February 23, 2006: US/UK conduct joint subcritical nuclear test in Nevada

March 12, 2006

Focus: Britain's secret nuclear blueprint

For nearly a year British scientists at Aldermaston have been secretly working with the Americans on a replacement for Trident. Do we need it? Is it legal? Michael Smith reports

Two weeks ago a group of Britain’s brightest young physicists gathered at the US nuclear test site in the Nevada desert and headed for Control Point 1. There they waited for a test codenamed Operation Krakatoa to erupt.
A thousand feet beneath the desert scrub, components for a new British nuclear warhead were ready for detonation. Though it was not to be an earthquaking full nuclear blast — since Britain is a signatory to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty — the physicists were about to witness only the second “sub-critical” test Britain has conducted in nearly a decade.
The controlled detonation, measuring the effect of conventional explosives on a small piece of plutonium, was ostensibly to help ensure that the UK’s nuclear warheads, deployed on Trident submarines, remain effective. But that was only half the story.
As The Sunday Times reveals today, the data produced by the test were part of a much wider, secret research programme to build a new nuclear weapon that some experts say will breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT).

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While the British remain highly secretive about their plans, sources interviewed in America were more forthcoming and say the architecture or concept for the new weapon has been settled and that the race is now on to produce a working design.
The prize both teams are chasing, they say, is a new weapon known as the “Reliable Replacement Warhead” (RRW), a system that can meet the demands of modern warfare but also the rigours of international law against full-scale nuclear testing.
Britain’s nuclear warheads, they point out, ought to undergo occasional tests, which are now banned. The RRW, in contrast, will be a powerful and flexible “production line” nuke that can be designed, constructed and maintained without full-scale testing. It must also be capable of dispatch on an upgrade of the Trident delivery system.
“The argument made for Reliable Replacement Warhead is that you can have your cake and eat it,” said one US official. “We have our new warheads and we don’t have to test them.”

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The Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore laboratories have been working on an RRW since May 2005, but the officials in Washington are impressed the way “the Brits have done so much with so little”.
The initiative threatens to be hugely controversial, however. While Tony Blair and his government are committed to retaining Britain’s existing nuclear deterrent, the question of replacing or renewing the system is far more contentious. The need, cost and legality of any new system are all challenged by politicians, lawyers and even some former military commanders. Under the NPT, which came into force in 1970, Britain is committed to prevent proliferation and to “pursue” disarmament.

The issue is heading inexorably towards a clash.

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It is this worry that first sparked Britain’s secret co-operation with the Americans on the new warhead nearly a year ago — a move that critics characterised yesterday as “underhand” and designed to undermine the “open public debate” on the issue that Blair has long promised.
This week that debate will start in earnest. Tomorrow the Foreign Policy Centre, a Blairite think tank, will publish a report questioning whether Britain needs a nuclear deterrent at all.
“The unfortunate reality for the British people is that, unknown to them, they have a nuclear weapon that is not independent and is committed to support unrealistic US-led policy for the military use of nuclear weapons,” the report will state.
“The UK should cease to try to keep up appearances and adopt a policy based on the reality that it is not an independent nuclear power.”

The temperature will be raised further on Tuesday when the House of Commons defence select committee will begin an inquiry into the future of Britain’s nuclear bomb.
Far from rubber- stamping a Trident replacement for which work is already under way, many backbench MPs are calling for the government to publish a full assessment of national threats, nuclear costs and alternative options.
“The government denies it, but it’s possible (a decision has already been taken),” said Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North and chairman of the parliamentary CND group. “The evidence for it is the huge amount of money being spent on Aldermaston. One can only infer that it is possibly for a new generation of warheads.”

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The RRW, as one official explained, is intended to be a warhead that can almost be produced on a production line, built to deliver as small or large a blast as required. That may breed new risks. “The danger is you lower the threshold at which you will use them to the point that someone does,” said one official. “It’s just too tempting and highly dangerous. We were better off in the cold war with mutually assured destruction.”
For politicians, however, it has a clear attraction. Easier and quicker to produce, the RRW could be presented as an update, even a simplification, of Trident rather than a new system. That, proponents could argue, would not breach the non-proliferation treaty.
TO campaigners for nuclear disarmament, the Trident system already contravenes international treaties. CND believes that “Trident is illegal, immoral and a waste of resources.” Kate Hudson, chairwoman of CND, will be one of those giving evidence this week to the defence committee. Matrix Chambers, the law firm for whom Cherie Blair works, has drawn up a legal opinion advising the Peacerights organisation that any replacement of Trident would constitute “a material breach” of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

snip, much more

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2081514,00.html

From March 30, 2006

A venture led by Northrop Grumman, the US defence group, has won a $2.5 billion contract to manage and operate a Nevada test site for the US Department of Energy.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5-2110597,00.html

(International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War)

IPPNW Opposes the joint US / UK
Subcritical Nuclear Testing in Nevada

March 2nd, 2006

Today, the US, Russia, and United Kingdom are still conducting nuclear weapons tests, known as "subcritical" tests, in violation of the fundamental spirit of the CTBT. These are massive underground nuclear experiments using chemical high explosives to blow up nuclear materials, including plutonium. They are called subcritical because the tests do not produce a nuclear chain reaction.

On February 23, 2006, the US and UK carried out a joint subcritical nuclear test in the Nevada desert. Code named Krakatau, it was the 22nd subcritical experiment to date since they began in 1997.
Another champion of stopping nuclear testing and abolishing nuclear weapons, and a close IPPNW partner, is Mayors for Peace, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Below are letters of protest sent by the mayors in response to this latest subcritical test.

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http://www.ippnw.org/USUKtesting2006.html

New nuclear threat for Utah?

By Lee Davidson
Deseret Morning News

March 22, 2006

Amid press reports that Great Britain is secretly developing a new generation of nuclear warheads, activists fear that could lead to renewed nuclear testing in Nevada — upwind from Utah.

The Times of London reported last week that Britain has been hiring the best and brightest young physicists it can find to develop a new warhead to replace the aging ones now aboard its Trident submarines.
The Times said that as part of such work, the British scientists conducted at the Nevada Test Site on Feb. 23 an underground "subcritical test," where no critical mass was formed and no nuclear reaction occurred.
That test examined the behavior of plutonium as it was "strongly shocked by forces produced by chemical high explosives," according to a Nevada Test Site press release. When combined with analysis by supercomputers, it helps predict how warheads will perform.
After the Times report, top British officials would neither confirm nor deny that they have a secret program to develop new warheads.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC, "We are giving consideration to the development of a new system." When asked if a program is already under way to develop a successor to current Trident warheads, he said, "There is a discussion about whether we do."
The British and U.S. governments have not acknowledged that the test last month in Nevada was part of a program to develop new nuclear arms, as reported by the Times.
A Nevada Test Site press release said merely that the test, code-named "Krakatau," was to provide "crucial information to maintain the safety and reliability of each nation's nuclear weapons without having to conduct underground nuclear tests."
Also, Kevin Rohrer, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration's Nevada Site, told the Deseret Morning News that nothing in the test was designed "to help develop a new weapon."

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Erickson worries that underground nuclear tests could occur again, but not the open-air tests that led to cancer downwind in Utah. Congress later apologized for those tests and created a compensation fund for some downwind cancer victims.
While underground tests are safer, they have been known to vent through the surface and spread radiation downwind.
The Times of London, however, quoted unnamed British defense officials saying they figured they would need to develop new warheads without full nuclear testing because of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They said they instead likely would have to depend on "subcritical" tests coupled with analysis by supercomputers.
The Times quoted one official saying, "We got to build something that we can never test and be absolutely confident that when we use it, it will work."
The Times also reported that some critics in Britain charge that the program will breach the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635193498,00.html