[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Fw: USA - neue Atomtests?

[manni at snafu.de]

Forwarded Message:
> To: "Roland Blach" <roblach at s.netic.de>
> From: "Roland Blach" <roblach at s.netic.de>
> Subject: Fw: USA - neue Atomtests?
> Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 11:48:09 +0100
> -----
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Renate Domnick <rdomnick at cityweb.de>
> To: Marion Kuepker <marionkuepker at compuserve.com>; Roland Blach
> <roblach at s.netic.de>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 12:20 PM
> Subject: USA - neue Atomtests?
> 
> 
> U.S. Ponders Resumption of Nuke-Weapons Test
> By Dan Stober and Jonathan S. Landay, San Jose Mercury News         15
> November, 2002
> 
> WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is laying the groundwork for the
> resumption of nuclear testing and the development of new nuclear
> weapons,
> according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder.
> The memorandum circulated recently to members of the Nuclear Weapons
> Council, a high-level government body that sets policy for nuclear
> weapons,
> urges the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories to assess the technical
> risks
> associated with maintaining the U.S. arsenal without nuclear testing,
> which
> President Bush's father halted in 1992. In addition, the memo suggests
> that
> the United States take another look at conducting small nuclear tests, a
> policy rejected by the Clinton administration.
> 
> "We will need to refurbish several aging weapons systems," writes
> council
> chairman E.C. Aldridge Jr., the undersecretary of defense for
> acquisition,
> technology and logistics. "We must also be prepared to respond to new
> nuclear weapons requirements in the future" - a reference to a push to
> develop "earth-penetrating" weapons that might destroy buried stocks of
> biological, chemical or nuclear weapons in countries such as Iraq.
> "It's recognizing that the stockpile that we designed 25 or 30 years ago
> for
> the Cold War really might not be the stockpile for the war on
> terrorism," a
> senior Pentagon official said Friday. "The rest of the world realized
> after
> Desert Storm that if you could be seen, you could be killed."
> The memo is backed up by little-noticed language in the defense
> authorization bill that Congress approved this week. The bill suggests
> that
> the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories - Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos
> and
> Sandia - should be ready to resume testing with as little as 6 months
> notice.
> 
> Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association,
> said
> the memorandum demonstrates the Bush administration's intention to end
> the
> testing moratorium.
> "The administration is chipping away at the barriers to a resumption of
> testing," said Kimball. "They are doing their best to establish a
> rationale
> to resume testing, either for reliability problems or for new weapons.
> The
> reality is that there is no scientific nor military basis for a
> resumption
> of testing, and to do so would be an enormous strategic blunder that
> would
> invite a wave of proliferation that could swamp the entire
> non-proliferation
> regime."
> 
> New testing could prompt the Russians, the Chinese, Indians and
> Pakistanis
> to do likewise, or harden North Korea's refusal to abandon its nuclear
> program, he warned.  But a Pentagon official said there is no movement
> afoot
> to resume testing.
> "It was just time to go back and collect our thoughts" after 10 years of
> maintaining the nuclear stockpile without tests conducted beneath the
> Nevada
> desert, said Frederick Celec, the deputy assistant to the secretary of
> defense for nuclear matters. "Let's take stock and see where we are.
> What
> are the risks involved in not testing?"
> 
> Democrats in Congress say that the interest in resumed testing comes not
> from the uniformed generals or the physicists in the weapons labs, but
> primarily from conservative civilian leaders, such as Vice President
> Dick
> Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary
> Paul
> Wolfowitz, and advisers such as former defense official Richard Perle
> and
> John Foster, a nuclear weapons designer.
> Since 1992, weapons scientists in California and New Mexico have used a
> multibillion-dollar system of supercomputers and large-scaled technology
> to
> understand the underlying physics of bombs and missile warheads. The
> Aldridge memo suggests that this Science Based Stockpile Stewardship
> program
> may not be enough. It requests studies "to assess the potential benefits
> that could be obtained from a return to nuclear testing with regard to
> weapons safety, security and reliability."
> 
> The memo suggests another look at the potential benefits of a "low
> yield"
> testing program, which might produce a nuclear explosion equivalent to
> only
> a few hundred pounds of conventional explosives. Such tests might
> involve
> small amounts of plutonium - not in bomb form - at the Nevada Test Site,
> according to a well place defense official. So-called sub-critical tests
> are
> now designed to produce no nuclear yield at all.
> 
> Portions of the defense authorization bill passed Wednesday require
> nuclear
> weapons scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and
> elsewhere
> to report if nuclear explosions beneath the Nevada desert might be
> "helpful"
> in resolving reliability questions about existing nuclear weapons, even
> if
> the tests are technically "unnecessary."
> 
> "I don't know of any reason why we can't" maintain the stockpile without
> testing, Bruce Goodwin, the head of the nuclear weapons program in
> Livermore, told the San Jose Mercury News. Testing might be required "if
> somebody came along and said we needed a completely new,
> ultra-lightweight
> weapon," he said. "But I don't see anything like that on the horizon."
> 
> Although some nuclear weapons scientists unsuccessfully sought
> permission to
> conduct low-yield nuclear tests after the testing moratorium began in
> 1992,
> Goodwin said he sees no need for it now. "I don't think I would ask for
> that
> today. We know a lot more, we're a lot more capable," he said.
> 
> Congress this week authorized the three nuclear weapons labs to create
> preliminary designs for a weapon known as the Robust Nuclear Earth
> Penetrator, designed for underground targets. The project involves
> strengthening existing hydrogen bombs, rather than creating new designs.
> Livermore weapons designers say they don't expect the project to require
> nuclear tests.
> 
> But critics fear that development of such weapons could increase
> pressure to
> resume nuclear testing. The defense bill includes language, inserted by
> Democrats opposed to the earth penetrator such as Rep. Ellen Tauscher,
> D-Calif., that specifically prohibits the scientists from beginning work
> until a list of written questions is answered, involving the bomb's
> purpose
> and targets, and an assessment of whether such targets could be
> destroyed
> using non-nuclear weapons.
> 
> The authorization bill also tasks the labs to study the costs and
> benefits
> of reducing the time required to prepare for a nuclear test to six
> months,
> 12 months, 18 months or 24 months. The current "readiness" time is two
> to
> three years. In March, an influential Pentagon advisory panel chaired by
> former defense official and Lawrence Livermore director John Foster
> recommended a lead time of "no more than three months to a year."
> 
> A veteran nuclear weapons physicist said a test designed, built and
> tested
> in only six months would be a "political test" rather than a science
> test.
> "Historically, in order to do a test in six months you pretty much had
> to
> have the device picked out already and have preliminary plans on what to
> do.
> How can you predict a problem in advance?"
> 
> (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
> distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
> in
> receiving the included information for research and educational
> purposes.)
> 
> © : t r u t h o u t 2002
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