Potential Disadvantages of Microtechnology for Future High Consequence Safety Applications

Microtechnologies (e.g., microelectronics, and micromachines) are useful and promising for many applications. However, since the small size and specialized materials of electronics in general and microtechnologies in particular appear to make them sensitive to many normal and abnormal environments, and since complete characterization of the newer technologies is lacking, they must be used with extreme caution in high consequence safety applications. Based on what is now known, we believe that they should not be proposed for high consequence safety applications, particularly for nuclear weapons detonation safety.