This excellent but somewhat technical article appears as the cover story in this month's issue of Physics TodayAbstract:The Bush administration is contemplating a new crop of nuclear weapons that could reduce the threat to civilian populations. However, they're still unlikely to work without producing massive radioactive fallout, and their development might require a return to underground nuclear testing.
by Robert W. Nelson
Congress is currently considering legislation that would authorize the US nuclear weapons laboratories to study new types of nuclear weapons: Earth-penetrating nuclear bunker busters designed to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets, and agent-defeat warheads intended to sterilize stockpiles of chemical or biological agents. In addition, the Bush administration has requested that Congress repeal a 1994 law, banning research that could lead to development of mini-nukes, low-yield nuclear warheads containing less than the power equivalent of a 5-kiloton chemical explosion, one-third that of the Hiroshima bomb.
The actual development of new nuclear weapons would require additional legislation and would signal a major policy reversal. The US has not developed a new nuclear warhead since 1988 and has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992. And although the Senate did not consent to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1999, the US continues to participate in a worldwide moratorium on underground nuclear testing. Currently, US nuclear weapons laboratories monitor and maintain the existing nuclear inventory through the Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship Program. (See Raymond Jeanloz's article in Physics Today, December 2000, page 44.)
In support of its request to repeal the 1994 law, the Bush administration is arguing that the US may need lower yield nuclear weapons to more credibly deter rogue regimes possessing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. But arms control advocates fear that renewed US development of nuclear weapons would spark similar actions by other nuclear-armed nations and damage long-standing efforts to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons. In addition, critics charge that mini-nukes blur the distinction between conventional and full-blown nuclear war and make the eventual use of nuclear weapons more likely.
Whether the US should go forward with actual development of new types of nuclear weapons will almost certainly be debated vigorously in Washington, DC for the next several years. Physicists and engineers have often participated in public debates over nuclear weapons policy, including new nuclear weapons development.1,2 (See various related articles in Physics Today, July 1975, November 1989, and March 1998*.) More important, scientists can help policymakers to distinguish which technical goals are feasible and which are merely wishful thinking.
Nuclear weapons advocates in the Bush administration favor missiles carrying nuclear warheads that could be designed to penetrate the ground sufficiently to destroy buried command bunkers or sterilize underground stocks of chemical and biological weapons and yet produce "minimal collateral damage." Crucial to the debate, therefore, is an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of earth-penetrating nuclear weapons. How deeply, for example, can missiles really burrow into reinforced concrete? How deeply buried must these weapons be for the surrounding rock to contain the blast? Would the underground temperatures of a nuclear blast sterilize chemical and biological agents?3 This article addresses these questions and explains that the goal of minimal collateral damage falls squarely in the wishful-thinking category.
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http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-11/p32.html
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