[BC] Technical Oops!

[PeterH5322]

> "Top 25 tech slipups of all time," is dedicated to keeping the technology 
> industry from losing its collective memory about its biggest blunders.

The top tech slipup of all-time, "Cold War" version, involves certain 
thermonuclear warheads designed by Lawrence Livermore National Lab 
(Edward Teller's lab) which was required to have a certain safety 
mechanism built into the fission "primary" (the fusion "secondary" is 
inherently safe, in this regard).

LLNL refused to used an existing, proven "primary" design of Los Alamos 
National Lab (Robert Oppenheimer's lab) and, instead, it designed its own 
"primary", a task it had not done before.

The new LLNL design worked during initial testing, but extended testing 
after the weapon system had been deployed proved the new LLNL design was 
"too safe", meaning there would be no fission nuclear yield at all, or 
too little such yield, and as the fusion "secondary" (and the fission 
"tertiary", if present) was completely dependent upon the "primary" 
delivering its designed nuclear yield, we now had a great many warheads 
deployed which would not function at all, if called upon to do so.

The LANL designed warheads had no such problems.