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United States: Foster Panel Recommends U.S. Prepare for Nuclear Testing By Greg Seigle By 2004, the United States should be able to test nuclear weapons within three months to a year after a presidential decision to do so, John Foster told the House Armed Services Special Oversight Panel on Department of Energy Reorganization. Today it would take two to three years to conduct a nuclear test if the president ordered one, said Foster, a former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who has been involved in U.S. nuclear programs since World War II (see GSN, March 19). “The more we reduce,” said Foster, referring to a U.S.-Russian agreement in principle to cut levels of each country’s deployed nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200, “the more confidence you need” in the warheads (see related GSN story, today). Foster, who chairs a panel set to release its final report next week, also echoed the recently leaked Nuclear Posture Review (see GSN, March 14), saying the United States should also explore the option of building new, low-yield “clean” nuclear weapons intended to strike particular military targets while limiting civilian deaths or radioactive contamination. “Test readiness needs to be addressed much more realistically,” Foster testified. “This is not because a need to test is imminent but because prudence requires that every president have a realistic option to return to testing, should technical or political events make it necessary.” Foster said the need to sustain confidence in U.S. deterrence capabilities is as important as it ever has been. “Other major nations continue to maintain and adapt their nuclear arsenals, and there is continuing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery methods,” he said. “We recommend the administration and Congress support test readiness of three months to a year, depending on the type of test.” Opponents Would “Go Ballistic” Any move by the United States to simply begin preparing to test its nuclear warheads would surely garner a strong reaction from opponents, according to Representative Ellen Tauscher (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the oversight panel. “People will absolutely go ballistic if they think we are going to start testing,” Tauscher said. “Just talking about it sends them into orbit.” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told the Associated Press that even shortening the time needed to prepare for a test “could easily lead to a dangerous action-reaction cycle involving China and Russia that could lead to the erosion of the test moratorium that [U.S. President] George W. Bush says he supports.” Tauscher voiced concern about the age of U.S. nuclear weapons, some of which are about 50 years old. According to Foster most of these warheads were built with an intended life span of about 12 years. Tauscher also said that the United States must come up with a way to assess the safety and reliability of its nuclear arsenal, but she strongly opposes testing, arguing it would create a “domino effect” among allies and adversaries alike. “How can we talk about nonproliferation and then go testing?” Tauscher asked. Instead of live testing, U.S. scientists should focus on simulation testing, Tauscher said. The first three-dimensional simulation of a nuclear explosion was conducted earlier this month on a new supercomputer link between the Livermore lab in her home district and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (see GSN, March 11). Foster, however, said simulated nuclear tests alone would not suffice to maintain the safety and reliability of the U.S. stockpile — or to show U.S. enemies its stockpile is in working condition. “Nobody knows” when the decay and corrosion of old warheads will reach the critical point, rendering them useless, he said. If the ongoing decay and corrosion continues, “we might lose the warhead,” he added. Testing Vital Actual live tests of nuclear warheads and their components is crucial to enabling scientists to know just how a particular nuclear bomb will work, Foster testified. Without testing there is no way for scientists at the national laboratories to know exactly how a particular warhead will perform — or even if it will perform, he said. “That’s a risk,” he said. “One cannot know whether [a bomb] will work or whether one will fail. We cannot know that and we cannot prove that.” If the country does not prepare to test, it would take two to three years after a presidential decision to begin testing — an unacceptable lag time considering today’s uncertain world, Foster said. “That might not even be in [the president’s] term,” Foster said. “Two to three years doesn’t do it.” The costs of the tests would vary greatly, depending on the type of experiments needed, he said. If scientists simply want to find out if a particular warhead works, it would be relatively inexpensive to conduct a test explosion, he said. However, tests that study the physics and dynamics of a nuclear warhead and its components could be “frighteningly expensive,” he said. Testing may be needed not only to gauge the capability, safety and reliability of a particular type of warhead but also to build new bombs to respond to an unforeseen crisis, Foster said. “It’s more likely a foreign country will test, and the president may want to take advantage of that” to start U.S. testing, he said. “It’s not totally under our control.”
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