Nuclear Testing

Volume 2, Issue 14, November 3, 2011

A front-page story in today’s Washington Post (“Supercomputers Offer Tools for Nuclear Testing--and Solving Nuclear Mysteries”) illustrates how far the U.S. Stockpile Stewardship Program has come since nuclear explosive tests ended in 1992. Scientists at the three U.S. national laboratories now have a deeper understanding of nuclear weapons than ever before.

Mark O. Hatfield, the former Republican senator from Oregon, died August 7 in Portland at the age of 89. He was a political maverick, a pragmatic idealist who worked across the aisle to take on big issues, including the long-running U.S. war in Vietnam, the insanity of the nuclear arms race, excessive military spending, and the global arms trade.

Ten years ago, President Bill Clinton asked Gen. John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review issues surrounding the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the aftermath of the Senate’s 1999 rejection of the treaty. His 2001 report concluded that “the advantages of the Test Ban Treaty outweigh any disadvantages, and thus that ratification would increase national security. For the sake of future generations, it would be unforgivable to neglect any reasonable action that can help prevent nuclear proliferation, as the Test Ban Treaty clearly would.”

The Obama administration’s fiscal year 2012 budget request includes $33 million for the U.S. contribution for the Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization’s (CTBTO) ongoing work to build, operate, and maintain the International Monitoring System. To date, 264 of the system’s total 337 monitoring stations have been built and are certified. Previous U.S. government reports have noted that several of the stations provide monitoring capabilities in sensitive regions not fully covered by U.S. national technical means of intelligence. The annual budget for the CTBTO is approximately $110 million, and the current annual U.S. assessment is approximately $25 million. The $33 million request for fiscal year 2012 matches the administration’s fiscal year 2011 request. However, in the continuing resolution for federal funding, which covers the first five months of the current fiscal year, Congress approved funding for the CTBTO at an annual rate of $30 million. By March 4, Congress must pass a bill funding the remaining seven months of the fiscal year or approve another stopgap funding measure.