Joseph Martz

Science, Security, and Nuclear Weapons: A Conundrum for Our Generation?
 

For as long as I can recall, I have been interested in science. I remember reading the World Book encyclopedia several times, marveling at the entries on engineering, technology, and science. I moved from Texas to Los Alamos in 8th grade, and thought the old science museum at Los Alamos was the most amazing place I had ever seen. The fact that my father worked at Los Alamos was a source of tremendous pride. In high school, two key experiences set me on the course my career in science would take.
 
I heard about a contest to fly an experiment on the Space Shuttle in 1980. I submitted a proposal on purifying metals by passing electric currents through them in the vacuum of space. It was selected for the very first Space Shuttle “Students in Space” round of experiments. I’ll never forget traveling to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to talk to NASA scientists and sit in the space shuttle simulators! I remember watching the television in awe as John Young and Bob Crippin rode the first Space Shuttle mission. Imagine my surprise when, a few months later, I was sent a patch that had flown on that mission, along with a certificate!
 
The second key experience occurred in the year I graduated, when Los Alamos held the 40th anniversary reunion of participants in the Manhattan Project. The renowned physicist Richard Feynman only agreed to speak if young people would be in the audience. I was one of 30 high school students with VIP seating at the very front. Hans Bethe gave the talk I’ll never forget. He spoke of the physics of supernovas—most of this went over my head. But at the end he turned to the young people in the front row and pointed his finger straight at me. “It’s up to your generation to find a solution to this problem we created. You must find a way to move beyond vast nuclear arsenals to protect peace,” Bethe said. I was stunned. My first reaction was, “what an old kook.” But after I went off to college, I kept hearing Bethe’s words and soon understood their wisdom. My generation would have to find a solution in science to the great paradox of nuclear weapons and peace.
 
I finished my degree at Texas Tech, and went on to graduate school at Berkeley, where I developed a novel way to clean plutonium from the environment. My work made quite a media splash—it was featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. I was invited come to Los Alamos as a full-blown staff member. I accepted, and began research into the weapons-related issues around plutonium. Now was the time to gain the expertise to contribute to answering Bethe’s challenge.
 
My first breakthrough was on how plutonium corrodes—basically how it rusts. During this time, the country stopped nuclear testing and shut down it’s plutonium factory—the Rocky Flats plant outside of Denver. Tons of plutonium around the country was left literally overnight in temporary containers. What I had discovered was that this plutonium would degrade in a very special way, potentially bursting its containers. I briefed a special board—the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—on these results. Fairly quickly, the Defense Board issued a formal recommendation to repackage all of the plutonium in the country to avoid these problems. I was a science celebrity! I was asked to train inspectors and help write a new standard for storage of plutonium. And all of this grew out of work to understand how plutonium degraded in weapons.
 
I was asked to lead the group at Los Alamos responsible for the nuclear cores of weapons, called “pits.” Then I was asked to lead the program looking at all weapon materials and how they age. This was timely because the government was debating whether it needed a replacement for Rocky Flats. If pits lasted long enough, then a big replacement factory wouldn't be needed. Editorials in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal talked about the issue. Again, science was at the forefront of a critical national issue, and my research was back in the newspapers!
 
Well, we did figure out that pits age gracefully, and the government decided it did not need to build an expensive new facility. This was a great example of how science could inform critical national policy decisions. More importantly, it showed a way that science could help reduce the number of nuclear weapons. I was excited! I began to study nuclear deterrence and policy. Could science substitute for weapons? I was asked to help lead the famous weapons design division at Los Alamos. I studied issues around weapons design and physics. For 20 years, the government had not designed or fielded a new nuclear weapon. And now they were asking an important question: Could we reduce some of the yield of the weapons, while making a more robust, more secure nuke? There were concerns, in this post-9/11 world, about terrorists stealing nukes.
 
Once again, I was asked to lead a team to study this concept—the Reliable Replacement Warhead. For almost 2 years, we worked night and day to explore concepts. We’ll talk about some of them at the Cafe. We’ll also return to the opening theme: Can science substitute for weapons? Can science provide both security and a deterrent?