The Public Policy/Why We Test Nukes

...The fissile materials are subject to corrosion...

...It isfair to say that while the U.S...

...Then what happened...

...Amid the celebrations the tourist might be hard-pressed to find any dark shadows falling on this tiny, sun-drenched island sixty miles to the south of Sicily...

...Mifsud Bonnici, on the other hand, has merely switched religions...

...In principle, the USSR has agreed to voluntary site inspection, but in fact the Soviets are demanding that the United States (and any other nation) be required to produce extensive seismic proof that a test has been con-ducted before the Soviets even consider a request for onsite inspection...

...The Grand Harbor that once played host to Phoenician trading galleys and as recently as 1979 served as a strategic British port now caters to Soviet tankers...

...This requires research and development, of which testing is an in-dispensable component...

...Shifting the test to previously unused areas of different geologic composition or into seismically active regions would make accurate seismic detection much more difficult and uncertain...

...Months passed, and while discussions were still in progress, the Soviet Union, on August 30, 1961, announced its intention to resume testing...

...many portions have to be machined apart...

...proposed a ban to cover "all tests above the ground up to the greatest heights to which effective controls can now be agreed, all tests in the oceans, and all underground tests above a seismic threshold of 4.5...

...discover what it believed to be a covert Soviet test, it would be bard to pinpoint the exact location, and to provide sufficient proof to convince a world which did not wish to see violations that indeed a violation had already occurred...

...In its move toward the Soviets and the "non-aligned" bloc, tiny Malta is rumbling down the same path that has proved so disastrous for other erstwhile European colonies...

...We cannot afford any "paper tigers" in the stockpile...

...in this country it has been picked up by church organizations, local disarmament groups, and even some members of Congress...

...Finally, tests can be camouflaged in real earthquakes, multiple detonations can be designed to simulate earthquakes, and nuclear ex-plosions can be set off in large "decoupling" cavities such as salt domes and even contained in large steel spheres...

...Finally, the administration agreed to the USSR's insistence that a test ban be considered separate from other arms control issues...

...Moreover, expectations of a mutual and verifiable ban ignore the events of the last thirty years...

...delegation in Geneva was unable to reach agreement with the Soviet Union on the terms of the test ban...

...Practices we would view as unacceptable, or even illegal, have been treated by the Soviets as allowable within the context of specified agreements...

...Overseas subscriptions, by air mail only, $30, drawn on a US bank.] Send to: THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1986 27 are least likely to have is seismic...

...And I reported the maximum measured activity in rainwater washing out Chernobyl's iodine over the US: 0.00036 microcuries per liter...

...Rue, the pattern differences between earthquakes and nuclear explosions are easy to discern if the waves are received strong and clear...

...and the Soviet Union agree to...

...THE MALTESE FALTER by William McGurn Valetta, Malta—In a country known for its festi, or religious festivals, Easter week in Malta is one of the more colorful, with each parish trying to outdo its neighbor...

...There's about 4 liters to the gallon...

...For nuclear weapons it is not necessarily a matter of "wearing out...

...If you think corporations can be taxed without passing the tax to the consumer, join Ralph Nader to soak the rich...

...The publicly broadcast appeal came immediately after the Soviets had completed an extensive series of under-ground tests of their own, and would not need to test again for some time...

...As Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Mc-Cone pointed out, the Soviet proposal amounted to nothing more than a comprehensive test ban without safeguards...

...Any design change introduces some degree of uncertainty, which may need to be resolved by a nuclear test...

...Verification of a test ban is one of the most difficult issues to understand, and one of the most important...

...All these improvements have required Dixy Lee Ray is the former governor of Washington State and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission...

...and since they exist we have the corollary responsibility to ensure that they are as safe, controllable, and reliable as humanly possible...

...The United States would find it hard to detect such tests, and even if they were detected we would have much greater difficulty identifying them...

...would have no effective means to rehabilitate its stockpiled weapons...

...Ac-cording to current estimates, the reliable life of a nuclear warhead does not exceed twenty years...

...Sixth Fleet in the Gulf of Sidra...

...On August 22, 1958, President Eisenhower announced that the United States was "prepared, unless testing is resumed by the Soviet Union, to withhold further testing . . . for a period of one year...

...ACCESS TO ENERGY Box 2298-A Boulder, CO 80306 Enter my subscription to Access to Energy for one year (12 monthly issues...

...I am Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado, and I publish a pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise monthly newletter, Access to Energy...

...The "mutual" test ban began...

...Few of the components could be reassembled and used again in a rebuilt weapon...

...This is not as easy as it might seem...

...In the Chernobyl accident, Access to Energy pointed out how easy it will be for the Soviets to cover up the deaths from radiation sickness and delayed cancers, and why they will not even bother to dilute contaminated wheat with grain from elsewhere...

...Modernization of our stockpile over the last twenty years has produced warheads that are smaller, more compact, incorporate less fissionable material, are safer for handling and transportation, less susceptible to tampering and unauthorized uses, create less fallout, and are designed specifically for military targets instead of civilian populations...

...This unilateral moratorium began on October 31, the day test ban negotiations were scheduled to begin in Geneva...

...But they made all the extensive preparations for the tests at this time, since they were able to execute a great many within a month of starting up...

...As long as the Soviet Union insists that onsite inspection is essentially voluntary, on a case-by-case basis, and requires seismic evidence to sup-port an inspection request, non-seismic intelligence will be of limited value to enforce a comprehensive test ban treaty...

...Access to Energy readers have known for many years that the Soviets do not have containment buildings, for they are more troublesome to build than making new Ukranians...

...WHY WE TEST NUKES by Dixy Lee Ray The current Soviet propaganda campaign, intense both here and abroad, for a comprehensive nuclear test ban began with an announcement from the Kremlin last fall of a self-imposed moratorium on testing...

...to follow suit—an appeal made, as usual, through television and news outlets rather than through proper diplomatic channels...

...aggression" (before the strike against Qaddafi...

...But there's the rub...

...Does that tiny grain of knowledge make you feel good...

...Today Malta is in the midst of a second siege on the Western way of life, but this time from within...

...Access to Energy informed its readers why the Soviets would have thanked their lucky stars if a meltdown had been all they had on their hands...

...Monitoring requires a sample inspection of each weapon type...

...If the tourist looked a bit closer, he would find other disquieting signs...

...Chemically reactive materials such as uranium, plutonium, high explosives, and plastics are inherently required in nuclear weapons...

...In reality a test ban could be neither...

...new weapons designs, and these de-signs must be tested...

...They may difffer in whom to trust and parrot...

...Welcome to Malta, problem child of the Mediterranean...

...But the waves lose their identity at lower levels...

...This susceptibility to deterioration tends to be much higher for nuclear weapons than for other equipment, partly because weapon design must be determined mainly by the desired weapon performance and by safety considerations rather than by demands for resistance to deterioration...

...To disassemble a modern weapon is to destroy it...

...penitentes slogging through the streets with heavy chains tied to their feet, while on Easter Sunday the men in another parish heave a life-size statue of Christ in the air to signify He is Risen...

...Include issue on the Chernobyl accident, free...

...It should, because America's news media and largest periodicals don't have it...

...Generally only the nuclear material is worth recovering, and it must be melted down and refabricated...

...The Soviet Union accepted these terms and added a condition of its own—that the major powers agree to a three-year moratorium on all tests, including those below the threshold...

...Despite concerted efforts by the Eisenhower 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1986 Administration in 1959, the U.S...

...nuclear warheads are brazed, welded, and cementedtogether...

...Nicknamed 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1986...

...It will also require non-nuclear operational tests in the environment of the carrier vehicle, which could mean developmental flight tests—these are also prohibited under most test-ban proposals...

...But so great was the public sentiment to cease testing that the U.S...

...The Soviets called on the U.S...

...The lion's share of the credit for the country's slide from democracy and its newfound kinship with folks like Kim Il Sung and Colonel Qaddafi (both of whom have been decorated with Malta's highest honor) belongs to its prime minister until 1985, Dom Mintoff...

...But in this country, where the British are still popular, the violent lurch belies a long and noble tradition as a Western bastion...

...No doubt there is a dash of malice in this choice, considering that the humorless Mifsud Bonnici early in his career backed the island's reactionary archbishop, the late Michael Gonzi, in the latter's efforts to deny the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church to Mintoff and other Labor party leaders, this in what is probably Europe's most devout country...

...Tests con-ducted in hard rock are more easily identified than those detonated in soft earth, and it makes a big difference whether the test takes place above or below the water table...

...Nuclear weapons are very complex devices that are perishable...

...Were you fed the media fixation that Chernobyl was a "meltdown...

...Plastic-bonded high explosives and other plastics tend to decompose over time...

...We know now that whereas the U.S...

...has in its entire history, about three hundred megatons in total...

...But Access to Energy is not just about nuclear energy (which is merely a blatant case of superstition mongering...

...The U.S...

...hence 63,000 gallons of "contaminated" rain water "full of fall-out" will give you as much radioactive iodine as you get when you have your thyroid checked...

...Nuclear weapons exist...

...A little cesium and strontium will give the Russians a more varied diet: like Markey, Solarz, Schroeder, and the other antinuclear breast-beaters in Congress, the Soviets care only about visible deaths...

...but readers also know why containment buildings are merely safety measures preventing consequences after things have gone wrong...

...My name is Petr Beckmann...

...Some of the high altitude tests involved previously launched missiles, and it is likely that the Soviets learned, at this time, both how such explosions can be masked by the sun and about the X-ray effect from hydrogen bombs...

...practice has been to monitor the nuclear stockpile closely in order to detect deterioration at an early stage...

...The shots in this Soviet series ranged from very small yields to the largest nuclear explosive test ever conducted, 58 megatons...

...Further inland, the visitor might be surprised to find a branch office of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a police force armed and trained by the North Koreans, and an alarming number of Libyan males of military age...

...Only four decades ago this little island stood alone in the entire Mediterranean against a ferocious air attack by the Axis powers, a display of fortitude that earned the Maltese the King George Cross that today adorns their flag...

...The USSR conducted more tests above one megaton than the U.S...

...Access to Energy pointed out at the time that the Three Mile Island accident would cost more than one life per week: not from any radiation, but in the fuel cycle of the substitute power, mostly coal-fired, that had to be brought in to replace the safer and healthier way of generating electric power...

...But there are also a large number of unidentified seismic events every year...

...They will find two opposing view-points and manufacture a "controversy...

...Remember how they brought in the Union of Concerned Scientists and other phonies to question the "official assurances of no health dangers...

...observed the test moratorium and refrained from even research and development on improved weapons systems, the Soviet Union used the moratorium to conceal its preparations for the world's largest, most extensive, and best-planned series of tests searching for improved nuclear weapons technology...

...But, like some household appliances that have been stored for several years unused in a family's basement, when closely inspected they may be found to have deteriorated into an unusable condition...

...You have to understand that Mintoff is a rogue," says one supporter of the op-position Nationalist party...

...held a substantial lead in nuclear technology in 1959, by 1963 that lead had essentially disappeared as a result of this Soviet test series...

...In the absence of clear and unambiguous safeguards including guaranteed onsite verification, issues that are still unresolved despite more than a quarter century of effort, a nuclear test ban is not in the best interest of the United States or of the free world...

...The typical lead time for preparing a test is six to eighteen months...

...True, there is an international network of seismic receiving stations...

...Moreover, for nuclear weapons to be credible we must know, with certainty, that the weapons will work as planned if called upon to do so...

...Some four centuries before that this same island—with a handful of armed knights and a few thousand locals repulsed the vastly superior forces of the Sultan of Turkey in a victory that set church bells a-ringing even in the Protestant England of Elizabeth I. Called the Great Siege, the battle re-versed the direction of history in favor of Christian Europe...

...accepted the proposal...

...they are required to operate only once...

...What remedy would be available to the United States if the ' Soviet Union refused to acknowledge its violationand also refused to permit onsite inspection...

...Moreover, tests are now usually identified because of their known location near a test site, or because of otheridentifying information...

...But the calls for a ban on nuclear testing overlook the many reasons why tests are conducted in the first place...

...Since 1945, the nature of the nuclear threat has changed greatly, and deterrence, which requires the maintenance of a credible weapons stockpile, has responded to those technological developments...

...If deterioration is found during the inspection, the weapon might require redesign to avoid the problem...

...Were there to be a ban on testing, the U.S...

...Fruitless discussions on verification and other issues continued in Geneva while President Kennedy supported the ban, and all U.S...

...The largest test ever conducted by the U.S...

...If the warhead requires replacement by a different type, the replacement warhead will need various certification tests in its new role...

...The weapon must be taken apart for the internal components to be inspected, which is more than a simple matter of undoing some bolts and screws to separate the various parts...

...The United States has detonated only about one-tenth of that...

...The Soviets can protest that, technically, they did not break the moratorium because they did DANGER RADIOACTIVE IODINE 131not actually conduct any tests during it...

...First, al-though the proposals are always aimed at the United States and the Soviet Union, both China and France possess nuclear arms and delivery systems, and both have stated unequivocally that they will continue testing regardless of what the U.S...

...In the two years 1961-63 the Soviets conducted elaborate weapon systems tests and very complex tests involving missiles and radars, all of which took long lead-time preparation...

...He is as zealous for socialism today as he was for Christianity twenty years ago...

...Its first nuclear test took place the next day and it continued testing until August 1963...

...The Soviet program consisted of about one hundred tests in the atmosphere, an unknown number underground, and several at very high altitudes...

...Offer limited to new subscribers.] My check for $22 is en-closed...

...It is about the truth and how to arrive at it — in all fields...

...SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL...

...If you are looking for somebody to trust and parrot, get your opinions from the network newscasters and newspaper analysts, who are mostly trusting and parroting each other...

...And readers were informed why certain things, such as the Chernobyl accident, cannot happen in America: they are not prevented by safety equipment, but by physical laws...

...There is essentially no wear except for that associated with handling and transport...

...weapons work, including research and development, remained on hold...

...U.S...

...In this case, I told them how much radioactive iodine 131 is given to a healthy patient in a thyroid check (a cancer patient is given much more): up to 90 microcuries...

...Should the Soviet Union conduct a secret test, the conclusive evidence we DANGER RADIOACTIVE DANGER RADIOACTIVE IODINE 131 IODINE 131 Within days of the Chernobyl accident I warned my 6,000 readers: Do not drink more than 63,000 gallons of rain water...

...Signals are confused in the natural noise of the earth, and many events simply escape seismic detection...

...In the 1960s, for example, the total destructive potential of our nuclear arsenal was four times as great as it is today...

...Today's weapons are not, as is so often implied, just as in-discriminate but more powerful than the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

...Thus Mosta boasts a solemn Good Friday procession of biblical characters and holy statues, followed by hooded, white-robed William McGurn is editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal/ Europe and a European editor of The American Spectator...

...As for those 63,000 gallons, my readers know why they are safe...

...Having led his people from a robust democracy to the fringes of the collectivist Promised Land, Mintoff has left it to Mifsud Bonnici to cross the Jordan...

...but they share a common inability to evaluate...

...They deteriorate in time and become unreliable, inoperable, or function differently from the way they were designed...

...The assumption that testing is solely or even primarily for the purpose of adding still more weapons to existing arsenals is simple-minded and deeply mistaken...

...Opening up the socialist daily, he would find an advertisement for Libyan mercenaries to fight against "U.S...

...was in the Castle series in March 1953, measuring 15 megatons...

...If you think that war is caused by weapons, join Gulagchev's peace-marching stooges...

...A Rhodes scholar, Mintoff was said to have ruled the island with the contempt of a colonial governor, and this description was lent credence by the successor he chose to inflict on his people, his education minister, Mifsud Bonnici...

...But at the same time the pious Maltese were preparing for Easter their unelected prime minister, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, was making a pilgrimage to Tripoli...

...Nevertheless the campaign is unrelenting...

...But if you want to form an opinion by rational conclusions from measured data, subscribe to Access to Energy...

...The Soviet resumption of testing caught the United States totally unprepared...

...There he told Muammar Qaddafi that the Maltese were "one with the people of Libya" during this "grave hour"--i.e., the skirmish with the U.S...

...for they think objectivity lies halfway between the truth and a lie...

...Should the U.S...

...I don't ask them to trust and parrot me, I ask them to think...

...Those who support a nuclear test ban usually include the words "mutual" and "verifiable...

...They work by the T&P (trust and parrot) method...