Siegfried Hecker was one of the invited scientists.

They were in a conference room and they brought in a red metal box opened that up, and inside was a white wooden box with a slide off top.

They opened that up, and inside were two glass jars, sort of like jelly jars, with a screw-on lid, tightly taped.

And they said, this first one has 150 grams of oxalate, plutonium oxalate powder, a certain chemical form of plutonium.

The second jar, they said, well, that's the product.

That's plutonium metal.

in this jar and they said it's 200 grams of plutonium metal

US nuclear scientist, Siegfried Hecker, was invited back to visit their facility, which now had 2,000 centrifuges.

What was your thinking and, if I may say, kind of the mood at the lab about the end of an activity that was a very exciting event? part of lab life for a long time and the transition to using computers instead of physical testing to make sure our stockpile is the way it should be?

Well, let me just first say that that last statement that you made is one that I don't believe.

And that is we can't use computers to certify our stockpile and to get around nuclear testing.

So that's all part of the history of stockpile stewardship.

That's what a lot of people believe.

But no, it's not just computers.

It's a whole program that we wound up calling stockpile stewardship.

So tell us now, Sig, after all these years, what do you think? What do you think of the arguments that we need to resume physical testing? Is our stockpile still safe, reliable, and effective, as you said? What should our listeners understand about this?