Weapons Production Complex
This table is not comprehensive, as numerous facilities throughout the United States have contributed to its nuclear weapons program. It includes the major sites related primarily to the U.S. weapons program (past and present), their basic site functions, and their current status of activity. Not listed are the many bases and facilities at which nuclear weapons have been deployed. In addition to deploying weapons on its own soil, during the Cold War the United States also stationed nuclear weapons in 27 foreign countries and territories, including Okinawa, Japan (during the occupation immediately following World War II)), Greenland, Germany, Taiwan, and French Morocco then independent Morocco.
| Site name | Location | Function | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Alamos National Laboratory | Los Alamos, New Mexico | Research, Design, Pit Production | Active |
| Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory | Livermore, California | Research and design | Active |
| Sandia National Laboratories | Livermore, California; Albuquerque, New Mexico | Research and design | Active |
| Hanford Site | Richland, Washington | Material production (Plutonium) | Not active, remediation |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | Oak Ridge, Tennessee | Material production (Uranium-235, fusion fuel), research | Active to some extent |
| Y-12 National Security Complex | Oak Ridge, Tennessee | Component fabrication, stockpile stewardship, uranium storage | Active |
| Nevada Test Site | Near Las Vegas, Nevada | Nuclear testing and nuclear waste disposal | No nuclear tests since 1992, engaged in waste disposal |
| Yucca Mountain | Nevada Test Site | Waste disposal (primarily power reactor) | Pending |
| Waste Isolation Pilot Plant | East of Carlsbad, New Mexico | Radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production | Active |
| Pacific Proving Grounds | Marshall Islands | Nuclear testing | Not active, last test in 1962 |
| Rocky Flats Plant | Near Denver, Colorado | Components fabrication | Not active, remediation |
| Pantex | Amarillo, Texas | Weapons assembly, disassembly, pit storage | Active, esp. disassembly |
| Fernald Site | Near Cincinnati, Ohio | Material fabrication (Uranium-235) | Not active, remediation |
| Paducah Plant | Paducah, Kentucky | Material production (Uranium-235) | Active (commercial use) |
| Portsmouth Plant | Near Portsmouth, Ohio | Material fabrication (Uranium-235) | Active, (centrifuge), but not for weapons production |
| Kansas City Plant | Kansas City, Missouri | Component production | Active |
| Mound Plant | Miamisburg, Ohio | Research, component production, Tritium purification | Not active, remediation |
| Pinellas Plant | Largo, Florida | Manufacture of electrical components | Active, but not for weapons production |
| Savannah River Site | Near Aiken, South Carolina | Material production (Plutonium, Tritium) | Active (limited operation), remediation |
Read more about this topic: Nuclear Weapons Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the words weapons, production and/or complex:
“Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)