It has been 33 years since the last US nuclear test. But now it looks like the tests will be resumed. On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump ordered nuclear tests to be resumed "immediately" because "other countries have such programs".
If the US does indeed resume nuclear weapons testing, it would effectively be a waiver of the moratorium on nuclear tests.
Will the US really detonate nuclear weapons?
Nuclear weapons experts say it is not entirely clear what exactly Trump means by "nuclear tests". Could it be just tests of carrier rockets like those conducted by Russia - without detonating nuclear warheads. Or are we talking about underground nuclear tests, which are a complex and dangerous process?
Alexander Bolfras, who heads the Strategy, Technology and Arms Control Department at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, believes that this is more likely to be tests of American intercontinental ballistic missiles. Personally, he would be very surprised if the US detonated nuclear bombs.
Vitaly Fedchenko, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), also doubts the latter. According to him, the direction of Trump's order suggests the less serious of the two scenarios.
"The Department of Energy, not the Department of Defense, is responsible for maintaining the nuclear testing capacity in the US administration," Fedchenko points out. "So if he (Trump – ed.) ordered the Department of Defense to do this, then yes, maybe it's about some kind of missile testing or something like that. But if it's about nuclear weapons, then that's the Department of Energy's job," the expert said.
Where could nuclear tests with detonation be carried out?
Both experts believe that if an explosion were to occur, it would be in the Nevada desert, where such tests have been conducted in the past.
Fedchenko also draws attention to another aspect: that such tests cannot be carried out immediately. Because, as the expert points out, there are probably very few people left who are still active and have the necessary experience to carry out such tests. Added to this are the complexity of the task and the logistics required to conduct them.
"Such a test is only possible after years, at least after 18 months, if everything goes absolutely according to plan. The place where it will be held must be prepared. If it's underground, you have to dig a shaft or something like that, and that will take time," Fedchenko said.
The expert added that although "the test is being conducted underground, it's still a nuclear explosion, and if something goes wrong, radiation could leak into the atmosphere." Then we'd end up with a nuclear cloud somewhere near Las Vegas, Fedchenko said. "In addition, with such an underground nuclear explosion, there would certainly be seismicity that would be felt in tall buildings."
"I don't think the US is trying to repeat what the Russians are doing. The US has a pretty clear program to modernize its nuclear weapons. "Many of them date back to the end of the Cold War, so it makes sense to modernize them and introduce new systems," says Alexander Bolfras of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Russia is developing new systems because of the reliable American missile defense. The United States has no such concerns because it knows that Russia is not investing in missile defense systems in the same way that the United States is doing, he added.
Is it possible that others will join in and provoke a nuclear race?
Even an intention as vague as Trump's now can cause a domino effect. There are now nine nuclear states in the world - the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. According to SIPRI, they are all in the process of "prolonged intensive programs to modernize their nuclear weapons by 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions", the organization said in a report published earlier this year.
The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country, and China is "far behind in third place" after Russia, Donald Trump recently said. However, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, China is quickly catching up and has doubled the size of its arsenal to about 600 nuclear warheads by 2025 - from 300 in 2020. The Washington think tank predicts that in another five years, China will have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads.
Alexander Bolfras sees the potential for a new arms race. "In addition to having to align its nuclear forces and strategy with Russia, the United States is also facing the threat of two competitors, as the Americans themselves say", he points out.
North Korea conducted another nuclear test this week - it test-fired strategic sea-to-surface cruise missiles at targets in the Yellow Sea, which Pyongyang says can carry nuclear warheads.
How have nuclear tests been conducted in the past?
Most major nuclear powers, with the exception of North Korea, stopped testing explosives in the 1990s. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test of this type in 2017. Russia's last confirmed test was in 1990, followed by the United States in 1992 and China in 1996.
In the early years of nuclear weapons testing, which began in 1945, many were conducted in the atmosphere, not underground. The Arms Control Association, a group that keeps track of all nuclear tests, notes that most of the test sites were in indigenous territories and far from the capitals of the countries conducting the tests. Many of the early tests (528 in total) were not underground but atmospheric, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere.
The 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, signed by 123 countries, including the United States and Russia but not North Korea, banned atmospheric tests because of their devastating effects. Although underground tests are considered safer, the possibility of a release of radioactivity, as Fedchenko describes it, remains real.
Author: Matt Pearson