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"  Vandenberg Air Force Base, California Air Force Intercontinental Ballistic Missile crews call practice launches from Vandenberg &amp;quot;a trip to the Super Bowl&amp;quot;\u2014they are often the highlight of their careers. In 1963, the US launched 166 rockets from Vandenberg, but in these post\u2013Cold War days, just three to four rockets are launched a year. But with new threats on the horizon, those at Vandenberg take their mission as seriously as ever.  &amp;quot;This is all about deterrence,&amp;quot; says Jay Prichard, the brawny director of Vandenberg&amp;#039;s Space and Missile Heritage Center. &amp;quot;Imagine using an 80,000-pound missile to throw a nuclear baseball. Now imagine hitting a target on the other side of the Pacific.&amp;quot;  Prichard is trying to explain the challenges of launching an ICBM 700 miles high and having it strike a target across the globe. The technology was born right here at Vandenberg, and for five decades the base has trained, tested and demonstrated every U.S. ICBM. Vandenberg covers a remote stretch of the central California coast that juts into the Pacific Ocean, making it an ideal test site; a rocket launched to the west will be aided by the Earth&amp;#039;s rotation in reaching its target and never fly over land. Tours of the Space and Missile Heritage Center, which portrays the history of the ICBM, run monthly. The first flights in 1958 used Thor rockets, intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) with a range of 1700 miles. The two main challenges in developing missiles that could truly cross continents were ensuring the rocket&amp;#039;s ability to lift a heavy nuclear payload and creating a launch vehicle that didn&amp;#039;t burn up upon reentry. The Atlas, an ICBM first tested in 1959, solved these problems by condensing loads and capping the rocket with a blunt copper top called a heat sink, which creates a shock wave that pushes the atmosphere open, letting the vehicle slip through reentry intact. Advances came in 1962 with the Titan, which used a ready-to-go liquid fuel and was launched from hardened underground silos, and the Minuteman, which used solid rocket fuel and incorporated new advanced materials. The current ICBM fleet is made up entirely of Minuteman IIIs, which have been upgraded with better guidance systems.  To Visit: Tours of Vandenberg&amp;#039;s Space and Missile Heritage Center typically run the second Wednesday of every month; groups larger than 25 can arrange their own dates. For details, contact Vandenberg&amp;#039;s public affairs office (805-606-3595; e-mail: 30sw.pa.workflow@vandenberg.af.mil).  Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico In 1943, the U.S. established a secret laboratory in northern New Mexico with the goal of producing an atomic weapon to end World War II. Just two years later, researchers actually did it. The making of the atomic bomb changed the course of the war and history; Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) changed, too. Today LANL also pursues bioscience, chemistry and environmental science, but maintaining nuclear security is still the lab&amp;#039;s chief focus, a mighty task undertaken by, among others, the Satellite Nuclear Detonation Detection (SNDD) group. New security guidelines make a visit impossible, but I arrange an interview with SNDD program manager Paul Weber. For those wanting a tactile experience, there is the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque, which features exhibits on the development and deployment of the bomb as well as atomic pop culture.  Weber explains to me the history of nuclear detection. The 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty banned testing nukes aboveground and in the oceans, air or space. Just days later, the U.S. launched the first Vela satellites to ensure compliance by monitoring for X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons, and later satellites looked for optical and radio signals\u2014these are five telltale signals of a nuclear blast. Detection capabilities were enhanced in the 1990s with the installation of nuclear detonation detection systems on GPS satellites, which by design cover the entire globe and are therefore perfect hosts. New instruments like the Combined X-Ray Spectrometer and Particle Dosimeter (CXD) have focused on being able to distinguish nuclear signals from common background noise like sun flares and lightning, which strikes the earth approximately 100 times a second. Burst Detector sensors have improved computing capabilities to detect electromagnetic pulses, and the Space Atmospheric Burst Reporting System (SABRS) combines 10 older instruments into one to detect neutrons and gamma rays. Building computer chips tolerant to the radiation of space is still expensive, so most instruments transmit data to ground-based computers for further evaluation. Weber sees the fact that countries like North Korea have gone to such great lengths to hide nuclear testing as an indicator of his group&amp;#039;s success. And as Weber boasts that even those tests were picked up by earth-based seismic detectors. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t get away with testing nuclear weapons without the U.S. knowing about it,&amp;quot; he says. To Visit: The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History is located at 601 Eubank Boulevard Southeast in Albuquerque, N.M., and is open daily from 9 am to 5 pm (505-245-2137; http://www.nuclearmuseum.org/general-information/). Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee Oak Ridge was established in 1943 with the secret mission of producing uranium and plutonium for a nuclear bomb. The lab&amp;#039;s main complex today more resembles a college campus, with sleek glassy buildings, green lawns and zigzagging walkways. Although public access is restricted for most of the year, during the Secret City Festival in the third weekend of June, bus tours depart daily from the American Museum of Science and Energy in downtown Oak Ridge and visit some of the lab&amp;#039;s most famous sites: Y-12, where uranium for the first bomb was enriched; the Graphite Reactor, the world&amp;#039;s second oldest nuclear reactor; and the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source, the world&amp;#039;s most powerful neutron source.  In a conference room decorated with 1950s reactor photos, I meet Oak Ridge Associate Lab Director Kelly Beierschmitt, who oversees the lab&amp;#039;s newly designated nuclear directorate. America pioneered nuclear energy, but in the 1970s and 1980s public perception soured, and high costs scared off investors. Advancements stalled, explains Beierschmitt. Now, France and Japan lead the industry, he laments. But issues like high fuel prices, global warming and India and China&amp;#039;s burgeoning nuclear industries have revitalized American interest in nuclear energy. &amp;quot;If we don&amp;#039;t develop and stay ahead, we will be buying these technologies from other countries,&amp;quot; says Beierschmitt. &amp;quot;We import our oil; I don&amp;#039;t want us to be importing our nuclear power 20 years from now.&amp;quot; A major obstacle in building new reactors is the massive cost: A new plant is $6 to $8 billion. &amp;quot;Not many utilities can handle that,&amp;quot; explains Dan Ingersoll, who leads a group working with the DOE to develop modular reactors small enough to be put on a truck or railcar and cheap enough\u2014about $800 million\u2014that small utilities can afford them. Benefits would be seen close to home; the Tennessee Valley Authority, the utility that currently provides the mostly coal-generated power that runs Oak Ridge, aims to build a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) that would power the lab within the next decade. Ingersoll believes one of the most promising SMR designs is the fluoride salt-cooled Small Advanced High Temperature Reactor (SmAHTR), which uses salt to transfer reaction heat and can run hotter than 700 degrees C, increasing efficiency by 50 percent and generating process heat for industrial applications such as hydrogen production, now a costly and energy-consumptive process.  In the afternoon, I&amp;#039;m given a whirlwind tour, visiting a lab where new fuels and materials are tested, the lab responsible for creating a portable trailer to detect nuclear materials at border crossings and Jaguar, which with a peak performance speed of 2.3 petaflops a second was once the world&amp;#039;s fastest supercomputer\u2014just weeks before my arrival, China&amp;#039;s Tianhe-1A eclipsed Jaguar. A new $122 million DOE grant will use Jaguar to develop a &amp;quot;virtual reactor&amp;quot; meant to simulate a nuclear power plant&amp;#039;s operations, allowing current reactors to hone operating costs and the material and fuel capabilities of next generation reactors to be modeled. As the sun sets, Beierschmitt and I tour the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), which generates isotopes for medical research and evaluates the effects of irradiation on materials. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re humbled by the accomplishments of the people who went before us,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Now that we have all these new tools, we want to take nuclear to the next level.&amp;quot; To Visit: The 2011 Secret City Festival is June 17 to 18. Buses leave daily from the admissions counter of the American Museum of Science and Energy, located at 300 South Tulane Avenue in Oak Ridge. See the website for more details (http://www.amse.org/content.aspx?Article=1212) or contact the museum&amp;#039;s public information officer, Lissa Clark, at 865-576-3218. Four More Nuke Tours: Minuteman Missile National Historic Site \u2013 Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota This Cold War missile silo was built in 1963 but seldom seen by the public. In 1999, Congress established the park, which is located at exit 131 off Interstate 90. See the website for tour times (http://www.nps.gov/mimi/index.htm) or call the park office, (605-433-5552).  Titan Missile Museum, Sahuarita, Arizona Visit the launch control center and missile launch duct at this Titan II missile silo in the Arizona desert. Daily tours from 9am \u2013 4pm. 1580 W. Duval Mine Rd., Sahuarita, Arizona (http://www.titanmissilemuseum.org/), (520-625-7736).  Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri A Global Strike Command base, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers can launch combat missions directly from Whiteman to any spot on the globe. Tours are held one Friday per month during the summer, see website for details (http://www.whiteman.af.mil/questions/publictours/index.asp)  Warren ICBM and Heritage Museum, F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming The museum depicts both ICBM and base history. Open Mondays through Fridays, 8am \u2013 4pm. See website for details (http://www.warrenmuseum.com/) or call (307-773-2980). "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a6482/unique-tours-through-us-nuclear-history/>