Nuclear Weapons Bureaucracy

Nuclear Weapons Bureaucracy
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Nuclear Weapons Bureaucracy
In United States, there are different agencies involved in varying aspects of nuclear weapons issues. These include the Departments of Energy, Defence, State, Commerce, and Homeland Security.  However, the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration is the principal U.S. Government agency responsible in designing, constructing and maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons. Established in 1977 the department of Energy responded to the energy crisis that affected the country.  Most of the Americans identify nuclear weapons with the Department of Defence although the Department of Energy took all the responsibility of all nuclear energy related matters. Before then the Atomic Energy Commission established after World War II, had been awarded the responsibility for the big infrastructure built during the war under the Manhattan Project. Presently, the National Nuclear Security Administration controls the nation’s nuclear weapons design facilities at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Savannah River, and a host of other national laboratories spread across United States.  They design and build prototype weapons, operate the nuclear reactors and reprocessing plants that generate the enriched uranium and plutonium used in nuclear weapons, and develop safety measures to prevent the weapons’ accidental detonation or deliberate detonation of a stolen weapon in the hand of terrorists or hostile foreign nations (Shultz, Perry, Kissinger & Nunn, 2007).
The Department of Defence is the second agency that, oversees the nation’s armed forces responsibility of nuclear weapon. This includes military units trained to operate nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles. There are a series of unified commands within the Department of Defence, which is responsible for coordinating the use of each branch of the armed forces’ nuclear weaponry. The Triad was formed during the Cold War for both legitimate military and less legitimate bureaucratic reasons, unique to each branch of the military. Nuclear weapons are stored away in submarines because of the opacity of the oceans and the development of highly sophisticated means of communicating with those submarines while they remained submerged and hidden from view.
The Department of State, which acts as the official diplomatic arm of the United Sta...