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:
“When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It is human at least, if not divine.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (18501894)
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)
“The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe.... A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (18581915)