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U.S. conducts nuclear test to examine performance of weapons

by Michiko Tanaka, Staff Writer

It was learned on September 19 that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy, conducted a new type of nuclear experiment between April and June of this year at Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S. state of New Mexico. The experiment to study the effects of nuclear weapons was the fifth nuclear test of this kind and the first since November 2011.

NNSA has provided information about the experiment on its official website, reporting that a “Z machine,” a special device at the facility, was used to perform the test. In order to study the responses of plutonium, the machine generates intense X-rays which create the conditions of ultrahigh temperature and pressure similar to those produced when a nuclear weapon is detonated.

NNSA contends that this kind of experiment is a way of ensuring the safety and effectiveness of nuclear weapons without performing underground nuclear tests.

This new type of nuclear experiment was first conducted in November 2010 under the administration of President Barack Obama. Three such experiments were carried out in 2011. In addition to these tests, three subcritical tests have been conducted under the Obama administration. These experiments fall outside the scope of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

While the Obama administration has been exhibiting a positive stance toward nuclear disarmament, ratifying the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia, it has remained firm in maintaining its nuclear deterrence capability.

Kazumi Mizumoto, vice president of the Hiroshima Peace Institute at Hiroshima City University, expressed his view that the United States will continue to perform nuclear experiments in the future. “President Obama is bowing to pressure from the arms industry, which is seeking its share of the nation’s budget, and from those in Congress with ties to arms manufacturers. As a result, the president is compromising his pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons,” he said.

Keywords

Nuclear tests conducted by the United States
After conducting the first nuclear test in the world in 1945, the United States has repeatedly performed nuclear tests both aboveground and underground. After a test in 1992, the country temporarily suspended its nuclear testing. But since 1997, it has carried out subcritical tests, in which high explosives are used to produce an impact on nuclear materials. The United States argues that subcritical tests are exempt from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) because they do not cause a nuclear explosion. In recent years, research on testing the performance of nuclear weapons in the laboratory has been promoted.

(Originally published on September 20, 2012)

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