The US nuclear arsenal is based on this brand new supercomputer

In a large white tiled room in Livermore, California, Sierra is the second most powerful supercomputer in the world. Sierra looks like an unpretentious server farm, but is actually a huge connected hive of 190,000 processing cores. It was completed earlier this year and has since been the focus of a landmark campaign: researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have conducted simulations of astrophysics, climate and precision medicine on Sierra, while looking for faulty components and other technical problems.

But at the beginning of next year, Sierra real the work will begin. The system will be "broken down", which means that it will be disconnected from any external network to prevent unauthorized access. Once this happens, he can begin the calculations for which he was designed: simulations of nuclear weapons launches and detonations.

Not surprisingly, the exact nature of the simulations is ranked. But for a day, Livermore Lab has allowed The edge and other press access to the secure facility. We were able to see Sierra and speak with engineers and physicists charged with blowing up virtual nuclear weapons in the name of national security. Watch the video above to find out what we have learned and why the United States needs a supercomputer to support their huge nuclear stockpile.