Friday, Feb. 14, 2003 | 11:28 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- A policy-setting group of House Republicans is echoing President Bush's call to make the Nevada Test Site ready for a new era of bomb testing within 18 months. The proposal is part of a new GOP report endorsing a dramatic shift in U.S. nuclear weapons policy.
Nuclear bomb tests in the United States have been banned since 1992, after the last full-scale underground test at the Nevada Test Site on Sept. 23, 1992.
But international unrest and fears over nuclear proliferation and terrorists prompted the House Policy Committee on Thursday to call for improved test readiness in Nevada and a more aggressive weapons policy.
"We are living in a different world with new and emerging threats," said Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., an author of the panel report. "The nuclear threat is numerically smaller, but more diverse and less inherently stable. Our nuclear weapons program must adapt to the new world."
National Nuclear Security Administration officials who manage the Nevada Test Site have estimated it would take two to three years to prepare for a new full-scale test. An Energy Department Inspector General's report released in September said it could take even longer.
Officials would have to assemble experts, conduct new safety studies and re-develop an infrastructure at the site.
President Bush last year stopped short of endorsing new tests, but White House officials said they wanted the preparation time cut to 18 months.
To that end, Bush included $60 million for test site readiness in the massive federal budget bill for the current fiscal year, which he is expected to sign today.
The House Policy Committee is a 46-member group of Republican leaders who set party priorities. The panel's report, "Differentiation and Defense: An Agenda for the Nuclear Weapons Program," makes recommendations to Congress. Among them are improved testing, continued development of a missile defense system, and new investments in nuclear weapons research.
The lawmakers who compiled the report spoke to officials with the White House and Pentagon, as well as with the nation's national laboratories and the NNSA, Wilson spokeswoman Rebecca Wilder said. Wilder added that while the report recommends an 18-month readiness window, lawmakers eventually would like to drop the time to 12 months.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said there is no evidence that full-scale tests are needed. Modern technology and testing methods, which include subcritical tests now conducted at the test site, are adequate, Berkley said.
"There is no reason to further poison the state of Nevada when there are less intrusive methods of testing," Berkley said. "To go back 50 years is ludicrous, unnecessary, expensive and dangerous."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was unavailable for comment today. Reid, along with Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., have said they were open to the idea of cutting readiness time, but they have not endorsed new tests. Reid has seen no evidence to suggest new tests are needed, a Reid aide said today.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev, would be "strongly inclined" to support Bush if the president said new tests were necessary, Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said today.
Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said he would support new tests if President Bush said they were absolutely necessary.
Several Democrats and other critics said the GOP lawmakers were proposing a dangerous policy shift that could undermine anti-testing treaties and invite aggressive stances by other nuclear-armed nations.
"This could result in both a greater risk that terrorist groups will acquire these weapons and a lower threshold for the use of nuclear weapons," Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a written statement released Thursday.
Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said he has not seen a detailed argument from the Bush administration about why new full-scale tests are necessary. The publication has not taken an official stance on new tests. But Schwartz said he believes that new tests are not necessary.
If done properly, new underground tests could be conducted without health risks to people in Las Vegas, Schwartz said. Residents in Las Vegas likely would feel the shocks, Schwartz said.
The Test Site's nearest border is about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. There were 928 above- and below-ground tests at the site between 1951 and 1992.
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