ABSTRACT
Abolition assumes a persuasive accounting. Moreover, public belief that there is an adequate accounting of stocks is certain to be a political requirement for abolition. Nuclear weapon states are concerned about the effects of time degrading weapons in their inventory. The US Office of Technology Assessment explained the problem in 1993: To make warheads that were reliable after years of storage, many features might need refinement, including nondegrading high explosives, purer grades of plutonium or, with weapon designs that use tritium gas for additional yield, a replaceable tritium supply. The United States claimed during the Clinton era that the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship program did not include ongoing design of new nuclear weapons, but was quite open in saying that the program sought to maintain a certain expertise in nuclear weapons. Since the designs in the US and British inventories are of long standing, they appear not to have failed laboratory-table tests or given other evidence of non-viability.
