A Restart of Nuclear Testing Offers Little Scientific Value

Hundreds of nuclear weapons have been tested by the U.S. since WWII, but newer science has replaced the need for live detonations. Galerie Bilderwelt / Hulton Archive via Getty Images Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, Middlebury and Miles A. Pomper, Middlebury July 15, 2020 marks 75 years since the detonation of the first nuclear bomb. The Trinity Test, in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert, proved that the design for the Nagasaki Bomb worked and started the nuclear era. The U.S. tested nuclear bombs for decades. But at the end of the Cold War in 1992, the U.S. government imposed a moratorium on U.S. testing. This was strengthened by the Clinton administration’s decision to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Although the Senate never ratified the treaty and it never entered into force, all 184 countries that signed the test ban, including the U.S., have followed its rules. But in recent weeks, the Trump administration and Congress have begun debating whether to restart active testing of nuclear weapons on U.S. soil. Some conservative Republicans have long expressed concerns over the reliability of aging U.S. warheads and believe that testing is a way to address this problem. Additionally, the U.S., Russia and China are producing novel types of nuclear missiles or other delivery systems and replacing existing nuclear weapons – some of which date to the Cold War – with updated ones. Some politicians in the U.S. are concerned about the reliability of these untested modern weapons as well. We are two nuclear weapons researchers – a physicist and an arms control expert – and we believe that there is no value, from either the scientific nor diplomatic perspective, to be gained from resuming testing. In fact, all the evidence suggests that such a move would threaten U.S. national security. As the Cold War came to an end, the U.S. and the Soviet Union both began reducing their numbers of nuclear weapons, setting the stage for the testing ban. White House Photographic Office Why did the US stop testing? Since the Trinity Test in July 1945, the U.S. has detonated 215 warheads above ground and 815 underground. These were done to test new weapon designs and also to ensure the reliability of older ones.