Peer Review and Design Competition in the NNSA National Security Laboratories (2015) / Chapter Skim
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The laboratories have also strengthened their technical evaluation and peer review processes both to ensure the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nuclear stockpile and to help maintain associated science and engineering design and innovation capabilities in the laboratories. Although not a substitute for weapons tests, peer review has become an increasingly important practice at the three NNSA laboratories as a 1
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have taken somewhat different approaches to peer review, owing in large part to SNL's ability to test non-nuclear components and systems. • With only archival nuclear explosion test data available, LANL and LLNL rely on vigorous, deep-dive reviews by true competi tive peers and other subject-matter experts to critique the re sults of calculations and subcritical experiments relating to NEP performance.
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These conclusions led the committee to the following recommendation: Recommendation 1: The nuclear weapons laboratories should improve their peer review processes in the following ways: • Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore Na tional Laboratory should ensure they have short, written guid ance for a graded approach to peer review, the rigor of which is appropriate to the stage of work and range of technical activities being reviewed. • Sandia National Laboratories should strengthen and broaden its use of outside experts on its peer review teams, as articulated in written guidance that Sandia recently finalized.
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design study produced innovative designs by competing teams at LANL/SNL-New Mexico and LLNL/SNL-California.1 However, the manner in which the study was conducted led to deep resentments at the laboratories. Conclusion 3: Although the RRW design study succeeded in pro ducing innovative weapon designs by the competing teams, its value was reduced because technical experts from the competing laboratories were not given the opportunity to critique one anoth er's ideas through interlaboratory peer review or to address criti cisms at the science and engineering level before the final designs were formally presented to NNSA and potential end users.
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• There have been no full NEP design competitions since the 1992 nuclear explosion testing moratorium. Recent design studies have been good analysis and modeling exercises, but they did not result in actual engineering and fabrication of components and systems; thus, they did not exercise the complete set of skills required in the NNSA complex to design nuclear weapons that would be an effective deterrent, nor was the credibility of any design assessed by fabricating a device or by non-nuclear testing.
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Recommendation 4: In order to exercise the full set of design skills necessary for an effective nuclear deterrent, the National Nuclear Security Administration should develop and propose the first in what the committee envisions as a series of design competitions that include designing, engineering, building, and non-nuclear testing of a prototype. The non-nuclear components produced by Sandia should be integrated into the design and fabrication of the prototype.
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