
What's a "fogbank"? Nobody knows, but nukes need them, so we reinvented them. - pavel_lishin
http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2010/11/what-fogbanks-cost/
======
latch
Wiki has more information (ok, more like speculation) on what a Fogbank is:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK>

"Many arms experts believe that FOGBANK is an aerogel material which acts as
an interstage material in a nuclear warhead, i.e. a material designed to
become a superheated plasma following the detonation of the weapon's fission
stage, the plasma then triggering the fusion-stage detonation."

Also, just because someone's retired doesn't mean you can't ask for help...

~~~
mpk
The wikipedia article also mentions,

    
    
        [..] the NNSA eventually decided to invest $23 million
        to attempt to find an alternative to FOGBANK.
    

and,

    
    
        In 2008, following the expenditure of a further 
        $69 million, the NNSA finally managed to 
        manufacture FOGBANK [..]
    

So not counting the initial cost (which isn't mentioned), we're already up to
92 million USD.

~~~
hartror
The US no longer tests Nukes right?

So how do they know the new stuff works I wonder . . .

~~~
ceejayoz
My understanding is that they simulate them via supercomputing. I imagine this
fact has caused a few Pentagon generals to go bald prematurely.

~~~
InclinedPlane
As far as I can tell the US hasn't had a nuclear test that went far different
from expectations since the 60s. And modern nuclear warheads haven't used
dramatically different designs for quite some time. Given that it's a pretty
good bet that all US nuclear weapons in service are reliable.

------
seldo
FREDERIK POHL is still alive??? And has a blog?? My mind is blown.

(Non science-fiction readers: this is like hearing that not only is Elvis
still alive, but is performing an acoustic set nearby)

~~~
satori99
I know, right?!

Gateway remains my favourite hard-sci novel of all time.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_%28novel%29>

------
mbyrne
RANT to follow, feel free to ignore:

It feels like this story is being spun to raise "serious questions about the
federal government's nuclear weapons management" by Mother Jones and others,
as well as to demean hackers.

From my three minutes of research, it looks like Fogbank is a material that is
used in just three models of nuclear warheads, one of which, W76, is used on a
the Ohio class of nuclear submarine. More to the point this is a story about
refurbishing a device that is 20-30 years old. One weapon in the nuclear
arsenal, the W76 nuclear warhead, is due to be refurbished and one component
is not readily available since they shut the manufacturing plant down 21 years
ago. And now that they tried to make the component again, they have run into
some problems since no one has manufactured this stuff for 20+ years. The
stuff is a nightmare to make--they had to evacuate the manufacturing facility
three times in one year alone. (Has your office ever been evacuated three
times in a year so you wouldn't DIE?)

This story angle(and its related links) is really about pundits who NEVER DID
ANYTHING HARD mocking nuclear engineers who are trying to remanufacture
something from the past, essentially from scratch.

"Tee hee, they're so dumb they _forgot_ how to make the atom bomb." No. They
are trying to make component to a discontinued 30-year-old nuclear warhead. I
would love to have one of this guys fix my grandmother's 600lb. RCA Color TV,
the one in her living room in the gigantic wooden furniture case. All they
have to do is order a new cathode ray tube...oh wait...they don't make them
anymore for that, now what? These critics are guys whose knowledge of
electronics extends to (possibly) being able to use a light switch, and who
have never MADE anything their entire lives that involves science, math, or
reality. So what's my point? (Following is NOT directed at F. Pohl, I know
nothing about him:) Maybe in Science Fiction Land, old crap is easy to fix,
maybe your robot girlfriend could even do it for you---but in the real world,
complex old junk and old codebases and anything that comes from intelligent,
creative lifeforms does not get fixed by squirting stuff on it that you can
get out of a toothpaste tube you can buy at Wal-mart. And frankly, my guess
that if they spent $60-100 million dollars to create this new facility and
make juicy new Fogbank, it is LESS than the cost would have been to keep the
old facility open for 20-30 years until now. A top secret nuclear weapons
manufacturing facility? What do you think that costs to run per year? (The
Microsoft Ultra Top Secret Software licenses alone probably run into the
millions per year.)

They won't reveal what Obama's last junket to India cost (and/or Bush before
him), but if it was in the $5-10 million dollar per day range (that was the
latest figure, I saw quoted, and verified by snopes) times 10 days and there
goes the Fogbank budget. Pffft.

Hasn't Obama heard of Skype? Sheesh.

~~~
pyre

      > This story angle(and its related links) is really about pundits who
      > NEVER DID ANYTHING HARD mocking nuclear engineers who are trying to
      > remanufacture something from the past, essentially from scratch.
    

Seems to me that the 'moral' of the story is that the government should have
kept better records (of the design, _and_ the manufacture process). So that
they didn't have to start from scratch. $69M is the price tag for our lack of
foresight/incompetance.

The only other smaller moral is that we need to find a way for classified
things to be found when they need to be found, rather than ending up in a
bottomless pit because no one that has classification knows that it exists or
how to find it.

~~~
mbyrne
Actually, I am glad they didn't write a step-by-step "Making H Bombs for
Dummies" guide like you suggest. Because NOTHING is ever kept secret if it can
be passed along like papers or computer files. Witness the long and ongoing
history of nuclear espionage breaches. Having the full recipe broken up and
distributed in the brains of a trusted group of people is significantly more
secure.

~~~
pyre
Then they should at least have a plan for knowledge transfer rather than
letting those people die/retire without passing on the knowledge, no?

------
gamble
I'm sure this is true for any sufficiently complex engineering project that
wasn't wound down with an eye towards restarting it later. It's practically
impossible externalize all the practical details that the individual engineers
hold in their own heads and pass down organically when the project is still
active. I'm sure at the time they simply assumed that this generation of
weapons would be long obsolete and replaced before the inability to make more
fog banks became an issue.

------
jallmann
This is a good example of the importance of institutional knowledge. IIRC this
is why Boeing has to design a new plane every decade or so -- otherwise it
'forgets' how to when enough people leave, retire, etc. I am sure there are
many more examples of this out there.

edit: a more relevant example to HN -- the supposed run on cobol hackers. One
might also be able to argue this about mainframes, too.

~~~
krschultz
This is the sole reason we are still designing fighter planes, submarines etc.
Nobody else in the world can match the US at the moment, but if we stop now
we'll be starting from scratch in 30 years when we want to again. The way to
make it cost effective is to slow down the pace and lengthen the projects.

------
andreyf
Am I the only one who sees the face of a giant clown in that nuclear cloud?

~~~
wwortiz
It is from that game twisted metal

[http://playstationlifestyle.net/wp-
content/uploads/2010/01/t...](http://playstationlifestyle.net/wp-
content/uploads/2010/01/twisted_metal_01.jpg) (must be a new one if it has ps3
but the old one was for the original playstation)

Edit: maybe not <http://ps3.ign.com/articles/805/805953p1.html> but twisted
metal was the first thing I remembered

------
hartror
There is always a trade off between security and usefulness.

The best secret is one that no one knows. It is also completely useless. This
trade off is one that startups/hackers deal with all all time and there is no
right answer, just worries.

Are we too insecure? Is our security costing us users? How much security is
too much/little?

It is also a problem you can never finish just continually review and refine.

------
thejo
The concept of having to reinvent stuff because we lost all of the tacit
knowledge associated with it is very interesting. Donald MacKenzie wrote about
this in the context of nuclear weapons - Tacit knowledge and the uninvention
of nuclear weapons (
[http://books.google.com/books?id=c5YaHkcP6DEC&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=c5YaHkcP6DEC&lpg=PP1&dq=knowing%20machines&pg=PA215#v=onepage&q&f=false)
)

It's highly recommended if you're wondering how things can get uninvented.

------
Qz
P.S. The author of the post is Frederik Pohl, a pretty awesome science fiction
writer.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_Pohl>

