The National Atomic Testing Museum is set to receive a 6-foot-5-inch confinement vessel that it plans to display in its “The Bomb Without the Boom” exhibit.
The artifact, arriving tomorrow from the Los Alamos National Lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, will be on display starting March 19. The vessel is a replica of a container designed to confine the effects of an explosive test and to allow scientists and engineers to gather data using delicate diagnostic instruments.
“The Bomb Without the Boom” exhibit was curated to answer the question of how nuclear weapons are managed today. Through artifacts and narrative, it highlights the Stockpile Stewardship Program and how, through innovative science-based experiments, the United States can assure the safety and reliability of its nuclear weapons without full-scale testing in a post-Cold War world.
Showing how data gleaned from the use of lasers and small amounts of explosives is fed into supercomputers, this exhibit demonstrates how these practices give scientists both peace of mind and confirmation of the viability of U.S. nuclear weapons.
In addition to the new artifact, visitors to the exhibit can discover how nuclear weapons of both the past and present work and information about specific bombs, such as the B57 produced during the Cold War and the B61 created after the Cuban Missile Crisis. They can also explore how the United States studies the effects of high explosives on nuclear materials, such as plutonium, in subcritical experiments to enhance the safety of stockpiled weapons, and information about modern nuclear medicine and how data collected by supercomputers can be utilized to identify causes of climate change.
“The Bomb Without the Boom” exhibit is included with museum admission. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit atomicmuseum.vegas.
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