http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11120-2002Jan7.html
U.S. to Seek Options On New Nuclear Tests
White House Worries About Arsenal's Reliability
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 8, 2002; Page A04
The Bush administration plans to raise the possibility
that it might resume underground nuclear testing in
the years ahead to help maintain the safety and
reliability of a scaled-back U.S. strategic nuclear
weapons arsenal, according to weapons specialists
inside and outside the government.
The idea will be raised today when the administration
lays out its broad strategic nuclear plans to
Congress, including the planned reductions in nuclear
weapons announced by President Bush at his meeting
last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The highly classified Nuclear Posture Review will
contain the administration's justification for
reducing strategic warheads over the next decade from
today's roughly 6,000 warheads to the level of 1,700
to 2,100 proposed by Bush.
But the review will say that the United States needs
to be able to resume testing at its Nevada test site
in less time than than the two years it would now take
under Energy Department guidelines, according to
Energy Department sources. Some sources said that the
department would like to reduce the period to one year
or less, but that the nuclear review does not
establish a definite time period.
"They do not want to say they are going to resume
testing," one Energy Department official said
yesterday. "They want the option to do so if they
think they need it."
Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush, imposed a
moratorium on underground nuclear testing in 1992, and
the moratorium was upheld by President Bill Clinton. A
decision to resume testing for the first time in a
decade would almost certainly provoke an outcry by
countries around the world, including leading U.S.
allies, which largely support a global ban.
The testing language in the review is nonspecific
because "they were trying to not make waves," an
administration official said.
But prominent supporters of renewed testing argue that
it is necessary to maintain the reliability of the
country's nuclear arsenal as the Pentagon refurbishes
warheads designed over the past 20 years to last
another two decades.
The option to resume testing must continue,
"particularly as the stockpile gets smaller," said
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense
Policy Board, which has been advising Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on broad military
matters.
Bush has said since taking office that he would
maintain the moratorium, though he has avoided ruling
out future testing.
As a candidate for president, Bush said he supported
the Senate's decision in 1999 not to ratify the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, an agreement aimed at
instituting a global ban on nuclear tests. The
prospects for that treaty becoming law remain dim,
since it can only go into force after it is ratified
by all 44 countries that have the capacity to develop
nuclear weapons. Thirteen of those countries,
including the United States, China, India, Pakistan,
North Korea and Israel, have yet to ratify the pact.
The nuclear review that will be presented to Congress
also may discuss the need for preliminary work on new
weapons designs to train a new generation of
scientists and in case new nuclear devices are needed,
according to sources.
Congress since 1994 has prohibited the Energy
Department's nuclear weapons labs from conducting
research or development leading to a new low-yield
nuclear weapon or precision low-yield warhead. The
fiscal 2002 defense authorization bill prohibits the
National Nuclear Security Agency, which runs the labs
for the Energy Department, from using funds "to
initiate new weapons development programs" not
approved by Congress.
However, while the Defense Department recently told
Congress it had no current requirements for a
low-yield nuclear weapon -- which would be designed to
destroy hard, underground bunkers -- several senior
Bush defense officials have supported removal of any
congressional prohibition of design work on such
weapons.
A study on future requirements for U.S. nuclear
forces, produced in December 2000 by a panel that
included many current Bush administration defense
officials, raised the need for "a capacity to design
and build new weapons."
Although the threat to resume nuclear testing may stir
up opposition from the arms control community and
other signatory countries to the test ban treaty,
administration officials believe the whole subject of
nuclear weapons has receded into the background in the
wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in
Afghanistan.
"If we accept that we plan to keep nuclear weapons
well into the future, I'm not sure I disagree with the
eventual necessity of testing," said William Arkin, a
weapons specialist who has worked for the Federation
of American Scientists and the Natural Resources
Defense Council. Arkin said that he has noted a lack
of interest in the whole subject, particularly since
the war on terrorism began. "Who cares?" he said. "Who
has a better plan [than the one Bush proposed]?"
Rumsfeld, who took a major interest in the nuclear
review earlier last year, found himself diverted from
the subject once the president agreed to make deep
reductions in the strategic arsenal.
The review was to have been presented to Congress by
Dec. 31. But it was delayed because of "staffing
coordination problems," a Pentagon spokesman said.
One cause of the delay was that neither Rumsfeld nor
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham found time over the
recent holidays to review the final drafts, according
to administration sources.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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