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Preventing Renewed TestingReversing the slippery slopeDespite the devastating legacy of 40 years of nuclear weapons production and testing, the Bush administration has pursued new nuclear weapons programs since it began its presidency seven years ago. These programs are dangerous for many reasons but it is of particular concern for Utah because it may lead to renewed nuclear weapons testing in Nevada. Although the programs have rather benign names like the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), they are dangerous attempts to create new weapons for the U.S. arsenal. Fortunately, Utahns remain united in the effort to stop any renewed testing. In 2005, HEAL initiated a campaign called Downwinders Opposed to Nuclear Testing (DONT) that works to maintain that unity and oppose any attempt to renew nuclear testing in Nevada. This unity was recently on display as we celebrated a significant victory by helping to stop the planned non-nuclear "Divine Strake" test in Nevada. Our government wanted to see how far it could take us down the path of renewed nuclear weapons testing and we responded, "not an inch!"
Divine StrakeOn February 22, 2007 Divine Strake was cancelled. This was a tremendous victory for Utah and all those who stand opposed to creating a new generation of downwinders. It proves to us all once again that when we speak out collectively for our health and our environment, we are powerful. Divine Strake was always more than a test of weapons--it was a test of wills. WHAT WAS DIVINE STRAKE? The Divine Strake test would have exploded 700 tons of ammonium nitrate fuel oil in a 30x30 foot open pit at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The test was designed to identify the "smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities," according to the Defense Department 2006 Budget Request. The blast from this detonation would have been 50 times larger than the largest conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and would have had a yield of 0.6 kilotons--in other words, the power of low-yield nuclear weapon. WHAT WAS THE DANGER? Although technically a non-nuclear test, the mushroom cloud from Divine Strake would have stirred up the fallout from the hundreds of above and below ground nuclear tests conducted at the NTS from the 1950s to the 1990s. This fallout would have been carried off-site and exposed downwind communities once again. While the government's initial environmental assessment issued in May 2006 declared that no radiation would become airborne or escape the NTS, their revised analysis in December 2006 stated that "resuspension of fallout could travel beyond the NTS boundary where it might contribute to the radiological dose of the public." The government's change of tune on this matter justified the public's mistrust and highlighted the need to stop any attempt to renew full-scale nuclear testing. This need has never been greater as the Department of Energy has recently undertaken a massive effort to overhaul the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and weapons-making facilities. Divine Strake may have been a step in this effort and fortunately for the health and safety of Utahns, it was defeated. For more on this victory, click here.
Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) & Complex TransformationThe U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is in the midst of a push to develop a new generation of nuclear warheads. Over the next several decades, the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program would redesign and replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with new warheads. NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NOT NEEDED
The Cold War ended almost 20 years ago yet the U.S. still maintains a stockpile of nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads. Those warheads roam the oceans on submarines and sit deep in silos ready to be fired within minutes. The DOE argues that the RRW is needed because the stockpile is aging and may be unreliable. However, the facts clearly repudiate that notion as even the military's own experts agree that the U.S. stockpile is highly reliable and will remain so for many decades (according to weapons scientists, reliable is not defined as whether the bomb will detonate or not but if it will detonate at the predicted yield). NEW WEAPONS WILL INCREASE THE NEED FOR NEW TESTINGThe DOE maintains that these new warheads can be deployed without conducting full-scale nuclear explosive tests. However, the United States has never certified and deployed a new nuclear warhead design without first conducting a series of full-scale nuclear explosive tests. Many weapons scientists are skeptical that a new warhead could be certified without nuclear testing. If the RRW is developed, there will be tremendous political and military pressure to test it. WE NEED NEW POLICIES NOT NEW WEAPONSThe RRW program will return the nuclear weapons laboratories to the Cold War cycle of nuclear weapon design, development and production. We have already experienced how this production cycle has had such a negative impact on Utah and new weapons manufacturing could mean more waste for Utah. The RRW program is one component of what the DOE calls Complex Transformation (formerly Complex 2030). This initiative is an attempt to completely refurbish the nuclear weapons complex in order to retain nuclear weapons production well into the future. DOE's own estimates predict that this program would cost at least $150 billion. Complex Transformation sends the wrong signal internationally and is not needed. The U.S. should instead invest in cleaning up the nuclear weapons complex, not building a new "Bombplex." Congress should eliminate funding for the RRW program and Complex Transformation. It is unnecessary: our current nuclear arsenal is already too large and these programs deviate from the need to clean up our current complex's waste. What is needed is a new nuclear policy that would lead to the elimination of nuclear weapons and would prohibit any attempt at renewed nuclear weapons testing. Source: Union of Concerned Scientists, http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/
Nevada Test Site ReadinessIn 1992, the United States unilaterally imposed a nuclear weapons testing moratorium and four years later signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (for more on the CTBT, see below). Despite this move, the NTS remains on constant alert to resume testing if the federal government decides to do so. In fact, because the CTBT was never ratified, there is no policy or regulation stopping the resumption of nuclear weapons testing in Nevada. The NTS can resume testing within as short a time frame as 24 months. In fact, the Bush administration attempted in 2004 and 2005 to shorten that schedule to as little as 18 months but luckily these attempts failed. One way DOE retains its capability to test is to conduct subcritical experiments with nuclear materials at the NTS. Subcritical experiments use high explosives to create some of the physical conditions, such as pressure and temperature, that nuclear materials undergo in a nuclear weapon before reaching the critical stage. In fact, if you take in all of the computer simulations and testing work done at DOE facilities, the U.S. essentially continues to test every single component of a nuclear weapons stopping short of a full nuclear explosion. A helpful analogy is if you equate nuclear testing, that is, producing an actual nuclear yield in a test, to burning fuel in the cylinders of a car engine, then let's look at we do now with our weapons stockpile. We use heaters to heat the engine to normal hot temperatures. We use external motors to turn the engine over, testing water pumps, oil pumps, radiator flow, and the opening and closing of valves. We can run fuel through the carburetor without letting the spark-plug fire and we can then turn on the spark-plugs and run inert "fuel" through the cylinders to test the ignition system. All of this is equivalent to the subcritical tests that the United States carries out routinely. And we can take it, whether "it" is the car or a nuclear weapon, out for a test drive because we routinely test the missiles and airplanes that deliver nuclear weapons. We can run the car into a tree to test the seatbelts and airbags. We can replace all the electronics and install CD players and satellite radio. The one thing we could not test in the car is if the spark ignites the fuel but remember we have over a century of experience with gasoline engines and we have extremely sophisticated computer programs calibrated against past performance of this particular engine (just as we have over a thousand nuclear tests to calibrate our nuclear weapon computer models.) Would any automotive engineer doubt that the car would start? The bigger question is this: if we have data from over a 1000 weapons tests and over a decade of simulated tests, and new proposed programs exist under the assumption that no new testing would ever be needed, why then do we still have a national test site? The closure of NTS would be a strong signal that we never will repeat the tragic mistakes of our past and expose innocent people to the negative health effects of nuclear weapons. Once the NTS is closed and their is a promise to never resume testing, then the U.S. can move toward a policy that eliminates nuclear weapons as a central component of our military strategy.
Mini-Nukes & Bunker BustersPresident Bush has been intent on pushing our country towards designing and building new nuclear weapons since he took office. In a 2001 leaked presidential report called the Nuclear Posture Review, the Bush administration advocated for the development of new or modified nuclear weapons dubbed "mini-nukes" and "bunker busters" with the purpose of being able to better attack underground bunkers and/or chemical and biological weapons facilities. They further claimed that the development of mini-nukes and bunker busters would deter terrorist and rogue states from developing those weapons in the first place. This claim is belied by the fact that there is an easy way to defend against mini-nukes and bunker busting weapons if you have underground facilities: dig deeper! In reality, the development of these weapons would increase proliferation risks and again take the U.S. one step closer towards renewed testing. Mini-Nukes are nuclear weapons with a yield of less than 5 kilotons (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 12.5 kilotons). In 1993, Congress passed a law that forbade any research or development of mini-nukes because they are much more likely to be used in battle. In 2003, the Bush administration led the effort to persuade congress to repeal the 1993 law in order to facilitate their development. The law was ultimately repealed which is a dangerous development and one that we must keep a close eye on. Another dangerous aspect of President Bush' 2001 Nuclear Posture Review was the call for the design of weapons specifically designed to destroy underground bunkers and facilities. The new design was called the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP). What was little discussed in the RNEP debate was the fact that the U.S. nuclear arsenal already includes a bunker busting weapon, the B61-11. The problem in the minds of the Bush administration and Defense Department is that the B61-11 can only penetrate 6-10 meters below ground. Even if RNEP could be designed to penetrate much deeper (20-100 meters) the simple defense against such a plan is to, again, dig deeper! The RNEP program received $14 million in Fiscal Year 2003 and $7 million in FY2004. Luckily in 2005 and 2006, because of tremendous grassroots pressure from arms control groups and grassroots groups like HEAL Utah, funding for RNEP was cut and never appropriated. This is just another example of the need to continue to watchdog the DOE's nuclear weapons programs and how dangerously close we have been to renewed weapons testing.
Comprehensive Test Ban TreatyArms control and disarmament activists have proposed a comprehensive nuclear test ban since the early days of nuclear testing. Testing was not only seen as an enabler of proliferation but was well-known to be a severe health risk to millions of people. The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was the first step in addressing these concerns because it banned nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space. Of course, this ban only moved tests underground and did not limit proliferation. In fact, it was not until the early 1990s that the movement to end all testing was rekindled. In 1996, the United Nations adopted the CTBT with the United States a signatory. Unfortunately, the treaty lacks U.S. ratification and the last attempt to ratify it failed in the US. Senate in 1999. Today, there are 138 countries that have ratified the treaty. The U.S. must make a commitment to ending all attempts to test nuclear weapons. Ratifying the CTBT would send a strong signal to not only the world but to fellow Americans that we will never conduct another full-scale weapons test and risk the health of millions of people.
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