The U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile continues to shrink and it’s gotten older, but the National Nuclear Security Administration, which has a site in Oak Ridge, has four modernization programs under way. That’s the busiest the NNSA has been since the Cold War era, Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty said in a report to Congress in October.

The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, which enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb used in wartime, has been involved in the work to modernize some weapons and dismantle others as the stockpile changes.

The rest of this story, which you will find only on Oak Ridge Today, includes more information about Y-12’s work on nuclear weapons and a series of nine questions and answers with Hans M. Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at Federation of American Scientists. 

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