The Associated Press May 01, 2003
National nuclear weapons labs studying new bunker-busting bomb
By Mark Sherman
Two national nuclear weapons laboratories have begun studying prospects for a so-called bunker-busting nuclear bomb that could destroy deeply buried targets - but also create deadly radioactive fallout.
The competing feasibility studies at the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos labs are the outgrowth of the Bush administration's nuclear policy review, which determined that the nation needs to modernize its nuclear force and develop a more flexible array of weapons for use to deter attack by unpredictable countries like North Korea.
The administration's opponents say the development of new, smaller nuclear weapons would make the use of nuclear weapons - unthinkable during the Cold War - more likely and undercut the U.S. push to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
Democrats plan to ask some tough questions at hearings next week about what this means for the nation's nuclear policy. "The administration is using this as a stalking horse for a much bigger agenda they want to have about nuclear weapons," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif.
Scientists at the labs are looking at modifying bombs already in the nuclear arsenal to create the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. The goal is to be able to destroy a bunker buried in rock thousands of feet below the surface, said Fred Celec, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's deputy assistant for nuclear matters.
"There are hard, deeply buried targets around the world today that we cannot hold at risk with anything we have in the inventory today or any conventional weapon we see in the inventory in the future," Celec said in an interview.
The new weapon would burrow 20 to 30 feet into the earth and then detonate, creating a strong seismic shock wave that could destroy or damage the deeply buried target, experts say.
Such a bomb would have to penetrate deeper or pack more explosive punch than the U.S. arsenal's existing earth-penetrating nuclear bomb. That bomb, the B61-11, is designed to burrow into soil, but not rock, before exploding and has a yield that ranges as high as 340 kilotons, according to nuclear experts. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was around 15 kilotons, or 15,000 tons of TNT.
The United States dropped less powerful conventional bunker-busting bombs on Iraq in an effort kill Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders.
The administration also is asking Congress to lift a ban on research on low-yield nuclear weapons of less than five kilotons, so that military planners can study another type of bunker-busting bomb, one that might use heat and radiation to kill biological and chemical agents, Celec said.
Congressional Democrats warned that the research could have dangerous, unintended consequences. "It sends all the wrong signals to the rest of the world that we're preaching nonproliferation to," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the senior Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "It moves us in a direction that is very contrary to the policy we pursued throughout the Cold War."
Tauscher, whose district includes Livermore, said the administration's pursuit of new weapons is hypocritical. "It's a little bit like talking out of both sides of your mouth," she said. "You can't have them, but by the way, we don't have enough."
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan Washington group that supports nonproliferation, described the larger agenda referred to by Tauscher.
"If you connect all of the dots, it's clear they're headed in the direction of producing new types of nuclear weapons for new missions and very well could lead to a resumption of nuclear testing and a nuclear action-reaction cycle around the world," Kimball said.
The administration has said it has no plans to resume testing.
Tauscher also questioned whether there is a need for such battlefield nuclear weapons. She said she has not had any military officers tell her they believe the U.S. arsenal needs them.
Among the concerns cited by opponents is the risk to troops posed by fallout. A study by the Natural Resources Defense Council of a hypothetical nuclear attack on a North Korean bunker with a 100-kiloton bomb shows fallout extending across the Demilitarized Zone, where U.S. troops are stationed, and into South Korea, said Matthew McKinzie, a staff scientist in NRDC's nuclear program.
The amount of fallout would depend on the size of the bomb, and where it detonated, McKinzie said.
But Celec, a career civil servant who will retire later this year, said he has talked to civilian and military officials at the Pentagon who want the process to move forward.
He acknowledged there would be radioactive fallout from a nuclear attack on a deeply buried bunker, but asserted that it would cause less damage than an above-ground nuclear explosion.
Celec said no decisions have been made about producing a new weapon, and that technical or political concerns could sink the project. For now, the Bush administration just wants congressional approval, and funding. "It is a study at this point in time and nothing more than that," Celec said.
On the Net:
Excerpts from the administration's nuclear posture review: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press
