Russia Practices Nuking U.S.

Originally posted by dragonrider
Also just how decommissioned are the decommissioned warheads in storage? Just how hard would it be to bring these weapons to an operational state?

There are several hundred nuclear weapons cores in storage at the PANTEX facility in west Texas. In this facility, all the cores are physically removed from the weapon and put into individual storage. Granted, all you would have to do is put the core back into the weapon, although doing so would likely be an hours long project, and that is assuming that the personnel doing it were properly trained.

The plutonium was supposed to be melted into an unusable shape, but I'm not sure if they have done this or not.
The 'pit' is only the plutoum part of the bomb, there are many other components needed to make an operational bomb. Such as :

• Kryton switches - needed to time the detonation of the high explosives surrounding the pit.
  
• The HE lenses are also critical to detonation. These have to be precisely machined to form a spherical implosion shockwave. They normally use 2 different types of HE with different detonation velocities so as to curve the implosion around the pit.
  
• Neutron guns are also important to form a full yield.
  

Russia does have far more plutonium than the US. This is largely due to the Soviet policy of producing more plutonium rather than recycling it for new weapons as is western practice. This follows the long practiced Soviet military doctrine of never throwing anything away ie. they still had WW2 tanks and artillery in sheds in the late 80's.
So. most of the Soviet weapons over 15 years old would be unreliable especially their fusion weapons. This is because the form of hydrogen used - deuterium - has a relativlely short half life decaying into helium 3 ( I think ). The US recycles deuterium by passing the it through paladium which removes the helium 3, thus ensuring relablity of the set yield. The Soviets/Russians however do not do this, thus substantially increasing the chances of a ' fizzle '.