Warhead politics: Livermore and the competitive system of nuclear weapon design
- Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
From the 1950s onward, US evolved a two-laboratory system to design, develop, and test nuclear weapons. LANL (New Mexico) dates from World War II. The founding in 1952 of LLNL in California effectively established the two-laboratory system. Despite essentially identical missions, LANL and LLNL adopted different strategies and approaches to the development of nuclear weapons. This thesis looks to their joint history for an explanation of this and consequent questions (how did the two-laboratory system originate and evolve? how did it function? what impact did it have on nuclear weapons development?) The incentives and constraints that shaped laboratory strategies and outputs was determined by military demand for nuclear weapons, an informal mandate against laboratory duplication, congressional support for competition, and Livermore`s role as the ``second lab.`` This thesis discusses the laboratories` role in the arms race, organizational strategies for coping with changing political environments, dynamics of technological innovation, and the leverage of policymakers over large organizations.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 274149
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-LR-124754; ON: DE96014192
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: DN: Thesis submitted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; TH: Thesis (Ph.D.); PBD: Jun 1995
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Energy and Technology Review, November 1991. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]
Politics of nuclear weapons. Master's thesis, Jan 90-Dec 91