送信者: "kkaneko" <kkaneko@eagle.ocn.ne.jp>
件名 : EEE会議（米国の超小型核爆弾開発計画＝英文ページ）
日時 : 2003年5月8日 10:35


Bush Administration Keen on New Nuclear Weapons

By J.R. Pegg

WASHINGTON, DC, May 6, 2003 (ENS) - As U.S. officials
struggle to deal with North Korea and its renegade nuclear program, the
Senate Armed Services Committee is set to consider a Bush administration
proposal to research new nuclear weapons and to reduce the preparation time
for underground testing from three years to 18 months.

The proposal is one piece of the administration's nuclear
weapons policy that critics believe blurs the line between the use of
nuclear and conventional weapons and threatens to undermine the
international effort to contain the world's development of nuclear weapons.

"A nuclear weapon is not just another item in our arsenal,
and it is wrong to treat it like it is," Senator Ted Kennedy said last week
at a panel discussion held by the nonpartisan Arms Control Association
(ACA).

"We reap what we sow," said Kennedy, a Massachusetts
Democrat and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "If we
brandish our own nuclear weapons, we only encourage other nations to develop
their own."

Within its fiscal 2004 defense budget, the Bush
administration has requested funding to shorten the prep time for testing
and for research on nuclear bunker buster bombs as well as for the repeal of
the 10 year old ban on research and development of low yield nuclear weapons
less than five kilotons.

A five kiloton nuclear weapon is about half the size of
the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The Senate Armed Services Committee
is scheduled to begin discussions of the 2004 defense budget today, although
an early design contest has already been launched between federal research
laboratories to outline plans for the nuclear bunker buster bomb.

The U.S. has not performed a nuclear weapons test since
1992. (Photo courtesy Defense Threat Reduction Agency)
The administration says its plans would make the nation's
nuclear arsenal into a more effective deterrent, because these kinds of
weapons could reduce the potential for causing civilian casualties and could
improve the effectiveness of nuclear weapons in destroying deeply buried and
hardened targets. Officials say the administration is committed to continued
dismantling of the existing nuclear arsenal and that its policy is
consistent with the goal of reducing the nation's dependence on the
deterrent threat of nuclear weapons.
Critics say that the administration's concept of modifying
or developing nuclear weapons for use against deeply buried and hardened
targets is not only misguided, but fundamentally flawed.

Low collateral, low yield bunker buster nuclear bombs are
a "physical myth," said Sidney Drell, a nuclear physicist with Stanford
University.

A nuclear weapon exploded just beneath the Earth's surface
would create a massive crater and would throw more radioactive dirt and
particles into the air than one detonated above the target, Drell explained.


For fallout to be contained, even a 0.5 kiloton nuclear
weapon would have to penetrate at least 150 feet into the Earth in order for
fallout to be contained, explained Matt McKinzie, a physicist with the
Natural Resources Defense Council

But there is no known material that could be used to
encase a bomb that could penetrate more than 50 feet, Drell said, "even if
we slam them in at supersonic speeds."

And even if there was such a material, Drell explained,
the bunkers the administration is concerned about would require a nuclear
weapon of more than 100 kilotons.

"To contain 100 kilotons or so, you would have to detonate
the weapon more than 1,000 feet below ground," said Drell.

Critics of the administration say the war in Iraq
underscores the view that the U.S. has nothing to gain, but a lot to lose,
from developing the low yield nuclear weapons currently banned by Congress.

Precision guided munitions and standoff weapons currently
in the U.S. arsenal make these "mini nukes unnecessary," Kennedy said.

Developing these capabilities would "offer the United
States no decisive military advantage while having potentially grave
repercussions for U.S. interests around the world," said Senator Dianne
Feinstein, a California Democrat.

"The political effects of U.S. pursuit of new nuclear
weapons could well be to legitimize nuclear weapons, and U.S. nuclear
planning could serve as a pretext for other countries and, worse, terrorist
groups such as al-Qaeda, to build or acquire their own bombs."

The request for funding to shorten the time it would take
to prepare for underground testing also sends the wrong message to the
international community, Drell told attendees at ACA's discussion, in
particular in light of other administration policies that appear to blur the
lines between use of nuclear and conventional weapons.

A policy document released by the administration in
December 2002 outlined that the administration would consider using nuclear
weapons in response to chemical or biological threats and officials have
indicated that nuclear weapons could be used against hostile nations such as
North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya.

President George W. Bush has worked closely with Russian
President Vladimir Putin to forge agreements to reduce existing nuclear
stockpiles in both countries. (Photo by Eric Draper courtesy the White
House)
"There is no justification for that kind of escalation,"
Kennedy said. "Our conventional weapons are more than adequate to deal with
that threat. We gain no greater deterrence by threatening to go nuclear."
Kennedy says the administration's proposals send the wrong
message to the international community just as the world is wrestling with
growing fears of nuclear proliferation.

Instead of seeking to develop new weapons, Kennedy says
the administration should be doing more to ensure that existing stockpiles -
in particular in Russia - do not fall into the hands of terrorists.

"There is hundreds of tons of material in the former
Soviet Union," Drell explained. "Those are the greatest threats we face, and
here we are spending less than one-third of one percent of our defense
budget on that problem. That is terribly out of whack."

The administration is sending mixed messages about its
nuclear weapons policy, added ACA executive director Darryl Kimball. Its
Nuclear Posture Review calls for the U.S. should minimize the role of
nuclear weapons, as did the head of the U.S. Strategic Command in recent
Congressional testimony.

But the same document calls for the development of these
new capabilities.

"The Bush administration is Jekyll and Hyde on this
subject," Kimball said.

The policy could put additional strain on international
accords to prevent non proliferation at critical time, even as this
framework has proven to be effective, according to Drell.

Only eight out of 189 nations are known to have nuclear
weapons today, Drell said, "a far small number was thought to be the case as
one looked at prospects 40, 30 years ago."

Four nuclear powers are not party to the Nonproliferation
Treaty - India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.

"It would be fair to say that the further U.S. pursuit of
new types of nuclear weapons or modifications, whether they are high-yield
or low-yield, would complicate efforts to try to deal with the tactical
weapons in the former Soviet Union," said Kimball.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, worries
that the Bush administration's nuclear policy will make the challenges of
nonproliferation more difficult to address. (Photo courtesy Senator
Feinstein's Office)
The Bush administration's proposals stand in contrast to
the continued efforts to reduce the American nuclear arsenal. The U.S. has
not manufactured a new nuclear weapon nor produced fissile material for
nuclear weapons in more than a decade and has dismantled more than 13,000
nuclear weapons since 1992.
In addition, the Moscow Treaty, ratified by the Senate in
March, calls for the U.S. and Russia to reduce their number of deployed
warheads - under the accord, the current U.S. total of 6,000 and the Russian
stockpile of 5,000 strategic nuclear warheads will be cut to no more than
2,220 each by the end of 2012.

In a paper submitted to the G-8, which is expected to
discuss funding for non proliferation at its meeting in June, the Bush
administration says it is not backing away from this commitment nor do its
actions indicate a move to begin testing new weapons.

"Proposals exist to decrease the time that it would take
to resume nuclear testing, were that ever to be necessary," according to the
May 1 paper. "But that fact says nothing about the likelihood of a nuclear
test. Nor does it relate to the development of a new nuclear weapon."

"Published reports that studies or contingency planning
may be ongoing do not in any way represent a change in policy," the paper
states. "Since the nuclear age began, all U.S. Presidents have demonstrated
prudence with regard to nuclear weapons. The United States has an
unparalleled conventional capability to defend our security. President
Bush's policies are further reducing the extent to which we need to rely on
nuclear weapons."

But this does little to ease fears by many that the Bush
administration is sending the wrong signal on nuclear weapons. Critics
believe that that if the U.S. is perceived to be actively seeking new
weapons in its nuclear arsenal, it will be harder to convince others to halt
their development.

"If we are not careful, our own nuclear posture could
provoke the very nuclear-proliferation activities we are seeking to
prevent," said Feinstein.


Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2003. All Rights Reserved.