Disarmament Diplomacy

Issue No. 59, July - August 2001

News Review

Alarm over US Testing Plans

Concern mounted during the period under review that the Bush administration is at least preparing to consider a resumption of nuclear testing. US officials adamantly deny any such plans.

On June 27, testifying to the House Armed Services Committee, General John Gordon, Director of the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, urged Congress to provide funds to enable a resumption of testing within 18 months, rather than the currently stipulated three years, of any presidential decision to terminate the moratorium imposed in 1992. Gordon stated: "We are conducting an internal review on how best we can improve our readiness posture to conduct a nuclear test, should we ever be so directed. 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. ... I am not now exercising design capabilities, and because of that, I believe this capacity and capability is atrophying rapidly." Responding to questions on the General's comments, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer noted (June 29) that the request "does not have anything to do with [a] resumption of nuclear tests. The President is going to continue the moratorium."

On June 28, the House of Representatives passed an Energy Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2002 barring the Department from shortening the period of time required to prepare for a resumption of testing, pending the outcome of the ongoing review on US nuclear force posture.

On July 7, a senior administration official was quoted as commenting that the CTBT "does not help our non-proliferation goals... There is little confidence that the treaty can actually be verified... There is no support within the administration for the treaty to be taken up for consideration again..."

On July 13, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Yakovenko was asked: "Can it be that because of the American stand the CTBT is dead?" Yakovenko replied: "We would very much dislike a scenario along these lines. Refusal by the United States to ratify the CTBT can provoke a crisis not only of this major treaty in the field of arms limitation and non-proliferation, but also of the whole international non-proliferation regime based on the NPT."

On July 29, speaking to reporters in Australia, US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld discussed his concern about the long-term effect of the moratorium: "It is not out of the realm of possibility that as the years go along...people retire who known how to do these things and other people don't come along who find they want to spend their lives signing up to develop nuclear weapons when no one is developing [them]... It's not beyond the realm of possibility that at some point in the not too distant future someone will give you a phone call...and say, 'Gee, I'm awfully sorry to tell you, Mr. Secretary, but..." ... [What if we don't] have enough indications that a category of our weapons has aged sufficiently [to be replaced], that they're not reliable or they're not safe...? In which case, then what does one do if you still believe that it [the US nuclear force] has been generally a stabilising factor in the world?"

Notes: on August 15, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) unveiled a $100 million supercomputer designed to simulate nuclear tests. The IBM machine, known as ASCI (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative) White, is the latest staging post in a programme aiming at full simulation by 2005. Complete simulation is predicted to require 100 trillion calculations (T-flops) per second. ASCI White is capable of a mere 12.3 T-flops per second. According to a LLNL fact sheet, the computer fills a 20,000 square foot room, with a cooling capacity adequate to "cool 765 homes", and boasts 49.3 miles of underfloor cable. David Schwoegler, a spokesperson for the laboratory, told reporters: "We are in a race against time as we have to pass the baton to a new generation of nuclear engineers who have neither designed nor tested a nuclear weapon."

Reports: US studying nuclear test site, Associated Press, June 29; Underground test speedup barred, Washington Post, July 6; White House wants to bury pact banning tests of nuclear arms, New York Times, July 7; Bush wants nuclear test ban treaty to die, Reuters, July 7; Interview granted by Alexander Yakovenko, Russian Foreign Ministry Transcript, Document 1323-13-07-2001, July 13; Text - Rumsfeld says overwhelming offensive power doesn't always deter, Washington File, July 30; World's fastest computer unveiled, Reuters, August 15; Livermore lab unveils supercomputer, Associated Press, August 15.