A New York Times article by James Glanz has raised the specter that pro-nuclear weapons testing advocates in the U.S. will lean heavily on President-Elect Donald J. Trump's nominee for Energy Secretary, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, to resume nuclear weapons testing. The advocates will very likely lobby Perry, if he's confirmed by the U.S. Senate, that "stockpile stewardship" -- a guarantee that nuclear weapons will work, if called upon, in order to assure MAD (mutually assured destruction)/deterrence against nuclear armed enemies -- requires full-scale nuclear weapons testing.
The last full-scale nuclear weapons test blast conducted by the U.S. took place in September 1992 at the Nevada Test Site, under the George H.W. Bush administration. (However, "sub-critical" tests -- the use of high explosives and plutonium to generate data for use in supercomputers to test stockpile stewardship, and even to potentially advance nuclear weapons designs, has continued since 1992 in Nevada. The most recent "sub-critical test" took place there on Dec. 7, 2012, under the Barack Obama administration.)
The Nevada Test Site, where 928 full-scale nuclear weapons test blasts have taken place between 1951 and 1992, is located on Western Shoshone Indian land, against their will. This is a violation of the "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley, signed by the U.S. government in 1863.
100 of those blasts were above-ground. But around one-third of the 828 under-ground nuclear weapons test blasts in Nevada "vented" -- leaked radioactivity -- into the atmosphere, according to revelations unearthed by the National Security Archives in 2013.
The New York Times article contained withering criticism of Trump and Perry:
The current way of certifying the stockpile, called science-based stockpile stewardship, is not only costly but also enormously complex, said John Pike, the director of the think tank GlobalSecurity.org and one of the most experienced security analysts in the field.
“There’s no end of mischief they could cause for the stockpile,” Mr. Pike said, referring to Mr. Trump and Mr. Perry, and pointing to the confusion and concern that followed the Twitter post by the president-elect.
Mr. Pike was withering in his criticism of Mr. Perry’s ability to act as a knowledgeable counterweight to Mr. Trump. “Perry’s got no idea which end the bullet comes out of,” he said. “He’s not somebody who’s going to say no to the president.”
Update on December 13, 2016 by
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Update on January 9, 2017 by
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