Part one of Sandia National Labs' first-person documentary on the use control, detonation safety and survivability of US nuclear weapons. It covers nuclear sharing in NATO and how control of use was separated from possession, leading to the always/never problem.
Why Hacker News points people here: Strongly recommended in nuclear-accident and weapons-history threads as an excellent documentary on how nuclear weapons were made safe and secure.
“I highly recommend this three-part series produced by Sandia National Laboratory”HN comment, 2024
“I highly recommend this three-part series produced by Sandia National Laboratory”
Three-part series on Sandia's nuclear weapon safety and control design.
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For any engineer interested in nuclear weapons, I highly recommend this three-part series produced by Sandia National Laboratory on their development of Permissive Action Link, the warhead’s electrical isolation and cryptological module that ensures US nuclear weapons will detonate if any only if authorized by the President. It’s fascinating how they thought about bad path scenarios like thermal damage causing carbon tracking of PCBs potentially defeating the control system. It is called “Always/Never: The Quest for Safety, Control, and Survivability” Part 1: this video Part 2: link Part 3: link
RecommendsgenerusoMay 2026
“There is an excellent three part documentary from Sandia National Labs”
Covers technology and history of nuclear device safety.
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There is an excellent three part documentary from Sandia National Labs: "Always/Never: The Quest for Safety, Control, and Survivability." (part 1) this video They cover both the technology itself and its history, including the incidents you are reading about. These people are the ones who developed the methodology and the technology for nuclear device safety, or at least a significant chunk of it. I think it has recently become much more mathematically heavy, with zero knowledge proofs and other fancy stuff used to talk to the locks in the devices.
Cites itMindless2112Jan 2021
“work for the safety and security of nuclear weapons.”
Documentary on nuclear weapons safety and security work.
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> "Always/Never" shares the story of the national labs’ history of work for the safety and security of nuclear weapons. this video
