|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
United States I: Nuclear “Bunker Busters” May Disperse WMD Agents, Not Destroy Them, Expert Says By Shawn M. Schmitt According to Robert Nelson, senior fellow in science and technology at the council, a nuclear weapon used to attack an underground storage facility would not emit enough heat to properly destroy all the chemical or biological agents that may be stored there. Because low-yield nuclear weapons would probably need to bore through several feet of solid rock to reach their target, the surrounding earth would simply absorb much of the heat from the nuclear explosion. The U.S. understanding of the heat produced by nuclear explosions was developed during Cold War-era atmospheric nuclear tests, Nelson said, and many low-yield weapon development advocates may be under a false impression that an underground explosion would produce the amount of heat necessary to disarm the hazardous weapons. This year, the Bush administration has asked Congress to lift a 1994 ban to allow the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, those with yields below five kilotons. “The scenarios for bunker busting [and] agent defeat that proponents use to justify new weapons are either ineffective, or only marginally more effective, than conventional alternatives,” said Nelson, who has written a paper on the topic that will be published in the journal Science & Global Security. “Using a nuclear weapon to destroy CBW [chemical and biological weapons], for example, is more likely to disperse active agent into the environment,” he added. The U.S. military’s precision-guided weaponry won’t help either, Nelson claimed. Even the most technologically advanced missiles would still have to hit any chemical and biological weapon cache head-on, with little room for error. According to Nelson, even if a bunker buster missed its target by only a few feet, there would be a strong possibility that the targeted agents could be released. The chances for success are decreased even further, Nelson said, when one further considers the uncertainty of military intelligence and the possibility of an enemy routinely shifting the location of its underground stockpiles. In addition, Nelson noted, the fallout from a low-yield explosion could produce devastating effects and could contaminate civilians and members of the U.S. military in the theater with radiation or dispersed WMD agents. “Everyone seems to agree that earth-penetrating weapons would produce a lot of fallout,” he said. “I was surprised at the agent-defeat scenario. My intuition was wrong like everyone else: I assumed the heat would sterilize the germs. But our intuition based on air explosions like the Hiroshima weapon is just wrong when you detonate below ground, where the density of dirt is 2,000 times higher than air. “There just isn’t enough heat available to sterilize more than a few percent of the material ejected from the crater,” Nelson added. Nelson said the best way to ensure that chemical and biological agents are properly secured is to seal off the site and sterilize the weapons using conventional means. “If they are buried underground, the best thing to do is to leave [them] there” until military crews can safely disarm them, he said. Nelson released his findings during a recent press conference to launch the new book Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Emergent Threats in an Evolving Security Environment, to which he contributed a chapter that focused on the low-yield nuclear issue. Nelson said officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration are aware of his pending paper, but they plan to conduct their own study. Resumed Testing Could Answer Questions Heritage Foundation Fellow Baker Spring said Nelson’s assertions may very well prove true, and the United States could only learn for certain if it resumed nuclear testing. Nelson said he isn’t opposed to “conceptual” work inside laboratories, but he opposes a U.S. return to explosive testing or the deployment of new weapons. “By returning to new weapon development and/or testing, the United States would signal that it is still interested in finding new uses for nuclear weapons — especially low-yield tactical or battlefield weapons to be used in Third World conflicts,” he said, noting that various countries may decide to counter the perceived threat from the United States by building and testing their own weapons. “Russia and China would likely test if the U.S. tests,” Nelson said. “Russia is also more dependent now on its nuclear forces given that NATO has such conventional superiority. A renewed U.S. program would give ammunition in Russia and China to their nuclear proponents who wish to develop new weapons of their own,” he said. Spring, however, said he suspects Nelson’s research is a political work disguised as a scientific study. Nelson’s technical argument “asserts the ineffectiveness of the weapon prior to testing it,” Spring said. “Dr. Nelson may well be right. He believes strongly in his position, so he should have no fear of being proven wrong by the testing program. Indeed, I suspect he does not fear being proven wrong. I suspect what he fears is that the testing program itself has policy implications he dislikes,” he added. “Though I have a different view in this case, there is nothing wrong with Dr. Nelson arguing for a particular policy. What is wrong is to hide policy arguments behind technological arguments and use the supposedly unassailable technological arguments to imply that all informed and reasonable people must agree to support the same policy position,” Spring said. Unless direct and compelling policy arguments against undertaking development and testing of this class of weapons are made, it is my view that the program should go forward.”
| ||||||||||
Back to top
