A group of eminent U.S. physicists and nuclear weapons designers has concluded that the military has neither a "present nor anticipated" need for the small nuclear weapons tests that a Senate majority voted last week to spend $50 million to prepare for.
The scientific group concluded after a six-week study for the Department of Energy that conducting the small explosions would not add measurably to the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which the scientists said has been solidly established by more than 1,000 test nuclear explosions.
"The United States can, today, have high confidence in the safety, reliability, and performance margins of the nuclear weapons that are designated to remain in the enduring stockpile," said a summary of the group's report. It was signed by several of the country's veteran bomb designers under the auspices of JASONS, a group of academic scientists who consult for the government on national problems.
The report, which has been presented to Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, Secretary of Energy Hazel R. O'Leary, and other top administration officials, was issued during a growing debate in Congress and within the administration over the merits of additional nuclear testing.
The Clinton administration has been unable for months to decide whether to propose additional nuclear tests, due to disagreement between testing proponents at the Pentagon and opponents at the Energy Department, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the office of the White House science adviser.
On Friday, the Senate voted 56 to 44 to keep $50 million to prepare for so-called hydronuclear tests, even though the administration has said it does not plan to conduct any during 1996.
Proponents of additional nuclear testing, largely from the Republican majority, have argued that more explosions are needed to ensure that weapons remain safe and reliable. The administration, in negotiations being conducted in Geneva on a global accord barring all nuclear testing, has similarly insisted on the right to continue setting off extremely small-scale nuclear explosions for the purpose of maintaining the U.S. arsenal.
The group's report was endorsed by four of the principal designers of the U.S. nuclear arsenal: John Kammerdiener and John Richter of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Robert Peurifoy of the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, and Seymour Sack of the Livermore National Laboratory in California.
The 14-member group also included noted Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, IBM scientist Richard Garwin, University of California physicist Marshall Rosenbluth and Stanford physicist Sidney Drell, each of whom has worked on aspects of U.S. nuclear weaponry for more than three decades.
Besides challenging the merits of the hydronuclear tests, which would have an explosive yield equivalent to about 4 pounds of TNT, the report also challenges the prevailing Pentagon view that conducting new, large nuclear explosions is also essential to ensuring that U.S. nuclear weapons will continue to operate.
It states that while such tests would doubtless provide interesting data, the country should pursue other, better routes to maintaining the nuclear arsenal, such as supporting an extensive program of weapons surveillance and a "significant industrial infrastructure" to maintain aging weapons components.
The summary stated that the group's detailed findings "are consistent with [a] U.S. agreement to enter into a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of unending duration" provided that the treaty allows the country to withdraw if warranted by "supreme national interest."
"I believe that this study represents the views of a very diverse and experienced scientific community," said Drell, the panel's chairman.