Administration tiptoes around nuke-test issue

Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2002 | 11:17 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- Bush administration officials are walking a fine line on the question of whether to resume underground nuclear bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site.

They say they are committed to a 1992 ban on tests in America -- for now. But President Bush wants a plan in place to more quickly prepare the Test Site for a new generation of tests, should he decide the tests are needed.

It would take two to three years to resume tests at the nation's nuclear weapons labs and at the Test Site, a 1,350-acre complex about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Bush officials want to reduce that time -- some suggest cutting it to a year.

To that end, the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration in December launched a study at the Test Site to examine costs and technical issues associated with speeding up the timetable.

Officials in Nevada say the issue is about readiness.

"There are some of us who believe that we have to dust off the current two-three-year thing and look at it," said Troy Wade, chairman of the Nevada Alliance for Defense, Energy and Business, a trade group that represents Test Site contractors.

Wade, who also directed defense programs for the Energy Department under President Ronald Reagan, warns: "There is a basic point that needs to be focused on and that is that nobody has said let's do a test.

"This whole issue is about capability. We haven't done a test in 10 years. Our (experienced) people are retiring and dying. This nation's defense still is based on nuclear weapons. The question is, can we assure the president that they are safe and reliable?"

Discussions about renewed testing were stirring last year after Bush met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush pledged to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads.

The smaller arsenal would need to be actively tested to prove reliability of the remaining bombs, especially given that no tests have been conducted in a decade, defense officials and weapons scientists have said.

The topic of resuming tests surfaced this week in a classified Pentagon document called the Nuclear Posture Review, which outlines the Bush administration's nuclear weapons strategy.

The document was presented to Congress on Tuesday for confidential review. Sens. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Harry Reid, D-Nev., plan to analyze the document; Reps. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., are out of the country.

Reid and Ensign say any proposals to resume tests should be vigorously scrutinized, but they are not opposed to the idea if it is in the national interest.

The Review annually certifies the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But some defense officials have complained such certification has become increasingly difficult since no bomb actually has been detonated underground for 10 years.

Bush has said he has no intention for now of resuming detonations at the Nevada Test Site, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld echoed that Tuesday. But Defense officials, in a classified briefing, expressed concern about the lag time to prepare for testing if it were to resume.

Concern exists within the administration -- and among some members of Congress and the defense establishment -- over the ability to ensure that warheads will work as expected if they are used.

So-called stockpile stewardship by the Energy Department and its nuclear weapons laboratories has become more complex and challenging without tests.

The nuclear plan clearly appeared to raise the specter of renewed testing, test-ban supporters said.

"Many war hawks who are weary of the U.S. decision to drastically cut nuclear arsenals ... are using (concerns about warhead reliability) to champion underground testing," said James Wyerman, executive director of 20/20 Vision, a disarmament advocacy group.

John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, another nuclear proliferation watchdog group, said while the administration's nuclear review does not call for renewed testing it's "part of a pattern that they want to move toward nuclear testing."

As a substitute to testing, the Energy Department is developing technology that will allow scientists to use the world's most powerful computers and most sophisticated lasers to simulate nuclear detonation as they keep track of warhead performance.

But it will be years before those systems are in place.

Recently several internal audits by the Energy Department's inspector general raised concern about its current programs for finding flaws and defects in warheads. Investigators found backlogs of as much as 18 months in testing, inspections and monitoring.

"If these delays continue the department may not be in a position to unconditionally certify the aging nuclear weapons stockpile," wrote DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman.

Sun reporters Benjamin Grove and Ed Koch and the Associated Press contributed to this article.