How is a brand new period of great-power rivalry affecting America’s nuclear safety enterprise? Three nationwide laboratories are tasked with conserving America’s warheads secure, modernising them and even building new ones. And, not like throughout the chilly struggle, they need to do all of it with out conducting explosive exams. With political tensions on the rise round the world, the labs’ mission has change into extra necessary than ever. This week, we examine how the administrators of the three labs are assembly this new second.
“The Bomb” is a four-part sequence which traces the scientific story of nuclear weapons. We go behind the scenes at America’s nuclear-weapons laboratories to learn the way the nation is pushing the frontiers of excessive physics, supplies science and computing to modernise its stockpile.