Group reveals covert NTS blasts

Thursday, Jan. 11, 2001 | 11:21 a.m.

The United States is quietly searching for new uses for old nuclear weapons in research at the Nevada Test Site.

Department of Defense documents unearthed by a California anti-nuclear group show that explosions conducted in underground tunnels at the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, may be used to develop small nuclear warheads capable of penetrating underground bunkers.

The explosions at the Test Site so far are conventional, not nuclear, so they do not violate international test-ban treaties. The documents do not indicate whether future nuclear explosions are planned.

The documents show the government is planning to experiment with deep-penetrating bombs this year, Andrew Lichterman, director of the Western States Legal Foundation of Oakland, Calif., said. The foundation acquired the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The military could make new battlefield uses from old nuclear warheads, Lichterman said.

"It is clear they are researching how to make nuclear weapons more usable," he said. "I have to wonder if they will push the envelope based on what is in the defense budget."

The Energy Department and other weapons experts say there are no nuclear experiments proposed at the Test Site. Former President George Bush declared a moratorium on all underground nuclear blasts in September 1992, and the ban has been extended by President Clinton.

Since then the DOE has conducted 13 subcritical underground experiments, which do not create a nuclear reaction. In part, government scientists are learning how plutonium behaves when it is subjected to a blast from high explosives.

The tests are part of a program to maintain the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal, according to the DOE.

The DOE and the Defense Department teamed up in the 1990s to continue research into weapons' effects, building computer models to replace nuclear testing and filling in gaps of knowledge about nuclear weapons using the Test Site and other facilities.

Part of the Test Site's mission is to remain ready to resume nuclear weapon testing if the president orders it.

Independent nuclear weapons experts said the government is not crossing the line and is obeying the nuclear test ban.

"Certainly the Defense and Energy Departments are stepping right up to the boundary on everything permitted short of nuclear testing," said Steven Aftergood, government secrecy project director for the Federation of American Scientists, a national watchdog group.

Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group in New Mexico said the documents Lichterman released Wednesday are important to the public's understanding of how nuclear weapons fit into the nation's future military plans.

"They document the keen interest of the Defense Department managers of developing advanced nuclear weapons for a broad range of battlefield uses," Mello said.

The Test Site has been scrambling to find new projects to replace nuclear weapons testing, Mello said. The tunnel experiments with the Defense Department are part of those new directions.

The defense budget contributes roughly $12 million to the Test Site each year to keep the facilities ready to return to nuclear testing and to allow defense experiments such as those in the tunnel, he said.

"The Nevada Test Site is a good place to blow things up," Mello said.

Chris Paine, a scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the research at the Test Site and at defense facilities across the country is an effort to find new uses for old nuclear weapons.

"They are certainly studying new ways to repackage nuclear weapons components," he said.