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

unauthorized use) are achieved and that modern technology advancements are integrated within nuclear
weapons safety and security.
The Weapons Systems Engineering Assessment Technology subprogram provides scientific
understanding, experimental capability, diagnostic development and data required to qualify components
and full weapon assemblies. This subprogram forms a key link between engineering sciences and
computational simulation, and between testing and evaluation in both normal and abnormal
environments that are essential to the weapon program qualification activities.
The Nuclear Survivability subprogram provides the tools and technologies necessary to design and
qualify components and subsystems to meet requirements to withstand radiation, space, and other hostile
environments. This work includes development of radiation-hardened components and modernized
tools for weapon system analysis.
The Enhanced Surveillance subprogram provides component and material lifetime assessments to
support weapon refurbishment decisions. These lifetime assessments include both the experimental
accelerated aging tests and assessment of aged components from the stockpile including the
computational verification of component and material aging. This information is used for material,
component and systems that are used to assess the current and future state of weapons in the enduring
stockpile. In addition, this subprogram develops advanced diagnostics and predictive capabilities for
early detection and assessment of stockpile aging concerns. These advanced diagnostics are able to
identify potential issues that previously could not have been identified through prior
diagnostics/surveillance methods thus enabling a better understanding of the current state of the
stockpile. Advanced diagnostics include non-destructive diagnostics that could potentially allow tested
components to be candidates for re-use. Based on advanced diagnostics data, the number of destructive
component tests can potentially be reduced as the aging models improve.
The Engineering Campaign activities are closely integrated with Directed Stockpile Work (DSW), the
Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Campaign, the Readiness Campaign, the Science
Campaign, Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities (RTBF), and our counterparts at the United
Kingdom’s Atomic Weapons Establishment. Examples of these integrations are provided below:
• DSW provides the requirements for modeling and simulation capability and establishes the
corresponding schedule for Engineering Campaign deliverables that support Life Extension
Programs (LEPs) and other planned refurbishments of stockpile systems.
• Many of the decisions by the ASC Campaign to develop or improve scientific models are the direct
result of insights gained by technology maturation that occurs in the Engineering Campaign (e.g.
development of modeling and simulation of a new material, enhancements to current models due to
greater understanding of aging phenomena). In addition, the ASC Campaign provides validation and
verification requirements for advanced codes to the Engineering Campaign which, in turn, uses the
codes to design and execute experiments to generate data required in the validation of the
computational tools.
• The Readiness and Engineering Campaigns coordinate investments in parallel with the ASC and the
Science Campaigns to manage weapon technology and component maturation development
Weapons Activities/
Engineering Campaign Page 94
FY 2012 Congressional Budget