National Security Science Podcast

Most eight-year-olds build things out of Legos. Aidan McMillan decided to build a nuclear fusion device—under the supervision of watchful adults. Four years later, his homemade fusor began producing neutrons—the signature of fusion—there was only one problem: proving it. For that, he turned to Los Alamos National Laboratory. To learn more, tune in to this episode of the National Security Science Podcast. Plus, you'll also hear from the Laboratory's legendary former director, Harold Agnew.

EPISODE FEATURE National Security Science J. Weston Phippen reads an article published in 1992 titled, “A reluctant division leader,” by the first Manhattan Project Physics division leader, Robert Wilson. Wilson talks about the early days at Los Alamos. LABCAST Ten Los Alamos projects have won innovation awards. The R&D 100 awards are considered the 'Oscars of Invention' and honor the best inventions of the past year. HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE HILL Bradbury Science museum director reads a World War II–era poem by the Women’s Army Corps stationed in Los Alamos.

U.S nuclear weapons have played a critical role in preventing conflict among major powers since the end of World War II. Ensuring the safety and reliability of this nuclear deterrent is an essential part of national security. But, how can scientists test and evaluate the U.S. nuclear stockpile in the absence of nuclear testing? In this episode of the National Security Science podcast, we’ll learn all about new experiments to ensure the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile. It all starts nearly 1,000 feet underground.

This episode marks the first of a three-part series on nuclear testing. Our team traveled to the Nevada National Security Site to explore the history of nuclear testing, how it started, how it ended, and what scientists are doing now. We begin the three-part series by joining the magazine’s Jill Gibson as she embarks on a ‘technical orientation visit’ to the Nevada National Security Site, which was formerly the Nevada Test Site and before that the Nevada Proving Grounds. The site is located about an hour north of Las Vegas in a highly secure area chosen in 1951 for its remote location. It stretches across 1,355-square-miles—making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. Between 1951 and 1992 a total of 928 nuclear tests were conducted at the site, 828 of which were underground.

Today we interview three scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in three different labs to get a glimpse of how instruments used for treaty verification are tested and developed. Instruments must be able to survive a rocket launch and also decades of harsh space weather. Over the years, several international treaties have limited the sizes and locations of nuclear detonations. Most recently, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty—the CTBT—prohibits all nuclear detonations, period. No one is allowed to set off a nuclear device anywhere—not underground, not underwater, not on the Earth’s surface or atmosphere, and not even in outer space. President Bill Clinton signed the CTBT in 1996, and although the United States has not ratified the treaty, it has maintained a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992. But what about other countries? How do we know if they’re playing by the rules? The short answer is that the United States has the tools—many of them developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories and other entities—to detect nuclear explosions anywhere in, on, or above the world, at any time. One way Los Alamos does this is by developing specialized sensing instruments that live on satellites and are able to detect and measure the products of a nuclear explosion. At high altitudes and in outer space, the most easily detected products are x-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons. At lower altitudes, these products interact with the atmosphere and produce detectable optical and radio signatures. If certain levels of products are detected in the right proportions, the ground systems analyzing the sensor data can definitively identify a nuclear blast, estimate where and when it occurred, and gauge how big it was. So now we come to today’s topic; surviving space.

Long before National Security Science magazine existed, Los Alamos published a monthly magazine called "The Atom". In this episode of the podcast, the National Security Science magazine team wishes subscribers happy holidays and reads a poem out of The Atom’s December 1964 issue called, “Merry Christmas and all that stuff.”

On July 16, 1945, a predawn thunderstorm moved through the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 120 miles south of Albuquerque. After it passed, at 5:29:45 a.m., detonators ignited explosives around a large, steel, globe-shaped device on a 100-foot tower. The explosion prompted a fission chain reaction in the plutonium inside the globe. The resulting nuclear blast from the Gadget, as the device was called, released an explosive force of 21 kilotons (equivalent to 21 thousand tons of TNT). It created a blinding flash of light, a thunderous sound, and a mushroom cloud 38,000 feet tall. “Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind,” remembered physicist Norris Bradbury of witnessing the event. “I didn’t. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.” This was the Trinity test, the culmination of 27 months of work at Project Y—a secret laboratory in Los Alamos—to create the world’s first atomic bomb. In this episode of the National Security Science podcast, on the 76th anniversary of the Trinity test, we examine the test from two angles: from 1945, when the test occurred, and from 2021, when a group of Los Alamos employees traveled to the Trinity site to tour ground zero and the surrounding area.

Ohio-class submarines disappear into the ocean for 70 days at a time, carrying 155 sailors, 24 nuclear-armed missiles, and more hot sauce than your local taqueria. Retired Naval officer Mark Levin gives a firsthand account.