Word: warheaded
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...workings of a nuclear explosive and included it as part of a bomb threat that terrified Orlando, Fla., for 36 hours. Nor is cost a deterrent. University of Virginia Professor Mason Willrich, a nuclear-arms expert, estimates that a weapons fabrication and assembly plant that can manufacture ten fission warheads annually costs about $8 million to build. Each 20-kiloton warhead would run less than $15 million, plus the cost of the fissionable material. This is within the reach of even the most impoverished nation willing to divert resources from social programs...
More Tinder. Plutonium (Pu-239) is not found in nature, but will become increasingly abundant. It is the artificial byproduct of the fission that takes place within nuclear power generators. After complicated processing, it can be converted into a warhead, and that is what worries experts. As the soaring price of fossil fuels encourages an increasing number of nations to buy nuclear plants to generate electricity, substantial amounts of Pu-239 will become available. "There will simply be more and more tinder lying around," observes Francois Duchene, the director of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies...
...than 50 bombs each year. Already there are 562 power-producing or research reactors in operation or under construction in 33 nations. By 1980, it is estimated, up to 1 million lbs. of Pu-239 will have been accumulated in the world's civilian nuclear power industry; a warhead with less than 22 lbs. could destroy a medium-sized city...
...anti-ballistic missiles. (The U.S. is protecting a Minuteman missile launch site in Grand Forks, N. Dak.; the Russians are ringing Moscow.) The second agreement strengthens the 1963 treaty banning major nuclear-weapons testing everywhere except underground. Starting on March 31, 1976, both countries will be restricted to testing warheads with yields of less than 150 kilotons-the equivalent of 150,000 tons of TNT. The delay in enforcement will give the Soviets time to complete the testing of warheads for their new family of huge missiles. The U.S. will have time to finish developing a new warhead...
...course, has not marked time in weapons advances since the signing of the SALT agreement. It has moved ahead in more than two dozen areas. In June, Congress authorized the Department of Defense to improve the accuracy of its Minuteman III ICBMs and to perfect a missile warhead (called MaRV) that can be maneuvered in flight to avoid Soviet missile defenses. Such improved accuracy would give the U.S. a better chance of destroying Soviet land-based ICBMS. A danger: this first-strike capacity could upset the nuclear balance in the same way that the Soviets would if they MlRVed...