C.T.B.T. Truth or Consequences #1: A Safe, Reliable Nuclear Deterrent Demands Periodic, Realistic Underground Testing

(Washington, D.C.): In various series settings over the past few days, President Clinton has
made a number of pronouncements about the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the hope of
selling it to an unreceptive U.S. Senate. Many of his statements are misleading, some simply
inaccurate; not a few fall into both categories.

Fortunately, the hearings held in the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations
Committees
last week provided needed rebuttals from respected former Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officers and
other authorities. As a contribution to the Senate’s deliberations, the Center offers highlights of
these expert witnesses’ testimony and other relevant information to help correct the record.

President Clinton: “Our experts have concluded that we don’t need more tests
to keep our own
nuclear forces strong.”

The Truth: The “experts” President Clinton cites may feel as
he claims they do, but if so, they
are ignoring historical experience and indulging in wishful thinking of the most dangerous kind.
The more responsible among them make clear that their “confidence” in being able to keep the
U.S. nuclear forces not only “strong” but safe and reliable is highly
conditional — dependent
upon an as-yet incomplete, unproven Stockpile Stewardship Program being fully funded for at
least a decade (at a total cost of $45 billion or more) and no problems that would require testing
to correct developing in the meantime. For example, Dr. John Browne,
the current Director
of the Los Alamos National Laboratory told the Armed Services Committee last week:

“The issue that we face is whether we will have the people, the capabilities and the national
commitment to maintain this confidence in the stockpile in the future, when we expect to see
more significant changes. Although we are adding new tools each year, the essential tool kits for
stockpile stewardship will not be complete until sometime in the next decade.”

Last week’s testimony, moreover, made clear the views of other “experts” who believe that
the
American deterrent cannot be kept safe and reliable — let alone strong — without
periodic,
realistic underground nuclear tests. These include the following:

• Dr. James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Energy under President Carter
  (as well as
  the former Secretary of Defense, Director of the CIA and Chairman of the Atomic Energy
  Commission): “In the absence of testing, confidence in the reliability of the stockpile
  will
  inevitably, ineluctably decline. In the seven years since our last test, confidence has
  declined. It is declining today and will continue to decline….

“Why is such a decline in confidence unavoidable? Our nuclear weapons are highly
sophisticated devices composed of thousands of components that must operate with split-second
timing and with scant margin for error. Weapons are also radioactive, and thus subject to
radioactive decay and chemical decomposition. Other components will age and will fail. All of
the components must ultimately be replaced due to changes in material, changes in regulations,
the disappearance of manufacturers, the changing of processes. That replacement can never be
perfect.”

• Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger: “If we need nuclear
  weapons, we have
  to know that they work. That is the essence of their deterrence. If there is uncertainty about
  that, the deterrent capability is weakened. The only assurance that you could have that they
  will work is to test them, and the only way to test them is the most effective way to test
  them.”

“Since [U.S.] testing ended [in 1992] there have been no weapons “red-lined” [i.e.,
removed
from operational status for safety and/or reliability reasons]. The assumption seems to be that
since we stopped testing everything’s fine. Well, I can’t share that assumption, I don’t think
that’s correct, and I don’t want to take a chance. You just aren’t allowed any margin for error in
this business. And this treaty gives a very large margin for error.”

“And all of the discussion in other committees and a great deal of the discussion in public
has
been an attempt to show that the stockpile stewardship program will be an effective way of
testing them, although everyone agrees it’s not as effective as testing them in the way that we
have done in the past with underground explosions, with all precautions to prevent any of the
escape of the material into the atmosphere.

“You will have all kinds of statements made that the stewardship stockpile program will be
able
to be tested by computer modeling. We’ve had some less than reassuring statements that the
computers that can do this best will be available in 2005 or 2008, which is a
tacit admission
that in the meantime, the stockpile stewardship program, as it’s presently constituted, is
not an effective way of testing. And the only way to be sure that these weapons will
work and
will be able to do their horribly lethal task is to test them and test them in the most effective way
possible.”

• Admiral Henry Chiles, President Clinton’s former Commander-in-Chief, U.S.
  Strategic
  Forces Command: “We are going to have to remove and replace almost all, if not all,
  of the
  non-nuclear components in those weapons with newly designed components. The older
  components are not available. They were originally manufactured by technologies that are
  obsolete, and they are not supported in our evolving industrial base. And without testing I
  know of no other engineering unit of comparable complexity that anyone would consider safe
  and reliable in a modern world.”

• Dr. Paul Robinson, the current Director of the Sandia National Laboratory:
  “I can state
  with no caveats that to confirm the performance of high-tech devices — cars, airplanes,
  medical diagnostics, computers or nuclear weapons — testing is the preferred
  methodology…actual nuclear testing of the entire system….To forego testing is to live with an
  uncertainty. And the question is, what is the risk, can one bound the uncertainty, and how
  does that work out?”

“In the past, we used to change out the nation’s nuclear weapons about eight to 10 years; we
would replace an old design with a completely new design at that point in time. And so we had
really very little effects due to aging of the system sitting in there. Today the stockpile is the
oldest one we’ve ever had in the 54-year history of the program, so we’re watching for new
effects due to aging that we haven’t seen before.”

• Dr. John Nuckles, former Director of the Lawrence Livermore National
  Laboratory
  under President Clinton: “It cannot be assured that the powerful computational and
  experimental capabilities of the Stockpile Stewardship program will increase confidence and
  reliability. Improved understanding may reduce confidence in the estimates to
  performance
  margins and reliability if fixes and validations are precluded by the CTBT.”

“The SSP will probably succeed in finding undetected stockpile defects and in
narrowing
the major gaps in our understanding of nuclear weapons which have eluded 50 years of nuclear
testing. Nuclear testing would then be required to confirm this new understanding and
validate the resulting stockpile fixes.”

• Dr. Troy Wade, former Assistant Secretary of Energy for Defense Programs and
  nuclear bomb designer: “Nuclear weapons are not like artillery shells. You cannot
  store
  them in a bottle or building and then get them whenever the exigencies of the situation prompt
  you to do so. Nuclear weapons are very complicated assemblies that require continued
  vigilance to assure reliability and safety.

“It is, therefore, a first-order principle that nuclear weapons that are now expected to be
available in the enduring stockpile for much longer than was contemplated by the designers, will
require enhanced vigilance to continue to ensure safety and reliability.

“I am a supporter, only because I believe it is a way to develop the computational capability
to
assure the annual certification process for warheads, that have not changed, or for which there is
no apparent change. For nuclear weapons that do not fit that category, stockpile
stewardship is merely — as we say in Nevada — a crap shoot. Nuclear testing has
always been
the tool necessary to maintain, with high confidence, the reliability and safety of the stockpile. I
believe this treaty would remove the principle tool from the tool chests of those responsible for
assuring safety and reliability.”

“Maintaining the nuclear deterrence of the United States, without permitting needed testing,
is
like requiring the local ambulance service to guarantee 99 percent reliability any time the
ambulance is requested, but with a provision that the ambulance is never to be started until the
call comes. I believe this is a patently absurd premise.”

• Dr. Robert Barker, former Assistant for Atomic Energy to Secretaries of Defense
  Weinberger, Carlucci and Cheney and a nuclear weapon designer: “There are nine
  weapons in the continuing inventory; only three of those weapons have the three modern
  safety features of enhanced nuclear detonation safety, the fire resistant pit and insensitive high
  explosive. Three of the systems in the continuing inventory have only one of those features.

“Now, I believe to freeze an inventory in place in which every weapon is not as safe as it
could be is unconscionable. I think that is a decision that the Senate really needs to take on and
ask itself whether it is comfortable with making a decision to freeze the stockpile in a situation in
which it is less safe than it could be. Should an accident happen, the loss of life, loss of property,
as a result of not having included — it could have been precluded by the inclusion of one of these
features — who is it that will take the credit or take the blame for that? I think any
prudent
program that called for a cessation in testing would have made sure that every weapon in
the inventory was as safe as it could be before such a step was taken.

The Bottom Line

In his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary Schlesinger cited
remarks made by Dr. Victor Reis, President Clinton’s erstwhile Assistant Secretary of Energy for
Defense Programs and architect of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, in a speech delivered
before he left office to the Sandia National Laboratory:

“Think about [the challenge of the Stockpile Stewardship Program]. We are asking to
maintain
forever an incredibly complex device no larger than this podium, filled with exotic radioactive
materials, that must create, albeit briefly, temperatures and pressures only seen in the nature of
the center of stars. Do it without an integrating nuclear test and without any reduction in
extraordinarily high standards of safety and reliability. And while you’re at it, downsize the
industrial complex that supports this enterprise by a factor of two and stand up critical new
manufacturing processes; this, within an industrial system that was structured to turn over new
designs every 15 years and for which the nuclear explosive testing was the magic tool for
demonstrating success.”

Dr. Schlesinger observed dryly: “Now, this challenge was laid down by the architect of the
SSP.
He understood the risks. The only thing that he might add to that statement is that, in order to
validate the SSP, we would require nuclear testing.”

The ineluctable reality is that the United States has already run potentially grave risks by not
testing its aging arsenal for the past seven years. It perpetuates this moratorium — let
alone
making it a permanent, international obligation — at its peril.