Last week U.S. President Donald Trump published a confused tweet about nuclear testing:
… Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. …
Some media panicky wrote that Trump had ordered to detonate nuclear warheads.
I disagreed with that interpretation:
All nuclear warheads the U.S. has are under the control of the Department of Energy. It is the sole agency that can do test explosions of nuclear warheads. The nuclear delivery vehicles which are used to deploy the war heads are under the control of the Department of Defense (or ‘Department of War’ as Trump calls it).
Trump said “Because of other countries testing programs” and “start testing … on an equal basis” both in reference of nuclear delivery vehicle tests of other countries.
Trump thereby likely meant to order the DoD to test its nuclear delivery vehicles, just like Russia has recently done. He did not order the DoE to test nuclear war heads.
The testing of nuclear delivery vehicles, like intercontinental missiles, is a routine that has been done every year since those exist.
It is nothing to panic about.
On Sunday the Energy Secretary confirms that no nuclear explosions are involved (archived):
The nuclear testing ordered by President Trump will not involve nuclear explosions, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday, adding that the testing would involve “the other parts of a nuclear weapon” to ensure they are working properly.
Mr. Wright’s comments came four days after Mr. Trump made the declaration that he was ordering the U.S. military to resume nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with other countries, raising the specter of a return to the worst days of the Cold War.
“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are systems tests,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on the Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.” “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions.”
Noncritical or subcritical explosion test are those where, for example, the chemical explosives which, within a nuclear warhead, are supposed to initiate the nuclear fission are tested for their stability. That is, like testing the wiring of a warhead detonator, routine stuff which every country that has nuclear weapons does on a regular basis.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is where the U.S. is doing these tests:
Subcritical experiments allow researchers to evaluate the behavior of nuclear materials (usually plutonium) in combination with high explosives. This configuration mimics the fission stage of a modern nuclear weapon. However, subcrits remain below the threshold of reaching criticality. No critical mass is formed, and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs—there is no nuclear explosion.
…
Although subcrits don’t create self-sustaining nuclear reactions, in many ways, they harken back to the days of full-scale nuclear testing. Since the 1992 moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing, subcrits have provided valuable data related to weapons design, safety, materials, aging, and more. This information helps scientists determine if America’s nuclear weapons will work as intended.
These experiments are legit even under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They are, just as I had said, no need to panic.