW)
The Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) activities ensure the reliability, safety, and security of the
current and future nuclear weapons stockpile. The SNL supports the W76-1 Life Extension Program
(LEP) design, qualification, production, and surveillance activities, as well as Retired Systems activities,
including required characterization of stockpile weapon components. Other SNL activities include:
weapons assessment and certification, surety assessments, the Annual Assessment Process, the
Independent Nuclear Weapon Assessment Process, technical basis for stockpile transformation planning,
R&D studies, the semi-annual weapon reliability reports, support to the Nuclear Explosive Safety
Studies (NESS), laboratory and flight surveillance, neutron generator design and development, gas
transfer system design and development for LLNL systems, closure of high-priority Significant Finding
Investigations (SFIs), aircraft compatibility, and military liaison with the Department of Defense (DoD).
Sandia has design and production mission assignments for neutron generators; arming, fusing and firing
components; and a dozen other technologies that require extensive engineering oversight to produce.
Also, SNL supports continuing efforts to examine how the B61 Phase 6.2/6.2A study will move to
Phase 6.3 Development Engineering addressing subsystem component development to address issues of
safety, security and long-term reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent.
Science Campaign
The SNL will continue to leverage its unique capabilities and tools in the pulsed power sciences and the
materials and process sciences to support the mission of the Science Campaign for stockpile
stewardship. The Science Campaign subprogram activities are as follows:
• Advanced Certification: The SNL will continue efforts to establish an accredited warhead
certification plan, without nuclear testing, in an era in which changes to nuclear components will
occur due to aging or design concerns. Sandia will obtain actinide, gas, and other material equation
of state data.
• Dynamic Materials Properties: The Z pulsed-power facility has a unique capability to
isentropically (i.e., shocklessly) compress materials and to accelerate flyer plates to shock compress
materials to high pressures, thus providing equation-of-state and constitutive property data to the
SNL, LANL, and LLNL material communities for inclusion in models and for the quantification of
margins and uncertainty (QMU) process. In particular, SNL will continue to conduct experiments
to obtain fundamental and integrated data on special nuclear materials (i.e., plutonium) to quantify
initial conditions for boost processes and to develop new techniques for measuring dynamic
strength on Z. In addition, SNL provides the science basis for developing new non-nuclear
Sandia National Laboratories Page 522
FY 2012 Congressional Budget