No joke - A billion-dollar capacitor problem. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 10:39:46 pm
content: If you think you have bad capacitor problem, here's one that will blow your mind - in more ways than one.Since many would not want to read a long article, here is my summary of the main points in the article (except those in quotes, the rest are my words):"Defects found in a $5 electrical component will delay the Navy and Air Force nuclear warhead refurbishment program by 18 months and cost more than $1 billion to fix, a National Nuclear Security Administration official said during a congressional hearing Wednesday."During the cold war, 70% of the missile parts were made in house. Now 70% are off-the-shelf parts due to cost reduction initiatives.While in early tests, those $5 commercially available capacitors weremeeting specificationmeet requirement today, however during later stress tests, a few of those failed."The problem is, these parts used in the warheadupgrades must survive for decades, up to 30 yearsafter production, Verdon said. However, the quality of each capacitor production lot varied, which led to the stress testing failure. Instead of using the capacitors and risking readiness in the future, Verdon said his agency decided to delay the upgrade work, initially scheduled to begin in December.[Charles Verdonis the deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration]Replacement capacitors are being produced but will cost about $75 per unit, compared with the $5 per unit cost of the off-the-shelf capacitors that failed stress testing."Here is the USNI September 25, 2019 article:https://news.usni.org/2019/09/25/faulty-5-parts-cause-18-month-1-billion-delay-to-navy-air-force-nuclear-upgradesEDIT:Changed the word I used in the summary "While in early tests...meeting specification" to the wording in the original article "While in early tests...meet requirement today". Requirement and Specification can be very different.

author: Circlotron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 10:46:13 pm
content: Moral of the story is - beware of mil-spec eBay parts.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 10:57:54 pm
content: They need to switch the operating model to a more consumer one. Why have a very expensive warhead that has to last 30 years? Why not have a cheap one that has to be replaced every 5 years. Yes, overall quality will be lower, but on the up side you can make a ton of them fast and cheap.Having more warheads about to expire is also good for training and design refinements.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 11:04:53 pm
content: They tend to work on the basis they will need to survive perhaps two decades into a total supply chain collapse.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 26, 2019, 11:38:57 pm
content: Please note: I made a change in wording in the OP to make my summary reflect the original meaning better.EDIT:Changed the word I used in the summary "While in early tests...meeting specification" to the wording in the original article "While in early tests...meet requirement today". Requirement and Specification can be very different.

author: DimitriP
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 01:30:11 am
content: QuoteAhh....yes...."best practices" but which industry? Gotta love those!

author: Dundarave
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 03:32:23 am
content: Those old RIFA brand caps are showing up everywhere...

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 03:33:19 am
content: Quote from: Dundarave on September 27, 2019, 03:32:23 amWarheads are supposed to explode. All you have to do is time it right.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 04:12:15 am
content: If there is any military product that I would want to work 20 years without maintenance it would be a nuke. Every time you take one out of a vault or wherever they are stored you increase the risk of something bad happening. A theft. A train wreck. A lightning strike. Even a meteor. Or a long list of other bad things. None of these is likely, but in a really high stakes game like this you don't want to roll snake eyes.Best answer is to get rid of them, but that doesn't seem to be the world we live in, so I am happy to see them handled as little as possible.It does seem that it there would be cheaper ways to get the caps they want. Just buy up the rest of the lots that pass the stress test. I am sure that the smallest batch size of commercial parts is huge relative to the number of nuclear warheads.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 27, 2019, 01:36:21 pm
content: I mean if that billion is being used to fire US-run factories, that's not /as/ bad, as it goes back into our economy.

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2019, 09:03:20 am
content: Best thing is to not use electrolytic capacitors, in anything which is to last decades.It can be very difficult but is possible.There is a big variation in quality, and it isn't possible to predict who will make a low quality batch one day.Look at the motherboard "popping capacitor" problem of a few years ago. Those were chinese caps; with chinese stuff there is absolutely no way of knowing.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 29, 2019, 09:16:37 am
content: Best thing is not to build any warheads

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 12:37:18 am
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 29, 2019, 09:16:37 amAnd let the military industrial complex collapse? As a hot blooded American dedicated to the development of new and incredible ways to kill surprisingly few soldiers while decimating civilian populations for the sake of financial gain and economic enhancement, I find the concept of a peace time economy against the freedom to manifest our destiny in any way possible!

author: scatterandfocus
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 01:44:00 am
content: Quote from: Ampera on September 30, 2019, 12:37:18 amAnd not spend 50% of our tax dollars (that we know of) on building their toys of power and destruction. Imagine how much better science and engineering education could be, and how many more people could be educated, with even half of that money. But that is business I guess.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 01:55:50 am
content: Quote from: Ampera on September 30, 2019, 12:37:18 amActually, while it is called "military industrial complex", useful civilian technology do come out of it. It was US Defense's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) who invented the internet.Without defense spending on research, I suspect if we were solely on civilian-commercial spending for R&D, satellite and rocket technology would be far more expensive - far too expensive for something like weather satellite or civilian communication satellites.I'd rather see our federal government focus on defense than other stuff that should be done by individuals or NGO's. If useful stuff come out of it, great, that is extra side-benefits.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 05:34:45 am
content: Not building warheads does not mean not investing in defense.Just imagine what devastation would happen if a nuclear warhead goes off in its silo within 100 miles of a large city in the US due to a failing component.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 07:07:13 am
content: Unless you’re in Russia. Nyonoksa radiation accident...

author: zl2wrw
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 06:05:56 pm
content: You might be interested in reading about "strong link / weak link" systems with respect to nuclear weapons. The basic concept is that the weak link in the system is what makes it go prompt critical, and the strong link is what stops it from doing so. In the event of a mishap, eg fire, rocket malfunction on launch, etc the weak link is designed to fail before the safe link, rendering the bomb a dud...I understand that convincing ones opponents of the reliability of ones nuclear arsenal is a requirement for an effective deterrent "2nd strike capability", however given the size of the US (and Russian) nuclear arsenals relative to the worlds other nuclear weapons states, maybe Trump & Putin should negotiate another round of "megatons to megawatts"? (converting nuclear material from bombs into civilian nuclear reactor fuel - a good way to get rid of them bombs)

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 06:28:36 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on September 27, 2019, 04:12:15 amadd to that the with nukes there's a bunch of treaties to follow too

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 06:31:55 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on September 30, 2019, 07:07:13 amThe one in Spain 1966 Palomares accident was quite bad as well, 4 hydrogen bombs went loose and one or two exploded (not the plutonium) after the B52 and KC135 tanker exploded in mid air during refill! The place are still radioactive today!

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 08:19:01 pm
content: Quote from: zl2wrw on September 30, 2019, 06:05:56 pmI thought the high radioactive material for nukes was a by-product from nuclear powerplants not the other way around?

author: LeonR
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 08:33:55 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 30, 2019, 05:34:45 amAren't silos supposed to contain the fallout mass of such cases?

author: Seekonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 08:59:43 pm
content: Like the nuclear missile silo that blew up near Atlanta (Damascas Arkansas) hardly anyone knows about? Watch Command and Control, PBS 2017.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 09:41:59 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 30, 2019, 08:19:01 pmhttps://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/energy-environment/10nukes.html

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 30, 2019, 10:47:57 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on September 26, 2019, 10:57:54 pmIn a big organization upgrades are a massive undertaking. I can tell seemingly simple upgrade of the servers fleet 5 years is a bare minimum anyone would agree to and then the project may last 1 or 2 years. Do not ask me why, this is the way it is.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 03:25:58 am
content: From the article, this is a warhead refreshment project. So, it sounds like the capacitor issue is with the warhead and not the missile. With multiple warheads per missile, that just made the problem that much worst.As I contemplate the headache this must be causing... Something else came to mind...A few years back (2014, TV show 60 minutes), there was a segment on the US Air Force still using 8-inch floppies in part of the ICBM launching sequence... I wonder how healthy are the capacitors in those floppy drives. Gotta be a bit puffy by now. That could be our next billion dollar floppy upgrade initiative...Link:https://defensesystems.com/articles/2014/04/29/af-8-inch-floppies-icbm-launch.aspx

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 03:40:49 am
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 30, 2019, 08:19:01 pmWeapons-grade material is lower in natural radioactivity compared with fuel-grade material (or natural uranium ore). This is important because you don't want the radioactive decay process causing criticality accidents in your highly enriched, dense bomb cores.Plutonium is made in reactors, but calling it a "by-product" is a little misleading. The first working reactors were purpose-built to breed plutonium and didn't generate useful electrical power. Power generation came later—in some sense nuclear energy is a by-product of weapons development.

author: Whales
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 04:01:29 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on September 26, 2019, 10:57:54 pm30 years isn't just a technical/operational/warfare decision. It's also a decision to work around social and government/military structural issues.Funding dries up? Political scandals? Government or military collapse? During these periods the weapons would still be considered "needed" by countries like the US, but they may not have funding or organisational ability to quickly create new ones.N.B. a warhead full of RIFAs may break some conventions regarding specificity of bombing

author: zl2wrw
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 08:12:28 am
content: Quote from: langwadt on September 30, 2019, 09:41:59 pmFrom a technical perspective, of all the uranium atoms in uranium ore dug out of the ground, about 0.7% is U235 which is "fissile" and the other 99.2% is U238 which is not fissile, but is "fertile" - that is, it can undergo "transmutation" by neutron capture yielding Plutonium isotope 239 (Pu239).Some heavy water moderated (eg CANDU) or graphite moderated (eg Hanford B) reactors can run on unenriched uranium fuel, but generally speaking, light water moderated reactors (ie most of the world's civilian reactors) require the uranium to be enriched to about 3% to 5% U235 content. If you want to make a "Little Boy" gun-type atomic bomb (what was dropped on Hiroshima), then you require something like +90% U235 content in the fuel. Uranium is enriched by separating the U235 atoms from the U238 atoms, typically with centrifuges and the uranium in the form of Uranium Hexafluoride gas (a U235 atom is three neutrons lighter than a U238 atom). Uranium enrichment to +90% for bomb fuel is really hard, expensive work, and U235 has a rather high critical mass so you need quite a lot of it to make a bomb. On the other hand, Pu239 has a critical mass about an order of magnitude smaller than that of U235 and is cheaper "per bomb" to produce, but the NRE costs are higher (plutonium implosion bombs are much more complex).When you fission U235/Pu239 in a reactor, it releases neutrons, and some of the U238 in the fuel gets transmuted into Pu239 (remember that you start with fuel that is something like 5% fissile material and 95% U238). Pu239 is fissionable, and can be used either as reactor fuel, or as the fuel for an implosion type atomic bomb (what was dropped on Nagasaki, and what is used as the initiator for thermonuclear fusion aka "Hydrogen" bombs).However, bomb-grade Pu239 is harder to manufacture than reactor grade Pu239. Basically, in a civilian power reactor, you fission the fuel for a year or two until the build up of fission products tends to absorb so much of the neutron flux that the fuel losses "reactivity" (kinda like a battery going flat). Then you pull the spent fuel from the reactor, replace it and repeat. To a certain extent the spent fuel can be recycled (separate the unfissioned Uranium/Plutonium from the spent fuel for reuse and send the waste fission products to high level waste disposal).On the other hand if you are seeking bomb-grade plutonium, then you don't want much "burnup" in the reactor (fuel only in the reactor for weeks or months before plutonium extraction processing) to ensure that the Pu239 doesn't get excessively contaminated with heavier plutonium isotopes like Pu240 which tend to reduce the yield of a nuclear bomb by prematurely initiating the reaction before the fuel is fully compressed. It is really really hard to separate Pu239 from Pu240 (much harder than separating U235 from U238), and spent high-burnup fuel is really hard to handle because it is very strongly radioactive because of all the fission products in it. Also, Pu239 that is contaminated with short half-life fission products is kinda hard on all the troops that have to handle the weapon containing it (the idea is to threaten to irradiate the enemy, not your own forces!).My understanding is that most weapons grade Pu239 has come from low-burnup "weapons production" reactors like Windscale and Hanford B, oh and also from frequent online refuelling of RBMK reactors (which have a notorious reputation because of what happened in the 1980's in what is now Ukraine...)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

author: duak
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 01, 2019, 05:55:52 pm
content: I'd endeavour to design a nuclear weapon that would be useable for 30 year and won't go off by itself. I'd also design it so that something has to be refreshed every month or so such that if it's lost, stolen or abandoned, it can't go off. Sure as shootin', someone will figure out or accidently discover a way to cause damage. Readhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Damascus_Titan_missile_explosionAbout nuclear fuel - The Canadian CANDU power reactor can be refueled while online so it's possible to cook U238 for a week or two without shutting down. I understand India used this feature of CANDU for the fuel for their bombs. Just throw a couple more on the barbie for those blokes...https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/canada-and-india-the-nuclear-genie-40-years-on/article23978162/

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 02, 2019, 08:40:55 pm
content: Quote from: Kjelt on September 29, 2019, 09:16:37 amThey aren't building new ones, they are more or less recapping the existing ones to keep them in service longer. Instead of building new ones.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 21, 2019, 09:53:41 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on October 01, 2019, 03:25:58 amThey have listened to you and replaced them with ssdhttps://www.c4isrnet.com/air/2019/10/17/the-us-nuclear-forces-dr-strangelove-era-messaging-system-finally-got-rid-of-its-floppy-disks/