Short-term ambitions over nuclear tests scare experts: Pandora’s box would open

At first glance, the probability of seeing a nuclear fungus in the near future is particularly unlikely. In the most tense era of the Cold War, the 1963 Washington-Moscow Treaty on the Testing of Nuclear Weapons in the Atmosphere, in Space and Underwater prohibits such testing.

It is at a height of several hundred meters that the nuclear cartridges are detonated and cause an easily recognizable image: first a bright flash, then a rising plume of smoke, which turns into a nuclear mushroom. In the 1960s and 1960s, the United States, the Soviet Union, and later the United Kingdom, France, and China conducted hundreds of such tests, from low-power explosions (several kilotons) to the massive explosion of a tsarist bomb ( 50 megatons), a Soviet test. Most of these tests are done on land, in remote deserts, or on water. The peak was reached in 1961-1962, when the power of nuclear weapons detonated alone in the atmosphere exceeded 340 megatons.

And while such tests have not been carried out since the 1980s, when China was the last country to detonate a 1-megaton charge into the atmosphere (at an altitude of 800 meters), the nuclear tests themselves did not stop: The last officially approved and successful nuclear test was conducted in North Korea in 2017.

Like the vast majority of tests conducted in other countries, it took place in a deep mine. Such tests are called safer, less polluting, and do not violate the agreement.

However, after the end of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union and its successor, Russia, decided to refrain from conducting nuclear tests, as has been the case in France (1996), India and Pakistan (1998), and South Korea. North (since 2004). .

The voluntary abstention of the most important and most nuclear-tested countries, and of nuclear-weapon States in general, the United States and Russia, has been further limited since the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Unlike the treaty from 1963, Lithuania has signed and ratified it. The United States has never ratified the 1996 treaty, although it has signed it, but has promised not to carry out nuclear tests, most recently in 1992.

However, since the collapse of another treaty last year, the confidence of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) in Russia and the US. USA It started to fail, last year accused Russia and China of secret nuclear tests, and in May of this year, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, officially began to consider the possibility that the United States. USA it should respond the same way. A large number of experts, especially those who speak out against nuclear weapons like a mat, have stagnated and started to oppose the idea of ​​new evidence. But the proponents of the evidence also have their own arguments.

Who needs proof?

The idea that the United States should resume nuclear testing has been constantly raised for several years. From the first nuclear in 1945 to the last in 1992. The United States conducted a total of 1,030 nuclear tests (715 in the Kremlin, 45 in China). In recent decades, supercomputers have made the necessary calculations of how nuclear weapons would work rather than actual nuclear tests.

The US Department of Energy. The U.S., which is responsible for the country’s nuclear arsenal (which can only be ordered by the president), regularly provides data from computer tests that were impossible a few decades ago, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

However, since 2017, the Trump administration has been repeatedly interested in the possibilities of conducting actual nuclear tests and seeking reasons. They were quickly found.

Last year, the US Department of State. USA It issued a report stating that Russia had conducted nuclear tests on the New Earth: the dump here had been testing most nuclear weapons since Soviet times.

The United States also expressed concern that China was also in breach of its 1996 commitments. Contract. Ultra-low-powered nuclear weapons are said to have been secretly tested: The United States has provided no evidence, as they are either non-existent or classified intelligence has detected traces of the evidence. Both Russia and China, of course, have denied the allegations. However, it was enough for the leader of the United States to request the Pentagon for a particularly rapid resumption of nuclear tests.

The arguments also appeared. United States Reserve Vice Admiral Robert R. Monroe, for example, said that the United States’ nuclear weapons are more vulnerable and misunderstood by the modern leadership of national security.

“First of all, we don’t know if those weapons will work.” Second, our underground testing capabilities in Nevada are so outdated that we can no longer perform rapid tests and certify these weapons. We have almost no scientists, engineers, who developed nuclear weapons. “We have not conducted any tests in the past decades; instead, we are using computer codes that simulate explosion tests,” Monroe said. He cited legendary Los Alamos Laboratory scientist John Richter, who rebuked nuclear attempts to trust supercomputers.

“The idea that a computer code can reveal all the secrets of a test is manure,” he wrote in watts, noting that the nuclear weapon is made up of about 6,000 parts, which change each year. The slightest deviation from the predicted rate and a nuclear explosion may or may not occur, or, as actual evidence has shown, an unwanted result, such as a 6 megaton explosion, may be 15 megatons, as was the case in 1954 Castillo Bravo during the tests.

This is why real proof is needed: it is both a science and an art, in which intuition and other human qualities that supercomputers cannot imitate are important. Another problem, according to Monroe, is that the enormous tensions and pressures of the Cold War have paradoxically contributed to the development of nuclear tests: some last-minute weapon changes have not been documented, and all the nuclear weapons that exist today were created during the Cold War.

“Therefore, the current computer codes are based on old data and may be completely wrong,” said the vice admiral.

Huge cost of damage

Performing a new nuclear test is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Its most likely location is the Nevada desert, which after hundreds of underground nuclear tests looks like a crater-covered surface of the Moon.

The last test was in 1992, a hundred and a half miles from Las Vegas. Since then, the city has expanded significantly, with a population of approximately 2 million, including the surrounding area. there were only 800 thousand. During that time, dozens of new glass buildings emerged that were not resistant to earthquakes caused by nuclear tests. In 1968, for example, a 1-megaton underground test caused a serious earthquake in Las Vegas.

Paradoxically, the United States’ accusations against Russia of nuclear tests had already been made in 1997, but then, after analyzing all the data, it turned out that it was not an explosion of a Russian weapon, but a true earthquake in the New Land.

But even if the Americans decided to conduct a nuclear test, a new mine would have to be drilled, and all the work would be entrusted to hundreds of people, from nuclear weapons engineers and specialists to service personnel, to be housed, fed and maintained. Therefore, such an attempt could only cost up to half a trillion. Dollars

Even if these financial and other resources were easily found, no one would be guaranteed the success of nuclear tests: Since the 1990s, when underground nuclear tests began, there have been dozens of incidents in the United States alone, with explosions too powerful due to miscalculations.

In total, at least 500,000 people have been exposed to radiation in the United States during nuclear tests. people, and in the United States there is an estimated 11,000. thyroid cancer deaths caused by nuclear tests in particular.

Since 2009, the United States has disbursed nearly $ 1.4 billion. dollars in compensation for people who have suffered damage during nuclear tests. At the time, the Soviet Union, which had carried out nuclear tests, and Russia, which had seized its rights, do not even know how many victims of nuclear tests there are, much less to compensate for the damage, which Russia does not recognize. For example, during a test in 1954, when 45,000 people marched through a field contaminated with radiation and harmful substances after a nuclear explosion. soldiers who later received no compensation.

Poses open for testing in other countries

However, in addition to the damage to human health and the environment, which is likely to cause a great wave of outrage, there are other effects of renewing such evidence. China has already warned the US. USA Let them see American attempts as provocation and violation of the treaty.

Paradoxically, for the President of the United States, Trump, such a nuclear test appears to be an appropriate means to pressure the start of negotiations on the renewal of a strategic arms reduction treaty. The START agreement signed in 2010 foresees a series of strategic weapons between Russia and the United States, from intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads to bombers and submarines. Both parties to this agreement strictly adhere to and inspect each other in accordance with existing agreements; During the year, experts from both parties visit each other at selected sites and assess the other party’s compliance with its obligations. Unlike the INF or other treaties, both EE. USA As Russia have complied and continue to adhere to START.

However, this agreement expires this year, and Trump has repeatedly expressed his discontent with such agreements and has publicly declared his intention to include China in the new START agreement to renew it.

Beijing has repeatedly made it very clear to Washington that it has no intention of doing so: It is estimated that China’s nuclear arsenal will reach several hundred nuclear warheads, but it is impossible to verify. The United States does not yet have the leverage to involve China in signing a new treaty that would not only impose restrictions on strategic weapons, but would also allow Russian and American experts to inspect China’s secret facilities.

Therefore, the nuclear test can become the instrument that, when linked to the START negotiations, can provoke completely different actions: The United States hopes that the nuclear test will force China to resign and react in one way or another, to join to the agreement; According to experts, the opposite may end: other countries will see this as a green light for nuclear tests.

Both Russia and China can easily hold it, but then India and Pakistan or France may be forced to react. This would be a blow not only to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but could also divide allies, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan, which have the opportunity but are not actively seeking nuclear weapons. At the same time, Iran, suspected of developing nuclear weapons, would also gain further arguments as to why this country needs such weapons.

Eventually, such competition could ruin the 1963 treaty, and the underground nuclear test marathon could be replaced by new nuclear fungi: atmospheric testing could be an effective deterrent or intimidator and, most importantly, highly visible. However, countries that have not tested nuclear weapons in the atmosphere can also cause unplanned incidents that threaten both nature and human life.