The Bush administration’s plans on nuclear testing (see GSN, Sept. 26) may be part of a larger agenda to expand nuclear weapons production, warns Jeffrey St. Clair in a report for In These Times. 

Critics have attacked the motives of those in the Bush administration, including Vice-President Dick Cheney and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, have called for resumption of nuclear weapons testing to ensure their reliability.  “All non-nuclear parts to a weapon can be extensively lab tested and replaced as needed – if needed at all,” said Jay Coghlan, director of NukeWatch.  “The nuclear parts, specifically plutonium and surrounding high explosives, have been found to actually achieve greater stability with age,” Coghlan said, adding that the motives behind testing may be to shift the nuclear weapons to more tactical uses.  “U.S. nuclear weapons are certainly reliable in the sense that they are sure to go off,” Coghlan said.  “The concern that the military has with reliability is that the weapons are not only guaranteed to go off, but explode close to design yield.  This is important not for mere deterrence, but for nuclear warfighting,” Coghlan said.

Although the United States has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it has adhered to a testing moratorium since 1992. Several high-level U.S. officials, however, have attacked the limitations of the test ban treaty.  Assistant Secretary of Defense Jack Crouch wrote a series of articles in the 1990s attacking the test ban treaty and has argued that the United States should deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea and consider using them against North Korea if it did not agree to U.S. calls to drop their nuclear and biological weapons programs, according to St. Clair.

Soon after President Bush came into office, an advisory committee released the results of a study on the reliability, safety, and security of U.S. nuclear weapons.  The panel was headed by John Foster, former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and now an advisor to TRW, one of the U.S.’s largest defense contractors.  The report urged that testing be resumed as soon as possible and training begin on new weapons designers who could develop “robust, alternative warheads that will provide a hedge in the future.”  Foster, contrary to most nuclear scientists, has said that computer simulations of nuclear explosions are a poor substitute for real nuclear explosions.  “There are a number of underground weapons tests we can’t reproduce,” Foster has said.  “There are these enigmas.”

How Soon Can We Begin?

The Bush administration, in June, instructed the Energy Department to study how to shorten the time needed to prepare nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site.   The DOE said it would take 36 months to resume testing but some officials want to see this reduced significantly.  General John Gordon, director of the Nuclear Safety Administration at the DOE, has said he wants to reduce the time needed to four months.  “We are conducting an internal review on how we can improve significantly our readiness posture to conduct a nuclear test, should we ever be so directed,” Gordon testified before the U.S. House of Representatives.  “This is not a proposal to conduct a test, but I am not comfortable with not being able to conduct a test within three years.”  Gordon has also complained that the Pentagon has not been able to actively pursue new nuclear weapons designs, according to St. Clair, adding that Gordon has said he wanted to “reinvigorate” planning for a new generation of “advanced nuclear warheads” (Jeffrey St. Clair, In These Times, Oct. 1).   

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