Physics Today Describes Effort to Save Craft of Nuclear Weapon

College Park, MD, October 31, 1994 -- As conservationists rush to save a dying species, or anthropologists to document a
primitive peoples' absorption into the twentieth century, so now the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is archiving nuclear weapons
know-how.

In the November 1994 issue of Physics Today, the monthly magazine of the American
Institute of Physics, Denis F. Cioffi describes the efforts at DOE facilities to
document this part of our history. 

Leading to this movement were the budget crunch brought about by the end of the
cold war, the end of underground nuclear testing, and the ages of the
"weaponeers." Any information gathered now will add to DOE's already massive
amount of weapons data. 

The three DOE nuclear weapons design laboratories -- Los Alamos Nationa
Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
-- already document and videotape many of their activities. But this summer,
Sandia became the first to institute a large-scale, formal process of videotaping
interviews of weaponeers. 
Keith Johnstone, who oversees Sandia's Knowledge Preservation Project, told Physics
Today that weaponeers are those who design and construct the components that
transform a "physics package" into a "nuclear explosive device." 
The effort to preserve what Sandia calls the "craft of nuclear weapon design
began as a purely technical project, but those involved soon realized that they
would be hearing much more than just the technical details of weapons
construction. Thus, the project expanded. Johnstone says they now try to captur
the culture as well as technical information. 

Why record this lethal knowledge? Johnstone says the weapons design archivist
aren't suggesting the information ever be used again, but he sees the knowledge
"as a resource that can either be drawn upon or buried forever - that's a decision
that will be made by others, but at least they'll have the opportunity to mak
it." 


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